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五、补全短文(10分)
happy birthday to you
The main problem in discussing American popular culture is also one of its main characteristics: it won’t stay American. No matter what it is, whether it is films, food and fashion, music, casual sports or slang, it’s soon at home elsewhere in the world. There are several theories why American popular culture has had this appeal.
One theory is that it has been “advertised” and marketed through American films, popular music, and more recently, television. ________1____ They are ,after all, in competition with those produced by other countries.
Another theory, probably a more common one, is that American popular culture is internationally associated with something called “the spirit of America.” ____2____
The final theory is less complex: American popular culture is popular because a lot of people in the world like it.
Regardless of why it spreads, American popular culture is usually quite rapidly adopted and then adapted in many other countries. _______3______ “Happpy Birthday to You,” for instance , is such an everyday song that its source, its American copyright, so to speak, is not remembered. Black leather jackets worn by many heroes in American movies could be found , a generation later, on all those young men who wanted to make this manly-look their own.
Two areas where this continuing process is most clearly seen are clothing and music. Some people can still remember a time when T-shirts, jogging clothes, tennis shoes, denim jackets, and blue jeans were not common daily wear everywhere. Only twenty years ago, it was possible to spot an American in Paris by his or her clothes. No longer so: those bright colors, checkered jackets and trousers, hats and socks which were once made fun of in cartoons are back again in Paris as the latest fashion. ______4_______
The situation with American popular music is more complex because in the beginning, when it was still clearly American , it was often strongly resisted. Jazz was once thought to be a great danger to youth and their morals, and was actually outlawed in several countries. Today, while still showing its rather American roots, it has become so well established. Rock ‘n’ roll and all its variations, country & western music, all have more or less similar histories. They were first resisted, often in American as well, as being “low-class,” and then as “a danger to our nation’s youth.” _______5_______ And then the music became accepted and was extended and developed, and exported back to the U.S..
练习:
A.As a result, its American origins and roots are often quickly forgotten.
B. But this theory fails to explain why American films, music, and television programs are so popular in themselves.
C. American in origin, informal clothing has become the world’s first truly universal style.
D. The BBC,for example, banned rock and roll until 1962.
E. American food has become popular around the world too.
F. This spirit is variously described as being young and free, optimistic and cnfedent, informal and disrespectful.
标准答案: B,F,A,C,D
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六、完型填空(15分):
Vibrating rubber cellphones could be the next big thing in mobile communications. They allow people to communicate by squishing the phone to transmit 1 along with their spoken words. According to a research team at the MIT Media Lab in Cambridge, Massachusetts, the idea will make 2 more fun.
Many mobile phones can already be made to vibrate 3 ring when you do not want people to know you are getting a call. But these vibrations, 4 by a motor spinning an eccentric weight inside the device, are too crude for subtle communication, says Angela Chang of the lab’s Tangible Media Group. “they’ re 5 on or off,” she says.
But when you grip Chang’s prototype latex cellphone, your fingers and thumb wrap around five 6 speakers. They vibrate 7 your skin around 250 times per second. Beneath these speakers sit pressure sensors, so you can transmit vibration as well as 8 it. When you squeeze with a finger, a vibration signal is transmitted 9 your caller’s corresponding finger. Its 10 depends on how hard you squeeze.
She says that within a few minutes of being given 11 the phones, students were using the vibration feature to add emphasis to what they were saying or to interrupt the other speaker. Over time, people even began to transmit their 12 kind of ad hoc “Morse code”. Which they would repeat back to show they were following what the other person was saying. “It was pretty easy to communicate, though we didn’t specifically pre-arrange 13,” says David Milovich, one of the students who tried out the device.
Chang thinks “vibralanguages” could 14 for the same reason as texting: sometimes people want to communicate something 15 everyone nearby knowing what they’re saying. “And imagine actually being able to shake someone’s hand when you close a business deal,” she says.
练习:
1. A)voices B)messages C)vibrations D)feelings
2. A) phoning B)talking C)working D)texting
3. A) as much as B)as well as C)in spite of D)instead of
4. A)being caused B)caused C)to be caused D)having caused
5. A)never B)seldom C)either D)neither
标准答案: C,A,D,B,C
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6. A)tiny B)large C)loud D)low
7. A)against B)above C)over D)on
8. A)using B)hearing C)receiving D)feeling
9. A)for B)with C)from D)to
10 A)strength B)loudness C)speed D)rhythm
标准答案: A,A,C,D,A
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11 A)students B)them C)--- D)her
12 A)own B)unique C)other D)different
13 A)codes B)systems C)wave bands D)call time
14 A)make out B)go without C)give in D)take off
15 A)with B)without C)for D)against
标准答案: C,A,A,D,B