Erica McElrath calls herself “ The Happy Lady”. And by now, you may have caught her singing and dancing with her mp3 player on any of several city street corners. “ I don’t want money,” said McElrah, 40, of St. Louis. “ I come out here to make people smile.”
McElrah lost her full-time job in January. Since then, she has spent her days doing what she loves-dancing in the street. Her message to people in hard times: do something that you enjoy, no matter what your circumstances. “ Life isn’t that bad,” she said. “ If you’re working 40 hours a week, you shouldn’t be complaining.”
McElrah graduated from parkway Central High School and has spent the past 21 years working as a nursing assistant, She began singing and dancing publicly on her days off a few years ago to help her through the pain of her second divorce.
Her favorite spot is the northwest corner of Chouteau Avenue and South Grand Boulevard near St. Louis University. McElrah’s mp3 player is loaded with hundreds of classic rock hits and 80’s pop songs, including those by Joe Cocker, Tina Turner, Neil Diamond and Toto. But her favorite artist, by far, is Stevie Nicks.
Videos of McElrah have appeared on YouTube, a video-sharing website on which users can upload, share, and view videos. “People think I’m crazy, but I don’t care,” She said. “ I can dance a little. I just go with the music.” Even a rude gesture from a passing motorist doesn’t bother her either. “ I just smile and wave,” she said.
McElrah’s show of bravery recently earned her a job opportunity with Liberty Tax Service, which temporarily offered her a job as a dancer Statute of Liberty to promote a new place near Grand Center starting in January.
“ Just be happy and do what you love,” she said. “The money will come.”At first McElrah began singing and dancing in public in order to _____.
| A．make a living |
| B．entertain the public |
| C．rise to fame |
| D．encourage herself |
Erica McElrah’s actions are _______.
| A．popular with others |
| B．stopped by her family |
| C．supported by passers-by |
| D．laughed at sometimes |
Erica McElrah was offered a job because of _____.
| A．her beautiful voice |
| B．her positive behavior |
| C．her lively dancing |
| D．her competitive spirit |
Which of the following about Erica McElrah is TRUE？
| A．She doesn’t care others’ comments on her. |
| B．Her favorite artist is Joe Cocker. |
| C．She once worked as a doctor. |
| D．She has been divorced once. |
What would be the best title for the passage?
| A．Ways To Be Happy |
| B．Learn To Do What You Love |
| C．Happy Lady’s Singing and Dancing Life |
| D．What Made The Happy Lady Famous? |
Long bus rides are like television shows. They have a beginning,a middle,and an endwith commercials （商业广告） thrown in every three or four minutes. The commercials are unavoidable. They happen whether you want them or not. Every couple of minutes a billboard glides by outside the bus window. "Buy Super Clean Toothpaste.""Drink Good Wet Root Beer.""Fill up with Pacific Gas."Only if you sleep,which is equal to turning the television set off,are you spared the unending cry of "You Need It! Buy It Now!"
The beginning of the ride is comfortable and somewhat exciting,even if you’ve traveled that way before. Usually some things have changednew houses,new buildings,sometimes even a new road. The bus driver has a style of driving and it’s fun to try to figure it out the first hour or so. If the driver is particularly reckless （鲁莽的） or daring,the ride can be as thrilling （惊心动魄的） as a suspense story. Will the driver pass the truck in time? Will the driver move into the rightor the lefthand lane? After a while,of course,the excitement dies down. Sleeping for a while helps pass the middle hours of the ride. Food always makes bus rides more interesting. But you’ve got to be careful of what kind of food you eat. Too much salty food can make you very thirsty between stops.
The end of the ride is somewhat like the beginning. You know it will soon be over and there’s a kind of expectation and excitement in that. The seat of course,has become harder as the hours have passed. By now you’ve sat with your legs crossed,with your hands in your lap,with your hands on the armrestseven with your hands crossed behind your head. The end comes just at no more ways to sit.According to the passage,what do the passengers usually see when they are on a long bus trip?
| A．Buses on the road. | B．Films on television. |
| C．Advertisements on the billboards. | D．Gas stations. |
What is the purpose of this passage?
| A．To give the writer’s opinion about long bus trips. |
| B．To persuade you to take a long bus trip. |
| C．To explain how bus trips and television shows differ. |
| D．To describe the billboards along the road. |
The writer of this passage would probably favor .
| A．bus drivers who aren’t reckless | B．driving alone |
| C．a television set on the bus | D．no billboards along the road |
The writer feels long bus rides are like TV shows because .
| A．the commercials both on TV shows and on billboards along the road are fun |
| B．they both have a beginning,a middle,and an end,with commercials in between |
| C．the drivers are always reckless on TV shows just as they are on buses |
| D．both traveling and watching TV are not exciting. |
The writer thinks that the end of the ride is somewhat like the beginning because both are .
| A．exciting | B．comfortable | C．tiring | D．boring |
Disposing(处理) of waste has been a problem since humans started producing it. As more and more people choose to live close together in cities, the waste-disposal problem becomes increasingly difficult.
During the eighteenth century, it was usual for several neighboring towns to get together to select a faraway spot as a dumpsite. Residents or trash haulers(垃圾托运者) would transport household rubbish, rotted wood, and old possessions to the site. Periodically(定期的) some of the trash was burned and the rest was buried. The unpleasant sights and smells caused no problem because nobody lived close by.
Factories, mills, and other industrial sites also had waste to be disposed of. Those located on rivers often just dumped the unwanted remains into the water. Others built huge burners with chimneys to deal with the problem.
Several facts make these choices unacceptable to modern society. The first problem is space. Dumps, which are now called landfills, are most needed in heavily populated areas. Such areas rarely have empty land suitable for this purpose. Property is either too expensive or too close to residential(住宅区的)neighborhoods. Long-distance trash hauling has been a common practice, but once farm areas are refusing to accept rubbish from elsewhere, cheap land within trucking distance of major city areas is almost nonexistent.
Awareness of pollution dangers has resulted in more strict rules of waste disposal. Pollution of rivers, ground water, land and air is a price people can no longer pay to get rid of waste. The amount of waste, however, continues to grow.
Recycling efforts have become commonplace, and many towns require their people to take part. Even the most efficient recycling programs, however, can hope to deal with only about 50 percent of a city's reusable waste.The most suitable title for this passage would be ______.
| A．Places for Disposing Waste | B．Waste Pollution Dangers |
| C．Ways of Getting Rid of Waste | D．Waste Disposal Problem |
During the 18th century, people disposed their waste in many ways EXCEPT for ______.
| A．burying it | B．recycling it |
| C．burning it | D．throwing it into rivers |
What can be inferred from the fourth paragraph?
| A．Farm areas accept waste from the city in modern society. |
| B．There is cheap land to bury waste in modem society. |
| C．It is difficult to find space to bury waste in modem society. |
| D．Ways to deal with waste in modem society stay the same. |
The main purpose of writing this article is to ________.
| A．draw people's attention to waste management |
| B．warn people of the pollution dangers we are facing |
| C．call on people to take part in recycling programs |
| D．tell people a better way to get rid of the waste |
Sheep, like turkeys and ostriches, are not considered the cleverest animals. British scientists said last Wednesday human may have underestimated(低估) the woolly creatures. They could be much smarter than we think.
Researchers at the Babraham Institute in Cambridge, southern. England, have shown that animals have a good memory system and are extremely good at recognizing faces--which they think is a sure sign of intelligence.
Behavioral scientist Keith Kendrick and his friends trained 20 sheep to recognize and distinguish(区别) 25 pairs of sheep faces and used electrodes(电极) to measure their brain activity, which showed they could remember 50 faces for up to two years.
"If they can do that with faces, the fact is that they have to have reasonable intelligence, otherwise, what is the point of having a system for remembering anything else," Kendrick said in an interview.
So hours of seemingly mindless eating grass may not be so mindless after all.
Kendrick believes sheep got their reputation as dumb animals because they live in large groups and do not appear to have much ind
ividuality and are frightened of just about everything.
All animals, including humans, once they are frightened don't tend to show signs of intelligent action," he explained.
In research reported in the science journal Nature, Kendrick and his team showed that sheep, like humans, have a specialized system in the brain, which allows them to distinguish between many different faces that look extremely similar.
"The most important findings of the study is that they are able, both from a behavioral point of view and from looking at the way the brain is organized, to remember a large number of faces of individuals for a very long time," said Kendrick. "It is a very strange system. They are showing similar abilities in many ways to humans. " From the first paragraph we can find that ______.
| A．people used to think sheep are smarter than the other animals |
| B．people used to raise sheep in a wrong way |
| C．people don't consider sheep as clever animals |
| D．people have done a lot of research on sheep |
From what Kendrick said in the interview we learn that ________.
| A．scientists have learned a lot about sheep's intelligence |
| B．scientists have learned little about sheep's intelligence |
| C．scientists can't do anything more about sheep's memory |
| D．scientists don't have to research animals' memory |
As is shown in the passage _________.
| A．sheep are among the weak animals |
| B．it is not right for people to raise sheep in groups |
| C．when sheep eat grass in the fields their minds may be active |
| D．if people feel frightened, they may become more brave |
When scientists found that sheep show similar abilities in many ways to humans they may think it _____.
| A．worrying | B．moving | C．frightening | D．interesting |
When I opened my e-mail the other day, a pretty woman named Rachel appeared on my computer screen. She greeted me by name and started talking with great enthusiasm. Every now and then she stopped to smile at me or blow a kiss. She was reading to me an e-mail from my brother, and a lot of it was about his getting the phone company to give him a high-speed Internet connection. It was pretty cool.
Rache
l was there thanks to a new technology called Facemail. Facemail lets you send e-mail that gets ready to the receiver by an attractive male or female form or by a clown(小丑). The software, which is free, can be downloaded at www. Facemail.com.
Facemail faces are lifelike, and they simulate(模拟) emotions based on emotions that you put in your text. For example, type in-X, and Rachel blows a kiss.
LifeFX, the company that develops the Facemail, is sure there are broad business uses. The reason e-business is not popular, the company says, is that buying over the Internet lacks the human touch. But what if you went to the Nike website and Michael Jordan greeted you by name, waited on you and personally closed the sale? And it is talking with Whirl(惠而浦公司) about using the technology in a computer screen on a fridge. Then if Morn can't be home when the kids get back from school, she can leave a note with voice and image telling them what there is to eat.
Facemail could get hot fast. Personally, I'm a fan. But Facemail should be used with care. The clown looks lively and funny at first. But if you select the clown, put a few rude words in an e-mail and add some angry emotions, you've got a Psycho-mail(疯人型电子邮件).The pretty woman that appears on the writer's computer screen was ______.
A. a woman working on the Internet B. his brother's girlfriend
C not a real person D. the picture of his pen-friend The main advantage of Facemail is that ______.
| A．you can hire a beautiful woman to read the e-mail to you |
| B．you can see the person who sends you the e-mail |
| C．yon can send an e-mail free of charge |
| D．e-mail can be attractive in a more lovely way |
The writer mentioned Nike website and Michael Jordan to show that _______.
| A．Famous people like Michael Jordan also like to use Facemail |
| B．Facemail can make shopping on the Internet more interesting |
| C．Nike website will increase its sales by Jordan |
| D．Michael Jordan will serve you himself on Nike website |
What is the writer's attitude towards Facemail?
| A．He thinks it needs further improvement. |
| B．He thinks it cool and funny. |
| C．He thinks it a danger to the Internet. |
| D．He thinks people should be careful with Facemail. |
Ever since news of widespread food recalls caused by a carcinogenic dye broke, there has been confusion（混淆） over possible links to the country of the same name, but Sudan officials say there is no connection whatever.
Sudan1 is a red industrial dye that has been found in some chilli powder, but was banned in food products across the European Union (EU) in July 2003.
Since the ban was put in place, EU officials have been striving to remove some food products from the shelves. So far 580 products have been recalled.
Last week Sudan’s Embassy in the United Kingdom asked the Food Standards Agency (FSA) for clarification of the origin of the dye’s name.
Omaima Mahmoud Al Sharief, a press official at Sudan’s Embassy in China, explained the purpose of the inquiry was to clear up any misunderstanding over links between the country and the poisonous dye.
"We want to keep an eye on every detail and avoid any misunderstanding there," she said. "Our embassy to Britain asked them how the dye got that name and whether the dye had something to do with our country. But they told us there was no relationship."
The FSA, an independent food security watchdog in Britain, received a letter from the Sudanese embassy last week.
"They asked us why the dye is named Sudan, however, we also do not know how it got the name," she said. "People found the dye in 1883 and gave it the name. Nobody knows the reason, and we cannot give any explanation before we find out."
Sudan dyes, which include Sudan1 to 4, are red dyes（颜料） used for colouring solvents（溶剂）, oils, waxes, petrol, and shoe and floor polishes. They are classified as carcinogens by the International Agency for Research on Cancer. What does the underlined word mean in paragraph one?
| A．Causing cancer. | B．Having side effect. | C．Containing poison. | D．Poisonous. |
How did the Sudan1 get its name?
| A．The dye is often produced in Sudan. |
| B．The dye has something to do with the country named Sudan. |
| C．Nobody is sure of the origin of the name. |
| D．Many foods produced in Sudan contain the dye. |
We can infer from the passage that.
| A．the Sudan government is paying much attention to the food safety |
| B．Sudan1 is often used to be added to the food |
| C．people didn’t realize the danger of Sudan1 until 2003 |
| D．many food shops will be closed down |
Which of the following is the best title?
| A．Keep away from Sudan1 |
| B．No Sudan1 dye links to the country |
| C．How Sudan1 dye got its name? |
| D．Pay attention to the food safety |
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