Pearl Buck(1892—1973)was born in Hillsboro, West Virginia. She grew up in China, but was educated at Randolph-Macon Woman’s College. After her graduation she returned to China and lived there until 1934 with the exception of a year spent at Cornell University, where she took an MA in 1926.Pearl Buck began to write in the twenties; her first novel, East Wind; West Wind, appeared in 1930.It was followed by The Good Earth (1931),Sons(1932),and A House Divided(1935),together forming a trilogy(三部曲)on the stories of the family of Wang. The Good Earth stood on the American list of bestsellers for a long time and earned her several awards, including the Pulitzer Prize and the William Dean Howells Medal. She also published The first Wife and Other Stories(1933),All Men are Brothers(1933),The Mother(1934),and This Proud Heart(1938).The biographies(传记)of her mother and father, The Exile and Fighting Angel, were published in 1936 and later brought out together under the title of The Spirit and the Flesh(1944).
Pearl Buck’s works after 1938 are too many to speak about. Her novels have continued to deal with the differences between East and West. Her interest has spread to such countries as India and Korea.
Pearl Buck was active in many charity(慈善)organizations; in particular she set up an organization for the adoption of Asian-American children and took an active interest in children with low IQ.
What is the correct time order of the following events?
a. Pearl Buck took an MA at Cornell University.
b. Pearl Buck published The First Wife and Other Stories.
c. Pearl Buck’s first novel, East Wind; West Wind appeared.
d. Pearl Buck published the biographies of her mother and father.
| A．a,b,c,d | B．a,d,c,b |
| C．a,c,b,d | D．a,d,b,c |
We can learn from the passage that_______.
| A．Pearl Buck attended a college in China |
| B．The Good Earth was well-received by American readers |
| C．Pearl Buck stayed in China in 1926 |
| D．Pearl Buck stopped writing in 1938 |
According to the passage, Pearl Buck was interested in______.
| A．American history | B．politics in India and Korea |
| C．writing novels about war | D．doing charity work |
In which part of a magazine would you probably read the passage?
| A．People | B．Politics | C．Travel | D．Business |
Free Fun Guides
What is new about this year’s Museum Day?
| A．People will get free tickets online. |
| B．Two museums offer free admission. |
| C．People can visit a museum for free. |
| D．People can visit museums online. |
How is National Public Lands Day different from the other three events?
| A．It comes on Sept. 25. |
| B．Visitors may choose what to visit. |
| C．Admission is free for people. |
| D．Visitors may do some volunteer work. |
How can kids get a free book?
| A．By reading eighty books at any Barnes & Noble. |
| B．By downloading and printing out a passport. |
| C．By signing up a summer reading program and choosing one of the books they have read. |
| D．By signing up for a winter reading program. |
Which of the following shows the similarity between Museum Day and Free Night of Theater?
| A．They take place once a year. |
| B．They last for the same length of time. |
| C．The tickets can be used in any U.S. city. |
| D．The same number of free tickets is given away. |
I have always known my kids use digital communications equipment a lot. But my cellphone bill last month really grabbed my attention. My son had come up to nearly 2,000 incoming text messages, and had sent nearly as many. Of course, he was out of school for the summer and communicating more with friends from a distance. Nevertheless, he found time to keep a summer job and complete a college course in between all that typing with thumb.
I was even more surprised to learn that my son is normal. "Teenagers with cellphones each send and receive 2,272 text messages a month on average, " Nielsen Mobile said.
Some experts regret that all that keyboard jabber(键盘闲聊) is making our kids stupid, unable to read non-verbal cues such as facial expressions, gestures, posture and other silent signals of mood and attitude. Unlike phones, text messaging doesn't even allow transmission of tone of voice or pauses, says Mark Bauerlein, author called The Dumbest Generation: How the Digital Age Stupefies Young Americans and Jeopardizes Our Future.
Beyond that, though, I'm not sure I see as much harm as critics of this trend. I' ve posted before on how I initially tried to control my kids' texting. But over time, I have seen my son suffer no apparent ill effects, and he gains a big benefit, continuing contact with others.
I don't think texting make kids stupid. It may make them annoying, when they try to text and talk to you at the same time. And it may make them distracted, when buzzing text message interrupt efforts to noodle out a math problem or finish reading for school.
But I don't see texting harming teens' ability to communicate. My son is as accustomed to nonverbal cues as any older members of our family. I have found him more engaged and easier to communicate with from a great distance. because he is constantly available by means of text message and responds with faithfulness and speed.What is Mark Bauerlein ' s attitude to texting?
| A．It is convenient for teens to communicate with others. |
| B．It is likely to cause trouble in understanding each other. |
| C．It is convenient for teens to text and call at the same time. |
| D．It will cause damage to the development of teens' intelligence. |
What would be the best title for this passage?
| A．For Teens, Texting Instead of Talking |
| B．For Parents, Caring Much for Their Kids |
| C．Disadvantages of Texting |
| D．The Effect of Communication |
What does the underlined word "distracted" in the fifth paragraph mean?
| A．Confused. | B．Absent-minded. |
| C．Comfortable. | D．Bad-tempered. |
Picture a typical MBA lecture theatre twenty years ago. In it the majority of students will have conformed to the standard model of the time: male, middle class and Western. Walk into a class today, however, and you’ll get a completely different impression. For a start, you will now see plenty more women—the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, for example, boasts that 40% of its new enrolment is female. You will also see a wide range of ethnic groups and nationals of practically every country.
It might be tempting, therefore, to think that the old barriers have been broken down and equal opportunity achieved. But, increasingly, this apparent diversity is becoming a mask for a new type of conformity. Behind the differences in sex, skin tones and mother tongues, there are common attitudes, expectations and ambitions which risk creating a set of clones among the business leaders of the future.
Diversity, it seems, has not helped to address fundamental weaknesses in business leadership. So what can be done to create more effective managers of the commercial world? According to Valerie Gauthier, associate dean at HEC Paris, the key lies in the process by which MBA programmes recruit their students. At the moment candidates are selected on a fairly narrow set of criteria such as prior academic and career performance, and analytical and problem solving abilities. This is then coupled to a school’s picture of what a diverse class should look like, with the result that passport, ethnic origin and sex can all become influencing factors. But schools rarely dig down to find out what really makes an applicant succeed, to create a class which also contains diversity of attitude and approach—arguably the only diversity that, in a business context, really matters.
Professor Gauthier believes schools should not just be selecting candidates from traditional sectors such as banking, consultancy and industry. They should also be seeking individuals who have backgrounds in areas such as political science, the creative arts, history or philosophy, which will allow them to put business decisions into a wider context.
Indeed, there does seem to be a demand for the more rounded leaders such diversity might create. A study by Mannaz, a leadership development company, suggests that, while the bully-boy chief executive of old may not have been eradicated completely, there is a definite shift in emphasis towards less tough styles of management—at least in America and Europe. Perhaps most significant, according to Mannaz, is the increasing interest large companies have in more collaborative management models, such as those prevalent in Scandinavia, which seek to integrate the hard and soft aspects of leadership and encourage delegated responsibility and accountability.What characterizes the business school student population of today?
| A．Greater diversity. |
| B．Intellectual maturity. |
| C．Exceptional diligence. |
| D．Higher ambition. |
What is the author’s concern about current business school education?
| A．It will arouse students’ unrealistic expectations. |
| B．It will produce business leaders of a uniform style. |
| C．It focuses on theory rather than on practical skills. |
| D．It stresses competition rather than cooperation. |
What aspect of diversity does Valerie Gauthier think is most important?
| A．Age and educational background. |
| B．Attitude and approach to business. |
| C．Social and professional experience. |
| D．Ethnic origin and gender. |
What does Mannaz say about the current management style?
| A．It is eradicating the tough aspects of management. |
| B．It encourages male and female executives to work side by side. |
| C．It adopts the bully-boy chief executive model. |
| D．It is shifting towards more collaborative models. |
The main aim of Environment Awareness Week is to _____.
| A．educate the public on protecting the environment |
| B．discuss global warming and other environmental problems |
| C．explain ways for producing freshwater to save the environment |
| D．learn about renewable energy sources that protect the environment |
The organizer of the event is _____.
| A．Global Gaia Network |
| B．Clean Energy Agency |
| C．Green Earth Foundation |
| D．International Environment Fund |
Which of the following statements is NOT true of the event? ________
| A．It will last a week and the halls will be open 11 hours a day. |
| B．You can send an email to Mrs. Daisy Soh for more information. |
| C．Each hall charges the same amount of money as the other. |
| D．Lectures in Hall 1 will be given by university students. |
Are we getting more stupid? According to Gerald Crabtree, a scientist at Stanford University in the US, we are.
You may not want to hear this, but Crabtree believes that human intelligence reached its peak more than 2,000 years ago and ever since then has been going downhill. “If an average Greek from 1,000 BC were transported to modern times, he or she would be one of the brightest among us,” Crabtree told The Guardian.
At the heart of Crabtree’s thinking is a simple idea. In the past, intelligence was critical for survival when our ancestors had to avoid dangerous animals and hunt for food. The difference of being smart or stupid is often life or death. However, after the spread of agriculture, when our ancestors began to live in dense farming communities, the need to keep their intelligence in peak condition gradually reduced.
This is not hard to understand. Most of the time, pressure is what keeps us going – you need the pressure from your teachers to finish your homework; the pressure of looking pretty prompts you to lose weight when summer comes. And the same is also true of our intelligence – if we think less, we become less smart.
These mutations(变异) are harmful to our intelligence and they were all developed in the past 3,000 years. The other evidence that Crabtree holds is in our genes. He found that among the 2,000 to 5,000 genes that we have that determine human intelligence, there are two or more mutations in each of us.
However, Crabtree’s theory has been criticized by some who say that early humans may have better hunting and surviving abilities, but people today have developed a more diverse intelligence. For example, spearing a tiger doesn’t necessarily require more brainpower than playing chess or writing a poem. Moreover, the power of modern education means a lot more people have the opportunity to learn nowadays.
“You wouldn’t get Stephen Hawking 2,000 years ago. He just wouldn’t exist,” Thomas Hills of the University of Warwick, UK, told Live Science. “But now we have people of his intellectual capacity doing things and making insights that we would never have achieved in our environment of evolutionary adaptation.”What is Crabtree’s recent finding according to the article?
| A．The Greeks from 1,000 BC could have been the smartest in human history. |
| B．Our ancient ancestors had no better surviving abilities than we do nowadays. |
| C．Humans have been getting steadily more intelligent since the invention of farming. |
| D．Mutations in genes that decide human intelligence have affected the development of intelligence. |
According to Crabtree, ancient humans _______.
| A．had much more genes that determine human intelligence |
| B．were forced to be smart due to natural selection pressures |
| C．relied more on group intelligence than individual intelligence |
| D．developed a diverse intelligence to adapt to the harsh realities |
Some argue that Crabtree’s theory is false because they think _______.
| A．people today are under much more pressure than early humans |
| B．it’s ridiculous to compare a hunter’s and a poet’s intelligence |
| C．modern education is far more advanced than ancient education |
| D．human intelligence nowadays is different from that of the distant past |
What is Thomas Hills’ attitude toward Crabtree’s theory?
| A．Supportive | B．Unfavorable |
| C．Worried | D．Confused. |
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