The most frightening words in the English language are, “Our computer is down.”

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The most frightening words in the English language are, “Our computer is down.” You hear it more and more when you are on business. The other day I was at the airport waiting for a ticket to Washington and the girl in the ticket office said, “I’m sorry, I can’t sell you a ticket. Our computer is down.”
“If your computer is down, just write me out a ticket.”
“I can’t write you out a ticket. The computer is the only one allowed to do so.”
I looked down on the computer and every passenger was just standing there drinking coffee and staring at the black screen. Then I asked her, “What do all you people do?”
“We give the computer the information about your trip, and then it tells us whether you can fly with us or not.”
“So when it goes down, you go down with it.”
“That’s good, sir.”
“How long will the computer be down?” I wanted to know.
“I have no idea. Sometimes it’s down for 10 minutes, sometimes for two hours. There’s no way we can find out without asking the computer, and since it’s down it won’t answer us.”
After the girl told me they had no backup(备用) computer, I said. “Let’s forget the computer. What about your planes? They’re still flying, aren’t they?”
“I couldn’t tell without asking the computer.”
“Maybe I could just go to the gate and ask the pilot if he’s flying to Washington, ” I suggested.
“I wouldn’t know what gate to send you to. Even if the pilot was going to Washington, he couldn’t take you if you didn’t have a ticket.”
“Is there any other airline flying to Washington within the next few hours?”
“I wouldn’t know, ” she said, pointing at the dark screen. “Only ‘IT’ knows. ‘It’ can’t tell me.”
By this time there were quite a few people standing in lines. The word soon spread to other travelers that the computer was down. Some people went white, some people started to cry and still others kicked their luggage.
小题1:The best title for the article is _______.

A．When the Computer Is Down	B．The Most Frightening Words
C．The Computer of the Airport	D．Asking the Computer

小题2:What could the girl in the ticket office do for the passengers without asking the computer?

A．She could sell a ticket.

B．She could write out a ticket.

C．She could answer the passengers’ questions.

D．She could do nothing.

小题3:Why do you think they had not a backup computer?

A．Because it was easy down

B．Because it was very expensive.

C．Because it was not advanced enough.

D．Because it was not as big as the main computer.

小题4:The last paragraph suggests that _______.

A．a modern computer won’t be down.

B．computers can take the place of humans

C．sometimes a computer may bring suffering to people

D．there will be great changes in computers

答案

小题1:A
小题2:D
小题3:B
小题4:C

解析

本文记述了作者在机场遭遇电脑系统死机所带来的后果及人们对此的反应。
小题1:主旨题。根据文章第1句中的Our computer is down及后面的文章内容，可推知此题答案为A。
小题2:细节题。根据文章中的对话：售票员不能卖机票，回答不出旅客提出的问题等等，可推知此题答案为D。
小题3:主观题。根据各选项的比较及生活经验对之进行判断，得出此题的答案为B。
小题4:推断题。根据文章最后一段的描述：电脑死机，旅客们感到恐惧、忧郁、不安，从而可推知此题答案为C。

举一反三

Jack used to curse(咒骂) the front yard as if it were a living thing. He was the man who lived with my grandmother for thirty years. He was not my grandfather, but an Italian who came down the road one day, selling fruit in Florida.
Jack stopped at my grandmother’s house to sell her some oranges just a stone’s throw from downtown Miami, and he was delivering her whiskey a week later. He stayed for thirty years. Jack hated the front yard because he thought it was against him. There had been a beautiful lawn(草坪) there when Jack came along, but he let it wander off into nothing. He refused to water it or take care of it in any way.
Now the ground was so hard that it gave his car flat tires(轮胎) in the summer. The yard was always finding a nail to put in one of his tires or the car as always sinking out of sight in the winter when the rains came on. The lawn had belonged to my grandfather, who lived out the end of his life in an insane hospital. It had been his pride and joy and was said to be the place where his powers came.
小题1:It can be inferred that the real reason Jack had problems with the yard was that _______.

A．he didn’t like the lawn.

B．the author’s grandfather was against Jack working on the lawn

C．the lawn was full of living things

D．he himself did not take care of the lawn

小题2:We can learn from the passage that when the lawn belonged to the author’s grandfather, it had been _______.

A．beautiful

B．worn out

C．wasted

D．full of nails

小题3:What do we know about Jack and the author’s grandfather?

A．They both hated the front lawn.

B．Jack was jealous of the author’s grandfather.

C．They sold fruit in Florida.

D．They came from Italy and lived together.

题型：不详难度：| 查看答案

I was 15 when I walked into McCarley’s Bookstore in Ashland. As I was looking at ___1___ on the shelves, the man behind the counter, ___2___, asked if I’d like ___3___. I needed to start ___4___ for college, so I said yes. I ___5___ after school and during summers for the lowest wages and the job helped pay for my freshman year of college. I would work many other jobs; I made coffee in the Students Union during college, I was a hotel maid and even made maps for the U. S. Forest Service. But selling books was one of the most ___6___. One day a woman asked me for books on cancer. She seemed fearful. I showed her almost ___7___ we had at that time ___8___ and found other books we could order. She left the store less ___9___. I’ve always remembered the ___10___ I felt in having helped her.
Years later, as a ___11___ in Los Angeles, I heard about an immigrant child who was born with his fingers connected, webline. His family could not ___12___ a corrective operation, and the boy lived in ___13___, hiding his hand in his pocket.
I ___14___ my boss to let me do the story. After my story was broadcast, a doctor and a nurse called, offering to perform the ___15___ for free.
I visited the boy in the recovery room soon after the operation. The first thing he did was to hold up his ___16___ hand and say, “Thank you.” I felt a sense of ___17___.
In the past, while I was ___18___, I always sense I was working for the customers, not the store. Today it’s the same. NBC News pays my salary, ___19___ I feel as if I work for the ___20___, helping them make sense of the world.
1. A. maps      B. titles  C. articles     D. reports
2. A. the reader     B. the college student   C. the shop owner D. the customer
3. A. a book    B. a job   C. some tea     D. any help
4. A. planning B. saving C. preparing   D. studying
5. A. read       B. studied       C. cooked       D. worked
6. A. boring    B. surprising   C. satisfying   D. disappointing
7. A. anything B. something C. nothing      D. everything
8. A. in need   B. in all   C. in order      D. in store
9. A. worried B. satisfied     C. excited       D. puzzled
10. A. pride    B. failure C. regret D. surprise
11. A. doctor   B. store owner       C. bookseller D. TV reporter
12. A. pay      B. cost    C. afford D. spend
13. A. shame   B. honour       C. horror D. danger
14. A. advisedB. forced      C. persuaded   D. permitted
15. A. action   B. program     C. treatment    D. operation
16. A. repaired       B. connected   C. injured       D. improved
17 A. pleasureB. sadness     C. interest       D. disappointment
18. A. at the TV station B. in the Students Union
C. at the U. S. Forest Service       D. at McCarley’s Bookstore
19. A. so B. and    C. but    D. because
20. A. readers B. viewers      C. customers   D. passengers

题型：不详难度：| 查看答案

My father was a foreman of a sugar-cane plantation in Rio Piedras, Puerto Rico. My first job was to drive the oxen that ploughed the cane fields. I would walk behind an ox, guiding him with a broomstick. For $ 1 a day, I worked eight hours straight, with no food breaks.
It was very tedious work, but it prepared me for life and taught me many lasting lessons. Because the plantation owners were always watching us, I had to be on time every day and work as hard as I could. I’ve never been late for any job since. I also learned about being respectful and faithful to the people you work for. More important, I earned my pay; it never entered my mind to say I was sick just because I didn’t want to work.
I was only six years old, but I was doing a man’s job. Our family needed every dollar we could make because my father never earned more than $ 18 a week. Our home was a three-room wood shack with a dirty floor and no toilet. Nothing made me prouder than bringing home money to help my mother, father, two brothers and three sisters. This gave me self-esteem(自尊心), one of the most important things a person can have.
When I was seven, I got work at a golf course near our house. My job was to stand down the fairway and spot the balls as they landed, so the golfers could find them. Losing a ball meant you were fired, so I never missed one. Some nights I would lie in bed and dreamt of making thousands of dollars by playing golf and being able to buy a bicycle.
The more I dreamed, the more I thought. Why not? I made my first golf club out of guava limb(番石榴树枝) and a piece of pipe. Then I hammered an empty tin can into the shape of a ball. And finally I dug two small holes in the ground and hit the ball back and forth. I practiced with the same devotion and intensity. I learned working in the field — except now I was driving golf balls with club, not oxen with a broomstick.
小题1:The writer’s first job was _______.

A．to stand down the fairway at a golf course

B．to watch over the sugar-cane plantation

C．to drive the oxen that ploughed the cane fields

D．to spot the balls as they landed so the golfers could find them

小题2:The word “tedious” in Paragraph 2 most probably means _______.

A．difficult

B．boring

C．interesting

D．unusual

小题3:The writer learned that_______ from his first job.

A．he should work for those who he liked most

B．he should work longer than what he was expected

C．he should never fail to say hello to his owner

D．he should be respectful and faithful to the people he worked for

小题4:_______ gave the writer serf-esteem.

A．Having a family of eight people

B．Owning his own golf course

C．Bringing money back home to help the family

D．Helping his father with the work on the plantation

小题5:Which of the following statements is true according to the passage?

A．He wanted to be a successful golfer.

B．He wanted to run a golf course near his house.

C．He was satisfied with the job he got on a plantation.

D．He wanted to make money by guiding oxen with a broomstick.

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We spent a day in the country, picking wild flowers. With the car full of flowers we were going home. On our way back my wife noticed a cupboard (柜厨) outside a furniture shop. It was tall and narrow. “Buy it, ” my wife said at once. “We’ll carry it home on the roof rack. I’ve always wanted one like that.”
What could I do? Ten minutes later I was ￡20 poorer; and the cupboard was tied on the roof rack. It was six feet long and eighteen inches square, quite heavy too.
In the gathering darkness I drove slowly. Other drivers seemed unusually polite that evening. The police even stopped traffic to let us through. Carrying furniture was a good idea.
After a time my wife said, “There’s a long line of cars behind. Why don’t they overtake, I wonder?” In fact a police car did overtake. The two officers inside looked at us seriously as they passed. But then, with great kindness, they led us through the rush-hour traffic. The police car stopped at our village church. One of the officers came to me.
“Right, sir, ” he said. “Do you need any more help?”
I was a bit puzzled. “Thanks, officer, ” I said. “You have been very kind. I live just on the road.”
He was staring at our car, first at the flowers, then at the cupboard. “Well, well, ” he said, laughing. “It’s a cupboard you’ve got there! We thought it was something else.”
My wife began to laugh. The truth hit me like a stone between the eyes. I smiled at the officer. “Yes, it’s a cupboard, but thanks again.” I drove home as fast as I could.
1. In fact the husband _______ the cupboard.
A. would like very much to buy           B. badly wanted
C. was glad to have bought                  D. would rather not buy
2. Other drivers thought they were _______.
A. carrying a cupboard to the church
B. sending flowers to the church
C. carrying nothing but a piece of furniture
D. going to attend a funeral(葬礼) at the church
3. The police will be more polite to those who are _______.
A. driving in gathering darkness                 B. in great sorrow (悲痛)
C. driving with wild glowers in the car        D. carrying furniture
4. What did the husband think of this matter?
A. It was very strange.                               B. He felt ashamed of it.
C. He took great pride in it.                        D. He was puzzled at it.

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When Johnson called again, the manager received him very politely. “That is a most remarkable oil you brought us, Mr Johnson,” he said. Johnson nodded his smooth, dark head. That was something he knew very well. “I’ve never seen anything like it,” the manager admitted. Johnson nodded again. “No?” he said politely. Then he added, “But I think you will, sir. A very great deal of it.” He appeared to think for a moment. “I think you will find it will be on sale seven, perhaps, eight years from now.” He smiled.
The manager thought that was uncertain. He said, “It is better than our fish oils. I admit that.” “So I am told, sir,” agreed Johnson.
“Have you any plans to produce it yourself, Mr Johnson?”
Johnson smiled again. “Would I be showing it to you if I had?”
“We might add some chemicals to one of our own fish oils,” said the manager.
“It would be expensive to do that, even if you could.” Johnson said gently. “Besides,” he added, “I am told that this oil will be much cheaper than your best fish oils. Cheaper than any vegetable oil, in fact.”
“Perhaps,” said the manager. “Well, I suppose you want to make an arrangement, Mr Johnson, Shall we discuss it?”
“Of course,” said Johnson. “There are two ways of dealing with a situation of this sort. The usual one is to prevent it altogether or at least to delay it as long as possible. That is, of course, the best way,” The manager nodded. He knew plenty about all that.
“But I am so sorry for you, because, you see, that is not possible this time.” The manager had his doubts, but all he said was an inquiring(asking), “Oh?”
“The other way,” continued Johnson, “is to produce yourself before the trouble starts.”
小题1:The manager thought of adding chemicals to the fish oil to make it ________.

A．cheaper than the new oil	B．more quickly
C．more expensive	D．as good as the new oil

小题2:Johnson’s new oil would be ________.

A．more expensive than fish oil, but better

B．less expensive, and better

C．less expensive, but not good

D．more expensive, and not so good

小题3:Johnson expressed his regret that the manager ________.

A．could not stop the new oil being made

B．would never know how to make it

C．had spent a lot of money on it

D．didn’t know enough about it

小题4:Johnson showed his new oil to the manager because he wanted ________.

A．to produce it himself	B．to prevent it being produced
C．to be paid not to produce it	D．the manager to produce it

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