After the children returned to the classroom, the teacher opened their eggs one by one, asking each child to explain that symbol of “new life”. The first opened egg contained a flower. Everyone cheered. In another one was a butterfly….When the teacher opened the last egg, it was empty. “That’s stupid,” said someone. The teacher felt a pull at his shirt. It was Philip. Looking up, Philip said, “It’s mine. I did it. It’s empty. I have new life, because the tomb is empty.” Not a sound was heard in class at all. From that day on, Philip became a real part of the group. They welcomed him, and whatever made him different was never mentioned again.
Philip’s family knew he wouldn’t live a long life, for there were too many things wrong with him.
26. The underlined word “condition” in the first paragraph probably means ________.
A. grade B. status C. disease D. health
27. It can be inferred from the first paragraph that ________.
A. The 8-year-olds were friendly to Philip
B. The 8-year-olds were sometimes cruel
C. Philip was really different in school
D. Philip was older and more sensitive
28. The teacher gave each child one plastic egg to let them ________.
A. put some symbol of “new life” into it
B. play around on that beautiful spring day
C. try to pull it apart in the middle
D. go out and discover themselves
29. After Philip explained his new life, ________.
A. The class thought he was clever. B. He began to study in the class.
C. The class fell silent. D. He felt dying.
30. We learn from the passage that ________.
A. The teacher used to have classes outdoors
B. Philip’s new life wish was empty
C. Philip was healthy as a whole
D. Philip was accepted by his classmates in the end
B
People from East Asia tend to have more difficulty than those from Europe in telling facial expressions and a new report published online in Current Biology explains why.
Rachael Jack, University of Glasgow researcher, said that rather than scanning evenly(均匀的) across a face as Westerners do, Easterners fix their attention on the eyes.
"We show that Easterners and Westerners look at different face features to read facial expressions," Jack said. "Westerners look at the eyes and the mouth equally, while Easterners favor the eyes and ignore the mouth."
According to Jack and her colleagues, the finding shows that human communication of emotion is more complex than believed before. As a result, facial expressions that had been considered universally recognizable cannot be used to reliably convey(传达) emotion in cross-cultural situations.
The researchers studied cultural differences in the recognition of facial expressions by recording the eye movements of 13 Western Caucasian and 13 East Asian people while they observed pictures of expressive faces and put them into types: happy, sad, surprised, fearful, disgusted, angry, or neutral. They compared how accurately the participants(参与者) read those facial expressions using their particular eye movement strategies.
It turned out that Easterners paid much greater attention to the eyes and made significantly more errors than Westerners did. "The cultural difference in eye movements that they show is probably a reflection(反映) of cultural difference in facial expressions," Jack said. "Our data suggest that while Westerners use the whole face to express emotion, Easterners use the eyes more and mouth less."
In short, the data show that facial expressions are not universal signals of human emotion. From here on, examining how cultural factors have made these basic social skills have greater variety will help our understanding of human emotion. Otherwise, talking of communicating emotions across cultures, Easterners and Westerners will find themselves lost in translation.
31. The discovery shows that Westerners _______.
A. observe the eyes and the mouth in different ways
B. consider facial expressions universally reliable
C. pay equal attention to the eyes and the mouth
D. have more difficulty in recognizing facial expressions
32. What were the people asked to do in the study?
A. To classify(分类) some face pictures. B. To get their faces impressive.
C. To make a face at each other. D. To observe the researchers' faces.
33. What does the underlined word "they" in Paragraph 6 refer to?
A. The people taking part in the study. B. The researchers of the study.
C. The errors made during the study. D. The data collected from the study.
34. Compared with Westerners, Easterners are likely to _______.
A. do translation more successfully B. study the mouth more frequently
C. read facial expressions more correctly D. examine the eyes more attentively
35. What can be the best title for the passage?
A. The Eye is the Window to the Soul
B. Cultural Differences in Reading Emotions
C. Effective Methods to Develop Social Skills
D. How to Increase Cross-cultural Understanding
C
Have you ever wondered about people’s names? Where do they come from? What do they mean?
People’s first names, or given names, are chosen by their parents. Sometimes the name of a grandparent or other member of the family is used. Some parents choose the name of a well-known person. A boy could be named George Washington Smith; a girl could be named Helen Keller Jones.
Some people give their children names that mean good things. Clara means “bright”; Beatrice means “one who gives happiness”; Donald means “world ruler”; Leonard means “as brave as a lion”.
The earliest last names, or surnames(姓), were taken from place names. A family with the name Brook or Brooks probably lived near brook(小溪);someone who was called Longstreet probably lived on a long, paved road. The Greenwood family lived in or near a leafy forest.
Other early surnames came from people’s occupations. The most common occupational name is Smith, which means a person who makes things with iron or other metals. In the past, smiths were very important workers in every town and village. Some other occupational names are: Carter — a person who owned or drove a cart; Potter —a person who made pots and pans.