It's not a new phenomenon, but have you noticed how many nouns are being used as verbs? We all use them, often without noticing what we're doing.

    I was arranging to meet someone for dinner last week, and I said “I’ll pencil it in my diary”, and my friend said “You can ink it in”, meaning that it was a firm arrangement not a tentative one!

Many of these new verbs are linked to new technology. An obvious example is the word fax, which is a shortening of facsimile originally, an exact copy of a book or document. We all got used to sending and receiving faxes, and then soon started talking about faxing something and promising we'd fax it immediately. So, nouns turn into verbs in two easy stages. Then along came email, and we were soon all emailing each other madly. How did we do without it? I can hardly imagine life without my daily emails.

Email reminds me, of course， of my computer and its software, which has produced another couple of new verbs. On my computer I can bookmark those pages from the World Wide Web that I think I'll want to look at again, thus saving all the effort of remembering their addresses and calling them up from scratch. I can do the same thing on my PC, but there I don't bookmark; I favorite—coming from “favorite pages”, so the verb is derived from an adjective not a noun． I wasn’t really sure whether people said this，but someone told me recently that they had favorited a site I was looking for and so they could easily give me its address.

In the late 1980s I noticed that lots of my friends had acquired pagers, and kept saying things like “I’ll page you as soon as I know what time we’re meeting”. They couldn't say it to me, though; 1 refused to have one． So my children bought me a mobile phone, now known simply as a mobile and I had to learn yet more new verbs. I can message someone, that is, I can leave a message （either spoken or written）for them on their phone．Or I can text them, write a few words suggesting when and where to meet, for example. How long will it be before I can mobile them, that is, phone them using my mobile? I haven’t heard that verb yet, but I’m sure I will soon. Perhaps I’ll start using it myself! 　

“I’ll pencil it in my diary” in the second paragraph probably means          .

    A. it was a firm arrangement　　　　　　　    　B. it was an uncertain arrangement

    C. the arrangement should be written as a diary     D. he prefers a pencil to a pen

A website address can be easily found if it has been＿____.

    A. emailed                   B. messaged                 C. favorited                D. texted

Which of the following has not been used as a verb, yet?

    A. message                   B. page                     C. email                            D. mobile

The best title for this passage is____．

A. New Verbs from Old Nouns　　　　B. The Development of the English language

    C. New Technology and New words    D. Technology and Language.

阅读理解

　　Tom, Mike and Jack once lost their way in a forest. They came to a farmer's house and asked if they could stay in the house for the night.

　　“Sure,”the farmer said“but I have room for only two of you in the house. The other one will have to sleep in the barn（马厩）, with the animals. I'm afraid the smell is very bad out there.”

　　“I'll sleep in the barn,”Tom said.

　　But half an hour later a knock was heard on the house door, and there stood Tom, “I can't take the smell.”

　　“All right,” said Mike“I'll sleep in the barn.” So he went off to the barn.

　　In a while there was another knock on the door, “I can't take the smell, either.”

　　“You two fools,” said Jack“I'll sleep in the barn.”

　　Thirty minutes later came another knock. When they opened the door, they saw all the animals from the barn.

1．What did they do when they found they had lost their way?

[　　]

A．They stopped to have a good rest.

B．They came to a house and begged to be put up for the night.

C．They decided to help the farmer take care of his animals.

D．They made up their minds to get out of the forest before dawn.

2．What did the farmer do?

[　　]

A．He was too frightened to open the door.

B．He told them how to get out of the forest.

C．He promised to put them up for the night.

D．He went to his friend's to make room for them.

3．One of the boys had to sleep in the barn because ________

[　　]

A．he was very dirty.

B．he made a loud noise when he slept.

C．there wasn't enough room in the house.

D．there was only one room in the house.

4．Who was the first to go to the barn to sleep?

[　　]

5．All the animals were at the door because ________.

[　　]

A．the farmer drove them out.

B．they wanted to go into the warm house.

C．Tom and Mike led them out.

D．Jack drove them out.

短文改错

I'll never forget the trip to Europe last year. After I left	1．________
a small village in the south of France, I drove on to the next	2．________
town. In the way a young man who was very tall stopped me and	3．________
asked me for the lift. As soon as he got into the car, I said	4．________
“Good morning” to him in French and he answered with the same	5．________
language. Except for a few words, I did not know any French	6．________
at all. None of us spoke during the journey. I had nearly	7．________
reached the town, while the young man suddenly said very slowly.	8．________
“Do…you…speak…English?” I looked at him in surprising.	9．________
Here was no people speak English, Just then I understand that	10．________
he, too, was an Englishman.

—Is the experiment easy?

　　　　— ________ . I’ll just do my bit.

　　A. I think so　　　B. Certainly   C. Not a little　　D. Anything but

— Would you like to come to the dinner party here on Saturday?

— Thank you. I’d love to,　　　 I’ll be out of town at the weekend

A. because          B. and       C. so        D. but