大一英语考试资料.docx

1、大一英语考试资料Fresh Start 1 I first began to wonder what I was doing on a college campus when my parents drove off, leaving me standing pitifully in a parking lot. I decided I wanted nothing more than to find my way safely to my dorm room. It seemed that everyone on campus was watching me. My plan was to

2、keep my ears open and my mouth shut and I hoped no one would notice I was a freshman. 2 The next morning I found my first class and marched in. Once I was in the room, however, another problem awaited me. Where to sit? After much hesitation I chose a seat in the first row and to the side. 3 Welcome

3、to Biology 101, the professor began. Oh, God, I had thought it was a literature class. A cold sweat broke out on the back of my neck. I groped for my schedule and checked the room number. I was in the right room but the wrong building. 4 So now what? Get up and leave in the middle of the lecture? Wo

4、uldnt the professor be angry? I knew everyone would stare. Forget it. I settled into my chair and tried to look as serious as a biology major might be. 5 After class I felt a little hungry, and I hurried to the cafeteria. I piled my tray with sandwiches and was heading for the seat when I accidental

5、ly stepped in a large puddle of ketchup. My food tray tipped and I lost my balance. As my rear end met the floor, I saw my entire life pass before my eyes; it ended with my first day of college classes. 6 In the seconds after my fall I thought how nice it would be if no one had noticed. But as all t

6、he students in the cafeteria came to their feet, cheering and clapping, I knew they had not only noticed, they were determined that I would never forget it. 7 For the next three days I dined alone on nothing more than shame, and some junk food from a machine placed outside my room. On the fourth day

7、 I thought I needed some real food badly. Perhaps three days was long enough for the campus population N to have forgotten me. So off to the cafeteria I went. 8 I made my way through the food line and tiptoed to a table. Suddenly I heard a crash that sounded familiar. I looked up to find that anothe

8、r poor soul had met the same fate as I had. My heart went out to him as people began to cheer and clap as they had for me. He got up, hands held high above his head in a victory clasp, grinning from ear to ear. I expected him to slip out of the cafeteria as I had, but instead he turned around and be

9、gan preparing another tray. And thats when I realized I had been taking myself far too seriously. 9 Who cared whether I dropped a tray, where I sat in class, or even whether I showed up in the wrong lecture? Nobody. This wasnt like high school. In college, it didnt matter. This was my big chance to

10、do my own thing. 10 Once I realized that I had no ones expectations to live up to but my own, I relaxed. I began to view college as a wonderful experiment. I dressed a little differently, I discovered a taste for jazz, and I decided I liked going barefoot. 11 I gave up trying to act my way through c

11、ollege and began not acting at all. College, I decided, was probably the only time I would be completely forgiven for any mistakes (including stepping in puddles of ketchup and dropping food trays). So I used the opportunity to make all the ones I thought Id ever make. 12 Three years after graduatio

12、n, Im still making mistakes. And Im even being forgiven for a few. Do Animals Have a Culture?John FriedlLately, social scientists have begun to ask if culture is found just in humans, or if some animals have a culture too. When we speak of culture. We mean a way of life a group of people have in com

13、mon. Culture includes the beliefs and attitudes we learn. It is the patterns of behavior that help people to live together. It is also the patterns of behavior that make one group different from another group.Our culture lets us make up for having lost our strength, claws, long teeth and some other

14、defenses. Instead, we use tools, cooperate with one another, and communicate with language. But these aspects of behavior, or culture”, can also be found in the lives of certain animals.We used to think that the ability to use tools was the dividing line between human beings and animals. Lately, how

15、ever we have found that this is not the case. Chimpanzees can not only use tools, but actually make tools themselves. This is a major step up from simply picking up a handy object and using it. For example, chimpanzees have been seen stripping the leaves of a branch, then putting it into a termite n

16、est. When the termites bite at the stick, the chimpanzee removes it and eats them off the end-like our use of a fork.For some time we thought that although human beings learned their culture, animals could not be taught such behavior. Or even if they could learn, they would not teach one another in

17、the way humans do. This ,too, has proven to be untrue. A group of Japanese monkeys was studied at the Kyoto University Monkey Center in Japan. They were given sweet potatoes by scientists who wanted to attract them to the shore of an island. One day a young female began to wash her sweet potato to g

18、et rid of the sand. This practice soon spread through the group. It became learned behavior, not from humans but from other monkeys. Now almost all the monkeys who have come into contact with this group do not. Thus there is “culture” deference among animals.We have ruled out tool use and invention

19、as ways of telling animal behavior and human behavior. We have also ruled out the learning and sharing of behavior. Yet we still have held onto the last feature-language. But even the use of language can no longer separate human culture from animal culture. Attempts to teach apes to speak have faile

20、d. But teaching them language has been very successful if we are willing to accept other forms than just the spoken word. Two psychologists trained a chimpanzee named Washoe to use Standard American Sign Language. This is the same language used by deaf people. In this language, talk is made through

21、gestures, and not by spelling out words with individual letters. By the time she was five years old, Washoe had a vocabulary of 130 signs. Also, she could put them together in new ways that had not been taught originally. This means she could create language and not just mimic it. She creates her ow

22、n sentences that have real meaning. This has allowed two-way talk. It permits more than one-way command and response.Of course, there are limits to the culture of animals. As far as we know, no ape has formed social institutions such as religion or law. Also, some chimpanzees may be able to learn si

23、gn language, but this form of language is limited in its ability to communicate abstract ideas. Yet with a spoken language we can communicate our entire culture to anyone else who knows that language. Perhaps the most important thing is that the line dividing us from them is not as clear as we used

24、to think.from Fort Lauderdale, Florida in fine weather. There was a total of fourteen men on board the planes. The planes were in good condition; they had the best equipment on board including compasses and radios, and they also carried life rafts. The planes could float on water for ninety seconds.

25、 One and a half hours after the take-off, a radio message from one of the planes was heard at the control tower at Fort Lauderdale. 2 I dont know where we are. 3 After that the planes could no longer speak to the control tower, but they could speak to and hear each other, and the control tower could

26、 hear them. 4 The magnetic compass is going crazy. 5 Were completely lost. 6 No other messages were heard after that. Nobody else heard from the planes or saw them again. Three hundred planes and many boats searched the area, but not one trace of Flight 19 was found. Then one of the planes that was

27、sent to look for them also disappeared completely. 7 These planes had disappeared in a very mysterious part of the world in the western Atlantic Ocean where lots of strange events have taken place. The mystery started long before 1945, and since that year many other ships and planes have also disapp

28、eared in this area. It is called the Bermuda Triangle. It is a large, triangular area of the ocean with the island of Bermuda at its northern tip. 8 Planes and ships disappear in other parts of the world, but there are more disappearances in the Triangle than in other areas. For years now scientists

29、 and others have been puzzled by this mystery. There have been many attempts to explain why people, planes and ships disappear in such high numbers here . 9 One writer, John Spencer, believes that the ships and planes have been carried off from the sea and sky by flying saucers or UFOs from another

30、planet. Since there are millions of other planets in the universe, Spencer believes there must be other intelligent creatures somewhere in the universe. These creatures are interested in collecting humans and their equipment so that they can examine them carefully. 10 Another theory is that the geog

31、raphy of the area is responsible for the disappearances of the ships and planes. Bermuda lies on an earthquake belt. Underwater earthquakes result in large waves appearing suddenly. These waves are so big that they can break a ship into pieces. In the air, a similar thing can happen to airplanes bec

32、ause of sudden strong winds. 11 As with Flight 19, many boats and planes have reported that their magnetic compasses stop working properly in the Bermuda Triangle. Normally a magnetic compass points towards magnetic north . However, the Bermuda Triangle is one of the two places on Earth in which a compass points towards true north. Therefore, there is something strange about the magnetic properties of the area. 12 Many people have found these explanations difficult to believe. However, the most recent theory has a scientific basi