Put a group of strangers in a room together, and they’ll probably start a conversation. “Hot today, isn’t it?” one might say. “You said it,” another replies.

Why do we talk so much about the weather? When we meet new people, we don’t begin by telling them our life story. We start with small talk, a polite conversation about something like traffic or weather.

Research suggests that small talk can build new friendships. When we begin conversations with new people, we want to feel comfortable, and so do they. We use small talk to find common interests. Once we have a common interest, a friendship can begin.

Small talk even helps people get a job. In order to impress at a job interview, you need to bond with the interviewer right away. Proper small talk can make that first impression get you the job.

So, how can you make small talk lead to a new friendship or job? First off, find common ground. Select something around you that you share with the other person.

Next, keep the conversation going. Compliment (贊美) the other person to make him or her feel comfortable, and ask questions to show interest.

Third, keep eye contact. When you loop people in the eye, they feel you appreciate what they are saying. It makes you appear honest and build trust.

Naturally, shy people might not have enough confidence to start up conversations with strangers. Talking to someone you don’t know is not the easiest thing to do! Some experts say with more practice, small take does get easier.

Some people avoid small talk because they dislike discussing things like traffic or weather. For them, they are just too small. However, when you think about it, small talk is anything but small. In fact, it is actually a very big deal!

Title

Small Talk: A Big (76) _________

Introduction

We are likely to make small talk when we (77) _______ meet people.

(78)___________

Small talk can help people form (79) ________ friendships.

Small talk can also help people get (80) __________.

Advice

Find some topics (81) ________ with the other person.

Keep the talk going by making compliments and (82) __________ questions.

Keep eye contact in conversation to build (83) ________.

(84) _________ more in order to make small talk easier.

Conclusion

Small talk really (85) _________ a lot to us.

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科目：高中英語 來源：2015-2016學年安徽黃山屯溪一中高一下期中考試英語卷（解析版） 題型：聽力第三部分

When people first walked across the Bering Land Bridge thousands of years ago, dogs were by their sides, according to a study published in the journal Science.

Robert Wayne of the University of California, Los Angeles, and Jennifer Leonard of the Smithsonian Institute, used DNA material—some of it unearthed by miners in Alaska—to conclude that today’s domestic dog originated in Asia and accompanied the first humans to the New World about 10,000 to 15,000 years ago. Wayne suggests that man’s best friend may have enabled the tough journey from Asia into North America. “Dogs may have been the reason people made it across the land bridge,” said Wayne. “They can pull things, carry things, defend you from fierce animals, and they’re useful to eat.”

Researchers have agreed that today’s dog is the result of the domestication(馴化) of wolves thousands of years ago. Before this recent study, a common thought about the precise origin of North America’s domestic dog was that Natives domesticated local wolves, the descendents(后代) of which now live with people in Alaska, Canada, and the Lower 48.

Dog remains from a Fairbanks-area gold mine helped the scientists reach their conclusion. Leonard, an evolutionary biologist, collected DNA from 11 bones of ancient dogs that were locked in permafrost(永凍層) until Fairbanks miners uncovered them in the 1920s. The miners donated the preserved bones to the American Museum of Natural History in New York City, where they remained untouched for more than 70 years. After borrowing the bones from the museum, Leonard and her colleagues used radiocarbon techniques to find the age of the Alaska dogs. They found the dogs all lived between the years of 1450 and 1675 A.D., before Vitus Bering and Aleksey Chirikov who were the first known Europeans to view Alaska in 1741. The bones of dogs that wandered the Fairbanks area centuries ago should therefore be the remains of “pure native American dogs,” Leonard said. The DNA of the Fairbanks dogs would also expose whether they were the descendents of wolves from North America.

Along with the Fairbanks samples, the researchers collected DNA from bones of 37 dog specimens(標本) from Mexico, Peru, and Bolivia that existed before the arrival of Columbus. In the case of both the Alaska dogs and the dogs from Latin America, the researchers found that they shared the most genetic material with gray wolves of Europe and Asia. This supports the idea of domestic dogs entering the New World with the first human explorers who wandered east over the land bridge.

Leonard and Wayne’s study suggests that dogs joined the first humans that made the adventure across the Bering Land Bridge to slowly populate the Americas. Wayne thinks the dogs that made the trip must have provided some excellent service to their human companions or they would not have been brought along. “Dogs must have been useful because they were expensive to keep,” Wayne said. “They didn’t feed on mice; they fed on meat, which was a very guarded resource.”

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A. leftover food B. dead bodies

C. animal waste. D. living environmet

2.According to the study described in Paragraph 4, we can learn that ______.

A. the bones studied were not from dogs brought into North America by Europeans

B. the 11 bones of ancient dogs are not from native American dogs

C. the bones discovered by the gold miners were from North American wolves

D. ancient dogs entered North America between 1450 and 1675 AD

3.What can we know from the passage?

A. Native Americans domesticated local wolves into dogs.

B. Ancient dogs entered North America across the Bering Land Bridge.

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A. dogs fed on mice

B. dogs were easy to keep

C. dogs helped protect their resources

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A. the origin of the North American dogs

B. the DNA study of ancient dogs in America

C. the reasons why early people entered America

D. the difference between Asian and American dogs

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Whatever misfortune you face, just hold up your head and face it with a smile! I got to know this from a musical soul.

The other day I was feeling quite , having just been laid off from my job. With so many to pay, I was wondering what was going to happen to my family.

I got off the bus when I heard piano music and singing rising above the noise of the . I walked a bit slower, trying to find out where it was coming from. Through the I saw a young lady sitting at a piano with a box next to her.

She was singing songs about love and her sweet voice me a bit. Then I stood there watching her playing, thinking that it must take to perform on her own in front of hundreds of people she didn’t know.

She might have felt my for she occasionally looked in my direction.

By now I was telling myself that I could at least tell her how good she sounded. I walked and put some money in her box and she expressed her thanks with a smile on her face.

I asked her , “Why are you playing the piano in the middle of this crowded place?”

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