Silk production has a long and colourful history unknown to most people. Scientific discoveries have shown that silk production existed in China from around 2500 B.C., although it could be much older. For hundreds of years, China kept the secret of silk to itself as one for the most closely protected secrets in history. Anyone revealing the secret of silkworms or trying to take silkworm eggs out of ancient China was punished by death.
At one time silk was reserved only for the Chinese emperor. Gradually, others began wearing silk. In addition to being used for clothing, silk came to have industrial uses in ancient China, something that happened in the West only in modern times. Silk was used to make musical instruments, fishing lines, weapons, ropes and even paper. During the Han Dynasty silk became a form of money. Farmers paid taxes in both rice and silk. The prices of goods were calculated in lengths of silk just as they had once been calculated in gold. The importance of silk is even reflected in the Chinese language. For example, of the 5000 most common Chinese characters, around 500 have silk as their “key”.
In spite of their secrecy, the Chinese eventually lost their monopoly on silk production. It reached Korea in around 200 B.C. when immigrants from China arrived there. Silk production came to India in 300 A.D.. It was not until 500 A.D. that silk production came to Europe when travellers smuggled out silkworms in hollow tubes of bamboo. These were used to establish silk industry in Rome (modern-day Italy), although Chinese silk was still considered to be the best.
Silk was brought to Rome from China by means of the Silk Road. There were actually two Silk Roads, one over land and one on the sea. The land route in particular had a huge effect in history. All sorts of trade goods — silver, gold, jade, porcelain — passed along this road. Ideas travelled the Silk Road too. For example the religion of Buddhism was carried to China from India by traders on the Silk Road. The Silk Road created the first international culture, exposing many people to the ideas and treasures of both Western and Chinese cultures.How was China able to keep the secret of silk production?
| A．It refused to sell its silk to other countries. |
| B．Foreigners were not permitted to enter China. |
| C．The silkworms needed were not able to survive outside China. |
| D．Chinese passing on the secret to foreigners were seriously punished. |
Which of the following uses of silk is NOT mentioned in the passage?
| A．A way of purchasing goods people sold. |
| B．A material used for making different products. |
| C．A method of paying money to the government. |
| D．A valuable gift given to foreigners travelling in China. |
In what order did silk production spread throughout the world according to the passage?
| A．Europe àIndia àKorea àChina. | B．China àKorea àIndia àEurope. |
| C．China àIndia àKorea àEurope. | D．China àEurope àIndia àKorea. |
The underlined phrase “smuggled out” in Paragraph 3 is closest in meaning to ________.
| A．quietly traded | B．openly removed |
| C．illegally transported | D．violently stole |
Which of the following is true about the Silk Road?
| A．It allowed for economic and cultural exchanges between countries. |
| B．It made China the most powerful country in the ancient world. |
| C．It could only be completed by travellers with access to a boat. |
| D．It was first developed for transferring religious ideas. |
Any mistake made in the printing of a stamp raises its value to stamp collectors. A mistake on one inexpensive postage stamp has made the stamp worth a million and a half times its original value.
The mistake was made more than a hundred years ago in the British colony of Mauritius, a small island in the Indian Ocean. In 1847 an order for stamps was sent to a London printer-Mauritius was to become the fourth country in the world to issue stamps.
Before the order was filled and delivered, a ball was planned at Mauritius’ Government House, and stamps were needed to send out the invitations. A local printer was instructed to copy the design for the stamps. He accidentally inscribed the words “Post Office” instead of “Post Paid” on the several hundred stamps that he printed.
Today there are only twenty-six of these misprinted stamps left fourteen One Penny Orange-Reds and twelve Two Penny Blues. Because of the Two Penny Blue’s rareness and age, collectors have paid as much as ＄16 800 for it.Over a century ago, Mauritius ________.
| A．was an independent country | B．belonged to India |
| C．was one of the British colonies | D．was a small island in the Pacific Ocean |
The mistake on the stamps was made ________.
| A．in Mauritius | B．at Mauritius Government House |
| C．in a post office | D．in London |
Stamp collectors have paid 16 800 for ________.
| A．fourteen One Penny Orange-Reds | B．twelve Two Penny Blues |
| C．one One Penny Orange-Red | D．one Two Penny Blue |
Today many people say that women have the same chance as men in society. But this was not always so. In the past, women all over the world had to fight to get the same chance as men in education and jobs. Many people said that women should not receive much education because they would not do as well as men when they went to work.
One woman who showed that women should have the same chance was Marie, a scientist. In the 1800s scientists knew that a metal, uranium, gave off radiation. They also knew how much radiation came from his element. But they didn’t know what this radiation was like; they wondered why and how uranium gave off radiation. Marie Curie set out to answer these questions. In one of her experiments she was studying a certain material which, she knew, contained uranium, But it gave off 4 times as much radiation as usually does. What could explain this fact? Marie Curie thought that there must be another source of radiation in this material.
In 1898 Marie Curie set out to find out this new source of radiation, which she named “radium”. Her husband, who was also a scientist, helped her. They set up a laboratory in an old building behind a school. For four years Curies searched, doing many experiments, And one morning in 1902 Marie found the source of the radiation.
Marie Curie proved to the world that there was element that gave off radiation. And she also proved to the world that, if women are given truly equal chance, they can really help society.The scientists of Marie Curie’s day knew .
| A．that uranium gave off radiation |
| B．that radium gave off radiation |
| C．that there was some radium in uranium |
| D．that uranium and radium both gave off radiation |
The Curies found the element radium .
| A．with other scientists’ help | B．by asking some famous scientists |
| C．by doing many experiments | D．with their teachers’ help |
In the past many people thought .
| A．that women must get the same chance as men in education and jobs |
| B．that women should receive much education |
| C．that women should get good jobs |
| D．that women could not do the work well |
Marie Curie proved to people .
| A．that there was a new element uranium |
| B．that there was a new element radium |
| C．that women could do their work as well as men if they were really given the same conditions |
| D．both B and C |
Anyone who doubts that children are born with a healthy amount of ambition need spend only a few minutes with a baby eagerly learning to walk. No matter how many times the little ones stumble in their first efforts, most keep on trying, determined to master their amazing new skill. It is only several years later, many psychologists and teachers agree, that a good number of kids seem to lose their natural drive to succeed. For the parents of such kids, whose own ambition is often tied to their children’s success, it can be a painful experience.
Figuring out why the fire went out is the first step. Assuming that a kid doesn’t suffer from a learning disability, or isn’t involved in some family crisis at home, many educators attribute a sudden lack of motivation to a fear of failure or classmate pressure. “Everything is within the kids’ control; their intelligence is changeable,” says Lisa Blackwell, a research scientist at Columbia University. “More than any teacher or workshop,” Blackwell says, “parents can play a key role in conveying this message to their children by praising their effort, and progress rather than emphasizing their ‘smartness’ or praising high performance alone. Most importantly, parents should let their kids know that mistakes are a part of learning.”
Some experts say our education system, with its strong emphasis on testing and separation of students into different levels of ability, also bears blame for the disappearance of drive in some kids. “These programs shut down the motivation of all kids who aren’t considered gifted and talented. They destroy their confidence,” says Jeff Howard, a social psychologist. Howard and other educators say it’s important to expose kids to a world beyond homework and tests, through volunteer work, sports, hobbies and other extracurriculum activities.
“The problem of the issue is that many students experience education as irrelevant to their life goals and ambitions,” says Michael Nakkual, a Harvard education professor. The key to getting kids to aim higher at school is to free them of the idea that class work is irrelevant, to show them how doing well at school can actually help them fulfill their dreams beyond it. They need to understand that you have to learn to walk before you can run. According to the passage, the parents of kids with no ambition .
| A．don’t do a very good job teaching them to walk |
| B．are to blame if the kids do poorly in school |
| C．feel pain because ambitions are connected to their success |
| D．should take part in extra-curriculum activities with kids |
The underlined part “the fire went out” probably means .
| A．the motivation was suddenly lost |
| B．the fear of failure was suddenly gone |
| C．the learning disability was suddenly lost |
| D．the fire was suddenly gone |
All the following can contribute to a sudden lack of ambition EXCEPT .
| A．learning disability | B．classmate pressure |
| C．emphasis on testing | D．extracurricular activities |
What is the most important thing for parents in motivating their kids?
| A．By punishing kids who don’t display ambition. |
| B．By emphasizing smartness and high performance. |
| C．By telling kids that mistakes are a part of learning. |
| D．By praising the effort and progress they have made. |
We can infer from the passage that .
| A．children who have lost their ambition will never succeed in life |
| B．school performance has much to do with students’ later success |
| C．both the parents and the school are to blame for the lost ambition |
| D．younger kids learning to walk are more ambitious than older ones |
Many people seem to think that science fiction is typified by the Bug-eyed Monster, embodying every feature that most people find unpleasant. This is unfortunate because it degrades a worthwhile literary endeavor. Instead, the basic interest of science fiction lies in the relation between man and his technology and between man and the universe. Science fiction is a literature of change and a literature of the future, and the aspects of human life that it considers make it well worth reading and studying for no other literary form does quite the same things. What is science fiction? To begin, the following definition should be helpful: science fiction is a literary subgenre which postulates(以…为前提) a change (for human beings) from conditions as we know them and follows the implications of these changes to a conclusion.
The first point that science fiction is a literary subgenre is a very important one, but one which is often overlooked. Specifically, science fiction is either a short story or a novel. There are only a few dramas which could be called science fiction; the body of poetry that might be labeled science fiction is only slightly larger. To say that science fiction is a subgenre of prose fiction(小说) is to say that it has all the basic characteristics and serves the same basic functions in much the same way as prose fiction in general, that is, it shares a great deal with all other novels and short stories.
Everything that can be said about prose fiction, in general, applies to science fiction. Every piece of science fiction, whether short story or novel, must have a narrator, a story, a plot, characters, setting, and language. The themes of science fiction are concerned with interpreting man’s nature and experience around him. Themes in science fiction are constructed and presented in exactly the same ways that themes are dealt with in any other kind of fiction. They are the result to a particular combination of a narrator, story, plot, character, setting, and language. In short, the reasons for reading and enjoying science fiction, and the ways of studying and analyzing it, are basically the same as they would be for any other story or novel. From the first paragraph, we can infer that science fiction has been most popular in modern society because ____.
| A．with the growth of literacy, the size of the reading public has increased |
| B．competition from television has created a demand for more exciting fiction |
| C．science fiction is easier to understand than other kinds of fiction |
| D．the increased importance of technology has given science fiction an increased relevance |
According to the definition in the passage, a fictional work that places human beings in a prehistoric world inhabited by dinosaurs____.
| A．cannot be called science fiction because it does not deal with the future |
| B．cannot be called science fiction because it doesn’t deal with technology |
| C．can be called science fiction because it deals with man’s relation with the world |
| D．can be called science fiction because it places people in an environment different from the one we know |
Science fiction is called a literary subgenre because____.
| A．it is not important enough to be a literary genre |
| B．it cannot be made into a dramatic presentation |
| C．it shares characteristics with other types of prose fiction |
| D．it has a great number of readers keen on reading |
One implication of the final sentence in the passage is that____.
| A．the reader should turn next to commentaries on general fiction |
| B．there is no reason for any reader not to like science fiction |
| C．the reader should compare other novels and stories to science fiction |
| D．those who can appreciate prose fiction can appreciate science fiction |
An appropriate title for this passage would be____.
| A．Man and the Universe | B．Toward a Definition of Science Fiction |
| C．A Type of Prose Fiction | D．The Bug-Eyed Monster |
Uncertainty spreads through our lives so thoroughly that it dominates our language. Our everyday speech is made up in large part of words like probably, many, soon, great, little. What do these words mean?Such verbal expression is not necessarily to be criticized. Indeed, it has a value just because it allows us to express judgments when a precise quantitative statement is out of the question.
We have been trying to pin down by experiments what people mean by these expressions in specific contexts, and how the meanings change with age. For instance, a subject is told “There are many trees in the park” and is asked to say what number the word many mean to him. Or a child is invited to take “some” sweets from a bowl and we then count how many he has taken. We compare the number he takes when he is alone with the number when one or more other children are present and are to take some sweets after him, or with the number he takes when told to give “some” sweets to another child.
First, we find that the number depends, of course, on the items involved. To most people some friends means about five, while some trees means about twenty. However, unrelated areas sometimes show parallel values. For instance, the language of probability seems to mean about the same thing in predictions about the weather and about politics: the expression “is certain to” (rain, or be elected) signifies to the average person about a 70 percent chance; “is likely to”, about a 60 percent chance; “probably will” about 55 percent.
Secondly, the size of the population of items influences the value assigned to an expression. Thus, if we tell a subject to take “a few” or “ a lot of” glass balls from a box, he will take more if the box contains a large number of glass balls than if it has a small number. But not proportionately more: if we increase the number of glass balls eight times, the subject takes only half as large a percentage of the total.
Thirdly, there is a marked change with age. Among children between six and fourteen years old, the older the child, the fewer glass balls he will take. But the difference between a lot and a few widens with age. This age effect is so consistent that it might be used as a test of intelligence. What’s the right attitude towards the words like probably, many, soon?
| A．They are inaccurate and we should avoid them. |
| B．They are necessary since we cannot be always precise. |
| C．They should be criticized because there are too many of them. |
| D．Their value is not yet clear since we don’t know their meaning. |
Why do we do experiments with the words “many” and “some”?
| A．To prove people are insensitive to these words. |
| B．To prove the words dominate our everyday speech. |
| C．To find out how the meanings vary with age and contexts. |
| D．To find out whether the words can mean a precise quantity. |
Which of the expressions means a larger chance in weather broadcast?
| A．Possible | B．Probable | C．Be likely to | D．Be certain to |
Which of the following will least definitely influence the number of items a kid takes out of a box when he is invited to take “some”?
| A．Whether the quantity of items is large or small. |
| B．Whether the items are candies or toys. |
| C．Whether the kid is a toddler or a youngster. |
| D．Whether the kid is alone or accompanied by other children. |
What will tell us about the intelligence of a child?
| A．The consistency of picking up a certain glass ball. |
| B．How many glass balls he will take when he’s asked to. |
| C．The difference between a lot and a few when he takes glass balls. |
| D．Whether there are marked changes in his first pick and second one. |
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