单项选择题

Passage Two
The faces of elderly, happily-married people sometimes resemble each other. Dr. Aiken studied a number of couples who had been married for at least twenty-five years. Each couple provided four photographs—one photo of each partner at the time of their marriage and another photo of each partner twenty-five or more years later. All background was cut from the photos to remove any clues. The photos were then displayed in groups: a random grouping of the persons at the time of their marriage and another random grouping of the same persons who took photographs later. Some testees were asked to pick out the partners. They failed totally with the first group. Their judgements were no better than chance. But with the photos taken twenty-five or more years after the marriage, the testees were quite successful with the most happily-married couples.
Dr. Aiken believes there are several reasons why couples grow alike. One reason has something to do with imitation. One person tends to copy or do the same as someone else without knowing it. He says human begins to imitate the expressions of the faces of their loved ones. “Another possible reason,” he says, “is the common experience of the couples.” There is a tendency for people who have the same life experience to change their faces in similar ways. For example, if a couple have suffered from a lot of sad experiences, their faces are likely to change in a similar way.

单项选择题

Passage One
Jack Billabong is a stockman. One Friday afternoon he was riding along the track towards the Henderson farm. He was looking for a prize bull which had escaped from the Borrogee paddock. He reached the hills and saw at once that he could not go further.
There had been a fire in the forest which had gone out. But the air was still full of smoke and fallen trees had blocked the track. Jack was just going to turn back when he saw something moving in the smoke. He waited. It was a girl on a horse, and she was riding towards him. “There’s a badly burnt man on the farm,” the girl shouted. “He saved my life. Please help me to save him.”
The girl was Cathy Henderson. She had been on horseback for two hours. She had to jump over fallen trees that were still burning. Her pony had fallen with her twice. She was thirsty and almost dead from want of sleep. But she rode back to the farm with Jack immediately.
Joe Brook was unconscious when they reached him. They lifted him onto Jack’s horse. The ride back to Borrogee was terrible. Cathy was so tired that Jack had to tie her to her pony. The pony was tired too, but its courage was astonishing. It followed Jack right to Borrogee Hospital. Nobody saw them arrive because it was night. “
I’ve never seen a horse like that pony,” Jack said. Cathy praised Jack Billabong, but she refused to say anything about the pony, “Joe will write about her in his story,” she said.
But she did say one thing: “If flame hadn’t returned to the farm that afternoon, Joe and I would have died.”

单项选择题

Passage Two
The faces of elderly, happily-married people sometimes resemble each other. Dr. Aiken studied a number of couples who had been married for at least twenty-five years. Each couple provided four photographs—one photo of each partner at the time of their marriage and another photo of each partner twenty-five or more years later. All background was cut from the photos to remove any clues. The photos were then displayed in groups: a random grouping of the persons at the time of their marriage and another random grouping of the same persons who took photographs later. Some testees were asked to pick out the partners. They failed totally with the first group. Their judgements were no better than chance. But with the photos taken twenty-five or more years after the marriage, the testees were quite successful with the most happily-married couples.
Dr. Aiken believes there are several reasons why couples grow alike. One reason has something to do with imitation. One person tends to copy or do the same as someone else without knowing it. He says human begins to imitate the expressions of the faces of their loved ones. “Another possible reason,” he says, “is the common experience of the couples.” There is a tendency for people who have the same life experience to change their faces in similar ways. For example, if a couple have suffered from a lot of sad experiences, their faces are likely to change in a similar way.

单项选择题

Passage Three
The three biggest lies in America are: (1) “The check is in the mail”, (2) “Of course I’ll respect you in the morning”, and (3) “It was a computer error.”
Of these three little white lies, the worst is the third. It’s the only one that can never be true. Today, if a bank statement cheats you out of $ 900 that way, you know what the clerk is sure to say,” It was a computer error.” Nonsense. The computer is reporting nothing more than what the clerk typed into it.
The most annoying case of all is when the computerized cashier in the grocery store shows that an item costs more than it actually does. If the innocent buyer points out the mistake, the checker, bagger, and manager all come together and offer the familiar explanation: “It was a compute error.”
It wasn’t, of course that computerized cashier is really nothing more than an electric event. The eye reads the Universal Product Code—chat bar of black and white lines in a corner of the package—and then checks the code against a price list stored in memory. If the price list is right, you’ll be charged accurately.
Grocery stores update the price list each day—that is, somebody sits at a keyboard and types in the prices. If the price they type in is too high, there are only two explanations: carelessness or dishonesty. But somehow “a computer error” is supposed to excuse everything.
One reason we let people hide behind a computer is the common misperception that huge, modern computers are electric brain with “artificial intelligence.” At some point there might be a machine with intelligence but none exists today. The smartest computer on Earth right now is no more intelligent than your average pe n. At this point in the development of computers, the only thing any machine can do is what a human has instructed it to do.

单项选择题

Passage Two
The faces of elderly, happily-married people sometimes resemble each other. Dr. Aiken studied a number of couples who had been married for at least twenty-five years. Each couple provided four photographs—one photo of each partner at the time of their marriage and another photo of each partner twenty-five or more years later. All background was cut from the photos to remove any clues. The photos were then displayed in groups: a random grouping of the persons at the time of their marriage and another random grouping of the same persons who took photographs later. Some testees were asked to pick out the partners. They failed totally with the first group. Their judgements were no better than chance. But with the photos taken twenty-five or more years after the marriage, the testees were quite successful with the most happily-married couples.
Dr. Aiken believes there are several reasons why couples grow alike. One reason has something to do with imitation. One person tends to copy or do the same as someone else without knowing it. He says human begins to imitate the expressions of the faces of their loved ones. “Another possible reason,” he says, “is the common experience of the couples.” There is a tendency for people who have the same life experience to change their faces in similar ways. For example, if a couple have suffered from a lot of sad experiences, their faces are likely to change in a similar way.

单项选择题

Passage Three
The three biggest lies in America are: (1) “The check is in the mail”, (2) “Of course I’ll respect you in the morning”, and (3) “It was a computer error.”
Of these three little white lies, the worst is the third. It’s the only one that can never be true. Today, if a bank statement cheats you out of $ 900 that way, you know what the clerk is sure to say,” It was a computer error.” Nonsense. The computer is reporting nothing more than what the clerk typed into it.
The most annoying case of all is when the computerized cashier in the grocery store shows that an item costs more than it actually does. If the innocent buyer points out the mistake, the checker, bagger, and manager all come together and offer the familiar explanation: “It was a compute error.”
It wasn’t, of course that computerized cashier is really nothing more than an electric event. The eye reads the Universal Product Code—chat bar of black and white lines in a corner of the package—and then checks the code against a price list stored in memory. If the price list is right, you’ll be charged accurately.
Grocery stores update the price list each day—that is, somebody sits at a keyboard and types in the prices. If the price they type in is too high, there are only two explanations: carelessness or dishonesty. But somehow “a computer error” is supposed to excuse everything.
One reason we let people hide behind a computer is the common misperception that huge, modern computers are electric brain with “artificial intelligence.” At some point there might be a machine with intelligence but none exists today. The smartest computer on Earth right now is no more intelligent than your average pe n. At this point in the development of computers, the only thing any machine can do is what a human has instructed it to do.

单项选择题

Passage One
Jack Billabong is a stockman. One Friday afternoon he was riding along the track towards the Henderson farm. He was looking for a prize bull which had escaped from the Borrogee paddock. He reached the hills and saw at once that he could not go further.
There had been a fire in the forest which had gone out. But the air was still full of smoke and fallen trees had blocked the track. Jack was just going to turn back when he saw something moving in the smoke. He waited. It was a girl on a horse, and she was riding towards him. “There’s a badly burnt man on the farm,” the girl shouted. “He saved my life. Please help me to save him.”
The girl was Cathy Henderson. She had been on horseback for two hours. She had to jump over fallen trees that were still burning. Her pony had fallen with her twice. She was thirsty and almost dead from want of sleep. But she rode back to the farm with Jack immediately.
Joe Brook was unconscious when they reached him. They lifted him onto Jack’s horse. The ride back to Borrogee was terrible. Cathy was so tired that Jack had to tie her to her pony. The pony was tired too, but its courage was astonishing. It followed Jack right to Borrogee Hospital. Nobody saw them arrive because it was night. “
I’ve never seen a horse like that pony,” Jack said. Cathy praised Jack Billabong, but she refused to say anything about the pony, “Joe will write about her in his story,” she said.
But she did say one thing: “If flame hadn’t returned to the farm that afternoon, Joe and I would have died.”

单项选择题

Passage Three
The three biggest lies in America are: (1) “The check is in the mail”, (2) “Of course I’ll respect you in the morning”, and (3) “It was a computer error.”
Of these three little white lies, the worst is the third. It’s the only one that can never be true. Today, if a bank statement cheats you out of $ 900 that way, you know what the clerk is sure to say,” It was a computer error.” Nonsense. The computer is reporting nothing more than what the clerk typed into it.
The most annoying case of all is when the computerized cashier in the grocery store shows that an item costs more than it actually does. If the innocent buyer points out the mistake, the checker, bagger, and manager all come together and offer the familiar explanation: “It was a compute error.”
It wasn’t, of course that computerized cashier is really nothing more than an electric event. The eye reads the Universal Product Code—chat bar of black and white lines in a corner of the package—and then checks the code against a price list stored in memory. If the price list is right, you’ll be charged accurately.
Grocery stores update the price list each day—that is, somebody sits at a keyboard and types in the prices. If the price they type in is too high, there are only two explanations: carelessness or dishonesty. But somehow “a computer error” is supposed to excuse everything.
One reason we let people hide behind a computer is the common misperception that huge, modern computers are electric brain with “artificial intelligence.” At some point there might be a machine with intelligence but none exists today. The smartest computer on Earth right now is no more intelligent than your average pe n. At this point in the development of computers, the only thing any machine can do is what a human has instructed it to do.

单项选择题

Passage Two
The faces of elderly, happily-married people sometimes resemble each other. Dr. Aiken studied a number of couples who had been married for at least twenty-five years. Each couple provided four photographs—one photo of each partner at the time of their marriage and another photo of each partner twenty-five or more years later. All background was cut from the photos to remove any clues. The photos were then displayed in groups: a random grouping of the persons at the time of their marriage and another random grouping of the same persons who took photographs later. Some testees were asked to pick out the partners. They failed totally with the first group. Their judgements were no better than chance. But with the photos taken twenty-five or more years after the marriage, the testees were quite successful with the most happily-married couples.
Dr. Aiken believes there are several reasons why couples grow alike. One reason has something to do with imitation. One person tends to copy or do the same as someone else without knowing it. He says human begins to imitate the expressions of the faces of their loved ones. “Another possible reason,” he says, “is the common experience of the couples.” There is a tendency for people who have the same life experience to change their faces in similar ways. For example, if a couple have suffered from a lot of sad experiences, their faces are likely to change in a similar way.

单项选择题