单选题
单选题
Text 3
During the whole of a dull, dark and soundless day in the, autumn of the year, when the clouds hung oppressively low in the heavens, had been passing alone, on horseback, through a singularly dreary tract of country, and at length found myself, as the shades of the evening drew on, within view of the melancholy House of Usher. Thus Edgar Allan Poe opened his story of the fall of the House of Usher in 1839. In this beautifully crafted sentence he captured so much that is essential to the horror story: darkness, ominous solitude, foreboding calm, apprehension and uncertainty, and a deep feeling of melancholy that could soon turn to fear.
Many kinds of fiction are self – explanatory: mysteries, Westerns, love stories, spy thrillers, and science fiction define themselves by the terms used to name them. The horror story is less easily defined, perhaps because other types of fiction so often use the trappings of terror to enhance their plots. Charles Dickens used the vehicle of an old-fashioned ghost story to tell A Christmas Carol, but that book is not a honor story. Nor does a Grimm brothers fairy tale such as Hansen and Grate with its child-devouring witch, belong to the genre.
The nature of the horror story is. best indicated by the title of the 1980s television series Tales from the Dark Side. Human beings have always acknowledged that there is evil in the world and a dark side to human nature that cannot be explained except perhaps in religious terms. This evil may be imagined as having an almost unlimited power to inspire anxiety, fear, dread, and terror in addition to doing actual physical and mental harm.
In the tale of horror quite ordinary people are confronted by something unknown and fearful, which can be neither understood nor explained in reasonable terms. It is the emphasis on the unreasonable that lies at the heart of horror stories. This kind of literature arose in the 18th century at the start of a movement called Romanticism. The movement was a reaction against a rational, orderly world in which humanity was basically good and everything could be explained scientifically. The literary type that inspired the horror story is Gothic fiction, tales of evil, often set in sinister medieval surroundings. This original kind of horror fiction has persisted to the present.
A:Irrationality. B:Melancholy. C:Uncertainty. D:Suspension.
Text 2
| House-price falls are gathering
momentum and are spreading across the UK, according to a monthly poll of
surveyors which on Monday delivered its gloomiest reading for nearly 12
years. Fifty-six per cent of surveyors contacted by the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors reported price falls in the three months to October. Only 3 per cent saw prices rise in their area, compared with 58 per cent as recently as May. There was further evidence of slowing activity in the property market as the number of sales per surveyor dived to a nine-year low. Unsold stock on agents’ books has increased 10 per cent since the summer. Ian Perry, Rics’ national housing spokesman, said it was now very clear that buyers were unsettled by higher interest rates. The Bank of England raised rates five times to 4. 75 per cent over the last year to cool the property boom. But he also blamed comments by Mervyn King, the Bank’s governor, and misleading media headlines for "injecting additional uncertainty into the market by continued speculation over more serious price declines". "Mervyn King presumably felt that he had to be more explicit in the summer when people were still buying. His warnings of a drop in property prices then have had the desired effect. "But our concern now is that the pendulum is swinging too far," be said. Last week, the Bank’s monetary policy committee predicted for the first time that "house prices may fall modestly for a period" in its November inflation report. The Nationwide and Halifax mortgage lenders both showed a modest monthly decline in house prices in their latest loan approval data. Although the majority of surveyors expect prices to fall further in the next three months, Mr. Perry stressed there were signs of stabilizing demand from buyers in London. "London tends to be ahead of the rest of the market. And agents are telling us that more people are looking to buy. It is much better than it was," Mr. Perry said. However, falling prices continued to spread from the South of England as surveyors reported the first clear decline in prices in Yorkshire and the Humber, the north and the north west. Scotland remained the only region with rising prices. |
A:the house-price falls may continue for a while. B:people’s uncertainty about the market is ungrounded. C:there was always exception to the rule of rising prices. D:people are certainly ready to buy more than before.
House-price falls are gathering momentum and are spreading across the UK, according to a monthly poll of surveyors which on Monday delivered its gloomiest reading for nearly 12 years.
Fifty-six per cent of surveyors contacted by the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors reported price falls in the three months to October. Only 3 per cent saw prices rise in their area, compared with 58 per cent as recently as May.
There was further evidence of slowing activity in the property market as the number of sales per surveyor dived to a nine-year low. Unsold stock on agents’ books has increased 10 per cent since the summer. Ian Perry, Rics’ national housing spokesman, said it was now very clear that buyers were unsettled by higher interest rates.
The Bank of England raised rates five times to 4.75 per cent over the last year to cool the property boom.
But he also blamed comments by Mervyn King, the Bank’s governor, and misleading media headlines for "injecting additional uncertainty into the market by continued speculation over more serious price declines".
"Mervyn King presumably felt that he had to be more explicit in the summer when people were still buying. His warnings of a drop in property prices then have had the desired effect.
"But our concern now is that the pendulum is swinging too far," he said.
Last week, the Bank’s monetary policy committee predicted for the first time that "house prices may fall modestly for a period" in its November inflation report. The Nationwide and Halifax mortgage lenders both showed a modest monthly decline in house prices in their latest loan approval data.
Although the majority of surveyors expect prices to fall further in the next three months,
Mr. Perry stressed there were signs of stabilizing demand from buyers in London.
"London tends to be ahead of the rest of the market. And agents are telling us that more people are looking to buy. It is much better than it was," Mr. Perry said.
However, falling prices continued to spread from the South of England as surveyors reported the first clear decline in prices in Yorkshire and the Humber, the north and the north- west. Scotland remained the only region with rising prices.
The author probably believes that
A:the house-price falls may continue for a while. B:people’s uncertainty about the market is ungrounded. C:there was always exception to the rule of rising prices. D:people are certainly ready to buy more than before.
The world is undergoing a great transition marked by uncertainty and complexity which we do not yet understand.
This poses (提出) a challenge to young people all over the world, for in about 15 years’ time youth will play a fundamental role as never before in the history of the world. Young people will make up over half the population in developing countries—the so-called countries of the South. In the North they will have the heavy responsibility of providing for societies in which elderly people will generally be in the majority. It is probably not by chance that young people in different parts of the world today represent a movement of challenge and pressure which is shaking government and attempting to impose new values in a universe which they perceive as inhospitable (冷淡的) or even hostile.
We have come a long way from the early 20th century concept of perpetual 3% annual growth, which fitted so well with the Newtonian vision of the world—a vision resting on the idea of a perfect giant clockwork mechanism. The dramatic nature of today’s crisis is based on our difficulty in understanding—on a lack of intelligibility (可理解性的). For in evolution’s constant march towards complexity we have just crossed a threshold (门槛). Beyond this threshold, everything is different; everything invites us to look anew (重新). But we are prisoners of images which still inhabit our minds because they brought us so much intellectual comfort in understanding our world as it used to be. Prigonine takes us over the threshold and forces us to enter into the new dialogue which is necessary. It is useful to try to transfer this new vision into the spheres of management, business, national sovereignty (主权) , and international organization. In this way we may perhaps make progress in governing that which, on first analysis we may judge to be ungovernable.
A:transition B:challenge C:uncertaint D:uncertainty and complexity
Passage 3
Many a young person tells me he wants to be a writer. I always encourage such people, but I also ex plain that there’ s a big difference between "being a writer" and writing. In most cases these individuals are dreaming of wealth and fame, not the long hours alone at a typewriter. "You’ ye got to want to write," I say to them, "not want to be a writer."
The reality is that writing is a lonely, private and poor-paying affair. For every writer kissed by for tune there are thousands more whose longing is never rewarded. When ! left a 20-year career in the U. S. Coast Guard to become a freelance writer (自由撰稿人), I had no prospects at all. What I did have was a friend who found me my room in a New York apartment building. It didn’ t even matter that it was cold and had no bathroom. I immediately bought a used manual typewriter and felt like a genuine writer.
After a year or so, however, I still hadn’ t gotten a break and began to doubt myself. It was so hard to sell a story that I barely made enough to eat. But I knew I wanted to write. I had dreamed about it for years. I wasn’ t going to be one of those people who die wondering" What if" I would keep putting my dream to the test-even though it meant living with uncertainty and fear of failure. This is the Shadow land of hope, and anyone with a dream must learn to live there.
A:the wonder land one often dreams about B:the bright future that one is looking forward to C:the state of uncertainty before one's final goal is reached D:a world that exists only in one's imagination
Passage 3 Many a young person tells me he wants to be a writer. I always encourage such people, but I also ex plain that there’ s a big difference between "being a writer" and writing. In most cases these individuals are dreaming of wealth and fame, not the long hours alone at a typewriter. "You’ ye got to want to write," I say to them, "not want to be a writer." The reality is that writing is a lonely, private and poor-paying affair. For every writer kissed by for tune there are thousands more whose longing is never rewarded. When ! left a 20-year career in the U. S. Coast Guard to become a freelance writer (自由撰稿人), I had no prospects at all. What I did have was a friend who found me my room in a New York apartment building. It didn’ t even matter that it was cold and had no bathroom. I immediately bought a used manual typewriter and felt like a genuine writer. After a year or so, however, I still hadn’ t gotten a break and began to doubt myself. It was so hard to sell a story that I barely made enough to eat. But I knew I wanted to write. I had dreamed about it for years. I wasn’ t going to be one of those people who die wondering" What if" I would keep putting my dream to the test-even though it meant living with uncertainty and fear of failure. This is the Shadow land of hope, and anyone with a dream must learn to live there.
"Shadow land" in the last sentence refers to（ ）A:the wonder land one often dreams about B:the bright future that one is looking forward to C:the state of uncertainty before one's final goal is reached D:a world that exists only in one's imagination
{{B}}第三篇{{/B}}
| ?{{B}} ? ? ? ? ? ?
? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? Advice of a
Writer{{/B}} ? ?Many a young person tells me he wants to be a writer. I always encourage such people, but I also explain that there’s a big difference between "being a writer" and writing. In most cases these individuals are dreaming of wealth and fame, not the long hours alone at a typewriter. ?"You’ve got to want to write, I say to them, "not want to be a writer." ? ? The reality is that writing is a lonely, private and poor--paying affair. For every writer kissed by fortune there are thousands more whose longing is never rewarded. When I left a 20 _year career in the U. S. Coast Guard to become a freelance writer (自由撰稿者), I had no prospects at all: What I did have was a friend who found me my room in a New York apartment building. It didn’t even matter that it was cold and had no bathroom. I immediately bought a used manual typewriter and felt like a genuine writer. ? ?After a year or so, however, I still hadn’t gotten a break and began to doubt myself. It was so hard to sell a story that barely made enough to eat. But I knew I wanted to write. I had dreamed about it for years. I wasn’t going to be one of those people who die wondering, What if? I would keep putting my dream to the test--even though it meant living with uncertainty and fear of failure. This is the Shadowland of hope, and anyone with a dream must learn to live there. |
A:the wonderland one often dreams about B:the bright future that one is looking forward to C:the state of uncertainty before one’s final goal is reached D:a world that exists only in one’s imagination
?
?下面有3篇短文，每篇短文后有5道题，每题后面有4个选项。请仔细阅读短文并根据短文回答其后面的问题。
{{B}}第一篇{{/B}}
| {{B}}? ? ? ? ? ? ?
? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?
? ? ? ? ?The English Weather{{/B}} ? ?"Other countries have a climate; in England we have weather". This statement, often made by Englishmen to describe the strange weather conditions of their country, is both revealing and true. It is revealing because in it we see the Englishman insisting once again that what happens in England is not the same as what happens elsewhere. Its truth can be proved by any foreigner who stays in the country for longer than a few days. ? ?In no country other than England, it has been said, can one experience four seasons in the course of a single day! Day may break as a warm spring morning; an hour or so later black clouds may have appeared from nowhere and the rain may be pouring down. At midday it may be really winter with the temperature down by about eight degrees or more centigrade(摄氏度 ). And then, in the late afternoon the sky will clear, the sun will begin to shine, and for an hour or two before darkness fails, it will be summer. ? ?In England one can experience almost every kind of weather except the most extreme. (Some foreigners seem to be under the impression that for ten months of the year the country is covered by a dense blanket of fog; this is not true.)The problem is that we never can be sure when the different types of weather will occur. Not only do we get several different sorts of weather in one day, but we may very well get a spell(持续的一段时间) of winter in summer and a spell of summer in winter. ? ?The uncertainty about the weather has had a definite effect upon the Englishman’s character. It tends to make him cautious(小心谨慎的),for example. The foreigner may laugh when he sees the Englishman setting forth on a brilliantly sunny morning wearing a raincoat and carrying an umbrella, but he may well regret his laughter later in the day! ? ?And, of course, the weather’s variety provides a constant topic of conversation. Even the most taciturn (沉默寡言的) of Englishmen is always prepared to discuss the weather. And, though he sometimes complains bitterly of it, he would not, even if he could, exchange it for the more predictable climate of other lands. |
A:The foreigner’s laughter. B:The cold weather in winter. C:The uncertainty about the weather. D:The predictable climate.
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