In China, chain restaurants - especially the big multinational ones - are cool. Going to Starbucks, for example, is a status symbol. It not only says, "I'm rich enough to buy this overpriced coffee," but also, "I'm cosmopolitan enough to be part of globalization." Where I come from in the UK, however, chains are neither fashionable nor gourmet . Chains are where you go on New Year's Day when nowhere else is open, or when you are 5 years old and your parents can't stand hearing, "I'm huuuuuungry!" any longer. In my own case (with regards to McDonald's), a chain is where you are taken on your first "date". Even at the age of 13, I knew to give the guy the "let's just be friends" phone call the next day. In the UK, independent cafes and restaurants are making a comeback on the fashion scene. Nowadays, a Londoner who says "let's meet for a coffee at Monmouth" (an independent cafe) is much cooler than one who says "let's go to Starbucks". Even if Monmouth's coffee is a little more expensive, there's a satisfaction in knowing your pounds aren't going straight to the big corporations. Of course, there are chain stores all over the UK; you can't go five minutes without spotting a Costa Coffee. But numbers do not add up to good taste. I do, however, have a confession . After moving to China I had moments when all the rice and Kung Pao Chicken became too much. I, too, have retreated to McDonald's. Many Chinese people like to go to multinational chain restaurants because _ . A) the restaurants give customers a taste of foreign culture B) the restaurants offer different food and drinks from other restaurants C) they believe that eating there will show their wealth and social status D) these restaurants are perfect places for a romantic date
C
(Question)
LONDON, Aug. 19 (Xinhua) -- A four-year-old child's ability to draw could be an indicator of intelligence at age 14, according to a study published on Tuesday in the British journal Psychological Science. The researchers from King's College London (KCL) studied 7,752 pairs of identical and non-identical twins, and found that the link between drawing and later intelligence was influenced by genes. At the age of 4, children were asked by their parents to complete a 'Draw-a-Child' test. Their drawings were rated from 0 to 12, based on the presence and correct number of body-parts, like arms, legs, head, eyes and nose. The children were also given verbal and non-verbal intelligence tests at ages 4 and 14. According to researchers, the test was devised in the 1920's to assess children's intelligence, so it's not surprising that the test correlated with intelligence at age 4.However, they found that higher scores on the test were also moderately associated with higher scores of intelligence at 14. The researchers also measured the heritability of figure drawing. Identical twins share all their genes, whereas non-identical twins only share about 50 percent. Overall, at age 4, drawings from identical twin pairs were more similar to one another than drawings from non-identical twin pairs. Therefore, the researchers concluded that differences in children's drawings have an important genetic link. They also found that drawing at age 4 and intelligence at age 14 had a strong genetic link. "Drawing is an ancient behaviour, dating back beyond 15,000 years ago," Dr. Rosalind Arden, lead author of the paper from KCL, said that: "This capacity to reproduce figures is a uniquely human ability and a sign of cognitive ability, in a similar way to writing, which transformed the human species' ability to store information, and build a civilisation." What do we know about the twins from the passage? A) Those who could draw better at 4 tend to be more intelligent at 14. B) Twins who look similar to each other draw better pictures. C) They were chosen to take the drawing test by the researchers. D) They were tested on how smart they were once.
(Answer)
A
Ques: From birth to death, the word kick has been given an important part in expressing human experience. The proud and happy mother feels the first signs of life kicking inside her body. And that same life------many years later------ comes to its end in a widely-used expression, to kick the bucket( ) . The expression to kick the bucket is almost 200 years old. One belief is that it started when an English stableman killed himself by hanging while standing on a bucket. He put a rope around his neck and tied it to a beam in the ceiling, and then kicked the bucket away from under him. Another old expression that comes from England is to kick over the traces. Traces were the chains that held at horse or mule to a wagon or plow. Sometimes, an animal refused to obey and kicked over the traces. Kick around is an expression that is heard often in American English. A person who is kicked around is someone who is treated badly. Usually he is not really being kicked by somebody's foot. He is just not being treated with the respect that all of us want. A person who has kicked around for most of his life is someone who has spent his life moving from place to place. In this case, kicking around means moving often from one place to another. Kick around has another meaning when you use it with the word idea. When you kick around an idea, you are giving that idea some thought. There is no physical action when you kick a person upstairs, although the pain can be as strong .You kick a person upstairs by removing him from an important job and giving him a job that sounds more important, but really is not. Still another meaning of the word kick is to free oneself of a bad habit, such as smoking cigarettes. Health campaigns urge smokers to kick the habit. How many different kinds of meanings are talked about on;'kick around' in the text? A) One. B) Two. C) Three. D) Four.
Ans: C
The man who learned to fly It is publicly accepted that it was the Wright brothers that invented the plane, but actually George Cayley knew how to make a plane a century before the Wright brothers took off. If only he'd got the internal combustion engine to work. During the 18thand 19thcenturies, scientists and the public all believed that it was only impossible to fly using an artificial wing, but an act of silly deed to suggest that you could. This did not discourage the English gentleman scientist George Cayley, even though his contemporaries --- including his own son--- were embarrassed by his efforts. In 1799, Cayley carved a silver disc with one side bearing a design for the world's first aeroplane and the other illustrating the earliest published description of the aerodynamic forces on the wing that enable a plane to fly. His three--part essay Aerial Navigation, published in 1809 and 1810, was greeted with skepticism by his contemporaries. But Cayley "didn't give a rat's ass" about what they all thought, according to Richard Dyde of York University in Ontario, Canada, author of The Man Who Discovered Flight--- and with good reason. He had completed a series of experiments to back up his theories and "was convinced that everyone else was wrong". Cayley constructed increasingly excellent model flying machines, and finally invented a full-scale glider, which was flown in 1853 by his grandson, George. This pioneering work would prove inspirational to Orville and Wilbur Wright, who made the first controlled and sustained heavier-than-air human flight 50 years later. Their success was dependent on the recent invention of the internal combustion engine--- a device which Cayley, having realized its great importance, had spent many fruitless years trying to develop. How many years later was George Cayley's glider flown after he first designed a plane? A) A century. B) Fifty-four years. C) Ten years. D) More than a hundred years.
B