It is usually a mistake to plan a conversation into a lesson.()
It is usually a mistake to plan a conversation into a lesson.()
It is usually a mistake to plan a conversation into a lesson.()
He made ______ that he had to resign.
A.so a big mistake
B.a so big mistake
C.such a big mistake
D.such big a mistake
On leave for four days, Nobel and I drove across Scotland to the west coast and took the ferry (渡船) over to Skye. The small stone quay (码头) was spotted with shops; a bus was drawn up by the waterside, a hotel advertisement on its side. I looked at Nobel and he nodded. We had come pre-pared to be disappointed. But we had not driven far before the road gave way to a winding(蜿蜒的) track and the only signs of habitation(居住地) were a few crofters' (苏格兰小农场佃户的) cottages. It was evening when we drew up outside the Sligachan Inn at the foot of the Coolin Mountains. The innkeeper welcomed us and showed us our rooms.
From every window was the same view, gray mountains rising in austere(简朴的) beauty, their peaks hidden in a white mist, and everywhere a great feeling of stillness. The shadows that lengthened across the valley, the streams that coursed down the rocks, the thin mist turning now into night, all a part of that stillness. I shivered; Skye was a world that one would either love or hate. There could be no in-between.
"It is very beautiful, "said the landlord.
" Yes, " I said, " it's beautiful.
"But only mountaineers or fools will climb those peaks. "
" We're both fools, " Nobel said shortly.
"So be it. Dinner is at eight-thirty. "
We stood a while at the window. The night was clear and our heads felt clear and cold as the air. We smelled the odor(气息) of the ground in the spring after rain, and behind us the wood smoke of the pine fire in our room, and we were content. For these are the odors of nostalgia(乡愁), spring mist and wood smoke, and never the scent of a woman or of food.
We were alone in the inn save for one old man who had returned there to diet. His hair was white, but his face and bearing were still those of a mountaineer, though he must have been a great age. He never spoke, but appeared regularly at meals to take his place at a table tight-pressed against the window, alone with his wine and his memories. We thought him rather fine.
What was the weather like in Scotland at the time of this story?
A.It was very warm.
B.It was severely cold.
C.It was not really cold.
D.Snowstorms were raging across the land.
Part A
Directions: Read the following four texts. Answer the questions below each text by choosing A, B, C or D. (40 points)
Clouds may have silver linings, but even the sunniest of us seldom glimpse them on foot. The marvelous Blur Building that hovers above the lake of Yverdon les Bains in Switzerland provides such an opportunity. It gives anyone who has ever wanted to step into the clouds they watch from the airplane window a chance to realize their dream. Visitors wear waterproof ponchos before setting off along a walkway above the lake that takes them into the foggy atmosphere of the cloud. The experience of physical forms blurring before your eyes as you enter the cloud is both disorientating and liberating. However firmly your feet are planted on the floor, it is hard to escape the sensation of floating. On the upper deck of this spaceship-shaped structure, the Angel Bar, a translucent counter lit in tones of aqueous blue, beckons with a dozen different kinds of mineral water.
To enter this sublime building situated in the landscape of the Swiss Alps feels like walking into a poem—it is part of nature but removed from reality, Its architects, Elizabeth Diller and Ricardo Scofidio of New York, designed it as a pavilion for the Swiss Expo 2002 in the Three Lakes region of Switzerland, an hour's train ride from Geneva, which features a series of exhibits on the lakes. The Blur Building is easily the most successful. Indeed, you can skip the rest of the Expo—a Swiss kitsch version of Britain's Millennium Dome—and head straight for the cloud, which is there until the end of October.
The architects asked themselves what was the ideal material for building on a lake and decided on water itself.' the element of the lake, the snow. the rivers and the mist above it. They wanted to play on and lay bare the notion of a world's fair pavilion by creating an ethereal ghost of one in which there is nothing to see. The result is a refuge from the surveillance cameras and high-definition images of our everyday world—a particular tease in Switzerland, where clarity and precision are so prized. (Anti- architecture or not, the Blur Building cost a cool $7.5 million.)
Out-of-the-box thinking is a trademark of Diller Scofidio. a husband-and-wife team of architecture professors who became the first architects to win a genius grant from the MacArthur Foundation in 1999. Although they have built very little, they are interested in the social experience of architecture, in challenging people's ideas about buildings. They treat architecture as an analytical art form. that combines other disciplines, such as visual art and photography, dance and theatre.
To realize its Utopian poetry, the Blur Building has to be technologically state-of-the-art. Water from the lake is pumped through 32,000 fog nozzles positioned throughout the skeleton-like stainless steel structure; so the building does not just look like a cloud on the outside, it feels like a cloud on the inside. And while the 300-foot-wide platform. can accommodate up to 400 people, visitors vanish from each other in the mist at about five paces, so you really can wander lonely as a cloud. Wordsworth must be smiling.
The spectacle on the deck of this structure is NOT______.
A.dazing
B.free
C.spine-chilling
D.dazzling