You are going to read an article about guidebooks ...

第1题

You are going to read an article about guidebooks to London. For questions 21-35, choose from the guidebooks (A-G). The guidebooks may be chosen more than once. When more than one answer is required, these may be given in any order. There is an example at the beginning (0).

Of which guidebook(s) is the following stated?

It is frequently revised. 0. F

It is quite expensive. 【S1】______

It is not aimed at local people. 【S2】______

Its appearance is similar to other books by the same publisher. 【S3】______

It contains some errors. 【S4】______

It is reasonably priced. 【S5】______

It shows great enthusiasm for the city. 【S6】______

It has always been produced with a particular market in mind. 【S7】 ______

It is written by people who have all the latest information. 【S8】 ______

It is written in a friendly style. 【S9】 ______【S10】 ______

It is part of the first series of its kind to be published. 【S11】 ______

It omits some sights which should be included. 【S12】 ______

It contains more information than other guides. 【S13】 ______

It might appeal to London residents. 【S14】 ______

Its information about places to eat is enjoyable to read. 【S15】 ______

London Guidebooks

Visitors to London, which has so much to offer, need all the help they can get. Alastair Beckley takes his pick of the capital's guidebooks.

Guidebook A

Informal and familiar in tone, this valuable book has much to offer. Produced by the same people who put together London's principal listings magazine, this is right Lip to date with what's happening in the city very much its home ground. It is concise enough to cater for those staying for just a couple of days, yet covers all areas of interest to visitors in an admirably condensed and approachable way. On balance, this is the single most handy book to have with you in London.

Guidebook B

This book is beautifully illustrated, with cutaway diagrams of buildings and bird's-eye-view itineraries rather than plain maps. leis is a model of the clear professional design that is the recognisable trademark of this series. Its coverage of the main sights is strong, and visually it's a real trial - a delight to own as a practical guide. It's a bit pricey but well wor

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第2题

You are going to read an article about people who changed their jobs. For questions 23-35, choose from the people (A-D). The people may be chosen more than once. There is an example at the beginning (0).

Which person mentions

enjoying their pastime more than the job they used to do?

enjoying being in charge of their own life? 【S1】______

being surprised by suddenly losing their previous job? 【S2】______

not having other people depending on them financially? 【S3】______

missing working with other people? 【S4】______

undergoing training in order to take up their new job? 【S5】______

a contact being useful in promoting their new business? 【S6】______

not being interested in possible promotion in their old job? 【S7】______

disliking the amount of time they used to have to work? 【S8】______

surprising someone else by the decision they made? 【S9】______

a prediction that hasn't come true? 【S10】______

consulting other people about their businesses? 【S11】______

the similarities between their new job and their old one? 【S12】______

working to a strict timetable? 【S13】______

A NEW LIFE

A The Farmer

Matt Froggatt used to be an insurance agent in the City of London but now runs a sheep farm.

"After 14 years in business, I found that the City had gone from a place which was exciting to work into a grind-no one was having fun any more. But I hadn't planned to leave for another five or ten years when I was made redundant. It came out of the blue, but it made me take a careful look at my life. I didn't get a particularly good pay-off but it was enough to set up the farm with. My break came when I got to know the head chef of a local hotel with one of the top 20 hotel restaurants in the country. Through supplying them, my reputation spread and now I also supply meat through mail order. I'm glad I'm no longer stuck in the office but it's astonishing how little things have changed for me: the same 80- to 90- hour week and still selling a product."

B The Paniter

Ron Able white was a manager in advertising but now makes a living as an artist.

"My painting began as a hobby but I realised I was getting far more excitement out of it than out of working. The decision to take redundancy and to become an artist seemed logical. The career counsellor I talked to was very helpful. I think I was the first person who had ever told him, '1 don't want to go back to where I've been.' He was astonished because the majority of people in their mid-forties need to get back to work immediately -they need the money. But we had married young and our children didn't need our support. It was a leap into the unknown. We went to the north of England, where we didn't know a soul. It meant leaving all our friends, but we've been lucky in that our friendships have survived the distance plenty of them come up and visit us now."

C The Hatmaker

After working for five years as a company lawyer, Katherine Goodison set up her own business in her London flat, making hats for private clients.

"My job as a lawyer was fun. It was stimulating and I earned a lot of money, but the hours were terrible. I realised I didn't wan

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第3题

You are going to read an article about the effect of advertising on children. For questions 22- 35, choose from the sections of the article (A-F). The sections may be chosen more than once. There is an example at the beginning (0).

Which section of the article mentions

the kind of shop in which TV advertising expects to see results? 0 B

the influence a parent has had over their child's views? 【S1】______

the fact that children do not understand why their parents refuse their demands? 【S2】______

a parent who understands why children make demands? 【S3】______

a family who rarely argue while shopping? 【S4】______

someone who feels children ought to find out for themselves how to make 【S5】______

decisions about what to buy?

the fact that parents can be mistaken about what food is good for you? 【S6】______

an unexpected benefit for shops? 【S7】______

a parent who regrets buying what their children have asked for? 【S8】______

a parent who has different rules for themselves and their children? 【S9】______

a parent who feels annoyed even before the children ask for anything? 【S10】______

the fact that parents blame the advertisers for the difficult situation they 【S11】______

find themselves in?

the regularity of children's demands? 【S12】______

the need for parents to discuss food with their children? 【S13】______

a TV advertising rule which has little effect? 【S14】______

Young Shoppers

A Supermarket shopping with children, one mother says, is absolute a murder: "They want everything they see. If it's not the latest sugar-coated breakfast cereal, it's a Disney video or a comic. Usually all three. I can't afford all this stuff and, anyway, if I agree to their demands I feel I've been persuaded against my better judgment and I feel guilty about buying and feeding them rubbish. Yet I hate myself for saying no all the time, and I get cross and defensive in anticipation as we leave home. I do my best to avoid taking them shopping but then I worry that I'm not allowing them to have the experience they need in order to make their own choices. I can't win."

B Research has found that children taken on a supermarket trip make a purchase request every two minutes. More than ￡150 million a year is now spent on a

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第4题

You are going to read a newspaper article about an island in the Irish Sea, called the Isle of Man, which is fast becoming a centre for film-making. Choose from the list A-H the sentence which best summarises each part (1-6) of the article. There is one extra sentence which you do not need to use. There is an example at the beginning (0).

A The new film industry is not expected to make big profits immediately.

B The new film industry has resulted in some criticism of the island's government.

C It was initially difficult to persuade film-makers to use the island.

D The island is already able to compete with other film- making centres.

E Film-makers are able to find a wide range of settings for their films on the island.

F More investment is planned as the new film industry becomes established.

G Financial reasons have made film companies see the island as a good place to make new films.

H The island's inhabitants are keen to be involved with the new film industry.

TREASURE ISLAND

Only 73,000 people live on the Isle of Man, but several thousand of them have registered with Jay-Dee Promotions. This is the casting and extras agency John Banks and his wife Pat run to service tile film industry that has suddenly taken off on the island. Banks does not know exactly how many clients he has—he is too busy to count them. And Jay-Dcc is only one of three such agencies that have sprung up in the last year or two.

【B1】 __________

Until recently the island's principal contributions to cinema were a comedy about motorcycle racing, and Tile Man.am ah, one of Alfred Hitchcock's silent movies. But producers have now discovered an important reason to undertake the inconvenient voyage to the middle of the Irish Sca-money. In the past couple of years, the Isle of Mall government has lent over ￡6.5 million of public money to film companies. If a film is a success then the Isle of Man will receive a share of the profits. This has turned the island into an offshore I folly wood.

【B2】 __________

Only one film was made in 1995, two in 1996, but there were no fewer than eleven in the following year. However, from the beginning, the Isle of Man government has followed the strategy of Hollywood, where the role of thumb is that for every ten films, seven will lose money, one will cover its costs, one will provide modest returns, and the tenth, it is hoped, will be an enormous hit.

【B3】 __________

An island 45 kilometres long, with no history of film production, is suddenly turning out the same number of fins as the Scottish film industry, which has a huge pool of local talent and an infrastructure that has evolved over the years. However, it was always the intention of the Isle of Man government to lure productions away from England, Scotland and Ireland.

【B4】 __________

Producers have suddenly discovered the affluent little holiday island to be the perfect location for seemingly any film. It has doubled for Cornwall, Hamburg, Sydney Harbour in the nineteenth century, rural Ireland and inner- city England. It has even attracted a new production of Treasure island. Geographical specifics did not seem to be uppermost in the mind of the film's producer: 'We gambled with the fact that we would be able to have enough sunny days to be able to do the tropical island part.'

【B5】 __________

Tile Isle of Man film initiative was inspired not by vague dreams of glory, but by hopes of boosting the economy. Its tourist industry has been in decline for twenty years and it was thought that a hit film would help it. One of the early objectives was simply to demonstrate to a doubtful fin industry that it was possible to make feature films on the island.

【B6】 __________

The govcrnmcn

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第5题

You are going to read a newspaper article about a man who is running round the world. Eight paragraphs have been removed from the article. Choose from the paragraphs A-I the one which fits each gap (16-22). There is one extra paragraph which you do not need to use. There is an example at the beginning (0).

The Runningman

Bryan Green, a 32-year old from London, calls himself the "Runningman". He runs and keeps on running through towns, cities, up mountains and across rivers. Green has set his sights on running round the world.

He then flew to the north of Japan and ran to Osaka in the south. In Australia he ran from Perth to Sydney, and then he began in the Americas, bringing his current total to 23 countries, 45,000 kilometres and 30 pairs of trainers.

【B1】______

When I met Green in Rio, he had just run 70 kilometres, his daily average. He was holding in one hand a two-litre bottle of fizzy juice and in the other a piece of paper that he needed someone to sign, to confirm the time al which he had arrived.

【B2】______

He travels light, carrying with him less than many people take to work. In his backpack he has a palmtop computer, a digital video camera, a Nikon 35mm camera, a rnap, a loo[hbrush and one change of clothes.

【B3】______

"The original idea was just to see the world," he told me. "But, as I soon realised, I could make myself a future. I have learnt how to make money out of what [ do." He started off with￡20 in his pocket and estimates that he has earned about E 60,000 so far.

【B4】______

And there is something of the explorer about him. "Of course, I've found some places easier than others," he says.

【B5】______

At one point on that stage of the journey, Green got lost and was unable to find enough to eat. But generally he has been lucky with his health: he has not been injured and has never fallen ill.

【B6】______

He speaks no language apart from English and, with no space for a dictionary, has a plastic- covered sheet of A4 paper with a dozen use, fid phrases in various languages. Over dinner he is keen to talk about the Amazon jungle.

【B7】______

However, perhaps the point of a run like Green's is not to indulge in proper preparation. Its beauty is in the improvisation. "I don't really analyse the run any more, I just do it," he says.

A I did it for him. Even though he akeady holds the world long-distance running record, he still needs to continue proving he is keeping up a reasonable running speed.

B He has not yet sorted out a route and appears surprised when I tell him that there are no proper roads across it, as local people prefer to use the rivers instead.

C He's done this by selling his story to journalists. He is very aware that he is a marketable product.

D He has learned that you must take only what you will use. He has no medical supplies and no proper waterproofs.

E Apart from the day in south Australia where it was 45℃ in the shade and he collapsed, Australia is, he says, perfect running country. This compares to his experiences in temperatures of—30℃ in parts of Asia.

F Next week he heads off north, towards the Amazon, hoping to run to New York. After that, he just has to take care of Africa and Antarctica.

G So he is a touchingly solitary figure. He is too mobile to be able to make many friends, although he did meet someone in Australia who cycled next to him for 600 kilometres.

H Fortunately, the cold and the rain don't seem to bother him. It is partly his strength of character that made him refuse to take health insurance.

I The Runningman recently arrived in Rio de Janeiro in Brazil via a roundabout route: he left London four years ago and ran through Europe to China.

【B1】______

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第6题

You are going to read a newspaper article about human beings getting taller. Eight sentences have been removed from the article, Choose from the sentences A-I the one that fits each gap (14-20). There is one extra sentence which you do not need to use. There is an example at the beginning (0).

It's true—We're all getting too big for our boots

Chris Greener was fourteen when he told his careers teacher be wanted to join the navy when he left school. 'What do you want to be?' asked the teacher, looking the boy up and down. 'The flagpole un a ship?' The teacher had a pout because Chris, though still only fourteen, was already almost two metres tall.

Every decade, the average height of people in Europe grows another centimetre. Every year, more and more truly big people are horn. continuingly, this does not mean humanity is producing a new super race.

【B1】__________

Only now are we losing the effects of generations of poor diet-with dramatic effects. 'We are only now beginning to fulfil our proper potential and are reaching the dimensions programmed by our bodies,' says paleontologist Professor Chris Stringer. 'We are becoming Cro-Magnons again- the people who lived on this planet 40,000 years ago.' For most of human history, our ancestors got their food from a wide variety of sources: women gathered herbs, fruits and berries, while men supplemented these with occasional kills of animals (a way of life still adopted by the world's few remaining tribes of hunter-gatherer).

【B2】__________

Then about 9,000 years ago, agriculture was invented with devastating consequences. Most of the planet's green places have been gradually taken over by farmers, with the result that just three carbohydrate- rich plants - wheat, rice and maize provide more than half of the calories consumed by the human race today.

【B3】__________

Over the centuries we have lived on soups, porridges and breads that have left us underfed and underdeveloped. In one study of skeletons of American Indians in Ohio, scientists discovered that when they began to grow corn, healthy hunter-gatherers were turned into sickly, underweight farmers. Tooth decay increased, as did diseases. Far from being one of the blessings of the New World, com was a public health disaster, according to some anthropologists.

【B4】__________

The fact that most people relying on this system are poorly nourished and stunted has only recently been tackled, even by the world's wealthier nations. Only in Europe, the US and Japan are diets again reflecting the richness of our attesters' diets. As a result, the average man in the US is now 179cm, in Holland 180cm, and in Japan 177cm. It is a welcome trend, though not without its own problems.【B5】__________A standard bed-length has remained at 190em since 1860, while the height of a door was fixed at 198cm in 1880. Even worse, leg-room in planes and trains seems to have shrank rather than grown, while clothes manufacturers are constantly having to revise their range of products.

The question is: where will it all end? We cannot grow for ever. 【B6】__________But what is it? According to Robert Fugal, of Chicago University, it could be as much as 193cm -and we are likely to reach it some time this century.

However, scientists add one note of qualification. Individuals may be growing taller because of improved nutrition, but as a species we are actually shrinking, although very tightly. During the last ice age, 10,000 years ago, members no the human race were slightly rounder and taller an evolution's response to the cold. (Large round bodies are best at keeping in heat.) 【B7】__________ And as the planet continues to heat up, we may shrink even further. In other words, the growth of human beings could be offset by global warming.

A We must have some

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第7题

You are going to read a magazine article about swimming with dolphins Eight paragraphs have been removed from the article. Choose from the paragraphs A-I the one which fits each gap (15-21) There is one extra paragraph which you do not need to use. There is an example at the beginning (0).

Dolphins in the Bay of Plenty

Swimming with groups of dolphins, known as 'pods', is beck,ming a popular holiday activity for the adventurous tourist. Our travel correspondent reports.

'You must remember that these dolphins are wild. They are not fed or trained iii any way. These trips are purely on the dolphins' terms.' So said one of our guides, as she briefed us before we set out for our rendezvous.

No skill is required to swim with dolphins, just common sense and an awareness that we are visitors in their world. Once on board the boat, our guides talked to us about what we could expect from our trip.

【B1】 __________________

The common dolphin we were seeking has a blue-black upper body, a grey lower body, and a long snout. We had been told that if they were in a feeding mood we would get a short encounter with them, but if they were being playful then it could last as long as two hours.

【B2】__________________

Soon we were in the middle of a much larger pod, with dolphins all around us. The first group of six swimmers put on their snorkels, slipped off the back of the boat and swam off towards them.

【B3】 __________________

Visibility was not at its best, but the low clicking sounds and the high-pitched squeaks were amazing enough. The dolphins did not seem bothered by my presence in the water above them. Sometimes they would rush by so close that I could feel the pressure-wave as they passed.

【B4】 __________________

I personally found it more rewarding to sit on the bow of the boat and watch as the surface of the sea all around filled with their perfectly arching dolphin backs. Some of the mole advanced snorkellers were able to dive down with these dolphins, an experience they clearly enjoyed.

【B5】 __________________

In fact, they are very sociable animals, always supporting each other within the pod. The guides are beginning to recognise some of the local dolphins by the markings on their backs, and some individuals appear time after time.

【B6】 __________________

Indeed, the pod we had found, on some hidden signal, suddenly turned away from the boat and headed off in file stone direction at high speed. We watched as hundreds of backs broke through the water's surface at the same time, disappearing into the distance.

【B7】 __________________

They had finally finished feeding and were content to play alongside as they showed us the way home. The sun beamed down, and as each dolphin broke the surface of the water and exhaled, a rainbow would form. for a few seconds in the mist. It was an enchanting experience.

A This was a magical experience and, as time in the water is limited, everyone rotates to get an equal share. We spent the next two hours getting in and out of the boat, and visiting other pods.

B An excited shriek led us all to try something that one girl had just discovered, and we all rushed to hang our feet over the front so that the playful creatures would touch them.

C A spotter plane circled above the bay, looking for large pods of dolphins to direct us towards. On deck, we watched for splashes on the surface of the water.

D These include mothers gently guiding their young alongside, either to introduce them to the boat, or to proudly show off their babies. Yet, when they become bored with playing, they leave.

E After 20 minutes, we sighted our first small pod. The dolphins came rushing towards the boat, swimming alongside and overtaking us until they could surf on the boat's bow w

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第8题

Part B (10 points)You are going to read a list of ...

Part B (10 points)

You are going to read a list of headings and a text about laughing. Choose the most suitable heading from the list A-F for each numbered paragraph (41-45). The first paragraph of the text is not numbered. There is one extra heading which you do not need to use. Mark your answers on ANSWER SHEET 1.

[A] What have they found？

[B] Is it true that laughing can make us healthier？

[C] So why do people laugh so much？

[D] What makes you laugh？

[E] How did you come to research it？

[F] So what's it for？

Why are you interested in laughter？

It's a universal phenomenon, and one of the most common things we do. We laugh many times a day, for many different reasons, but rarely think about it, and seldom consciously control it. We know so little about the different kinds and functions of laughter, and my interest really starts there. Why do we do it？ What can laughter teach us about our positive emotions and social behaviour？ There's so much we don't know about how the brain contributes to emotion and I think we can get at understanding this by studying laughter.

41.

Only 10 or 20 per cent of laughing is a response to humour. Most of the time it's a message we send to other people—communicating joyful disposition, a willingness to bond and so on. It occupies a special place in social interaction and is a fascinating feature of our biology, with motor, emotional and cognitive components. Scientists study all kinds of emotions and behaviour, but few focus on this most basic ingredient. Laughter gives us a clue that we have powerful systems in our brain which respond to pleasure, happiness and joy. It's also involved in events such as release of fear.

42.

My professional focus has always been on emotional behaviour. I spent many years investigating the neural basis of fear in rats, and came to laughter via that route. When I was working with rats, I noticed that when they were alone, in an exposed environment, they were scared and quite uncomfortable. Back in a cage with others, they seemed much happier. It looked as if they played with one another—real rough-and-tumble—and I wondered whether they were also laughing. The neurobiologist Jaak Panksepp had shown that juvenile rats make short vocalisations, pitched too high for humans to hear, during rough-and- tumble play. He thinks these are similar to laughter. This made me wonder about the roots of laughter.

43.

Everything humans do has a function, and laughing is no exception. Its function is surely communication. We need to build social structures in order to live well in our society and evolution has selected laughter as a useful device for promoting social communication. In other words, it must have a survival advantage for the species.

44.

The brain scans are usually done while people are responding to humorous material. You see brainwave activity spread from the sensory processing area of the occipital lobe, the bit at the back of the brain that processes Visual signals, to the brain's frontal lobe. It seems that the frontal lobe is involved in recognising things as funny. The left side of the frontal lobe analyses the words and structure of jokes while the right side does the intellectual analyses required to "get" jokes. Finally, activity spreads to the motor areas of the brain controlling the physical task of laughing. We also know about these complex pathways involved in laughter from neurological illness and injury. Sometimes after brain damage, tumours, stroke or brain disorders such as Parkinson's disease, people get "stonefaced syndrome" and can't laugh.

45.

I laugh a lot when I watch amateur videos of children, because they're so natural. I'm sure they're not forcing anything funny to happen. I don't part

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第9题

You are going to read a passage with 10 statements...

You are going to read a passage with 10 statements attached to it. Each statement contains information given in one of the paragraphs. Identify the paragraph from which the information is derived. You may choose a paragraph more than once. Each paragraph is marked with a letter. Text a little less and think a little more A. A recent Nielsen report shows that children aged 13 to 17 average an astonishing 3,417 text messages a month—some 45 percent of all text messages. This breaks down to seven texts every waking hour, or roughly one every eight-and-a-half minutes. But those who look at this data and worry that young people are over-texting may be asking the wrong question. The more pertinent (直接相关的) concern may be not the amount, but the function. Many observers argue that the social world of teenagers and even young adults is nowadays largely constituted by text messaging. B. Maybe so. Certainly a principal reason cited by many teens for their use of texting is that it is fun. In some surveys, young people reported that they prefer texting to conversation. And "prefer" may be too weak a word. Many young people, when not allowed to text, become anxious and uneasy. C. In recent years, there has been no shortage of reports on television about researchers who say they have found teens addicted to their mobile phones. Perhaps a better way to view the data is as an illustration of how mobile phones in general, and texting in particular, have taken over the experiential world of the young. An economist might expect that teens deprived of texting would simply substitute another method of communication—talking, for instance. As it turns out, a significant minority will not. They will behave instead, researchers report, the way people do when deprived of human contact. D. Texting allows the young to create their own world. E. The phone, in other words, is not merely a tool through which teens keep in touch with friends. It is the technology that defines their social circle. If they cannot text someone, that person may as well not exist. F. Still, I am not criticizing the technology itself. Like most people of all ages these days, I find texting far too convenient to ignore—although, to be sure, my usual quota is two or three texts a day, not seven an hour. G. The trouble is that texting arose suddenly, not gradually. Originally included in mobile phones as a tool to enable service providers to spam their customers, it actually came to the US later than most of the industrialized world. David Mercer, in his 2006 book The Telephone: The Life Story of a Technology, suggests that the popularity of the practice rose sharply when viewers were urged to text their votes for the winner on such television programs as American Idol. This break from past practice was so radical that adults had no opportunity to work out from their own experience reasonable bounds for the young. And so the young, unbounded, freely created their own world, from which the old are largely excluded. H. Fears of what young people might be like if left free to design the world have long been with us: Think Lord of the Flies, A Clockwork Orange, or "Children of the Corn." That imponderable (难以判断的事物) I leave for others to weigh. I don't believe that over-texting will create dangerous psychopaths (精神病患者). But it might create something else. I. Heavy texting has been linked to sleep deprivation among the young, evidently because they somehow feel compelled to respond, even in the middle of the night. Researchers have found correlations between texting and everything from illiteracy to overeating. A 2006 study by James E. Katz, perhaps the leading academic expert on mobile phone use, has found that young people have trouble giving up their phones, even for a short time. Most were unable to make it through a two-day experiment designed to discover what they would do without their phones. Texting crowds out other activities J. On the other hand, if used in moderation, texting might help demolish (彻底破坏) the weird and unmannerly etiquette of the mobile phone, in which, for no reason but the technology's existence, it is the recipient of the call who is somehow required to make an excuse if not free to answer. Texting harks back to (类似于) an earlier, less demanding model of communication, in which response was at the convenience of the respondent. It was, and is, known as letter writing. K. There may actually be advantages in the use of phones for a purpose other than conversation. The proliferation of phone apps may help children learn. (It may also lead to a new digital divide between those with lots of apps on their phones and those without.) And for those who are worried that constant mobile phone use by the young might lead to cancer, or perhaps glucose (葡萄糖) absorption in the brain, texting—in which the phone is nowhere near the ear—is obviously an improvement. L. The larger problem with texting involves neither the physical nor the mental health of our growing army of young texters. My worry is that the ubiquity (无所不在) of texting may accelerate the decline of what our struggling democracy most needs: independent thought. Indeed, as texting crowds out other activities, it must inevitably crowd out inactivity—and there lies a danger. For inactivity and thinking are inextricably (紧密相连) linked. M. By inactivity, I mean doing nothing that occupies the mind: time spent in reflection. Bertrand Russell wrote a marvelous essay on this subject, titled "In Praise of Idleness" (also the title of the collection in which the essay is most readily found). Russell's point is that when the rest of the world thinks we are idle, the brain, if properly trained, is following its own path. Only then, he contends, are we truly thinking. The rest of the time we are analyzing and reacting, but our thoughts are then determined by responses to the thoughts of others. Unless we spend time in reflection—in idleness—we can never truly think thoughts of our own. N. Already we live in an era when there is little time for idle thinking. Whether in the storms of political argument or the hyperkinetic (运动过度的) pace of the workplace, we are called upon constantly to respond rather than reflect. The education of the young, increasingly built around the rapid-fire model of the standardized test, only enhances the model of thought in which speed is everything and reflection is for those left behind. As young people increasingly fill their free hours with texting and other similarly fast-paced, attention-absorbing activities, the opportunities for sustained reflective thought will continue to fade. Spiraling away from democratic vision O. Today's public debates are dominated by the short and the concise, and influential commentators often seem to take pride in the assumption that nobody who disagrees with them can possibly have anything useful to say. As Cass Sunstein, now a White House adviser, points out in his splendid book Republic.com, a crucial aspect of free speech is that it forces us, from time to time, to encounter a voice we do not expect to hear making a point we have not considered. We are spiraling rapidly away from that healthy democratic vision. The explosion of text messaging is certainly not a cause of the unhealthy political world we adults are passing on to our children. But it points to how far we are from a cure. 1. Texting may benefit the texter in that the phone is away from the ear.

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第10题

You are going to read a magazine article about a man who teaches children how to improve their memory Choose the most suitable heading from the list A-I for each part (1-7) of the article. There is one extra heading which you do not need to use. There is an example at the beginning (0).

A An obvious need

B Gaining attention

C The odder the better

D Making sense of information

E Trade secrets

F Academic approval

G A change of focus

H Selected memories

I An ancient skill

Memory test

Jerome Burne talks to a magician who teaches children ways to remember facts.

The Greek philosophers knew about it and it could still dramatically improve children's school results today, except that no one teaches it. "It' is a very old technique for making your memory better. Try memorising this series of random numbers: 3, 6, 5, 5, 2, 1,2, 4. About as meaningful as dates in history or equations in maths, aren't they? Chances are you won't remember them in five minutes, let alone in five hours. However, had you been at a lecture given at a school in the south of England last month, you would now be able to fix them in your head for five days, five weeks, in fact for ever."

【B1】 ______

'I am going to give you five techniques that will enable you to remember anything you need to know at school," promised lecturer lan Robinson to a fascinated audience of a hundred schoolchildren. He slapped his hand down on the table. In his other life, Robinson is an entertainer, and he was using all the tricks he had picked up in his career. "When I've finished in two hours' time, your work will be far more effective and productive. Anyone not interested, leave now." The entire room sat still, glued to their seats.

【B2】 ______

When he entertains, Robinson calls himself the Mind Magician. He specialises in doing magic tricks that look totally impossible, and then he reveals that they involve nothing more mysterious than good old-fashioned trickery. '1 have always been interested in tricks involving memory being able to reel off the order of cards in a pack, that sort of thing," he explains.

【B3】 ______

Robinson was already lecturing to schools on his magic techniques when it struck him that students might find memory techniques even more valuable. "It wasn't a difficult area to move into, as the stutf's all there in books." So he summarised everything to make a two-hour lecture about five techniques.

【B4】 ______

What Robinson's schoolchildren get are methods that will be familiar to anyone who has dipped into any one of a dozen books on memory. The difference is that Robinson's approach is firmly aimed at schoolchildren. The basic idea is to take material that is random and meaningless—musical scales, the bones of the arm—and give them a structure. That series of numbers at the beginning of the article fits in here. Once you think of it as the number of days in the year—365—and the number of weeks—52—and so on, it suddenly becomes permanently memorable.

【B5】 ______

"You want to learn a list of a hundred things? A thousand? No problem," says Robinson. The scandal is that every child is not taught the techniques from the beginning of their school life. The schoolchildren who were watching him thought it was brilliant. "1 wish I'd been told this earlier," commented Mark, after Robinson had shown them how to construct "mental journeys."

【B6】 ______

Essentially, you visualise a walk down a street, or a trip round a room, and pick the points where you will put the things you want to remember—the lamppost, the fruit bowl. Then in each location you put a visual representation of your list—phrasal verbs, historical dates, whatever—making them as strange

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