Q: When you get in your car, you reach for it. When you're at work, you take a break to have a moment alone with it. When you get into a lift, you play with it. Cigarette? Cup of coffee? No, it's the third most addictive thing in modem life, the cell phone. And experts say it is becoming more difficult for many people to _ their longing to hug it more tightly than most of their personal relationships. The costs are becoming more and more evident, and I don't mean just the monthly bill. Dr. Chris Knippers, a counselor at the Betty ford Center in Southern California, reports that the overuse of cell phones has become a social problem not much different from other harmful addictions: a barrier to one-on-one personal contact, and an escape from reality. Sounds extreme, but we' ve all witnessed the evidence: The person at a restaurant who talks on the phone through an entire meal, ignoring his kids around the table; the woman who talks on the phone in the car, ignoring her husband; the teen who texts messages all the way home from school, avoiding contact with kids all around him. Jim Williams, an industrial sociologist based in Massachusetts, notes that cell - phone addiction is part of a set of symptoms in a widening gulf of personal separation. He points to a study by Duke University researchers that found one-quarter of Americans say they have no one to discuss their most important personal business with. Despite the growing use of phones, e - mail and instant messaging, in other words, Williams says studies show that we don't have as many friends as our parents.  " Just as more information has led to less wisdom, more acquaintances via the Internet and cell phones have produced fewer friends," he says. If the cell phone has truly had these effects, it's because it has become very widespread. Consider that in 1987, there were only l million cell phones in use.  Today, something like 300 million Americans carry them. They far outnumber wired phones in the United States. Which of the following is the best title for the passage? A) Cell phones Are the New Cigarettes B) Cell phones Are Harmful to the Society C) The New Report about the Cell phone D) The Disadvantages of the Cell phone
A: A


Q: Even with the multimedia excitement of the web. Electronic Mail, email, is the most frequently used application of the Internet. Many people who have a chance to use the Internet at school, home, and work. They use the Internet for no other purposes than to send or receive emails. It's all very easy. You prepare the message, log onto  the Internet, and send it. The message first goes to your Internet Service Provider's mail server, which in turn sends it to the recipient's  mail server. On the way your message may go through several servers, each reading the name in order to send it to the right server. The message then remains in the recipient's mail email server until he requests it by "checking his mail". The benefits of emails are obvious: mostly it's quick. Also, many people feel that the rules for regular mails don't apply to email, making it less formal, which in turn make email easier to write and send. It's not just friends and coworkers that are receiving emails. Wherever you look, the Web is providing email addresses. This has made communication between strangers easier than ever. You can read an interesting article online and immediately send the author an email. Anyone who posts his email address on a Web page is saying he wants to receive email. There are places you can go if you don't know someone's email address. Check out Bigfoot, the Internet Address Finder, or Netscape's Email Directories for more information. Email is one of the services offered by your Internet Service Provider--a service that you're applying for every month. The passage is about  _  . A) the multimedia excitement B) different websites C) email D) mail server
A: C


Q: One day, a train was approaching the small town of Cheekyville. On the train was a young man with a big suitcase. He was called William Warbler, and he looked very common indeed. What made him most unusual, though, was the fact that whenever he needed to communicate he did it by singing opera  . It didn't matter to William whether it was simply a matter of answering a brief greeting, like "good day". He would clear his voice and respond, "Gooood dayyy to youuuuuuuu... toooooo!" No one could get a normal spoken word out of him and no one knew how he made his living. As he lived quite simply, always wearing his same old second-hand suit, people often looked down on him. William had been in Cheekyville for some years, when, one day, word spread round town like wildfire: William had played a role in a very important opera in the nation's capital. Everyone in the capital went to see it, and it was a great success. Everyone in Cheekyville felt it was a surprise. But something more surprising was, when William was being interviewed by reporters, he answered their questions by speaking rather than singing. And he did it with great manners, and with a clear and pleasant voice. From that day, William gave up singing at all hours. Now he did it only during his stage appearances and world tours. Some people suspected why he had changed, but others continued believing him to be somewhat mad. They wouldn't have thought so if they had seen what William kept in his big suitcase. It was a large stone, with a hand-carved   message on it. The message said: "Practice, my boy. Practice every second, for you never know when your chance will come." Little did people realize that he only got the role in the opera because the director had heard William singing while out buying a newspaper. According to the text, William   _  . A) had no idea whether he should continue doing something mad B) was nervous and didn't know how to sing when he was interviewed C) was selling newspapers when the opera director heard him singing D) practiced singing whenever possible before he became famous
A: D


Q: Being able to call on the old boy's network helps you get your foot in the door,but has little impact on your later success.Having good connections does change your possibility of being offered a higher wage when you start working,but has no impact on your eventual wage.Coming from a wealthy background has little impact on lifetime earnings.Over time,brain power soon overtakes ,and intelligence is the factor,which will determine your earnings and success.The speed of your rise through the ranks is determined largely by your own intelligence. The study monitored earnings and promotions over the course of 25 years.Scores were used to assess the SocioEconomic Background(SEB)-wealth and connections-and standard Army intelligence tests used to assess intelligence.The study is sure to infuriate those angered by wealthy groups such as Oxford's upper-crust Bullingdon Club,of which both David Cameron and Borris Johnson were members. Professor Yoav Ganzach says that these findings have a positive message for those,who can't rely on nepotism for their first job."Your family can help you start your career and you do get an advantage,but it doesn't help you progress.And once you start working,you can go wherever your abilities take you," he says.When intelligence and SEB are pitted directly against once another ,intelligence is a more accurate predictor of future career success,he say. What's the main idea of the passage? A) Earnings and promotions are up to your own. B) A study conducted by Professor Yoav Ganzach. C) SEB is very important in one's first career. D) Success is determined by your own brain power.

A: D