Passage One Most students are usually introduced to the study of history by way of a fat textbook and become quickly immersed in a vast sea of names, dates, events, and statistics. The students' skills are then tested by examinations that require them to show how much of the data they remember. From this experience a number of conclusions seem obvious: the study of history is the study of "facts" about the past; the more "facts" you know, the better you are as a student of history. But in this way students may become confused upon discovering that historians often disagree sharply. They discover that historians dealing with the same event may come to quite different conclusions about it. Obviously, there is no easy solution to this problem. Historians disagree because each historian views the past from a particular perspective. Once students grasp this, they have taken the first step toward being able to evaluate the work of various historians. But before they can take this first step, students must consider a problem they have more or less taken for granted. They must ask themselves what history really is. The word history has several meanings. In its broadest sense, it denotes the whole of the human past. More restricted is the notion that history is the recorded past, that is, that part of human life which has left some sort of record such as folk tales, artifacts, or written documents. Finally, history may be defined as that which historians write about the past.
1. What is the meaning of the word "fat" in Line 1?
Passage Two When the Western European nations rose to power in the 15th and 16th centuries, their aim was to find a trade route to the East. Competition for the priceless Eastern trade was intense, and France, with ports on the Mediterranean, was a special rival of England. During the 17th and 18th centuries she considered the possibility of piercing the Isthmus of Suez for a shortcut waterway to the East. With Napoleon when he occupied Egypt went a noted French engineer, to study the problem. But it was not until 1859 that a Frenchman, Ferdinand de Lesseps, who had long been fascinated by the idea of a canal, turned the first spadeful of earth to start the excavations. De Lesseps, by virtue of his diplomacy and charm, had found favor with the Egyptian viceroy. Over bitter opposition from the British, who saw communication with their Indian empire threatened, he had won concessions from the Egyptians and Turks, making possible for the work to go forward. Although de Lesseps had hoped to have the enterprise financed by all the great western powers, most of the capital was provided by France and Egypt. Finally de Lesseps' dream was realized, and in the summer of 1869 the waters of the Red Sea and the Mediterranean were united.
1. European nations first sought a trade route to the East during the ______.
3. Great Britain did not want to see the French build the Suez Canal because it would give France an advantage in Eastern trade competition and because ______.
A.it endangered ties with India
B.it would give France a military advantage
C.France might then gain control of Egypt
D.the English disliked both the French and the Egyptians
Passage Three With oil prices and interest rates low, more and more Americans are buying boats—and as traffic on the waterways increases, so does the number of accidents from drinking and driving on water. A National Transportation Safety Board study concludes that drinking may be a factor in 80 percent of the 1 000 or so deaths in boating accidents that occur every year. Yet anyone can drive a boat without a license (执照), drinking on board is almost universally legal. Experts say drunken boating may be even more dangerous than drunken driving. Boating on a crowded waterway can be in complete disorder: there are no stop signs, traffic lights or lane markers. Speed restrictions are nonexistent outside harbors. Some boats have terrible power and top speeds—and no boat has brakes. Combined with the effects of all the sun, wind, waves and happy tiredness that go with boating, even moderate amounts of alcohol can be dangerous. According to one recent study, a boater's judgement and behavior can be worsened by only about a third as much alcohol as it would take on land. Only recently have many states begun to take action against drunken boating. The key is passing laws to set a medical standard for blood alcohol level and to allow police to test blood-alcohol levels on the spot. Increasingly, speed restrictions are also being set on crowded waterways. Some experts also suggest granting licenses for boat operators. The license requirement could be used to strengthen safety training and to keep repeat offenders off the water. It would also make it harder for beginners and children to go joyriding in highperformance boats.
1. What is the main cause of the increase of traffic on water?
A.People are willing to spend money on boating.
B.Boating enjoys greater freedom than driving on land.
Passage Four England is not a big country., from north to south and from east to west it is only about three hundred miles across. But for a small country it has a surprising range of climate. People who have never visited England, or who have visited only one part of it, often make the mistake of thinking that it is a cold and wet country. Except for the summer months of June to September, this is probably true of the north of England and the Midlands. In the south, however, the climate is much more pleasant. One result is that when people retire from a job in the north they often prefer to move down to the milder south. Perhaps the warmest part of the country is the southwest, which consists of the counties of Devon and Cornwall. The warm Gulf Stream flows across the North Atlantic Ocean from the Gulf of Mexico and makes the coastal regions of the southwest quite warm. Palm trees, bamboo (竹) and many semitropical (亚热带的) plants grow well in the southwest of England. Flowers and vegetables ripen (成熟) as much as a month earlier than those elsewhere. Farmers in the area obtain a higher price for their vegetables and flowers because they are ready earlier. In winter there may be several feet of snow in other parts of England but there will probably be no snow at all in the southwest. This may be one of the reasons why the southwest is one of England's most popular holiday areas.
1. The distance from the center of England to the south coast is about ______.
Passage Five Some psychologists maintain that mental acts such as thinking are not performed in the brain alone, but that one's muscles also participate. It may be said that we think with our muscles in somewhat the same way that we listen to music with our bodies. You surely are not surprised to be told that you usually listen to music not only with your ears but with your whole body. Few people can listen to music that is more or less familiar without moving their body or, more specifically, some part of their body. Often when one listens to a symphonic concert on the radio, he is tempted to direct the orchestra even though he knows there is a competent conductor on the job. Strange as this behavior may be, there is a very good reason for it. One cannot derive all possible enjoyment from music unless he participates, so to speak, in its performance. The listener "feels" himself into the music with more or less pronounced motions of his body. The muscles of the body actually participate in the mental process of thinking in the same way, but this participation is less obvious because it is less pronounced.
1. The process of thinking is different from that of listening in that ______.
A.the former is a mental process while the latter not
B.muscle participation is less apparent in the former