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Australia is a nation of immigrants because the overwhelming majority of the Australian population are().
A . white
B . middle class people
C . tourists from other countries
D . immigrants or their descendant
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请根据下列材料写一篇150词左右的英文短文。 On college campuses across the nation, there is a noticeable phenomenon that we cannot afford to ignore: far too many young college students lack the sense of gratitude. What is your opinion about this phenomenon?
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The United Nations is no stronger than the collective will of the nations that support it.()
A . 联合国没有支持它的各成员国的集体意志强大。
B . 联合国的强大程度取决于各成员国的集体意志对它支持的程度。
C . 联合国的作用依靠其成员国集体意志的支持,否则它不会有什么力量。
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The Commonwealth of Nations is an association of independent countries().
A . that were once colonies of Britain
B . that have a large number of British immigrants
C . that have close relations with Britain
D . that have fought on the side of Britain in the two world war
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Haggis is the national dish of Scotland.
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Kilt is the national dress of Scotland.
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Robert Burns is the national poet of :
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Rose is the national flower of Scotland.
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The national flower of Scotland is ().
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The national flag of the U.K. is Union Jack.
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The Scottish national dish is made of :
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The national flower of Wales is____.
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Beowulf’s hero Beowulf is one of the national heroes of the English people.
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The Song of Beowulf is the national ______ of the English people.
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The origin of this nation is wrapped in ().
A.A.mystery
B.B.homesickness
C.C.alcohol
D.D.confidence
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An important part of the national government is the ForeignService, a branch of the Department of the State.
A. a unity
B. a division
C. an embassy
D. an invitation
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The national bird of the United States is______.
A.sparrow
B.swallow
C.eagle
D.swan
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The national anthem of Great Britain is ().
A.A.The Lion Heart
B.B.Cape dium
C.C.Bon Voyage
D.D.God save the Queen
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The tourist trade is booming. With all this coming and going, you'd expect greater understanding to develop between the nations of the world. Not a bit of it! Superb systems of communication by air, sea and land make it possible for us to visit each other's countries at a moderate cost. What was once the "grand tour", reserved for only the very rich, is now within everybody's grasp. The package tour and chartered flights are not to be sneered at. Modern travelers enjoy a level of comfort which the lords and ladies on grand tours in the old days couldn't have dreamed of. But what's the sense of this mass exchange of populations if the nations of the world remain basically ignorant of each other?
Many tourist organizations are directly responsible for this state of affairs. They deliberately set out to protect their clients from too much contact with the local population. The modern tourist leads a cosseted, sheltered life. He lives at international hotels, where he eats his international food and sips his international drink while he gazes at the natives from a distance. Conducted tours to places of interest are carefully censored. The tourist is allowed to see only what the organizers want him to see and no more. A strict schedule makes it impossible for the tourist to wander off on his own; and anyway, language is always a barrier, so he is only too happy to be protected in this way. At its very worst, this leads to a new and hideous kind of colonization. The summer quarters of the inhabitants are temporarily reestablished on the island of Corfu. Blackpool is recreated at Torremolinos where the traveler goes not to eat paella, but fish and chips.
The sad thing about this situation is that it leads to the persistence of national stereotypes. We don't see the people of other nations as they really are, but as we have been brought up to believe they are. You can test this for yourself. Take five nationalities, say, French, German, English, American and Italian. Now in your mind, match them with these five adjectives: musical, amorous, cold, pedantic, native. Far from providing us with any insight into the national characteristics of the peoples just mentioned, these adjectives actually act as barriers. So when you set out on your travels, the only characteristics you notice are those which confirm your preconceptions. You come away with the highly unoriginal and inaccurate impression that, say, "Anglo-Saxons are hypocrites" or that "Latin peoples shout a lot". You only have to make a few foreign friends to understand how absurd and harmful national stereotypes are. But how can you make foreign friends when the tourist trade does its best to prevent you?
Carried to an extreme, stereotypes can be positively dangerous. Wild generalizations stir up racial hatred and blind us to the basic fact--how trite it sounds! That all people are human. We are all similar to each other and at the same time all unique.
The best title for this passage is ______.
A.tourism contributes nothing to increasing understanding between nations
B.tourism is tiresome
C.conducted tour is dull
D.tourism really does something to one's country
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Which is the national flag of the U.K?
A.The Star-Spangled Banner.
B.God Save the King/Queen.
C.Union Jack.
D.Ben Nevis.
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If national health insurance would not cure the problems of the American healthcare system, what, then, is responsible for them? Suspicion falls heavily on hospitals, which make up the largest component of the system. In 1988 hospitals accounted for 39% of all health expenditures-more than doctor, nursing homes, drugs, and home health care combined.
Although U.S. hospitals provide outstanding research and frequently excellent care, they also exhibit the classic attributes of insufficient organizations: increasing costs and decreasing use. The average cost of a hospital stay in 1987—$3,850—was more than double the 1980 cost. A careful government analysis published in 1987 revealed the inflation of hospital costs, over and above general price inflation, as a major factor in their growth, even after allowances were made for increases in the population and in intensity of care. While the rate of increase for hospital costs was 2796 greater than that for all medical care and 163% greater than that for all other goods and services, demand for hospital services fell by 34%. But hospitals seemed oblivious of the decline: during this period the number of hospital beds shrank only by about 396, and the number of full-time employees grew by more than 240,000.
After yet another unexpectedly high hospital-cost increase last year, one puzzled government analyst asked: "Where's the money going?" Much of the increase in hospital costs—amounting to $180 billion from 1965 to 1987—went to duplicating medical technology available in nearby hospitals and maintaining excess beds. Modern Healthcare, a leading journal in the field, recently noted that "anecdotes of hospitals' unnecessary spending on technology abound". Medical technology is very expensive. An operating room outfitted to perform. open-heart surgery costs hundreds of thousands of dollars. From 1982 to 1989 the number of hospitals with open-heart-surgery facilities grew by 33%, and the most rapid growth occurred among smaller and moderate-sized hospitals. This growth was worrisome for reasons of both costs and quality. Underused technology almost inevitably decreases quality of care. In medicine, as in everything else, practice makes perfect. For example, most of the hospitals with the lowest mortality rates for coronary-bypass surgery perform. at least fifty to a hundred such procedures annually, and in some cases many more; the majority of those with the highest mortality rates perform. fewer than fifty a year.
According to the passage, the American health-care system______.
A.is working smoothly
B.is the best system in the world
C.is not working efficiently
D.in on the point of collapses
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According to reports in major news outlets, a study published last week included a startling discovery: the nation's Jewish population is in shrinking. The study, the National Jewish Population Survey, found 5.2 million Jews living in the United States in 2000, a drop of 5 percent, or 300,000 people, since a similar study in 1990. What's truly startling is that the reported decline is not tree. Worse still, the sponsor of the $6 million study, United Jewish Communities, knows it.
Both it and the authors have openly admitted their doubts. They have acknowledged in interviews that the population totals for 2000 and 1990 were reached by different methods and are not directly comparable. The survey itself also cautions readers, in a dauntingly technical appendix, that judgment calls by the researchers may have led to an undercount. When the research director and project director were asked whether the data should be construed to indicate a declining Jewish population, they flatly answered no. In addition, other survey researchers interviewed pointed to other studies with population estimates as high as 6.7 million.
Despite all this, the two figures --5.2 million now, 5.5 million then --are listed by side in the survey, leaving the impression that the population has shrunk. The result, predictably, has been a rash of headlines trumpeting the illusionary decline, in turn touching off jeremiads by rabbis and moralists condemning the religious laxity behind it. Whether out of ideology, ego, incompetence or a combination of all three, the respected charity has invented a crisis.
United Jewish Communities is the coordinating body for a national network of Jewish philanthropies with combined budgets of $2 billion. Its population surveys carry huge weight in shaping community policy. This is not the first time the survey has set off a false alarm. The last one, conducted by a predecessor organization, found that 52 percent of American Jews who married between 1985 and 1990 did so outside the faith. That number was a fabrication produced by including marriages in which neither party was Jewish by anyone's definition, including the researchers.
Its publication created a huge stir, inspiring anguished sermons, books and conferences. It put liberals on the defensive, emboldened conservatives who reject full integration into society and alienated ordinary folks by the increasingly xenophobic tone of Jewish communal culture. The new survey, to its credit, retracts that figure and offers the latest survey has spawned a panic created by the last one.
So why did the organization flawed figures once again? Some scholars who have studied the. survey believe the motivation then came partly out of a desire to shock straying Jews into greater observance. It' s too early to tell if that' s the case this time around. What is clear is the researchers did their job with little regard to how their data could be misconstrued. They used statistical models and question formats that, while internally sound, made the new survey incompatible with the previous one. For example, this time the researchers divided the population of 5.2 million into two groups--"highly involved" Jews and "people of Jewish background"- and posed most questions only to the first group. As a result, most findings about belief and observance refer only to a subgroup of American Jews, making comparisons to the past impossible.
We can' t afford to wait a decade before these figures are revised. The false population decline must be corrected before it further sours communal discourse. The United Jewish Communities owes it to itself and its public to step forward and state plainly what it knows to be true: American Jews are not disappearing.
According to the passage, which of the following statements is NOT true about the National Jewish Population Survey?
A.It found a decline of 300,000 Jews in ten years.
B.It was carded out by United Jewish Communities.
C.This is the first time United Jewish Communities has made mistakes in the population survey.
D.The reported decline is not reliable.
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[1] Humor is a phenomenon which is influenced by culture. It can be difficult to determine what aspects define a certain sense of humor. A nation’s wit is linked to the historical development of the country. How funny somebody finds a certain incident depends on many factors including age, personal experience, level of education and geographical location. Therefore humor is something which is not always transferable in another country.
[2] What somebody from one area may find hilarious may not be amusing at all to somebody from another location. Whether or not someone gets a joke is determined by their interpretation, filtered by the cultural context.
[3] What about when both countries speak the same mother tongue? Does that mean that they will then share the same sense of humor, or can differences still occur? Let’s take the example of Britain and America. Not only do Americans and Brits spell the word “humor” differently, most claim that American humor and British humor are quite different in nature. Time and time again, people say that Brits and Americans don’t “get” each other’s sense of humor. To what extent is this true, if at all?
[4] There’s a received wisdom in the U.K. that Americans don’t get irony. It is often believed to be one of the most common differences between the British and American sense of humor. This is of course not true. One of the major differences seems to be how often both countries use irony. Brits use irony on a daily basis. We use it as liberally as prepositions in every day speech. We tease our friends. We use sarcasm as a shield and a weapon. We avoid sincerity until it’s absolutely necessary. We mercilessly take the piss out of people we like or dislike basically. And ourselves. This is very important. Our brashness and swagger is laden with equal portions of self-deprecation. This is our license to hand it out.
[5] But it is not the foundation of American humor. I think Americans understand British irony (most of the time anyway!); what they don’t understand is the need to use it so frequently. When Americans use irony they tend to state that they were “only kidding”. They feel the need to make a joke more obvious than Brits do, maybe this stems from a fear of offending people.
[6] The American sense of humor is generally more slapstick than that in Britain. I think this arises from a cultural difference between the two. Their jokes are more obvious and forward, a bit like Americans themselves. British jokes, on the other hand, tend to be more subtle but with a dark or sarcastic undertone. There is usually a hidden meaning. This may stem from the fact that British culture is more reserved than American culture.
[7] Americans say, “Have a nice day” whether they mean it or not. Brits are terrified to say this. We tell ourselves it’s because we don’t want to sound insincere, but I think it might be for the opposite reason. We don’t want to celebrate anything too soon. Failure and disappointment lurk around every corner. This is due to our upbringing. Americans are brought up to believe they can be the next president of the United States. Brits are told, “It won’t happen for you.”
[8] Yet certain American comedies have gained huge success in Britain and vice versa. Therefore, although there are differences between both comic styles, there is still an appreciation and understanding of the other sense of humor. Both the British and American versions of the comedy The Office are hugely successfully on both sides of the Atlantic. Both shows have their own cultural differences, yet they portray a lifestyle. which both Americans and Brits alike can relate to. Although both nations have subtle differences in their wit, they can appreciate the other’s sense of humor.
46、According to this passage, all of the following factors influence how funny a person finds a certain incident except __________.
A.age
B.gender
C.personal experience
D.level of education
47、What is the main idea of the third paragraph?()
A.In this paragraph, the question whether Brits and Americans share the same sense of humor or not is put forward.
B.In this paragraph, the author emphasizes that Brits and Americans don’t understand each other’s sense of humor.
C.In this paragraph, the author emphasizes that American humor and British humor are quite different in nature.
D.In this paragraph, the question that to what extent American humor is different from British humor is put forward.
48、What is the topic sentence of the fourth paragraph?()
A.The first sentence.
B.The fourth sentence.
C.The fifth sentence.
D.The second sentence.
49、According to the fourth paragraph, the difference between American humor and British humor lies in the use of ___________.
A.joke
B.sarcasm
C.irony
D.metaphor
50、Why are British jokes more subtle than American jokes?()
A.Because Brits are more straightforward.
B.Because Brits are more slapstick.
C.Because Brits are more open.
D.Because British culture is more reserved than American culture.
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The most popular national symbol of Canada is ().