【判断题】A tube is long and round, and most importantly, it is hollow.

The nature of language is the nature of human thought and human action, for language is no more nor less than the tool of both of these aspects of human nature. A word is either the shadow of an act or of an idea. Verbal sounds have no meaning themselves. They【M1】______ are the channels, the medium for the expression or communication of【M2】______ that which lay outside of themselves. Plato has made clear to us how【M3】______ easy it is to deceive ourselves with words, to labor under an impression that just because we can utter a sound we also necessarily know that we are talking about Words may be empty vessels and pour out【M4】______ no more than hollow sounds. We find it simple to define some words and extremely difficult to define others words. The reason is that the【M5】______ definition of a word is the experience of records. Hence the definiteness【M6】______ of a definition of a word is in proportion at the vividness of the【M7】______ experience, its meaning. We readily define chair because of our frequent experience with the object which the sound is a symbol.【M8】______ We define it in terms of our experience like an object to sit ia But a【M9】______ definition of terms like "truth", or "virtue", or "honesty", or "beauty" is a most severe trial because of the haziness or complete lack for【M10】______ experiences of this nature. What, then, is the source of the meaning of words? What is the relationship between words, things, and actions?

【M1】

World leaders met recently at United Nations headquarters in New York City to discuss the environmental issues raised at the Rio Earth Summit in 1992．The heads of state were supposed to decide what further steps should be taken to halt the decline of Earth's life-support systems．In fact，this meeting had much the flavour of the original Earth Summit．To wit：empty promises，hollow rhetoric，bickering between rich and poor，and irrelevant initiatives．Think U.S. Congress in slow motion．

Almost obscured by this torpor is the fact that there has been some remarkable progress over the past five years—real changes in the attitude of ordinary people in the Third World toward family size and a dawning realisation that environmental degradation and their own well-being are intimately，and inversely，linked．Almost none of this，however, has anything to do with what the bureaucrats accomplished in Rio．

Or it didn't accomplish．One item on the agenda at Rio，for example，was a renewed effort to save tropical forests．(A previous UN-sponsored initiative had fallen apart when it became clear that it actually hastened deforestation．)After Rio，a UN working group came up with more than 100 recommendations that have so far gone nowhere．One proposed forestry pact would do little more than immunizing wood-exporting nations against trade sanctions．

An effort to draft an agreement on what to do about the climate changes caused by CO2 and other greenhouse gases has fared even worse．Blocked by the Bush Administration from setting mandatory limits，the UN in 1992 called on nations to voluntarily reduce emissions to 1990 levels．Several years later，it's as if Rio had never happened．A new climate treaty is scheduled to be signed this December in Kyoto，Japan，but governments still cannot agree on these limits．Meanwhile，the U.S. produces 7% more CO2 than it did in 1990，and emissions in the developing world have risen even more sharply．No one would confuse the“Rio process”with progress．

While governments have dithered at a pace that could make drifting continents impatient，people have acted．Birth-rates are dropping faster than expected，not because of Rio but because poor people are deciding on their own to reduce family size．Another positive development has been a growing environmental consciousness among the poor．From slum dwellers in Karachi，Pakistan，to colonists in Rondonia，Brazil，urban poor and rural peasants alike seem to realize that they pay the biggest price for pollution and deforestation．There is cause for hope as well in the growing recognition among business people that it is not in their long-term interest to fight environmental reforms．John Browne，chief executive of British Petroleum，boldly asserted in a major speech in May that the threat of climate change could no longer be ignored．

The writer's general attitude towards the world leaders meeting at the UN is______．

A．supportive

B．impartial

C．critical

D．comedic

Our dream is the song of our soul. Life without one is reduced to a hollow existence. But life with a dream is filled with meaning and purpose.

Most of us have a dream, or heart's desire. But the trouble is most of us have the on/off switch of our dream set to OFF. Whenever we say, I can’t, we set the switch to OFF. Whenever we believe we can, we set the switch to ON. Simple, isn't it? Just because I believe I can do something doesn't mean there won’t be any problems. But once I believe I can do it, I will seek solutions for every problem I stumble on. And since it is a law of life that we find what we look for, if I look for solutions, I will find them.

Any worthy dream is a dream worthy of accomplishing. Once I realize I can do it, the next step is to make a commitment. As soon as we make a commitment, great power is released. What seemingly were insurmountable hurdles are now reduced to obstacles of laughable insignificance. But we won’t reach this stage until we decide to stop talking and start acting. Unless we commit ourselves, self-doubt will ferment and block our way.

Our dreams don’t have to be grand to be great. An aunt of mine sold gloves in a department store for most of her life. Her dream was to be the friendliest and most helpful salesperson around. Year after year, the same customers would return and deliberately seek her out. She brightened everyone's day and touched the lives of thousands. Was her dream any less significant than that of aprominent person? Of course not. We all have the power to follow a dream that will make a difference to us and those we meet.

No dream is too small; no dream is too big, so hold on to your dream. Langston Hughes tells why, Hold fast to dreams, for if dreams die, life is a broken-winged bird that cannot fly.So,what are you waiting for? Follow your dream!

(1)According to the author, dreams ___________.

A、refer to dreams in our sleep

B、refer to dreams in the daytime

C、gives meaning and purpose to our life

D、enables life to be a hollow existence

(2)What are the stages in following a dream?

A、Setting the switch of our dream on, making a commitment, and releasing the power.

B、Setting the switch of our dream on, committing ourselves, and following the dream.

C、Believing we can do it, committing ourselves, and acting.

D、Believing we can do it, acting and making a commitment.

(3)What does the dream of the author's aunt illustrate?

A、To illustrate we should commit ourselves and start acting.

B、To illustrate our dreams don’t have to be grand to be great.

C、To illustrate her dream was to be the friendliest and most helpful salesperson.

D、To illustrate we all have the power to follow a dream.

(4)Which of the following statements is NOT true?

A、Whether the switch of your dream is ON or OFF is left entirely to yourself.

B、If we believe we can do it, there won’t be any problems.

C、We will find what we look for.

D、The author's aunt's dream was not any less significant than that of a prominent person.

(5)The passage mainly tells us that __________.

A、a dream gives meaning and purpose to our life.

B、if dreams die, life will become meaningless.

C、we should follow our dream which will make a difference to us and other people.

D、a worthy dream is a dream worthy of accomplishing.

EPHEMERAL : ENDURE::

A．hollow : inundate

B．immanent: transcend

C．pointed : prick

D．raucous : polish

E．dingy : glisten

It takes a long time to raise a family of owlets, so the great horned owl begins early in the year. In January and February, or as late as March in the North, the male calls to the female with a resonant hoot. The female is larger than the male. She sometimes reaches a body length of twenty-two to twenty-four inches, with a wingspread up to fifty inches. To impress her, the male does a strange courtship dance. He bobs. He bows. He ruffles his feathers and hops around with an important air. He flutters from limb to limb and makes flying sorties into the air. Sometimes he returns with an offering of food. They Share the repast (食)after which she joins the dance, hopping and bobbing about as though keeping time to the heat of an inner drum.

Owls are poor home builders. They prefer to nest in a large hollow in a tree or even to occupy the deserted nest of a hawk or crow. These structures are large and rough, built of sticks and bark and lined with leaves and feathers. Sometimes owls nest on a rocky ledge, or even on the bare ground.

The mother lays two or three round, dull white eggs. Then she stoically settles herself on the nest and spreads her feather skirts about her to protect her precious charges from snow and cold.

It is five weeks before the first downy white owlet peeks its way out of the shell. As the young birds feather out, they look like wise old men with their wide eyes and quizzical expressions. They clamor for food and keep the parents busy supplying mice, squirrels, rabbits, crayfish, and beetles. Later in the season baby crows are taken. Migrating songsters, waterfowl, and game birds all fall prey to the hungry family. It is nearly ten weeks before fledglings leave the nest to search for their own food. The parent birds weary of family life by November and drive the young owls away to establish hunting ranges of their own.

What is the topic of this passage?

A．Raising a Family of Great Horned Owls

B．Mating Rituals of Great Horned Owls

C．Nest Building of Great Horned Owls

D．Habits of Young Great Horned Owls

To understand how astrology works, we should first take a quick look at the sky. Although the stars are at enormous distances, they do indeed give the impression of being affixed to the inner surface of a great hollow sphere surrounding the earth. Ancient people, in fact, literally believed in the existence of such a celestial sphere. As the earth spins on its axis, the celestial sphere appears to turn about us each day, pivoting at points on a line with the earth’s axis of rotation. This daily turning of the sphere carries the stars around the sky, causing most of them to rise and set, but they, and constellations they define, maintain fixed patterns on the sphere, just as the continent of Australia maintains its shape on a spinning globe of the earth. Thus the stars were called fixed stars.

The motion of the sun along the ecliptic is, of course, merely a reflection of the revolution of the earth around the sun, but the ancients believed the earth was fixed and the sun had an independent motion of its own, eastward among the stars. The glare of sunlight hides the stars in daytime, but the ancients were aware that the stars were up there even at night, and the slow eastward motion of the sun around the sky, at the rate of about thirty degrees each month, caused different stars to be visible at night at different times of the year.

The moon, revolving around the earth each month, also has an independent motion in the sky. The moon, however changes it position relatively rapidly. Although it appears to rise and Set each day, as does nearly everything else in the sky, we can see the moon changing position during as short an interval as an hour or so. The moon’s path around the earth lies nearly in the same plane as the earth’s path around the sun, so the moon is never seen very far from the ecliptic in the sky. There are five other objects visible to the naked eye that also appear to move in respect to the fixed background of stars on the celestial sphere. These are the planets Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn. All of them revolve around the sun in nearly the same plane as the earth does. So they, like the moon, always appear near the ecliptic. Because we see the planets from the moving earth, however, they behave in a complicated way, with their apparent motions on the celestial sphere reflecting both their own independent motions around the sun and our motion as well.

The ancient people believed that

A．the earth was spinning on the axis of the sky.

B．the patterns of stars on the sky would never change.

C．the sky was a hollow sphere spinning around the earth.

D．the stars around the sky were not stationary.

To understand how astrology works, we should first take a quick look at the sky. Although file stars are at enormous distances, they do indeed give the impression of being affixed to the inner surface of a great hollow sphere surrounding the earth. Ancient people, in fact, literally believed in the existence of such a celestial sphere. As the earth spins on its axis, the celestial sphere appears to turn about us each day, pivoting at points on a line with the earth's axis of rotation. This daily turning of the sphere carries the stars around the sky, causing most of them to rise and set, but they, and constellations they define, maintain fixed patterns on the sphere, just as the continent of Australia maintains its shape on a spinning globe of the earth. Thus the stars were called fixed stars.

The motion of the sun along the ecliptic is, of course, merely a reflection of the revolution of the earth around the sun, but the ancients believed the earth was fixed and the sun had and independent motion of its own, eastward among the stars. The glare of sunlight hides the stars in daytime, but the ancients were aware that the stars were up there even at night, and the slow eastward motion of the sun around the sky, at the rate of about thirty degrees each month, caused different stars to be visible at night at different times of the year.

The moon, revolving around the earth each month, also has an independent motion in the sky. The moon, however, changes it position relatively rapidly. Although it appears to rise and set each day, as does nearly everything else in the sky, we can see the moon changing position during as short an interval as an hour or so. The moon's path around the earth lies nearly in the same plane as the earth's path around the sun, so the moon is never seen very far from the ecliptic in the sky. There are five other objects visible to the naked eye that also appear to move in respect to the fixed background of stars on the celestial sphere. These are the planets Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn. All of them revolve around the sun in nearly the same plane as the earth does, so they, like the moon, always appear near the ecliptic. Because we see the planets from the moving earth, however, they behave in a complicated way, with their apparent motions on the celestial sphere reflecting both their own independent motions around the sun and our motion as well.

The ancient people believed that ______.

A．the earth was spinning on the axis of the sky

B．the sky was a hollow sphere spinning around the earth

C．the patterns of stars on the sky would never change

D．the stars around the sky were not stationary

To understand how astrology works, we should first take a quick look at the sky. Although the stars are at enormous distances, they do indeed give the impression of being affixed to the inner surface of a great hollow sphere surrounding the earth. Ancient people, in fact, literally believed in the existence of such a celestial sphere. As the earth spins on its axis, the celestial sphere appears to turn about us each day, pivoting at points on a line with the earth's axis of rotation. This daily turning of the sphere carries the stars around the sky, causing most of them to rise and set, but they, and constellations they define, maintains fixed patterns on the sphere, just as the continent of Australian maintains its shape on a spinning globe of the earth. Thus the stars were called fixed stars.

The motion of the sun along the ecliptic is, of course, merely a reflection of the revolution of the earth around the sun, but the ancients believed the earth was fixed and the sun had and independent motion of its own, eastward among the stars. The glare of sunlight hides the stars in daytime, but the ancients were aware that the stars were up there even at night, and the slow eastward motion of the sun around the sky, at the rate of about thirty degrees each month, caused different stars to be visible at night at different times of the year.

The moon, revolving around the earth each month, also has an independent motion in the sky. The moon, however, changes it position relatively rapidly. Although it appears to rise and set each day, as does nearly everything else in the sky, we can see the moon changing position during as short an interval as an hour or so. The moon's path around the earth lies nearly in the same plane as the earth's path around the sun, so the moon is never seen very far from the ecliptic in the sky. There are five other objects visible to the naked eye that also appear to move in respect to the fixed background of stars on the celestial sphere. These are the planets Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and the Saturn. All of them revolve around the sun in nearly the same plane as the earth does, so they, like the moon, always appear near the ecliptic. Because we see the planets from the moving earth, however, they behave in a complicated way, with their apparent motions on the celestial sphere reflecting both their own independent motions around the sun and our motion as well.

The ancient people believed that ______.

A．the earth was spinning on the axis of the sky

B．the sky was a hollow sphere spinning around the earth

C．the patterns of stars on the sky would never change

D．the stars around the sky were not stationary

To understand how astrology works, we should first take a quick look at the sky. Although the stars are at enormous distances, they do indeed give the impression of being affixed to the inner surface of a great hollow sphere surrounding the earth. Ancient people, in fact, literally believed in the existence of such a celestial sphere. As the earth, spins on its axis, the celestial sphere appears to turn about us each day, pivoting at points on a line with the earth's axis of rotation. This daily turning of the sphere carries the stars around the sky, causing most of them to rise and set, but they, and constellations they define, maintains fixed patterns on the sphere, just as the continent of Australian maintains its shape on a spinning globe of the earth. Thus the stars were called fixed stars.

The motion of the sun along the ecliptic is, of course, merely a reflection of the revolution of the earth around the sun, but the ancients believed the earth was fixed and the sun had an independent motion of its own, eastward among the stars. The glare of sunlight hides the stars in daytime, but the ancients were aware that the stars were up there even at night, and the slow eastward motion of the sun around the sky, at the rate of about thirty degrees each month, caused different stars to be visible at night at different times of the year.

The moon, revolving around the earth each month, also has an independent motion in the sky. The moon, however, changes its position relatively rapidly. Although it appears to rise and set each day, as does nearly everything else in the sky, we can see the moon changing position during as short an interval as an hour or so. The moon's path around the earth lies nearly in the same plane as the earth's path around the sun, so the moon is never seen very far from the ecliptic in the sky. There are five other objects visible to the naked eye that also appear to move in respect to the fixed background of stars on the celestial sphere. These are the planets Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and the Saturn. All of them revolve around the sun in nearly the same plane as the earth does, so they, like the moon, always appear near the ecliptic. Because we see the planets from the moving earth, however, they behave in a complicated way, with their apparent motions on the celestial sphere reflecting both their own independent motions around the sun and our motion as well.

The ancient people believed that______.

A．the earth was spinning on the axis of the sky

B．the sky was a hollow sphere spinning around the earth

C．the patterns of stars on the sky would never change

D．the stars around the sky were not stationary

From this article, we may draw the conclusion that _____.

A．The focus on the bird is an important yet missing characteristic, and without it even the successful discovery will seem hollow.

B．It is not the bird but the human efforts that attract a lot of readers' attention.

C．The article argues that the book is with great content and great focus.

D．Although the book is not stylish, readers still find interesting things in its characterization and extended hist0ry of the bird.