1、【 精品教育资源文库】Unit 3 A taste of English humour .阅读理解AWhen Danny Wallace, 26, got bored, he put an ad on the World Wide Web reading simply， “Join Me. Send a passport photo.” A year and a half later his east London flat is the headquarters for a global internetbased “club” whose members carry out good de
2、eds for strangers every Friday.Its not common for people in London to talk to strangers. If you see someone struggling with something, part of the brain goes “I want to help”. But the trained part of the brain says, “They will think you are mad or going to mug them”， so you walk away.Join Me now has
3、 about 3,000 members around the world who do an act of kindness every Friday. For example, Im usually out on Friday so I go for one of the standard actsthe unexpected cup of coffee. You might be sitting in a cafe and see an old man in the corner drinking coffee or tea, and you walk up with another c
4、up of whatever they are drinking, and say, “Ive bought you a coffee” and walk away. Its a pleasure to see the look of surprise on their faces. There can be some suspicion, but I think that was mostly in the early days when I didnt know how to do it properly. I would walk up quite nervously like I wa
5、s doing something wrong and I didnt know when to leave. In the end, I learned through _trial_and_error_. Sometimes it worked, and other times it didnt. I discovered that you have to walk up with confidence and humour and not “get in their faces”. You say, “This is for you”， then you go. Its hitandru
6、n kindness. And there is no point in doing it halfheartedly. Youve got to do it because you really mean it.Join Me is without geographical boundaries, but there are quite a few members in London, and such stories about things happen on the underground or on the buses. One lady got on the bus and put
7、 a 10 note down and said, “Thats for me and the next nine people.” So at every stop, anyone who got on was told it was paid for. A lot of people were doing this sort of thing anyway. For them its an excuse or reason to do something nice for a complete stranger, and it gives them the confidence to wa
8、lk up and start chatting.语篇导读【 精品教育资源文库】本文为记叙文，简述了公益组织“Join Me”的成立和发展，介绍了作者作为成员之一，每周五做一件善事的经历，最后说明了这一组织存在的意义。1When Londoners see someone in trouble, they _.Aoften give a hand Bstop and ask questionsCpretend not to have seen it Dtelephone the police解析 C 细节理解题。根据第二段内容可知，伦敦人一般不和陌生人说话，遇到有困难的陌生人会装作没看见一样走
9、开，故选 C 项。2According to the passage, members of Join Me often _.Aput an advertisement on the World Wide WebBgo out and make friends with strangersCdo an act of kindness every FridayDbuy coffees for the strangers解析 C 细节理解题。根据第三段第一句可知，Join Me 的成员每周五做一件善事，故选 C 项。3The underlined expression in the third p
10、aragraph possibly means _.Afinding something very difficult Bdoing something without much effortCmaking a few mistakes Dexperimenting to get the right result解析 D 词义猜测题。联系第三段 trial and error 的上下文可知，作者一开始并不懂如何请陌生人喝咖啡，经过反复试验后才发现合适的方式，故选 D 项。4Which would be the best title for the passage?AHitandrun Kind
11、ness BHistory of Join MeCDanny Wallace and Join Me DWhy not Join Me解析 A 标题归纳题。本文主要围绕 Join Me 的成员每周五以做完就跑的方式行善事这一主题来展开，故选 A 项。BA good joke can be the hardest thing to understand when studying a foreign language. As a recent article in The Guardian newspaper noted, “Theres more to understanding a joke
12、 in a foreign language than understanding vocabulary and grammar.”Being able to understand local jokes is often seen as an unbelievable 【 精品教育资源文库】icebreaker for a language learner eager to form friendships with native speakers. “I always felt that humor was a ceiling that I could never break throug
13、h， ” Hannah Ashley, a public relations account manager in London, who once studied Spanish in Madrid, told The Guardian, “I could never speak to people on the same level as I would speak to a native English speaker. I almost came across as quite a boring person because all I could talk about was fac
14、ts.”In fact, most of the time, jokes are only funny for people who share a cultural background or understand humor in the same way. ChineseAmerican comedian Joe Wong found this out firsthand. He had achieved huge success in the US, but when he returned to China in 2008 for his first live show in Bei
15、jing, he discovered that people didnt think his Chinese jokes were as funny as his English ones.In Australia, meanwhile many foreigners find understanding jokes about sports to be the biggest headache. “The hardest jokes are related to rugby because I know nothing about rugby， ” said Melody Cao, who
16、 was once a student in Australia. “When I heard jokes I didnt get, I just laughed along.”In the other two major Englishspeaking countries, the sense of humor is also different. British comedian Simon Pegg believes that while British people use irony(反话 )basically, saying something they dont mean to
17、make a jokeevery day, people in the US dont see the point of using it so often. “British jokes tend to be more subtle and dark, while American jokes are more obvious with their meanings, a bit like Americans themselves， ” he wrote in The Guardian.语篇导读本文为议论文。理解外语中的笑话是一件比学习外语单词和语法更复杂的事情。因为不同的文化背景、用语习惯
18、以及幽默方式等都会影响到对笑话的理解。5It is implied in the noted sentence in Paragraph 1 that _.Athere tends to be something behind the words of a joke in a foreign language Bhumor is always conveyed to foreigners through vocabulary and grammarCvocabulary and grammar help you understand jokes in a foreign language Dm
19、aking jokes is a possible way for one to learn better a foreign 【 精品教育资源文库】language解析 A 推理判断题。第一段中所引用的句子句意为：理解外语中的笑话比理解单词和语法多更多内容。也就是说，除去笑话中所包含的单词和语法，还有更多的内容需要理解(比如笑话中所包含的文化背景和用语习惯等)，故选 A 项。6What can we guess about Hannah Ashley? AShe thinks that Spanish people generally do not have much of a sense
20、of humor. BShe believes that one had better rely on facts when speaking a foreign language.CShe had a better command of the Spanish language than of the English.DShe found humor was a barrier to her getting along well with Spanish people. 解析 D 推理判断题。根据第二段中汉娜所说的 I always felt that humor was a ceiling
21、 that I could never break through 及 I could never speak totalk about was facts 可以推断，幽默成为汉娜与西班牙人交往的阻碍，故选 D 项。7Joe Wong is used as an example to _.Ashow that its hard to put jokes into another languageBsuggest that there are cultural differences in humor Cprove that local people have different taste i
22、n humorDshow that expressing ability affects the sense of humor解析 B 推理判断题。根据第三段第一句可知，大多数时间里，笑话只对那些有共同文化背景或者能以同样的方式理解幽默的人来说是有趣的。故下文引用 Joe Wong 的例子也是为了佐证这一论点，即：幽默存在文化的差异，故选 B 项。8From the article we can learn that _.Ajokes about sports are difficult for people to understandBAmericans are generally more
23、 humorous than British peopleCBritish peoples dark jokes often make people uncomfortableDnot all English native speakers can understand English jokes easily 解析 D 细节理解题。根据最后一段第二句可知，即使同样是说英语的国家，美国人对于英国人含蓄委婉的笑话不太能理解，故选 D 项。.语法填空In my early twenties, I worked in Kuwait(科威特) for several years. One day, a local workmate warne
