Section A MULTIPLE-CHOICE QUESTIONS
In this section there are several passages followed by fourteen multiple-choice questions. For each multiple-choice question, there are four suggested answers marked A, B, C and D. Choose the one that you think is the best answer and mark your answers on ANSWER SHEET TWO.
Passage One
When the Viaduct de Millau opened in the south of France in 2004, this tallest bridge in the world won worldwide compliments. German newspapers described how it "floated above the clouds" with "elegance and lightness" and "breathtaking" beauty. In France, papers praised the "immense concrete giant". Was it mere coincidence that the Germans saw beauty where the French saw heft and power Lera Boroditsky thinks not.
A psychologist at Stanford University, she has long been intrigued by an age-old question whose modern form dates to 1956, when linguist Benjamin Lee Whorf asked whether the language we speak shapes the way we think and see the world. If so, then language is not merely a means of expressing thought, but a constraint on it, too. Although philosophers, anthropologists, and others have weighed in, with most concluding that language does not shape thought in any significant way, the field has been notable for a distressing lack of empiricism—as in testable hypotheses and actual data.
That"s where Boroditsky comes in. In a series of clever experiments guided by pointed questions, she is amassing evidence that, yes, language shapes thought. The effect is powerful enough, she says, that "the private mental lives of speakers of different languages may differ dramatically," not only when they are thinking in order to speak, "but in all manner of cognitive tasks," including basic sensory perception. "Even a small fluke of grammar"—the gender of nouns— "can have an effect on how people think about things in the world," she says.
As in that bridge, in German, the noun for bridge, Brücke, is feminine. In French, pont is masculine. German speakers saw female features; French speakers, masculine ones. Similarly, Germans describe keys (Schlüssel) with words such as hard, heavy, jagged, and metal, while to Spaniards keys (llaves) are golden, intricate, little, and lovely. Guess which language interprets key as masculine and which as feminine
Language even shapes what we see. People have a better memory for colors if different shades have distinct names—not English"s light blue and dark blue, for instance, but Russian"s goluboy and sinly. Skeptics of the language-shapes-thought claim have argued that that"s a trivial finding, showing only that people remember what they saw in both a visual form and a verbal one, but not proving that they actually see the hues differently. In an ingenious experiment, however, Boroditsky and colleagues showed volunteers three color swatches and asked them which of the bottom two was the same as the top one. Native Russian speakers were faster than English speakers when the colors had distinct names, suggesting that having a name for something allows you to perceive it more sharply. Similarly, Korean uses one word for "in" when one object is in another snugly (a letter in an envelope), and a different one when an object is in something loosely (an apple in a bowl). Sure enough, Korean adults are better than English speakers at distinguishing tight fit from loose fit.
In Australia, the Aboriginal Kuuk Thaayorre use compass directions for every spatial cue rather than right or left, leading to locutions such as "there is an ant on your southeast leg." The Kuuk Thaayorre are also much more skillful than English speakers at dead reckoning, even in unfamiliar surroundings or strange buildings. Their language "equips them to perform navigational feats once thought beyond human capabilities," Boroditsky wrote on Edge. org.
Science has only scratched the surface of how language affects thought. In Russian, verb forms indicate whether the action was completed or not—as in "she ate (and finished) the pizza. " In Turkish, verbs indicate whether the action was observed or merely rumored. Boroditsky would love to run an experiment testing whether native Russian speakers are better than others at noticing if an action is completed, and if Turks have a heightened sensitivity to fact versus hearsay. Similarly, while English says "she broke the bowl," even if it smashed accidentally (she dropped something on it, say), Spanish and Japanese describe the same event more like "the bowl broke itself." "When we show people video of the same event," says Boroditsky, "English speakers remember who was to blame even in an accident, but Spanish and Japanese speakers remember it less well than they do intentional actions. It raises questions about whether language affects even something as basic as how we construct our ideas of causality." (此文选自 Newsweek)
Passage Two
What would the holidays be without lots of tiny twinkling lights Less colorful and festive—but also a lot safer.
From living rooms to front porches across the country, homeowners are stringing millions of lights on Christmas trees or eaves and decorating their windowsills with electric, battery-operated or traditional candles. But according to the federal Consumer Product Safety Commission, too many are doing so with little regard to the hazards. Last holiday season there were about 200 Christmas tree fires in American homes, caused primarily by faulty lights and resulting in 10 deaths and more than $ 10 million in property loss, the Commission says. Another 14,000 house fires are started yearly by misplaced or mishandled flame candles, causing 170 deaths and $ 350 million in property loss. And about 10,000 people are treated at emergency rooms for injuries from falls, cuts or shocks while hanging lights or decorations.
The biggest causes of holiday fires are "candles and live trees", said Kim Dulic, a Commission spokeswoman. The agency recommends battery-operated candles instead of real or electric, she said, along with fire-resistant artificial trees—or fresh well-watered trees.
A cut tree is fresh, she said, if the bottom of its trunk is sticky with resin and its needles are hard to pull and don"t break when bent. It is too dry if it sheds a shower of needles when bounced on the ground. A harvested tree should be cut about a half inch from the bottom and put in water within no more than three to six hours, said Rick Dungey, the public relations manager of the National Christmas Tree Association, in Chesterfield, Mo. "If you wait any longer, air molecules get in the trunk and they prevent the tree from siphoning water," Mr. Dungey said, adding that people should water often and never let the water go below the cut end. Once a Christmas tree dries out, it is an accident waiting to happen, said Lorraine Carli, the communications vice president of the National Fire Protection Association, in Quincy, Mass. If ignited, it can be engulfed in seconds.
The most common cause is electrical—either an overused electrical system or faulty wiring. Brett Brenner, the president of the Electrical Safety Foundation International (ESFI), in Rosslyn, Va. , said homeowners should make yearly inspections. "Cracked sockets, frayed or bare wires and loose connections can cause a serious shock or start a fire," he said. Use no more than one extension cord per socket, and string no more than three sets of lights together. Wires should not run under carpets or through windows or doors. He said outdoor outlets should be protected by a ground fault circuit interrupter—a breaker that trips with any interruption or problem with the ground wire. (An interrupter usually needs to be installed when an outlet is near or exposed to water; it generally costs less than $ 10. )
John Drengenberg, the consumer affairs director of Underwriters Laboratories, the testing group in Northbrook, Ⅲ. , said that if lights are certified for indoors only, they must not be used outside; those certified for outdoors, however, can be used inside. No matter the kind, he said, if the bulbs are the screw-in type, there should be no more than 50 per outlet. Outdoor lights, he said, should be hung with plastic clip-on hangers, not metal nails or staples, which can pierce insulation and cause a short. And what about those who don"t take down their outdoor lights until the wisteria is in bloom in May "You should never leave lights up all year round," Mr. Drengenberg said. "They"re not designed for year-round use. "
(此文选自 International Herald Tribune)
Passage Three
We all know that emotions originate in the brain. But we usually talk about our emotions coming from our hearts. If someone you know doesn"t give up easily, you might say, "He"s got a lot of heart." Not every culture would agree—for instance, when Italians want to say someone has heart, they say instead, "Ha fegato": "He has liver."
But what about bad emotions When you feel so sad or so angry that your heart "aches", could it actually be true Two new studies add support to the theory that, yes, what goes on in your mind can break your heart.
In the first study, just published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology (JACC), a team of eight researchers looking at more than 63,000 women who were participants in the ongoing Nurses" Health Study, found that those who reported basic symptoms of depression (like feeling down and incapable of happiness) had a higher-than-normal risk of coronary heart disease. And women who were clinically depressed were more than twice as likely as other women to suffer sudden cardiac death. None of the participants had heart problems at the study"s outset, but nearly 8% had symptoms of depression.
The researchers theorize that depression might have some direct physiological impact on the heart—like causing it to work harder in the face of stress. The study also found that the more depressed women were, the more likely they were to smoke cigarettes or have high blood pressure and diabetes—not exactly heart-healthy conditions. Or it may be that the antidepressants prescribed to treat those with mood problems were associated with heart ailments; in the study, sudden cardiac death was linked more strongly with antidepressant use than with women"s symptoms of depression.
The antidepressant theory is just that—a theory. It could be that the antidepressant takers in the study were simply the most depressed. But if the theory is substantiated by further research, it would add to a growing body of evidence suggesting that antidepressants carry a high risk (particularly for teenagers) when weighed against the drugs" still uncertain benefits. Scientists have already shown that antidepressants are a bad idea for those about to undergo coronary artery bypass surgery.
No one is sure exactly how depression hurts the heart, and one plausible explanation is that the train runs in the opposite direction—a damaged heart and its consequent stress on the body might activate, somehow, genes or other physiological changes that contribute to depression.
But another new paper, also published in the JACC, lends credit to the idea that it is our moods that work on our hearts and not the other way around. In this paper, researchers from University College London reviewed the findings of 39 previously published articles and found that men who are angry and hostile are significantly more likely to have a cardiac event than those who aren"t. That may sound unsurprising—we all know that anger can stress your heart. But it"s important to note the difference between aggression and just being aggressive. Previous studies have found that so-called type A"s—those who are driven, competitive and obsessed with deadlines—are not more likely to experience heart disease. In other words, your type A co-workers who are annoyingly ambitious and dutiful are no more likely to have a heart attack than you are. Rather, it"s the seething, angry types with underlying hostility who are the ticking time bombs. Anger, it turns out, is physiologically toxic.
The authors of the second paper offer the standard theories about how an angry emotion translates to a physical heart attack, angry people have a harder time sleeping; they take prescribed drugs less often; they eat worse, exercise less, smoke more and are fatter. These things add up: compared with the good-humored, those who were angry and hostile—but had no signs of heart problems at the outset—ended up with a 19% higher risk of developing coronary heart disease, according to the University College London paper.
The two studies reify gender stereotypes, women get their hearts broken through sadness; men "break" their hearts (via heart attack) through anger. But both studies suggest that men and women have a common interest in understanding that some causes of cardiac disease—poor diet or lack of exercise or bad sleep habits—may have a precipitating cause themselves. Whether male or female, letting yourself get overwhelmed by emotion can damage not only your mind but also that crucial organ, the heart.
(此文选自 Time)
Passage Four
A far cry from the pirates and princesses of today, costumes during Halloween"s precursor centuries ago included animal skins and heads, drag getups, and even mechanical horse heads, historians say.
Records of the precursor to Halloween—the Celtic new year celebration of Saimhain—are extremely threadbare, said Ken Nilsen, professor of Celtic studies at Canada"s St. Francis Xavier University in Antigonish, Nova Scotia. "We don"t have actual records telling us what it was like in ancient times, so our knowledge is based principally on folk customs that continued until recent centuries," Nilsen told National Geographic News.
Samhain, however, is known to date back at least 2,000 years, based on analysis of a Celtic bronze calendar discovered in the 1890s in Coligny, France, in what was then called Gaul. The festival marked the end of the Celtic year, when the harvest was gathered and animals were rounded up. It"s said the hides of cattle and other livestock slaughtered at this time were ritually worn during festivities that likely hark back to even earlier pagan beliefs.
Ancient Roman writers recorded that tribes in what is now Germany and France held riotous ceremonies where they donned the heads and skins of wild mammals to connect with animal spirits. The custom of wearing animal hides at bonfire-lighted Celtic feast ceremonies survived until recent times, Nilsen notes. "This was certainly done at Martinmas (the November 11 Christian feast of St. Martin) in Ireland and Scotland, which, in the old calendar, would be Halloween," he said. "There might have been an excess of livestock, so it would make sense to slaughter an animal," Nilsen said.
Samhain night was also a celebration of the dead—the one time the spirits were believed to walk among the living. Again, the earliest rituals aren"t known in detail, but in recent centuries families put out food and even set extra table places for their ancestors at Samhain. It was also a night when people dressed to create mischief and confusion, according to Bettina Arnold of the Center for Celtic Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. "The spirits of the dead were impersonated by young men dressed with masked, veiled or blackened faces," Arnold wrote in an essay titled Halloween Customs in the Celtic World. These disguises were intended both to protect revelers from any malevolent spirits and to fool households they visited. In Scotland and elsewhere, revelers masquerading as the dead would go around demanding food offerings—a forerunner to today"s trick-or-treating. Nilsen of St. Francis Xavier University added. "People put on costumes which frequently included blackened faces and so on, representing spooks, demons, or whatever."
According to the University of Wisconsin"s Arnold, on Samhain the boundary between the living and the dead was obliterated—as was the boundary between the sexes. Male youths would dress up as girls and vice versa, she wrote. In Wales, for example, groups of mischievous young men in Halloween drag were referred to as hags. In parts of Ireland, a man dressed as a white horse known as Lair Bhan—an ancient Celtic fertility symbol—led noisy processions at Samhain.
Many Samhain ensembles were incomplete without the appropriate accessories: lanterns made with hollowed-out turnips and candles. Later transplanted to North America with Irish immigrants, the tradition would be replicated in the fatter form of the pumpkin, a fruit native to the New World.
(此文选自 National Geographic) It can be inferred from Paragraph Five that ______. (Passage Two)