听力原文:W: Hello, is that Steve? I'm stuck in a traffic jam. I'm afraid I can't make it before seven o'clock.
M: Never mind. I'll be here waiting for you.
Q: What do we learn from the conversation?
(16)
A. The man will meet the woman tomorrow.
B. The man and the woman have an appointment at 7 o'clock.
C. The woman can't finish making the jam before 7 o'clock.
D. The woman won't be able to see the man this evening.
查看答案
Which of the following statements, if true, could most probably cure Karen of the illness?
A. Her children were all right.
B. She had a job having little to do with numbers.
C. She went to a psychoanalyst.
D. She gave up smoking and drinking coffee.
听力原文: In America today, books with suggestions on how to do things are very popular. There are about four to five thousand books with titles that begin with the words "How To". One book may tell you how to earn more money, another may tell you how to save or spend it, and another may explain how to give your money away.
Some "How To" books tell you how to find a job and how to succeed at it. If you fail, however, you can get a book called How to Turn Failure into Success. If you would like to become very rich, you can buy the book How to Make a Million. If you never make any money at all, you may need a book called How to Live on Nothing.
One of the most popular types of books is one that helps people with their private problems. If you are unhappy with your life, you can read How o Love Every Minute of Your Life. If you are tired of books on happiness, you may prefer a book called How to Get Yourself in Trouble. There is even a book about how to take your own life.
Why are "How To" books in great demand in the United States?
A. Because the rich do not always satisfy.
Because many people read books only for pleasure.
C. Because these books help Americans out of trouble.
D. Because the books meet the needs of different readers.
2 The question is. what is science fiction? And the answer must be, unfortunately, that there have been few attempts to consider this question at any length or with much seriousness; it may well be that science fiction will resist any comprehensive definition of its characteristics. To say this, however, does not mean that there are no ways of defining it nor that various facets of its totality cannot be clarified. To begin, the following definition should be helpful: science fiction is a literary sub-genre which postulates a change (for human beings) from conditions as we know them and follows the implications of these changes to conclusion. Although this definition will necessarily be modified and expanded, and probably changed, in the course of this exploration, it covers much of the basic groundwork and provides a point of departure.
3 This first point—that science fiction is a literary sub-genre—is a very important one, but one which is often overlooked or ignored in most discussions of science fiction. Specifically, science fiction is either a short story or a novel. There are only a few dramas which could be called science fiction, with Karel Capek's RUR (Rossum's Universal Robots) being the only one that is well known; the body of poetry that might be labeled science fiction is only slightly larger. To say that science fiction is a sub-genre of prose fiction 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.
4 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, a setting, characters, language, and theme. And like any prose, the themes of science fiction are concerned with interpreting man's nature and experience in relation to the world 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 of a particular combination of 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.
Science fiction is called a literary sub-genre because ______.
A. it is not important enough to be a literary genre
B. it cannot be made into a dramatic presentation
C. it has its limits
D. it shares characteristics with other types of prose fiction
2 The study was conducted via student surveys, and the data were collected from the same group of adolescents in three waves from 1995 to 2002. The study, which surveyed an estimate of 20,000 students, was sponsored by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development and other federal agencies. The study's authors, Jay Greene and Greg Forster, concluded that students in suburban high schools consume alcohol, smoke cigarettes and partake in as much illegal drug use as students in urban schools, and sometimes even more than their city counterparts. Students in suburban schools also had about the same levels of sexual behavior. as their urban counterparts. The authors suggest that folks who have been fleeing the city hoping to find a "wholesome" life may just come up wanting.
3 Greene, a senior fellow at the institute, told me that he was surprised that the study showed there isn't too much of a difference between urban and suburban high schoolers.
4 Surprised? That's because we continue to idealize the more affluent suburbs and demonize the poorer sections of the city. For decades, "city" has been a euphemism for black and poor and decadent, and "suburbs" synonymous with white and wealthy and puritanical. But, of course, neither has ever been totally true. Yet, we're often still surprised when a group of well-to-do kids do something stupid and not so surprised when poor kids do.
5 Henry Binford, an associate professor of history at Northwestern University, said there's a long history of idealizing suburban life that goes back to the 19th century. "Part of the appeal for people moving out was for them to get away from the dirt and crime, poor services and the hurly-burly of the downtown," he said. "Many imagined that the suburbs would be havens. They thought suburban life was healthier and more moral than city living. But the suburbs were never pure or safe or without difficulty as people thought they would be." It's fantasy duking it out with reality.
6 Why the similarities despite the differences in ZIP codes and, often, opportunities? For starters—and this is a no-brainer—adolescents will be adolescents no matter where they live. They have to contend with similar peer pressures regarding sex, drugs and alcohol. Other pervasive influences, including various media messages, transcend suburban-urban boundaries.
7 Young people tend to have a high propensity for doing stupid things and getting themselves into sticky situations. How ZIP codes play a role is that some wealthier kids' parents can afford to get them unstuck far better than others. Most of us recognize that there is no hermetically sealed place to rear youngsters. But some people still think so, says Greene, a graduate of New Trier High School on the North Shore. "A lot of the flight to the suburbs is still related to the perception that certain social ills are so concentrated in the city," Greene said. That perception is reinforced by television shows and movies about city life; by the news. It's so ingrained that we tend not to question it. We take it for granted.
8 One of the things that attracted me to this study was not so much the similarities—the "findings" that kids will be kids wherever they live—
A. compare the behavior. of urban and suburban kids in terms of some social problems
B. highlight the gravity of some social problems involving kids
C. show the author's well-informedness
D. draw attention to the seriousness of problems with suburban kids