TV Game Shows

One of the most fascinating things about television is the size of the audience. A novel can be on the “best seller” list with a sale of fewer than 100,000 copies, but a popular TV show might have 70 million TV viewers. TV can make anything or anyone well-known overnight.

This is the principle behind “quiz” or “game” shows, which put ordinary people on TV to play a game for prizes and money. A quiz show can make anyone a star, and it can give away thousands of dollars just for fun. But all of this money can create problems .For instance, in the 1950s,quiz shows were very popular in the U.S. and almost everyone watched them. Charles Van Doren, an English instructor, became rich and famous after winning money on several shows. He even had a career as a television personality. But one of the losers proved that Charles Van Doren was cheating. It turned out that the show’s producers who were pulling the strings, gave the answers to the most popular contestants beforehand. Why? Because if the audience didn’t like the person who won the game, they turned the show off. The result of this cheating was a huge scandal. Based on his story, a movie under the title “Quiz Show” is on 40 years later:

Charles Van Doren is no longer involved with TV. But game shows are still here, though they aren’t taken as seriously. In fact, some of them try to be as ridiculous as possible. There are shows that send strangers on vacation trips together, or that try to cause newly-married couples to fight on TV, or that punish losers by humiliating them. The entertainment now is to see what people will do just to be on TV. People still win money, but the real prize is to be in front of an audience of millions.

练习

1. TV can make a beggar world-famous overnight. 

  A. Right    B. Wrong    C. Not mentioned

2.The principle behind “quiz” or “game” shows is to put ordinary people on TV to play a game for prizes and money.

  A. Right    B. Wrong    C. Not mentioned

3.Prizes and money for winners are usually provided by TV stars and large companies.

  A. Right    B. Wrong    C. Not mentioned

4.One of the TV personalities, Charles Van Doren was proved to be cheating by persuading the show’s producers to give him the answers beforehand.

  A. Right    B. Wrong    C. Not mentioned

5.The huge scandal of cheating on TV game shows was not exposed until 40 years later in the movie “Quiz Show”.

  A. Right    B. Wrong    C. Not mentioned

6.Nowadays game shows are not treated as seriously as they used to be.

  A. Right    B. Wrong    C. Not mentioned

7. Winners of present-day TV game shows no longer get money from the shows.

  A. Right    B. Wrong    C. Not mentioned

Plants and Mankind

Botany, the study of plants, occupies a peculiar position in the history of human knowledge. We don’t know what our Stone Age ancestors knew about plants, but from what we can observe of reindustrialize societies that still exist, a detailed learning of plants and their properties must be extremely ancient. This is logical. Plants are the basis of the food pyramid for all living things, even for other plants. They have always been enormously important to the welfare of people, not only for food, but also for clothing, weapons, tools, dyes, medicines, shelter, and many other purposes. Tribes living today in the jungle of the Amazon recognize hundreds of plants and know many properties of each. To them botany has no name and is probably not even recognized as a special branch of “knowledge” at all.

Unfortunately, the more industrialized we become the farther away we move from direct contact with plants, and the less distinct our knowledge of botany grows. Yet everyone comes unconsciously on an amazing amount of botanical knowledge, and few people will fail to recognize a rose, an apple, or an orchid. When our Neolithic ancestors, living in the Middle East about 10,000 years ago, discovered that certain grasses could be harvested and their seeds planted for richer yields the next season, the first great step in a new association of plants and humans was taken. Grains were discovered and from them flowed the marvel of agriculture: cultivated crops. From then on, humans would increasingly take their living from the controlled production of a few plants, rather than getting a little here and a little there from many varieties that grew wild and the accumulated knowledge of tens of thousands of years of experience and intimacy with plants in the wild would begin to fade away.

练习

1. It is logical that a detailed learning of plants and their properties must be extremely ancient.

  A. Right    B. Wrong    C. Not mentioned

2. People cannot survive without plants.

  A. Right    B. Wrong    C. Not mentioned

3. Tribes living today in the jungle of the Amazon teach botany to their children at school.

  A. Right    B. Wrong    C. Not mentioned

4. Our direct contact with plants grows with the process of industrialization.

  A. Right    B. Wrong    C. Not mentioned

5. Today people usually acquire a large amount of botanical knowledge from textbooks.

  A. Right    B. Wrong    C. Not mentioned

6. People living in the Middle East first learned to grow plants for food about 10,000 year ago.

  A. Right    B. Wrong    C. Not mentioned

7. Once mankind began farming, they no longer had to get food from many varieties that grew wild.

  A. Right    B. Wrong    C. Not mentioned