What had brought French words into mor...

Why is English so difficult It is often thought that the number of words in the English language is a major reason, but this is not the real answer. Certainly, there are over half million words in the Oxford English Dictionary, but only about 10,000 are in general everyday use. A much stronger reason is the rich variety of sources from which English comes—sources that are due to the different people who have conquered or settled in parts of the British Isles over the past 1,300 years-and knowing more about the way English has evolved over this period makes its difficulties easier to understand. What do we mean by an "English" word Many words are English in the sense that they can be traced back to the Anglo-Saxons—Germanic tribes which settled in England from around the fifth century A.D. They gave us many common words like book, house, cat and dog. Earlier still were the Celtic people whose speech survives in Scottish and Irish Gaelic, in Welsh, and in the local languages of two extremities of the British Isles, Manx and Cornish. There is practically no Celtic influence in English. This is because the Celts were forced back in to the fringes of the British Isles by the Anglo-Saxon invaders, and there was little cultural interaction. The next important influence on the main vocabulary of English came in the ninth and tenth centuries when much of the east side of England was in the hands of Danish invaders, and England as a whole had a Danish king Cnut (Canute) for a time. The Danes had much more contact with the Anglo-Saxons than did the Celts, and their short period of occupation has left its mark in the number of Scandinavian words taken into our language. Many of these are still in use, such as take and law, names of parts of the body such as leg and skull. Many more Scandinavian words are preserved in some dialects of the east side of England, in place-names and in street-names. The last time that England was successfully invaded was in 1052 when William of Normandy defeated the English king Harold at the Battle of Hastings. The arrival of the Normans brought a further decisive influence on the language—French. French, together with Italian, Spanish, Portuguese and Romanian is known as a Romance language, and has its roots in Latin. For several centuries, French was the language of the aristocracy in England and a large number of French words came into the language. Many of these words are to do with government, like justice, council and tax, and many are abstract terms like liberty, charity and conflict. Most of the words taken into the language over the years were adopted either because there was a basic need for them and they were useful or because they were preferable m some way to the words already in use. Often the old word disappeared altogether. In many cases, however, the new word and the old continued in use side by side on a roughly equal footing. This had produced pairs of words which are both in use today, like shut and close or buy and purchase, in which the second word of each pair is French in origin. In the first years after the Norman Conquest many new words were used only by the ruling class and professionals associated with them, such as scribes and clerks. The language of the common people remained largely unaffected. It was the spread of literacy and the development of printing that brought the French words into more general use. Often these were technical words, or words with an official ring, such as commence and purchase. The result was a mixture of types of words. For many meanings we now have a choice of formal and informal words, the formal ones often being used only in very specific situations.Why is English difficult according to the text

A．English comes from a great variety of sources.
B．There are over half a million words in English vocabulary.
C．The number of the words in the English language is the main reason.
D．Many English words can be traced back to the Anglo-Saxons tribes.

单项选择题

It is impossible to find out exactly how many volunteers are at work today in the United States. Thirty-seven million or so are known to belong to organizations like the Pink Ladies, Travelers" Aid, or Big Brothers; but those who work alone or in small informal groups cannot be counted. The total number of men and women who give their time to help others appears to be between fifty and sixty-eight million. Volunteers start community projects too small to attract the attention of organized agencies, or work at jobs for which no funds are available. A handful of city folk will turn an empty lot into a playground for the children of their neighborhood; others decide to repair and paint a few dilapidated houses in their street. Somewhere else women cook and deliver two hot meals a day to elderly people living alone, and too sick or too tired to prepare their own food. Another group calls lonely old people once a day to chat a little and find out if they are all right. Some college students teach English, mathematics, or drawing to the inmates of a local jail. Young men and women spend part of their weekends collecting empty cans and bottles for the recycling center of their community, and some children pick up the trash left on the beach by the crowd of a summer holiday. Anywhere one looks, the army of volunteers is hard at work—not Only in the United States, but also in many other countries where volunteerism is spreading. Fifteen years ago, the typical volunteer was a married woman between twenty-five and forty-five, who had children in school and time on her hands. She was rather well educated, with a high-school or a college degree, and she didn"t need to earn a salary. She was therefore free to devote her time and talents to those who seemed to need them. Some women volunteered out of boredom, because they needed to find an occupation outside their house. But the great majority were prompted only by the desire to relieve some distress, to be useful. There have always been such women ready to give of themselves unselfishly and quietly. At the beginning of the American Civil War, around 1846, a schoolteacher named Clara Barton undertook to deliver to wounded soldiers all sorts of supplies-food, clothes, tobacco, and even medicine—that they could not get easily. She paid for these out of her own money at first, and later from the funds that she could collect from other generous people. She also ventured on the battlefields, during or after battles, to help the wounded and the dying. After the war, the government asked her to help search for missing soldiers. She helped later in other wars in Europe and attracted a number of women willing to share her work. The group grew and eventually became the American Red Cross, which now counts about 1,140,000 volunteers, with a budget of eighty-two million dollars, all from voluntary contributions. Another pioneer of the same period, Dorothea Dix, fought to improve the living conditions in the hospitals for the mentally iii, which were not well run at the time. Her efforts finally caused state governments to take financial responsibility for these institutions. Many organizations have been launched by a determined group of volunteers, from the Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts of America to the Sierra Club, devoted to the protection of nature, and to the Gray Panthers, who fight discrimination against the elderly and try to keep them active, happy, and politically important by encouraging them to vote.According to the passage, all the following statements are true EXCEPT______.

A．the exact number of volunteers in America is difficult to find out
B．there are thirty-seven million volunteers at work in the United States
C．American Red Cross counts about 1,140,000 volunteers with a large budget
D．the total number of volunteers in America ranges from fifty to sixty-eight million

单项选择题

"It should be possible to make a precious stone that not only looks like the real thing, but that is the real thing", said a chemist many years ago. "The only difference should be that one crystal would be made by man, the other by nature." At first this did not seem like a particularly hard task. Scientists began to try making synthetic diamonds towards the end of the eighteenth century. It was at this time that a key scientific fact was discovered: diamonds are a form of carbon, which is a very common element. Graphite, the black mineral that is used for the lead in your pencil, is made of it, too. The only difference, we know today, is that the carbon atoms have been packed together in a slightly different way. The chemists were fired with enthusiasm: Why not change a cheap and plentiful substance, carbon, into a rare and expensive one, diamond You have probably heard about the alchemists who for centuries tried to turn plain lead or iron into gold. They failed because gold is completely different from lead or iron. Transforming carbon into diamonds, however, is not illogical at all. This change takes place in nature, so it should be possible to make it happen in the laboratory. It should be possible, but for one hundred and fifty years efforts failed. During this period, none the less, several people believed that they had solved the diamond riddle. One of these was a French scientist who produced crystals that seemed to be the real thing. After the man"s death, however, a curious rumour began to go the rounds. The story told that one of the scientist"s assistants had simply put tiny pieces of genuine diamonds into the carbon mixture. He was bored with the work, and he wanted to make the old chemist happy. The first real success came more than sixty years later in the laboratories of the General Electric Company. Scientists there had been working for a number of years on a process designed to duplicate nature"s work. Far below the earth"s surface, carbon is subjected to incredibly heavy pressure and extremely high temperature. Under these conditions the carbon turns into diamonds. For a long time the laboratory attempt failed, simply because no suitable machinery existed. What was needed was some sort of pressure chamber in which the carbon could be subjected to between 800,000 and 1,800,000 pounds of pressure to the square inch, at a temperature of between 200°F and 2,200°F. Building a pressure chamber that would not break under these conditions was a fantastically difficult feat, but eventually it was done. The scientists eagerly set to work again. Imagine their disappointment when, even with this equipment, they produce all sorts of crystals, but no diamonds. They wondered if the fault lay in the carbon they were using, and so they tried a number of difficult forms. They failed again and again but went on working. The idea was then brought forward that perhaps the carbon needed to be dissolved in a melted metal. The metal might act as a catalyst, which means that it helps a chemical reaction to take place more easily. This time the carbon was mixed with iron before being placed in the pressure chamber. The pressure was brought up to 1,100,000 pounds to the square inch and the temperature to 900℉. At last the chamber was opened. A number of shiny crystals lay within. These crystals scratched glass, and even diamonds. Light waves passed through them in the same way as they do through diamonds. Carbon dioxide was given off when the crystals were burned. Their density was just 3.5 grams per cubic centimeter, as is true of diamonds. The crystals were analyzed chemically. They were finally studied under X-rays, and there was no longer room for doubt. These jewels of the laboratory were not like diamonds; they were diamonds. They even had the same atomic structure.The main idea of Paragraph 2 is that______.

A．making artificial diamonds didn"t seem very difficult at first sight
B．scientists began to try making synthetic diamond in the late 1700s
C．scientists discovered diamonds are a form of carbon, a common element
D．the discovery of the diamonds" constitute impelled scientists to make a synthetic one

单项选择题

The 150 million people who live outside the country of their birth makeup less than 2.5 percent of world population, but they have an importance far beyond their numbers. Some international migrants are refugees or students, but those with the most impact are economic migrants, drawn to places such as Los Angeles, where the wages may be three times greater than those in Bombay. These migrants tend to be young and willing to work for low wages. Though traditionally unskilled, a growing number are highly educated. Immigration is now the major contributor to demographic change in many developed countries. In the U.S., according to the latest U.S. Census Bureau projection, the population will grow by 129 million in the period from 2000 to 2050, but if immigration stops it would go up by just 54 million. Western Europe"s population is 42 percent greater than that of the U.S., but its projected immigration is only about half that of the U.S.; as a consequence, the region expected to lose 28 million people over the next 50 years. Japan, which has close to zero net migration, is projected to lose 26 million by 2050. (Deaths will start outrunning births in west Europe and Japan around the middle of this decade.) During file past six years, the U.S. received 7 percent of the world"s international migrants, compared with 9 percent by Germany, the second most popular destination. One fourth of all migrants to the U.S. went to California; favorite cities, in order of the number of foreign-born, are Los Angeles, New York City, San Francisco, Miami and Chicago. International migrants primarily come from developing countries, with China at 14 percent and Mexico at 8 percent being the largest sources. A few developing countries, Afghanistan, Bosnia, Liberia and Rwanda—have had significant influxes in recent years, but these reflect mainly the movement of refugees. Most developing countries had negative net migration. In the past few years, every European country with considerable immigration has had a reaction against foreign workers, according to social scientist Christopher Jencks of Harvard University. Some Asian countries hit hard by recession in the late 1990s tried to repatriate migrant workers. Thus far the U.S. shows no signs of reinstituting the extremely restrictive immigration laws of the past, a major reason being the dependence of many industries on a supply of foreign labor. Indeed, the AFL-CIO, once an opponent of high immigration quotas, has reversed position and is now attempting to organize immigrant. This change in attitude, among other reasons, leads Jencks to conclude that a substantial reversal of the current liberal policies is unlikely.Which of the following statements does NOT exactly describe the economic migrants

A．They tend to be young,
B．Many of them are highly educated.
C．They are willing to work for low wages.
D．They constitute 2.5% of the world population.

单项选择题

Why is English so difficult It is often thought that the number of words in the English language is a major reason, but this is not the real answer. Certainly, there are over half million words in the Oxford English Dictionary, but only about 10,000 are in general everyday use. A much stronger reason is the rich variety of sources from which English comes—sources that are due to the different people who have conquered or settled in parts of the British Isles over the past 1,300 years-and knowing more about the way English has evolved over this period makes its difficulties easier to understand. What do we mean by an "English" word Many words are English in the sense that they can be traced back to the Anglo-Saxons—Germanic tribes which settled in England from around the fifth century A.D. They gave us many common words like book, house, cat and dog. Earlier still were the Celtic people whose speech survives in Scottish and Irish Gaelic, in Welsh, and in the local languages of two extremities of the British Isles, Manx and Cornish. There is practically no Celtic influence in English. This is because the Celts were forced back in to the fringes of the British Isles by the Anglo-Saxon invaders, and there was little cultural interaction. The next important influence on the main vocabulary of English came in the ninth and tenth centuries when much of the east side of England was in the hands of Danish invaders, and England as a whole had a Danish king Cnut (Canute) for a time. The Danes had much more contact with the Anglo-Saxons than did the Celts, and their short period of occupation has left its mark in the number of Scandinavian words taken into our language. Many of these are still in use, such as take and law, names of parts of the body such as leg and skull. Many more Scandinavian words are preserved in some dialects of the east side of England, in place-names and in street-names. The last time that England was successfully invaded was in 1052 when William of Normandy defeated the English king Harold at the Battle of Hastings. The arrival of the Normans brought a further decisive influence on the language—French. French, together with Italian, Spanish, Portuguese and Romanian is known as a Romance language, and has its roots in Latin. For several centuries, French was the language of the aristocracy in England and a large number of French words came into the language. Many of these words are to do with government, like justice, council and tax, and many are abstract terms like liberty, charity and conflict. Most of the words taken into the language over the years were adopted either because there was a basic need for them and they were useful or because they were preferable m some way to the words already in use. Often the old word disappeared altogether. In many cases, however, the new word and the old continued in use side by side on a roughly equal footing. This had produced pairs of words which are both in use today, like shut and close or buy and purchase, in which the second word of each pair is French in origin. In the first years after the Norman Conquest many new words were used only by the ruling class and professionals associated with them, such as scribes and clerks. The language of the common people remained largely unaffected. It was the spread of literacy and the development of printing that brought the French words into more general use. Often these were technical words, or words with an official ring, such as commence and purchase. The result was a mixture of types of words. For many meanings we now have a choice of formal and informal words, the formal ones often being used only in very specific situations.Which of the following words is French in origin

A．House.
B．Skull,
C．Law.
D．Tax.

单项选择题

It is impossible to find out exactly how many volunteers are at work today in the United States. Thirty-seven million or so are known to belong to organizations like the Pink Ladies, Travelers" Aid, or Big Brothers; but those who work alone or in small informal groups cannot be counted. The total number of men and women who give their time to help others appears to be between fifty and sixty-eight million. Volunteers start community projects too small to attract the attention of organized agencies, or work at jobs for which no funds are available. A handful of city folk will turn an empty lot into a playground for the children of their neighborhood; others decide to repair and paint a few dilapidated houses in their street. Somewhere else women cook and deliver two hot meals a day to elderly people living alone, and too sick or too tired to prepare their own food. Another group calls lonely old people once a day to chat a little and find out if they are all right. Some college students teach English, mathematics, or drawing to the inmates of a local jail. Young men and women spend part of their weekends collecting empty cans and bottles for the recycling center of their community, and some children pick up the trash left on the beach by the crowd of a summer holiday. Anywhere one looks, the army of volunteers is hard at work—not Only in the United States, but also in many other countries where volunteerism is spreading. Fifteen years ago, the typical volunteer was a married woman between twenty-five and forty-five, who had children in school and time on her hands. She was rather well educated, with a high-school or a college degree, and she didn"t need to earn a salary. She was therefore free to devote her time and talents to those who seemed to need them. Some women volunteered out of boredom, because they needed to find an occupation outside their house. But the great majority were prompted only by the desire to relieve some distress, to be useful. There have always been such women ready to give of themselves unselfishly and quietly. At the beginning of the American Civil War, around 1846, a schoolteacher named Clara Barton undertook to deliver to wounded soldiers all sorts of supplies-food, clothes, tobacco, and even medicine—that they could not get easily. She paid for these out of her own money at first, and later from the funds that she could collect from other generous people. She also ventured on the battlefields, during or after battles, to help the wounded and the dying. After the war, the government asked her to help search for missing soldiers. She helped later in other wars in Europe and attracted a number of women willing to share her work. The group grew and eventually became the American Red Cross, which now counts about 1,140,000 volunteers, with a budget of eighty-two million dollars, all from voluntary contributions. Another pioneer of the same period, Dorothea Dix, fought to improve the living conditions in the hospitals for the mentally iii, which were not well run at the time. Her efforts finally caused state governments to take financial responsibility for these institutions. Many organizations have been launched by a determined group of volunteers, from the Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts of America to the Sierra Club, devoted to the protection of nature, and to the Gray Panthers, who fight discrimination against the elderly and try to keep them active, happy, and politically important by encouraging them to vote.The most probable reason for the people to become volunteers is that______.

A．they volunteer out of boredom
B．they want to be useful for others
C．they can collect money from the generous
D．they fight to improve people"s living conditions

单项选择题

The 150 million people who live outside the country of their birth makeup less than 2.5 percent of world population, but they have an importance far beyond their numbers. Some international migrants are refugees or students, but those with the most impact are economic migrants, drawn to places such as Los Angeles, where the wages may be three times greater than those in Bombay. These migrants tend to be young and willing to work for low wages. Though traditionally unskilled, a growing number are highly educated. Immigration is now the major contributor to demographic change in many developed countries. In the U.S., according to the latest U.S. Census Bureau projection, the population will grow by 129 million in the period from 2000 to 2050, but if immigration stops it would go up by just 54 million. Western Europe"s population is 42 percent greater than that of the U.S., but its projected immigration is only about half that of the U.S.; as a consequence, the region expected to lose 28 million people over the next 50 years. Japan, which has close to zero net migration, is projected to lose 26 million by 2050. (Deaths will start outrunning births in west Europe and Japan around the middle of this decade.) During file past six years, the U.S. received 7 percent of the world"s international migrants, compared with 9 percent by Germany, the second most popular destination. One fourth of all migrants to the U.S. went to California; favorite cities, in order of the number of foreign-born, are Los Angeles, New York City, San Francisco, Miami and Chicago. International migrants primarily come from developing countries, with China at 14 percent and Mexico at 8 percent being the largest sources. A few developing countries, Afghanistan, Bosnia, Liberia and Rwanda—have had significant influxes in recent years, but these reflect mainly the movement of refugees. Most developing countries had negative net migration. In the past few years, every European country with considerable immigration has had a reaction against foreign workers, according to social scientist Christopher Jencks of Harvard University. Some Asian countries hit hard by recession in the late 1990s tried to repatriate migrant workers. Thus far the U.S. shows no signs of reinstituting the extremely restrictive immigration laws of the past, a major reason being the dependence of many industries on a supply of foreign labor. Indeed, the AFL-CIO, once an opponent of high immigration quotas, has reversed position and is now attempting to organize immigrant. This change in attitude, among other reasons, leads Jencks to conclude that a substantial reversal of the current liberal policies is unlikely.According to the passage, the U.S. immigrants in the period from 2000 to 2050 will probably increase

A．129 million
B．54 million
C．75 million
D．28 million

单项选择题

"It should be possible to make a precious stone that not only looks like the real thing, but that is the real thing", said a chemist many years ago. "The only difference should be that one crystal would be made by man, the other by nature." At first this did not seem like a particularly hard task. Scientists began to try making synthetic diamonds towards the end of the eighteenth century. It was at this time that a key scientific fact was discovered: diamonds are a form of carbon, which is a very common element. Graphite, the black mineral that is used for the lead in your pencil, is made of it, too. The only difference, we know today, is that the carbon atoms have been packed together in a slightly different way. The chemists were fired with enthusiasm: Why not change a cheap and plentiful substance, carbon, into a rare and expensive one, diamond You have probably heard about the alchemists who for centuries tried to turn plain lead or iron into gold. They failed because gold is completely different from lead or iron. Transforming carbon into diamonds, however, is not illogical at all. This change takes place in nature, so it should be possible to make it happen in the laboratory. It should be possible, but for one hundred and fifty years efforts failed. During this period, none the less, several people believed that they had solved the diamond riddle. One of these was a French scientist who produced crystals that seemed to be the real thing. After the man"s death, however, a curious rumour began to go the rounds. The story told that one of the scientist"s assistants had simply put tiny pieces of genuine diamonds into the carbon mixture. He was bored with the work, and he wanted to make the old chemist happy. The first real success came more than sixty years later in the laboratories of the General Electric Company. Scientists there had been working for a number of years on a process designed to duplicate nature"s work. Far below the earth"s surface, carbon is subjected to incredibly heavy pressure and extremely high temperature. Under these conditions the carbon turns into diamonds. For a long time the laboratory attempt failed, simply because no suitable machinery existed. What was needed was some sort of pressure chamber in which the carbon could be subjected to between 800,000 and 1,800,000 pounds of pressure to the square inch, at a temperature of between 200°F and 2,200°F. Building a pressure chamber that would not break under these conditions was a fantastically difficult feat, but eventually it was done. The scientists eagerly set to work again. Imagine their disappointment when, even with this equipment, they produce all sorts of crystals, but no diamonds. They wondered if the fault lay in the carbon they were using, and so they tried a number of difficult forms. They failed again and again but went on working. The idea was then brought forward that perhaps the carbon needed to be dissolved in a melted metal. The metal might act as a catalyst, which means that it helps a chemical reaction to take place more easily. This time the carbon was mixed with iron before being placed in the pressure chamber. The pressure was brought up to 1,100,000 pounds to the square inch and the temperature to 900℉. At last the chamber was opened. A number of shiny crystals lay within. These crystals scratched glass, and even diamonds. Light waves passed through them in the same way as they do through diamonds. Carbon dioxide was given off when the crystals were burned. Their density was just 3.5 grams per cubic centimeter, as is true of diamonds. The crystals were analyzed chemically. They were finally studied under X-rays, and there was no longer room for doubt. These jewels of the laboratory were not like diamonds; they were diamonds. They even had the same atomic structure.Transforming carbon into diamonds in the laboratory is______.

A．more illogical than turning plain lead or iron into gold
B．less logical than turning plain lead or iron into gold
C．not so illogical as turning plain lead or iron into gold
D．as illogical as turning plain lead or iron into gold

问答题

Science is a way of thinking much more than it is a body of knowledge. (46) Its goal is to find out how the world works, to seek what regularities there may be, to penetrate to the connections of things—from subnuclear particles, which may be the constituents of all matter, to living organisms, the human social community, and hence to the cosmos as a whole. Our intuition is by no means an infallible guide. Our perceptions may be distorted by training and prejudice or merely because of the limitations of the phenomena of the world. (47) Even so straightforward a question as whether in the absence of friction a pound of lead falls faster than a gram of fluff was answered incorrectly by Aristotle and almost everyone else before the time of Galileo. Science is based on experiment, on a willingness to challenge old dogma, on an openness to see the universe as it really is. Accordingly, science sometimes requires courage—at the very least the courage to question the conventional wisdom. (48) Beyond this the main trick of science is to really think of something: the shape of clouds and their occasional sharp bottom edges at the same altitude everywhere in the sky; the formation of a dewdrop on a leaf; the origin of a name or a word; the reason for human social customs—the incest taboo, for example; how it is that a lens in sunlight can make paper burn; how a "walking stick" got to look so much like a twig; why the Moon seems to follow us as we walk; what prevents us from digging a hole down to the center of the Earth; what the definition is of "down" on a spherical earth; how it is possible for the body to convert yesterday"s lunch into today"s muscle and sinew; or how far is up—does the universe go on forever, or if it does not, is there any meaning to the question of what lies on the other side Some of these questions are pretty easy. Others, especially the last, are mysteries to which no one even today knows the answer. They are natural questions to ask. (49) Every culture has posed such questions in one way or another, and almost always the proposed answers are in the nature of "Just So Stories", attempted explanations divorced from experiment, or even from careful comparative observations. But the scientific cast of mind examines the world critically as if many alternative worlds might exist, as if other things might be here which are not. Then we are forced to ask why what we see is present and not something else. Why are the Sun and the Moon and the planets spheres Why not pyramids, or cubes, or dodecahedra Why not irregular, jumbly shapes Why so symmetrical, worlds (50) If you spend any time spinning hypotheses, checking to see whether they make sense, whether they conform to what else we know, thinking of tests you can pose to substantiate or deflate your hypotheses, you will find yourself doing science. And as you come to practice this habit of thought more and more you will get better and better at it.

答案：正确答案：科学旨在弄清世界的运行机制，寻求其间可能存在的规律，洞察事物之间的联系一从构成一切物质成分的亚核粒子，到生物有...

单项选择题

Why is English so difficult It is often thought that the number of words in the English language is a major reason, but this is not the real answer. Certainly, there are over half million words in the Oxford English Dictionary, but only about 10,000 are in general everyday use. A much stronger reason is the rich variety of sources from which English comes—sources that are due to the different people who have conquered or settled in parts of the British Isles over the past 1,300 years-and knowing more about the way English has evolved over this period makes its difficulties easier to understand. What do we mean by an "English" word Many words are English in the sense that they can be traced back to the Anglo-Saxons—Germanic tribes which settled in England from around the fifth century A.D. They gave us many common words like book, house, cat and dog. Earlier still were the Celtic people whose speech survives in Scottish and Irish Gaelic, in Welsh, and in the local languages of two extremities of the British Isles, Manx and Cornish. There is practically no Celtic influence in English. This is because the Celts were forced back in to the fringes of the British Isles by the Anglo-Saxon invaders, and there was little cultural interaction. The next important influence on the main vocabulary of English came in the ninth and tenth centuries when much of the east side of England was in the hands of Danish invaders, and England as a whole had a Danish king Cnut (Canute) for a time. The Danes had much more contact with the Anglo-Saxons than did the Celts, and their short period of occupation has left its mark in the number of Scandinavian words taken into our language. Many of these are still in use, such as take and law, names of parts of the body such as leg and skull. Many more Scandinavian words are preserved in some dialects of the east side of England, in place-names and in street-names. The last time that England was successfully invaded was in 1052 when William of Normandy defeated the English king Harold at the Battle of Hastings. The arrival of the Normans brought a further decisive influence on the language—French. French, together with Italian, Spanish, Portuguese and Romanian is known as a Romance language, and has its roots in Latin. For several centuries, French was the language of the aristocracy in England and a large number of French words came into the language. Many of these words are to do with government, like justice, council and tax, and many are abstract terms like liberty, charity and conflict. Most of the words taken into the language over the years were adopted either because there was a basic need for them and they were useful or because they were preferable m some way to the words already in use. Often the old word disappeared altogether. In many cases, however, the new word and the old continued in use side by side on a roughly equal footing. This had produced pairs of words which are both in use today, like shut and close or buy and purchase, in which the second word of each pair is French in origin. In the first years after the Norman Conquest many new words were used only by the ruling class and professionals associated with them, such as scribes and clerks. The language of the common people remained largely unaffected. It was the spread of literacy and the development of printing that brought the French words into more general use. Often these were technical words, or words with an official ring, such as commence and purchase. The result was a mixture of types of words. For many meanings we now have a choice of formal and informal words, the formal ones often being used only in very specific situations.Which of the following statements is NOT true according to the text.

A．French has its roots in Latin.
B．There is no Celtic influence in English.
C．The Celts had much contact with the Anglo-Saxon.
D．Many Scandinavian words were taken into English.

单项选择题

It is impossible to find out exactly how many volunteers are at work today in the United States. Thirty-seven million or so are known to belong to organizations like the Pink Ladies, Travelers" Aid, or Big Brothers; but those who work alone or in small informal groups cannot be counted. The total number of men and women who give their time to help others appears to be between fifty and sixty-eight million. Volunteers start community projects too small to attract the attention of organized agencies, or work at jobs for which no funds are available. A handful of city folk will turn an empty lot into a playground for the children of their neighborhood; others decide to repair and paint a few dilapidated houses in their street. Somewhere else women cook and deliver two hot meals a day to elderly people living alone, and too sick or too tired to prepare their own food. Another group calls lonely old people once a day to chat a little and find out if they are all right. Some college students teach English, mathematics, or drawing to the inmates of a local jail. Young men and women spend part of their weekends collecting empty cans and bottles for the recycling center of their community, and some children pick up the trash left on the beach by the crowd of a summer holiday. Anywhere one looks, the army of volunteers is hard at work—not Only in the United States, but also in many other countries where volunteerism is spreading. Fifteen years ago, the typical volunteer was a married woman between twenty-five and forty-five, who had children in school and time on her hands. She was rather well educated, with a high-school or a college degree, and she didn"t need to earn a salary. She was therefore free to devote her time and talents to those who seemed to need them. Some women volunteered out of boredom, because they needed to find an occupation outside their house. But the great majority were prompted only by the desire to relieve some distress, to be useful. There have always been such women ready to give of themselves unselfishly and quietly. At the beginning of the American Civil War, around 1846, a schoolteacher named Clara Barton undertook to deliver to wounded soldiers all sorts of supplies-food, clothes, tobacco, and even medicine—that they could not get easily. She paid for these out of her own money at first, and later from the funds that she could collect from other generous people. She also ventured on the battlefields, during or after battles, to help the wounded and the dying. After the war, the government asked her to help search for missing soldiers. She helped later in other wars in Europe and attracted a number of women willing to share her work. The group grew and eventually became the American Red Cross, which now counts about 1,140,000 volunteers, with a budget of eighty-two million dollars, all from voluntary contributions. Another pioneer of the same period, Dorothea Dix, fought to improve the living conditions in the hospitals for the mentally iii, which were not well run at the time. Her efforts finally caused state governments to take financial responsibility for these institutions. Many organizations have been launched by a determined group of volunteers, from the Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts of America to the Sierra Club, devoted to the protection of nature, and to the Gray Panthers, who fight discrimination against the elderly and try to keep them active, happy, and politically important by encouraging them to vote.During the war, Clara Barton appeared on battlefields to______.

A．search for missing soldiers
B．attract many other women
C．help the wounded and the dying
D．collect funds from the generous

单项选择题

The 150 million people who live outside the country of their birth makeup less than 2.5 percent of world population, but they have an importance far beyond their numbers. Some international migrants are refugees or students, but those with the most impact are economic migrants, drawn to places such as Los Angeles, where the wages may be three times greater than those in Bombay. These migrants tend to be young and willing to work for low wages. Though traditionally unskilled, a growing number are highly educated. Immigration is now the major contributor to demographic change in many developed countries. In the U.S., according to the latest U.S. Census Bureau projection, the population will grow by 129 million in the period from 2000 to 2050, but if immigration stops it would go up by just 54 million. Western Europe"s population is 42 percent greater than that of the U.S., but its projected immigration is only about half that of the U.S.; as a consequence, the region expected to lose 28 million people over the next 50 years. Japan, which has close to zero net migration, is projected to lose 26 million by 2050. (Deaths will start outrunning births in west Europe and Japan around the middle of this decade.) During file past six years, the U.S. received 7 percent of the world"s international migrants, compared with 9 percent by Germany, the second most popular destination. One fourth of all migrants to the U.S. went to California; favorite cities, in order of the number of foreign-born, are Los Angeles, New York City, San Francisco, Miami and Chicago. International migrants primarily come from developing countries, with China at 14 percent and Mexico at 8 percent being the largest sources. A few developing countries, Afghanistan, Bosnia, Liberia and Rwanda—have had significant influxes in recent years, but these reflect mainly the movement of refugees. Most developing countries had negative net migration. In the past few years, every European country with considerable immigration has had a reaction against foreign workers, according to social scientist Christopher Jencks of Harvard University. Some Asian countries hit hard by recession in the late 1990s tried to repatriate migrant workers. Thus far the U.S. shows no signs of reinstituting the extremely restrictive immigration laws of the past, a major reason being the dependence of many industries on a supply of foreign labor. Indeed, the AFL-CIO, once an opponent of high immigration quotas, has reversed position and is now attempting to organize immigrant. This change in attitude, among other reasons, leads Jencks to conclude that a substantial reversal of the current liberal policies is unlikely.According to the passage, most developing countries______.

A．receive migrants
B．accommodate refugees
C．have more immigrants than emigrants
D．have more emigrants than immigrants

问答题

Science is a way of thinking much more than it is a body of knowledge. (46) Its goal is to find out how the world works, to seek what regularities there may be, to penetrate to the connections of things—from subnuclear particles, which may be the constituents of all matter, to living organisms, the human social community, and hence to the cosmos as a whole. Our intuition is by no means an infallible guide. Our perceptions may be distorted by training and prejudice or merely because of the limitations of the phenomena of the world. (47) Even so straightforward a question as whether in the absence of friction a pound of lead falls faster than a gram of fluff was answered incorrectly by Aristotle and almost everyone else before the time of Galileo. Science is based on experiment, on a willingness to challenge old dogma, on an openness to see the universe as it really is. Accordingly, science sometimes requires courage—at the very least the courage to question the conventional wisdom. (48) Beyond this the main trick of science is to really think of something: the shape of clouds and their occasional sharp bottom edges at the same altitude everywhere in the sky; the formation of a dewdrop on a leaf; the origin of a name or a word; the reason for human social customs—the incest taboo, for example; how it is that a lens in sunlight can make paper burn; how a "walking stick" got to look so much like a twig; why the Moon seems to follow us as we walk; what prevents us from digging a hole down to the center of the Earth; what the definition is of "down" on a spherical earth; how it is possible for the body to convert yesterday"s lunch into today"s muscle and sinew; or how far is up—does the universe go on forever, or if it does not, is there any meaning to the question of what lies on the other side Some of these questions are pretty easy. Others, especially the last, are mysteries to which no one even today knows the answer. They are natural questions to ask. (49) Every culture has posed such questions in one way or another, and almost always the proposed answers are in the nature of "Just So Stories", attempted explanations divorced from experiment, or even from careful comparative observations. But the scientific cast of mind examines the world critically as if many alternative worlds might exist, as if other things might be here which are not. Then we are forced to ask why what we see is present and not something else. Why are the Sun and the Moon and the planets spheres Why not pyramids, or cubes, or dodecahedra Why not irregular, jumbly shapes Why so symmetrical, worlds (50) If you spend any time spinning hypotheses, checking to see whether they make sense, whether they conform to what else we know, thinking of tests you can pose to substantiate or deflate your hypotheses, you will find yourself doing science. And as you come to practice this habit of thought more and more you will get better and better at it.

答案：正确答案：在伽利略时代之前，甚至连在没有摩擦的情况下一磅铅是否比一克绒毛落得快这样直截了当的问题，亚里士多德和和几乎其他...

单项选择题

"It should be possible to make a precious stone that not only looks like the real thing, but that is the real thing", said a chemist many years ago. "The only difference should be that one crystal would be made by man, the other by nature." At first this did not seem like a particularly hard task. Scientists began to try making synthetic diamonds towards the end of the eighteenth century. It was at this time that a key scientific fact was discovered: diamonds are a form of carbon, which is a very common element. Graphite, the black mineral that is used for the lead in your pencil, is made of it, too. The only difference, we know today, is that the carbon atoms have been packed together in a slightly different way. The chemists were fired with enthusiasm: Why not change a cheap and plentiful substance, carbon, into a rare and expensive one, diamond You have probably heard about the alchemists who for centuries tried to turn plain lead or iron into gold. They failed because gold is completely different from lead or iron. Transforming carbon into diamonds, however, is not illogical at all. This change takes place in nature, so it should be possible to make it happen in the laboratory. It should be possible, but for one hundred and fifty years efforts failed. During this period, none the less, several people believed that they had solved the diamond riddle. One of these was a French scientist who produced crystals that seemed to be the real thing. After the man"s death, however, a curious rumour began to go the rounds. The story told that one of the scientist"s assistants had simply put tiny pieces of genuine diamonds into the carbon mixture. He was bored with the work, and he wanted to make the old chemist happy. The first real success came more than sixty years later in the laboratories of the General Electric Company. Scientists there had been working for a number of years on a process designed to duplicate nature"s work. Far below the earth"s surface, carbon is subjected to incredibly heavy pressure and extremely high temperature. Under these conditions the carbon turns into diamonds. For a long time the laboratory attempt failed, simply because no suitable machinery existed. What was needed was some sort of pressure chamber in which the carbon could be subjected to between 800,000 and 1,800,000 pounds of pressure to the square inch, at a temperature of between 200°F and 2,200°F. Building a pressure chamber that would not break under these conditions was a fantastically difficult feat, but eventually it was done. The scientists eagerly set to work again. Imagine their disappointment when, even with this equipment, they produce all sorts of crystals, but no diamonds. They wondered if the fault lay in the carbon they were using, and so they tried a number of difficult forms. They failed again and again but went on working. The idea was then brought forward that perhaps the carbon needed to be dissolved in a melted metal. The metal might act as a catalyst, which means that it helps a chemical reaction to take place more easily. This time the carbon was mixed with iron before being placed in the pressure chamber. The pressure was brought up to 1,100,000 pounds to the square inch and the temperature to 900℉. At last the chamber was opened. A number of shiny crystals lay within. These crystals scratched glass, and even diamonds. Light waves passed through them in the same way as they do through diamonds. Carbon dioxide was given off when the crystals were burned. Their density was just 3.5 grams per cubic centimeter, as is true of diamonds. The crystals were analyzed chemically. They were finally studied under X-rays, and there was no longer room for doubt. These jewels of the laboratory were not like diamonds; they were diamonds. They even had the same atomic structure.Which of the following statements is NOT true according to the text

A．Building the special pressure chamber is too difficult to be done.
B．The density of the artificial diamonds is the same as the true ones.
C．Carbon turns into diamonds under very heavy pressure and high temperature.
D．Scientists had been working for many years to duplicate natural diamonds.

问答题

Science is a way of thinking much more than it is a body of knowledge. (46) Its goal is to find out how the world works, to seek what regularities there may be, to penetrate to the connections of things—from subnuclear particles, which may be the constituents of all matter, to living organisms, the human social community, and hence to the cosmos as a whole. Our intuition is by no means an infallible guide. Our perceptions may be distorted by training and prejudice or merely because of the limitations of the phenomena of the world. (47) Even so straightforward a question as whether in the absence of friction a pound of lead falls faster than a gram of fluff was answered incorrectly by Aristotle and almost everyone else before the time of Galileo. Science is based on experiment, on a willingness to challenge old dogma, on an openness to see the universe as it really is. Accordingly, science sometimes requires courage—at the very least the courage to question the conventional wisdom. (48) Beyond this the main trick of science is to really think of something: the shape of clouds and their occasional sharp bottom edges at the same altitude everywhere in the sky; the formation of a dewdrop on a leaf; the origin of a name or a word; the reason for human social customs—the incest taboo, for example; how it is that a lens in sunlight can make paper burn; how a "walking stick" got to look so much like a twig; why the Moon seems to follow us as we walk; what prevents us from digging a hole down to the center of the Earth; what the definition is of "down" on a spherical earth; how it is possible for the body to convert yesterday"s lunch into today"s muscle and sinew; or how far is up—does the universe go on forever, or if it does not, is there any meaning to the question of what lies on the other side Some of these questions are pretty easy. Others, especially the last, are mysteries to which no one even today knows the answer. They are natural questions to ask. (49) Every culture has posed such questions in one way or another, and almost always the proposed answers are in the nature of "Just So Stories", attempted explanations divorced from experiment, or even from careful comparative observations. But the scientific cast of mind examines the world critically as if many alternative worlds might exist, as if other things might be here which are not. Then we are forced to ask why what we see is present and not something else. Why are the Sun and the Moon and the planets spheres Why not pyramids, or cubes, or dodecahedra Why not irregular, jumbly shapes Why so symmetrical, worlds (50) If you spend any time spinning hypotheses, checking to see whether they make sense, whether they conform to what else we know, thinking of tests you can pose to substantiate or deflate your hypotheses, you will find yourself doing science. And as you come to practice this habit of thought more and more you will get better and better at it.

答案：正确答案：除此之外，科学的主要秘诀是实实在在地思考一些问题：天空中到处可见的云的形状，以及偶然可见的云层在同一高度的鲜明...

单项选择题

The 150 million people who live outside the country of their birth makeup less than 2.5 percent of world population, but they have an importance far beyond their numbers. Some international migrants are refugees or students, but those with the most impact are economic migrants, drawn to places such as Los Angeles, where the wages may be three times greater than those in Bombay. These migrants tend to be young and willing to work for low wages. Though traditionally unskilled, a growing number are highly educated. Immigration is now the major contributor to demographic change in many developed countries. In the U.S., according to the latest U.S. Census Bureau projection, the population will grow by 129 million in the period from 2000 to 2050, but if immigration stops it would go up by just 54 million. Western Europe"s population is 42 percent greater than that of the U.S., but its projected immigration is only about half that of the U.S.; as a consequence, the region expected to lose 28 million people over the next 50 years. Japan, which has close to zero net migration, is projected to lose 26 million by 2050. (Deaths will start outrunning births in west Europe and Japan around the middle of this decade.) During file past six years, the U.S. received 7 percent of the world"s international migrants, compared with 9 percent by Germany, the second most popular destination. One fourth of all migrants to the U.S. went to California; favorite cities, in order of the number of foreign-born, are Los Angeles, New York City, San Francisco, Miami and Chicago. International migrants primarily come from developing countries, with China at 14 percent and Mexico at 8 percent being the largest sources. A few developing countries, Afghanistan, Bosnia, Liberia and Rwanda—have had significant influxes in recent years, but these reflect mainly the movement of refugees. Most developing countries had negative net migration. In the past few years, every European country with considerable immigration has had a reaction against foreign workers, according to social scientist Christopher Jencks of Harvard University. Some Asian countries hit hard by recession in the late 1990s tried to repatriate migrant workers. Thus far the U.S. shows no signs of reinstituting the extremely restrictive immigration laws of the past, a major reason being the dependence of many industries on a supply of foreign labor. Indeed, the AFL-CIO, once an opponent of high immigration quotas, has reversed position and is now attempting to organize immigrant. This change in attitude, among other reasons, leads Jencks to conclude that a substantial reversal of the current liberal policies is unlikely.What did some Asian countries do in the late 1990s

A．They tried to attract more migrant workers.
B．They wanted to depend more on foreign workers.
C．They managed to organize immigrants.
D．They attempted to send back foreign workers.

单项选择题

It is impossible to find out exactly how many volunteers are at work today in the United States. Thirty-seven million or so are known to belong to organizations like the Pink Ladies, Travelers" Aid, or Big Brothers; but those who work alone or in small informal groups cannot be counted. The total number of men and women who give their time to help others appears to be between fifty and sixty-eight million. Volunteers start community projects too small to attract the attention of organized agencies, or work at jobs for which no funds are available. A handful of city folk will turn an empty lot into a playground for the children of their neighborhood; others decide to repair and paint a few dilapidated houses in their street. Somewhere else women cook and deliver two hot meals a day to elderly people living alone, and too sick or too tired to prepare their own food. Another group calls lonely old people once a day to chat a little and find out if they are all right. Some college students teach English, mathematics, or drawing to the inmates of a local jail. Young men and women spend part of their weekends collecting empty cans and bottles for the recycling center of their community, and some children pick up the trash left on the beach by the crowd of a summer holiday. Anywhere one looks, the army of volunteers is hard at work—not Only in the United States, but also in many other countries where volunteerism is spreading. Fifteen years ago, the typical volunteer was a married woman between twenty-five and forty-five, who had children in school and time on her hands. She was rather well educated, with a high-school or a college degree, and she didn"t need to earn a salary. She was therefore free to devote her time and talents to those who seemed to need them. Some women volunteered out of boredom, because they needed to find an occupation outside their house. But the great majority were prompted only by the desire to relieve some distress, to be useful. There have always been such women ready to give of themselves unselfishly and quietly. At the beginning of the American Civil War, around 1846, a schoolteacher named Clara Barton undertook to deliver to wounded soldiers all sorts of supplies-food, clothes, tobacco, and even medicine—that they could not get easily. She paid for these out of her own money at first, and later from the funds that she could collect from other generous people. She also ventured on the battlefields, during or after battles, to help the wounded and the dying. After the war, the government asked her to help search for missing soldiers. She helped later in other wars in Europe and attracted a number of women willing to share her work. The group grew and eventually became the American Red Cross, which now counts about 1,140,000 volunteers, with a budget of eighty-two million dollars, all from voluntary contributions. Another pioneer of the same period, Dorothea Dix, fought to improve the living conditions in the hospitals for the mentally iii, which were not well run at the time. Her efforts finally caused state governments to take financial responsibility for these institutions. Many organizations have been launched by a determined group of volunteers, from the Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts of America to the Sierra Club, devoted to the protection of nature, and to the Gray Panthers, who fight discrimination against the elderly and try to keep them active, happy, and politically important by encouraging them to vote.The aim of the Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts of America is______.

A．to protect the nature
B．to encourage old people
C．to fight against discrimination
D．to help the mentally ill people

单项选择题

"It should be possible to make a precious stone that not only looks like the real thing, but that is the real thing", said a chemist many years ago. "The only difference should be that one crystal would be made by man, the other by nature." At first this did not seem like a particularly hard task. Scientists began to try making synthetic diamonds towards the end of the eighteenth century. It was at this time that a key scientific fact was discovered: diamonds are a form of carbon, which is a very common element. Graphite, the black mineral that is used for the lead in your pencil, is made of it, too. The only difference, we know today, is that the carbon atoms have been packed together in a slightly different way. The chemists were fired with enthusiasm: Why not change a cheap and plentiful substance, carbon, into a rare and expensive one, diamond You have probably heard about the alchemists who for centuries tried to turn plain lead or iron into gold. They failed because gold is completely different from lead or iron. Transforming carbon into diamonds, however, is not illogical at all. This change takes place in nature, so it should be possible to make it happen in the laboratory. It should be possible, but for one hundred and fifty years efforts failed. During this period, none the less, several people believed that they had solved the diamond riddle. One of these was a French scientist who produced crystals that seemed to be the real thing. After the man"s death, however, a curious rumour began to go the rounds. The story told that one of the scientist"s assistants had simply put tiny pieces of genuine diamonds into the carbon mixture. He was bored with the work, and he wanted to make the old chemist happy. The first real success came more than sixty years later in the laboratories of the General Electric Company. Scientists there had been working for a number of years on a process designed to duplicate nature"s work. Far below the earth"s surface, carbon is subjected to incredibly heavy pressure and extremely high temperature. Under these conditions the carbon turns into diamonds. For a long time the laboratory attempt failed, simply because no suitable machinery existed. What was needed was some sort of pressure chamber in which the carbon could be subjected to between 800,000 and 1,800,000 pounds of pressure to the square inch, at a temperature of between 200°F and 2,200°F. Building a pressure chamber that would not break under these conditions was a fantastically difficult feat, but eventually it was done. The scientists eagerly set to work again. Imagine their disappointment when, even with this equipment, they produce all sorts of crystals, but no diamonds. They wondered if the fault lay in the carbon they were using, and so they tried a number of difficult forms. They failed again and again but went on working. The idea was then brought forward that perhaps the carbon needed to be dissolved in a melted metal. The metal might act as a catalyst, which means that it helps a chemical reaction to take place more easily. This time the carbon was mixed with iron before being placed in the pressure chamber. The pressure was brought up to 1,100,000 pounds to the square inch and the temperature to 900℉. At last the chamber was opened. A number of shiny crystals lay within. These crystals scratched glass, and even diamonds. Light waves passed through them in the same way as they do through diamonds. Carbon dioxide was given off when the crystals were burned. Their density was just 3.5 grams per cubic centimeter, as is true of diamonds. The crystals were analyzed chemically. They were finally studied under X-rays, and there was no longer room for doubt. These jewels of the laboratory were not like diamonds; they were diamonds. They even had the same atomic structure.In order to help to form shiny crystals of diamonds the carbon needed______.

A．to act as a catalyst
B．to be in different forms
C．to have a pressure chamber
D．to be dissolved in a melted metal

单项选择题

Why is English so difficult It is often thought that the number of words in the English language is a major reason, but this is not the real answer. Certainly, there are over half million words in the Oxford English Dictionary, but only about 10,000 are in general everyday use. A much stronger reason is the rich variety of sources from which English comes—sources that are due to the different people who have conquered or settled in parts of the British Isles over the past 1,300 years-and knowing more about the way English has evolved over this period makes its difficulties easier to understand. What do we mean by an "English" word Many words are English in the sense that they can be traced back to the Anglo-Saxons—Germanic tribes which settled in England from around the fifth century A.D. They gave us many common words like book, house, cat and dog. Earlier still were the Celtic people whose speech survives in Scottish and Irish Gaelic, in Welsh, and in the local languages of two extremities of the British Isles, Manx and Cornish. There is practically no Celtic influence in English. This is because the Celts were forced back in to the fringes of the British Isles by the Anglo-Saxon invaders, and there was little cultural interaction. The next important influence on the main vocabulary of English came in the ninth and tenth centuries when much of the east side of England was in the hands of Danish invaders, and England as a whole had a Danish king Cnut (Canute) for a time. The Danes had much more contact with the Anglo-Saxons than did the Celts, and their short period of occupation has left its mark in the number of Scandinavian words taken into our language. Many of these are still in use, such as take and law, names of parts of the body such as leg and skull. Many more Scandinavian words are preserved in some dialects of the east side of England, in place-names and in street-names. The last time that England was successfully invaded was in 1052 when William of Normandy defeated the English king Harold at the Battle of Hastings. The arrival of the Normans brought a further decisive influence on the language—French. French, together with Italian, Spanish, Portuguese and Romanian is known as a Romance language, and has its roots in Latin. For several centuries, French was the language of the aristocracy in England and a large number of French words came into the language. Many of these words are to do with government, like justice, council and tax, and many are abstract terms like liberty, charity and conflict. Most of the words taken into the language over the years were adopted either because there was a basic need for them and they were useful or because they were preferable m some way to the words already in use. Often the old word disappeared altogether. In many cases, however, the new word and the old continued in use side by side on a roughly equal footing. This had produced pairs of words which are both in use today, like shut and close or buy and purchase, in which the second word of each pair is French in origin. In the first years after the Norman Conquest many new words were used only by the ruling class and professionals associated with them, such as scribes and clerks. The language of the common people remained largely unaffected. It was the spread of literacy and the development of printing that brought the French words into more general use. Often these were technical words, or words with an official ring, such as commence and purchase. The result was a mixture of types of words. For many meanings we now have a choice of formal and informal words, the formal ones often being used only in very specific situations.Why are many foreign words adopted into the English language

A．England was invaded again and again in history.
B．The English language has a very large vocabulary.
C．The language of the common people remained unchanged.
D．They were preferable to the words already in use.

问答题

Science is a way of thinking much more than it is a body of knowledge. (46) Its goal is to find out how the world works, to seek what regularities there may be, to penetrate to the connections of things—from subnuclear particles, which may be the constituents of all matter, to living organisms, the human social community, and hence to the cosmos as a whole. Our intuition is by no means an infallible guide. Our perceptions may be distorted by training and prejudice or merely because of the limitations of the phenomena of the world. (47) Even so straightforward a question as whether in the absence of friction a pound of lead falls faster than a gram of fluff was answered incorrectly by Aristotle and almost everyone else before the time of Galileo. Science is based on experiment, on a willingness to challenge old dogma, on an openness to see the universe as it really is. Accordingly, science sometimes requires courage—at the very least the courage to question the conventional wisdom. (48) Beyond this the main trick of science is to really think of something: the shape of clouds and their occasional sharp bottom edges at the same altitude everywhere in the sky; the formation of a dewdrop on a leaf; the origin of a name or a word; the reason for human social customs—the incest taboo, for example; how it is that a lens in sunlight can make paper burn; how a "walking stick" got to look so much like a twig; why the Moon seems to follow us as we walk; what prevents us from digging a hole down to the center of the Earth; what the definition is of "down" on a spherical earth; how it is possible for the body to convert yesterday"s lunch into today"s muscle and sinew; or how far is up—does the universe go on forever, or if it does not, is there any meaning to the question of what lies on the other side Some of these questions are pretty easy. Others, especially the last, are mysteries to which no one even today knows the answer. They are natural questions to ask. (49) Every culture has posed such questions in one way or another, and almost always the proposed answers are in the nature of "Just So Stories", attempted explanations divorced from experiment, or even from careful comparative observations. But the scientific cast of mind examines the world critically as if many alternative worlds might exist, as if other things might be here which are not. Then we are forced to ask why what we see is present and not something else. Why are the Sun and the Moon and the planets spheres Why not pyramids, or cubes, or dodecahedra Why not irregular, jumbly shapes Why so symmetrical, worlds (50) If you spend any time spinning hypotheses, checking to see whether they make sense, whether they conform to what else we know, thinking of tests you can pose to substantiate or deflate your hypotheses, you will find yourself doing science. And as you come to practice this habit of thought more and more you will get better and better at it.

答案：正确答案：世界上每一文化群落都以这样或那样的方式提出过这些问题。所提出的答案几乎总是具有"就这么回事"的性质，而试图做的...

单项选择题

The 150 million people who live outside the country of their birth makeup less than 2.5 percent of world population, but they have an importance far beyond their numbers. Some international migrants are refugees or students, but those with the most impact are economic migrants, drawn to places such as Los Angeles, where the wages may be three times greater than those in Bombay. These migrants tend to be young and willing to work for low wages. Though traditionally unskilled, a growing number are highly educated. Immigration is now the major contributor to demographic change in many developed countries. In the U.S., according to the latest U.S. Census Bureau projection, the population will grow by 129 million in the period from 2000 to 2050, but if immigration stops it would go up by just 54 million. Western Europe"s population is 42 percent greater than that of the U.S., but its projected immigration is only about half that of the U.S.; as a consequence, the region expected to lose 28 million people over the next 50 years. Japan, which has close to zero net migration, is projected to lose 26 million by 2050. (Deaths will start outrunning births in west Europe and Japan around the middle of this decade.) During file past six years, the U.S. received 7 percent of the world"s international migrants, compared with 9 percent by Germany, the second most popular destination. One fourth of all migrants to the U.S. went to California; favorite cities, in order of the number of foreign-born, are Los Angeles, New York City, San Francisco, Miami and Chicago. International migrants primarily come from developing countries, with China at 14 percent and Mexico at 8 percent being the largest sources. A few developing countries, Afghanistan, Bosnia, Liberia and Rwanda—have had significant influxes in recent years, but these reflect mainly the movement of refugees. Most developing countries had negative net migration. In the past few years, every European country with considerable immigration has had a reaction against foreign workers, according to social scientist Christopher Jencks of Harvard University. Some Asian countries hit hard by recession in the late 1990s tried to repatriate migrant workers. Thus far the U.S. shows no signs of reinstituting the extremely restrictive immigration laws of the past, a major reason being the dependence of many industries on a supply of foreign labor. Indeed, the AFL-CIO, once an opponent of high immigration quotas, has reversed position and is now attempting to organize immigrant. This change in attitude, among other reasons, leads Jencks to conclude that a substantial reversal of the current liberal policies is unlikely.The AFL-CIO likes to organize immigrants now because______.

A．it is an opponent of high immigrant quotas
B．it depends on foreign labor for development
C．it has a reaction against foreign workers
D．it shows no sign of reinstituting immigration laws

单项选择题

"It should be possible to make a precious stone that not only looks like the real thing, but that is the real thing", said a chemist many years ago. "The only difference should be that one crystal would be made by man, the other by nature." At first this did not seem like a particularly hard task. Scientists began to try making synthetic diamonds towards the end of the eighteenth century. It was at this time that a key scientific fact was discovered: diamonds are a form of carbon, which is a very common element. Graphite, the black mineral that is used for the lead in your pencil, is made of it, too. The only difference, we know today, is that the carbon atoms have been packed together in a slightly different way. The chemists were fired with enthusiasm: Why not change a cheap and plentiful substance, carbon, into a rare and expensive one, diamond You have probably heard about the alchemists who for centuries tried to turn plain lead or iron into gold. They failed because gold is completely different from lead or iron. Transforming carbon into diamonds, however, is not illogical at all. This change takes place in nature, so it should be possible to make it happen in the laboratory. It should be possible, but for one hundred and fifty years efforts failed. During this period, none the less, several people believed that they had solved the diamond riddle. One of these was a French scientist who produced crystals that seemed to be the real thing. After the man"s death, however, a curious rumour began to go the rounds. The story told that one of the scientist"s assistants had simply put tiny pieces of genuine diamonds into the carbon mixture. He was bored with the work, and he wanted to make the old chemist happy. The first real success came more than sixty years later in the laboratories of the General Electric Company. Scientists there had been working for a number of years on a process designed to duplicate nature"s work. Far below the earth"s surface, carbon is subjected to incredibly heavy pressure and extremely high temperature. Under these conditions the carbon turns into diamonds. For a long time the laboratory attempt failed, simply because no suitable machinery existed. What was needed was some sort of pressure chamber in which the carbon could be subjected to between 800,000 and 1,800,000 pounds of pressure to the square inch, at a temperature of between 200°F and 2,200°F. Building a pressure chamber that would not break under these conditions was a fantastically difficult feat, but eventually it was done. The scientists eagerly set to work again. Imagine their disappointment when, even with this equipment, they produce all sorts of crystals, but no diamonds. They wondered if the fault lay in the carbon they were using, and so they tried a number of difficult forms. They failed again and again but went on working. The idea was then brought forward that perhaps the carbon needed to be dissolved in a melted metal. The metal might act as a catalyst, which means that it helps a chemical reaction to take place more easily. This time the carbon was mixed with iron before being placed in the pressure chamber. The pressure was brought up to 1,100,000 pounds to the square inch and the temperature to 900℉. At last the chamber was opened. A number of shiny crystals lay within. These crystals scratched glass, and even diamonds. Light waves passed through them in the same way as they do through diamonds. Carbon dioxide was given off when the crystals were burned. Their density was just 3.5 grams per cubic centimeter, as is true of diamonds. The crystals were analyzed chemically. They were finally studied under X-rays, and there was no longer room for doubt. These jewels of the laboratory were not like diamonds; they were diamonds. They even had the same atomic structure.The synthetic crystal of diamond______.

A．could not even cut glass
B．was made at the temperature of 900℉
C．gave off carbon dioxide when it was under X-rays
D．is not like the real diamond in atomic structure

单项选择题

It is impossible to find out exactly how many volunteers are at work today in the United States. Thirty-seven million or so are known to belong to organizations like the Pink Ladies, Travelers" Aid, or Big Brothers; but those who work alone or in small informal groups cannot be counted. The total number of men and women who give their time to help others appears to be between fifty and sixty-eight million. Volunteers start community projects too small to attract the attention of organized agencies, or work at jobs for which no funds are available. A handful of city folk will turn an empty lot into a playground for the children of their neighborhood; others decide to repair and paint a few dilapidated houses in their street. Somewhere else women cook and deliver two hot meals a day to elderly people living alone, and too sick or too tired to prepare their own food. Another group calls lonely old people once a day to chat a little and find out if they are all right. Some college students teach English, mathematics, or drawing to the inmates of a local jail. Young men and women spend part of their weekends collecting empty cans and bottles for the recycling center of their community, and some children pick up the trash left on the beach by the crowd of a summer holiday. Anywhere one looks, the army of volunteers is hard at work—not Only in the United States, but also in many other countries where volunteerism is spreading. Fifteen years ago, the typical volunteer was a married woman between twenty-five and forty-five, who had children in school and time on her hands. She was rather well educated, with a high-school or a college degree, and she didn"t need to earn a salary. She was therefore free to devote her time and talents to those who seemed to need them. Some women volunteered out of boredom, because they needed to find an occupation outside their house. But the great majority were prompted only by the desire to relieve some distress, to be useful. There have always been such women ready to give of themselves unselfishly and quietly. At the beginning of the American Civil War, around 1846, a schoolteacher named Clara Barton undertook to deliver to wounded soldiers all sorts of supplies-food, clothes, tobacco, and even medicine—that they could not get easily. She paid for these out of her own money at first, and later from the funds that she could collect from other generous people. She also ventured on the battlefields, during or after battles, to help the wounded and the dying. After the war, the government asked her to help search for missing soldiers. She helped later in other wars in Europe and attracted a number of women willing to share her work. The group grew and eventually became the American Red Cross, which now counts about 1,140,000 volunteers, with a budget of eighty-two million dollars, all from voluntary contributions. Another pioneer of the same period, Dorothea Dix, fought to improve the living conditions in the hospitals for the mentally iii, which were not well run at the time. Her efforts finally caused state governments to take financial responsibility for these institutions. Many organizations have been launched by a determined group of volunteers, from the Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts of America to the Sierra Club, devoted to the protection of nature, and to the Gray Panthers, who fight discrimination against the elderly and try to keep them active, happy, and politically important by encouraging them to vote.The best title for the passage may be______.

A．Volunteers in the United States
B．How Volunteers Work in the United States
C．The Growth of Volunteers in the United States
D．Volunteers from the Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts

单项选择题

Why is English so difficult It is often thought that the number of words in the English language is a major reason, but this is not the real answer. Certainly, there are over half million words in the Oxford English Dictionary, but only about 10,000 are in general everyday use. A much stronger reason is the rich variety of sources from which English comes—sources that are due to the different people who have conquered or settled in parts of the British Isles over the past 1,300 years-and knowing more about the way English has evolved over this period makes its difficulties easier to understand. What do we mean by an "English" word Many words are English in the sense that they can be traced back to the Anglo-Saxons—Germanic tribes which settled in England from around the fifth century A.D. They gave us many common words like book, house, cat and dog. Earlier still were the Celtic people whose speech survives in Scottish and Irish Gaelic, in Welsh, and in the local languages of two extremities of the British Isles, Manx and Cornish. There is practically no Celtic influence in English. This is because the Celts were forced back in to the fringes of the British Isles by the Anglo-Saxon invaders, and there was little cultural interaction. The next important influence on the main vocabulary of English came in the ninth and tenth centuries when much of the east side of England was in the hands of Danish invaders, and England as a whole had a Danish king Cnut (Canute) for a time. The Danes had much more contact with the Anglo-Saxons than did the Celts, and their short period of occupation has left its mark in the number of Scandinavian words taken into our language. Many of these are still in use, such as take and law, names of parts of the body such as leg and skull. Many more Scandinavian words are preserved in some dialects of the east side of England, in place-names and in street-names. The last time that England was successfully invaded was in 1052 when William of Normandy defeated the English king Harold at the Battle of Hastings. The arrival of the Normans brought a further decisive influence on the language—French. French, together with Italian, Spanish, Portuguese and Romanian is known as a Romance language, and has its roots in Latin. For several centuries, French was the language of the aristocracy in England and a large number of French words came into the language. Many of these words are to do with government, like justice, council and tax, and many are abstract terms like liberty, charity and conflict. Most of the words taken into the language over the years were adopted either because there was a basic need for them and they were useful or because they were preferable m some way to the words already in use. Often the old word disappeared altogether. In many cases, however, the new word and the old continued in use side by side on a roughly equal footing. This had produced pairs of words which are both in use today, like shut and close or buy and purchase, in which the second word of each pair is French in origin. In the first years after the Norman Conquest many new words were used only by the ruling class and professionals associated with them, such as scribes and clerks. The language of the common people remained largely unaffected. It was the spread of literacy and the development of printing that brought the French words into more general use. Often these were technical words, or words with an official ring, such as commence and purchase. The result was a mixture of types of words. For many meanings we now have a choice of formal and informal words, the formal ones often being used only in very specific situations.What had brought French words into more general use

A．These words were often technical words.
B．Many common people were able to read and write.
C．The formal words are not only used in specific situations.
D．The arrival of the Normans exerted the influence on English.

问答题

Science is a way of thinking much more than it is a body of knowledge. (46) Its goal is to find out how the world works, to seek what regularities there may be, to penetrate to the connections of things—from subnuclear particles, which may be the constituents of all matter, to living organisms, the human social community, and hence to the cosmos as a whole. Our intuition is by no means an infallible guide. Our perceptions may be distorted by training and prejudice or merely because of the limitations of the phenomena of the world. (47) Even so straightforward a question as whether in the absence of friction a pound of lead falls faster than a gram of fluff was answered incorrectly by Aristotle and almost everyone else before the time of Galileo. Science is based on experiment, on a willingness to challenge old dogma, on an openness to see the universe as it really is. Accordingly, science sometimes requires courage—at the very least the courage to question the conventional wisdom. (48) Beyond this the main trick of science is to really think of something: the shape of clouds and their occasional sharp bottom edges at the same altitude everywhere in the sky; the formation of a dewdrop on a leaf; the origin of a name or a word; the reason for human social customs—the incest taboo, for example; how it is that a lens in sunlight can make paper burn; how a "walking stick" got to look so much like a twig; why the Moon seems to follow us as we walk; what prevents us from digging a hole down to the center of the Earth; what the definition is of "down" on a spherical earth; how it is possible for the body to convert yesterday"s lunch into today"s muscle and sinew; or how far is up—does the universe go on forever, or if it does not, is there any meaning to the question of what lies on the other side Some of these questions are pretty easy. Others, especially the last, are mysteries to which no one even today knows the answer. They are natural questions to ask. (49) Every culture has posed such questions in one way or another, and almost always the proposed answers are in the nature of "Just So Stories", attempted explanations divorced from experiment, or even from careful comparative observations. But the scientific cast of mind examines the world critically as if many alternative worlds might exist, as if other things might be here which are not. Then we are forced to ask why what we see is present and not something else. Why are the Sun and the Moon and the planets spheres Why not pyramids, or cubes, or dodecahedra Why not irregular, jumbly shapes Why so symmetrical, worlds (50) If you spend any time spinning hypotheses, checking to see whether they make sense, whether they conform to what else we know, thinking of tests you can pose to substantiate or deflate your hypotheses, you will find yourself doing science. And as you come to practice this habit of thought more and more you will get better and better at it.

答案：正确答案：如果你花费时间构思一些假设，检验它们是否有意义，是否与我们知道的其他情况相符合，考虑一些你能做的实验来证实或推...

问答题

The following paragraphs are given in a wrong order. For Questions 41-45, you are required to reorganize these paragraphs into a coherent article by choosing from the list A-G. Some of the paragraphs have been placed for you. (10 points)A. "It is always better to buy a house; paying rent is like pouring money down the drain." For years, such advice has encouraged people to borrow heavily to get on the property ladder as soon as possible. But is it still sound advice House prices are currently at record levels in relation to rents in many parts of the world and it now often makes more financial sense—especially for first-time buyers—to rent instead.B. "If I don"t buy now, I"ll never get on the property ladder" is a common cry from first-time buyers. If house prices continue to outpace wages, that is true. But it now looks unlikely. When prices get out of line with what first-timers can afford, as they are today, they always eventually fall in real terms. The myth that buying is always better than renting grew out of the high inflation era of the 1970s and 1950s. First-time buyers then always ended up better off than renters, because inflation eroded the real value of mortgages even while it pushed up rents. Mortgage-interest tax relief was also worth more when inflation, and hence nominal interest rates, was high. With inflation now tamed, home ownership is far less attractive.C. Homebuyers tend to underestimate their costs. Once maintenance costs, insurance and property taxes are added to mortgage payments, total annual outgoings now easily exceed the cost of renting an equivalent property, even after taking account of tax breaks. Ah, but capital gains will more than make up for that, it is popularly argued. Over the past seven years, average house prices in America have risen by 65%, those in Britain, Spain, Australia and Ireland have more than doubled. But it is unrealistic to expect such gains to continue. Making the (optimistic) assumption that house prices instead rise in line with inflation, and including buying and selling costs, then over a period of seven years,—the average time American owners stay in one house—our calculations show that you would generally be better off renting.D. Be warned, if you make such a bold claim at a dinner party, you will immediately be set upon. Paying rent is throwing money away, it will be argued. Much better to spend the money on a mortgage, and by so doing build up equity. The snag is that the typical first-time buyer keeps a house for less than five years, and during that time most mortgage payments go on interest, not on repaying the loan. And if prices fall, it could wipe out your equity.E. In any case, a renter can accumulate wealth by putting the money saved each year from the lower cost of renting into shares. These have, historically, yielded a higher return than housing. Putting all your money into a house also breaks the basic rule of prudent investing: diversify. And yes, it is true that a mortgage leverages the gains on your initial deposit on a house, but it also amplifies your losses if house prices fall.F. The divergence between rents and house prices is, of course, evidence of a housing bubble. Someday prices will fall relative to rents and wages. After they do, it will make sense to buy a home. Until they do, the smart money is on renting.G. "I want to have a place to call home" is a popular retort. Renting provides less long-term security and you cannot paint all the walls orange if you want to. Home ownership is an excellent personal goal, but it may not always make financial sense. The pride of "owning" your own home may quickly fade if you are saddled with a mortgage that costs much more than renting. Also, renting does have some advantages. Renters find it easier to move for job or family reasons.Order: A is the 1st paragraph and F is the last.

答案：正确答案：D

问答题

The following paragraphs are given in a wrong order. For Questions 41-45, you are required to reorganize these paragraphs into a coherent article by choosing from the list A-G. Some of the paragraphs have been placed for you. (10 points)A. "It is always better to buy a house; paying rent is like pouring money down the drain." For years, such advice has encouraged people to borrow heavily to get on the property ladder as soon as possible. But is it still sound advice House prices are currently at record levels in relation to rents in many parts of the world and it now often makes more financial sense—especially for first-time buyers—to rent instead.B. "If I don"t buy now, I"ll never get on the property ladder" is a common cry from first-time buyers. If house prices continue to outpace wages, that is true. But it now looks unlikely. When prices get out of line with what first-timers can afford, as they are today, they always eventually fall in real terms. The myth that buying is always better than renting grew out of the high inflation era of the 1970s and 1950s. First-time buyers then always ended up better off than renters, because inflation eroded the real value of mortgages even while it pushed up rents. Mortgage-interest tax relief was also worth more when inflation, and hence nominal interest rates, was high. With inflation now tamed, home ownership is far less attractive.C. Homebuyers tend to underestimate their costs. Once maintenance costs, insurance and property taxes are added to mortgage payments, total annual outgoings now easily exceed the cost of renting an equivalent property, even after taking account of tax breaks. Ah, but capital gains will more than make up for that, it is popularly argued. Over the past seven years, average house prices in America have risen by 65%, those in Britain, Spain, Australia and Ireland have more than doubled. But it is unrealistic to expect such gains to continue. Making the (optimistic) assumption that house prices instead rise in line with inflation, and including buying and selling costs, then over a period of seven years,—the average time American owners stay in one house—our calculations show that you would generally be better off renting.D. Be warned, if you make such a bold claim at a dinner party, you will immediately be set upon. Paying rent is throwing money away, it will be argued. Much better to spend the money on a mortgage, and by so doing build up equity. The snag is that the typical first-time buyer keeps a house for less than five years, and during that time most mortgage payments go on interest, not on repaying the loan. And if prices fall, it could wipe out your equity.E. In any case, a renter can accumulate wealth by putting the money saved each year from the lower cost of renting into shares. These have, historically, yielded a higher return than housing. Putting all your money into a house also breaks the basic rule of prudent investing: diversify. And yes, it is true that a mortgage leverages the gains on your initial deposit on a house, but it also amplifies your losses if house prices fall.F. The divergence between rents and house prices is, of course, evidence of a housing bubble. Someday prices will fall relative to rents and wages. After they do, it will make sense to buy a home. Until they do, the smart money is on renting.G. "I want to have a place to call home" is a popular retort. Renting provides less long-term security and you cannot paint all the walls orange if you want to. Home ownership is an excellent personal goal, but it may not always make financial sense. The pride of "owning" your own home may quickly fade if you are saddled with a mortgage that costs much more than renting. Also, renting does have some advantages. Renters find it easier to move for job or family reasons.Order: A is the 1st paragraph and F is the last.

答案：正确答案：E

问答题

The following paragraphs are given in a wrong order. For Questions 41-45, you are required to reorganize these paragraphs into a coherent article by choosing from the list A-G. Some of the paragraphs have been placed for you. (10 points)A. "It is always better to buy a house; paying rent is like pouring money down the drain." For years, such advice has encouraged people to borrow heavily to get on the property ladder as soon as possible. But is it still sound advice House prices are currently at record levels in relation to rents in many parts of the world and it now often makes more financial sense—especially for first-time buyers—to rent instead.B. "If I don"t buy now, I"ll never get on the property ladder" is a common cry from first-time buyers. If house prices continue to outpace wages, that is true. But it now looks unlikely. When prices get out of line with what first-timers can afford, as they are today, they always eventually fall in real terms. The myth that buying is always better than renting grew out of the high inflation era of the 1970s and 1950s. First-time buyers then always ended up better off than renters, because inflation eroded the real value of mortgages even while it pushed up rents. Mortgage-interest tax relief was also worth more when inflation, and hence nominal interest rates, was high. With inflation now tamed, home ownership is far less attractive.C. Homebuyers tend to underestimate their costs. Once maintenance costs, insurance and property taxes are added to mortgage payments, total annual outgoings now easily exceed the cost of renting an equivalent property, even after taking account of tax breaks. Ah, but capital gains will more than make up for that, it is popularly argued. Over the past seven years, average house prices in America have risen by 65%, those in Britain, Spain, Australia and Ireland have more than doubled. But it is unrealistic to expect such gains to continue. Making the (optimistic) assumption that house prices instead rise in line with inflation, and including buying and selling costs, then over a period of seven years,—the average time American owners stay in one house—our calculations show that you would generally be better off renting.D. Be warned, if you make such a bold claim at a dinner party, you will immediately be set upon. Paying rent is throwing money away, it will be argued. Much better to spend the money on a mortgage, and by so doing build up equity. The snag is that the typical first-time buyer keeps a house for less than five years, and during that time most mortgage payments go on interest, not on repaying the loan. And if prices fall, it could wipe out your equity.E. In any case, a renter can accumulate wealth by putting the money saved each year from the lower cost of renting into shares. These have, historically, yielded a higher return than housing. Putting all your money into a house also breaks the basic rule of prudent investing: diversify. And yes, it is true that a mortgage leverages the gains on your initial deposit on a house, but it also amplifies your losses if house prices fall.F. The divergence between rents and house prices is, of course, evidence of a housing bubble. Someday prices will fall relative to rents and wages. After they do, it will make sense to buy a home. Until they do, the smart money is on renting.G. "I want to have a place to call home" is a popular retort. Renting provides less long-term security and you cannot paint all the walls orange if you want to. Home ownership is an excellent personal goal, but it may not always make financial sense. The pride of "owning" your own home may quickly fade if you are saddled with a mortgage that costs much more than renting. Also, renting does have some advantages. Renters find it easier to move for job or family reasons.Order: A is the 1st paragraph and F is the last.

答案：正确答案：G

问答题

The following paragraphs are given in a wrong order. For Questions 41-45, you are required to reorganize these paragraphs into a coherent article by choosing from the list A-G. Some of the paragraphs have been placed for you. (10 points)A. "It is always better to buy a house; paying rent is like pouring money down the drain." For years, such advice has encouraged people to borrow heavily to get on the property ladder as soon as possible. But is it still sound advice House prices are currently at record levels in relation to rents in many parts of the world and it now often makes more financial sense—especially for first-time buyers—to rent instead.B. "If I don"t buy now, I"ll never get on the property ladder" is a common cry from first-time buyers. If house prices continue to outpace wages, that is true. But it now looks unlikely. When prices get out of line with what first-timers can afford, as they are today, they always eventually fall in real terms. The myth that buying is always better than renting grew out of the high inflation era of the 1970s and 1950s. First-time buyers then always ended up better off than renters, because inflation eroded the real value of mortgages even while it pushed up rents. Mortgage-interest tax relief was also worth more when inflation, and hence nominal interest rates, was high. With inflation now tamed, home ownership is far less attractive.C. Homebuyers tend to underestimate their costs. Once maintenance costs, insurance and property taxes are added to mortgage payments, total annual outgoings now easily exceed the cost of renting an equivalent property, even after taking account of tax breaks. Ah, but capital gains will more than make up for that, it is popularly argued. Over the past seven years, average house prices in America have risen by 65%, those in Britain, Spain, Australia and Ireland have more than doubled. But it is unrealistic to expect such gains to continue. Making the (optimistic) assumption that house prices instead rise in line with inflation, and including buying and selling costs, then over a period of seven years,—the average time American owners stay in one house—our calculations show that you would generally be better off renting.D. Be warned, if you make such a bold claim at a dinner party, you will immediately be set upon. Paying rent is throwing money away, it will be argued. Much better to spend the money on a mortgage, and by so doing build up equity. The snag is that the typical first-time buyer keeps a house for less than five years, and during that time most mortgage payments go on interest, not on repaying the loan. And if prices fall, it could wipe out your equity.E. In any case, a renter can accumulate wealth by putting the money saved each year from the lower cost of renting into shares. These have, historically, yielded a higher return than housing. Putting all your money into a house also breaks the basic rule of prudent investing: diversify. And yes, it is true that a mortgage leverages the gains on your initial deposit on a house, but it also amplifies your losses if house prices fall.F. The divergence between rents and house prices is, of course, evidence of a housing bubble. Someday prices will fall relative to rents and wages. After they do, it will make sense to buy a home. Until they do, the smart money is on renting.G. "I want to have a place to call home" is a popular retort. Renting provides less long-term security and you cannot paint all the walls orange if you want to. Home ownership is an excellent personal goal, but it may not always make financial sense. The pride of "owning" your own home may quickly fade if you are saddled with a mortgage that costs much more than renting. Also, renting does have some advantages. Renters find it easier to move for job or family reasons.Order: A is the 1st paragraph and F is the last.

答案：正确答案：B

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