There is probably no field of human activity in which our values and lifestyles are shown more clearly and strongly than they are in the clothes that we choose to wear.The dress of an individual is a kind of “sign language” that communicates a set of information and is usually the basis on which immediate impressions are formed.Traditionally,a concern for clothes was considered to be an affair of females,while men took pride in the fact that they were completely lacking in clothes consciousness(意識).
This type of American culture is by degrees changing as man dress takes on greater variety and color.Even as early as 1955,a researcher in Michigan said that men attached rather high importance to the value of clothing in daily life. White collar workers in particular viewed dress as a symbol(象征)of ability,which could be used to impress or influence others,especially in the work situation.The white collar worker was described as extremely concerned about the impression his clothing made on his superiors(上司).Although blue collar workers were less aware(察覺到的)that they might be judged on the basis of their clothing,they recognized that any difference from the accepted pattern of dress would be made fun of by fellow workers.
Since that time,of course,the patterns have changed:the typical office worker may now be wearing the blue shirt,and the laborer a white shirt;but the importance of dress has not become less.Other researchers in recent years have helped to prove its importance in the lives of individuals at various age levels and in different social and economic status groups(階層).
【小題1】The passage tells us that _______.

YOUR mom might cook a bowl of noodles for you on your birthday. But in the US, a mom makes a cupcake for her children on their birthday.
Cupcakes are small, round cakes topped with frosting (糖霜). It has been an American tradition that moms bring cupcakes to the classroom to celebrate their child’s birthday.
But recently some doctors have called for this to be banned. They believe cupcakes contribute to child obesity.
Despite their good intentions, however, some people believe that experts are interfering (妨礙) with American culture. The cupcake is seen as American as apple pie — only prettier.
According to Marion Nestle, a professor of nutrition at New York University, the cupcake is the most democratic (民主的) of desserts. As they are small enough for one person, you don’t have to share your cupcake with anyone — it’s all yours. They are also all the same size, so there can’t be any cries of “she got the bigger piece!”
Each bite can taste different depending on how much icing you have. It is a lesson in self-determination. Some people eat only a little of the frosting every time, others have it all in just one bite.
In recent years, eating a cupcake has become as trendy as having a cup of Starbucks coffee.
Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton jokingly promised on a talk show that if she was elected president, she would give everyone a cupcake on her birthday.
Ruth Reichl, editor-in-chief of Gourmet magazine, explains that the rise of the cupcake is very much about going back to American national identity in food, which is all about comfort. “People want to think about when they and their country were innocent,” she said.
【小題1】 According to the passage, it has been an American tradition that ___________.

“Experience may possibly be the best teacher, but it is not a particularly good teacher.” You might think that Winston Churchill or perhaps Mark Twain spoke those words, but they actually come from James March, a professor at Stanford University and a pioneer in the field of organization decision making. For years March( possibly be wisest philosopher of management) has studied how humans think and act, and he continues to do so in his new book The Ambiguities of Experience.
He begins by reminding us of just how firmly we have been sticking to the idea of experiential learning :“Experience is respected；experience is sought；experience is explained.” The problem is that learning from experience involves（涉及）serious complications（復(fù)雜化），ones that are part of the nature of experience itself and which March discusses in the body of this book.
In one interesting part of book，for example，he turns a double eye toward the use of stories as the most effective way of experiential learning. He says “The more accurately（精確的）reality is presented，the less understandable the story，and the more understandable the story, the less realistic it is.”
Besides being a broadly knowledgeable researcher. March is also a poet, and his gift shines though in the depth of views he offers and the simple language he uses. Though the book is short, it is demanding；Don’t pick it up looking for quick, easy lessons. Rather, be ready to think deeply about learning from experience in work and life.
【小題1】According to the text, James March is ____________. 

An idea that started in Seattle's public library has spread throughout America and beyond. The concept is simple: help to build a sense of community in a city by getting everyone to read the same book at the same tome.
In addition to encouraging reading as a pursuit (追求) to be enjoyed by all, the program allows strangers to communicate by discussing the book on the bus, as well as promoting reading as an experience to be shared in families and schools. The idea came from Seattle librarian Nancy Pearl who launched (發(fā)起）the "If All of Seattle Read the Same Book " project in 1998. Her original program used author visits, study guides and book discussion groups to bring people together with a book, but the idea has since expanded to many other American cities, and even to Hong Kong.
In Chicago, the mayor(市長）appeared on television to announce the choice of To Kill a Mockingbird as the first book in the "One Book, One Chicago" program. As a result, reading clubs and neighbourhood groups sprang up around the city. Across the US, stories emerged of parents and children reading to each other at night and strangers chatting away on the bus about plot and character.
The only problem arose in New York, where local readers could not decide on one book to represent the huge and diverse population. This may show that the idea works best in medium-sized cities or large towns, where a greater sense of unity(一致）can be achieved .Or it may show that New Yorkers rather missed the point ,putting all their energy
And passion into the choice of the book rather than discussion about a book itself.
Ultinatel was Nancy points out, the level of success is not measured by how many people read a book, but by how many people are enriched by the process. or have enjoyed speaking to someone with whom they would not otherwise have shared a word.
【小題1】  What is the purpose of the project launched by Nancy?

An idea that started in Seattle's public library has spread throughout America and beyond. The concept is simple: help to build a sense of community in a city by getting everyone to read the same book at the same tome.
In addition to encouraging reading as a pursuit (追求) to be enjoyed by all, the program allows strangers to communicate by discussing the book on the bus, as well as promoting reading as an experience to be shared in families and schools. The idea came from Seattle librarian Nancy Pearl who launched (發(fā)起）the "If All of Seattle Read the Same Book " project in 1998. Her original program used author visits, study guides and book discussion groups to bring people together with a book, but the idea has since expanded to many other American cities, and even to Hong Kong.
In Chicago, the mayor(市長）appeared on television to announce the choice of To Kill a Mockingbird as the first book in the "One Book, One Chicago" program. As a result, reading clubs and neighbourhood groups sprang up around the city. Across the US, stories emerged of parents and children reading to each other at night and strangers chatting away on the bus about plot and character.
The only problem arose in New York, where local readers could not decide on one book to represent the huge and diverse population. This may show that the idea works best in medium-sized cities or large towns, where a greater sense of unity(一致）can be achieved .Or it may show that New Yorkers rather missed the point ,putting all their energy
And passion into the choice of the book rather than discussion about a book itself.
Ultinatel was Nancy points out, the level of success is not measured by how many people read a book, but by how many people are enriched by the process. or have enjoyed speaking to someone with whom they would not otherwise have shared a word.
【小題1】  What is the purpose of the project launched by Nancy?

Development of a widely accepted chronology for the arrival of humans has been equally difficult, and it was only with the development of optically stimulated luminescence dating that a human presence in Australia was confirmed at 53,000 to 60,000 years ago. Older dates for a human presence in Australia have now been shown to be erroneous .
The importance of Australia as a separate natural laboratory in which to test extinction theories lies in the fact that humans arrived there much earlier than they arrived in the other continental areas (the Americas and northern Eurasia) that experienced substantial megafaunal extinction. What Miller et al. have shown is that the extinction of Genyornis occurred simultaneously across southeastern Australia (indeed probably right across the continent) about 50,000 years ago. This is very close to the presently accepted time of arrival of humans in Australia. It was also a period of modest climate change, well before the dramatic climatic fluctuations of the terminal Pleistocene. The data of Miller et al., therefore, support those who see human hunting rather than climate as causing the extinction of the megafauna.
Genyornis was a ponderous bird, around 80 to 100 kg in weight, about twice as heavy as the living emu and cassowary. It was an inhabitant of Australia?s inland plains and some coastal regions, but its legs were relatively short and thick, suggestion that it was a slower runner than the emu. Proponents of human?caused extinction suggest that it is just such characteristics that made the megafauna vulnerable to human hunting.
A new school of thought has recently established itself in the extinction debate. It advocates the idea that a combination of human impact and climate change was responsible for the extinction of the world?s megafauna. The new Genyornis data also weaken that argument, for the following reason. Fifty thousand years ago, Australia was experiencing mild cooling; 11,000 to 12,000 years ago, the Americas were experiencing rapid warming. These disparate climatic conditions, all coincident with megafaunal extinction, suggest that whatever was happening with climate, it was bad for the big animals. Under these conditions, the hybrid model becomes indistinguishable from the human?caused extinction model for the influence of climate becomes extremely weak, and only the arrival of humans is important in predicting extinction.
【小題1】 The last word “megafauna” in Paragraph 2 most probably means
A  birds.  B  plants.
C  big animals.  D  small animals.
【小題2】 Genyornis was vulnerable to human hunting because it was
A  a delicacy.  B  very weak.
C  very small in size.  D  clumsy.
【小題3】  How many models have been put forward for the extinction of Genyoris?
A  One.  B  Two.
C  Three.  D  Four.
【小題4】 That Australia experienced mild cooling and the Americas rapid warming suggests that
A  the climatic conditions were unfit for Genyornis to live.
B  Genyornis were highly adaptable to different climatic conditions.
C  The two climatic conditions were both bad for Genyornis.
D  The climatic conditions had nothing to do with the extinction of Genyoris.
【小題5】 The selection is mainly about
A  the debate over the time of the human presence in Australia.
B  the relationship between the human presence and magafaunal extinction.
C  the relationship between human activities and climatic changes.
D  the debate over factors causing megafaunal extinction.

In 1935, the clarinetist and bandleader Benny Goodman, aged just twenty?six, left New York with his fourteen?piece “swing” band and, traveling in a ragtag group of cars, headed for the huge Palomar Ballroom in Los Angeles. It was not an easy trip. ?There were half a dozen dismal, sparsely attended one?nighters and three weeks at a dance hall in Denver, where the band was forced to play waltzes, tangos, and novelty numbers. On the opening night at the Palomar, the band played ballad numbers in the first set, and there was little response from the dancers. Then one of the musicians said, if they were going to bomb again they might well do it in style. So Goodman called for his hot, often uptempo arrangements, many of them by the ingenious black bandleader and arranger Fletcher Henderson, and the kids stopped dancing, clustered around the bandstand, and began roaring. ?Before the weeks at the Palomar were over, it was clear that Goodman had suddenly made jazz—still a suspect and largely subliminal American folk music, despite the brilliant inventions during the previous decade of Jelly Roll Morton and others—into a popular music.
Goodman?s surprising ways continued. In 1936, he shook up the white entertainment establishment by hiring two black musicians—the elegant pianist Teddy Wilson and the plunging vibraphonist Lione Hampton. (To be sure, Wilson and Hampton did not play in the band; instead, they appeared with Goodman and the drummer Gene Krupa during intermissions.) A year later, when the band went into the Paramount Theater in New York for three weeks, legions of kids appeared, and a screaming, dancing riot nearly took place. ?It was the first great American show frenzy, and it prepared the way for the Sinatra frenzy of 1947, and for all the Beatles frenzies, and for all the mindless rock?borne frenzies of the Seventies and Eighties.
Then, on the night of January 16, 1938, Goodman, challenging the long?hairs, took his band into a sold?out Carnegie Hall. The big band played a dozen numbers, the trio two numbers, and the quartet five numbers. ?Despite the immediate rumblings from Olin Downes, the Times?s classical music critic (“The playing last night, if noise, speed and beat, all old devices, are heat, was “hot” as it could be, but nothing came of it all, and in the long run it was decidedly monotonous”), Goodman?s concert moved jazz even further up the American popular register. ［412 words］
【小題1】 This passage is mainly
A  a general review of Jazz music.
B  a biography of Benny Goodman.
C  about the origin of American folk music.
D  about how jazz became popular in America.
【小題2】  Which of the following statements is true according to the passage?
A  The band?s first music show in Los Angles was an immediate success.
B  Goodman is considered the father of Jazz music.
C  Benny Goodman was unknown to public when he left New York.
D  The band scheduled to play waltzes, tangos and novelty numbers at a dance hall in Denver.
【小題3】 It could be inferred from the passage that
A  Jazz is a style of music native to America.
B  Classic music had become outdated at Goodman?s time.
C  Morton and Goodman were contemporaries.
D  Goodman was the first bandleader who hired Black musicians in 1930s.
【小題4】 The phrase “shake up” (Line 1,Paragraph 2) in the context probably means
A  to give a very unpleasant shock.
B  to make changes to an organization.
B  to get rid of a problem.
D  to point out, designate.
【小題5】  Towards Goodman?s music show frenzy, Olin Downes, the classical music critic has
A  approving attitude.  B  satirizing attitude.
C  regretting mind.  D  exaggerated tone.

More than a century ago, the composer and bandleader John Philip Sousa warned that technology would destroy music, who said, “These talking machines are going to ruin the artistic development of music in this country. When I was a boy … in front of every house in the summer evenings you would find young people together singing the songs of the day or the old songs. Today you hear these terrible machines going night and day. We will not have a vocal cord (聲帶) left.”
Music has greatly changed in the past hundred years, which has been everywhere in our world: rivers of digital melody flow on the Internet or on disc; MP3 players with forty thousand songs can be put in a back pocket or a purse. Yet, for most of us, music is no longer something we do ourselves, or even watch other people do in front of us. It has become a radically virtual medium, an art without a face.
Ever since Edison invented the phonograph cylinder(留聲機), people have been assessing what the medium of recording has done for and to the art of music. Sousa was a spokesman for the party of doom; in the opposite corner are the utopians(烏托邦), who argue that technology has not imprisoned music but liberated it. Before Edison came along, Beethoven’s symphonies could be heard only in select concert halls. Now the recordings carry the man from Bonn to the corners of the earth. Glenn Gould, after renouncing live performance in 1964, predicted that within the century the public concert would disappear into the electronic air.
Having discovered much of my favorite music through LPs and CDs, I am not about to join Sousa’s party. Modern urban environments are often so soulless or ugly that I’m grateful for the humanizing touch of electronic sound. But neither can I accept Gould’s slashing futurism. I want to be aware of technology’s effects, positive and negative. Fortunately, scholars and critics have been methodically exploring this terrain for many decades, trying to figure out exactly what happens when we listen to music with no musicians in the room.
【小題1】The first paragraph is intended to        .

People often say that money talks. They mean that a person with a lot of money can say how he or she wants things done. But it is not easy to earn enough money to gain this kind of power.
Ask anyone in business. They will tell you that it is a jungle out there. The expression probably began because a jungle is filled with wild animals and unknown dangers that threaten people.
People in business have to be careful if they are to survive the jungle out there. They must not be led into making bogus investments. Bogus means something that is not real.
Nobody is sure how the word got started. But it began to appear in American newspapers in the 1800s. A newspaper in Boston, Massachusetts, said the word came from a criminal whose name was Borghese. Borghese wrote checks to people although he did not have enough money in the bank. After he wrote the checks, he would disappear. So, people who were paid with his checks received nothing. The newspaper said Americans shortened and changed the criminal’s name Borghese to Bogus.
People trying to earn money must be also aware of the risk of being ripped off. A writer for a magazine said he first saw the expression used in 1971. It was on a sign that a student carried during a protest demonstration at a university. The message on the sign was that the student felt cheated.
To be successful, a person in business works hard and tries to get down to brass tacks. This expression means to get to the bottom or the most important part of something. For example, a salesman may talk about his product without saying the price. You get down to brass tacks when you say, “it sounds good, but how much does it cost?”
Word expert Charles Funk thinks the expression comes from sailors on ships. They clean the bottom of a boat. When they have removed all the dirt, they are down to the copper pieces that hold the ship together. So, if we get down to brass tacks, we can prevent rip-offs and bogus ways of earning money in that jungle out there. And, some good luck will help, too.
【小題1】Why do people say money talks?

A World of Color
No matter where you go, colors are everywhere! And while the colors may be the same, their meanings change depending on the country.