The Queen’s English is now sounding less upper-class, a scientific study of the Queen’s Christmas broadcasts had found. Researchers have studied each of her messages to the Commonwealth countries since 1952 to find out the change in her pronunciation from the noble Upper Received to the Standard Received.

Jonathan Harrington, a professor at Germany’s University of Munich, wanted to discover whether accent (口音) changers recorded over the past half century would take place within one person. “As far as I know, there just is nobody else for whom there is this sort of broadcast records,” he said.

He said the noble way of pronouncing vowels (元音) had gradually lost ground as the noble upper-class accent over the past years. “Her accent sounds slightly less noble than it did 50 years ago. But these are very, very small and slow changes that we don’t notice from year to year.”

“We may be able to relate it to changes in the social classes,” he told The Daily Telegraph, a British newspaper. “In 1952 she would have been hears saying ‘thet men in the bleck het’. Now it would be ‘that man in the black hat’. And ‘hame’ rather than ‘home’. In the 1950s she would have been ‘lorst’, but by the 1970s ‘lost’.”

The Queen’s broadcast is a personal message to the Commonwealth countries. Each Christmas, the 10-minute broadcast is put on TV at 3 pm in Britain as many families are recovering from their traditional turkey lunch. (传统火鸡午餐).

The results were published (发表) in the Journal of Phonetics.

1.The Queen’s broadcasts were chosen for the study mainly because ______.

2.Which of the following is an example of a less noble accent in English?

3.We may infer from the text that the Journal of Phonetics is a magazine on _______.

4.What is the text mainly about?

If you ask Americans whether or not they think their former president George W. Bush is smart, most of them will probably tell you they don’t think so. However, Bush’s IQ score is estimated to be above 120, which puts him in the top ten percent of the population.

It doesn’t seem to make sense. How come someone with such an IQ score is not considered smart? Researchers say: IQ does not tell the whole story. Some people have high IQ scores, but still they can be poor thinkers and decision-makers.

Keith Stanovich, a Canadian professor of human development and applied psychology, has been looking into the “clever fools” phenomenon for 15 years. He says IQ tests are very good at measuring certain mental faculties(能力), including logic, learning ability, working-memory capacity (how much information you can hold in mind), etc. Those faculties play a part in one’s academic success, but rational thinking is more important for us to make good judgments in real-life situations.

IQ tests fail to work when it comes to rational thinking. That’s because they are unable to assess things such as a person’s ability to weigh up information, or whether an individual can set aside the cognitive biases(认知偏差)that may be misleading.

“A high IQ is like height in a basketball player,” says David Perkins, who studies thinking and reasoning skills at Harvard University. “It is very important, all other things being equal. But all other things aren’t equal. It takes a lot more to be a good basketball player than being tall, and it takes a lot more to be a good thinker than having a high IQ.”

1.According to the text your academic success depends on your __________.

2.If you need to decide where to invest your money, you must use your ______________

3.We know from the text that ____________

4.What is the text mainly about?

Wednesday, January 7,2009

    A blacklist of 19 leading search engine portals (门户) and websites, including Google and Baidu, which “spread vulgar (lacking in good taste) content and harm the young people” has been published, the Chinese government said Monday.

    According to Xinhua News Agency, six central departments conducted a month – long campaign to clean up the Internet of unhealthy and vulgar materials.

“The government will continue to punish or even shut down those shameful Websites that refuse to correct their wrongdoing.” Cai Mangzhao, director of the State Council Information Office, said. “Immediate action is needed to clean up the Internet environment.”

The government demanded the web portals, a number of video sharing sites, including Sina, Sohu and NetEase, Google in Chinese and other websites to remove vulgar photos after due notice but they failed and continued providing links to these unhealthy sites.

    Google China’s spokeswoman Cui Jin, however, explained that “Google is neither the owner of those Websites nor does it spread (that) information intentionally. We have also adopted ‘safe search’ to block sites with such content automatically. ”

    Baidu, NetEase. com. Inc and SINA Corp., in web statements on Wednesday, admitted their guilt, and apologized for failing to control such contend. Google China, on the other hand, promised to cooperate with Internet users and society to help build a healthy Internet culture. “After we received notice from relevant government departments, we cleaned up links to vulgar content that could have harmful effects on Internet users,” it added.

45. What is the text mainly about?

         A. How the Chinese government manages the leading search engine portals.

         B. How the leading search engine portals react to the government’s criticism.

         C. What the government is trying to do to clean up the Internet environment.

         D. What the leading search engine portals are doing to improve their service.

46. Which of the following is TRUE about Cai Mingzhao?

         A. He works for the Ministry of Public Security.

         B. He called on the shameful Web sites to correct their wrongdoing.

         C. He apologized for failing to clean up the Internet of unhealthy materials.

         D. He is working hard to make the definition of “spreading vulgar materials” clear.

47. According to the text, which company took the most positive attitude?

         A. Google China                 B. NelEase. com. Inc.      

         C. SINA Corp.            D. Baidu

48. We can learn from the last paragraph that             .

        A. China’s Internet environment is getting better and better

         B. China still has a long way to go to build a cleaner Internet environment

         C. China has made laws to protect the environment of the Interned

         D. China has not realized the harm of illegal information from the Internet  

Far from the land of Antarctica, a huge shelf of ice meets the ocean. At the underside of the shelf there lives a small fish, the Antarctic cod.

For forty years scientists have been curious about that fish. How does it live where most fish would freeze to death? It must have some secret. The Antarctic is not a comfortable place to work and research has been slow. Now it seems we have an answer.

Research was begun by cutting holes in the ice and catching the fish. Scientists studied the fish’s blood and measured its freezing point.

The fish were taken from seawater that had a temperature of -1.88℃ and many tiny pieces of ice floating in it. The blood of the fish did not begin to freeze until its temperature was lowered to -2.05℃. That small difference is enough for the fish to live at the freezing temperature of the ice-salt mixture.

The scientists’ next research job was clear: Find out what in the fish’s blood kept it from freezing. Their search led to some really strange thing made up of a protein(蛋白质) never before seen in the blood of a fish. When it was removed, the blood froze at seawater temperature. When it was put back, the blood again had its antifreeze quality and a lowered freezing point.

Study showed that it is an unusual kind of protein. It has many small sugar molecules(分子) held in special positions within each big protein molecules. Because of its sugar content, it is called a glycoprotein. So it has come to be called the antifreeze fish glycoprotein, or AFGP.

49. What is the text mainly about?

A. The terrible conditions in the Antarctic.          B. A special fish living in freezing waters.

C. The ice shelf around Antarctic.                  D. Protection of the Antarctic cod.

50. Why can the Antarctic cod live at the freezing temperature?

A. The seawater has a temperature of -1.88℃.    

B. It loves to live in the ice-salt mixture.

C. A special protein keeps it from freezing.        

D. Its blood has a temperature lower than -2.05℃.

51. What does the underlined word “it” in Paragraph 5 refer to?

A. A type of ice-salt mixture.                      B. A newly found protein.

C. Fish blood.                                           D. Sugar molecule.

52. What does “glycol” in the underlined word “glycoprotein” in the last paragraph mean?

A. sugar                      B. ice                   C. blood                      D. molecule

阅读下面的短文，并根据短文后的要求答题（请注意问题后的字数要求）。

[1] Today, millions of people want to learn or improve their English but it is difficult to find the best method. Is it better to study in Britain or America or to study in your own country?

[2] The advantages of going to Britain seem obvious. Firstly, you will be able to listen to the language all the time you are in the country. You will be surrounded completely by the language wherever you go . Another advantage is that you have to speak the language if you are with other people. In Italy, it is always possible, in the class, to speak Italian if you want to and the learning is slower.

   [3] On the other hand, _____ staying at home to study. You don’t have to make big changes to your life. As well as this, it is also a lot cheaper than going to Britain but it is never possible to achieve the results of living in the UK. If you have a good teacher in Italy, I think you can learn in a more concentrated way than being in Britain without going to a school.

   [4] So, in conclusion, I think that if you have enough time and enough money, the best choice is to spend some time in the UK. This is simply not possible for most people, so being here in Italy is the only viable option. The most important thing to do in this situation is to maximize your opportunities: to speak only English in class and to try to use English whenever possible outside the class.

 1. What is the text mainly about? (no more than 8 words)

  ___________________________________________________________________________

2. Complete the following statement with proper words. (no more than 3 words)

All the people and everything around are related with ______________________, and you’ll have more opportunities.

3. Fill in the blank in Paragraph 3 with proper words. (no more than 8 words)

  ___________________________________________________________________________

4. What suggestion does the author give to those who learn English in their own country? (no more than 20 words)

  ___________________________________________________________________________

  ___________________________________________________________________________

5. What does the word “it” (line 2, paragraph 3) probably refer to? (no more than 5 words)

 ___________________________________________________________________________