Today, traditional opinions about men still exist. A man has to be strong, brave, sports loving and manly. Anything less would not be considered manly. Sports such as football, basketball and boxing all tend (往往是) to be men’s sports. However, the dance of ballet is considered feminine because it requires nice movements. This tradition is shown in the movie, Billy Elliot.
Billy Elliot is a movie that protests against this traditional view of men. Billy Elliot is an eleven-year-old boy that has a natural talent for ballet dancing, but his father will not allow it. Billy’s father wants him to take up boxing and become stronger, but Billy goes against his father’s wishes and takes up ballet dancing. This difference of opinion makes Billy sad. What’s more, his friends also laugh at him.
After saving enough money, his father sends Billy to a weekly boxing course; however, Billy doesn’t enjoy boxing because he always loses in matches and is often hurt. His ballet teacher, Mrs. Wilkinson thinks that men or women should not be judged by the activities they like to do, so she tells Billy’s father that although he wants his son to make a good living, he should let his son do what he loves to do because he has a talent for it. When his father finally realizes the truth, Billy is surprised. In the end, with the help of his father, brother and all the people around him, Billy goes to the Royal Ballet Academy in London and becomes a very successful ballet dancer.The underlined word “feminine” in the first paragraph most probably means ______
| A．of men | B．of children | C．of women | D．of students |
Why is Billy laughed at by other children?
| A．He always loses in boxing matches. | B．He isn’t strong. |
| C．He looks like a girl. | D．He loves ballet. |
What do we know about Billy?
| A．His teacher encourages him to take up ballet dancing. |
| B．He does well in ballet dancing and boxing. |
| C．He does what his father wants him to do. |
| D．He has never taken up any men’s sports. |
From Billy’s story, we can see that _______.
| A．children should accept their parents’ opinions |
| B．we should try to fight against traditional opinions |
| C．men and women play different sports |
| D．parents should let their children do what they are interested in |
When your parents advise you to “get an education” in order to raise your income, they tell you only half the truth. What they really mean is to get just enough education to provide manpower（人力资源） for your society, but not so much that you prove an embarrassment to your society.
Get a high school diploma, at least. Without that, you will be occupationally dead unless your name happens to be George Bernard Shaw or Thomas Alva Edison, and you can successfully dropout in grade school.
Get a college degree, if possible. With a B. A., you are on the launching pad. But now you have to start to put on the brakes. If you go for a master’s degree, make sure it is an M.B.A., and the famous law of diminishing(逐渐减少的) returns begins to take effect.
Do you know, for instance, that long-haul truck drivers earn more per year than full professors? Yes, the average salary for those truckers was $24000 while the full professors managed to earn just $23030.
A doctorate is the highest degree you can get. Except for a few specialized fields such as physics or chemistry where the degree can quickly be turned to industrial or commercial purposes, if you pursue such a degree in any other field, you will face a future which is not bright. There are more doctors unemployed or underemployed in this country than any other part of the world.
If you become a doctor in English or history or anthropology or political science or languages or—worst of all—in philosophy, you run the risk of becoming overeducated for our national demands. Not for our needs, mind you, but for our demands.
Thousands of doctors are selling shoes, driving cars, waiting on table, and endlessly filling out applications month after month. They may also take a job in some high school or backwater(闭塞) college that pays much less than the doorkeeper earns.
You can equate the level of income with the level of education only so far. Far enough, that is, to make you useful to the gross national product, but not so far that nobody can turn much of a profit on you.According to the writer, what the society expects of education is to turn out people who ______.
| A．will not be a disgrace to society |
| B．will become loyal citizens |
| C．can take care of themselves |
| D．can meet the nation’s demand as a source of manpower |
Many doctors are out of job because ______.
| A．they are improperly educated |
| B．they are of little commercial value to their society |
| C．there are fewer jobs in high schools |
| D．they prefer easier jobs that make more money |
The nation is only interested in people ______.
| A．with diplomas |
| B．who specialize in physics and chemistry |
| C．who are valuable to the gross national product |
| D．who receive little education |
Which of the following is NOT true?
| A．Bernard Shaw didn’t finish high school, nor did Edison. |
| B．One must think carefully before pursuing a master’s degree. |
| C．The higher your education level, the more money you will earn. |
| D．If you are too well-educated, you’ll be overeducated for society’s demands. |
The writer sees education as ______.
| A．a means of providing job security and financial security and a means of meeting a country’s demands for technical workers |
| B．a way to broaden one’s horizons |
| C．more important than finding a job |
| D．an opportunity that everyone should have |
The Norwegian Government is doing its best to keep the oil industry under control. A new law limits exploration to an area south of the southern end of the long coastline; production limits have been laid down (though these have already been raised); and oil companies have not been allowed to employ more than a limited number of foreign workers. But the oil industry has a way of getting over such problems, and few people believe that the Government will be able to hold things back for long. As one Norwegian politician said last week: “ We will soon be changed beyond all recognition.”
Ever since the war, the Government has been carrying out a program of development in the area north of the Arctic Circle. During the past few years this program has had a great deal of success. Tromso has been built up into a local capital with a university, a large hospital and a healthy industry. But the oil industry has already started to draw people south, and within a few years the whole northern policy could be in ruins.
The effects of the oil industry would not be limited to the north, however. With nearly 100 percent employment, everyone can see a situation developing in which the service industries and the tourist industry will lose more of their workers to the oil industry. Some smaller industries might even disappear altogether when it becomes cheaper to buy goods from abroad.
The real argument over oil is its threat to the Norwegian way of life. Farmers and fishermen do not make up most of the population, but they are an important part of it, because Norwegians see in them many of the qualities that they regard with pride as essentially Norwegian. And it is the farmers and the fishermen who are most critical of the oil industry because of the damage that it might cause to the countryside and to the sea.The Norwegian Government would prefer the oil industry to ______.
| A．provide more jobs for foreign workers |
| B．slow down the rate of its development |
| C．sell the oil it is producing abroad |
| D．develop more quickly than at present |
The Norwegian Government has tried to ______.
| A．encourage the oil companies to discover new oil sources |
| B．prevent oil companies employing people from northern Norway |
| C．help the oil companies solve many of their problems |
| D．keep the oil industry to something near its present size |
According to the passage, the oil industry might lead northern Norway to ______.
| A．the development of industry |
| B．a growth in population |
| C．the failure of the development program |
| D．the development of new towns |
In the south, one effect to the development of the oil industry might be ______.
| A．a large reduction on unemployment |
| B．a growth in the tourist industry |
| C．a reduction in the number of existing industries |
| D．the development of a number of service industries |
Norwegian farmers and fishermen have an important influence because ______.
| A．they form such a large part of Norwegian ideal |
| B．their lives and values represent the Norwegian ideal |
| C．their work is so useful to the rest of Norwegian society |
| D．they regard oil as a threat to the Norwegian way of life |
A person, like a commodity, needs packaging. But going too far is absolutely undesirable. A little exaggeration(夸张) will do no harm when it shows the person’s unique qualities to their advantages. To show personal attractiveness in a casual and natural way, it is important for one to have a clear knowledge of oneself. A skilled packager knows how to add art to nature without any signs of embellishment so that the person so packaged is not a commodity, but a human being, lively and lovely.
A young person, especially a female, shining with beauty and full of life, has all the favor granted. Youth however, comes and goes in a flash. Packaging for the middle-aged is primarily to hide the marks made by years. If you still enjoy life enough to keep self-confidence and work at pioneering work, you are unique in your natural qualities, and your attractiveness and grace will remain. Elderly people are beautiful if their river of life has been, through plains, mountains and jungles, running its course as it should. You have really lived your life, which now arrives at a self - satisfied stage of quietness and calmness with no interest in fame or wealth. There is no need to make use of hair dyeing. The snow-capped mountain itself is a beautiful scene of fairyland. Let your looks change from young to old in step with the natural ageing process so as to keep in harmony with nature, for harmony itself is beauty, while the other way round will only end in unpleasantness. To be in the company of the elderly is like reading a thick book of good edition, which attracts one so much that one is unwilling to part with it. As long as one finds where one stands, one knows how to package oneself, just as a commodity sets up its brand by the right packaging.The underlined word in the first paragraph is closest to the word ______ in meaning.
| A．decoration | B．clarification | C．movement | D．identification |
It can be concluded from the text that ______.
| A．people should be packaged at all ages |
| B．people should be packaged in a special way |
| C．elderly people also care about packaging |
| D．proper packaging makes people attractive |
For the middle-aged, attractiveness ______ .
| A．hardly exists | B．is the strongest |
| C．comes from the inside | D．comes from the appearance |
According to the author, if you want to keep in harmony with nature, you should ______.
| A．dye your hair | B．make up at a young age |
| C．follow the ageing process | D．give up fame and wealth |
The underlined sentence means that elderly people ______.
| A．are usually packaged like a finely-made book |
| B．experience a lot and have rich knowledge of life |
| C．do a lot of traveling and can give you much information |
| D．enjoy reading thick books about beautiful nature and fairyland |
A new study links heavy air pollution from coal burning to shorter lives in northern China. Researchers estimate that the half-billion people alive there in the 1990s will live an average of 5 years less than their southern counterparts because they breathed dirtier air.
China itself made the comparison possible: for decades, a now-discontinued government policy provided free coal for heating, but only in the colder north. Researchers found significant differences in both particulate pollution of the air and life expectancy in the two regions.
While previous studies have found that pollution affects human health, "the deeper and ultimately more important question is the impact on life expectancy," said one of the researchers, Michael Greenstone, a professor of environmental economics at Massachusetts Institute of 一Technology. "This study provides a unique setting to answer the life expectancy question because the(heating) policy dramatically changes pollution concentrations（含量），，，Greenstone said in an email. "Further, due to the low rates of migration in China in this period, we can know people's exposure over long time periods," he said.
The policy gave free coal for fuel boilers to heat homes and offices to cities north of the Huai Riv饥which divides China into north and south. It was in effect for much of the 1950-198,0 period of central planning, and, though discontinued after 1980, it has left a legacy（遗留） in the north of heavy coal burning, which releases particulate pollutants into the air that can harm human health. Researchers found no other government policies that treated China's north differently from the south.
The researchers collected data for 90 cities, from 1981 to 2000, on the annual daily average concentration of total suspended（悬浮的）particulates. In China, those are considered to be particulates that are 100 micrometers or less in diameter, sent out from sources including power stations, construction sites and vehicles. Among them, PM2.5 is of especially great health concern because it can go deep into the lungs.
The researchers estimated the impact on life expectancies using death data from 1991-2000． They found that in the north, the concentration of particulates was 184 micrograms per cubic meter一or 55 percent higher than in the south, and life expectancies were 5.5 years lower on average across all age ranges.The main idea of this passage is that＿·
| A．research in China finds air pollution shortened life expectancy |
| B．the government provided free coal for heating in North China |
| C．coal burning causes bad air quality across China |
| D．a new study finds different particulates in South China |
According to Greenstone,＿greatly contributed to the high pollution concentrations in North China.
| A．power stations | B．construction sites |
| C．the free heating policy | D．gases from vehicles |
It is implied in the passage that＿·
| A．coal is no longer used for heating in North China |
| B．air quality was comparatively better in South China |
| C．southerners burned coals for heating in the 1980s |
| D．people preferred to live in South China after 1980 |
The underlined word "particulates" most probably means＿．
| A．dirty clouds | B．particular smoke |
| C．harmful dust | D．dangerous bacteria |
"Extra? Extra！Gasoline hits four dollars a gallon!”
No one will really be shocked一except, perhaps, the old-timers who tell about the good old days when gas was three gallons for a dollar, and people drove around "just for the fun of it".
As a matter of fact; the price of gas has been rising fast and steadily for several years, and many adjustments have already been made.
There was, for a time, considerable unemployment in the auto industry, and three quarters of the garages and service stations have gone out of business. However; the bicycle and motor-scooter business has flourished（兴旺); and many people have found employment there: Now that Federal Motors has brought out its new Lilliput, which travels forty miles on a gallon, the auto business is picking up again. The factories that haven't switched over to two-wheel transportation are working on their new smaller models. There is talk, too, about bringing out new steam and electric automobiles that will be just as economical as the old cars.
In the meantime, streetcars are gradually replacing buses all over the country because of the greater economy of electric power. And many people who have seldom used public transportation are now riding the streetcars while their automobiles rust（生锈）in their garages. There's no market at all for their big, luxurious cars, for only the wealthy can now afford to operate them. Many people are now shopping in their own neighborhood, and small businesses are thriving.
Ministers, educators, and editorial writers are pointing out that there has been a great improvement in family life. Families now stay at home more for their fun, and children and parents are becoming better acquainted. The stores report a booming business in parlor games, hobby materials, books, musical instruments and albums.
People have lost their pale indoor look. The revival of the lost art of walking has brought a healthy pink back to many a cheek. This return to the heels has revolutionized the clothing styles; people now need to be ready for all kinds of weather:
These conditions, however, may not last. Already our clever chemists are at work on new synthetic fuels which, they say, will put us right back where we were一on wheels. Shall w e wish them success or not?Which of the following is NOT a result of the gas price rising?
| A．More people prefer to travel on public transportation which costs less than driving cars. |
| B．People return to the traditional exercise of walking, which helps them to look healthier. |
| C．People shop in nearby stores without having to drive, so small businesses are declining. |
| D．The auto industry has been forced to develop new models which are more economical. |
The purpose of writing this passage is＿．
| A．to show the chain reaction of the rising gas price |
| B．to discuss whether it's necessary to work on new fuels |
| C．to warn people not to use too much gasoline |
| D．to picture what life will be like if gas runs out |
What is the best title for this passage?
| A．New fuels on the way |
| B．Cars or bicycles, that is a question |
| C．End of the good old days |
| D．From wheels to heels |
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