In the UK, we like a good bargain. People flock to the sales in January, when stores slash their prices to get rid of all their winter stock. But surprisingly, the British hate haggling. In markets you might see the odd British person battling with a stall owner to bring down the price of a pair of trousers or some furniture. Generally, though, people from the UK are too reserved to haggle. If we think the price of something we want is too high, we’ll simply move on and try somewhere else.
The act of bargaining with someone is very theatrical, in my opinion. It’s a test to see who can stand their ground for the longest. But it is not in British people’s nature to “perform” in public, especially around strangers.
However, in the US, people are generally more willing to haggle. And if you wander into a market, you’re likely to hear a number of phrases that Americans reserve for such occasions.
First, “you drive a hard bargain” is commonly said by the customer to indicate they think the stall holder is working very hard, probably a little too hard, to get the price he wants.
Or you might hear the buyer telling a stall holder that “the kid’s gotta have braces”, which means they don’t have enough spare money lying around to afford the price being offered.
If the customer is really shocked at the price suggested by the seller, they also might say “you’re killing me” to indicate that they think the price is far too high.
In Britain, it’s difficult to imagine anyone saying anything along these lines. If I were forced to bargain, I’d probably say, very simply: “I’m going to make you an offer.” If that offer were refused, I think I’d just walk away.The underlined word “haggling” can be replaced by _______.
| A．arguing | B．bargaining | C．performing | D．insisting |
Why don’t the British haggle generally?
| A．They don’t think it is polite behavior. |
| B．They have sales every January. |
| C．They can always get a better price somewhere else. |
| D．They dislike openly expressing feelings or opinions. |
The underlined phrase “you drive a hard bargain” means_______.
| A．the seller has a lot of deals on offer. |
| B．the buyer will make a final offer |
| C．the stall holder is too insistent |
| D．the buyer doesn’t have a lot of spare money |
What’s the author’s attitude toward bargaining?
| A．Negative. | B．Careless. | C．Positive. | D．Critical. |
How does the passage mainly develop?
| A．By providing examples. |
| B．By making comparision. |
| C．By analyzing causes and effects. |
| D．By following the order of importance. |
Looking for a low-cost path to self-knowledge? A way to mine your subconscious①for clues to your motivations, desires and fears? No need to have years of treatment or analysis. Just look to your dreams.
“You can ignore your dreams, but you are really doing harm to yourself,” says Lauri Quinn Loewenberg. “If so, you’re letting red flags pass you by, letting great ideas pass you by.”
Some sleep researchers believe dreams are more directly related to our moods and emotions and can serve as tools to self-understanding. Dreams occur during the REM (rapid eye movement) cycles of sleep each night. For adults, that means about every 90 minutes. The first period of REM sleep may be short, 5 to 10 minutes, followed by longer periods, finally reaching an hour or more in the fourth or fifth period.
When people are dreaming, brain scans show a lot of activities. The brain is online during dreams. The experiences you have during the day are connected during dream sleep. People we know or experiences we’ve had at different times in our lives may be different in the same dream.
AmyBeth Gilstrap has had the same recurring② dream that annoyed her since Hurricane Katrina drove her and her daughter and friends out of New Orleans. Ms. Gilstrap says, “It is always spies. My job is to get people to some place.” She’s certain the dream is related to her effort in the hurricane to help several families leave. Sometimes her cats also are part of that dream. That’s because she went back into New Orleans, before it was allowed, to rescue her cats.
Today, through brain scans scientists have known that the parts of the brain that control emotion and long-term memory are active during REM sleep.
1. The passage is mainly to tell readers ______.
A. dreams are mainly caused by hard work B. dreams can offer us key to self-knowledge
C. dreams are only activities of our brains D. how dreams help us solve our problems
2. According to the words from Lauri Quinn Loewenberg, ______.
A. dreams can make you feel badly ill B. you often have red flags in your dreams
C. dreams will make your life colorful D. you may get great help from your dreams
3. According to the passage, the underlined word “it” in Paragraph 5 refers to ______.
A. Ms. Gilstrap’s dream B. Ms. Gilstrap’s job C. Hurricane Katrina D. New Orleans
4. According to the passage, when you are dreaming at night, ______.
A. your dream is connected with your work that day
B. the dream will generally last about 5 to 10 minutes
C. the longer dream should be in the later part of the sleep
D. your eyes will still move slowly during the time
A typical① Chinese Internet user is a young male who prefers instant messaging to e-mail, seldom makes online purchases② and favors news, music and games sites. According to a study, about two-thirds of survey participants③ use the Internet for news — often entertainment-related — or for online games. About half download music and movies.
They also tend to prefer instant messaging to e-mail, and they are depending on the Internet more frequently than before to communicate with others who have the same professions, hobbies and political interests. Online purchases still remain unpopular in China. Three-quarters of users surveyed have never bought anything over the Internet, and only 10 percent make purchases even once a month. Among those who do buy online, most pay for entertainment while others buy phone cards, or computer hardware or software.
“Many people don’t trust the quality of goods bought online,” Guo said Wednesday. “If they buy it in a store and don’t like it, they can easily bring it back.”
The survey was done in five major cities: Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Chengdu and Changsha. Results do not necessarily project countrywide because Internet use in rural areas is lower than in cities. Guo describes the typical netizen in the five cities surveyed as young, male, richer and more highly educated. Males make up two-thirds of the Internet community, and more than 80 percent of users are under 24. Among people ages 25 to 29, 60 percent to 80 percent go online.
China has more than 100 million people online, second in the world to the United States.
1. A typical Chinese Internet user will be the one who ______.
A. likes to send e-mails B. likes to buy goods online
C. likes to pay for entertainment D. likes the games sites
2. Online purchases still remain unpopular in China mainly because ______.
A. it is more difficult for sales returns B. people haven’t computers
C. people can’t have a look at the goods D. goods bought online are of low quality
3. Which of the following words fails to describe the typical netizens in the five cities?
A. well educated B. richer C. female D. young
4. According to the text, which of the following shows the right relation between online people and their ages?
A.
B.
C.
D. 
When you turn on the radio, you hear an advertisement. When you watch television, you hear and see an advertisement. If you turn the pages of a newspaper or magazine, again you find an advertisement. If you walk down the street, you see one advertising board after another. All day, every day, people who want to sell you something compete to catch your attention. As a result, advertisements are almost everywhere.
In the West, advertisements are the fuel that makes mass media work. Many TV stations, newspapers, magazines, radio stations are privately owned. The government does not give them money. So where does the money come from? From advertisements. Without advertisements, there would not be these private businesses.
Have you ever asked yourself what advertising is? Through the years, people have given different answers to the question. For some time it was felt that advertising was a means of keeping your name before the public? and some people thought that advertising was “truth well told.” Now more and more people describe it in this way: Advertising is the paid, non-personal, and usually persuasive(有说服力的) description of goods, services and ideas by identified sponsors(明确的出资者) through various media.
First, advertising is usually paid for. Various sponsors pay for the advertisements we see, read, and hear over the various media. Second, advertising is non-personal. It is not face to face communication. Although you may feel that a message in a certain advertisement is aimed directly at you, in reality, it is directed at large groups of people. Third, advertising is usually persuasive. Directly or indirectly it tells people to do something. All advertisements try to make people believe that the product, idea, or service advertised can do good to them. Fourth, the sponsor of the advertisement must be identified. From the advertisement, we can see if the sponsor is a company, or an organization, or an individual. Fifth, advertising reaches us through traditional and nontraditional mass media. Included in the traditional media are newspapers, magazines, radio, television, and films. Nontraditional media include the mail, matchbox covers, and billboards.The existence(存在) of the privately owned mass media depends financially(经济上地) on _________.
| A．the government | B．their owners?families | C．advertisements | D．the audience |
according to the passage, who are most probably paying for the advertisements?
| A．Companies. | B．Organizations. | C．Individuals. | D．All of the above. |
Which of the following is considered nontraditional mass media?
| A．Newspapers. | B．The mail. | C．Magazines. | D．Films. |
according to the passage, which of the following statements about the features of advertisements is NOT true?
| A．Advertising must be honest and amusing. |
| B．Advertising is meant for large groups of people. |
| C．Advertising tells people to do something directly or indirectly. |
| D．The sponsors are always mentioned in the advertisements. |
He could have been president of Israel or played violin at Carnegie Hall, but he was too busy thinking. His thinking on God, love and the meaning of life graces our greeting cards and day-timers.
Fifty years after his death, his shock（乱蓬蓬的一堆）of white hair and hanging moustache still symbolize genius. Einstein remains the foremost scientist of the modern time. Looking back 2,400 years, only Newton ,Galileo and Aristotle were his equals.
Around the world , universities and academies（研究院）are celebrating the 100th anniversary of Einstein’s “miracle year” when he published five scientific papers in 1905 that basically changed our grasp of space, time ,light and matter. Only he could top himself about a decade later with his theory of relativity.
Born in the age of horse-drawn carriages, his ideas launched a technological revolution that has made more changes in a century than in the previous two thousand years. Computers, satellites, telecommunications, lasers, televisions and nuclear power all owe their invention to ways in which Einstein exposed a stranger and more complicated reality underneath the world.
He escaped Hitler’s Germany and devoted the rest of his life to human rights and peace with an authority unmatched by any scientist today, or even most politicians and religious leaders. He spoke out against fascism（法西斯主义）and racial prejudice. His FBI (美国联邦调查局)file ran 1,400 pages.
His letters expose a disorderly personal life ─ married twice and indifferent toward his children while absorbed in physics. Yet he charmed lovers and admirers with poetry and sailboat outings. Friends and neighbors fiercely protected his privacy. The first paragraph implies that Einstein __________.
| A．had the gift for politics and music |
| B．had run for president before he worked at his research |
| C．was an excellent violinist |
| D．was more a political leader of a musician than a thinker |
When you think of Einstein, what typical appearance was formed in your mind?
| A．Funny and humorous, with an air of a musician. |
| B．Wearing very wide trousers and a moustache, with an image of an actor. |
| C．Rough untidy mass of white hair and hanging moustache, with an image of thinking . |
| D．Black long hair and moustache, with his eyes deep set. |
Why was 1905 called Einstein’s “miracle year”?
| A．Because he topped himself with the theory of relativity. |
| B．Because he made important discoveries of space, time, light and matter. |
| C．Because he published five papers on his theory of relativity. |
| D．Because he wrote five important articles to help people understand space, time , light and matter better. |
Which of the following is not true about Einstein according to the passage?
| A．When he was absorbed in his research ,he didn’t care for his family. |
| B．He tried to amuse his family and friends in his spare time. |
| C．He was so busy with the physical research that he showed no interest in politics. |
| D．His theory led to much improvement in many technological fields. |
The very wealthy English Baron Fitzgerald had only one child, a son, who understandably was the apple of his eye. His wife died when the child was in his early teens. So Fitzgerald devoted himself to fathering the kid. Unfortunately the son died in his late teens.
Meanwhile, Fitzgerald’s wealth greatly increased. He spent a lot on art works of the masters. Later Fitzgerald himself because seriously ill. Before his death, he had carefully prepared his will as to how his wealth would be settled—to sell his entire collection at an auction (拍卖).
Because of the large quantity and high quality of his collection, a huge crowd of possible buyers gathered for the auction. Many of them were museum directors and private collectors eager to bid (出价).Before the auction, the art works were shown, among which was a painting of Fitzgerald’s son by an unknown artist. Because of its poor quality, it received little attention.
When it was time for the auction, the auctioneer gaveled (敲槌) the crowd to attention. First the lawyer read from Fitzgerald’s will that the first art work to be auctioned was the painting of his son.
The poor-quality painting didn’t receive and bidders...except one—the old servant who had served the son and loved him, and who for emotional reasons offered the only bid.
As soon as the servant bought the painting for less than one English pound, the auctioneer stopped the bidding and asked the lawyer to read again from the will. The crowd became quiet, and the lawyer read from the will:“Whoever buys the painting of my son gets all my collection.”Then the auction was over.The English Baron Fitzgerald was ______.
| A．a museum director | B．a master of art | C．an art collector | D．an art dealer |
Why did the old servant bid for the painting of Fitzgerald’s son?
| A．He was devoted to the family. | B．He saw that no one bid for it. |
| C．He knew the content of the will. | D．He found it cheap for him to buy. |
Fitzgerald’s will showed ______.
A his desire to fool the bidders B. his invaluable love for his son
C. his sadness at the death of his son D. his regret of having no children to take over his wealth
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