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   A good joke can be the hardest thing to understand when people are studying a foreign language. As a recent article in The Guardian noted,“There's more to understanding a joke in a foreign language than understanding vocabulary and grammar.”

Being able to understand local jokes is often seen as an unbelievable 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 through,”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 facts.”

In fact,most of the time,jokes are only funny for people who share a cultural background or understand humor in the same way. Chinese-American comedian Joe Wong found this out first-hand. He had achieved huge success in the US,but when he returned to China in 2008 for his first live show in Beijing,he discovered that people didn't 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 was once a student in Australia.“When I heard jokes I didn't get,I just laughed along.”

In the other two major English-speaking countries,the sense of humor is also different. British comedian Simon Pegg believes that while British people use irony(反话)一basically,saying something they don't mean to make a joke—every day,people in the US don't 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.

【小题1】It is implied in the noted sentence in Paragraph 1 that __________.
A.making jokes is a possible way for one to learn a foreign language better
B.humor is always conveyed to foreigners through vocabulary and grammar
C.vocabulary and grammar help you understand jokes in a foreign language
D.there tends to be something behind the words of a joke in a foreign language
【小题2】What can we learn about Hannah Ashley?
A.She thought that Spanish people generally did not have much of a sense of humor.
B.She believed that one had better rely on facts when speaking a foreign language.
C.She found that humor was a barrier to her to get along well with Spanish people.
D.She had a better command of Spanish language than English language.
【小题3】Joe Wong is used as an example to ___________.
A.suggest that there are cultural differences in humor
B.show that it's hard to put jokes into another language
C.prove that local people have different taste in humor
D.show that expressing ability affects the sense of humor
【小题4】From the text we can learn that ___________.
A.jokes about sports are difficult for all foreigners to understand
B.Americans are generally more humorous than British people
C.not all English speakers can understand English jokes easily
D.British people's dark jokes often make people uncomfortable
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   It is widely known that any English conversation begins with The Weather. Such a fixation with the weather finds expression in Dr. Johnson’s famous comment that “When two English meet, their first talk is of weather.” Though Johnson’s observation is as accurate now as it was over two hundred years ago, most commentators(评论员) fail to come up with a convincing explanation for this English weather-speak.

Bill Bryson, for example, concludes that, as the English weather is not at all exciting, the obsession with it can hardly be understood. He argues that” To an outsider, the most striking thing about the English weather is that there is not very much of it.” Simply, the reason is that the unusual and unpredictable weather is almost unknown in the British Isles.

Jeremy Paxman, however, disagrees with Bryson, arguing that the English weather is by nature attractive. Bryson is wrong, he says, “because the English preference for the weather has nothing to do with the natural phenomena(现象).” The interest is less in the phenomena themselves, but in uncertainty.” According to him, the weather in England is very changeable and uncertain and it attracts the English as well as the outsider.

Bryson and Paxman stand for common misconceptions about the weather-speak among the English. Both commentators, somehow, are missing the point. The English weather conversation is not really about the weather at all. English weather-speak is a system of signs ,which is developed to help the speakers overcome the natural reserve and actually talk to each other. Everyone knows conversations starting with weather-speak are not requests for weather data. Rather, they are routine greetings, conversation starters or the blank “fillers”, In other words, English weather-speak is a means of social bonding.

【小题1】The author mentions Dr. Johnson’s comment to show that________.
A.most commentators agree with Dr. Johnson
B.Dr. Johnson is famous for his weather observation
C.the comment was accurate two hundred years ago
D.English conversations usually start with the weather
【小题2】What does the underlined word “obsession” most probably refer to?
A.A social trend.B.An emotional state.
C.A historical concept.D.An unknown phenomenon.
【小题3】According to the passage, Jeremy Paxman believes that________.
A.Bill Bryson has little knowledge of the weather
B.there is nothing special about the English weather
C.the English weather attracts people to the British Isles
D.English people talk about the weather for its uncertainty
【小题4】What is the author’s main purpose of writing the passage?
A.To explain what English weather-speak is about.
B.To analyze misconceptions about the English weather.
C.To find fault with both Bill Bryson and Jeremy Paxman.
D.To convince people that the English weather is changeable.