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阅读下列材料，从每题所给的四个选项（A、B、C和D）中，选出最佳选项。 A Until I was twelve years old, I thought everyone in the world
knew about the grinnies, if I thought about the term at all — which
is unlikely. After all, everyone in my family used the word quite
naturally, and we understood each other. So far as I knew, it was a
word like any other word My last report card had said that I was a “C” student in English, and my parents, both teachers, decided that no child of theirs would be just an average student of anything. So nightly I spelled words aloud and answered questions about the fine points of grammar. I wrote and rewrote and rewrote every composition until I convinced my mother that I could make no more improvements. And the hard work paid off. One day the teacher returned compositions, and there it was — a big fat, bright red “A” on the top of my paper. Naturally, I was delighted, but I didn’t know I was attracting attention until the teacher spoke sharply, “Helen, what are you doing?” Called suddenly out of my happy thoughts, I said “Oh, I’ve got the grinnies!” The teacher and my classmates burst into laughter, and then I understood that grinnies were used inside my family. Other people were not so lucky. And it is really lucky to have the grinnies, an uncontrollable, natural state of great pleasure. Grinnies are shown on the outside by sparkling eyes and a wide, wide smile — not just any smile, but one that shows the teeth and stretches the mouth to its limits. A person experiencing the grinnies appears to be all mouth. On the inside grinnies are characterized by a feeling of joyful anxiety. Grinnies usually last just a few seconds, but they can come and go. Sometimes, when life seems just perfect, I have occasional attacks of the grinnies for a whole day. The term originated in my mother’s family. Her younger sister, Rose, who had deep dimples (酒窝), often expressed her pleasure with such a grin that the dimples appeared to become permanent. When Rose was about four, she started explaining her funny look by saying, “I have the grinnies”. The term caught on, and it has been an important word in our family now for two generations. The occasion doesn’t matter. Anything can bring on the grinnies — just so long as one feels great delight. When my brother finally rode his bicycle — without training wheels — from our house to the corner and back, he came home with the grinnies. When I was little, my mother’s announcement that we would have homemade ice cream for dessert always gave me the grinnies. My father had the grinnies when I was chosen to make a speech at the end-of-school-year ceremony. Grinnies can be brought on by a good meal, a sense of pride, a new friend, a telephone call from someone special, an achievement. Or sometimes one gets the grinnies for no reason at all: just a sudden sense of happiness can bring on a case. Whatever brings them on, an attack of the grinnies is among life’s greatest pleasures. In fact, now that I look back on the experience, I feel sorry for my seventh-grade teacher. I think it’s a pity that she didn’t know the word grinnies. It’s such a useful term for saying, “I’m really, really pleased!” 1. After the writer was twelve years old, she ______. A. thought everyone knew the meaning of “grinnies” B. equaled “grinnies” to bath or chocolate in meaning C. got to know “grinnies” was used only inside her family D. discovered the word “grinnies” through her mother 2. When her English teacher called her name, the writer was ______. A. looking at the big “A” on the top of her paper B. listening to her English teacher attentively C. too happy to notice what’s happening around her D. busy rewriting and improving her compositions 3. According to the writer, the word “grinnies” originates from______. A. her
mother C. her
brother 4. The writer feels sorry for her seventh-grade teacher because the teacher______. A. has no pity on her students B. should not have laughed at her C. doesn’t have any luck to meet her parent D. has no idea of what “grinnies” is 5. What method does the writer use to explain “grinnies”? A. Cause and
effect. C. Comparison and
contrast. B Below is a page from The World Almanac（年鉴）and Book of Facts 2008. 6. Which park has 365 miles of explored underground passages?
7. In which year was Channel Islands first authorized as a protection site for sea lions, sea birds and unique plants?
8. The world’s tallest trees are found in _______.
9. In 1917, the national park Denali was named as _______.
C Bonus（奖金） culture has become the subject of many studies nowadays. Many people have been angered by the way some bankers and high officials seem to have been rewarded for failure. Others find the idea of offering many-million-dollar bonuses morally disgusting. But few have asked whether performance-related bonuses really do improve performance. The answer seems so obvious that even to ask the question can appear ridiculous. Indeed, in spite of all the complaints about them, financial encouragements continue to be introduced in more and more areas, from healthcare and public services to teaching and universities. So it may come as a shock to many to learn that paying for results can actually make people perform badly in many circumstances, and that the more you pay, the worse they perform. No one is arguing that bonuses can help companies and institutions attract and keep the best staff. Nor does anyone argue against the idea that you can encourage people to do specific tasks by linking payments to those tasks. Rather, the point is about how to get the best out of people. Do employees really perform better if you promise to pay them more for getting results? There are some obvious reasons why such payments can fail. It has been argued, for instance, that cash bonuses contributed to the financial crash, because traders had little enthusiasm to make sure that their companies enjoyed long-term survival. Most bonus projects are poorly designed, says Professor Malcolm Higgs. He thinks the reason is that organisations try to keep bonus arrangements simple. Nevertheless, he thinks bonus projects can work as long as they link the interests of individual employees with the long-term goals of a business. Bonuses can also encourage cheating. “Once you start making people’s rewards dependent on outcomes rather than behaviours, the evidence is people will do whatever they can to get those outcomes,” says Professor Edward Deci. “In many cases the high officials simply lied and cheated to make the stock (股票) price go up so they got huge bonuses.” But the work of Deci and others suggests the problem with bonuses runs far deeper than poor design or cheating. In 1971, he asked students to solve puzzles, with some receiving cash prizes for doing well and others getting nothing. Deci found those offered cash were less likely to keep working on puzzles after they had done enough to get paid. These studies suggest that offering rewards can stop people doing things for the pure joy of it. This was the basis for a series of books by Kohn in which he argues that rewarding children, students and workers with grades, scholarships and other “bribes” (贿赂) leads to low-quality work in the long run. Those who believe in the power of bonuses fail to distinguish between inner drive and outside pressure — wanting to do something because you like it for itself in contrast to doing something because you want the reward, Kohn says. “It’s not just that these two are different, it’s often that the more you reward people for doing something, the more their inner drive tends to decline.” A “do this and get that” approach might improve performance in the short term, but over longer periods it will always fail, Kohn says. People who receive bonus will naturally play safe, become less creative, cooperate less and feel less valued, he adds. What’s more, the studies also suggest that offering rewards can also stop people taking responsibility. 10. The effect of performance-related bonuses has not been well studied because people _______. A. take the function of bonuses for granted B. see that bonus offering is done everywhere C. think financial encouragement is disgusting D. are shocked by the practice of rewarding for failures 11. According to Malcolm Higgs, designs that _________ are the good ones. A. drive people to finish short-term tasks B. help to attract and keep good employees C. link financial rewards with the quality of the outcomes D. connect individual interests with long-term business goals 12. If a person plays safe to get a bonus, he is probably being ________. A. more enthusiastic C. less
daring 13. Which of the following do you think the author would most probably agree with? A. Companies should make their bonus projects simple. B. The benefit of bonus helps to get the best out of people. C. The biggest problem with bonus is it creates cheating. D. Bonus offering can stop people doing things for pure joy. 14. Which do you think is the best title of the passage? A. What Is
Bonus?
C. D Which is sillier: denying we ever went to the moon or trying to convince the true nonbelievers? Once upon a time – July 20, 1969, to be specific – two men got out of their little spaceship and wandered around on the moon for a while. Ten more men walked on the moon over the next three and a half years. The end. Unfortunately, not quite. A fair number of Americans think that this whole business of moon landings really is a fairy tale. They believe that the landings were a big hoax (骗局) staged in the Mojave Desert, to convince everyone that U.S. technology was the “bestest” in the whole wide world. However, last fall NASA considered spending $15,000 on a public-relations campaign to convince the unimpressed that Americans had in fact gone to the moon. That idea was mostly a reaction to a Fox television program, first aired in February 2001, that claimed to expose the hoax. The show’s creator is a publicity hound (猎狗) who has lived up to the name in more ways than one by hounding Buzz Aldrin, the second man on the moon. Mr. X (as I will call him, thereby denying him the joyous sight of his name in print) recently followed Buzz Aldrin around and called him “a thief, liar and coward” until the 72-year-old astronaut finally lost it and hit the 37-year-old Mr. X in the face. Anyway, NASA’s publicity campaign began to slow down. The nonbelievers took the campaign as NASA’s effort to hide something while the believers said that $15,000 to convince people that the world was round — I mean, that we had gone to the moon — was simply a waste of money. (Actually, the $15,000 was supposed to pay for an article by James E. Oberg, an astronomy writer who, with Aldrin, has contributed to Scientific American.) If NASA’s not paying Oberg, perhaps it could put the money to good use by hiring two big guys to drag Neil Armstrong out of the house. Armstrong is an extremely private man, but he is also the first man on the moon, so maybe he has a duty to be a bit more outspoken about the experience. Or NASA could just buy Aldrin a commemorate plaque (纪念匾) for his recent touch on the face of Mr. X. 15. We can learn from Paragraphs 2 and 3 that some Americans believe _______. 16. According to the writer, which of the following is to blame for the story about the hoax? C. Buzz Aldrin. 17. According to the writer, Mr. X _______. 18. The believers think that NASA’s publicity campaign is ________. 19. What is implied in the last paragraph? 20. The tone of the article is _______. 1.
C 11. D 16. B |
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