【推荐1】A huge 42 percent of marriages in the UK end in divorce, the highest rate in Europe. What is happening in the UK to cause such a phenomenon? Many consider the family to be the basic building block of society. If marriages and families are falling apart, is the UK society also falling apart? Is the UKs cultural identity breaking down? The UK of today is one of the most multicultural countries on earth. There are exotic sights and sounds on the street corners of every British city. British cuisine is now one of the most diverse around. Everyone speaks with a different accent.

Is such diversity a good thing? Well, it makes the UK a very exciting place to live in. There are new ideas everywhere. There is great freedom to be who you want to be, and most people will not criticize you for who you are. Yet such freedom seems to come at a cost. Some British people regard ethnic minorities (少数民族) as coming to the UK to steal jobs. When the economy does badly, this feeling increases as unemployment rates rise. So, it could be argued that the breakdown of marriages in the UK is in some part because of the pressures put upon families by wider problems in British society. Many people become stressed when those problems arise, and that can then make their family life unhappy as well.

Another possible reason for the high divorce rate might be that marriage no longer has the same value or meaning for British people as it once did. Church attendance in the UK has been falling for the last 50 years, suggesting fewer people consider marriage a holy thing. Since 1991, there has been a drop of 50 percent in people getting married in church rather than a register office.

Then there is the financial side. In the past, married couples paid lower government taxes than single people. That tax incentive (激励) policy, which used to reduce a couples tax by up to 500 in a year, has now disappeared, making the cost to keep a marriage higher.

However, the 42 percent UK divorce rate isn’t the highest rate in the past forty years! Meanwhile, some measures are being taken to strengthen marriage in the UK by the government.

1. According to the text, all the following account for the high divorce rate except     .

A．Desire for freedom.	B．Social problems.
C．Change of values.	D．Financial pressures.

2. What does the underlined word “exotic” probably mean in paragraph 1?

A．amazing	B．foreign
C．local	D．familiar

3. What can be inferred from the text?

A．Cultural diversity has brought people freedom to criticize others.

B．The rising of the divorce rate indicates the society is falling apart.

C．The tax incentive policy once contributed to steady families to some degree.

D．More British people would get married in the church rather than in a register office.

4. What’s the writer’s attitude towards the present situation of the divorce rate in UK?

A．Pessimistic.

B．Unconcerned.

C．Doubtful.

D．Optimistic.

【推荐1】Eugene O'Neill, who was born in 1888, in New York, was a leading American drama writer and the winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1936. His father was a successful touring actor. Because of that, Eugene spent his early childhood in hotels, on trains, and backstage. Although later in his life he grew to hate his father for not giving him security（安全感）in his early years and a loving, comfortable family, he had the theater in his blood.

As a student, O'Neill went to boarding schools（寄宿制学校）but spent the summers in a moderate house his family owned. He left Princeton University in 1907, only about one year after he entered it, to start what he later called his real education in “life experience”。 At the age of 24, he was employed as a reporter and poetry column writer for the New London Telegraph, where he worked for only a few months.

O'Neill didn't cut a figure in playwriting until the summer of 1916, when he was in a peaceful village of Provincetown, Massachusetts, where some young writers and artists had founded an experimental theater. Before that, he had written awkward plays that were hardly accepted by the mainstream of American theater. While O'Neill was only one of those whose plays were produced by the theater, he led the group to success because of his contribution within the next few years. Between 1916 and 1920, the theater produced all of O'Neill's one-act plays. By the time his first full-length play, Beyond the Horizon, was produced on Broadway on February 2, 1920 at the Morosco Theater, the young playwright already had a small fame.

Theater critics（评论家）spoke highly of Beyond the Horizon for its tragic realism. The play brought O'Neill more public attention, as well as his first Pulitzer Prize. Besides that, he won another three for Anna Christie, Strange Interlude, and Long Day's Journey into Night. Over the next two decades, O'Neill continued to gain fame nationally and globally. He became the most widely translated and produced dramatist after Shakespeare and Bernard Shaw.

1. What might inspire O'Neill's love for theater?

A．His father's job.	B．The support of his family.
C．Hotel rooms he had lived in.	D．Stories he had heard on trains.

2. Why did O'Neill drop out of Princeton University in 1907?

A．He didn't want to study in a boarding school.

B．He wanted to receive real education from life.

C．He got a job from the New London Telegraph.

D．He was quite unsatisfied with the university life.

3. What does the underlined phrase "cut a figure" in Paragraph 3 probably mean?

A．Show interest.	B．Hold a degree.
C．Attract attention.	D．Receive an award.

4. What can we learn about O'Neill's Beyond the Horizon?

A．It inspired him to create another three dramas.

B．It drew theater critics' attention to tragic realism.

C．It helped him win more fame in the field of theater.

D．It made him the most widely translated dramatist.

【推荐2】What do literary greats Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Robert Burns have in common? They both lived and wrote in Edinburgh, along with many other big names in the field of literature. This fact helped UNESCO (联合国教科文组织)award the city the title of World’s First City of Literature on October 14.

Edinburgh left a lasting impression on Arthur Conan Doyle (1859-1930). Although he was born there he went to school in England but returned home for medical school. After graduating he moved to London and began writing his Sherlock Holmes stories. His inspiration for the character came from one of his professors at university. Holmes’ methods were so clever that they actually furthered the advance of the study of criminology (犯罪学).

Robert Burns (1759-1796)is still regarded as Scotland’s national poet, more than 200 years after his death. He is celebrated all over the world through translations of his work and the annual Burns Night supper on his birthday. One of his songs, My Love is Like a Red Red Rose ranks among the finest love songs ever written and Auld Lang Syne (《友谊地久天长》)is sung all around the world.

As one of the first literate societies in Europe, the Scottish Parliament passed the world’s first compulsory (义务)education law in 1496. By the 1790s, almost all Scots could read. Visitors to Scotland often observed that even the lowest members of society had copies of Burns’ poems and other books.

1. Edinburgh was awarded the title of World’s First City of Literature because ______.

A．the first award ceremony of literature was held there.

B．many literary greats like Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Robert Burns were born there.

C．it left a deep impression on many literary greats like Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

D．many literary greats like Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Robert Burns often wrote about it.

2. Arthur Conan Doyle was remembered mainly for his ______.

A．detective stories.

B．love poems and songs.

C．contribution to the study of criminology.

D．clever writing skills.

3. In the last paragraph, the writer mainly discussed ______.

A．the impression of visitors to Scotland.

B．how Burns’ poems are popular in Scotland.

C．the possible history reasons for many literary greats in Scotland.

D．how the world’s first compulsory education law was made.

【推荐3】Louise Gluck has been no stranger to awards over her long and storied career since her first publication in 1968. In 1993, she won the Pulitzer Prize for her collection of poems, The Wild Iris. And on Oct 8 (2020) she became the 16th woman to win the Nobel Prize in literature with the Nobel prizes first awarded in 1901.

Gluck was honored “for her unmistakable poetic voice that, with plain and simple beauty, makes individual existence universal”. Often said to be an autobiographical poet, drawing from the inner parts of her life, "Gluck seeks the universal, Nobel Committee Chair Anders Olsson said in a statement.

Gluck, 77, the author of 12 poetry collections, has been able to turn her life experiences into universal themes covering life, loss, and isolation. Because of this, readers have often found her poetry to be "dark”. However, there is much more than darkness in her voice, as noted by Olsson. "It is candid and also a voice full of humor and biting wit." he said.

For example, in her poem Snowdrops, she uses the coming of spring after winter to show rebirth of life after death. She leads readers down a depressing path only to reconnect with the light at the near end. At the conclusion of the poem, readers are left to feel the “raw wind of the new world" as they watch a new spring. This is often the case in Gluck's poetry, being able to feel joy even after not having done so for a long time.

When her work Faithful Virtuous Night received a National Book Award for Poetry in 2014, a judge for the award went on to say, the collection comes from "a world where darkness blurs （模糊）ordinarily sharp edges around the oppositions of our lives - loss and renewal, male and female, the living and the dead”.

Talking of prizes, she acknowledged that they can make "existence in the world easier" but did not amount to the immortality （永生） of a true artist. "I want to live after I die, in that ancient way." she said. "And there's no way of knowing whether that will happen, and there will be no knowing, no matter how many blue ribbons have been used to cover my body." The remark is in line with Olsson's description of Gluck's poetic voice as “candid and uncompromising” but frequently witty.

1. What can we learn about Louise Gluck?

A．She is a productive and distinguished poet.

B．She showed indifference to the Nobel award.

C．She had her first publication in her teens.

D．She gets inspiration from universal existence.

2. How do readers feel after reading Snowdrops?

A．Depressed.

B．Confused.

C．Astonished.

D．Refreshed.

3. According to Gluck, how do awards influence artists?

A．By improving their health and fame.

B．By popularizing their works better.

C．By contributing to their living longer.

D．By allowing them a better living.

4. What is the text mainly about?

A．Gluck's poetry collections.

B．Gluck's journey to success.

C．The glories of Glucks poetry.

D．The features of Gluck's poetry.

【推荐1】One of the important subjects in contemporary poetry is identity — with an open-ended explanation of that word Poets, young and old are exploring what identity is, using their own lives as the background.

British poet Phoebe Power, in her first collection of poems, Shrines of Upper Austria, explores a different aspect of identity: a personal understanding of national identity the collection received the forward prize for Best First Collection and was on the final list for the t.s. Eliot Prize.

Power was born in Newcastle-on-Tyne and raised in Cumbria. She has taken part in a number of performance art and video art projects. She received a Northern Writers’ Award in 2014 and an Eric Gregory Award from the Society of Authors in 2012. Now she lives in York in northern England.

Power’s starting point is her grandmother. She came to England from Austria as a new bride (新娘) married to a British soldier in 1946, the first year after the end of World War Ⅱ. Imagine the reactions of her British neighbors, and her new British family. Imagine what she had left behind. The grandmother’s experiences influenced Power greatly.

In Shrines of Upper Austria, we walk with the poet to see her grandmother’s life before Britain. We can learn about the small town where she lived and where “many of the shopkeepers were Jews”, the bodies of water, and buildings that existed when her grandmother lived there power also added some prose (散文) to the book, which tells us some stories of her grandmother’s early life. For example, it tells the stories about how her grandmother was found as a baby and given to a farmer when she was two.

The poems in the collection are pieces of a life. We can no more walk in our grandparents’ shoes than they can walk in ours. However, we can study old family photographs. We can see pieces of their lives — where they lived perhaps; where they played as children; what lakes or rivers they swam in. Like Power, we are left with pieces. These pieces don’t all make sense, but collectively they show a life.

1. Why could Power’s book of poems win influential prizes?

A．It was a collective work of the Society of Authors.

B．It specially focused on national identity.

C．It clearly explained the meaning of identity.

D．It was about powers’real life.

2. What can we find in Shrines of Upper Austria?

A．The poems by power’s grandmother.

B．The life and culture in Austria.

C．The stories of Power’s early life.

D．The bodies of water in York.

3. What does the author think of the pieces of our grandparents’ life?

A．Meaningful.

B．Shocking.

C．Heartbreaking.

D．Outdated.

【推荐2】Elizabeth Bishop is considered one of the best American poets of the 20th century. She was born in Worcester, Massachusetts in 1911. Her dad died when she was just a baby and her mom never recovered from the loss. She went to live with her grandparents in Nova Scotia, Canada when she was five. Eventually Bishop attended Vassar College, where she began to write poetry.

At Vassar she discovered Marianne Moore’s poetry and met Ms. Moore and began their life-long friendship. She later met poet Robert Lowell. She wrote tons and tons of letters to both of them, which is good for us because we would otherwise know very little of her personal life. Bishop published her first book of poetry in 1946 and wrote until her death in 1979. She would spend years working on a single poem. Her poems are not the result of hasty scribbling (匆忙乱写) on paper while eating breakfast. She would look through drafts of poems again and again and improve them until they were as close to perfect as she could get them.

Reading Elizabeth Bishop is like being transported to the very place, the very moment she’s writing about. She leads us to a microscope so we can see every smallest part of the scene. It seems that she’s always asking us to notice more, and more until the poem is so clear in our minds that it’s almost painful—like a light that’s too bright.

1. What do we know about Bishop’s early life?

A．She spent her childhood mainly in Worcester.

B．She was mainly brought up by her grandparents.

C．She was always encouraged by her parents.

D．She started to write poems at five.

2. Why are Bishop’s letters to Moore and Lowell important?

A．They offer much information about her life.

B．They have a deep influence on other poets.

C．They help us study Moore and Lowell’s poetry.

D．They prove she had friendships with famous poets.

3. What can we say about Bishop’s poetic creation?

A．She liked to write in the morning.

B．She could write poems at high speed.

C．She tried her best to achieve perfection.

D．She published hundreds of books of poetry.

4. Which word can be used to best describe the style of Bishop’s poems?

A．Hard.

B．Romantic.

C．Humorous.

D．Exact.