Thoreau was an American writer, a philosopher and a naturalist.

听力原文： Edgar Poe, an American writer, was born in 1809. His parents were actors. Edgar was a baby when his father left the family. He was two years old when his mother died. He was taken into the home of a wealthy business man named John Allen. He then received his new name, Edgar Allen Poe. As a young man, Poe attended the University of Virginia. He was a good student, but he liked to drink alcohol and play card games for money. As an unskilled game player, he often lost money. Since he couldn't pay his gambling losses, he left the university and began working for magazines. He worked hard, yet he was not well paid, or well known. At the age of 27, he got married. For a time it seemed that Poe would find happiness, but his wife was sick for most of their marriage, and died in 1847.

Through all his crises, Poe produced many stories and poems which appeared in different publications, yet he didn't become famous until 1845, when his poem, The Raven, was published. There is a question, however, about Poe's importance in American Literature. Some critics say Poe was one of America's best writers, and even had a great influence on many French writers. But others disagree. They my Poe's work is difficult to understand and most of his writing de scribes very unpleasant situations and events. Edgar Allen Poe died in 1849 when he was 40 years old. It is said that he was found dead after days of heavy drinking.

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A．His father caught a serious disease.

B．His mother passed away.

C．His mother left him to marry a rich businessman.

D．His father took to drinking.

The first person I came across who'd got the measure of e-mall was an American friend who was high up in a big corporation. Some years ago, when this method of communication first seeped into business life from academia, his company in New York and its satellites across the globe were among the first to get it. In the world's great seats of learning, e-mail had for some years allowed researchers to share vital new jokes. And if there was cutting-edge wit to be had, there was no way my friend's corporation would be without it.

One evening in New York, he was late for a drink we'd arranged. "Sorry," he said, "I've been away and had to deal with 998 e-mails in my queue." "Wow," I said, "I'm really surprised you made it before midnight."

"It doesn't really take that tong," be explained, "if you simply delete them all."

True to form, he had developed a strategy before most of us had even heard of e-mail. If any information he was sent was sufficiently vital, his lack of response would ensure the sender rang him up. If the sender wasn't important enough to have his private number, the communication couldn't be sufficiently important. My friend is now even more senior in the same company, so the strategy must work, although these days, I don't tend to send him many e-mails.

Almost every week now, there seems to be another report suggesting that we are all being driven crazy by the torment of e-mall. But if this is the case, it's only because we haven't developed the same discrimination in dealing with e-mail as we do with post. Have you ever mistaken an important letter for a piece of unsolicited advertising and thrown it out? Of course you haven't. This is because of the obliging stupidity of 99 per cent of advertisers, who just can't help making their mailshots look like the junk mail that they are. Junk e-mail looks equally unnecessary to read. Why anyone would feel the slightest compulsion to open the sort of thing entitled "SPECIALOFFER@junk.com" I cannot begin to understand. Even viruses, those sneaky messages that contain a bug which can corrupt your whole computer system, come helpfully labelled with packaging that shrieks "danger, do not open".

Handling e-mail is an art. Firstly, you junk anything with an exclamation mark or a string of capital letters, or from any address you don't recognise or feel confident about. Secondly, while I can't quite support my American friend’s radical policy, e-mails don't all have to be answered. Because e-mailing is so easy, there's a tendency for correspondence to carry on for ever, but it is permissible to end a strand of discussion by simply not discussing it any longer— or to accept a point of information sent by a colleague without acknowledging it.

Thirdly, a reply e-mail doesn't have to be the same length as the original. We all have e-mail buddies who send long, chatty e-mails, which are nice to receive, but who then expect an equally long reply. Tough. The charm of e-mail can lie in the simple, suspended sentence, with total disregard for the formalities of the letter sent by post. You are perfectly within the bounds of politeness in responding to a marathon e-mail with a terse one-liner, like: "How distressing. I'm sure it will clear up."

According to the writer, the company he mentions decided to adopt the e-mall system ______.

A．so that employees could contact academics more easily.

B．to avoid missing out on any musing novelty.

C．because it had been tried and tested in universities.

D．to cope with the vast mount of correspondence they received.

1. I was born American; I live an American; I shall die an American. (Daniel Webster) 2. IBM has a handsome increase of productivity this year. 3. We must all hang together, or we shall hang separately. 4. That man’s as practical as Don Quixote. 5. He must have been spoilt from the cradle. 6. Hitler’s attack on Poland in 1939 was like lightening. 7. The sun kissed the green fields. The thirsty desert drank up the water. 8. Only a limited number of the press were admitted to the ceremony. 9. Robbing a widow of her savings is certainly a noble act. 10. Living without an aim is like sailing without a compass. 11. Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire. (William B. Yeats) 12. The boy wolfed down the food the moment he grabbed it. 13. The falling leaves are dancing in the wind. 14. His purse would not allow him that luxury. 15. Many hands make light work. 16. It’s a crime to stay inside on such a beautiful day. 17. It took a few dollars to build this indoor swimming pool. 18. The boy used to take things without permission. 19. The coach had to be cruel and kind to his trainees. 20. I spoke to them in hesitant French. (The Grapes of Wrath)

One of the well-known of American writers is Samuel Clemens, whose pen name is Mark Twain. Born in 1835, Twain grew up in the Mississippi River town of Hannibal, Missouri. As did many other boys of his day, Twain dreamed of traveling on river boats and of someday becoming a riverboat pilot. Twain used his memories of the life of a river town in his two most famous books, Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer.

As a young man, Twain held many jobs. He was a printer, a good miner, and, for a time, he was a riverboat pilot. During his pilot days, he adopted the name Mark Twain. This was a term used by the boatmen to mean that the water measured two fathoms, or twelve feet, which was deep enough for safe passage.

Finally Twain became a successful writer. He traveled a great deal, writing and speaking, and became very popular both in the United States and in Europe.

Twain's style. of writing was simple and direct. Among the things he wrote about were superstitious(迷信的)people and people who were easily fooled. He used his unusual gift for humor to write about many things of importance.

Generally speaking, this article is about ______.

A．a riverboat pilot

B．a printer

C．a gold miner

D．a famous writer

Lucy Stone, ______ first feminists in the United States, helped organize the American Woman Suffrage Association in 186

A．the one

B．who was the

C．another

D．one of the