Googlefight is a simple service available on the Internet which offers you the chance to compare two different items and see how many hits they get on the Google search engine. The seemingly simple device has proved invaluable to users, especially to help win arguments. For example, imagine that you and your friends are arguing about who are the most popular music or movie stars, you can decide the argument by writing the names in the Googlefight boxes. Let's say that you are arguing about Jackie Chan and Jet Li. You will quickly discover that Jet Li is mentioned 16 million times on Google pages, whereas Jackie Chan is mentioned a mere 12 million times! In this unscientific way, you can claim victory for one Star over another. But teachers have come up with ways of using Googlefight which are much more useful from an academic point of view, particularly when it comes to studying languages. You can, for example, find out the frequency of two words with the same meaning, and deduce from the answers which one is more common. For example, let's take the words "buy" and "purchase", which mean the same thing (although "buy" is only a verb and "purchase" is both a verb and a noun). It is immediately clear from Googlefight that "buy" is much more commonly used, with a massive three and a half billion hits, compared to only one billion occurrences for the more formal word. But the real value of Googlefight to the language learner is in determining which is the more common of two phrases. For example, "raining cats and dogs" is an old-fashioned English expression about the weather. Do English speakers still use it? Or are they more likely to say "pouring down"? Googlefight suggests the latter. "Pouring down" has 898,000 Google hits, whereas "raining cats and dogs" only has 326,000. With phrases, it's important to remember that you need to use quote marks to make the search more accurate. For example, if you type in the similar phrases "look after" and "take care of " without quote marks, the second phrase seems to be... What must you remember to do if you are checking phrases by Googlefight? A) Make sure they mean be same thing. B) Make sure they are different. C) Remember to put quote marks round the phrase. D) Don't put quote marks round the phrase.
C
Fatimah Bamun dropped out of Balizenda Primary School in the first grade, when her father refused to buy her pencils and paper. Only after her teachers said to him that his daughter showed unusual promise did he change his mind. Today, Fatimah, 14, tall and slender, studies math in a dirt-floored fourth-grade classroom. Whether she will reach the fifth grade is another matter. Fatimah is facing the realities of a school with no toilet, no water, no hope of privacy other than the shadow of a bush, and no girlfriends with whom to share feelings. Fatimah is the only girl of the 23 students in her class. In fact, in a school of 178 students, she is one of the only three girls who have made it past the third grade. "I have no friend in the class," she said. "Most of my friends have dropped out to get married. So during the break, I just sit in the classroom and read." Her father, however, now says he is fully behind her. "The people from the government are all the time telling us to send our daughters to school, and I am listening to these people," he said. But in many cases, parents don't listen. Parents think that if the girls stay home, they can help with the harvesting, fetch the water and collect the firewood. So they take them out of school. In a region where poverty, tradition and ignorance make about 24 million girls not even have an elementary school education. There are many other barriers that prevent girls going to school, such as the lack of school toilets and water. The issue is not only equality. The World Bank thinks that if women in sub-Saharan Africa had equal education, land and other wealth, the region's economy could improve greatly. There is a connection between growth in Africa and sex equality. It is of great importance but still ignored by so many people. It can be inferred from the passage that _ . A) most African girls are treated equally in society B) African governments don't care whether girls go to school or not C) most African girls would rather get married than go to school D) African girls can't enjoy equal chances for education
D
Q: According to the dictionary definition of "create ",ordinary people are creative every day. To create means " to bring into being, to cause to exist"-something each of us does daily. We are creative whenever we look at or think about something in a new way. First, this includes an awareness of our surroundings. It means using all of our senses to become aware of our world. This may be as simple as being aware of color and texture ,as well as taste, when we plan a meal. Above all, it is the ability to notice things that others might miss. A second part of creativity is an ability to see relationships among things. If we believe the expression,"There is nothing new under the sun," the creativity is remaking or recombining the old in new ways. For example, we might do this by finding a more effective way to study or a better way to arrange our furniture, or we might make a new combination of camera lenses and filters to create an unusual photograph. A third part of creativity is the courage and drive to make use of our new ideas, to ask for them to achieve some new results. To think up a new idea is one thing; to put the idea to work is another. These three parts of creativity are included in all the great works of geniuses, but they are also included in many of our day-to-day activities. The best title for this passage is _ . A) How to Cultivate One's Creativity B) What Is Creativity C) The Importance of Creativity D) Creativity a Not Faraway Thing
A: B
(Q).
The artist Grandma Moses became famous for her simple, bright, cheerful paintings of American farm life.Her full name was Anna Mary Robertson Moses.But she was known to everyone as Grandma Moses because she did not begin to paint seriously until in her seventies. Born on a farm in New York, Anna had little schooling.Her days were filled with farm chores.But she often found time to make pictures.Soon, however, she became too busy to draw or paint.At the age of 12, she went to work as a servant for a family nearby.She worked for other people for many years.Then, when she was 27, she married Thomas Moses, a farmer.And they began raising a family of their own. Anna Moses could no longer do heavy farm work with age.Then, in her seventies, she began to paint in oils.Her pictures showed things she recalled from childhood-farm scenes, ice-skating, bringing home the Christmas tree.Later, she began to display her art at county fairs.Her pictures recorded a way of life that was quickly passing away.People everywhere loved these happy scenes, and soon her paintings were shown in art galleries.Grandma Moses became famous partially on account of her age, but mainly because her approach to art was modest and simple compared to many other painters of her time.Without formal training or even knowledge of Modernism, she relied on her own simple techniques to create her landscapes and scenes.She continued to paint almost until her death, on December 13, 1961 , at the age of 101. The themes in her paintings provided the comfort of a rural life that many busy Americans treasured from their past.The threat of nuclear arms that appeared on television screens and in magazines had Americans starving for something more.Grandma Moses' art appealed to those who had lost hope for the future.Her classic paintings still appear on TV commercials, greeting cards, and magazine and book covers. We can know from the passage that _ . A) her paintings raised people's hope for the future B) her paintings expressed the reality of her old age C) many Americans were interested in purchasing art works D) people wanted to get comfort by remembering grandmas
(A).
A