Musical instruments in China were
Bamboo instruments mainly refer to woodwind (木管乐器) such as Sheng, Dizi and Xiao. Zhong, Luo and Bo are good
Instruments,
Modern Chinese orchestras are organized along the same lines
A Polite Request
If you park your car in the wrong place,
3 . How similar are language and music?
Language is part of our daily lives, no matter where we live in the world.
Both language and music have a writing system.
In English we record language using the alphabet, which is a collection of letters. Similarly, we use notes (音符) to keep a record of music. Musicians read notes and create meaning in the form of music.
You can make a good guess at where someone is from by listening to the language he uses. In the same way, we know that styles of music are different around the world, giving us the opportunity to explore many different cultures through their music and providing us with music for every situation.
Both share emotion.
| A．Both are expressive. |
| B．Both vary with culture. |
| C．How do you know that I am angry? |
| D．We use language to express our thoughts. |
| E．Similarly, music is part of many people’s lives. |
| F．So just as you read English, you can read music. |
| G．In contrast, you probably also listen to sad music when you are feeling down. |
4 . Medha Pappula, an eighth-grader at Brambleton Middle School, is using her skill set to solve a problem — bullying. She recently earned an award from National Bullying Prevention Center (NBPC) for her anti-bullying (反霸凌) efforts in software development and animation (动画).
Pappula, 13, said she discovered that a classmate had experienced cyberbullying, which was painful for her to learn about. “Even though I didn’t experience it, I wouldn’t wish that on anyone, even my worst enemy,” Pappula said.
Then she developed a program that recognizes when digital and text-based messages include bullying language. The program takes a message, and then recognizes signs of bullying and gives a rating to the cyberbullying, the teen said. If the rating is high, she said, “the program can be used to carry out things like removing that message or reporting it.”
Pappula first designed and tested the program for Discord, a popular community-based messaging platform (平台), and said she plans to develop it for even bigger platforms like Facebook and Twitter.
In addition to this program, the NBPC awarded Pappula for a three-minute animated video about Unity Day, which she created and shared on YouTube last October. Unity Day, according to the video, was started by the NBPC in 2011 to raise bullying awareness among school-age children. Schools encourage their students to wear orange on Unity Day, as it is “a color that is connected with safety,” the website reads.
Pappula visited different websites to develop her animation skills several years ago. She spent more than a month creating her 2-D animated video using an animation software called Krita. The effort paid off, as nearly 6,000 people have already viewed the “Unity Day” video on YouTube. Along with being posted to the NBPC webpage, her animation was also shared by Cartoon Network. Moving forward, Pappula hopes to continue to work with the NBPC and to use her skills to lift those around her.
1. How did Pappula feel about bullying?| A．It upset her life a lot. |
| B．It could be stopped easily. |
| C．It happened online most often. |
| D．It shouldn’t happen to anyone. |
| A．By sending voice messages. |
| B．By removing useless messages. |
| C．By sending its users important reports. |
| D．By rating messages according to the language used. |
| A．She asked the NBPC for help. |
| B．She taught herself animation. |
| C．She learned from an expert. |
| D．She created Krita. |
| A．Honest. | B．kind. |
| C．Polite. | D．Proud. |
5 . While telling others your zodiac sign (星座), you are being evaluated (评估). Evaluations are being made about your luck, your personality, future development and how you will do in a given year. So what is the Chinese zodiac, exactly? It’s a 12-year cycle labeled (标记) with animals, starting with a Rat and ending with a Pig. For example, if you were born in 2004, you are a Monkey.
The Chinese believe some animals are luckier than the others, such as the Dragon. Unlike in Western tradition, the Chinese Dragon stands for power, strength and wealth. It’s everyone’s dream to have a Dragon baby. Ma Yun’s parents must have been very proud. And they are not the only ones. In 2012, the Year of the Dragon, the birthrate in China increased by about 5%. That means another one million more babies. With a traditional preference for baby boys, the boy-girl ratio that year was 120 to 100. When those Dragon boys grow up, they will face much more serious competition in love and job markets.
According to the BBC and Chinese government reports, January 2015 saw a peak of cesarean sections (剖腹产术高峰). Why? That was the last month for the Year of the Horse. It’s not because they like horses so much, it’s because they try to avoid having unlucky Goat babies.
Tiger is another unwelcome animal, because of its dangerous and unstable (不稳定的) personality. Many Chinese places saw a considerable decline of birthrate during those years.
Perhaps one should consider zodiac in a different way, as those Tiger and Goat babies will face much less competition. Maybe they are the lucky ones. I went through the Forbes top 300 richest people in the world, and it’s interesting to see the most unwelcome two animals, the Goat and Tiger, are at the top of the list, even higher than the Dragon. So maybe we should consider that it’s much better to have less competition.
1. What can we infer from Paragraph 2?| A．Dragon boys are much more competitive when growing up. |
| B．There were about one million dragon babies in 2012. |
| C．There were 20% more boys than girls born in 2012. |
| D．Ma Yun is proud that he is a Dragon. |
| A．People wanted to have Horse babies very much. |
| B．People considered Goat babies to be unlucky. |
| C．It’s the first month of the year. |
| D．People tried to avoid dangers. |
| A．Drop. | B．Need. |
| C．Increase. | D．Change. |
| A．They have fewer competitors. |
| B．They are difficult to get along with. |
| C．They will be more popular in job markets. |
| D．They will become richer than Dragon babies. |
A family dinner is an important tradition
Can’t they admit that the
Eating out is a good choice and it has nothing to do with loss of traditions. We still have the dinner with the same people, just in a different place. The occasion is more
In my opinion, what or where we eat on Spring Festival Eve really
7 . A thief dropped a winning lottery ticket (彩票) at the scene of his crime, but he has been given a lesson in
The robbery happened when Professor Sabbatucci was changing a tyre on a highway. Another motorist, who stopped “to
The next day, the professor saw the lottery
The professor received hundreds of
The robber gave back the
| A．friendship | B．honesty | C．bravery | D．adventure |
| A．held out | B．took out | C．made up | D．picked up |
| A．crime | B．lecture | C．money | D．evidence |
| A．explore | B．rest | C．watch | D．help |
| A．stolen | B．dropped | C．forgotten | D．damaged |
| A．results | B．story | C．loss | D．sales |
| A．presented | B．took | C．donated | D．shared |
| A．joking | B．saying | C．wondering | D．replying |
| A．number | B．case | C．win | D．receipt |
| A．notes | B．emails | C．letters | D．calls |
| A．trick | B．find | C．lead | D．draw |
| A．recognised | B．reminded | C．recorded | D．recovered |
| A．car | B．suitcase | C．package | D．check |
| A．explain | B．blame | C．believe | D．realise |
| A．deal | B．promise | C．payment | D．offer |
8 . Playing sports offers you more than just physical benefits (好处).
Making new friends.
Playing sports enables you to create friendships you otherwise might not have formed.
Understanding the value of health.
Taking part in sports improves your health in many ways.
Building team spirit.
Sports provide children with the important lesson of learning how to work in a team.
Playing sports requires a lot of time and energy. Some may think this would take students’ attention away from schoolwork. However, the opposite is true. Sports require memorization, repetition and learning — skills that are directly relevant (有关的) to schoolwork.
| A．Doing better in your studies. |
| B．Everyone has to work together to achieve the goal. |
| C．To be a good athlete, you must take care of yourself. |
| D．Sports can help you in your study and fit in with society as well. |
| E．Sports bring teens together from different schools and backgrounds. |
9 . There is a popular saying in the English language: “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me.” Well, that is not true. Unkind words, name-calling or even the so-called “the silent treatment” can hurt children as much as being physically hit, sometimes even more so. A recent study of middle school children showed that verbal (言语的) abuse by other children can harm, the development in the brain. The study was a project of researchers at Harvard Medical School in Massachusetts. Researcher Martin Teicher and his team studied young adults, aged 18 to 25. These young men and women had not ever been treated in a cruel or violent way by their parents. The researchers asked the young people to rate their childhood exposure to verbal abuse from both parents and other children. Then the researchers performed imaging tests on the brains of the subjects.
The images showed that the people who reported suffering verbal abuse from peers in middle school had underdeveloped connections between the left and right side of the brain. The two sides of the brain are connected by a large bundle of connecting fibers called the corpus callosum. This was the area that was underdeveloped.
The middle school years are a time when these brain connections are developing. So, unkind, hurtful comments from children or adults during this period have the greatest effect. The researchers tested the mental and emotional condition of all the young people in the study. The tests showed that this same group of people had higher levels of fear, depression, anger and drug abuse than others in the study.
The researchers published their findings online on the American Journal of Psychiatry's website.
Parents cannot control what other people say to their children, but they can prepare their children.
1. Why does the author use the popular saying at the beginning?| A．To show the power of words. |
| B．To introduce an opposite view. |
| C．To prove the author's argument. |
| D．To show ancient people's wisdom. |
| A．They were hurt by unkind words. |
| B．They performed poorly in imaging tests. |
| C．They had their brain slightly damaged. |
| D．They experienced no physical abuse at home. |
| A．Comments on the findings. |
| B．Approaches to further studies. |
| C．Suggestions to parents. |
| D．Different opinions on the matter. |
| A．Unkind words hurt the brain. |
| B．Verbal violence should be stopped. |
| C．The way we speak matters. |
| D．Words are worse than sticks and stones. |
10 . Surfing the Internet for fun will make you a better employee, according to an Australian study.
The University of Melbourne study shows that people who use the Internet for their own reasons at work are about 9 percent more productive (有效率的) than those who do not. Study author Brent Coker said “Surfing the Internet at times helps increase an employee’s attention.”
“People need to relax for a bit to get back their attention,” Coker said on the university’s website.” Having a short break, such as a quick surfing of the Internet, helps the mind to rest itself, leading to a higher total Internet attention for a day’s work, and as a result, increase productivity (生产效率),” he said.
According to the study of 300 workers, 70 percent of people who use the Internet at work surf the Internet for their own reasons during office hours. Among the most popular surfing activities are searching for information about products, reading online news, playing online games and watching videos.” Firms spend a lot of money on software to block their employees from watching video, using social networking sites or shopping online,” said Coker. “That’s not always a good idea.”
However, Coker said the study looked at people who surfed the Internet in moderation (适度), or were on the Internet for less than 20 percent of their total time in the office. “Those who spend too much time surfing the Internet will have a lower productivity than those without.” he said.
1. What does the University of Melbourne study mainly show?| A．People who surf the Internet are good employees. |
| B．Not everyone surfs the Internet for fun during office hours. |
| C．Surfing the Internet for fun during office hours increases productivity. |
| D．The Internet is becoming more and more important in people’s life. |
| A．the longer a person’s mind rests the better attention he will have. |
| B．surfing the Internet is the best way to increase productivity. |
| C．workers should have a long break during office hours |
| D．workers should let their minds rest now and then. |
| A．prevent | B．cycle | C．burst (爆裂) | D．breathe |
| A．People should spend as little time as possible surfing the Internet. |
| B．Those who never surf the Internet have the lowest productivity. |
| C．Most people don’t surf the internet in moderation during office hours. |
| D．Spending too much time surfing the Internet reduces productivity. |
