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倒数第八周星期
A
The malls were filled with people seeking gifts for their loved ones. Some of the malls remained open around the clock, partly to satisfy our needs to buy gifts.
Behind the materialistic aspect of shopping for gifts lies the idea of caring, being attentive to the desires of special people in our lives. However, to use a well-worn play on words: it is our presence, not our presents, that truly counts. Many of us, unfortunately, can be so inattentive, even in the presence of our loved ones, that we might as well not be there at all.
Attention is one of the greatest gifts we can give each other. Companies around the globe spend billions every year on advertising to catch our attention for just a short moment at a time. Whole industries – media, entertainment, education – rely on the precious gift of our attention for their continued existence. A baby lacking attention for a long time is likely to he psychologically unhealthy.
In earlier times, both diet and attention could be left unregulated（没人管的）without major cause for concern. There were natural checks and balances: limited availability of food meant few got fat, for example. Similarly, in bygone times we might have spent a few hours communicating with the village storyteller, today, watching an entire TV series, while speaking to nobody, is common. In traditional societies, with smaller population, everyone would get a fair deal of attention. On many issues we might go to see Grandma or Grandpa; now we have Google and Wikipedia.
“She just wants attention.” people tend to think little of those doing things simply for attention. But the truth is that human beings need attention, and giving attention to each other is, to a large extent, what human civilization is based upon. This perhaps explains the runaway success（一举成功）of social networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook. While we use such sites for “micro blogging”, “idea voicing” and “status updates” – the reality is that we are often doing no more or less than fulfilling our basic human drive for attention exchange.
I friend you, you friend me, I retweet you, you retweet me. The charming case with which we can now get and give attention is why many people appear overly attached to their smartphones. It is also a vicious（恶性）circle. As ever more people are busy exchanging attention online, there is increasingly less attention to be paid in the real world, which forces more people to seek their attention exchange online, or else risk attentuion-starvation.
The very nature of attention exchange is being rapidly transformed, and there is a danger that some of us will develop unhealthy practices. Just as eating red meat every day is a bad idea, so it is with too much attention exchange. The biological consequences of our technological advancement in food production are highly visible; heart disease, diabetes and obesity. The consequences of our transformed attention exchanges will be psychological and social, and so may take longer to identify, but they will be equally damaging.
Face-to-face attention is becoming rarer, and therefore more valuable. In a sense it is priceless. And it is a gift that can be given all-year-round.
1．In the first two paragraphs the author
A．offers advice to attention givers B．analyses the present problems
C．states the necessity of presents D．puts forward his point of view
2．Attention exchange was not a major concern in traditional societies because of
A．limited availability of food B．natural checks and balances
C．a much smaller population D．the guidance from old people
3．People use social networking sistes such as Twitter and Facbook to
A．obtain information B．give attention to others
C．voice their opinions D．notice and get noticed
4．What can we infer from Paragraph 6-7?
A．More people will risk attention-starvation in future.
B．The nature of attention exchange is rarely changed.
C．Technological advancement contributes to all diseases.
D．Transformed attention exchanges do harm to society.
5．The writer’s purpose for writing the passage is to
A．advocate more focus on real life attention
B．analyze the necessity of attention giving
C．give practical tips on attention exchange
D．recommend some social networking sites
B
What is stroke? Stroke is a typical disease which occurs when a blood clot（凝块）blocks an artery（动脉） or a blood vessel（血管） breaks, interrupting blood flow to an area of the brain. When either of these things happens, brain cells begin to die and brain damage occurs. Abilities controlled by that area of the brain are lost such as speech, movement and memory. Some people recover completely from strokes, but more than 2/3 of survivors will have some type of disability.Anyone can have a stroke regardless of men and women. it is really imperative for us to know something about Stroke Risk Factors. Risk factors are some beyond our control such as over age 55, being male, being Chinese, or having a family history of stroke. Others are controllable. Stroke prevention guidelines were brought forth by Journal of the American Medical Association 1n 1999.These includes:
6．Paragraph 1 is meant to say
A．people can reduce the happening chances of storke
B．a stroke victim is bound to die or become disabled
C．middle-aged Chinese meales are sure to have storke
D．stroke is not as dangerous as most people may think
7．The underlined word “imperative” here means
A．wonderful B．necessary C．valuable D．supportive
8．From Item 5 we can infer that
A．both LDL and HDL are bad cholesterols in human body
B．human body does not need such a thing as cholesterol
C．high cholesterol can be controlled with diet and exercise
D．people without LDL will be healthier than those who have
9．What will contribute to the danger of a stroke?
A．Drinking some wine daily B．Walking 30 minutes a day
C．Cutting down on salt and fat D．Losing temper constantly
10．The best title for this passage is
A．What is Stroke?
B．Ten Causes of Stroke
C．Stroke and Health
D．How to Prevent Stroke
C
Have you ever wished for a thirty-hour day? Surely this extra time would relieve the tremendous pressure which we live. Our lives leave a trail of unfinished tasks. Unanswered letters, unvisited friends, unwritten articles, and unread books haunt quiet moments when we stop to evaluate. We desperately need relief.
But would a thirty-hour day really solve the problem? Wouldn't we soon be just as frustrated as we are now with our twenty-four allotment? A mother's work is never finished, and neither is that of any manager, student, teacher, minister, or anyone else we know. Nor will the passage of time help us catch up. Children grow in number and age to require more of our time. Greater experience brings more exacting assignments. So we find ourselves working more and enjoying it less. We are accuslomed to working without stop.
When we stop to evaluate, we realize that our dilemma goes deeper than shortage of time; it is basically the problem of priorities（优先顺序）.Actually hard work does not hurt us. We all know what it is to go full speed for long hours, totally involved in an important task. The resulting weariness is matched by a sense of achievement and joy. Not hard work, but doubt and misgiving (疑虑) produce anxiety as we review a month or year and become oppressed by the pile of unfinished tasks. We sense demands have driven us onto a reef of frustration. We confess, quite apart from our sins, “we have left undone those things, which we ought to have done; and we have done those things which we ought not to have done.” To do the urgent thing or to finisnh the important thing, is a sharp question.
Several years ago an experienced cotton-mill manager said to me, "Your greatest danger is letting the urgent things crowd out of the important." He didn't realized how hard his maxim hit. It often returns to haunt and rebuke
me by raising the critical problem of priorities.
We live in constant tension between the urgent and the important. The problem is that the important task rarely must be done today, or even this week. The urgent task calls for instant action — endless demands, pressure every hour and day.
A man's home is no longer his castle; it is no longer a place away from urgent tasks because the telephone breaches the walls with imperious（专横的） demands. The momentary appeal of these tasks seems irresistible and important, and they devour our energy. But in the light of time's perspective their deceptive prominence fades; with a sense of loss we recall the important tasks pushed aside. We realize we’ve become slaves to the "tyranny（暴政） of the urgent."
11．The reason why we sometimes wish to have a thirty-hour day is that we
A．have too much work to complete B．need more time to enjoy our lives
C．need longer hours to ease pressure D．are used to working without stop
2．From Paragraph 3, we find anxiety increases when we
A．stop to think about our dilemma B．go full speed working at our task
C．are doing meaningless things D．recall lots of unfinished work
3．The motto that hits the writer tells us
A．to finish the urgent and the important thing
B．to avoid the urgent pushing out the important
C．the urgent thing shouldn’t be done instantly
D．the important thing is different from the urgent
4．The writer presents the article to remind us that
A．the urgent is not always to come first
B．the problem of time shortage is tough
C．the important is not always depressing
D．the way to deal with the urgent is hard
D
Some people seem easy to understand：their character appears obvious on first meeting. Appearances, however, can be deceptive. For thirty years now I have been studying my fellowmen. I don’t know very much about them. I shrug my shoulders when people tell me that their first impressions of a person are always right. I think they must have small insight or great vanity. For my own part I find that the longer I know people, the more they puzzle me.
I read in this morning's paper that Edward Hyde Burton had died. He was a merchant and he had been in business in Japan for many years.Once he gave me a great surprise. Unless I had heard the story from his own lips, I’d never have velieved that he was capable of such an action. He was always neatly and quietly dressed in accordance with his age and position. He didn’t talk much, but what he said was sensible. Tou couldn’;t imagine he’d possible raise his voice in anger. Here was a man who attracted you because you felt in him a real love for his fellows. He’d tell with point a good and spicy story, and in his youth he’d been something of an athete. He was a rich man and he’d made every penny himself. I suppose one thing that made you like him was that he was so weak; he arounsed your instinets（本能）of protection. TYou felt he couldn’t bear to hurt a fly.
One afternoon Burton told me a “funny” story in a quiet, dry humour:
“There was a namesake（同名人）of mine, who was the best bridge player I ever met. He
seemed to
have a fantastic instinct about the cards. I used to play with him a lot.”
“He was handsome in a way with curly hair and pink-and- white cleeks. Women thought a lot of him. There was no harm in him, he was only wild. Pf course he drank too much. He won a good deal of my money by card-playing.”
“One day he came to me when he went broke. He came to see me in my office and asked me for a job. I asked him how old he was.
“’Thirty-five’, he said.”
"'And what have you been doing hitherto?' I asked him.
"'Well, nothing very much,' he said.
"'I'm afraid I can't do anything for you just yet,' I said. 'Come back and see me in another thirty-five years, and I'll see what I can do.'
"He didn't move. He went rather pale. He hesitated for a moment and then he told me that he had had bad luck at cards for some time. He hadn't been willing to stick to bridge, he'd been playing poker, and he'd got trimmed. He hadn't a penny. He'd pawned everything he had. He couldn't pay his hotel bill and they wouldn't give him any more credit. He was down and out. If he couldn't get something to do he'd have to commit suicide.
"I looked at him for a bit. I could see now that he was all to pieces. He'd been drinking more than usual and he looked fifty. The girls wouldn't have thought so much of him if they'd seen him then.
"I got some glimmering of what he was driving at. I've known too many men who were little tin gods at their university.
“Suddenly I had an idea.” Pausing in his story, Burton turned to me. “When I was young I swam over three miles round the beacon（灯塔）and landed at the river of Tarumi. It’s rather difficult on account of the currents round the beacon. Well, I told my young fellow about it and I said that if he’d do it I’d give him a job.
“I could see he was rather taken aback. He was not in good condition for sports. He looked at me for a moment and then he nodded.”
“I told him I’d drive round to the river at half past twelve and meet him.
"Done,"he said.
“I wished him good luck and he left me.I had a lot of work to do that morning and I only just managed to the creek at Tarumi at half past twelve.But I needn't have hurried;he never turned up
“Did he funk it at the last moment?” I asked.
“No,he didn't funk it. He started all right. But of course he'd ruined his constitution by drink. The currents round the beacon were more than he could manage. We didn't get the body for about three days
I didn't say anything for a moment or two.I was a trifle shocked.Then I asked.
“When you made him that offer of a job, did you know he'd be drowned?'
He looked at me with his kind blue eyes, smiling. "Well,I hadn't got a vacancy in my office at the moment.'
15．The author believes
A．some people are too easy to understand
B．appearance is just opposite to the quality
C．first impressions can be misleading
D．his fellowmen are not understandable
6．For some time, Edward Burton impressed the author most with his
A．age and position
B．wealth and ability
C．sensibility and humor D．kindness and weakness
7．The underlined words “he was all to picces” may mean
A．he was mad and wild B．he was completely down
C．he was sick and dirty D．he was totally drunk
8．We can infer from Burton’s story that his namesakes
A．never saw through his trick B．annoyed him by playing cards
C．could not do any job well D．intended to cheat him with a lie
9．We learned from the story that Edward Burton
A．knew the young man would kill himself
B．arranged the end of his namesake’s life
C．did much for the poor fellowman
D．killed his card-friend by mistake
0．Edward Burton could be described as a(n)
person.
A．innocent B．smart C．careless D．evil
