Narcissus was a beautiful looking boy. He had long, flowing, blond hair, beautiful, bright, blue eyes and even, white teeth. Many young ladies fell in love with him including the nymph（女神）: Echo.
Nymphs were lively spirits who lived near streams and lakes and protected trees in the forest. Echo had upset the Queen of the Gods; Hera. As a punishment Hera made Echo unable to speak except to repeat the last three words of the person she was talking to.
Poor Echo fell in love with Narcissus but could never tell him how she felt. Narcissus teased her and she ran away with tears pouring down her face. Aphrodite, the goddess of love saw what happened and decided to punish Narcissus. As he came to a pool of water Narcissus saw his reflection (影子)and fell in love with the vision he saw. It was of course his own reflection.
Poor Narcissus watched his own reflection, every time he tried to touch the face of the vision he loved it broke up on the shimmering surface of the water. Narcissus stopped eating, lost his beautiful looks and desired to get his love. In the end he anguished gradually and died.
Aphrodite took pity on him and made a flower grow in his place on the bank of the lake. Narcissus flowers (水仙花) can be found to this day growing wherever you can find water and trees. Echo fell in love with Narcissus because_________.
| A．Narcissus was good-looking. |
| B．Echo was a lively spirit |
| C．Narcissus loved her, too. |
| D．Echo took pity on Narcissus |
Why did Aphrodite, the goddess of love, punish Narcissus?
| A．Aphrodite envied Echo because she loved Narcissus |
| B．She thought Narcissus didn’t respect and made Echo sad. |
| C．Narcissus fell in love with the vision, not Echo. |
| D．Echo was trapped in love and didn’t protect trees in the forest any longer. |
What does the underlined word “anguished” in the fourth paragraph mean?
| A．become increasingly thin and weak |
| B．become very hungry |
| C．become very fat |
| D．become out of mind |
What is the main purpose of writing the passage?
| A．To tell people a sad love story |
| B．To tell people how Narcissus flowers came |
| C．To tell the true meaning of beauty and ugliness |
| D．To tell people not affect others’ love |
As more and more people speak the global languages of English, Chinese, Spanish, and Arabic, other languages are rapidly disappearing. In fact, half of the 6,000--7,000 languages spoken around the world today will likely die out by the next century, according to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).
In an effort to prevent language loss, scholars from a number of organizations--UNESCO and National Geographic among them--have for many years been documenting dying languages and the cultures they reflect.
Mark Turin, a scientist at the Macmillan Centre Yale University, who specializes in the languages and oral traditions of the Himalayas, is following in that tradition. His recently published book, A Grammar of Thangmi with an Ethnolinguistic Introduction to the Speakers and Their Culture, grows out of his experience living, working, and raising a family in a village in Nepal.
Documenting the Thangmi language and culture is just a starting point for Turin, who seeks to include other languages and oral traditions across the Himalayan reaches of India, Nepal, Bhutan, and China. But he is not content to simply record these voices before they disappear without record.
At the University of Cambridge Turin discovered a wealth of important materials-including photographs, films, tape recordings, and field notes--which had remained unstudied and were badly in need of care and protection.
Now, through the two organizations that he has founded–the Digital Himalaya Project and the World Oral Literature Project--Turin has started a campaign to make such documents, for the world available not just to scholars but to the younger generations of communities from whom the materials were originally collected. Thanks to digital technology and the widely available Internet, Turin notes, the endangered languages can be saved and reconnected with speech communities.Many scholars are making efforts to ______.
| A．promote global languages |
| B．set up language research organizations. |
| C．search for language communities |
| D．rescue disappearing languages |
What does “that tradition’ in Paragraph 3 refer to?
| A．Telling stories about language users |
| B．Writing books on language teaching. |
| C．Having full records of the languages |
| D．Living with the native speaker. |
What is Turin’s book based on?
| A．The cultual studies |
| B．The documents available at Yale. |
| C．His language research in Bhutan. |
| D．His personal experience in Nepal. |
Which of the following best describe Turin’s work?
| A．Write, sell and donate. |
| B．Collect, protect and reconnect. |
| C．Record, repair and reward. |
| D．Design, experiment and report. |
Passenger pigeons(旅鸽) once flew over much of the United States in unbelievable numbers. Written accounts from the 18th and 19th centuries described flocks(群) so large that they darkened the sky for hours.
It was calculated that when its population reached its highest point, there were more than 3 billion passenger pigeons--a number equal to 24 to 40 percent of the total bird population in the United States, making it perhaps the most abundant bird in the world. Even as late as 1870 when their numbers had already become smaller, a flock believed to be 1 mile wide and 320 miles (about 515 kilometers) long was seen near Cincinnati.
Sadly, the abundance of passenger pigeons may have been their undoing. Where the birds were most abundant, people believed there was an ever-lasting supply and killed them by the thousands. Commercial hunters attracted them to small clearings with grain, waited until pigeons had settled to feed, then threw large nets over them, taking hundreds at a time. The birds were shipped to large cities and sold in restaurants.
By the closing decades of the 19th century, the hardwood forests where passenger pigeons nested had been damaged by Americans’ need for wood, which scattered (驱散) the flocks and forced the birds to go farther north, where cold temperatures and spring storms contributed to their decline. Soon the great flocks were gone, never to be seen again.
In 1897, the state of Michigan passed a law prohibiting the killing of passenger pigeons, but by then, no sizable flocks had been seen in the state for 10 years. The last confirmed wild pigeon in the United States was shot by a boy in Pike County, Ohio, in 1900. For a time, a few birds survived under human care. The last of them, known affectionately as Martha, died at the Cincinnati Zoological Garden on September 1, 1914.In the 18th and early 19th centuries, passenger pigeons________.
| A．were the largest bird population in the Us |
| B．lived mainly in the south of America |
| C．did great harm to the natural environment |
| D．were the biggest bird in the world |
The underlined word “ undoing” probably refers to the pigeons’ ________.
| A．escape | B．liberation |
| C．ruin | D．evolution |
What was the main reason for people to kill passenger pigeons?
| A．To seek pleasure. | B．To save other birds. |
| C．To make money. | D．To protect crops. |
What can we infer about the law passed in Michigan?
| A．It was ignored by the public. |
| B．It was declared too late. |
| C．It was unfair. |
| D．It was strict. |
Since the first Earth Day in 1970, Americans have gotten a lot “greener” toward the environment. “We didn’t know at that time that there even was an environment, let alone that there was a problem with it,” says Bruce Anderson, president of Earth Day USA.
But what began as nothing important in public affairs has grown into a social movement. Business people, political leaders, university professors, and especially millions of grass-roots Americans are taking part in the movement. “The understanding has increased many, many times,” says Gaylord Nelson, the former governor from Wisconsin, who thought up the first Earth Day.
According to US government reports, emissions (排放)from cars and trucks have dropped from 10.3 million tons a year to 5.5 tons. The number of cities producing CO beyond the standard has been reduced from 40 to 9. Although serious problems still remain and need to be dealt with, the world is a safer and healthier place. A kind of “Green thinking ” has become part of practices.
Great improvement has been achieved. In 1988 there were only 600 recycling programs, today in 1995 there are about 6,600. Advanced lights, motors, and building designs have helped save a lot of energy and therefore prevented pollution.
Twenty–five years ago, there were hardly any education programs for environment. Today, it’s hard to find a public school, university, or law school that does not have such a kind of program. “Until we do that, nothing else will change!” says Bruce Anderson.According to Anderson, before 1970, Americans had little idea about ________.
| A．the social movement |
| B．environmental problems |
| C．recycling techniques |
| D．the importance of Earth Day |
Where does the support for environmental protection mainly come from?
| A．The business circle | B．Government officials |
| C．The grass–roots level | D．University professors |
What have Americans achieved in environmental protection?
A. They have cut car emissions to the lowest.
B They have reduced pollution through effective measures.
C. They have lowered their CO levels in forty cities.
D. They have settled their environmental problems.What is especially important for environmental protection according to the last paragraph?
| A．Planning | B．Education |
| C．Green living | D．CO reduction |
Arriving in Sydney on his own from India, my husband, Rashid, stayed in a hotel for a short time while looking for a short time while looking for a house for me and our children.
During the first week of his stay, he went out one day to do some shopping. He came back in the late afternoon to discover that his suitcase was gone. He was extremely worried as the suitcase had all his important papers, including his passport.
He reported the case to the police and then sat there, lost and lonely in strange city, thinking of the terrible troubles of getting all the paperwork organized again from a distant country while trying to settle down in a new one.
Late in the evening, the phone rang. It was a stranger. He was trying to pronounce my husband’s name and was asking him a lot of questions. Then he said they had found a pile of papers in their trash can（垃圾桶）that had been left out on the footpath.
My husband rushed to their home to find a kind family holding all his papers and documents. Their young daughter had gone to the trash can and found a pile of unfamiliar papers. Her parents had carefully sorted them out, although they had found mainly foreign addresses on most of the documents. At last they had seen a half-written letter in the pile in which my husband had given his new telephone number to a friend.
That family not only restored the important documents to us that day but also restored our faith and trust in people. We still remember their kindness and often send a warm wish their way.What did Rashid plan to do after his arrival in Sydney?
| A．Go shopping | B．Take a vacation |
| C．Join his family | D．Find a house |
What does the underlined word“restored”in the last paragraph mean?
| A．Showed | B．Gave back |
| C．Delivered | D．Sent out |
Which of the following can be the best title for the text?
| A．Turning Trash to Treasure. | B．Living in a a New Country. |
| C．From India to Australia. | D．In Search of New Friends. |
Country music is one of the most popular kinds of music in the United States today because it is about simple but strong human feelings and events---love, sadness, good times, and bad times. It tells real-life, stories and sounds the way people really talk. As life becomes more complicated(复杂), it is good to hear music about ordinary people.
Country music, sometimes called country-western, comes from two kinds of music. One is the traditional music of the people in the Appalachian Mountains in the eastern Unite States. The other is traditional cowboy music from the west. The singers usually play guitars, and in the 1920s they started using electric guitars. At first city people said country music was low class. It was popular mostly in the South. But during World War II, thousands of Southerners went to the Northeast and Midwest to work in the factories. They took their music with them. Soldiers from the rest of the country went to army camps（军营）in the South. They learned country music. Slowly it became popular all over the country.
Today country music is also popular everywhere in the United States and Canada—in small towns and in New York City, among black and white, and among educated and uneducated people. About 1, 200 radio stations broadcast country music twenty-four hours a day. English stars sing it in British English, and people in other countries sing it in their own languages. The music that started with cowboys and poor southerners is now popular all over the world.It can be learned from the passage that country music comes from_____ .
| A．the Northeast and Midwest |
| B．factories and army camps in the South |
| C．the Appalachian Mountains and the West |
| D．real-life stories in small towns |
Before World War II country music was popular mainly in_____ .
| A．the south | B．the north |
| C．the Midwest | D．the Northeast |
During World War II many Southerners went to the Northeast and the Mid-west because _____.
| A．they wanted to take music with them |
| B．they wanted to make other people like country music |
| C．they wanted to work in the factories there |
| D．they wanted to make country music popular |
Country music is one of the most popular kinds of music in the world today because_______.
| A．city people said it was low class |
| B．people could sing it in many different languages |
| C．it started with cowboys and poor Southerners |
| D．it is loved by different kinds of people in the world |
Which of the following is NOT true according to the passage?
| A．Country music is about human feelings and events. |
| B．Country music is sung by stars all in English. |
| C．Country music is popular among city people today. |
| D．City people didn’t like country music at first. |