People aren’t walking any more--- if they can figure out a way to avoid it.
I felt superior about this matter until the other day I took my car to mail a small parcel. The journey is a matter of 281 steps. But I used the car. And I wasn’t in any hurry, either, I had merely become one more victim of a national sickness: motorosis.
It is an illness to which I had thought myself immune, for I was bred in the tradition of going to places on my own two legs. At that time, we regarded 25 miles as good day’s walk and the ability to cover such a distance in ten hours as a sign of strength and skill. It did not occur to us that walking was a hardship. And the effect was lasting. When I was 45 years old I raced –and beat—a teenage football player the 168 steps up the Stature of Liberty.
Such enterprises today are regarded by many middle-aged persons as bad for the heart. But a well-known British physician, Sir Adolphe Abrhams, pointed out recently that hearts and bodies need proper exercise. A person who avoids exercise is more likely to have illnesses than one who exercises regularly. And walking is an ideal form of exercise--- the most familiar and natural of all. It was Henry Thoreau who showed mankind the richness of going on foot. The man walking can learn the trees, flower, insects, birds and animals, the significance of seasons, the very feel of himself as a living creature in a living world. He cannot learn in a car.
The car is a convenient means of transport, but we have made it our way of life. Many people don’t dare to approach Nature any more; to them the world they were born to enjoy is all threat. To them security is a steel river thundering on a concrete road. And much of their thinking takes place while waiting for the traffic light to turn green.
I say that the green of forests is the mind’s best light. And none but the man on foot can evaluate what is basic and everlasting.What was life like when the author was young?
| A．people often walked 25 miles a day |
| B．People usually went around on foot. |
| C．People used to climb the Statue of Liberty. |
| D．people considered a ten-hour walk as a hardship. |
The author mentions Henry Thoreau to prove that ________.
| A．middle-aged people like getting back to nature |
| B．people need regular exercise to keep fit |
| C．walking in nature helps enrich one’s mind |
| D．going on foot prevents heart disease |
What is compared to “a steel river” in Paragraph6?
| A．A ray of traffic light | B．A queue of cars |
| C．A flash of lightning | D．A stream of people |
What is the author’s intention of writing this passage?
| A．To encourage people to return to walking. |
| B．To recommend people to give up driving |
| C．To advise people to do outdoor activities. |
| D．To tell people to reflect more on life. |
My father was a foreman of a sugar-cane plantation(甘蔗种植园) in Rio Piedras, Puerto Rico. My first job was to drive the oxen that ploughed(耕) the cane fields. I would walk behind an ox(牛), guiding him with a broomstick. For $ 1 a day, I worked eight hours straight, with no food breaks.
It was very tedious work, but it prepared me for life and taught me many lasting lessons. Because the plantation owners were always watching us, I had to be on time every day and work as hard as I could. I’ve never been late for any job since. I also learned about being respectful and faithful to the people you work for. More important, I earned my pay; it never entered my mind to say I was sick just because I didn’t want to work.
I was only six years old, but I was doing a man’s job. Our family needed every dollar we could make because my father never earned more than $ 18 a week. Our home was a three-room wood shack with a dirty floor and no toilet. Nothing made me prouder than bringing home money to help my mother, father, two brothers and three sisters. This gave me self-esteem(自尊心), one of the most important things a person can have.
When I was seven, I got work at a golf course(高尔夫球场) near our house. My job was to stand down the fairway and spot the balls as they landed, so the golfers could find them. Losing a ball meant you were fired, so I never missed one. Some nights I would lie in bed and dreamt of making thousands of dollars by playing golf and being able to buy a bicycle.
The more I dreamed, the more I thought. Why not? I made my first golf club out of guava limb(番石榴树枝) and a piece of pipe. Then I hammered an empty tin can into the shape of a ball. And finally I dug two small holes in the ground and hit the ball back and forth. I practiced with the same devotion and intensity. I learned working in the field — except now I was driving golf balls with club, not oxen with a broomstick. The word “tedious” in Paragraph 2 most probably means _______.
| A．easy | B．boring | C．interesting | D．unusual |
The writer learned that_______ from his first job.
| A．he should work for those who he liked most |
| B．he should work longer than what he was expected |
| C．he should never fail to say hello to his owner |
| D．he should be respectful and faithful to the people he worked for |
_______ gave the writer self-esteem.
| A．Having a family of eight people |
| B．Owning his own golf course |
| C．Bringing money back home to help the family |
| D．Helping his father with the work on the plantation |
My heart sank when the man at the immigration counter gestured to the back room. I was born and raised in America, and this was Miami, where I live, but they weren’t quite ready to let me in yet.
“Please wait in here, Ms. Abujaber,” the immigration officer said. My husband, with his very American last name, accompanied me. He was getting used to this. The same thing had happened recently in Canada when I’d flown to Montreal to speak at a book event. That time they held me for 45 minutes. Today we were returning from a literary festival in Jamaica, and I was shocked that I was being sent “in back” once again.
The officer behind the counter called me up and said, “Miss, your name looks like the name of someone who’s on our wanted list. We’re going to have to check you out with Washington.”
“How long will it take?”
“Hard to say…a few minutes,” he said, “We’ll call you when we’re ready for you.” After an hour, Washington still hadn’t decided anything about me.
“Isn’t this computerized?” I asked at the counter, “Can’t you just look me up?”
“Just a few more minutes,” they assured me.
After an hour and a half, I pulled my cell phone out to call the friends I was supposed to meet that evening. An officer rushed over. “No phones!” he said, “For all we know you could be calling a terrorist cell and giving them information.”
“I’m just a university professor,” I said. My voice came out in a squeak.
“Of course you are. And we take people like you out of here in leg irons every day.”
I put my phone away.
My husband and I were getting hungry and tired. Whole families had been brought into the waiting room, and the place was packed with excitable children, exhausted parents, and even a flight attendant.
I wanted to scream, to jump on a chair and shout: “I’m an American citizen; a novelist; I probably teach English literature to your children.”
After two hours in detention (扣押), I was approached by one of the officers. “You’re free to go,” he said. No explanation or apologies. For a moment, neither of us moved. We were still in shock. Then we leaped to our feet.
“Oh, one more thing,” he handed me a tattered photocopy with an address on it, “If you aren’t happy with your treatment, you can write to this agency.”
“Will they respond?” I asked.
“I don’t know—I don’t know of anyone who’s ever written to them before.” Then he added,” By the way, this will probably keep happening each time you travel internationally.”
“What can I do to keep it from happening again?”
He smiled the empty smile we’d seen all day, “Absolutely nothing.”
After telling several friends about our ordeal, probably the most frequent advice I’ve heard in response is to change my name. Twenty years ago, my own graduate school writing professor advised me to write under a pen name so that publishers wouldn’t stick me in what he called “the ethnic ghetto”—a separate, secondary shelf in the bookstore. But a name is an integral part of anyone’s personal and professional identity—just like the town you’re born in and the place where you’re raised.
Like my father, I’ll keep the name, but my airport experience has given me a whole new perspective on what diversity and tolerance are supposed to mean. I had no idea that being an American would ever be this hard.The author was held at the airport because ______.
| A．she and her husband returned from Jamaica |
| B．her name was similar to a terrorist’s |
| C．she had been held in Montreal |
| D．she had spoken at a book event |
She was not allowed to call her friends because ______.
| A．her identity hadn’t been confirmed yet |
| B．she had been held for only one hour and a half |
| C．there were other families in the waiting room |
| D．she couldn’t use her own cell phone |
We learn from the passage that the author would ______ to prevent similar experience from happening again.
| A．write to the agency | B．change her name |
| C．avoid traveling abroad | D．do nothing |
Her experiences indicate that there still exists ______ in the US.
| A．hatred | B．discrimination |
| C．tolerance | D．diversity |
The author sounds ______ in the last paragraph.
| A．impatient | B．bitter | C．worried | D．ironic (具有讽刺意味的) |
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 |
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