1 . Roald Dahl is a beloved British writer. He is the writer of some of the world’s best-known children’s novels, including James and Giant Peach, Matilda, and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.
More than 250 million copies of his books have been sold worldwide. His works have been translated into 58 languages. Tuesday was Roald Dahl Day. People around the world celebrated what would have been Dahl’s 100th birthday. He was born in 1916 in Wales. He died in 1990.
Roald Dahl Day was worldwide on social media(媒体). Many people thanked Dahl for making them truly enjoy reading. One Twitter user wrote, “My childhood was made magical because of the wonderful Roald Dahl. A great storyteller!” Another wrote, “You made me fall in love with reading—a love that has lasted me a lifetime.” Special events and celebrations were held in Britain and other countries in honor of Dahl.
The Oxford English Dictionary marked Dahl’s 100th birthday by officially adding six Dahl-created words to its latest edition. They included words such as “Oompah- Loompah” and “scrumdiddlyumptious.”
Oompah Loompahs are the factory workers in the book—Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. They had orange skin and green hair. They danced and played music. Oompah Loompahs became more famous after the 1971 film of the book, which starred Gene Wilder as candy maker Willy Wonka.
“Scrumdiddlyumptious” is a word that appeared in Dahl’s book- The BFG—short for The Big Friendly Giant. It generally means “delicious”. A film of The BFG, directed by Steven Spielberg, was released(发行)this year
Earlier this year, Ocford released an entire Roald Dahl dictionary. It included more than 8,000 real and invented words used by the master storyteller.
1. What day was Roald Dahl Day this year?| A．Tuesday | B．Monday |
| C．Friday | D．Sunday |
| A．He changed their whole life. |
| B．He made them enjoy movies |
| C．He made them fall in love with reading |
| D．He brought some events and celebrations for them. |
| A．Musicians |
| B．Film-makers |
| C．The bosses in Dahl’s book |
| D．The factory workers in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. |
| A．He died at the age of 75. |
| B．He had a boring childhood |
| C．His works greatly influenced many people in the world |
| D．He added his words to the Oxford English Dictionary. |
2 . Some of the world’s most famous musicians recently gathered in Paris and New Orleans to celebrate the first annual International Jazz Day. UNESCO( United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) recently set April 30 as a day to raise awareness of jazz music, its significance, and its potential as a unifying(联合) voice across cultures.
Despite the celebrations, though, in the U.S. the jazz audience continues to shrink and grow older, and the music has failed to connect with younger generations.
It’s Jason Moran’s job to help change that. As the Kennedy Center’s artistic adviser for jazz, Moran hopes to widen the audience for jazz, make the music more accessible, and preserve its history and culture.
“Jazz seems like it’s not really a part of the American appetite,” Moran tells National Public Radio’s reporter Neal Conan. “What I’m hoping to accomplish is that my generation and younger start to reconsider and understand that jazz is not black and write anymore. It’s actually color, and it’s actually digital.”
Moran says one of the problems with jazz today is that the entertainment aspect of the music has been lost. “The music can’t be presented today the way it was in 1908 or 1958. It has to continue to move, because the way the world works is not the same,” says Moran.
Last year, Moran worked on a project that arranged Fats Waller’s music for a dance party, “Just to kind of put it back in the mind that Waller is dance music as much as it is concert music,” says Moran. “For me, it’s the recontextualization. In music, where does the emotion(情感) lie? Are we, as humans, gaining any insight(感悟) on how to talk about ourselves and how something as abstract as a Charlie Parker record gets us into a dialogue about our emotions and our thoughts? Sometimes we lose sight that the music has a wider context,” says Moran, “so I want to continue those dialogues. Those are the things I want to foster.”
1. Why did UNESCO set April 30 as International Jazz Day?| A．To remember the birth of jazz. |
| B．To protect cultural diversity. |
| C．To encourage people to study music. |
| D．To recognize the value of jazz. |
| A．Jazz becoming more accessible. |
| B．The production of jazz growing faster. |
| C．Jazz being less popular with the young. |
| D．The jazz audience becoming larger. |
| A．It will disappear gradually. |
| B．It remains black and white. |
| C．It should keep up with the times. |
| D．It changes every 50 years. |
| A．Exploring the Future of Jazz. |
| B．The Rise and Fall of Jazz. |
| C．The Story of a Jazz Musician. |
| D．Celebrating the Jazz Day. |
3 . Some people think if you are happy, you are blind to reality. But when we research it, happiness actually raises every single business and educational outcome for the brain. How did we miss this? Why do we have these social misunderstandings about happiness? Because we assumed you were average. When we study people, scientists are often interested in what the average is.
Many people think happiness is genetic. That’s only half the story, because the average person does not fight their genes. When we stop studying the average and begin researching positive outliers —people who are above average for a positive aspect like optimism or intelligence —a wildly different picture appears. Our daily decisions and habits have a huge impact upon both our levels of happiness and success.
Scientifically, happiness is a choice. It is a choice about where your single processor brain will devote its limited resources as you process the world. If you scan for the negative first, your brain really has no resources left over to see the things you are grateful for or the meaning embedded(嵌入) in your work. But if you scan the world for the positive, you start to acquire an amazing advantage.
I wrote the cover story for the Harvard Business Review magazine on “Happiness Leads to Profits.” Based on my article called “Positive Intelligence” and my research in The Happiness Advantage, I summarized our researched conclusion: the single greatest advantage in the modern economy is a happy and busy workforce.
A decade of research in the business world proves that happiness raises nearly every business and educational outcome: increasing sales by 37%, productivity by 31%, and accuracy on tasks by 19%, as well as a number of health and quality-of-life improvements.
1. The underlined word “this” in the first paragraph refers to .| A．the fact that people are happy |
| B．the connection between happiness and educational outcome |
| C．the fact that people often misunderstand happiness |
| D．the fact that most people are average |
| A．Scientists are only interested in what the average is. |
| B．You can choose to be happy or not. |
| C．The average are not happy at all. |
| D．Our decisions and habits have nothing to do with happiness. |
| A．To advertise himself. |
| B．To arouse the readers’ interest. |
| C．To support his point about happiness. |
| D．To attract the readers to read his articles. |
| A．To explain what is happiness. |
| B．To describe the misunderstandings about happiness. |
| C．To show people the importance of happiness. |
| D．To make the point that happiness promotes business and educational outcome. |
4 . A new study, conducted by British company Mindlab International, has found that listening to music at work increases accuracy and speed, The Telegraph reported. Perhaps, some parents disagree with this idea, saying, "Switch off the music and concentrate!" Well, if that's the case with your parents, you might now be able to convince them that you have science on your side.
The company gave 26 participants a series of different tasks for five days in a row, including spell checking, mathematical word problems, data entry, and abstract reasoning. The participants completed these tasks while listening to music or no music at all.
The results showed that while music was playing, 88% of participants produced their most accurate test results and 81% completed their fastest work. David Lewis, chairman of Mindlab International, told The Telegraph, "Music is a very powerful management tool if you want to increase not only the efficiency of your workforce but also their emotional state... they are going to become more positive about the work."
However, you may have a list of your favorite songs, but not all kinds of music match all homework. For maths or other subjects involving numbers or attention to detail, you should listen to classical music, the study found. In the study, pop music enabled participants to complete their tasks 58% faster than when listening to no music at all. If you are reviewing your English writing, pop music is the best choice, as it is the best kind for spell checking. It cut mistakes by 14%, compared to listening to no music. After finishing your homework, do you often take time to check your answers? Maybe, some dance music is suitable for you.
1. Which of the following can be the best title for the passage?| A．Music helps us to learn |
| B．We cannot live without music |
| C．Different music, different lives |
| D．Music in the classroom. |
| A．Persuade their parents to listen to music. |
| B．Listen to the same music together. |
| C．Try their best to choose the most suitable music. |
| D．Finish tasks with music or without music at all. |
| A．tools | B．results |
| C．tests | D．participants |
| A．Classical music | B．Dance music |
| C．Pop music | D．Rock music |
I’ve tried some methods to help me get control of my mail. First, I check my mail at the same time every day. Also I try to allow myself only 15～20 minutes every day to process my email. This doesn’t always work, but I try. Sometimes I save the messages. Sometimes I just read them, maybe answer a few, and then delete(删除) them.
Sometimes I’m not at all interested in a message, so I don’t even open it. I delete it right away. This is very much the way I go through the mail that the postal service delivers to my home.
These methods are very simple. I have some friends who are very clever with computers. From time to time，they teach me new tricks for managing my email. I’m still amazed at what email can do for me! I’m still worried, however, about having too much to read.
1. The writer used to read all his email because ______.
| A．he was forced to do that |
| B．he had nothing else to do |
| C．he didn’t know how to read mail |
| D．he didn’t have much mail |
| A．Passing some on to his friends. |
| B．Just reading some. |
| C．Deleting some. |
| D．Saving the messages. |
| A．messages. | B．friends. |
| C．computers. | D．methods. |
| A．To share happiness in using mail with us. |
| B．To share some methods of using computer with us. |
| C．To share some worries in using mail with us. |
| D．To persuade us out of using mail. |
6 . In the depths of the French Guianese rainforest, there still remain unusual groups of indigenous(土著的) people. Surprisingly, these people live largely by their own laws and their own social customs. And yet, people in this area are in fact French citizens because it has been a colony of the French Republic since 1946. In theory, they should live by the French law. However, their remote locations mean that the French law is often ignored or unknown, thus making them into an interesting area of “lawlessness” in the world.
The lives of these people have finally been recorded thanks to the effects of a Frenchman from Paris called Gin. Gin spent five months in early 2015 exploring the most remote corners of this area, which sits on the edge of the Amazon rainforest, with half its population of only 250,000 living in its capital, Cayenne.
“I have a special love for the French Guianese people. I have worked there on and off for almost ten years,” says Gin. “I’ve been able to keep firm friendships with them. Thus I have been allowed to gain access to their living environment. I don’t see it as a lawless land. But rather I see it as an area of freedom.”
“I wanted to show the audience a photographic record touching upon the uncivilized life,” continues Gin. “I prefer to work in black and white, which allows me to show different specific worlds more clearly.”
His black-and-white pictures present a world almost lost in time. These pictures show people seemingly pushed into a world that they were unprepared for. These local citizens now have to balance their traditional self-supporting hunting lifestyle with the lifestyle offered by the modern French Republic,which brings with it not only necessary state welfare, but also alcoholism, betrayal and even suicide.
1. Why does the author feel surprised about the indigenous people in French Guiana?| A．They seldom follow the French law. |
| B．They often ignore the Cuianese law. |
| C．They are separated the modern world. |
| D．They are both Cuianese and French citizens. |
| A．a tour guide | B．a geographer |
| C．a film director | D．a photographer |
| A．Cautious. | B．Doubtful. |
| C．Uninterested | D．Apprecitive. |
| A．The modera Frrnch lifestyle. | B．The self-supporting hunting. |
| C．The uncivilized world. | D．The French Republic. |
7 . When slaves were first brought over from West Africa to the southern parts of America, they brought along with them aspects of their own culture-religion, dance,language, music, and cuisine. A mix of the two cultures eventually appeared. The religious dance of the ring shout turned into modern dances like the Charleston, and tribal chants slowly transformed into sorrowful hymns (圣歌) sung by slaves that described their hardships.
These soulful accounts by slaves of the severe climate and conditions began to be called "the blues" , which continued in popularity among African Americans after the Civil War. This music increased in popularity into the early 1900s when many black musicians became an important part of the music industry.
The slaves that had been brought over were from all different regions of West Africa, but they worked together until they gradually formed a common culture. This strengthened the identity of their music that, in the 1950s, eventually led to the beginning of rock and roll. The Beatles, the most influential band of the 1960s, are often determined as the accelerator that resulted in the ideology (意识形态)surrounding music that is still around today. The freedom and individuality associated with that time period brought forth a whole culture surrounding music. It was not just music any more, but a lifestyle.
Over the decades, music has developed into such a vital part of society and pop culture. Musicians are glorified, with tons of adoring and screaming fans. The modern technology of present day has allowed for a greater gap between the creator of the music and the fans, as well as a widespread commercialization of music. However, criticisms of modern pop music often arise due to its mass production, and now there is a lack of the same soul and quality of naturalness and simplicity in music that was rising in the early 20th century.
1. What contributed to the birth of the Charleston?| A．Various African religions. |
| B．People's love of tribal dances. |
| C．A mix of two different cultures. |
| D．The popularity of sorrowful hymns. |
| A．It became popular in the late 20th century. |
| B．It may include the description of slaves' sad lives. |
| C．It mainly told the stories of the American Civil War. |
| D．It reflected the hard lives of many black musicians. |
| A．Slaves' collective work. |
| B．One region of West Africa. |
| C．The new common culture. |
| D．The music by the Beatles. |
| A．possessed soul and sincerity |
| B．became more commercialized |
| C．was blamed for its mass production D. widened the gap between musicians and fans |
8 . Too many people want others to be their friends, but they don’t give friendship back. That is why some friendships don’t last very long. To have a friend, you must learn to treat your friend the way you want your friend to treat you. Learning to be a good friend means learning three rules: be honest; be generous(宽宏大量的); be understanding.
Honesty is where a good friendship starts. Friends must be able to trust one another. If you do not tell the truth, people usually find out. If a friend finds out that you haven’t been honest, you may lose your friend’s trust. Good friends always rely on one another to speak and act honestly.
Generosity means sharing and sharing makes a friendship grow. You do not have to give your lunch money or your clothes. Naturally you will want to share your ideas and feelings. These can be very valuable to a friend. They tell your friend what is important to you. By sharing them, you help your friend know better.
Sooner or later everyone needs understanding and help with a problem. Something may go wrong at school. Talking about the problem can make it easier to solve. Turning to a friend can be a first step in solving the problem. So to be a friend you must listen and understand. You must try to put yourself in your friend’s place so that you can understand the problem better.
No two friendships are exactly alike(相同的)．But all true friendships have three things in common. If you plan to keep your friends, you must practice honesty, generosity and understanding.
1. Some friendships don’t last long because ________.| A．there are too many people who want to make friends. |
| B．those who give others friendship receive friendship from others. |
| C．some people receive friendship but don’t give friendship back. |
| D．they don’t know friendship is something serious. |
| A．something countable |
| B．the base of friendship |
| C．as important as money |
| D．more important than anything else |
| A．generosity and friendship |
| B．generosity and sharing |
| C．your ideas and feelings |
| D．your clothes |
| A．How to Be a Friend |
| B．Honesty Is the Best Policy |
| C．A Friend in Need Is a Friend Indeed |
| D．Three Important Points in Life |
9 . We can achieve knowledge either actively or passively（被动地）. We achieve it actively by direct experience, by testing and proving an idea, or by reasoning．
We achieve knowledge passively by being told by someone else．Most of the learning that takes place in the classroom and the kind that happens when we watch TV or read newspapers or magazines is passive. Conditioned as we are to passive learning, it’s not surprising that we depend on it in our everyday communication with friends and co-workers．
Unfortunately, passive learning has a serious problem．It makes us tend to accept what we are told even when it is little more than hearsay and rumor（谣言）．
Did you ever play the game Rumor? It begins when one person writes down a message but doesn’t show it to anyone．Then the person whispers it, word for word, to another person．That person, in turn, whispers it to still another, and so on, through all the people playing the game．The last person writes down the message word for word as he or she hears it．Then the two written statements are compared．Typically, the original message has changed．
That’s what happens in daily life．The simple fact that people repeat a story in their own words changes the story．Then, too, most people listen imperfectly．And many enjoy adding their own creative touch to a story, trying to improve on it, stamping（打上标记）it with their own personal style．Yet those who hear it think they know．
This process is also found among scholars and authors: A statement of opinion by one writer may be restated as a fact by another, who may in turn be quoted by yet another; and this process may continue, unless it occurs to someone to question the facts on which the original writer based his opinion or to challenge the interpretation he placed upon those facts．
1. According to the passage, passive learning may occur in _______．| A．doing a medical experiment | B．solving a math problem |
| C．visiting an exhibition | D．doing scientific reasoning |
| A．active learning | B．knowledge |
| C．communication | D．passive learning |
| A．a message may be changed when being passed on |
| B．a message should be delivered in different ways |
| C．people may have problems with their sense of hearing |
| D．people tend not to believe in what they know as rumor |
| A．Active learning is less important． |
| B．Passive learning may not be reliable． |
| C．Active learning occurs more frequently． |
| D．Passive learning is not found among scholars． |
I believe a common(普遍的) problem with Chinese students’ learning English is that they were not taught to think in English. They have an idea spoken in English and want to translate the idea into Chinese, then they think in Chinese of the proper reply and translate it into English. After a long period of speaking the language, one begins to think in the foreign language naturally. You will learn faster if you begin to think in English at the very beginning of your study. Many students ask me: What can I do to improve my spoken English?
My reply is: The more English you speak, the better English you will speak. There are many things you can do to improve your spoken English. Of course, the best way is to live where English is spoken as a language of the country.
1. The cries of American and Chinese babies are _______.
| A．different | B．the same |
| C．not like each other | D．like each other |
| A．some teachers didn’t teach students to think in English |
| B．teachers never gave the students the way of learning English |
| C．students didn’t remember the way teachers taught them |
| D．teachers didn’t want their students to think in English |
| A．Chinese students | B．English students |
| C．Chinese teachers | D．English teachers |
| A．You must think in English all the time. |
| B．You should always translate English into Chinese. |
| C．After speaking English for a long time, you may probably think in English naturally(自然地). |
| D．The best way of learning English is to live in America. |
