His story of urbanization begins, not surprisingly, with the industrial revolution when populations shifted and increased, exacerbating problems of housing and crime. In the 19th century many planning programs and utopias (Ebenezer Howard\'s garden city and Charles Fourier\'s “phalansteries" among them) were proposed as remedies. These have left their mark on 20th-century cities, as did Baron Hausmann\'s boulevards in Paris, Eugene Viollet-le-Duc\'s and Owen Jones\'s arguments for historical style, and Adolf Loos\'s fateful turn-of-the-century call to abolish ornament which, in turn, inspired Le Corbusier\'s austere modem functionalism. The reader will recognize all these ideas in the surfaces of the cities that hosted them: New York, Paris, London, and Vienna.
Cities changed again after the Second World War as populations grew, technology raced and prosperity spread. Like it or not, today\'s cities are the muddled product, among other things, of speed, greed, outmoded social agendas and ill-suited postmodern aesthetics. Some bemoan the old city\'s death; others welcome its replacement by the electronically driven "global village". Mr. Rykwert has his worries, to be sure, but he does not see ruin or anomie everywhere. He defends the city as a human and social necessity. In Chandigarh, Canberra and New York he sees overall success; in New Delhi, Paris and Shanghai, large areas of failing. For Mr. Rykwert, a man on foot in the age of speeding virtual, good architecture may still show us a face where flaneurs can read the story of their urban setting in familiar metaphors.
26. An argument made by supporters of functionism is that
A. post-war modernist architecture was coming under fire
B. UN building in New York blocks the housing projects
C. windswept plazas present “face” to the inhabitants of the city
D. functionism reflects the needs of the social body
27. According to Mr Rykwert, “dictum” can serve as
A. book
B. market
C. form
D. words
28. The word “exacerbating”(line 3, para 4) means
Adeteriorating
Binspiring
C. encouraging
D. surprising
29.According to Mr Rykwert, he
A. sees damage here and there
B. is absolutely a functionist
C. is completely disappointed with the city’s death
D. is objectively commenting the city ?
30. The author associates the issue of functionism with post-war modernist architecture because
A. they are both Mr Rykwert’s arguments
B. it is a comparison to show the importance of post-war modernist architecture
C. functionism and post-war modernism architecture are totally contradictory
D. Mr Rykwert supports functionism
Text 3
JOY WILLIAMS\'S quirky fourth novel "The Quick and the Dead" follows a trio of 16-yearold misfits in a warped "Charlie\'s Angels" set in the American south-west. Driven hazily to defend animal rights, the girls accomplish little beyond diatribe: they rescue a putrefied ram and hurl stones at stuffed elephants. In what is structurally a road novel that ends up where it began, the desultory threesome stumbles upon both cruelty to animals and unlikely romance. A mournful dog is strangled by an irate neighbor, a taxidermist falls in love with an 8-year-old direct-action firebrand determined that he atone for his sins. A careen across the barely tamed Arizona prairie, this peculiar book aims less for a traditional storyline than a sequence of jangled (often hilarious) conversations, ludicrous circumstances, and absurdist tableaux. The consequent long-walk-to-nowhere is both the book\'s limitation and its charm.
All three girls are motherless. Fiercely political Alice discovers that her erstwhile parents are her grandparents, who thereupon shrivel: "Deceit had kept them young whereas the truth had accelerated them practically into decrepitude." Both parents of the doleful Corvus drowned while driving on a flooded interstate off-ramp. The mother of the more conventional Annabel ("one of those people who would say, `We\'ll get in touch soonest\' when they never wanted to see you again") slammed her car drunkenly into a fish restaurant. Later, Annabel\'s father observes to his wife\'s ghost, "You didn\'t want to order what I ordered, darling." The sharp-tongued wraith snaps back: "That\'s because you always ordered badly and wanted me to experience your miserable mistake."
Against a roundly apocalyptic world view, the great pleasures of this book are line-by-line. Ms Williams can lacerate setting and character alike in a few slashes: "It was one of those rugged American places, a remote, sad-ass, but plucky downwind town whose citizens were flawed and brave." Alice\'s acerbity spits little wisdoms: putting lost teeth under a pillow for money is "a classic capitalistic consumer ploy, designed to wean you away at an early age from healthy horror and sensible dismay to greedy, deluded, sunny expectancy."
Whether or not the novel, like Alice, expressly advocates animal rights, an animal motif crops up in every scene, as flesh-and blood "critters" (usually dead) or insipid decoration on crockery. If Ms Williams does not intend to induce human horror at a pending bestial Armageddon, she at least invokes a future of earthly loneliness, where animals appear only as ceramic-hen butter dishes and endangered-species Elastoplasts. One caution: when flimsy narrative superstructure begins to sag, anarchic wackiness can grow wearing. While "The Quick and the Dead" is edgy from its first page, the trouble with starting at the edge is there is nowhere to go. Nevertheless, Ms Williams is original, energetic and viscously funny: Carl Hiaasen with a conscience.
31. The girls in the novel
Adid nothing about reflecting the society facts.?
Bprotected animals successfully.
Cwere cruel to the animals.
Dmurdered their neighbor’s dog.
32. This novel is attentive to each of the following except
Abackgrounds
Bconversations
Ctraditional storyline
D scenes
33. The main idea of the novel is
Acare about the children
Bhow to make crockery
Cfight with the animal-killers
Danimal protection
34. The second paragraph tells us
A.the miserable life of the girls.
B.the girls’ parents are growing old.
C.society contradiction and circumstances the girls live in.
D.the backgrounds of the story and the heroines.
35. For Alice, putting lost teeth under a pillow for money is not
Ajust a beautiful dream.
Ba way to be away the cheating.?
Ca way to be away the lust .?
Da way to prevent one from illness.
Text 4
FEW people, except conspiracy theorists, would have expected so public a spat as the one this week between the two ringmasters of Formula One (F1) motor racing. Bernie Ecclestone, a fabulously wealthy British motor sport entrepreneur, is at odds, it would seem, with his longstanding associate, Max Mosley, president of F1\'s governing body, the Federation International de l\'Automobile (FIA).
Ostensibly, the dispute has broken out over what looked like a done deal. Last June, the FIA voted unanimously to extend Mr. Ecclestone\'s exclusive rights to stage and broadcast F1 racing, which expire in 2010, by 100 years. For these lucrative rights, Mr. Ecclestone was to pay the FIA a mere $360m in total, and only $60m immediately. The FIA claims that Mr. Ecclestone has not made the payment of $60m, a claim denied by Mr. Ecclestone, who insists the money has been placed in an escrow account. Mr. Mosley has asked Mr. Ecclestone to pay up or risk losing the deal for the F1 rights after 2010, perhaps to a consortium of car makers that own F1 teams. For his part, Mr. Ecclestone has, rather theatrically, accused Mr. Mosley of "trying to do some extortion".
What is going on? Only three things can be stated with confidence. First, the idea that Mr. Ecclestone cannot find the $60m is ludicrous: his family trust is not exactly short of cash, having raised around $2 billion in the past two years. Second, it would not be in Mr. Ecclestone\'s long-term financial interest to forgo a deal which could only enhance the value of his family\'s remaining 50% stake in SLEC, the holding company for the group of companies that runs the commercial side of F1. Third, the timing of the dispute is very interesting.
Cities changed again after the Second World War as populations grew, technology raced and prosperity spread. Like it or not, today\'s cities are the muddled product, among other things, of speed, greed, outmoded social agendas and ill-suited postmodern aesthetics. Some bemoan the old city\'s death; others welcome its replacement by the electronically driven "global village". Mr. Rykwert has his worries, to be sure, but he does not see ruin or anomie everywhere. He defends the city as a human and social necessity. In Chandigarh, Canberra and New York he sees overall success; in New Delhi, Paris and Shanghai, large areas of failing. For Mr. Rykwert, a man on foot in the age of speeding virtual, good architecture may still show us a face where flaneurs can read the story of their urban setting in familiar metaphors.
26. An argument made by supporters of functionism is that
A. post-war modernist architecture was coming under fire
B. UN building in New York blocks the housing projects
C. windswept plazas present “face” to the inhabitants of the city
D. functionism reflects the needs of the social body
27. According to Mr Rykwert, “dictum” can serve as
A. book
B. market
C. form
D. words
28. The word “exacerbating”(line 3, para 4) means
Adeteriorating
Binspiring
C. encouraging
D. surprising
29.According to Mr Rykwert, he
A. sees damage here and there
B. is absolutely a functionist
C. is completely disappointed with the city’s death
D. is objectively commenting the city ?
30. The author associates the issue of functionism with post-war modernist architecture because
A. they are both Mr Rykwert’s arguments
B. it is a comparison to show the importance of post-war modernist architecture
C. functionism and post-war modernism architecture are totally contradictory
D. Mr Rykwert supports functionism
Text 3
JOY WILLIAMS\'S quirky fourth novel "The Quick and the Dead" follows a trio of 16-yearold misfits in a warped "Charlie\'s Angels" set in the American south-west. Driven hazily to defend animal rights, the girls accomplish little beyond diatribe: they rescue a putrefied ram and hurl stones at stuffed elephants. In what is structurally a road novel that ends up where it began, the desultory threesome stumbles upon both cruelty to animals and unlikely romance. A mournful dog is strangled by an irate neighbor, a taxidermist falls in love with an 8-year-old direct-action firebrand determined that he atone for his sins. A careen across the barely tamed Arizona prairie, this peculiar book aims less for a traditional storyline than a sequence of jangled (often hilarious) conversations, ludicrous circumstances, and absurdist tableaux. The consequent long-walk-to-nowhere is both the book\'s limitation and its charm.
All three girls are motherless. Fiercely political Alice discovers that her erstwhile parents are her grandparents, who thereupon shrivel: "Deceit had kept them young whereas the truth had accelerated them practically into decrepitude." Both parents of the doleful Corvus drowned while driving on a flooded interstate off-ramp. The mother of the more conventional Annabel ("one of those people who would say, `We\'ll get in touch soonest\' when they never wanted to see you again") slammed her car drunkenly into a fish restaurant. Later, Annabel\'s father observes to his wife\'s ghost, "You didn\'t want to order what I ordered, darling." The sharp-tongued wraith snaps back: "That\'s because you always ordered badly and wanted me to experience your miserable mistake."
Against a roundly apocalyptic world view, the great pleasures of this book are line-by-line. Ms Williams can lacerate setting and character alike in a few slashes: "It was one of those rugged American places, a remote, sad-ass, but plucky downwind town whose citizens were flawed and brave." Alice\'s acerbity spits little wisdoms: putting lost teeth under a pillow for money is "a classic capitalistic consumer ploy, designed to wean you away at an early age from healthy horror and sensible dismay to greedy, deluded, sunny expectancy."
Whether or not the novel, like Alice, expressly advocates animal rights, an animal motif crops up in every scene, as flesh-and blood "critters" (usually dead) or insipid decoration on crockery. If Ms Williams does not intend to induce human horror at a pending bestial Armageddon, she at least invokes a future of earthly loneliness, where animals appear only as ceramic-hen butter dishes and endangered-species Elastoplasts. One caution: when flimsy narrative superstructure begins to sag, anarchic wackiness can grow wearing. While "The Quick and the Dead" is edgy from its first page, the trouble with starting at the edge is there is nowhere to go. Nevertheless, Ms Williams is original, energetic and viscously funny: Carl Hiaasen with a conscience.
31. The girls in the novel
Adid nothing about reflecting the society facts.?
Bprotected animals successfully.
Cwere cruel to the animals.
Dmurdered their neighbor’s dog.
32. This novel is attentive to each of the following except
Abackgrounds
Bconversations
Ctraditional storyline
D scenes
33. The main idea of the novel is
Acare about the children
Bhow to make crockery
Cfight with the animal-killers
Danimal protection
34. The second paragraph tells us
A.the miserable life of the girls.
B.the girls’ parents are growing old.
C.society contradiction and circumstances the girls live in.
D.the backgrounds of the story and the heroines.
35. For Alice, putting lost teeth under a pillow for money is not
Ajust a beautiful dream.
Ba way to be away the cheating.?
Ca way to be away the lust .?
Da way to prevent one from illness.
Text 4
FEW people, except conspiracy theorists, would have expected so public a spat as the one this week between the two ringmasters of Formula One (F1) motor racing. Bernie Ecclestone, a fabulously wealthy British motor sport entrepreneur, is at odds, it would seem, with his longstanding associate, Max Mosley, president of F1\'s governing body, the Federation International de l\'Automobile (FIA).
Ostensibly, the dispute has broken out over what looked like a done deal. Last June, the FIA voted unanimously to extend Mr. Ecclestone\'s exclusive rights to stage and broadcast F1 racing, which expire in 2010, by 100 years. For these lucrative rights, Mr. Ecclestone was to pay the FIA a mere $360m in total, and only $60m immediately. The FIA claims that Mr. Ecclestone has not made the payment of $60m, a claim denied by Mr. Ecclestone, who insists the money has been placed in an escrow account. Mr. Mosley has asked Mr. Ecclestone to pay up or risk losing the deal for the F1 rights after 2010, perhaps to a consortium of car makers that own F1 teams. For his part, Mr. Ecclestone has, rather theatrically, accused Mr. Mosley of "trying to do some extortion".
What is going on? Only three things can be stated with confidence. First, the idea that Mr. Ecclestone cannot find the $60m is ludicrous: his family trust is not exactly short of cash, having raised around $2 billion in the past two years. Second, it would not be in Mr. Ecclestone\'s long-term financial interest to forgo a deal which could only enhance the value of his family\'s remaining 50% stake in SLEC, the holding company for the group of companies that runs the commercial side of F1. Third, the timing of the dispute is very interesting.