Charlie works in a post office. His father lost his job five years ago and his mother is often ill. And he has two brothers and a sister. He works hard and tries his best to buy enough food for his family. Last month his family had to move to an old house outside the city. It's farther from the post office and he has to get up early in the morning in order to catch the 6:30 train. The head of his office is strict and everybody has to get there on time. He knows what it'll mean if he's late. A friend of his had pity on him and lent his old car to him. The young man was happy and from then on he could go to work by car. Last Saturday Charlie went to buy some medicine for his mother. Bad luck! When he came out of the shop, he couldn't find the car. He was quite worried and began to look for it in front of the shop but he didn't find it. Suddenly he saw a woman parked a car there and hurried into the shop. Charlie saw the car wasn't locked. He got on it and drove it at once. He was afraid the loser would run after him and drove fast. A truck hit it at a crossing and he lost consciousness. This morning the young man came back to life and saw there were a few policemen standing by his bed. He asked, "Where am I?" "In Room 103." "In hospital or in prison ?" Charlie has to get to his office on time because _ . A) the head is strict with them B) he wishes to be praised C) he's usually on duty D) he's afraid to be fired
D
(Question)
In Stockholm, the Swedish Academy has chosen the British author Doris Lessing for the 2007 Nobel Prize in Literature. The selection of Doris Lessing for a Nobel was popular among the hundreds of journalists gathered for the announcement in Stockholm. Permanent Secretary of the Swedish Academy Horace Engdahl said with skepticism, fire and visionary power Lessing has subjected a divided civilization to scrutiny. Doris Lessing was born in 1919 in Persia - modern-day Iran - to British parents, moving as a child with her family to southern Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe, where she stayed in school only to the age of 14. A year after moving to London, she published her first novel in 1950.The Grass is Singingexamines unbridgeable racial conflict in colonial Africa through the eyes of a white farmer's wife and her black servant. A member of the British Communist Party during the 1950s and a campaigner against nuclear arms and South African apartheid, Lessing was for years banned from that country and from Rhodesia. Her literary breakthrough came in 1962 with publication ofThe Golden Notebook, seen by many, though not necessarily Lessing, as a pioneering work of modern feminism. A disjointed study of the mind of the main character, Anna Wulf, the novel explores her thoughts about Africa, politics and communism, relationships with men and sex, and Jungian analysis and dream interpretation. Lessing's themes shifted to psychology in her works from the 1960s, and by the 1970s she was fascinated with the Islamic mystic tradition of Sufism. Her turn toward science fiction withthe Canopusseries in the early 1980s was not warmly received by traditionalist critics, but she has continued to win new readers and numerous literary awards, including the David Cohen British Literary Prize and the Companion of Honour from the Royal Society of Literature, both in 2001. Following the announcement, the Horace Engdahl told VOA why he was personally so pleased with Lessing's selection. "She is one of the truly great writers - of novels, short... We can infer from the passage that _ . A) Journalists are very interested in the election of Doris Lessing's for Nobel Prize. B) Doris Lessing regard The Golden Notes as a pioneering work of feminism. C) Doris Lessing has written about many different subjects. D) Many writers have the courage to stick to the equality between the male and female experience.
(Answer)
C
Ques: They don't quite know how to cope with all the dam trouble they've got down in Hampden, Maine. And according to town manager Leslie Stanley, it doesn't look as if things will improve any in the immediate future. "We've got a real annoying problem on our hands," he says. The annoyance began in late May. About three miles outside of town a group of beavers built a dam near the mouth of a culvert that carries a stream under Canaan Road. Some 50 feet of roadway and several hundred feet of land on each side of the culvert were flooded. Stanley sent a road crew out to level the dam. The beavers rebuilt it. The crew tore it apart again. In fact, they tore it apart for ten mornings-and for ten straight nights the beavers rebuilt it. On the eleventh day, the foreman tossed the problem back to the town manager. He, in turn, tossed it on to the local game warden . The warden, absorbed in beaver knowledge, moved quietly and carefully out one night and placed a petrol-soaked bag over the dam. (Any beaver expert will tell you the creatures just can't tolerate petrol smell.) In the morning the bag was found artistically woven into the dam. The warden set out three steel traps that night. In the morning one was empty. The other two had been stolen by the beavers and used to strengthen the dam. The warden, cursing the state law against hunting beavers with firearms, got his traps back and set them out again and again. And every night the beavers stole them. Town manager Stanley enlisted additional troops. He telephoned his police chief. Those beavers were breaking a state law against blocking up a natural watercourse. "Why aren't you out there to _ the law?" Stanley asked. "You're the police chief. So remove them. Arrest them. Do something." Three mornings later, the police chief proudly announced the end of the dam. At 2:00 A.M., he said, he and a licensed dynamiter had blown it to small pieces. Stanley said he'd believe it when he saw it. They drove out to the culvert and found a new dam already half-built. They... What did the local game warden do? A) He made steel traps to strengthen the dam. B) He set out to hunt the beavers with firearms. C) He learned a lot about the construction of the dam. D) He used petrol-soaked bags to drive the beavers away.
Ans:
D