Reuel Tolkien (1892 ~ 1973), the British ling...

Reuel Tolkien (1892 ~ 1973), the British linguist, writer. He created a fantasy novel “The Lord of the Rings”, the well-known trilogy (三部曲).

Tolkien was born in Bloemfontein, South Africa. When he was 4 years old, his father died and his family moved back to England. Tolkien graduated from Oxford University when he was 23 years old, and participated in the First World War. During the war, Tolkien suffered from “trench fever” and stayed in the hospital until the end of World War I. It was the days in the hospital that he began his writing career first.

After the war, Tolkien became a linguist. He was an edition of the “New English Dictionary” of 1918 ~ 1920. However, he was more researching to Anglo-Saxon language which makes his extensive contacts in Britain and the Nordic spread all over the folklore and mythology.

In 1937, Tolkien completed his first work “The Hobbit”. Although this was a fairy tale, it was also suitable for adults to read. Because of good sales, publishers (Allen & Unwin) convinced Tolkien to write its sequel. This encouraged Tolkien to complete his most famous works the epic (史诗) trilogy “The Lord of the Rings”. The works of writing went on for almost a year with the support from his good friend Lewis.

At the beginning “The Lord of the Rings” was similar works for children, but after that writing style quickly became serious and dark. “The Lord of the Rings” was one of the most popular literary works in the 20th century in terms of sales and readers’ evaluation. Tolkien’s influence is important, for the success of “The Lord of the Rings” makes the fantasy novels of this literature genre (体裁) developed rapidly.

1.When did Tolkien take part in the World War I?

A. 1896　　 B. 1915

C. 1916　　 D. 1937

2.What can we learn from the passage?

A. Tolkien’s father died of “trench fever”.

B. Tolkien wrote the “New English Dictionary” himself.

C. “The Lord of the Rings” was finished about half a year.

D. Tolkien began his writing career in the hospital.

3.What is Tolkien’s “The Lord of the Rings” considered to be?

A. The first works of Tolkien

B. Always serious and dark

C. Beneficial to the development of the fantasy novels

D. The most popular literary works in the 20th century

4.The word “evaluation” in the last paragraph is closet to the meaning of “________”.

A. opinion　　 B. value

C. interest　　 D. hobby

高二英语阅读理解中等难度题查看答案及解析

阅读下面材料，在空白处填入适当的内容（1个单词）或括号内单词的正确形式。

Among masses of remarkable writers in the history of British literature 1.　 J.K Rowling who stands out as a 2.　 (gift) creator of Harry Potter. An ideal for Harry Potter　 3.　 (strike) J.K Rowling when she was on a delayed train. She then went to teach English in Portugal, 4. she continued to add flesh to the bone of the story. 5.(lack) in money, J.K Rowling used to spend many hours 6.　 a single cup of coffee in a warm cafeteria. Numerous failures　 7. she came across, She finally rose to fame and became the first writer to become a billionaire. Now, Harry Potter has enjoyed 8.　 great popularity that it even becomes part of the school curriculum, much to the 　 9.　 (please) of the schoolchildren. It is with determination and diligence 　 10. she finally makes it after undergoing numerous hardships.

高二英语语法填空中等难度题查看答案及解析

Hot words on the Internet don’t stay hot for long. “Geili” and “fuyun”, last year’s biggest linguistic innovations, are practically prehistoric in Internet terms. What’s buzzing now is “hold steady”

The term comes from a segment (片段) on the Taiwanese TV show University which features Miss Lin(Xie Yilin) giving a lecture on how to behave like a fashion queen at parties or on the bus. The extremely funny lecture is mainly an over-the-top mockery(嘲笑) of the fashion world, but Miss Lin makes a point: We need to hold steady in pressure-filled or embarrassing situations.

Holding steady, Internet slang for “staying poised”, is one of the qualities the public has been looking for lately as pressures on marriage, work and money can easily drive people crazy. The quality was demonstrated by a girl named Su Miaoling this year. The contestant in the TV singing competition Super Girl carried herself with an air of confidence on stage and kept her cool when others got anxious. “I like your poise(淡定). Very few contestants on this stage can keep calm like you do,” said one of the show’s judges, Hu Haiquan, to Su. Internet users dubbed Su “Sister Poise”.

Poise is also appreciated in Western culture as an essential quality of a well-mannered person. Each year, the National League of Junior Cotillions of the US releases a list of the Ten Best Mannered People. Kate Middleton made it onto the list in 2011 “for the poise and dignity with which she conducts herself in the public spotlight”. The Duchess of Cambridge was also acclaimed earlier this year for her remarkable poise at the royal wedding.

Good news for many, poise is not genetic----it can be acquired with a bit of effort. A personal growth guidance gives tips on how to stay poised. “Take a few deep breaths when you are facing a situation that tests your patience; practice yoga regularly to calm your nerves; use self-affirmation by saying ‘I choose to be calm in any situation’; write down your affirmation daily to imprint the goal,” reads the site.

1.According to the passage, what does “hold steady” mean?

2.Which of the following statements is NOT true?

3.Which of the following is NOT the way to hold steady?

4.The purpose of this passage is to_______.

高二英语阅读理解困难题查看答案及解析

The British----and especially the English----are bad at complaining. Because of British politeness rules, according to which conflict should be avoided, people either just do not complain, or sometimes bottle it up and then outpour it in another way in other umimportant situations. In fact, there is a TV programme which show the British in typical situations where they would be perfectly reasonable in complaining, but they don’t. In one scene, a woman reads a newspaper over people’s shoulders and the people say nothing or look embarrassed.

The British are also well-known for putting up with bad service everywhere from restaurants to airports and railway stations because the standard rules of behaviour say that it is bad to draw attention to yourself. This is why, when you travel on the tube in London and there is yet another delay, the passengers will look at each other, sigh, smile wearily and raise their eyes to heaven. They might even say, “Huh! Typical!” in a resigned(顺从的)tone of voice that says that there’s nothing that can be done about it. When complaints are made, they are made in an apologetic or a humorous tone of voice. In France ,on the other hand, angry passengers might riot(闹事)and burn down the subway station if they had to put up with the poor service that the London underground provides.

Americans and other Europeans, who are much more direct and in-your-face than the British, often wonder why British people always say “sorry” or “excuse me” when they complain. “It’s like they’re apologizing for something that isn’t their fault, they say. They are missing the point. British people are not really sorry ---it is because the word ‘sorry’ actually works as a distancing skill. This is important in terms of negative politeness and not drawing attention to yourself. If you do not say ‘sorry’ or use other distancing words like ‘could’, ‘would’, ‘might’, ‘possibly’ and so on, you will be seen as rude.”

1.What does the underlined part “bottle it up” in Paragraph 1 mean?

A. Put something into bottles　　 B. Not do anything dangerous

C. Cause problems by hesitating　　 D. Not allow emotions to be seen

2.The French tend to _______.

A. tolerate bad service　　 B. enjoy taking the subway

C. make a complaint humorously　　 D. express their dissatisfaction directly

3.When the British say “sorry”, they actually want to _______.

A. try not to be rude　　 B. apologize sincerely

C. show their feelings directly　　 D. draw attention to themselves

4.Which can be the best title for the text?

A. How to complain　　 B. Complaining politely

C. Poor service in Britain　　 D. Politeness rules across the world

高二英语阅读理解中等难度题查看答案及解析

Edward Sims was born in 1892. He was the fifth child and only son of Herbert and Dora Sims. Herbert was a blacksmith(铁匠), and had a thriving trade making horseshoes. He was determined that his first-born son would follow him into the blacksmith. For this reason, Edward had to leave school at the age of 12,and worked with his father.

However, Edward was not cut out to be a blacksmith. Although he has an athletic body, he didn't have strong arms like his father, and he felt dizzy in the heat of the smithy.  When he tried to find alternative employment, he found it difficult because he had never learnt to read or write.

One day, he went for an interview at a solictior’s office. The job was a runner, taking documents from the office to other offices in the city. The solicitor was pleased to see that Edward was physically fit, but when he discovered that the young man couldn't read or write, he decided against employing him. "How can you deliver documents to other offices," he asked, "if you can't read the addresses on them?"

Bitterly disappointed, Edward left the building and went to wait for a tram to take him back to the suburb where his father’s smithy was. Next to the bus stop, a man was selling newspapers from a stand .

"Excuse me, son?" he said. "Would you look after my stand for a moment?"

For the next 20 minutes, Edward sold newspapers, lots of them. When the man came back, he was so delighted with his new assistant's honesty, that he offered him a job. Edward took it immediately.

In the next few months, the two men progressed from working on newspaper stands to selling newspapers, tobacco,confectionery（糖果点心）and other goods in a shop. Then they opened a second shop, and a third. Eventually, they had a chain of 25 shops in three cities.

Edward became very rich, so he employed a tutor to teach him to read and write. The tutor  was amazed at what Edward had achieved. "Imagine what you could do if you’d been able to read and write when you were younger!" he said.

“Yes!” said Edward. “I could have run myself to exhaustion delivering documents for a solicitor!”

1.What would be the best title for the text?

A．Success of illiterate newsboy

B．Local blacksmith becomes famous

C．The thriving trade of the blacksmith

D．Reading and writing-the road to success

2.What can you infer from the underlined expression “not cut out to be” in the second paragraph?

A．Edward Sims did not like being a blacksmith.

B．Edward Sims did not like working with his father.

C．Edward Sims was not strong enough and it made him feel ill.

D．Edward Sims was good at it but wanted to do another job.

3.When Edward applied for the job as a runner for a solicitor, ________.

A．the solicitor turned him down because he wasn’t intelligent enough

B．the solicitor offered him the job because he was so fit

C．the solicitor gave him the job but told him he had to learn to read

D．the solicitor didn’t offer him the job because he couldn’t read

4.Which of the following is NOT ture about Edward Sims?

A．He was such a good salesman that he went on to own 25 newsagent shops with another man.

B．The newspaperman liked him so much he gave him a job.

C．He ran himself into exhaustion delivering papers.

D．He learnt to read and write.

高二英语阅读理解中等难度题查看答案及解析

A simple flower made headlines in the British press last week. How could that be?

British Prime Minister David Cameron and his ministers were attending a reception hosted by Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao in the Great Hall of the People in Beijing. They insisted on wearing poppies(罂粟花) in their buttonholes.

What’s wrong with that?

According to the Global Times, Chinese officials apparently had asked the UK delegation not to wear poppies. The British said that poppies meant a great deal to them on that day and they would wear them all the same.

So what’s the significance of the poppy? It’s a flower which has different cultural and symbolic meanings for British and Chinese people.

From the Chinese point of view, the poppy is a symbol of China’s humiliation at the hands of European powers in the Opium Wars of the 19th century. Britain forced China to open the borders to trade —including in the opium —which was made from poppies grown in India.

Yet from the British viewpoint the poppy is a reminder of the killing during Word War I. Red poppies grew on the battlefields of Flanders in Belgium where many thousands of British soldiers died or were buried. Since then, Poppy Day (November 11) has become a time in the UK to wear poppies and remember the sacrifices of British soldiers and civilians in times of war.

So you can see that the poppy sets off strong feelings in the hearts of Chinese and British people for different reasons. And it makes sense for us to try to understand each other’s standpoint.

Of course cultural differences can also be interesting and funny. And what one nation thinks is an acceptable gift may be viewed differently by their guest from overseas. US President Barack Obama gave a gift of an iPod to Britain’s Queen —a dull person with no interest in music. Obama also presented Gordon Brown with a fine selection of American movies. But they were in US format and impossible to play on British DVD players.

Many countries have diplomats stationed overseas. Diplomats provide information and advice to their governments back home. However, sometimes it would seem that even diplomats can overlook the cultural significance of a small flower.

(   ) 1..  British Prime Minister David Cameron probably attended a reception in Beijing on ________.

A. October 1            B. November 11      C. December 31      D. January 1

(   ) 2..  The poppy reminds the Chinese of ________.

A. the shame caused by European countries in the 19th century

B. the British soldiers who were killed and buried during World War I

C. the Chinese soldiers killed during World War II

D. the suffering caused by Britain during World War I

(   ) 3.. The diplomatic problem in Beijing is mainly caused by ________.

A. the translation mistake                      B. the language difference

C. the cultural difference                          D. the different lifestyle

(   ) 4..  We can infer that ________.

A. Britain’s Queen is not interested in art

B. Gordon Brown was fond of American movies US President Barack Obama sent him

C. US President Barack Obama received a gift for music

D. Britain’s Queen may not like the iPod US President Barack Obama presented her

(   ) 5..  What is the main idea of the 9th paragraph?

A. Cultural difference can also be interesting and funny.

B. Cultural differences can cause a big problem.

C. US President Barack Obama likes to present gifts to other leaders.

D. US leaders and British leaders get along well with each other.

高二英语阅读理解简单题查看答案及解析

It can be rude to talk politics over dinner…explicitly at least. But subtle linguistic cues might reveal more than you think about your political views, whether at the dinner table—or on Twitter. "There's a lot of information in the details of our language." Matthew Purver, a computational linguist at Queen Mary University of London. "The little words we use, the way we join together our sentences, and the kind of interactional patterns, where we react to other people."

Purver’s research team used Twitter as their communications forum, randomly selecting 28,000 users, half of whom clearly followed one political party’s Twitter feeds, for example, @GOP, but not the other, for a more or less even split among Republicans and Democrats. Then they analyzed the words in those users' timelines during a two-week period in June 2014.

As you might expect, the tweets of users who followed Republican accounts were a lot more likely to contain words like "obamacare" and "benghazi," whereas "bridge gate" came up more among Democratic followers.

But the researchers also found that the left-leaners were much more likely to use words like sh#& and fu@$ than were the righties. And whereas Republican followers preferred plural pronouns like "we" or "us," Democratic followers used more singular pronouns, like "I" or "me.".

That pronoun use could reflect previous work on how people on the right and left forge their political views. "People on the right end of the political spectrum are more likely to be concerned with group conformity. Whereas people who tend to be on the left are perhaps more likely to see their morals or their values deriving from individualistic ideas, if you like." The study is in the journal PLoS ONE.

Of course, just following a political account is not proof of political belief. But these findings suggest that algorithms may increasingly be able to read between the lines, detecting nuances in human communication that even we humans can't perceive.

1.What is the meaning of "There's a lot of information in the details of our language." ?

A. Information can be conveyed through the way of word combination, sentence pattern, etc. explicitly or implicitly.

B. We convey our meaning directly through language.

C. People say what they want.

D. Language is the only way we convey our meaning.

2.What result does Purver’s research team find?

A. Republican followers used more singular pronouns.

B. Democratic followers preferred plural pronouns like "we" or "us".

C. Republican followers are more likely to be concerned with group conformity.

D. Democratic followers did not care about government issues because they value individuality

3.What preference can pronoun use reflect?

A. That pronoun use could not reflect people’s political views.

B. Democratic followers are more likely to see their morals or their values deriving from individualistic ideas.

C. Either Democratic or Republican followers choose the pronouns at random.

D. Republican followers’ political views are on the left because they like to use the word conformity.

4.Which of the following is true?

A. It’s right to talk about politics over dinner.

B. People use Twitter to express their political views explicitly.

C. Humans may not perceive what we convey through language.

D. Linguistics has nothing to do with algorithms.

高二英语阅读理解中等难度题查看答案及解析

Shortly after publication, the book became ____ because of the writer’s repeated use of the negative word "nigger" to refer to the black Americans.

A．universal          B．conventional       C．controversial       D．skeptical

高二英语单项填空中等难度题查看答案及解析

根据短文内容，从下框的A-F选项中选出能概括每一段主题的最佳选项。选项中有一项为多余项。

A．The secret of the writer’s success

B．A writer with enduring popularity

C．Well-received creation to encourage Brits

D．The insight into human nature

E. Writing styles in different stages

F. The story appreciate for school students

1. ____________

Charles Dickens is often thought of as one of England’s great writers. Yet for many his language is old-fashioned and his story plots often improbable. Why, Dickens, out of so many other great English writers, has made the list? How then to explain Dickens’s enduring popularity?

2. _____________

One reason undoubtly is the British government’s insistence that every child studies a Dickens novel at school. Alongside Willian Shakespeare, Charles Dickens is a compulsory (必读的)writer on every English literature school reading list. His stories, though often over-long by today’s standard, are superbly written moral tales. They are filled with colorful characters.

3. ______________

But what makes his books stand out from other English writers is his insight into human nature. Dickens, like Shakespeare, tells us truths about human behavior that are as true to citizens of the 21st century as they were to his readers in the 19th century. Readers have returned to Dickens’s books again and again over the years to see what he has to say about readers’ own time.

4. _______________

The BBC adapted one of his less well-known novels, Little Dorrit, into a popular television drama that introduced many Brits to the novel for the first time. A dark story about greed and money, it was the perfect story to illustrate the bad times. No surprise then that it was Dickens Britons turned to, during the economic crisis last year, to make sense of world rapidly falling apart.

5. _______________

Readers of the 19th and early 20th century usually prized Dickens’s earlier novels for their humor and pathos(悲痛). While recognizing the virtues of these books, critics today tend to rank more highly the later works because of  their formal coherence and acute perception(洞察力) of the human condition. For as long as Dickens’s novels have something to say to modern audiences, it seems likely that he will remain one of Britain’s best loved writers.

高二英语信息匹配中等难度题查看答案及解析

The National Gallery

Description:

The National Gallery is the British national art museum built on the north side of Trafalgar Square in London. It houses a diverse collection of more than 2,300 examples of European art ranging from 13th-century religious paintings to more modern ones by Renoir and Van Gogh. The older collections of the gallery are reached through the main entrance while the more modern works in the East Wing are most easily reached from Trafalgar Square by a ground floor entrance.

Layout:

The modern Sainsbury Wing on the western side of the building houses 13th- to 15th-century paintings, and artists include Duccio, Uccello, Van Eyck, Lippi, Mantegna, Botticelli and Memling.

The main West Wing houses 16th-century paintings, and artists include Leonardo da Vinci, Cranach, Michelangelo, Raphael, Bruegel, Bronzino, Titan and Veronese.

The North Wing houses 17th-century paintings, and artists include Caravaggio, Rubens, Poussin, Van Dyck, Velazquez, Claude and Vermeer.

The East Wing houses 18th- to early 20th-century paintings, and artists include Canaletto, Goya, Turner, Constable, Renoir and Van Gogh.

Opening Hours:

The Gallery is open every day from 10am to 6pm (Fridays 10am to 9pm) and is free, but charges apply to some special exhibitions.

Getting There:

Nearest underground stations: Charing Cross (2-minute walk), Leicester Square (3-minute walk), Embankment (7-minute walk), and Piccadilly Circus (8-minute walk).

1.Where is the National Gallery?

A.on the north side of Trafalgar Square in London.

B.on the south side of Trafalgar Square in London.

C.on the west side of Trafalgar Square in London.

D.on the east side of Trafalgar Square in London.

2.In which century’s collection can you see religious paintings?

A.The 13th. B.The 17th. C.The 18th. D.The 20th.

3.Where are Leonardo da Vinci’s works shown?

A.In the East Wing. B.In the main West Wing.

C.In the Sainsbury Wing. D.In the North Wing.

4.Which underground station is closest to the National Gallery?

A.Piccadilly Circus B.Leicester Square C.Embankment D.Charing Cross

高二英语阅读理解中等难度题查看答案及解析