1 . Wearing ties (领带) was originally the mark of Britain’s most powerful classes. That made the tie itself a symbol of power and respect. And this led the tie to be adopted by a much larger tribe (群体) — the business tribe.
You cannot wear a tie if you work with machinery. So wearing a tie became a sign that you were a man who used his brain to make a living, rather than his hands. It showed you were serious. It showed you were a professional. It meant that everyone who wanted a job in business had to wear one. It was just impossible to take seriously a man who didn’t wear a piece of coloured silk around his neck. This is how millions of people came to be wearing ties across the world. They are part of the uniform of business.
“Ties offer a point of difference,” says John Milne, head of the British Guide of Tie Makers. “They give a chance to say something about their owner’s personality.”
So if you happen to meet a man with a very brightly coloured tie, there’s a good chance that he is the office joker. There’s also a good chance that he will be wearing brightly coloured socks.
Is there a future for ties? The signs are not promising. Tie wearing seems to be rare among the new breed of entrepreneurs(企业家) in the Internet and new technology industries. Many political leaders now go without ties. This shows they are men of the people — but not the people wearing ties.
Up until around 1960, it was common for men across the Western world to wear hats as part of their business uniform. That changed with the election of John F. Kennedy to the presidency of the United States. Kennedy never wore a hat — in fact his nickname was “hatless Jack”. Seeing that the most powerful man in the world did not have to wear a hat, millions of other men decided that they did not have to either. Hats simply vanished across the Western world. Perhaps “tieless Tony” will have the same effect on ties as “hatless Jack”.
1. In Britain, ties were first used as a sign to show a person’s ________.| A．personality | B．social position | C．wearing style | D．favourite hobby |
| A．it showed you used your brain | B．it showed you got a good salary |
| C．it showed you were an employer | D．it showed you were well-trained |
| A．Blair is the best leader in the world | B．Kennedy is the best leader in the world |
| C．more people will go to work without ties | D．people will wear hats instead of ties |
| A．disappeared | B．washed | C．expanded | D．sold |
2 . Scientists have solved a puzzle about modern humans, after research showed that a famous skull of a human ancestor found in South Africa is a million years older than experts thought. This discovery has changed what we know of human history.
The skull, which scientists have named “Mrs Ples”, is from an ape-like human relative from a species called Australopithecus africanus (南方古猿). It was found near Johannesburg in 1947 and, based on evidence from its surroundings, was thought to be between 2. 1 and 2. 6 million years old. This puzzled scientists, because although Mrs Ples looks like a possible early ancestor of early humans, the first true humans had already evolved by the time she apparently lived. For this reason, scientists had decided that Australopithecus afarensis, a similar species from East Africa that lived about 3.5 million years ago, was our most likely ancestor instead.
To get a more accurate age for Mrs Ples, a team led by Professor Darryl Granger of Purdue University in Indiana, US, used a new method to date the sandy rocks where the skull lay. They measured the amount of certain chemicals in rocks, which form at a steady rate when they are exposed to cosmic rays (宇宙射线) on Earth’s surface. Once rocks are buried, these chemicals stop forming and slowly disappear;the surviving amount reveals how much time has passed since the rock (or bones) were on the surface.
The new study shows that Mrs Ples and other australopithecine bones nearby are between 3.4 and 3.7 million years old. This means they lived at the same time as their East African relatives, so that either group could have given rise to modern humans. However, team member Dr Laurent Bruxelles pointed out that over millions of years, at only 2,500 miles away, these groups had plenty of time to travel and to breed with each other. In other words, the groups could quite easily have met, had children together and both been part of the history of modern humans.
1. What can we learn about Mrs Ples from the first two paragraphs?| A．It is a skull found in East Africa. |
| B．It is the most possible ancestor of humans. |
| C．It is a million years older than scientists expected. |
| D．It is proved to live between 2.1 and 2.6 million years ago. |
| A．By studying the effect of cosmic rays. |
| B．By calculating the forming rate of chemicals. |
| C．By locating the sandy rocks where the skull lay. |
| D．By measuring the surviving amount of chemicals. |
| A．Modern humans came into being in East Africa. |
| B．Mrs Ples travelled and had children with East African relatives. |
| C．The history of modern humans might begin 3.5 million years ago. |
| D．Ape-like species from Africa could have interacted with each other. |
| A．Historical Puzzle Unsolved | B．Ancestor Mystery Solved |
| C．Mrs Ples: The Earliest Human Being | D．Mrs Ples: A Famous Skull |
3 . A fresh and gentle wind on your face, soft sand under your feet and blue waters as far as the eye can see. Is there any other Olympic sport that is played in such pleasant conditions as beach volleyball？
“I’ve gone to a lot of beautiful places, and met a lot of beautiful people. That wouldn’t have happened if I had been playing another sport.” said Randy Stoklos, America’s most famous beach volleyball player.
The sport began as a four-a-side game on beaches in Southern California in the 1920s. The first recorded two-man game took place there in 1930, and the first tournament (锦标赛) was held in Los Angeles 18 years later. The winners were awarded a case of Pepsi. In the 1950s, women started playing and the sport soon spread to Europe and South America. Yet at that time, beach volleyball was more an entertainment show than a sport, with beauty contests included. The Association of Volleyball Professionals was founded in 1983 and beach volleyball developed into a fast, athletic sport. Its world-wide popularity won beach volleyball a place at the 1996 Olympics in Atalanta, where 24 male teams and 16 female teams took part. At present, the US and Brazil are the best in the world at beach volleyball.
The game came to China in the early 1990s and there have been national tournaments since 1994. It became an official event at the Eighth National Games in 1997. China’s You Wenhui and Wang Lu finished ninth in the women’s beach volleyball world championships in Brazil.
1. The passage is mainly about ______.| A．the history of beach volleyball |
| B．how to play beach volleyball |
| C．the importance of beach volleyball |
| D．women’s beach volleyball in China |
| A．Beach volleyball was first played like other Olympic: sports. |
| B．Beach volleyball has always been an entertainment show rather than a sport. |
| C．Beach volleyball began on beaches in Souther California. |
| D．Women started playing beach volleyball in South America in 1945. |
| A．In 1948, | B．In 1996. | C．In 1950. | D．In 1997. |
| A．in 1996, beach volleyball became an official event in China |
| B．China’s beach volleyball team is the best in the world |
| C．China’s beach volleyball players won the first place in Brazil |
| D．beach volleyball came to China in the early 1990s |
As a famous productive poet, Lu You from the Song Dynasty wrote more than 20,000 poems in his lifetime. The reason
However, Lu You was weak when he was a child. Lu You joined the military as
During his later years, Lu You started the body building
Chosho can relax your body and put you in a good mood.
5 . The name England comes from the words “Angle land”. The Angles were people who came from northern Germany in the 5th and 6th centuries, after the Romans had left. The French name for England is Angleterre, which also means “Angle land”. There were also invasions (侵略) of southern England by Saxons and Jutes (people from another part of northern Germany). English people are sometimes called Anglo－Saxons. The Celts who used to live in this area were forced to move back into Scotland, Ireland, Cornwall and into Western France (the area known as Brittany).
England at first became a series of kingdoms, the strongest of which was Wessex (the name comes from West－Saxon). The names of many of the areas in England come from this period—for example, the name Sussex comes from South－Saxon, Essex from East－Saxon, and East Anglia from East－Angle. The Vikings then came from Denmark, and later the Normans invaded from France. Eventually England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland were united, forming the United Kingdom.
The English language is the main language spoken throughout England, although there are many different accents. It can be difficult to know how to spell or to pronounce some English words, because the language has been influenced by Latin and Greek (languages used at the time of the Romans, and used in religion and education until recent times), German (the language of the Angles, Saxons and Jutes), French(the language of the Normans), Gaelic/Scots (Celtic languages) and Danish (the language of the Vikings).
There are now many people throughout the United Kingdom who speak a foreign language either as their first or second language, mainly due to immigration (移民) from Europe or the Commonwealth (countries which used to be part of the British Empire).
1. What's the first paragraph mainly about?| A．The origin of the name England. |
| B．The Celts used to live in England but left for some reason. |
| C．Southern England once was attacked by Saxons and Jutes. |
| D．Angles and Saxons came from different parts of northern Germany. |
| A．Sussex | B．Wessex |
| C．Essex | D．East Anglia |
| A．English words are hard to spell and to pronounce. |
| B．England had been invaded by most of the countries of Europe. |
| C．The English language was influenced by several foreign languages. |
| D．It's hard for people who have different English accents to communicate. |
| A．Because they are required to learn a foreign language at school. |
| B．Because they plan to live outside the UK in the future. |
| C．Because they have moved from other countries. |
| D．Because they have worked in other countries. |
6 . The Double Seventh Festival, also known as the Qixi Festival, is a traditional Chinese festival. Here is a beautiful story
Long，long ago, there was a young man named Niulang(Cowherd), One day, he
| A．through | B．behind | C．with | D．after |
| A．met | B．told | C．thanked | D．missed |
| A．boring | B．interesting | C．same | D．different |
| A．looked forward to | B．parted with | C．turned down | D．fell in love with |
| A．knew | B．lived | C．stayed | D．gave |
| A．promised | B．waited | C．ordered | D．helped |
| A．yet | B．ever | C．quite . | D．still |
| A．angry | B．sorry | C．excited | D．satisfied |
| A．friends | B．lovers . | C．parents | D．children |
| A．back | B．away | C．halfway | D．apart |
| A．surprised | B．changed | C．touched | D．protected |
| A．so | B．but | C．though | D．because |
| A．him | B．her | C．us | D．them |
| A．how | B．when | C．what | D．where |
| A．day | B．way | C．lesson | D．habit |
7 . Genghis Khan（成吉思汗）remains to this day one of the most successful men to have walked the Earth. Rising from an outcast to be the ruler of the largest land empire to have ever existed, he introduced an alphabet and an official form of money, united a kingdom of tribes at war with each other, and conquered most of the known world. His empire spread from Poland to Japan. It is estimated that one in every 200 men on the planet today is related to Genghis Khan. But there are no accounts of the events that surrounded his death and burial; only a mystery focused around an area known as the Forbidden Zone.
From the time of the Khan's death in 1227 up until 1991 the Forbidden Zone was as off-limits as any place in the world. Shortly after he died, the surviving Mongol leaders ordered a group of 50 fierce families, known as the Uryangqai of the Woods, to occupy this land and kill anyone who entered without permission.
They made exceptions only for the funeral processions（队伍）of the Khan's direct descendants, who were also allowed to be buried there. This extreme degree of secrecy has led many to the conclusion that the body of Genghis Khan himself lies in a tomb somewhere in this zone, along with some of the treasures of an empire vaster than those of Napoleon and Alexander the Great combined. When the U.S.S. R.（前苏联）took over Mongolia in 1924; they killed all the Uryangqai of the Woods just as they tried to erase the memory of the great Khan. The Forbidden Zone -still remained off-limits, however. It wasn't until the fall of the U.S.S.R. in 1991 that entering the Forbidden Zone became possible for scientists and historians. Even today, eight centuries after it quietly rested, the Forbidden Zone has been visited by very few.
1. Which of the following statements about Genghis Khan is TRUE?| A．He was the ruler of the largest empire in history. |
| B．He united and occupied many parts of the world. |
| C．An exact number of 200 people are related to him today. |
| D．He was buried in what is known as the Forbidden Zone. |
| A．They buried Genghis Khan's body in secret. |
| B．They were ordered to occupy the Forbidden Zone. |
| C．They were killed because they hated Genghis Khan. |
| D．They forbade everyone from entering the Forbidden Zone. |
| A．Who visited the Forbidden Zone. |
| B．When the Forbidden Zone was discovered. |
| C．Why the U.S.S.R. killed all the Uryangqai. |
| D．How the great Khan conquered the known world. |
| A．Genghis Khan, a Great Emperor |
| B．The Forbidden Zone, a Remaining Mystery |
| C．The Discovery of Genghis Khan's Tomb |
| D．The Bravery of the Uryangqai of the Woods |
Wood-block printing first appeared in the early Tang period. During the Song dynasty the technique of block printing was very advanced. Books were
However block printing
Then ink was applied to them and
The technique of printing was gradually known to other Asian countries and Europe. The great influence printing had
Some time after 10,000 BC, people made the first real attempt to control the world they lived
Farming produced more food per person
By about 6000 BC，people
This style of farming lasted for quite a long time. Then，with
| 历史 | 有两千多年的历史 |
| 特点 | 世界上最长的城墙，长6000多千米 建筑材料主要为石头、砖头，修建工作都是人工进行 主要用于防御外来入侵者，沿墙每隔几百米就有烽火台（watchtower） |
| 现状 | 世界著名旅游景点之一，每年吸引许多外国游客到长城观光旅游 |
注意：1. 词数100左右；
2. 可适当增加细节，以使行文连贯。
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