57. The most action-packed variation would be__________. A. Game One with a blue star B. Game Two with a black star C. Game One with a yellow star D. Game Two with a red star 58. Rocket Ball could best be described as a game of__________. A. space voyage B. quick response C. skills & strength D. scientific knowledge
B
The Harry Potter author JK Rowling has shared some rejection letters publishers sent to her alter ego Robert Galbraith, in an effort to comfort aspiring authors.
Rowling posted the letters on Twitter after a request from a fan. They related to The Cuckoo’s Calling, her first novel as Galbraith. But Rowling also saw Harry Potter turned down several times before the boy wizard became one of the greatest phenomena in children’s literature, with sales of more than 400m copies worldwide.
Asked how she kept motivated, she tweeted: ―I had nothing to lose and sometimes that makes you brave enough to try.‖ When she pitched under the name Galbraith without revealing her true identity, she faced many more snubs. Since then, Galbraith has published three successful novels but the first was rejected by several publishers, and Rowling was even advised to take a writing course.
Rowling erased the signatures when she posted the letters online, saying her motive was ―inspiration not revenge‖. She did not reveal the full text of the most brutal brush-off, which came by email from one of the publishers who had also rejected Harry Potter.
Rowling said she could not share the Potter rejections because they ―are now in a box in my attic‖ before offering the Galbraith letters. The kindest and most detailed rejection came from Constable & Robinson, who – despite the advice about a writing course – included helpful tips on how to pitch to a publisher (―as on book jackets – don’t give away the ending!‖). The publisher added: ―I regret that we have reluctantly come to the conclusion that we could not publish it without commercial success.‖ The short note from publishers Crème de la Crime said the firm had become part of another publishing group and was not accepting new submissions.
When The Cuckoo’s Calling eventually found a publisher in 2013, it was achieving respectable sales before the secret of its authorship broke, and it then shot to the top of the bestseller lists.
Joanne Harris, author of a string of hit novels, joined the Twitter discussion to say she had so many rejections for her 1999 book Chocolat, later adapted as a Hollywood movie, that she had piled them up and ―made a sculpture‖.
Rowling, Harris and their literary disciples are in excellent company. Eimear McBride, the 2014 Bailey’s prizewinner for her first novel A Girl is a Half-formed Thing, accumulated a drawer full of rejection letters before a chance conversation led to her book being published by Galley Beggar, a tiny independent publisher in Norwich.
59. Which of the following is the name of a prize for fiction? A. Robert Galbraith. B. Chocolat. C. Bailey’s D. Crème de la Crime 60. JK Rowling’s novels were rejected for the following reasons EXCEPT that _________. A. the writer needs to learn some techniques about how to write B. books are meant to be published for bringing in money C. the publisher for the time being denies new submissions
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D. those that can be adapted for movies are worth considering 61. Why did JK Rowling post some rejection letters on the Twitter? A. To inform readers that hardships make a man stronger. B. To inspire ambitious writers never to give up halfway.
C. To take her revenge on those publishers who ever rejected her. D. To carry out an academic discussion with other fellow writers.
C
Two things that Starbucks has discovered about mothers: first, our bodies are 90 per cent made up of milky coffee, which requires constant refilling; and second, we very much want to be wanted. Hence, its new ―parent-friendly‖ pledge.
With the help of the National Childbirth Trust, baristas at more than 800 Starbuck outlets around Britain are being trained in how to handle tired and emotional parents. Breastfeeding will be encouraged; bottles will be warmed on request; high chairs and changing tables will be supplied in abundance; there will even be emergency nappies on hand, for when your baby’s having one of those hundred-poo days and you only packed supplies for 99. ―It’s important that parents feel reassured they have the support of staff and won’t be judged,‖ says an NCT spokeswoman.
In return for these efforts, Starbucks branches will be able to display a special NCT window sticker bearing the logo: ―Parent Friendly Place.‖ This has the double advantage of implying that other cafes, lacking the official sticker, might be Parent Unfriendly, or at least a little Parent Standoffish. And indeed, some are. Who can blame them? Where there are parents, there are children – crying, running about, pouring out salt into little mounds, sucking their fingers and then sticking them in the sugar bowl.
On the other hand, there’s always money to be made from society’s desperate. Catering to parents, literally or figuratively, makes sense for those businesses already paying rents on the high street. It brings in customers all through the day, instead of just at lunch and supper. Cinemas have cottoned onto this too: the big chains have all introduced daytime ―parent and baby‖ screenings, where you and your screaming bundle of reflux can pretend to watch a whole grown-up film and no one is allowed to tut.
Even the swankiest restaurants are getting in on the act. The Michelin-starred Pollen Street Social in London, and the equally feted Delaware and Hudson in New York, have both hosted ―dining clubs for mothers‖. You take your child along with you to eat posh food from posh plates, and pretend the last two years of living off cold fish fingers and squirts of Ella’s Kitchen straight from the sachet were just a bad dream.
There is, I can’t help feeling, something slightly depressed about all this. Why are we so reluctant to give up our old habits? Is it because so many of us come to motherhood late, by which time our habits have come to define us? I remember, soon after having my first child, fretting that I had ―lost myself‖, as if I’d left my ID somewhere along with my car keys. I tried all sorts of things to recover it: spa weekends with girlfriends, date nights with the husband, writing book proposals in a vain attempt to restart my ambition.
But, after eight years and two more children, I have come to realise – you can’t ever get your old life back. It’s no use looking for it in restaurants and cinemas and down the back of the sofa.
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That person – the one who could leave the house without having to hire someone to take her place, and gossip at leisure without being tugged at on all sides by tiny, insistent hands, like a bosomy, Breton-striped Gulliver – is no more. And the strangest thing is, you don’t even miss her.
62. How do you understand the sentence ―We very much want to be wanted\in the first paragraph?
A. Mothers want society to be considerate of the uniqueness of their identity. B. Mothers hope to get rid of traditional roles and go to work.
C. Mothers expect their kids to think of them frequently when they grow up. D. Mothers desire to have the same social position as men.
63. Which of the following measures is used to attract mothers to restaurants?
A. Some businesses pay rents on the high street.
B. Free spa weekends and date nights are provided for them.
C. They can enjoy cold fish fingers and squirts of Ella’s kitchen in restaurants.
D. Dining clubs are hosted and nappies are even supplied on request.
64. Which of the following has the closest meaning to the underlined phrase ―getting in on the act‖?
A. responding accordingly B. joining the lineup of business C. taking the critical attitude D. preventing the act happening 65. Which is the best title for the passage? A. Mother’s New Appeal: Cozier Life
B. A Study on Mothers’ Likings and Dislikings C. Easy Money from New Parents D. On Restaurants’ Marketing Strategies
D
In the film The Revenant the Leonardo DiCaprio adventure takes the basic facts of real-life frontiersman Hugh Glass's sufferings and adds extra characters, extra ultra violence and more horse guts.
Hugh Glass was a frontiersman working in the upper Missouri river area in the early years of the 19th century. On a fur trapping expedition in 1823, he was attacked and injured by a grizzly bear.
1. _____________
Hugh Glass (Leonardo DiCaprio) is one of a group of men finishing up a fur trapping expedition in the wilderness. They are attacked by Ree (Arikara) warriors. Whoosh！ Someone gets impaled on a spear. Bang！ Someone gets shot off his horse. Crack！ Someone's bones shatter. There's a fearless close-up of an arrow thwacking into a face, a gun butt bashing into a face, a flying kick to a face. A horse gets shot in the face. It's exceptionally well choreographed (取景) and filmed.
This scene is based on a real-life incident: In June 1823, Ashley's band of around 70 men was attacked by Arikara warriors –they estimated around 600, though in the film it's more like a dozen.
2. Characters
In the film, 10 men get away. Fitzgerald is fighty and racist, so he's the bad guy. Glass is the good guy, because he loves his son (who is half-Pawnee) in a gruff, manly way that involves
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telling him off a lot. The back story about Glass’s love for a Pawnee woman is fiction. It has been suggested the real Glass had such a relationship, but there's no firm evidence –and no evidence that he had any children.
3. Wildlife
As the men make their way through a forest, Glass happens upon two bear cubs and their angry mama. If you felt pale after the face-smashing scene at the start, reach for the smelling salts. Chomp！ Growl！ Shake！ The bear sniffs him to see if he's dead, then jumps up and down on his back. Splinter！ Howl！ Slash！ Glass shoots the bear. Anyway, while historians are not certain of the precise details, the real Glass did get into a fight with a real bear, sometime in August 1823.
4. Murder
The men find Glass in a rum old state. Captain Henry pays Fitzgerald, Bridger and Hawk to stay behind until it is time for Glass's inevitable burial. When the captain leaves, Fitzgerald tries to bump Glass off. Hawk interrupts, so Fitzgerald bumps him off instead. This didn't happen in real life, because Hawk didn't exist. In the film, the weak Glass sees Fitzgerald kill his son, giving him an extra motivation to stay alive and seek revenge.
5. Survival
The real Glass survived his abandonment and dragged his battered body over hundreds of miles of terrain in pursuit of the men who left him for dead. Though he could read and write, Glass never set his story down in his own hand. It was first published by another writer in a Philadelphia journal in 1825. It may well have been modified then. It has been modified many times since.
6. Hardship
The film has invented some extra obstacles for Glass: it is snowing throughout, even though in real life his trek took place between August and October; the Arikara track him and chase him into a tree; he has to hollow out a dead horse to make himself a sleeping bag. As for the ending, it has been changed in one significant way: in real life, nobody got killed.
66. We can know for sure after reading the passage that real Hugh Glass _____.
A. finally survived for he was determined to take revenge on Fitzgerald killing Hawk B. fell in love with a Pawnee woman and soon after they had a clever and brave boy C. wrote nothing about his suffering despite the fact that he was actually educated D. nearly got killed by Fitzgerald and Hawk under the instruction of Captain Henry 67. To play the role of Hugh Glass, Leonardo DiCaprio must have ______.
A. fought against three bears courageously B. walked in snow with great difficulty C. rode a horse time and time again D. grasped skills for surviving in the wild 68. Which of the following can be the best subtitle for the 4th and 5th paragraphs? A. Violence B. Setting C. Horror D. Special effects
69. We can see here and there in the passage that the writer thinks of the movie as a _____
adaptation. A. faithful B. disappointing C. successful D. heartless 70. The passage is intended to inform readers _____. A. how tragic Hugh Glass's experience is
B. how well Leonardo DiCaprio performs in The Revenant C. how bloody the movie The Revenant is D. how historically accurate The Revenant is
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第四部分 任务型阅读 (共10小题，每小题1分，满分10分)
请认真阅读下列短文，并根据所读内容在文章后表格中的空格里填入一个最恰当的单词。注意: 请将答案写在答题卡上相应题号的横线上。每个空格只填一个单词。
In a study just published in the journal Intelligence, using search terms such as ―stupid thing to do‖, Balazs Aczel and his colleagues compiled a collection of stories describing stupid mistakes from sources such as The Huffington Post and TMZ. The researchers then had a sample of university students rate each story on the responsibility of the people involved, the influence of the situation, the seriousness of the consequences, and other factors.
Analyses of the subjects’ ratings revealed three varieties of stupid mistakes. The first is when a person’s confidence goes beyond their skill, as when a Pittsburgh man robbed two banks in broad daylight without wearing a disguise, believing that lemon juice he had rubbed on his face would make him invisible to security cameras.
The confidence-skill disconnection has been named the Dunning-Kruger effect, after a study by social psychologists David Dunning and Justin Kruger. Dunning and Kruger had Cornell undergraduates perform tests of humor, logic, and grammar, and then rate how well they think they performed compared to other subjects in the study. The worst performing subjects, whose scores put them in the 12th percentile, estimated that they had performed in the 62nd percentile. Summarizing the findings, Dunning noted, ―Poor performers—and we are all poor performers at some things—fail to see the flaws in their thinking or the answers they lack.‖ When we think we are at our best is sometimes when we are at our objective worst.
As any number of political scandals illustrate, the second type of stupid mistake involves impulsive acts—when we seem unable to keep our behavior in check. In the scandal that became known as Weinergate, former U.S. representative Anthony Weiner sent blue texts and pictures of himself to women he met on Facebook. (After resigning, Weiner continued his cyber-dalliances, and then fell prey to the Dunning-Kruger effect when he overestimated his support in the 2013 New York City mayoral primary; he received 5% of the vote.)
The final variety of stupid mistake involves failing to concentrate—Homer Simpsonesque D’oh moments. As arguably the best example from American sports history, in the 1929 Rose Bowl, University of California star Roy Riegels recovered a fumble(失误球) and returned it 65 yards the wrong way. Riegel’s mistake set up a safety for Georgia Tech, which turned out to be the deciding factor in the opponent’s victory. Aczel and colleagues’ analyses revealed that subjects viewed this category of stupid mistake as the least stupid.
It is, of course, unrealistic to think that we could ever eliminate human error. To err will always be human. However, this research gives us a better description of our failings and weaknesses, and a place to start in thinking about interventions and prescriptions to help us err less. This research also reminds us of our shared human weaknesses. We all tend to overestimate our abilities, to make impulsive decisions, and to fail to keep attention. This simple realization makes stupid mistakes seem, perhaps, a little less stupid — and a little more human.
Title: Why you make breathtakingly stupid mistakes 10