( A )

　　A linguist, an expert on languages, is always listening, never off-duty. I invited a group of friends round to my house, telling them that I was going to record their speech. I said I was interested in their regional accents(地方口音), and that it would take only a few minutes. Thus, one evening, three people came to my house and were shown into my front room. In front of each chair there was a microphone at head height, connected to a recorder in the middle of the floor. They sat down, rather nervously, and I explained that all I wanted was for them to count from one to twenty. Then we could relax and have a drink.

　　I turned on the recorder and each in turn counted from one to twenty in their best accents. When it was over, I turned the recorder off and brought round the drinks. The rest of the evening was spent in total relaxation. I joined them in talking and joking freely, leaving them only for a telephone call which lasted some time.

　　Or at least that is how it would appear. For, of course, the microphones were not connected to the recorder in the middle of the room at all but to another one in the bedroom. My friends, having seen the recorder before them turned off, paid no more attention to the microphones a few inches from their mouths, thus giving excellent sound quality. It meant that I was able to get as natural a piece of talk as it would be possible to find.

　　I should add, perhaps, that I did tell my friends what had happened to them, after the recording was over, and asked them whether it should be destroyed. None of them wanted to-but for some years after that, it always seemed that when it came to buying drinks, it was I who paid for them. Linguistic research can be a very expensive business.

　　1. The writer asked his friends to count from one to twenty because he________.

　　A. wanted to record how they pronounced numbers in their regional accents

　　B. had to check if his recorder was working

　　C. wanted them to think that was all he wanted to record

　　D. wanted to discover who had the best pronunciation

　　2. The recording which the writer was able to make was________.

　　A. natural B. controlled C. unclear D. poor

　　3. When he told his friends what he had done, they________.

　　A. wanted him to destroy the recordings he had made

　　B. didn't seem to mind much

　　C. were angry with him

　　D. made him buy them more drinks

　　( B )

　　Why does pouring hot water over a tight pot lid loosen it?

　　Hot water makes the metal of the pot lid a little larger in size; this makes the lid loose.

　　Most objects grow a little larger when heated because they are made up of molecules(分子)that are moving constantly. Heat makes molecules move faster. The hotter the molecules become, the faster they move and the more space they need.

　　This explains why we hear a hitting sound as we travel by train. The hitting sounds tell us that we are passing over the joints which allow room for the rails to become larger. These joints prevent the rails from bending as they get larger under the hot sun. Like the molecules of the metal pot lid, the molecules of the rails need more space when they are hot.

　　4. Objects grow larger when they are hot because hot molecules________.

　　A. move faster

　　B. take up more room

　　C. move slowly

　　D. both A and B

　　5. From this passage we can see that the molecules in rails________.

　　A. are not much like those in a pot lid

　　B. act like those in lids and other objects

　　C. will not become larger even in the hot sun

　　D. are like no other molecules

　　【答案与解析】

　　1. C。第一段倒数第二句即本题答案出处。2. A。本题也是考查细节题,第三段最后一句即本题答案出处。3. B。这是一道推理判断题。在第四段中,作者问他的朋友是否要销毁录音带,没有人想要这么做…… 由此可推断选项B正确。4. D。本题是考查细节题,第三段即本题答案出处。5. B。这也是一道考查细节题,短文最后一段最后一句话即本题答案出处。

　　(文/文玉荣；英语辅导报高三版2003-2004学年第42期；版权归英语辅导报社所有，独家网络合作伙伴新浪教育，未经许可，不得以任何形式进行转载。)