【推荐1】The guy who tried to edit English

The English vocabulary is not only huge, but also full of words that mean practically(几乎) the same thing- Get, obtain, acquire. Shine, gleam, glow, sparkle.     1    

That was the thinking of a British writer named C. K. Ogden, who in the 1930s proposed (提议) a new form of English with a vocabulary of just 850 words. He called the project Basic English     2    

Ogden arrived at his 850-word list through experimentation, rephrasing texts over and over until he was satisfied. The words he finally included were not necessarily the shortest or most concrete.     3     Because any verbal idea could be expressed with a small number of “operators”---words like come, go, get, take, have, make, be, and do. Ogden argued that most verbs were unnecessary. In Basic English, “eat” is “have a meal” and “forget” is “go from memory”.

Winston Churchill was a fan of the concept as a way to get foreigners to speak English, and he encouraged the BBC to use it.     4     Roosevelt, who expressed mild interest, joked that Churchill's famous speech about offering his “blood, toil, tears, and sweat” to his country wouldn't have been so exciting if he “had been able to offer the British people only blood, work, eye water, and face water, which I understand is the best that Basic English can do with five famous words.”

    5     Churchill didn't use it either. When seeking to express ourselves, we don't necessarily need fewer words; we need the right words. So it's to our benefit to have a large supply on hand.

A．Do we really need them all?

B．How many words are there in English?

C．Ogden himself didn't actually use Basic English.

D．Plenty of seemingly basic words did not make the list at all.

E．He also tried to persuade President Franklin Roosevelt to promote it.

F．He believed it would make the language more efficient and easier to learn.

G．Despite attention from world leaders, Basic English never got very far off the drawing board.

【推荐2】Recently I read Nineteen Eighty-Four, a novel by George Orwell set in a state where even the language they use is controlled. Adjectives are forbidden and instead they use phrases such as ‘ungood’, ‘plus good’ and ‘double plus good’ to express emotions. As I first read this I thought how impossible it would be in our society to have such vocabulary. However, the more I thought about it, the more I realised in its own way it’s already happening. I type messages to my friends and alongside each is the emoji. I often use them to emphasise something, or to not seem too serious, or because this specific GIF conveys my emotions much better than I ever could using just words. And I wonder, with our excessive use of emojis, are we losing the beauty and diversity of our vocabulary?

English has the largest vocabulary in the world, with over one million words, but who’s to say what it’ll be like in the future? Perhaps we will have a shorter language, full of saying ‘cry face’ if something sad happens or using abbreviations (缩写) like LOL (laugh out loud) or BRB (be right back) instead of saying the full phrase. So does this mean our vocabulary will shrink? Is it the start of an exciting new era? Will they look back on us in the future and say this is where it all began – the new language? Or is this a classic case of the older generations saying, ‘Things weren’t like that when I was younger. We didn’t use emoticons to show our emotions’?

Yet when you look back over time, the power of image has always been there. Even in the prehistoric era they used imagery to communicate, and what’s even more incredible is that we are able to analyse those drawings and understand the meaning of them thousands of years later. Pictures have the ability to transcend time and language. Images, be it cave paintings or emojis, allow us to convey a message that’s not restrictive but rather universal.

1. Why does the author mention Nineteen Eight Four?

A．To introduce the topic.

B．To show an example.

C．To give the reason.

D．To describe a phenomenon.

2. Why does the author like using emojis?

A．To reduce the use of words

B．To save time of typing

C．To express naturally and casually

D．To make fun of friends

3. Which of the following can best replace the underlined word “shrink” in Para 2?

A．Disappear.	B．Reduce.
C．Lower.	D．Change.

4. What will the author agree with?

A．Emojis will destroy the variety of our vocabulary.

B．Emojis will replace English as the most popular language.

C．Emojis are useless and meaningless in modern life.

D．Emojis will not restrict our communication.

【推荐3】In 1947, the province Bengal of Pakistan was divided into two parts: the western part became India and the eastern part is known as East Bengal which was later known as East Pakistan. At that time there were many economic, social and cultural problems. In 1948, when government announced Urdu as the national language, it caused the protest among the Bengali speaking majority of Pakistan. The protest got out of control and ended with the death of four protestors of the University of Dhaka who were shot by the police on 21st February, 1952. The students’ deaths during the fight for their mother language are now remembered as The International Mother Language Day (IMLD).

Each year on Feb 21, UNESCO holds the event to draw attention to the disappearance of the world’s languages: dozens of them are disappearing each year. What happens when a language dies out? Something huge is lost -- not just sounds and marks but the way that people make sense of the world and communicate with each other. And it is through language that we have culture and tradition. Kill a language and all this is killed too.

Through IMLD, more people are becoming more aware of the destruction of linguistic (语言的) diversity in modern times and trying to stop it. The Myaamia Project is a kind of effort. This is an attempt to revive (复兴) the language spoken by the Miami and Illinois tribes (部落) of the US. Project members work to encourage people to study and communicate with this language, which formally died out in the 1960s.

This is why we should remember the wise words of Nelson Mandela: “If you talk to a man in a language he understands, that goes to his head. If you talk to a man in his own language, that goes to his heart.”

1. What can we know from the first paragraph?

A．Bengal had the biggest population in Pakistan.

B．The conflict resulted from linguistic controversy.

C．The Bengali were the majority who spoke Urdu.

D．The police shot four students to end the protest.

2. What message does Paragraph 2 mean to convey?

A．Dozens of languages die out every February.

B．The world is known merely through languages.

C．Language helps to preserve and promote culture.

D．Much attention has been paid to language protection.

3. What does the Myaamia Project aim to do?

A．Keep linguistic diversity.	B．Protect an American tribe.
C．Raise money to help the locals.	D．Focus on native language learning.

4. Why does the author mention Mandela’s words?

A．To show his contribution to language protection.

B．To stress the difficulty in learning a dying language.

C．To reflect the possibility to preserve a local language.

D．To emphasize the importance of one’s mother tongue.

【推荐1】请认真阅读下面短文，并根据所读内容在文章后表格中的空格里填入一个最恰当的单词。
注意：请将答案写在答题卡上相应题号的横线上。每个空格只填一个单词。

The most common use of intelligence test scores is to tell in advance degree of academic success. Such scores are used in some communities as bases for admitting able children to schools at ages younger than normal, and they are very generally used to determine admissions to schools beyond public secondary school. Another use common in elementary schools involves comparing such scores with performances in various subjects to find out children who are working below capacity.

The greatest problem in using intelligence tests for the purpose of prediction is that no dependable criterion of their accuracy exists. The ideal criteria would be objective and reliable achievement tests following instructions in each subject, but there are few such tests, especially at the college level. Studies have shown that correlations(相关性) between intelligence tests and achievement tests in various subjects through secondary school range roughly from 0.5 to 0.8. Such correlations are fairly high, but they do not suggest anywhere near complete agreement.

At the college level there are two major tests used as criteria of admission. By far the more important is the College Entrance Examination, constructed by the Educational Testing Service authorized by the College Entrance Examination Board. These tests are returned to the Educational Testing Service for scoring, and the results are then made available to the various colleges authorized by the students to receive them. The second test of this type is the American College Test, which operates in essentially the same fashion.

Both tests constitute(组成) measures of certain skills, abilities, and knowledge that have been found to be related to success in college. Their correlations with academic success are limited for three outstanding reasons. First, measures of achievement in college are themselves perhaps no more reliable than those in elementary and secondary schools. Second, intellectual factors do not alone determine academic success, especially at the college level. Many students drop out of schools because they are inadequately motivated or because they dislike the instructional programme. Third, correlations are lowered because the use of such tests for denying admission to some students means that the range of scores for those admitted is restricted, and such restrictions tend to reduce correlations.

Common use of intelligence test scores	●To     1     the degree of academic success. ●To help     2     children with outstanding ability to school at the age younger than ordinary. ●To     3     children with less ability in primary school than average.
4     with intelligence tests	●Ideal criteria for objective and reliable achievement tests in college courses are extremely     5    . ●Correlations between intelligence tests and achievement tests are fairly high but still     6    .
Two major tests at the college level	●CEE ●ACF	Both tests are scored by the Educational Testing Service.
		The colleges that the students choose have     7     to the results of both tests.
		The correlations with academic success are limited for three reasons as     8    . a. Measures of college achievement are as     9     as those in primary and middle schools. b. Inadequate     10     or unfavorable instructional programme may well influence a college student's academic success as well. c. Admission restrictions tend to reduce correlations.

【推荐2】After a confirmed rabies(狂犬病) case in Parke County, Indiana, experts are urging caution if you find a bat(蝙蝠) in your home or office.
“If you try to kill a bat, you are more likely to get bitten,” said Joy O’Keefe, assistant professor of biology and director of Indiana State University’s Centre for Bat Research, Outreach and Conservation. “Most bats people find in their houses are healthy and are not going to bite them and give them rabies.” But they could be a federally endangered species, such as the Indiana Bat, which is found in this area.
So if you spot a bat in your home or office, don’t kill it or touch it with bare hands, O’Keefe said. Instead, put on a pair of heavy gloves and gently move it into a box or bucket. Once contained, the bat can be removed outside.
“If it’s a healthy bat, it’ll fly away eventually,” O’Keefe said. “If it doesn’t move or seem to be healthy, you can take it to the health department to be tested.”
This is the time of year when bats move from their summer resting sites to their winter resting sites, O’Keefe said.
“We get calls every year during the first month of school year from people finding bats in the university’s buildings,” said O’Keefe.
Bats are a great help to people, as every night they can eat up to their entire body weight of insects. Bats, however, are facing great threats from epidemics(流行性疾病), habitat destruction and other things.
“The best way the average person can help bats is by understanding them and by telling other people how awesome bats are and what bats do for us,” O’ Keefe said. “Hopefully, it will make people think that if there’s a bat in their house, they should try to get it out but not kill it. That would be really positive for bats—to not have people be one of their major threats.”
1. According to the text, experts are giving the public a warning about _______.

A．the biting by bats

B．the danger of keeping bats

C．the spreading of an infectious disease

D．the extinction of an endangered species

2. In O’Keefe’s opinion, when you find a bat in your house, you should _______.

A．put it on a tree	B．send it to get tested
C．remove it with gloves	D．report to the health department

3. We can infer that the text is probably written in _______.

A．spring

B．summer

C．autumn

D．winter

4. The underlined word “it” in the last paragraph probably means _______.

A．what bats like to eat

B．people’s awareness of bats

C．the best way to protect bats

D．the greatest threat bats are facing

【推荐1】A cat with an accent sounds like a character in children’s tale, but Swedish scientists are trying to figure out if domestic cats actually do have different “dialects” based on their geographical location. They also want to understand if the owner’s voice might have a role to play in the way cats’ meow（猫）. If they’re successful, the team of scientists from Lund University. hope to put together a “dictionary” of cat sounds.

The project will be carried out over the next five years. SchÖtz explained that she and her team will use phonetic（语音）analysis to compare cat sounds from two parts of Sweden-Stockholm and Lund-with different human dialects, and figure out if the cats from these regions also have different dialects. They will focus on tune, voice, and speaking style in the human speech that is addressed to cats, and also cat sounds that are addressed to humans.

While it all sounds rather fanciful, the main idea behind the project is to improve the human-cat relationship. Since their domestication（驯化）about 10,000 years ago, cats and humans have learned to “talk” through audio（声音的）and visual signals. Even today, wild cats have no need for meowing in adulthood, while domestic ones continue to meow as a way of communicating with humans. And by understanding more about this communication, SchÖtz and her team hope to influence the way cats are treated in animal hospitals, shelters, and care homes.

The team will record voices of about 30 to 50 cats in different situations, for example when they want access to desired locations, when they are content, friendly, happy, hungry, annoyed, or even angry-and try to identify any differences in their phonetic patterns. They want to know if cats prefer pet-directed speech or prefer to be spoken to like human adults.

The project is yet to begin officially, but the researchers have already started testing their equipment and techniques by recording a few cats’ meowings. And they’ve already made a few interesting observations. In one of the recordings, they noticed that when a cat is begging for food its meows rise slowly. But the opposite happens when the cat is unhappy. By the year 2021, SchÖtz and her team hope to have entirely broken the cats’ code by interpreting all their meowings.

1. Carrying out the research, Swedish Scientists will mainly investigate ______.

A．how cats vary the melody of meows	B．how cats communicate with their owners
C．how cats meow with a funny mood	D．how cats are treated around the world

2. The main purpose of the project done by Swedish scientists is to ______.

A．find out where the cats live	B．understand the cats’ lifestyle
C．build up the human-cat relationship	D．make up a dictionary of cat sounds

3. According to the passage it can most probably be inferred that ______.

A．the owners’ voice plays a key role in the way cats meow

B．the research could bring about the cats’ welfare changes in shelters, for instance

C．the owners understand entirely the cats’ need through their meows

D．domestic cats live a happier life than wild ones

4. What attitude does the author hold towards the prospect（前景）of the research？

A．Optimistic.	B．Pessimistic.
C．Unconcerned.	D．Skeptical.

【推荐2】Social change is more likely to occur in societies where there is a mixture of different kinds of people than in societies where people are similar in many ways. The simple reason for this is that there are more different ways of looking at things present in the first kind of society. There are more ideas, more disagreements in interest, and more groups and organizations with different beliefs. In addition, there is usually a greater worldly interest and ________ in mixed societies. All these factors （因素）tend to promote social change by opening more areas of life to decision. In a society where people are similar in many ways, there are fewer situations for people to see the need or the chance for change because everything seems to be the same. And although conditions may not be satisfactory, they are at least customary and clear.
Within a society, social change is also likely to occur more frequently and more readily in the material aspects of the culture than in the non-material aspects, for example, in technology rather than in values; in what has been learned later in life rather than what was learned early; in the simple elements（要素）rather than in the complex ones; and in elements that are acceptable to the culture rather than in strange ones.
Besides, social change is easier if it is gradual. For example, it comes more readily in human relations on a continuous scale rather than one with a sharp division. This is one reason why change has not come more quickly to Black Americans as compared to other American minorities, because of the sharp difference in appearance between them and their white fellows.
1. The underlined part “greater tolerance” in Paragraph 1 probably refers to “________”.

A．quicker adaptation to changing conditions

B．greater willingness to accept social change

C．more respect for different beliefs and behavior

D．greater readiness to agree to different conditions

2. Why is social change less likely to occur in a society where people are similar in many ways?

A．They are so conservative that they tend to slow down social change.

B．They can easily get what they want in the material aspect of society.

C．They are so used to their conditions that they seldom want to change.

D．They have similar needs that can be satisfied without much difficulty.

3. Which of the following factors probably tends to promote social change fast?

A．Different points of view.

B．Traditional values.

C．Sharp divisions in relations.

D．Similar appearances.

4. What is this passage mainly discussing?

A．Two different kinds of society.

B．Consequences of social change.

C．The importance of social change.

D．Certain factors affecting social change.

【推荐3】Faces, like fingerprints, are unique. Did you ever wonder how it is possible for us to recognize people? Even a skilled writer probably could not describe all the features that make one face different from another. Yet a very young child or even an animal, such as a pigeon can learn to recognize faces. We all take this ability for granted.

We also tell people apart by how they behave. When we talk about someone’s personality, we mean the ways in which he or she acts, speaks, thinks and feels that make that individual different from others.

Like the human face, human personality is very complex. But describing someone’s personality in words is somewhat easier than describing his face. If you were asked to describe what a “nice face” looked like, you probably would have a difficult time doing so. But if you were asked to describe a “nice person”, you might begin to think about someone who was kind, considerate, friendly, warm, and so forth.

There are many words to describe how a person thinks, feels and acts. Gordon Ports, an American psychologist, found nearly 18,000 English words characterizing differences in people’s behavior. And many of us use this information as a basis for describing, or typing, his personality. Book worms, conservatives, military types people are described with such terms.

People have always tried to “type” each other. Actors in early Greek drama wore masks to show the audience whether they played the villain’s or the hero’s role. In fact, the words “person” and “personality” come from the Latin word “persona”, meaning “mask”. Today, most television and movie actors do not wear masks. But we can easily tell the “good guys” from the “bad guys” because the two types differ in appearance as well as in actions.

1. Which of the following statements is NOT true?

A．People may have different personalities.

B．People differ from each other in appearance.

C．People can learn to recognize human faces.

D．People can describe all human features of others.

2. The reason that it is easier to describe one’s personality in words than ones face is that ________.

A．many words are available to describe personality

B．a person’s personality is easily distinguished

C．people’s personalities are very much alike

D．a person’s face is more complex than his personality

3. We learn from the passage that people are classified according to__________.

A．their way of wearing masks

B．their way of speaking and playing

C．their knowledge and behavior

D．their physical appearance and personality