1 . What is the future of newspapers as the industry has faced increasing newsprint prices, falling sales and the great drops in circulation (发行量)? In recent years the number of newspapers being closed down has risen, especially in the United States and the United Kingdom. Income has dropped while competition from the Internet has pressed older print publishers a lot.
To live on, newspapers are considering uniting and other choices though the result hasn’t been agreed.
Since the beginning of 2009, the United Sates has seen a number of major newspapers closed after no buyers appeared, including The Rocky Mountain News, closed in February, and The Seattle Post-Intelligencer, reduced to a complete Internet operation. In Detroit, both newspapers, The Detroit Free Press and The Detroit News, cut down home delivery to three days a week, while inviting readers to visit the newspapers’ Internet sites on other days. In Tucson, Arizona, the state’s oldest newspaper, The Tucson Citizen, would stop publishing on March 21, 2009, when parent Gannett Company failed to find a buyer.
A number of other large, financially troubled newspapers are trying to get buyers. One of the few large dailies finding a buyer is The San Diego Union-tribune. It agreed to be sold to a private firm for what The Wall Street Journal called the rock-bottom price over of less than $50 million considered to have been worth about $1 billion in 2004.
In the United Kingdom, newspaper publishers have been similarly hit. In late 2008 The Independent announced job cuts. In January the chain Associated Newspapers sold a controlling stake (股金) in the London Evening Standard as it announced a 24% decline in 2008 as income. In March 2009 parent company Daily Mail and General Trust said job cuts would be deeper than expected.
1. How does the author feel about the future of newspapers?| A．Concerned. | B．Uncaring. | C．Hopeful. | D．Satisfied. |
| A．The Detroit News. | B．The Detroit Free Press. |
| C．The Rocky Mountain News. | D．The Seattle Post-Intelligencer. |
| A．Increasing. | B．Common. | C．Reasonable. | D．Lowest. |
| A．More newspapers in the UK and the USA are closing down. |
| B．Newspaper publishers try to control their employees. |
| C．Newspapers are developing fast in the UK and the USA. |
| D．British newspapers have been losing money. |
2 . Concerns have existed long about what’s gone wrong in modern societies. Many scholars explain growing gaps between the haves and the have-nots as partly a by-product of living in large, urban populations. The bigger the crowd, from this perspective, the greater the distance is between the wealthy and those left wanting.
In The Dawn of Everything, David Graeber and David Wengrow challenge the assumption that bigger societies surely produce a range of inequalities. Using examples from past societies, the pair also rejects the popular idea that social development occurred in stages.
Such stages, according to conventional wisdom, began with humans living in small hunter-gatherer bands where everyone was on equal footing. Then an agricultural revolution (变革) about 12, 000 years ago fueled population growth and the appearance of tribes (部落) and eventually states.
This assumption makes no sense to Graeber and Wengrow. Their research, which extends for 526 pages, paints a more hopeful picture of social life over the last 30, 000 to 40, 000 years. Hunter-gatherers have a long history of changing social systems from one season to the next, the authors write. About a century ago, researchers observed that native populations in North America and elsewhere often operated in small, mobile groups for part of the year and formed large, settled communities the rest of the year. For example, each winter, Canada’s Northwest Coast Kwakiutl hunter-gatherers built wooden structures while in summers, they separated, and fished along the coast in less formal social ranks.
Social flexibility and experimentation, rather than a revolutionary shift, also characterized ancient transitions (转变) to agriculture, Graeber and Wengrow write. Middle Eastern village sites now indicate that the domestication (驯化) of crops occurred on and off from around 12, 000 to 9, 000 years ago. Ancient Fertile Crescent communities regularly gave farming a go while still hunting, gathering, fishing, and trading. Early people were in no rush to treat land as private property or to form political systems headed by kings, the authors conclude.
1. What might The Dawn of Everything mainly deal with?| A．Historic stages. | B．Social inequalities. |
| C．Historic revolution. | D．Social development. |
| A．They progressed in stages. | B．They started with inequality. |
| C．They began with small tribes. | D．They benefited from population growth. |
| A．By listing figures. | B．By offering examples. |
| C．By giving a definition. | D．By making a comparison. |
| A．A fixed political system. | B．Flexibility of society. |
| C．A regular revolutionary shift. | D．Improvement of crops. |
3 . A Time magazine special project known simply as “Firsts” celebrates women who have made big achievements. These women have made their mark in business, entertainment, politics and more. The project hopes to provide girls and women with positive examples who assure (使确信) them that they can succeed.
The “Firsts” project includes video features (特写), a book and a webpage. The webpage has the women’s pictures and short descriptions of their achievements. The project’s producers, Spencer Bakalar and Diane Tsai, made video profiles (简介) of 37 of the 46 original women featured by the project. And the webpage anticipates that more women will be added as they become new “Firsts”.
The women featured in “Firsts” have achieved success in many fields. Eileen Collins was the first woman to command a space shuttle. Jennifer Yuh Nelson was the first woman to direct a major Hollywood movie alone-Kung Fu Panda 2. Serena Williams set a record for tennis Grand Slam singles titles. The road to success hasn’t always been smooth for these women. It took hard work to reach excellence. Many of them also put up with rude comments because they were women. But they also received support from key people, especially parents. Many of the women also speak about the difficulty of balancing work and family life. Their work sometimes required them to sacrifice time with their children or miss important family events. Yet several of them also say that they see their work as setting a good example for their children. They want their sons and daughters to see their mother working and know that they, too. can achieve remarkable things.
Michelle Phan was the first woman to build a US $500 million company from a web series. She tells entrepreneurs (企业家) to find a problem that they care about and then offer a way to tackle it. That is vital advice that anyone in any field should follow.
1. What is the purpose of the “Firsts” project?| A．To teach girls how to design a webpage. |
| B．To introduce successful people to children. |
| C．To celebrate businesswomen’s achievements. |
| D．To encourage girls to succeed by giving superb examples. |
| A．It has recorded 46 videos. |
| B．It is going to find more women. |
| C．It was launched by a businesswoman. |
| D．It gives a full account of successful people’s life. |
| A．by time. | B．by cause and effect. |
| C．by example. | D．by comparison and contrast. |
| A．Invest. | B．Devote. | C．Fill up. | D．Give up. |
