学英语 找长喜
星期4 Thursday
A fall into a pit, a gain in your wit.吃一堑，长一智。 学习内容 Text A Text B Text C Text D 今日练习 Text A The dog, called Prince, was an intelligent animal and a slave to Williams. From morning till night, when Williams was at home, Prince never left his sight, practically ignoring all other members of the family. The dog had a number of clearly defined duties, for which Williams had patiently trained him and, like the good pupil he was, Prince lived for the chance to demonstrate his abilities. When Williams wanted to put on his boots, he would murmur “Boots” and within seconds the dog would drop them at his feet. At nine every morning Prince ran off to the general store in the village, returning shortly with not only Williams’ daily paper but a half-ounce packet of Williams’ favorite tobacco, John Rhine’s Mixed. A gun-dog by breed, Prince possessed a large soft mouth specially evolved for the safe carrying of hunted creatures, so that the paper and the tobacco came to no harm, never even showing a tooth mark.
Williams was a railway man, an engine driver, and he wore a blue uniform which smelled of oil and oil fuel. He had to work at odd times — “days”, “late days” or “nights”. Over the years Prince got to know these periods of work and rest, knew when his master would leave the house and return, and the dog did not waste his knowledge. If Williams overslept, as he often did, Prince barked at the bedroom door until he woke, much to the annoyance of the family. On his return, Williams’ slippers were brought to him, the paper and tobacco if previously delivered.
A curious thing happened to Williams during the snow and ice of last winter. One evening he slipped and fell on the icy pavement somewhere between the village and his home. He was so badly shaken that he stayed in bed for three days, and not until he got up and dressed again, did he discover that he had lost his wallet containing over fifty pounds. The house was turned upside down in the search, but the wallet was not found. However, two days later — that was five days after the fall — Prince dropped the wallet into Williams’ hand. Very muddy, stained and wet through, the little case still contained fifty-three pounds, Williams’ driving license and a few other papers. Where the dog had found it no one could tell, but found it he had and recognized it probably by the faint oil smell on the worn leather. 1. How did Prince perform his duties? [A] He was delighted to show them off.
[B] He did his best but was not often successful.
[C] He did them quickly, so as not to be punished by his master. [D] He had few opportunities to do them. 2. According to the passage, gun-dogs [A] were the fastest runners of all dogs.
题 材 日常生活 科技应用 体育人物 文学评论 词 数 410 379 538 455 建议时间 5.5分钟 5分钟 7.5分钟 7分钟 错误统计 /6 /4 /5 /5 做题备忘 www.beiwen.com 1
学英语 找长喜
[B] had their teeth removed when they were young. [C] could carry birds, etc, without hurting them. [D] bred well, producing many young dogs. 3. We learn from the passage that
[A] Williams did not get enough sleep. [B] Williams had unfixed working times.
[C] the dog grew accustomed to traveling by train. [D] the dog was confused about the time of day. 4. It upset Williams’ family when
[A] Williams had to go to work at night.
[B] the dog made too much noise in the house. [C] Williams made them all get up early.
[D] the dog would not let them see the newspaper.
5. Williams did not realize his loss for several days because [A] he trusted the dog to find the wallet. [B] he was unconscious all that time.
[C] he had thought the wallet was left in the office. [D] he had no occasion to feel in his pockets.
6. The dog thought it was Williams’s wallet because [A] he found it where Williams had fallen. [B] he had seen it before and recognized it.
[C] he found a wallet and by chance it was Williams’s. [D] he was familiar with the scent of it.
Text B
What will people use the Internet for? Shopping and banking will be big growth areas. Henley predicts that, from under 1% of all purchases today, it will account for 6.4% of purchases within four years, amounting to 42 billion. Sales have already started with dry goods such as books and CDs and, as people learn to trust it, will move on to regular purchases such as food. Iceland, the supermarket chain, began computer shopping trials two weeks ago and has already signed up at least 15,000 customers, ranging from busy executives to the housebound. When it links up with digital television, Iceland expects to double that immediately.
Yet internet-linked televisions and phones may be only the start. One potential breakthrough is Bluetooth, named after a 10th-century Danish king famed for his rotten front tooth and uniting warring factions in Denmark and Norway.
The modern Bluetooth allows an unlikely array of machines to talk to each other, so that a phone tucked away in a briefcase can remember to send out a signal that turns on a video machine 50 miles away, switches on the heating or starts the cooker. Cars, offices and kitchens will all speak to each other. In Finland, the idea of phones communicating with computerized tills so that you press a button and pay for your supermarket goods or drink from a vending machine is being tested. Said one enthusiast: “Your phone will be your remote control for life.”
As with all revolutions, there are reservations. Health concerns about mobile phones are unresolved, with microwave radiation linked to increased tiredness and headaches in one recent study in Sweden.
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学英语 找长喜
Some argue that more sophisticated entertainment at home will deepen antisocial “cocooning” trends, that internet grocery deliveries will kill off the last corner shops, and that a “couch potato” generation of children will grow even more over-fat.
The most significant impact, however, will be in the way we work. Adrian Hansford, director of millennial projects at BT, predicts it will encourage more people to work at home. “People have talked about telecommuting for years, but at last it makes economic sense. Many officers will turn into touchdown centers, where people will only occasionally call in. This is already the case for one in five at BT,” he said.
7. What’s NOT true about the Internet purchases? [A] Many people still don’t trust it very much now. [B] There will be a great growth in the sales.
[C] It will become a major form of purchase within four years. [D] A wider variety of goods will be purchased via the Internet.
8. Some people are reserved about Bluetooth because they believe that [A] mobile phones are still harmful to one’s health. [B] Bluetooth will violate people’s privacy. [C] they might be controlled by someone else. [D] it will replace the remote control of people. 9. With the development of phone communicating, [A] it will be helpful to cure headaches and tiredness. [B] goods would be delivered from corner shops. [C] people will tend to stay at home for a longer time.
[D] people will find it more difficult to get things they want. 10. Which of the following is NOT caused by Bluetooth? [A] People won’t have to go to the office every day. [B] People will no longer have to work.
[C] People will become too fat for lack of exercise. [D] People will become separate from others.
Text C
His palms were sweating. He needed a towel to dry his grip. A glass of ice water quenched his thirst, but hardly cooled his intensity. It was as hot as the competition he faced today at the National Junior Olympics. The pole was set as 17 feet. That was three inches higher than his personal best. Michael Stone confronted the most challenging day of his pole-vaulting career.
As long as Michael could remember, he had always dreamed of flying. Michael’s mother read him numerous stories about flying when he was growing up. Michael had this one recurring dream. He would be running down a country road. He could feel the rocks and chunks of dirt at his feet. As he raced down the golden-lines wheat fields, he always out-ran the locomotives passing by. It was at the exact moment he took a deep breath that he lifted off the ground. He would soar like an eagle.
From the age of 14, Michael began a very careful and regimented weightlifting program. The program was carefully monitored by his father. All of Michael’s vaults today seemed to be the reward for his hard work. But he wasn’t surprised or thrilled about clearing the bar at 17 feet, which made him one of the final two competitors.
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When he cleared the bar at 17 feet 2 inches and 17 feet 4 inches, again he showed no emotion. Now the bar was set at nine inches higher than his personal best. As he lay on his back and heard the crowd moan, he knew the other vaulter had missed his final jump. It was time for his final jump. Since the other vaulter had fewer misses, Michael needed to clear this vault to win. A miss would get him second place. Nothing to be ashamed of, but Michael would not allow himself the thought of not winning first place.
He rolled over and did his ritual of three finger-tipped push-ups(俯卧撑) along with three Marine-style push-ups. He found his pole, stood and stepped on the runway that led to the most challenging events of his 17-year-old life.
As he began sprinting down the runway, something felt wonderfully different, yet familiar. The surface below him felt like the country road he used to dream about. The rocks and chunks of dirt, the visions of the golden wheat fields seemed to fill his thoughts. When he took a deep breath, it happened. Michael began to fly, just like in his childhood dreams. Only this time he knew he wasn’t dreaming.
It was either the eruption of the people in the stands or the thump of his landing that brought Michael back to earth. He could imagine the smile on his parents’faces. But what he didn’t know was that his father was hugging his mother, crying. He was crying the greatest tears of all: tears of pride.
With all the media attention, endorsement possibilities and swarming herds of heartfelt congratulation, Michael’s life would never be the same. It wasn’t just because he won the National Junior Olympics and set a new world record. And it wasn’t because he had just increased his personal best by 9 inches. It was simply because Michael Stone is blind. 11. What’s Michael’s personal best before the National Junior Olympics? [A] 17 feet 3 inches. [B] 16 feet 7 inches. [C] 17 feet 4 inches. [D] 16 feet 9 inches.
12. Michael chose pole-vaulting as his career partly due to
[A] his recurring dream of eagle. [B] his mother’s affect. [C] his ability to out-ran locomotive. [D] his father’s monitoring. 13. According to the passage, we can know that Michael Stone [A] likes daydreaming. [B] runs very fast. [C] is indifferent to the result. [D] is cool-headed. 14. Which of the following statements is NOT true?
[A] Only Michael and the other vaulter cleared the bar at 17 feet.
[B] Michael’s rival cleared the bar at 17 feet 2 inches and 17 feet 4 inches. [C] Before his final jump, Michael got fallen down and lay on his back. [D] When running down the runway, Michael felt as if he were dreaming. 15. The best title for this passage is
[A] A Dream of Flying [B] A New World Record [C] A Dream of a Blind Boy [D] A Blind Vaulter
Text D
“I want to criticize the social system, and to show it at work, at its most intense.” Virginia Woolf’s provocative statement about her intentions in writing Mrs. Dalloway has regularly been ignored by the critics, since it highlights an aspect of her literary interests very different from the
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traditional picture of the “poetic” novelist concerned with examining states of daydream and vision and with following the intricate pathways of individual consciousness. But Virginia Woolf was a realistic as well as a poetic novelist, a satirist and social critic as well as a visionary: literary critics’ inattentive dismissal of Woolf’s social vision will not withstand scrutiny.
In her novels, Woolf is deeply engaged by the questions of how individuals are shaped (or corrupted) by their social environments, how historical forces impact on people’s lives, how class, wealth, and gender help to determine people’s fates. Most of her novels are rooted in a realistically rendered social setting and in a precise historical time.
Woolf’s focus on society has not been generally recognized because of her intense disgust at propaganda in art. The pictures of reformers in her novels are usually satiric or sharply critical. Even when Woolf is fundamentally sympathetic to their causes, she portrays people anxious to reform their society and possessed of a message or program as arrogant or dishonest, unaware of how their political ideas serve their own psychological needs. (Her A Writer’s Diary notes: “the only honest people are the artists,” whereas “these social reformers and philanthropists… harbor… discreditable desires under the disguise of loving their kind…”) Woolf hated what she called “preaching” in fiction, too, and criticized novelist D.H. Lawrence (among others) for working by this method.
Woolf’s own social criticism is expressed in the language of observation rather than in direct commentary, since for her, fiction is a contemplative, not an active art. She describes phenomena and provides materials for a judgment about society and social issues; it is the reader’s work to put the observations together and understand the coherent point of view behind them. As a moralist, Woolf works by indirection, subtly undermining officially accepted mores, mocking, suggesting, calling into question, rather than asserting, advocating, bearing witness: hers is the satirist’s art.
Woolf’s literary models were acute social observers like Chekhov and Chaucer. As she put it in The Common Reader, “It is safe to say that not a single law has been framed or one stone set upon another because of anything Chaucer said or wrote; and yet, as we read him, we are absorbing morality at every pore.” Like Chaucer, Woolf chose to understand as well as to judge, to know her society root and branch — a decision crucial in order to produce art rather than argumentative.
16. What’s the author’s attitude towards the literary critics mentioned in Para. 1? [A] scornful. [B] joking.
[C] indifferent. [D] disappointed.
17. Woolf realistically described the social setting in her novels because [A] literary critics considered her novels to be the most realistic. [B] she was interested in society’s effect on people. [C] she needed to support the arguments she advanced. [D] literary critics would charge her for her inexactness. 18. According to Woolf, the causes of reformers were [A] disgusting.
[B] satiric or sharply critical. [C] worthy of sympathy [D] arrogant and dishonest.
19. Which of the following is TRUE according to the passage?
[A] Woolf criticized D.H. Lawrence for the realistic settings in his novels.
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