A year ago, at the annual pre-Grammy party, Whitney Houston, the great star, walked on stage and closed the evening with a brilliant performance．
Last Saturday, Houston was once again the focus before the Grammy, but her presence was a regrettable one．Earlier that day, the pop music's former queen was found dead in her hotel room．She was 48．This, no doubt, is sad news to the whole music industry and her fans all over the world．
At her peak(巅峰), Houston was the golden girl of the music world．From the mid-1980s to the late 1990s, she was one of the world's best-selling artists．She impressed audiences with her effortless, powerful and peerless performance．
Besides multi-million record sales, Houston made countless hits such as The Greatest Love of All, I Have Nothing, and the mostly famous I Will Always Love You．She also influenced a generation of younger singers, from Christina Aguilera to Mariah Carey．
But by the end of her career, there was a shocking fall for this superstar．Houston had been addicted to(上瘾) drugs．Her album sales declined (下降) and the hits stopped coming and her once beautiful voice became hoarse （嘶哑的）, unable to hit the high notes as she used to．
In 2009, Houston staged a successful comeback with the album I Look To You, which fell on top of the charts．But hoarse voice, canceled concerts, and continuous illness-Houston's comeback trail wasn't smooth at all．In an interview with Oprah Winfrey in 2009, Houston admitted: "It (show business) is too much for me and I wanted out．"
Now that Houston has finally taken a break from all the chaos(混乱), may she rest in peace．Whitney Houston died ______．
| A．shortly before the Grammy this year | B．earlier last Sunday |
| C．a year ago | D．at the annual pre-Grammy party |
The underlined word "peerless" in Paragraph 3 most probably means ______．
| A．having no power | B．having no equal |
| C．requiring no effort | D．leaving no impression |
The cause of the fall of Whitney Houston was that _____．
| A．her album sales declined |
| B．show business was too much for her |
| C．her fans no longer love her |
| D．she had been addicted to drugs |
According to the passage, which is not Houston’s achievement?
| A．She made countless hits such as I Have Nothing. |
| B．She influenced a generation of younger singers. |
| C．She became the focus before the Grammy this year. |
| D．She staged a successful comeback in 2009. |
While income worry is a rather common problem of the aged, loneliness is another problem that aged parents may face. Of all the reasons that explain their loneliness, a large geographical distance between parents and their children is the major one. This phenomenon(现象)is commonly known as “Empty Nest Syndrome”(空巢综合症).
In order to seek better chances outside their countries, many young people have gone abroad, leaving their parents behind with no clear idea of when they will return home. Their parents spend countless lonely days and nights, taking care of themselves, in the hope that someday their children will come back to stay with them. The fact that most of these young people have gone to Europeanized or Americanized societies makes it unlikely that they will hold as tightly to the value of duty as they would have if they had not left their countries. Whatever the case, it has been noted that the values they hold do not necessarily match what they actually do. This geographical and cultural distance also prevents the grown-up children from providing response(回应)in time for their aged parents living by themselves.
The situation in which grown-up children live far away from their aged parents has been described as “distant parent phenomenon”, which is common both in developed countries and in developing countries. Our society has not yet been well prepared for “Empty Nest Syndrome”. According to the passage, the loneliness of aged parents is mainly caused by _________.
| A．their earlier experience of feeling lonely |
| B．the unfavorable living conditions in their native countries |
| C．the common worry about their income |
| D．the geographical distance between parents and children |
Many young people have gone abroad, leaving their aged parents behind, to _________.
| A．live in the countries with more money |
| B．seek a better place for their aged parents |
| C．continue their studies abroad |
| D．realize their dreams in foreign countries |
If young people go abroad, _________.
| A．they do not hold to the value of duty at all |
| B．they can give some help to their parents back home |
| C．they cannot do what they should for their parents |
| D．they believe what they actually do is right |
From the last paragraph, we can infer that ________.
| A．the situations in the developed and developing countries are different |
| B．“Empty Nest Syndrome” has arrived unexpectedly in our society |
| C．children will become independent as soon as they go abroad |
| D．the aged parents are not fully prepared for “Empty Nest Syndrome” |
Everyone knows about straight-A students. We see them frequently in TV situation comedies and in movies like Revenge (报复) of the Nerds. They get high grades, all right, but only by becoming dull laborers, their noses always stuck in a book. They are not good at social communication and look clumsy while doing sports.
How, then, do we account for Domenica Roman or Paul Melendres? Roman is on the tennis team at Fairmont Senior High School. She also sings in the choral group, serves on the student council and is a member of the mathematics society. For two years she has maintained A’s in every subject. Melendres, a freshman at the University of New Mexico, was student-body president at Valley High School in Albuquerque. He played soccer and basketball well, exhibited at the science fair, and meanwhile worked as a reporter on a local television station. Being a speech giver at the graduation ceremony, he achieved straight A’s in his regular classes, plus bonus points for A’s in two college-level courses.
How do super-achievers like Roman and Melendres do it? Brains aren’t the only answer. “Top grades don’t always go to the brightest students,” declares Herbert Walberg, a professor of education at the University of Illinois at Chicago, who has conducted major studies on super-achieving students. “Knowing how to make full use of your innate (天生的) abilities counts for more. Much more.”
In fact, Walberg says, students with high IQ sometimes don’t do as well as classmates with lower IQ. For them, learning comes too easily and they never find out how to get down. Hard work isn’t the whole story, either. “It’s not how long you sit there with the books open,” said one of the many-A students we interviewed. “It’s what you do while you’re sitting.” Indeed, some of these students actually put in fewer hours of homework time than their lower-scoring classmates.
The kids at the top of the class get there by mastering a few basic techniques that others can readily learn. What can we conclude from the first paragraph?
| A．Most TV programs and films are about straight-A students. |
| B．People have unfavorable impression on straight-A students. |
| C．Everyone knows about straight-A students from TV or films. |
| D．Straight-A students are well admired by people in the society. |
Some students become super-achievers mainly because ________.
| A．they are born cleverer than others | B．they work longer hours at study |
| C．they make full use of their abilities | D．they know the shortcut to success |
What will be talked about after the last paragraph?
| A．The interviews with more students. | B．The role IQ plays in learning well. |
| C．The techniques to be better learners. | D．The achievements top students make. |
Some nations think they must have more and more babies, more and more people, if they are to remain strong and free.
Actually, this is not so. Very often in history, small nations have conquered large ones. It’s not so much the size of the army as its organization and the technical level of its weapons. Thus, Greece took over Persia in the 300s B.C., Great Britain took over India in the 1700s, even though Persia and India had far bigger population than Greece and Great Britain.
If a nation wishes to avoid being dominated by its neighbors, its best chance is to raise its standard of living and its level of technology.This can be done best by not allowing its population to grow to such a point that it is sunk in misery and poverty. In fact, the worst way in which a nation can try to avoid being dominated by its neighbor is to increase its population to the point of misery and poverty.
If every nation tries to compete with its neighbors by raising its population, then the whole world will be sunk in misery and poverty. The nations will become weak in a disaster that will leave nothing behind that is worth dominating. No one will have gained anything. Everyone will have lost everything.
Once all this is understood, and people generally agree that population growth must not be allowed to continue, they must also come to understand how that growth can be stopped. Population grows because more people are being born than are dying. There are two ways, then, in which the growth can be stopped. You can increase the number of people who die until it matches the number of people who are being born. Or else you can decrease the number of people who are born until it matches the number of people who are dying.
The first method—increasing the death rate—is the usual way in which population is controlled in all species of living things other than ourselves, but we don’t want that, for disaster lies that way. The intelligent way is to reduce the birth rate. But how can the birth rate be reduced? In paragraph 3, the word “This” refers to ______.
| A．avoidance of poverty | B．improvement of life and technology |
| C．growth of population | D．enhancement of living standard and competition |
It can be inferred from the passage that if a country had fewer people, ______.
| A．it could still remain strong | B．it would be defeated by a strong neighbour |
| C．its standard of living could be high | D．its people would live misery |
What might the author be further discussing after the passage?
| A．Needs to balance population. | B．Problems involved in birth control. |
| C．Methods of decreasing population. | D．Opposition from some nations. |
The passage mainly focuses on ______.
| A．why we must control population | B．where we can find a solution |
| C．how to stop population growth | D．how to become a strong nation |
The modern Olympic Games, founded in 1896, began as contests between individuals, rather than among nations, with the hope of promoting world peace through sportsmanship. In the beginning, the games were open only to amateurs. An amateur is a person whose involvement in an activity---from sports to science or the arts---is purely for pleasure. Amateurs, whatever their contributions to a field, expect to receive no form of compensation ; professionals, in contrast, perform their work in order to earn a living.
From the perspective of many athletes, however, the Olympic playing field has been far from level. Restricting the Olympics to amateurs has precluded（妨碍） the participation of many who could not afford to be unpaid. Countries have always desired to send their best athletes, not their wealthiest ones, to the Olympic Games.
A slender and imprecise line separates what we call “financial support” from “earning money.” Do athletes “earn money” if they are reimbursed（补偿） for travel expenses? What if they are paid for time lost at work or if they accept free clothing from a manufacturer or if they teach sports for a living? The runner Eric Liddell was the son of poor missionaries; in 1924 the British Olympic Committee financed his trip to the Olympics, where he won a gold and a bronze medal. College scholarships and support from the United States Olympic Committee made it possible for American track stars Jesse Owens and Wilma Rudolph and speed skater Dan Jansen to train and compete. When the Soviet Union and its allies joined the games in 1952, the definition of amateur became still muddier. Their athletes did not have to balance jobs and training because as citizens in communist regimes, their government financial support was not considered payment for jobs.
In 1971 the International Olympic Committee(IOC) removed the word amateur from the rules, making it easier for athletes to find the support necessary to train and compete. In 1986 the IOC allowed professional athletes into the games.
There are those who regret the disappearance of amateurism from the Olympic Games. For them the games lost something special when they became just another way for athletes to earn money. Others say that the designation of amateurism was always questionable; they argue that all competitors receive so much financial support as to make them paid professionals. Most agree, however, that the debate over what constitutes an “amateur” will continue for a long time. One might infer that _______________________.
| A．developing Olympic-level skills in athletes is costly |
| B．professional athletes are mostly interested in financial rewards |
| C．amateurs does not expect to earn money at the sport that is played |
| D．amateurs have a better attitude than professionals do |
The statement “the Olympic playing field has been far from level” means that__________.
| A．the ground the athletes played on was in bad condition |
| B．the poorer players were given some advantages |
| C．the rules did not work the same way for everyone |
| D．amateurs were inferior to the professionals in many ways |
The financial support given to athletes by the Soviet government can best be compared to ________________.
| A．a gift received on a special occasion, such as a birthday |
| B．money received from a winning lottery ticket |
| C．an allowance paid to a child |
| D．money from charity organization |
One can conclude that the Olympic Organizing Committee _________________.
| A．has held firm to its original vision of the Olympic games |
| B．has struggled with the definition of amateur over the years |
| C．regards itself as an organization for professional athletes only |
| D．did nothing but stop allowing communists to participate |
I once had my Chinese MBA students brainstorming on “two-hour business plans”. I separated them into six groups and gave them an example: a restaurant chain. The more original their idea, the better, I said. Finally, five of the six groups presented plans for restaurant chains. The sixth proposed a catering service. Though I admitted the time limit had been difficult, I expressed my disappointment.
My students were middle managers, financial analysts and financiers from state owned enterprises and global companies. They were not without talent or opinions, but they had been shaped by an educational system that rarely stressed or rewarded critical thinking or inventiveness. The scene I just described came in different forms during my two years’ teaching at the school. Papers were often copied from the Web and the Harvard Business Review. Case study debates were written up and just memorized. Students frequently said that copying is a superior business strategy, better than inventing and creating.
In China, every product you can imagine has been made and sold. But so few well developed marketing and management minds have been raised that it will be a long time before most people in the world can name a Chinese brand.
With this problem in mind, partnerships with institutions like Yale and MIT have been established. And then there’s the “thousand talent scheme”: this new government program is intended to improve technological modernization by attracting top foreign trained scientists to the mainland with big money. But there are worries about China’s research environment. It’s hardly known for producing independent thinking and openness, and even big salary offers may not be attractive enough to overcome this.
At last, for China, becoming a major world creator is not just about setting up partnerships with top Western universities. Nor is it about gathering a group of well-educated people and telling them to think creatively. It’s about establishing a rich learning environment for young minds. It’s not that simple. Why does the author feel disappointed at his students?
| A．Because there is one group presenting a catering service. |
| B．Because the six groups made projects for restaurant chains. |
| C．Because all the students copied a case for the difficult topic. |
| D．Because the students’ ideas were lacking in creativeness. |
We can infer from the passage that ________.
| A．China can make and sell any product all over the world |
| B．high pay may not solve the problem of China’s research environment |
| C．cooperation with institutions has been set up to make a Chinese brand |
| D．the new government program are aimed at encouraging imagination |
Which is the best title of the passage?
| A．Look for a New Way of Learning. | B．Reward Creative Thinking. |
| C．How to Become a Creator. | D．Establish a technical Environment. |
粤公网安备 44130202000953号