【推荐1】Zebra crossings (斑马线) — the alternating dark and light stripes on the road surface — are meant to remind drivers that pedestrians may be trying to get across. Unfortunately, they are not very effective. A 1998 study done by the Department of Traffic Planning and Engineering at Sweden’s Lund University showed that three out of four drivers kept the same speed or even speeded up as they were approaching a crossing. Even worse? Only 5% stopped even when they saw someone trying to get across.

Now a mother-daughter team in Ahmedabad, India has come up with a clever way to get drivers to pay more attention — a 3D zebra crossing with an optical illusion (视错觉). Artists Saumya Pandya Thakkar and Shakuntala Pandya were asked to paint the crosswalks by IL&FS, an Indian company that manages the highways in Ahmedabad. The corporation was looking for a creative solution to help the city’s residents to cross the busy accident-prone (易出事故的) roads safely. Thakkar and Pandya, who had previously seen images of 3D zebra crossings that gave drivers the illusion of logs of wood on the streets in Taizhou， China, decided to test if a similar way would work in India.

Sure enough, in the six months when the 3D crosswalks have been painted across four of the city’s most dangerous highways, there have been no accidents reported! The artists say that while it may appear that the zebra crossing could cause the drivers to brake suddenly and endanger the vehicles behind, such is not the case. Because of the way the human eye works, the illusion is only visible from a distance. As they get closer, the painting looks just like any other ordinary zebra crossing. The creators hope that their smart design will become increasingly common throughout India and perhaps even the world. So let’s look forward to it.

1. What can we learn from the first paragraph?

A．Most drivers will slow down at zebra crossings.

B．Common zebra crossings don’t function well.

C．Drivers have to stop when approaching zebra crossings.

D．About 95% of the drivers choose to speed up when approaching zebra crossings.

2. Why do drivers seeing the 3D zebra crossings slow down according to Para. 2?

A．Because the drivers consider the safety of pedestrians.

B．Because the drivers mistake them for logs of wood on the streets.

C．Because the drivers are afraid of being fined for breaking the traffic rules.

D．Because the drivers don’t want to brake suddenly and endanger the vehicles behind.

3. The last paragraph is mainly about ________.

A．the theory of the 3D zebra crossings

B．the popularity of the 3D zebra crossings

C．the shortcoming of the 3D zebra crossings

D．the positive effect of the 3D zebra crossings

4. What is the author’s attitude towards the 3D zebra crossings?

A．Cautious.	B．Doubtful.
C．Approving.	D．Disapproving.

【推荐1】When the residents of Buenos Aires want to change the pesos they do not trust into the dollars they do, they go to an office that acts as a front for thriving illegal exchange market.

As the couriers carry their bundles of pesos around Buenos Aires, they pass grand buildings like the Teatro Colon, an opera house that opened in 1908, and the Retiro railway station, completed in 1915. In the 43 years leading up to 1914, GDP had grown at an annual rate of 6%, the fastest recorded in the world. In 1914 half of Buenos Aires’s population was foreign-born. Its income per head was 92% of the average of 16 rich economies.

It never got better than this. Its income per head is now 43% of those same 16 rich economies; it trails Chile and Uruguay in its own backyard.

The country’s dramatic decline has long puzzled economists. “If a guy has been hit 700,000 shots it’s hard to work out which one of them killed him,” says Rafael di Tella. But three deep-lying explanations help to throw light on the country’s decline. Firstly, Argentina may have been rich 100 years ago but it was not modern. The second theory stresses the role of trade policy. Thirdly, when it needed to change, Argentina lacked the institutions to create successful policies.

Argentina was rich in 1914 because of commodities; its industrial base was only weakly developed. The landowners who made Argentina rich were not so bothered about educating it: cheap labor was what counted.

Without a good education system, Argentina struggled to create competitive industries. It had benefited from technology in its Belle Epoque period, but Argentina mainly consumed technology from abroad rather than inventing its own.

Argentina had become rich by making a triple bet on agriculture, open market and Britain, its biggest trading partner. If that bet turned sour, it would require a severe adjustment. The First World War delivered the initial blow to trade. Next came the Depression, which crushed the open trading system on which Argentina depended. Dependence on Britain, another country in decline, backfired( 失 败 ) as Argentina’s favored export market signed preferential deals with Commonwealth countries.

After the Second World War, when the rich world began its slow return to free trade with the negotiation of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade in 1947, Argentina had become a more closed economy. An institution to control foreign trade was created in 1946; the share of trade as a percentage of GDP continued to fall. High food prices meant big profits for farmers but empty stomachs for ordinary Argentines. Open borders increased farmers’ taking but sharpened competition from abroad for domestic industry. Heavy export taxes on crops allow the state to top up its decreasing foreign-exchange reserves; limits on wheat exports create surpluses(过剩) that drive down local prices. But they also dissuade farmers from planting more land, enabling other countries to steal market shares.

1. Grand buildings are mentioned in the second paragraph to show ________.

A．Argentines were talented	B．Argentina was once a rich country
C．Argentines miss the past of Argentina	D．Argentina has a suitable infrastructure

2. Which of the following is TRUE according to the passage?

A．Argentina is richer than Uruguay.

B．Argentina was once attractive to immigrants.

C．Britain is playing a leading role in the development of Argentina.

D．Argentina is not serious about its agriculture and open markets.

3. The underlined sentence in the fourth paragraph implies that ________.

A．the decline of Argentina welcomes an analysis from authorities

B．it is hard to explain the reasons for Argentina’s decline

C．it takes time to explain the reasons for Argentina’s decline

D．Argentina has declined for many reasons

4. What is the root of the problem of Argentina’s trade policy?

A．Argentina depends heavily on foreign technology.

B．Many world events caused Argentina to break down.

C．Argentina failed in adjusting itself appropriately.

D．The conflicts between classes needed to be solved.

【推荐2】阅读下面短文，按照要求用英语回答问题。

Mothers and fathers all over the world teach their children manners. Other children may have manners that are not like yours. There are all kinds of manners.

Many years ago, children who had good manners were seen and not heard. They kept quite quiet if grown-ups were talking. Today, well-mannered children have more freedom.

Sometimes good manners in one place are bad manners in other places.

Suppose you are a visitor in the land of Mongolia. Some friends ask you to eat with them. What kind of manners do they want you to have? They want you to give a loud “burp” after you finish eating. Burping would show that you liked your food.

In some countries, if you give a loud burp, you are told to say “Excuse me, please.” In many places, people like to eat together But in some parts of Polynesia, it is bad manners to be seen eating at all. People show good manners by turning their backs on others while they eat.

What are manners like in an East African town? The people try not to see you. They are being polite. You may see a friend. He may not see you at all. If you are polite, you will sit down beside him. You will wait until he finishes what he is doing. Then he will talk to you.

Suppose you visit a friend in Arabia. You should walk behind the other tents until you come to his tent. If you pass in front of the other tents, you’ll be asked into each one. The people will ask you to eat with them. And it is bad manners if you say no.

Manners are different all over the world. But it is good to know that all manners begin in the same way. People needed ways to show that they wanted to be friends.

1. What is the best title of the passage? (no more than 10 words)
2. How do you understand the underlined sentence in Paragraph 2? (no more than 10 words)
3. In Mongolia, what action is thought to be a good manner according to the passage? (no more than 6 words)
4. What are well-mannered people expected to act in some parts of Polynesia during eating? (no more than 10 words)
5. Traditionally, what is a good manner during eating in China? (no more than 20 words)

【推荐1】“Confidence” is probably one of the most noticeable traits (品质) in the Americans. They show confidence in the way they talk, the way they smile, the way they dress and the way they walk. Living and competing with all these confident American students, I find it extremely important to be confident as an international student and instructor. As a student, being confident means you should never hesitate to raise your hand whenever a question or a point comes to your mind. Don't mind if it sounds simple or silly. Otherwise you will never get a chance to speak in class at all. What's worse, the professors may think you are not prepared for the discussion or you do not have your own opinion on the issue—this is the last comment any graduate would like to receive.
Being confident for me as a foreign instructor means calmly asking the student to repeat what he or she has said if I did not get it. Pretending to understand what you actually did not may just bring yourself embarrassment or even disgrace. But the time I most need to be confident is when my students come to my office and bargain about the grades I have given for their speeches. (The course I'm teaching here is Public speaking). Modesty is a trait highly valued in China, but it won't be of much help here if you want to survive and succeed in a good American graduate program.
1. To compete with American students it's very important to     .

A．be quite confident

B．be polite and friendly

C．have more discussions with them

D．understand what they think about

2. A professor will have the worst opinion of a student who     .

A．gives a silly or simple answer

B．tries to seize any chance to speak in class

C．shows no interest in the course

D．is considered to have no opinion of his own

3. The author is most likely to feel embarrassed if       .

A．he asks a student to repeat what he has said

B．the students bargain with him

C．he pretends to know what he doesn't

D．he has to give a speech

4. We learn from the second paragraph that       .

A．we should also remain modest in America

B．modesty doesn't help you much in America

C．Americans also like modest people

D．modesty can help you through an American graduate program

5. What can we infer from the passage?

A．American students are ready to accept the grades from the teacher.

B．The writer teaches in Europe for a living.

C．Students are encouraged to present simple questions.

D．One’s ignorance will give away in time.

【推荐3】Our senses aren’t just delivering a strict view of what’s going on in the world; they’re affected by what’s going on in our heads. A new study finds that hungry people see food-related words more clearly than people who’ve just eaten.

Psychologists have known for decades that what’s going on inside, our heads affects our senses. For example, poorer children think coins are larger than they are, and hungry people think pictures of food are brighter. Remi Radel of University of Nice Sophia-Antipolis, France, wanted to investigate how this happens. Does it happen right away as the brain receives signals from the eyes or a little later as the brain’s high-level thinking processes get involved?

Radel recruited 42 students with a normal body mass index. On the day of his or her test, each student was told to arrive at the lab at noon after three or four hours of not eating. Then they were told there was a delay. Some were told to come back in 10 minutes; others were given an hour to get lunch first. So half the students were hungry when they did the experiment and the other half had just eaten.

For the experiment, the participant looked at a computer screen. One by one, 80 words flashed on the screen for about 1/300th of a second each. They flashed at so small a size that the students could only consciously perceive (意识到) A quarter of the words were food-related. After each word, each person was asked how bright the word was and asked to choose which of two words they’d seen - a food-related word like cake or a neutral (中性的) word like boat. Each word appeared too briefly for the participant to really read it.

Hungry people saw the food-related words as brighter and were better at identifying food-related words. Because the word appeared too quickly.for them to be reliably seen, this means that the difference is in perception, not in thinking processes, Radel says.

“This is something great to me. Humans can really perceive what they need or what they strive for. From the experiment, I know that our brain can really be at the.disposal (处理) of our motives and needs,” Radel says.

1. “Poorer children” and ‘‘hungry people” are mentioned in Paragraph 2 to show ______.

A．they have sharper senses than others

B．they lose their senses because of poverty and hunger

C．humans’ senses are affected by what they see with their eyes

D．humans’ senses are influenced by what’s going on in their heads

2. There was a delay in Radel’s experiment because ______.

A．he needed more students to join

B．he didn’t prepare enough food for the 42 students

C．he wanted two groups of participants, hungry and non-hungry

D．he didn’t want to have the experiment at noon

3. Why did the 80 words flash so fast and at so small a size on the screen?

A．To make sure the participant had no time to think consciously

B．To ensure the participant was unable to perceive anything

C．To guarantee each word came out at the same speed and size

D．To shorten the time of the experiment

4. It can be learnt from what Radel says that _____.

A．humans’ thinking processes are independent of their senses.

B．humans can perceive what they need without deep thinking processes.

C．an experiment with hungry and non-hungry participants is not reliable.

D．42 participants are too small a number for a serious.investigation.

【推荐1】Recently, a new study suggests that staying positive through the cold season could be the best defense(抵御) against getting sick.

In an experiment that exposed（暴露）healthy volunteers to a cold of flu virus, researchers found that people with a generally sunny emotion were less likely to fall ill. The findings, published in the journal “Psychosomatic Medicine”, build on evidence that a “positive emotional style” can help defend the common cold and other illnesses.

“People with a positive emotional style may have different immune responses to the virus,” explained Dr Sheldom Cohen of Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. And when they do get a cold, they may experience their illness as less serious.

Cohen and his colleagues had found in a previous study that happier people seemed less susceptible(易受影响的) to catching a cold, but some questions remained as to whether the emotional quality itself had the effect.

For the new study, the researchers had 193 healthy adults complete standard measures of personality qualities, physical health and “emotional style”.

Those who tended to be happy, energetic and easy-going were judged as having a positive emotional style, while those who were often unhappy and tense had a negative style.

Afterwards, the researchers gave them nose drops containing either a cold virus or a particular flu virus that causes flu-like symptoms. Over the next six days the volunteers reported on any aches, pains, sneeze they had. Cohen and his colleagues found that positive emotions really have the big effect of fighting virus.

1. The results of the experiments by researchers suggest that _______.

A．people in excellent spirits are less likely to fall ill.

B．the emotional quality itself has the greatest effect of fighting virus

C．people with a positive emotional style seemed more likely to get ill

D．positive emotional people and negative people response similarly to the virus

2. Dr Sheldom Cohen made studies and reached his conclusion by _______.

A．comparing the experimental results of different groups

B．looking into the forms completed by the volunteers

C．collecting data among people with a cold

D．observing the volunteers’ symptoms

3. According to the passage, what quality should we develop to fight virus?

A．Clever.	B．Hard-working.
C．Optimistic.	D．Friendly.

4. We can conclude from the passage that _______.

A．positive life can lead to success in one’s career

B．physical health is more important than mental health

C．the happier we are, the less likely we will be to fall ill

D．the more we are together, the happier we will be

【推荐2】British anthropologists Russell Hill and Robert Barton of the University of Durham, after studying the results of one-on-one boxing, tae kwon do, Greco-Roman wrestling and freestyle wrestling matches at the Olympic Games, conclude that when two competitors are equally matched in fitness and skill, the athlete wearing red is more likely to win.

Hill and Barton report that when one competitor is much better than the other, colour has no effect on the result. However, when there is only a small difference between them, the effect of colour is enough to tip the balance. The anthropologists say that the number of times red wins is not simply by chance, but that these results are statistically significant.

Joanna Setchell, a primate (灵长目动物) researcher at the University of Cambridge, has found similar results in nature. She studies the large African monkeys known as mandrills. Mandrills have bright red noses that stand out against their white faces. Setchell’s work shows that the powerful males—the ones who are more successful with females—have a brighter red nose than other males.

As well as the studies on primates by Setchell, another study shows the effect of red among birds. In an experiment, scientists put red plastic rings on the legs of male zebra finches and this increased the birds’ success with female zebra finches. Zebra finches already have bright red beaks (鸟喙), so this study suggests that, as with Olympic athletes, an extra flash of red is significant. In fact, researchers from the University of Glasgow say that the birds’ brightly coloured beaks are an indicator of health. Jonathan Blount, a biologist, and his colleagues think they have found proof that bright red or orange beaks attract females because they mean that the males are healthier. Nothing in nature is simple, however, because in species such as the blue footed booby, a completely different colour seems to give the male birds the same advantage with females.

Meanwhile, what about those athletes who win in their events while wearing red? Do their clothes give them an unintentional advantage? Robert Barton accepts that “that is the implication” of their findings. Is it time for sports authorities to consider new regulations on sports clothing?

1. According to their research, Hill and Barton conclude that _____.

A．the colour of clothing has an effect on most sport events

B．red should be the choice of colour for clothing in sports

C．red plays a role when competitors are equally capable

D．athletes perform better when surrounded by bright red

2. The underlined word “tip” in Paragraph 2 is closest in meaning to _____.

A．achieve

B．seek

C．keep

D．change

3. The example of the blue footed booby proves that _____.

A．male birds use different body parts to draw attention

B．red is not the only colour to attract female birds

C．blue gives female birds the same advantage

D．blue can indicate how healthy a bird is

4. What is the best title for the passage?

A．What Colour Implies More Power?	B．A Tip on Clothing.
C．Need to Change the Rules in Sports?	D．Red Is for Winners.

【推荐3】As more and more people speak the global language of English, Chinese, Spanish, and Arabic, other languages are rapidly disappearing. In fact, half of the 6,000-7,000 languages spoken around the world today will be likely to die out by the next century, according the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).

In an effort to prevent language loss, scholars from a number of organizations — UNESCO and National Geographic among them — have for many years been documenting dying languages and the cultures they reflect.

Mark Turin, a scientist at the Macmillan Center, Yale University, who specializes in the languages and oral traditions of the Himalayas, is following in that tradition. His recently published book, A Grammar of Thangmi and Their Culture, grows out of his experience living, working, and raising a family in a village in Nepal.

Documenting the Thangmi language and culture is just a starting point for Turin, who seeks to include other languages and oral traditions across the Himalayan reaches of India, Nepal, Bhutan, and China. But he is not content to simply record these voices before they disappear without record.

At the University of Cambridge Turin discovered a wealth of important materials —including photographs, films, tape recordings, and field notes — which had remained unstudied and were badly in need of care and protection. Now, through the two organizations that he has founded — the Digital Himalaya Project and the World Oral Literature Project — Turin has started a campaign to make such documents, found in libraries and stores around the world, available not just to schools but to the younger generations of communities from whom the materials were originally collected. Thanks to digital technology and the widely available Internet, Turin notes, the endangered languages can be saved and reconnected with speech communities.

1. Many scholars are making efforts to ________.

A．promote global languages	B．rescue disappearing languages
C．search for languages communities	D．set up language research organizations

2. What does “that tradition” in Paragraph 3 refer to ________.

A．having detailed records of the languages	B．writing books on language users
C．telling stories about language speakers	D．living with the native speakers

3. What is Turin’s book based on?

A．The cultural studies in India.	B．The documents available at Yale.
C．His language research in Bhutan.	D．His personal experience in Nepal.

4. Which of the following best describes Turin’s work?

A．Write, sell and donate.	B．Record, repair and reward.
C．Collect, protect and reconnect.	D．Design, experiment and report.