刘桂妍公益空中英语课堂之阅读理解第一讲

Ally 刘桂妍公益空中英语课堂之阅读理解第一讲

Passage1(课前练习）

MONTREAL (Reuters) – Crossing the US-Canada border(边界) to go to church on a Sunday cost a US citizen ＄10,000 for breaking Washington’s strict new security rules. The expensive trip to church was a surprise for Richard Albert, who lives right on the Canadian border.

Like the other half-dozen people of Township 15, crossing the border is a daily occurrence for Albert. The nearby Que bec village of St. Pamphile is where they shop, eat and go to church. There are many such situations in these areas along the largely unguarded 5,530-mile border between Canada and the US---which in some cases actually runs down the middle of streets or through buildings. As a result, Albert says he did not expect any problems three weeks ago when he returned home to the US after attending church in Canada as usual. The US customs(海关) station in this area is closed on Sundays, so he just drove around the locked gate, as he had done every weekend since the gate appeared last May, following a tightening of border security(安全).

Two days later, Albert was told to go to the customs office, where an officer told him he had been caught on camera crossing the border illegally. Ottawa has given out special passes to some 300 US citizens in that area so they can enter the country when Canadian customs stations are closed, but the US stopped a similar program last May. That forces the people to a 200-mile detour along hilly roads to get home through another border checkpoint. Albert has requested that the customs office change their decisions on the fine, but he has not attended a Sunday church since. ―I feel like I’m living in a prison,‖ he said.

1. Albert was fined because he ___________________ .

A. broke the American security rules

B. failed to obey traffic rules

C. worked in St. Pamphile without a pass

D. damaged the gate of the customs office

2. The underlined word ―detour‖ mea ns ___________________ .

A. a drive through the town

B. a race across the fields

C. a journey in the mountain area

D. a roundabout way of traveling

3. What would be the best title for the text?

A. A Cross-country Trip

B. A Special Border Pass

C. An Expensive Church Visit

D. An Unguarded Border

Passage 2（课前练习）

People from East Asia tend to have more difficulty than those from Europe in distinguishing facial expressions — and a new report published online in Current Biology explains why.

Rachael Jack, University of Glasgow researcher, said that rather than scanning evenly(均匀的) across a face as Westerners do, Easterners fix their attention on the eyes.

"We show that Easterners and Westerners look at different face features to read facial expressions," Jack said. "Westerners look at the eyes and the mouth in equal measure, whereas Easterners favor the eyes and neglect (忽略) the mouth."

According to Jack and her colleagues, the discovery shows that human communication of emotion is more complex than previously believed. As a result, facial expressions that had been considered universally

recognizable cannot be used to reliably convey emotion in cross-cultural situations.

The researchers studied cultural differences in the recognition of facial expressions by recording the eye movements of 13 Western Caucasian and 13 East Asian people while they observed pictures of expressive faces and put them into categories: happy, sad, surprised, fearful, disgusted, angry, or neutral. They compared how accurately participants read those facial expressions using their particular eye movement strategies.

It turned out that Easterners focused much greater attention on the eyes and made significantly more errors than Westerners did. "The cultural difference in eye movements that they show is probably a reflection of cultural difference in facial expressions," Jack said. "Our data suggest that whereas Westerners use the whole face to convey emotion, Easterners use the eyes more and mouth less."

In short, the data show that facial expressions are not universal signals of human emotion. From here on, examining how cultural factors have diversified these basic social skills will help our understanding of human emotion. Otherwise, when it comes to communicating emotions across cultures, Easterners and Westerners will find themselves lost in translation.

1. The discovery shows that Westerners .

A. pay equal attention to the eyes and the mouth

B. consider facial expressions universally reliable

C. observe the eyes and the mouth in different ways

D. have more difficulty in recognizing facial expressions

2. What does the underlined word "they" in Paragraph 6 refer to?

A. The researchers of the study.

B. The participants in the study.

C. The errors made during the study.

D. The data collected from the study

3. In comparison with Westerners, Easterners are likely to _____________ .

A. do translation more successfully

B. examine the eyes more attentively

C. study the mouth more frequently

D. read facial expressions more corret

4. What can be the best title for the passage?

A. The Eye as the Window to the Soul

B. Effective Methods to Develop Social Skills

C. Cultural Differences in Reading Emotions

D. How to Increase Cross-cultural Understanding

Passage 3 (课前练习)

In Brazil, soccer is considered an art form. So it is only fitting that the sport Brazilians call ―the beautiful game‖ gets its own museum.

This is the land that produced football greats such as Garrincha, Zico, Romario, Ronaldo, Kaka, and the most famous of all, Pele. It is the only country to have qualified for every World Cup, and the only one to win it five times.

But until now, Brazil has never had a truly national museum honoring the sport that stands for Brazilian culture. That changed last month when the Museu do Futebol, or Football Museum, opened at Pacaembu Stadium in Sao Paulo.

Upon entering the museum, visitors are greeted in Portuguese, Spanish and English by a life-size image

of Pele, who is so respected in Brazil that he is known as "The King."

"The Louvre has the Mona Lisa. We have our own piece of art -- Pele," said Hugo Sukman of the Roberto Marinho Foundation, which helped fund the construction of the museum.

In many ways, the museum is a shrine (圣祠)to Pele.

One of its most impressive displays is a temporary exhibit with 140 items from Pele's personal collection, including the wooden shoeshine box he used as a boy to earn spare change and the ball from his 1,000th goal in 1969.

The museum traces football's transformation from a sport for the noble to the passion of the 190 million common people. From the jungles of the Amazon to the slums(贫民窟) of cities like Rio de Janeiro and Recife, soccer unites Brazilians from all walks of life.

"In general, a museum about football is also a museum about the history of Brazil and Brazilian culture," said Leonel Kaz, the museum's curator.

1.When visiting the museum, we can enjoy the displays except_______

A. a life-size image of Pele

B. the Mona Lisa

C. a wooden shoeshine box of Pele’s

D. the ball symbolizing Pele’s 1000th goal

2.What can we know about the museum according to the passage?

A. People visiting the museum could be greeted just in Spanish and English.

B. The building of the museum shows the popularity of the sport in Brazil.

C. The museum is actually a shrine to Pele.

D. Until now, Brazil has never had a truly national museum honoring the sport that represents

Brazilian culture.

3. At Pacaembu Stadium in Sao Paulo，the Museu do Futebol opened because________.

A. in the Brazilians’ opinion, as an art form, soccer represents their culture and should be worth the name

B. Brazil is the only country to have qualified for every World Cup.

C. many famous football stars were born in Brazil, including Pele.

D. people in Brazil want to honor Pele.

4. The author mainly wants to tell us that________.

A. Brazil is a multiracial country full of passion for football.

B. the history of Brazil and Brazilian culture can be known in the museum.

C. Brazil opened up its first football museum.

D. known as ―The King‖, Pele is thought highly of in Brazil.

Passage 4 （课后作业）

Coaches and parents need to stop pressuring their kids in sports. According to the Journal of the American Medical Association, over the past 30 years fractures（骨折）increased by 56 percent in girls and 32 percent in boys, mostly amongst kids in their pre-teens, due to overuse of the forearm. This shows that kids who get hurt always continue to play because of fear of their parents or coaches being disappointed or upset.

Parents and coaches obviously feel the need to push their children to do their best. But is that sometimes too much? A coach named Marilyn Enmark in Detroit says she recently was at an indoor game

where one of her players hit the side board and was holding his head. The father, who was a former soccer player himself, ran over to the boy and yelled at him for playing poorly, rather than asking how he was feeling. A week later, his mother called him over during the game and criticized his playing, as the boy started crying. Situations such as this one are not only happening in Detroit, but in towns and cities all over the country.

When a child gets pressured from an adult, whether it’s their parents or coaches, it can affect his or her confidence. They start feeling like they will never be good enough to satisfy their parents, and start actually believing they’re not good players. Between the ages 8 and 18, children rely on adults to tell them what’s right and wrong. But if all they’re getting is negative feedback, how do they know what they’re doing right? This can lead to fights between kids and parents, which can lead to family problems. If all parents want to talk about with their kids is the sports they’re playing, kids will just stop listening. Older kid s, usually above the age of 15, will turn to some drugs to step their game up, and satisfy their parents and coaches.

Everyone knows that if you want to get better at something, you have to practice, practice, and practice. But recently studies from the Center for Disease Control and Prevention show that too much training can lead to overuse injuries. Parents don’t realize when their kid’s bodies have had enough, so they keep pushing them. As a result, they continuously play even if they are hurt, and end up getting injuries that could have been prevented. In some cases, parents and coaches do in fact acknowledge their kids injuries, but then decide to do nothing about it. This is mostly because their kid is the ―star player‖ and the team ―can’t afford‖ to play without him or her. Children feel the need to keep playing while hurt, because they are afraid of disappointing their parents and coaches.

Sports are made so you can have fun, and this does not come from pressure.

1 . What’s the main idea of the pass age?

A. Coaches agree with the parents on how to train the good players.

B. Most players worry about making their parents disappointed.

C. Coaches and parents shouldn’t continue to put too much pressure on the players.

D. The team ―can’t afford‖ to play without the players.

2. What may the underlined word ―feedback‖ mean in Paragraph 3?

A. Unpleasant noise produced by electrical equipment.

B. Advice and criticism about how successful something is.

C. Return of part of the output of a system to its source.

D. Information about a product that a user gives back to its maker.

3. The increasing fractures mean that ______.

A. parents and coaches don’t care about children

B. children are often trained with injuries

C. children are eager to make achievements

D. the education system needs reforming

4. If you ask too much of your child, ______.

A. your child will become less self-confident

B. your child will have a bright future

C. your child will feel depressed

D. your child will ever rely on you

Passage 5 (课后作业）

A woman in the US is able to speak for the first time in 11 years after a pioneering voice box (喉) transplant（移植）.

Brenda Jensen said the operation was a great success which had saved her life. Thirteen days after the surgery she said her first words, ―Good morning, I want to go home.‖ It is the first time a voice box and windpipe (气管) have been transplanted at the same time and only the second time a voice box has ever been transplanted.

Ms. Jensen, 52, had been unable to speak on her own since her voice box was damaged during surgery in 1999. Since then, she has been unable to taste or smell food, could breathe only through a hole in her windpipe and could talk only with the help of an electronic voice box.

In October, surgeons at the University of California Davis Medical Centre removed the voice box and 6cm of the windpipe from a donor body. In an 18-hour operation, this was transplanted into Ms. Jensen's throat and the team connected it to her blood supply and nerves (神经）.

Professor Martin Birchall from University College London, who was part of the surgery team, said: ―We've learned that we can repai r nerves to make even very complex organs function again. It'll open the door to better facial transplants and will be extremely important as tissue engineering (组织工程学) develops. ‖

A voice box transplant might be life changing, but it is not life saving. Everyone who receives a transplant must take drugs to control the immune system (免疫系统）for the rest of their lives. These drugs can reduce life expectancy, so they are normally set aside for life saving procedures.

One of the reasons Ms. Jensen was a suitable person for this transplant was that she was already taking immune controlling drugs after a kidney-pancreas (胰腺) transplant four years ago. Professor Peter Belafsky, part of the surgical team, said, ―Brenda was an exceptional (例外) candidate for the transplant because she was highly motivated. Anyone who's met Brenda knows that she is a strong and determined person with a great outlook on life in spite of the many physical challenges she's faced over her lifetime.

1 . Ms. Jensen was a suitable person for this transplant because she was __________________.

A. strong-willed and prepared

B. experienced and brave

C. seriously ill and motivated

D. determined and realistic

2. Which of the following is the right time order of the event?

a. Ms. Jensen received a voice box transplant operation.

b. Ms. Jensen began to take immune controlling drugs.

c. Doctors removed the voice box from a donor body.

d. Ms. Jensen had a kidney-pancreas transplant operation.

A. acdb

B. dbca

C. bdca

D. cabd

3. Which is the best title for the passage?

A. Transplant Saves A Woman's Life

B. Overcoming Obstacles to Speak Again

C. First Words from New V oice Box

D. Courageous Woman Defeating Fears