Monday dawned warm and rainless. Aurelio Escovar, a dentist without a degree, opened his office at six. When he had a handful of is instruments arranged on the table, he sat down to polish the false teeth. He seemed not to be thinking about what he was doing, but worked steadily.
The sharp voice of his eleven-year-old son interrupted his concentration.
“Papa.”
“What?
“The Mayor wants to know if you'll pull his tooth.”
“ Tell him I'm not here.”
He was polishing a gold tooth. He held it at arm's length, and examined it with his eyes half closed. His son shouted again from the little waiting room.
“He says you are, too, because he can hear you.”
The dentist kept examining the tooth. Only when he had put it on the table with the finished work did he say, “So much the better.” He took several pieces of a bridge out of a cardboard box where he kept the things he still had to do and began to polish the gold.
“Papa.”
“What? He still hadn't changed his expression.
“He says if you don't take out his tooth, he'll shoot you.”
Without hurrying, with an extremely calm movement, he stopped his work and pulled the lower drawer of the table all the way out. There was a revolver (左轮手枪). “OK,” he said. “Tell him to come and shoot me.” He rolled the chair over opposite the door, his hand resting on the edge of the drawer.
The Mayor appeared at the door. He had shaved the left side of his face, but the other side, swollen and in pain, had a five-day-old beard.
The dentist saw many nights of desperation in his dull eyes. He closed the drawer with his fingertips and said softy, “'Sit down.”
“Good morning,” said the Mayor.
“Morning,” said the dentist.
While the instruments were boiling, the Mayor leaned his head on the headrest of the chair and felt better. His breath was icy. When he felt the dentist approach, the Mayor held his breath and opened his mouth.
Aurelio Escovar turned his bead toward the light. After inspecting the infected tooth, he closed the Mayor's jaw with a cautious pressure of his fingers. “It has to be without anesthesia (麻醉),” he said.
“Why?”
“Because you have an abscess (脓肿).”
The Mayor looked him in the eye. “All right,” he said, and tried to smile.
The dentist did not return the smile. He did all the preparation work without looking at the Mayor.
It was a lower wisdom tooth. The dentist spread his feet and grasped the tooth with the hot forceps (钳子). The Mayor seized the arms of the chair with all his strength. The dentist moved only his wrist. Without rancor (怨恨) rather with a bitter tenderness he said, “Now you'll pay for our twenty dead men.”
The Mayor felt the great pain in his jaw, and his eyes filled with tears. But he didn't breathe until he felt the tooth come out. Then he saw it through his tears. It seemed so foreign to his pain that he filed to understand his torture of the five previous nights.
The dentist gave him a clean cloth. “Dry your tears,” he said.
The Mayor did. He was trembling. While the dentist washed his hands, he saw the shabby ceiling and a dusty spider web with spider's eggs and dead insects.
The dentist returned, drying his hands. “Go to bed,” he said, “and gargle (漱口) with salt water.”
The Mayor stood up, said goodbye with a casual military solute, and walked toward the door, stretching his legs.
“Send the bill, he said.
“To you or the town?”
The Mayor didn't look at him. He closed the door.
1.Why did the dentist say he was not there (Para 6) when the Mayor wanted to have his tooth pulled?
A.Because he was only a dentist without a degree.
B.Because he was unwilling to treat the Mayor.
C.Because he was too busy to attend to the Mayor.
D.Because he was still polishing the Mayor's gold tooth.
2.What does the underlined sentence “He says if you don’t take out his tooth, he’ll shoot you.” imply?
A.The Mayor had a gun in secret. B.The Mayor was scaring the dentist's son.
C.The Mayor used to hate the dentist. D.The Mayor had absolute power in this town.
3.Which of the following statements is actually a lie?
A.There was a real revolver in the lower drawer of the dentist's table.
B.The Mayor didn't shave the right side of his face because of the toothache.
C.A lower wisdom tooth on the right side had given the Mayor a lot of pain for several days.
D.The dentist couldn't but pull the Mayor's tooth without anesthesia because of an abscess.
4.What kind of person is Aurelio Eascover according to the passage?
A.A humorous dentist in a small town. B.A skilled murderer in a dentist's clothing.
C.An ordinary citizen with a strong sense of justice. D.A brave hero in support of the government.
In the famous musical My Fair Lady, Eliza Doolittle, the poor daughter of a dustman who speaks with a thick Cockney accent, becomes the unwitting (不知晓的) target for a bet between two phonetics scholars. By the end of the musical, Doolittle is able to pronounce all of her words like a member of the British elite, fooling everyone at an embassy ball about her true origins.
It’s hard to imagine a version of My Fair Lady set in the U.S. because, unlike the British, Americans seem either unwilling or unable to honestly acknowledge their own social class. But a new set of scientific studies conducted by Michael Krauss and his colleagues at Yale University show that Americans find it easy to make distinctions about other people’s social class just by listening to them speak.
In one study, the researchers asked 229 people to listen to 27 different speakers who varied in terms of their age, race, gender and social class. The participants heard each speaker say a total of seven different words. Based on just this short audio, participants were able to correctly identify which speakers were college-educated 55 percent of the time-more than what would be expected by chance. A major limitation of this study, however, was that it used college education as a criterion for social class.
Then in another experiment, 302 participants were asked to either listen to or read transcripts (文本) from 90 seconds of recorded speech in which the speakers talked about themselves without explicitly mentioning anything about their social class. Participants were asked to judge what they thought the social classes of the speakers were by using a 10-rung ascending (上升的) ladder of increasing income, education and occupation. They found that participants who heard the audio recordings were more accurate in judging where the speakers fell in terms of their social status.
To show whether these inferences have real-world consequences, Kraus and his colleagues ran another experiment. They recruited 274 participants, all of whom had past hiring experience, to either listen to the audio or read a transcript of the content. The findings showed that participants were able to accurately judge the social class of the candidates and that this effect was stronger for participants who had heard the audio recordings. In addition, participants judged the higher-class candidates as more competent, a better fit for the job and more likely to be hired.
Taken together, this research suggests that despite our discomfort about the topic, Americans are able to easily detect one another’s social class from small snippets of speech. Moreover, we use this information to discriminate against people who seem to be of a lower social class. This research identifies social class as another potential way that employers may discriminate against candidates, perhaps without even realizing it.
1.The author introduces his topic by______.
A.making a comparison
B.justifying an assumption
C.explaining a phenomenon
D.relating the plot of a musical
2.What do the experiments suggest?
A.Participants tend to make objective judgments.
B.The content rather than the speaking style is reliable.
C.One’s social class can be inferred from how they speak.
D.Education and income are the main criteria for social status.
3.According to the passage, judgments about the way people talk_____.
A.disagree with the facts
B.affect hiring decisions
C.favour competent people
D.hardly provide reference
4.What can be learned from the last paragraph?
A.Americans are slow to judge social classes.
B.People in a low social class lose jobs easily.
C.Social-class discrimination is hard to address.
D.Speech can create social-class discrimination.
When you throw something in the trash, soon a garbage truck will come to take it away. Then where does it go? That depends on where you live. Different towns deal with trash in different ways. | |
Recycling A recycling truck picks up paper, cardboard, metal, plastic and glass. These go to the recycling plant to be sorted and made into new things. |
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Incinerator An incinerator is a huge stove that burns trash to make heat and electricity. The ash that’s left gets buried in a landfill. Trash ash can be poisonous, so it has to be stored carefully. But is takes up a lot less room than just plain trash. |
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Compost Food waste might go to a composter. In a compost heap (堆肥堆), bacteria and worms break down dead plants and old food. They turn it in into good, rich oil. Some people keep compost heaps in their gardens. Big commercial composters handle waste from restaurants and farms. |
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Landfills Some trash gets buried in landfills. A landfill starts as a big hole. Trucks dump trash. Big earth movers push it into place and crush it down. They cover the trash with dirt to keep scavengers (食腐动物) away. The bottom of a landfills is lined with a barrier to keep bad things from leaking into the ground. Pipes drain away liquid. When the landfill is full, it’s covered with earth. It might become a park or lawn. |
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1.What can we learn from the passage?
A.Recycling helps to generate energy.
B.Bacteria and worms helps handle food waste.
C.The landfill is used to drive scavengers away.
D.Trash ash is carefully handled to save room.
2.What’s the purpose of the passage?
A.To inform us of trash treatment.
B.To appeal for trash classification.
C.To discuss solutions to trash pollution.
D.To raise awareness of the harm of trash.
听下面一段独白，回答以下小题。
1.What has happened to South Howe Broch?
A.It has completely disappeared.
B.It has been falling into the sea.
C.It has been protected by a sea wall.
2.Which of the following sites has been badly affected by severe weather events?
A.Midhowe Broch. B.The Orkney Islands. C.The University of the Highlands and Islands.
3.Which period does the Midhowe Broch belong to?
A.The Iron Age. B.Viking rule. C.The Middle Ages.
4.What does the passage mainly talk about?
A.Climate has greatly changed in Scotland.
B.Climate change threatens Scottish historical structures.
C.Ancient British structures remain after severe climate change.
听下面一段较长对话，回答以下小题。
1.What might be responsible for Alice's headache?
A.Lack of sleep. B.Tiredness. C.Stress.
2.What does Alice probably do?
A.She's a student. B.She's a housewife. C.She's an employee.
3.What's the man's suggestion to the woman?
A.Changing her job. B.Forgetting her to-do-list. C.Relaxing herself with what she likes.
听下面一段较长对话，回答以下小题。
1.What does the man want to do?
A.Open a credit card account. B.Check his credit report. C.Pay off credit card debt.
2.How many valid credit cards does the man have now?
A.None. B.One C.Five.
3.What caused the man's problem?
A.He had unpaid debts. B.He was unable to pay. C.He failed to pay on time.
