Where to have: 1. ________________________

55. This passage is mainly about _____.

   A. why you often forget words                                          B. what is wrong with your brain

   C. how you can improve your memory                        D. what your long-term memory does

第II卷  非机读卷  50分

About the concert

54. What does the underlined word “organized” mean?

   A. put something in order                                                 B. leave something everywhere

   C. make something different                                      D. make something wrong

53. If you want to remember words, you should ______.

   A. keep them in your short-term memory                           B. make them meaningful

   C. worry about your brain                                                 D. go to the library every day

52. Things that are interesting or important to you ______.

   A. move out of your memory                                           B. don’t stay in your brain

   C. stay in short-term memory                                     D. move into long-term memory

51. What can we infer（推断） from the last paragraph?

   A. Mr. Cousins continued his job.                        B. Mr. Cousins went back to the hospital.

   C. Mr. Cousins wrote funny books.                      D. Mr. Cousins gave up his work.

C

   Language students often think they have a memory problem. They worry because they can’t remember vocabulary. They think something is wrong with their brain. In fact, the problem is not their brain or their memory. The problem is the way they study.

   If you want to improve your memory, it’s important to understand how it works. There are two kinds of memory: short-term and long-term. All information goes into your short-term memory first. But it can stay there for just a few minutes. In order to remember something for more than a few minutes, it must move into your long-term memory.

   Only some things move into your long-term memory. Which things? This is an important question for a student. In fact, your long-term memory keeps things that are interesting or important to you. That’s why you remember big events（事件） in your life or your favourite sports events. Your long-term memory keeps other things, too. It holds onto things that you have thought about and worked with. So if you want to remember words, you have to work with them in some way.

   Many students study vocabulary by repeating the words. This may be enough to remember them for a while. But after a day or a week, you may have lost them. The reason for this is very simple. Long-term memory is like a very big library with many, many books. And like a library, it is organized. When you put away a book - or a memory - you can’t just leave it everywhere. If you want to find it again, you have to put it in a certain place.

   Repeating a new word doesn’t help you remember it for long, because it doesn’t give you any way to find it again. You need to make a place for the word in your long-term memory. There are many ways you can do this. You can write sentences with the word. Or you can make a very short story about it. You can also make a picture in your mind with the word. For example, if the word is height, you can think of the tallest person you know and try to guess his height.

   All of these activities are ways to work with words. They make the meaning of words stronger in your long-term memory. And they give you a way to find a word when you read it.

50. Mr. Cousins thought that it was ______ cured him.

   A. taking a vacation                      B. running on the beach                     

C. medicine                                  D. laughter

49. What is NOT TRUE about Norman Cousins’ disease?

   A. It is uncommon.                       B. It makes walking difficult.             

C. It is easily cured.                      D. It is painful.

48. Norman Cousins wrote about ______ for a magazine.

   A. illness cure          B. world peace       C. comedy shows          D. traveling stories

47. Disco Club is the best place in town to _____.

   A. have Italian food B. see a film   C. enjoy the dance music    D. join “The Cat Band”

B

   An old English saying says, “Laughter is the best medicine.” One person who certainly would have agreed this is Norman Cousins.

   Norman Cousins was a writer of a magazine called Saturday Review for almost forty years. He also wrote and spoke about world peace, traveling to many different countries to share his ideas.

    In the 1960s, after returning to the United States from a busy and tiring trip to Europe, Mr. Cousins got sick. He found he had a rare（罕见的） disease, known as ankylosing spondylitis.

In less than a week after he got back, he could not stand. Every move that he made was painful（疼痛的）. He was not able to sleep at night. The doctors told Mr. Cousins that they did not know how to cure（治愈） his disease and he might never get over the illness. Mr. Cousins, however, refused to give up hope.

   Mr. Cousins thought that the illness could be caused by unhappy thoughts. He did not want to take medicine to cure himself. Instead, he felt that happy thoughts or laughter might cure his illness.

   He began to experiment on himself while still in the hospital by watching comedy（喜剧） shows on television. Mr. Cousins quickly found that ten minutes of real laughter during the day gave him two hours of pain-free sleep at night.

   Deciding that the doctors could not help him, Mr. Cousins left the hospital and checked into a hotel room where he could continue his experiments with laughter. For eight days, Mr. Cousins rested in the hotel room watching comedy shows on television, reading funny books, and sleeping whenever he felt tired. Within three weeks, he felt well enough to take a vacation to Puerto Rico where he began running on the beach for exercise.

   After a few months, Mr. Cousins was able to carry on his pens. He had laughed himself back to health.