In today's world, almost everyone knows that air pollution（污染）and water pollution are harmful to people's health. However, not all the persons know that noise is also a kind of pollution, and that is harmful to human health, too.
People who work and live under noisy conditions usually become deaf（聋）. Today, however, scientists believe that 10 percent of workers in Britain are being deafened by the noise where they work. Many of the workers who print newspapers and books, and who weave（织）cloth become deaf. Quite a few people living near airports also become deaf. Recently it was discovered that many teenagers（几十岁的人）in America could hear no better than 65-year-old persons, for these young people like to listen to pop music and most of pop music is a kind of noise. Besides, noise produced by jet planes or machines will make people's life difficult and unpleasant, or even make people ill or even drive them mad.
It is said that a continuous noise of over 85 decibels（分贝）can make people deaf. Now The governments in many countries have made laws to control noise and make it less than 85 decibels. In China, the government is trying to solve not only air and water pollution problems but also noise pollution problems.The text is mainly about ____________ .
| A．air pollution | B．water pollution | C．noise pollution | D．world pollution |
10 percent of the workers in Britain are being deafened because _________.
| A．they are working in noisy places |
| B．they often listen to pop music |
| C．they live near airports |
| D．they are too busy to listen to others' talk |
About noise produced by jet planes or machines, which is wrong?
| A．It will make people's life difficult |
| B．It will make people's life unpleasant |
| C．It will even make people ill or even drive them mad. |
| D．It will even make people hear better |
According to the text, a continuous noise of _____ decibels can make people deaf.
| A．less than 85 | B．less than 65 | C．about 65 | D．over 85 |
The government of China is trying to solve _______________ .
| A．only air pollution |
| B．only air and water pollution |
| C．only water pollution |
| D．air, water and noise pollution |
Are morning people born or made? In my case it was definitely made. In my early 20s, I hardly went to bed before midnight, and I would always get up late the next morning.
But after a while I couldn’t ignore the high relationship between success and rising early. On those rare occasions where I did get up early, I noticed that my productivity (效率) was always higher. So I set out to become a habitual early riser. But whenever my alarm went off, my first thought was always to stop that noise and go back to sleep. Eventually some sleep research showed that my strategy was wrong.
The most common wrong strategy is this: supposing you’re going to get up earlier, you’d better go to bed earlier. It sounds very reasonable, but will usually fail.
There are two main schools (流派) of thought on sleep patterns. One is that you should go to bed and get up at the same time every day. The second school says you should go to bed when you’re tired and get up when you naturally wake up. However, I have found both are wrong if you care about productivity. If you sleep at fixed hours, you’ll sometimes go to bed when you aren’t sleepy enough. You’re wasting time lying in bed awake.
My solution is to combine both methods. I go to bed when I’m sleepy and get up with an alarm clock at a fixed time. So I always get up at the same time (in my case 5 a.m.), but I go to bed at different times every night.
However, going to bed only when I’m sleepy, and getting up at a fixed time every morning are my ways. If you want to become an early riser, you can try your own.According to the passage, the underlined phrase refers to ________.
| A．people who stay up until the next morning |
| B．people who get up early in the morning |
| C．people who feel sleepy in the morning |
| D．people whose productivity is the lowest in the morning |
Why did the author want to become a habitual early riser?
| A．Because he / she wanted to have more sleep time. |
| B．Because he / she wanted to do morning exercise. |
| C．Because he / she wanted to test which school is better. |
| D．Because he / she found that the productivity was higher. |
The author experienced all the following EXCEPT ________.
| A．going to bed after midnight |
| B．asking scholars for advice on sleeping habits |
| C．getting up early occasionally |
| D．pressing off the alarm to go on sleeping |
What’s the author’s sleep pattern?
| A．Going to bed early and getting up early. |
| B．Going to bed late and getting up late. |
| C．Going to bed when sleepy and getting up at a fixed early time. |
| D．Going to bed early and getting up late. |
The passage is mainly about ________.
| A．main schools of thought on sleep patterns | B．how to have a good sleep |
| C．wrong strategies for getting up early | D．how to become an early riser |
Time out
Cover Price: ￡2.35
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Time out — London’s arts and entertainment weekly. This magazine offers the best listings and reviews of arts, music, films and nightlife, and it is a necessary guide to the entertainment capital of the world. If you’re not using Time out, you’re losing out on London.
School Sport Magazine
Cover Price: ￡4.40
School Sport Magazine is the only publication of its kind to celebrate the sporting achievements of schools, pupils and teachers in the UK. The purpose of the magazine is to report sporting news and record national and regional school sporting events as well as interviews with famous sport stars about their own sporting schooldays. Five issues (期) a year.
Time
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Every week, Time keeps you well informed of world news, covering all the matters that affect your life, from political struggles to scientific progress, environmental problems, and what’s new in business, fashion and arts. Its feature articles give you brief but true information and unique insights from world-leading journalists. Time is a great magazine, which can help you develop a truly global perspective.
FourFourTwo
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FourFourTwo is a monthly football magazine for grown-up readers. Feature articles and wonderful action photographs will keep you attracted. You can read interviews with big name football stars, from today, tomorrow and yesterday. You’ll love it!Among all of the above, there is/ are ________ weekly magazine(s).
| A．one | B．two | C．three | D．four |
Which of the following magazines will probably provide you with articles about paintings and their painters?
| A．Time Out & School Sport Magazine. | B．School Sport Magazine & FourFourTwo. |
| C．Time Out & Time. | D．only Time. |
Which of the following magazines is suitable for a 13-year-old boy who wants to know about a famous football star’s playing experiences at school?
| A．Time Out. | B．School Sport Magazine. |
| C．Time | D．School Sport Magazine or FourFourTwo. |
We can learn from the passage that ________ .
| A．all of the magazines are intended for adults. |
| B．among all the magazines, only School Sport Magazine is about sports. |
| C．Time Out & School Sport Magazine might be published in the United Kingdom. |
| D．among all the magazines, Time Out will cost you the least. |
The author’s purpose in writing this passage is to ________ .
| A．advertise four best-sellers |
| B．introduce four popular magazines to readers |
| C．ask readers to decide which of the four magazines is the best |
| D．get more people to buy these magazines |
Why are we addicted to upgrades? According to Donald Norman, American author of the book The Design of Everyday Things, “planned obsolescence”（计划性报废） is the trick behind the upgrading culture of today’s consumer electronics industry.
The New York Times cited Norman last month, saying that electronics manufactures strategically release new upgrades periodically, both for hardware and software, so that customers on every level feel the need to buy the newest version.
“This is an old-time trick– they’re not inventing anything new,” he said.
Thomas Wensma, a Dutch designer, despises the “planned obsolescence” of companies, as recently reported by UK-based The Guardian.
Wensma said this is a wasteful system through which companies – many of them producing personal electronics – release shoddy products simply because “they know that, in six months or a year, they’ll put out a new one”.
But the new psychology of consumers is part of this system, as Wensma said to the newspaper: “We now want something new, something pretty, the next shiny thing.”
____________________
“It’s to the damage of the consumer and the environment,” as the New York Times quoted Norman. “But perhaps to the betterment of the stockholder.”
In its most recent fiscal(财务的) year, Apple’s profit margin was more than 21 percent, reported the Los Angeles Times. At Hewlett-Packard, the world’s biggest PC manufacturer, it was only 7 percent.
“Steven Jobs pushed the principle of ‘planned obsolescence’ to new heights,” the newspaper commented on the company’s profits and marketing strategy. “Apple’s annual upgrades of its products generate sales of millions of units as owners of one year’s MacBook or iPhone line up to buy the newest version, even when the changes are incremental.”
Peer pressure
As to Li Jijia, the need for upgrading his smart phone comes mainly from friends and classmates. When the majority of friends are switching to the latest devices, he worries about feeling left out.
“Some apps and games require better hardware to run,” said Li. “If you don’t join in, you lose part of the connection to your friends.”Donald Norman believes that electronics makers strategically release new upgrades periodically because __________.
| A．customers need the latest version | B．technology is developing so fast |
| C．they want to invent something new | D．they can make a lot of money |
Thomas Wensma’s attitude to the “planned obsolescence” is __________.
| A．positive | B．negative | C．indifferent | D．neutral |
What subtitle can best fit into the blank in the text?
| A．Huge profits | B．Apple’s principle |
| C．Environmental damage | D．Marketing strategy |
The writer takes the example of Li Jijia to show that __________.
| A．the new psychology of consumers is also to blame for the wasteful system |
| B．young people are always fond of something new, pretty and shiny |
| C．if you don’t upgrade your smart phone, you will lose contact with your friends |
| D．needs of consumers help to promote the development of electronics industry |
Women consistently lie on social networking sites such as Facebook or Twitter to make their lives appear more exciting, a survey has found.
Researchers found that at least one in four women exaggerated or distorted what they are doing on social media once a month. The survey of 2000 women found they mostly pretended to be out on the town, when in fact they are home alone, and embellished about an exotic holiday or their job.
The most common reasons for women to write “fibs” included worrying their lives would seem “boring”, jealousy at seeing other people’s more exciting posts and wanting to impress their friends and acquaintances.
Psychologists suggested that as people attempt to “stay connected” on social media, they can in fact “paradoxically” be left “more isolated”. They also said that the “more we try to make our lives seem perfect, the less perfect we feel”.
According to the OnePoll survey, one third of women surveyed admitted to “dishonesty” on social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter at some stage.
Almost one in four admitted to lying or exaggerating about key aspects of their life online between one and three times a month while almost one in 10 said they lied more than once a week.
Nearly 30 percent of women lied about “doing something when I am home alone”, almost a quarter overstated their alcohol consumption while one in five were not truthful about their holiday activities or their jobs. Almost one in five women even lied about their “relationship status”.
“We work very hard presenting ourselves to the world online, pretending and attempting to be happy all the time which is exhausting and ultimately unfulfilling,” said Dr Michael Sinclair, a leading British consultant psychologist.
“Omitting the less desirable imperfections of our lives from the conversations with our `friends` online leads to less opportunity to feel empathized with(与…产生共鸣), resulting in a greater sense of disconnection from others.”
The survey was commissioned by Pencourage, a new anonymous “diary-style” social media website.Which of the words below is closest in meaning to the underlined word “fibs” in Para 3?
| A．life experiences | B．short stories |
| C．careful thoughts | D．insignificant lies |
A woman tends to tell a lie online when she__________.
| A．hopes to make more friends | B．envies other people’s exciting life |
| C．feels lonely at home | D．gets tired of the boring life |
A woman might pretend to be happier online than she actually is by __________.
| A．avoiding conversations with friends |
| B．describing her holiday activities |
| C．leaving out the imperfections in life |
| D．overstating her trouble at work |
According to Dr Michael Sinclair, constantly lying online may __________.
| A．eventually make one’s life more exciting |
| B．actually lead to a sense of isolation |
| C．really improve one’s sense of happiness |
| D．scarcely have any influence on relationships |
Like any awards ceremony of its age, the Oscars, now in its 85th year, has been trying hard to change.
So how did that go this year? When host Seth MacFarlane noted in his opening speech that it was the first time the Academy Awards had a theme, I thought: “well, that’s a good start.”
But when he revealed that the theme was a tribute to(向…致敬) musicals, I was less sure. After all, it’s not the first time that musicals have featured at the Oscars.
In 2007, the cast of Dream-girls gave a special performance directed by movie director and musical veteran(经验丰富的老手) Bill Condon. Then there was the memorable 2009 show hosted by Hugh Jackman, who screams musicals. With Beyonce Knowles and Anne Hathaway, he performed several hit songs from move musical. And in 2010, how did Neil Patrick Harris introduce the hosts? By performing a musical number.
So I guess the Oscars could have done better this year. But I must admit, there were more music performances in the three-and-a –half-hour show than ever before. This suggests the Oscars has dropped some of its arrogance and wants to offer audiences more entertainment.
It’s a timely move as the Golden Globes, also known as the “big party,” has become a threat to the Oscars, stealing viewers and even its reputation. Just look at the Oscars’ winning list this year.
You can’t blame the academy for wanting to stick it to the Golden Globes. While they hired Tina Fey and Amy Poehler to host the show—certainly more audience-friendly than MacFarlane— and Bill Clinton was invited as a presenter, who did viewers get at the Oscars? The First Lady of the US, Michelle Obama.
Way to go, Oscar! We know you’re struggling to look fresh and young, but don’t lose the pride and dignity that made you one biggest honor in the movie industry. Don’t ever let that change.Examples are given in Para.4 to show that__________.
| A．the Oscars has been trying hard to change |
| B．the Oscars’ theme is a tribute to musicals |
| C．it is not the first time that the Oscars has had a theme |
| D．musicals are not a new feature this year |
What disappoints the writer is that__________.
| A．the Oscars didn’t invite Bill Clinton as a presenter |
| B．the show took as long as three and a half hours |
| C．the Oscars has lost some pride and dignity to cater to the audiences |
| D．the Oscars is no longer fresh and young |
Which of the following is true of the Golden Globes?
| A．It gave an award to the First Lady of the US, Michelle Obama. |
| B．Its host and hostess had better reputation. |
| C．It has become highly competitive with the Academy Awards. |
| D．It is more friendly to the audience. |
Which of the following could be the best title for the passage?
| A．Nothing new, but well done |
| B．So old, still young |
| C．New start, good change |
| D．Too old to change |
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