The snow has paralysed(使瘫痪) transport in China during the country’s most important vacation period, the celebration of the Chinese New Year. Not only have transport delays hindered personal trips, but they have also slowed the delivery of fresh produce to markets. Consequently, in Zhengzhou, the capital city of the Henan province, tomato prices have doubled, and the cost of 47 other vegetables has increased by 36%, as reported by local media at the end of January.
According to an inside PR source, “wholesalers in Beijing were quoted as saying that only about 20% of the usual fresh vegetable supplies were reaching the city.” As an Asian country with a diet based on fresh produce, the shortage of vegetables and the rise in prices is not only affecting fresh food producers, but also the final consumers.
In terms of production, this is the worst snow disaster to hit China in the last 50 years, affecting a total of 9.4 million hectares of farmland in the country, according to a report published on 4 February 2008 by Feng Tao of Xinhua News, at the Chinese government website. Most of the crops devastated（毁坏）by the frost are located in the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River, the traditional natural border between North and South China.
Chen Xiwen, Director of the Office of the Central Leading Group on Rural Work, pointed out at the end of last week that “the blizzard disaster in the south has had a severe impact on winter crops, and the impact on fresh vegetables could be catastrophic in certain areas”, as stated in the Xinhua News report.
The Chinese government has been quick to take extreme measures. The Chinese Ministry of Agriculture (MOA) has sent 13 teams of experts to 8 of the areas most seriously affected by the harsh weather. The aim of this initiative is to provide farmers with technical assistance to minimize their losses. From this passage, we can know that the snow happened _____.
| A．During the Spring Festival |
| B．In the coldest days of the winter |
| C．In the North of China. |
| D．It’s not mentioned here. |
What’s the meaning of the underlined word in paragraph four?
| A．worst | B．snowstorm | C．cold weather | D．biggest |
This passage mainly tells us _____ .
| A．The snow in the south of China caused many problems. |
| B．The effect of the snow in the south of China on the fresh food |
| C．The snow in the south of China slowed the delivery of fresh produce to markets. |
| D．The Chinese government has taken extreme measures to help the suffered farmers. |
The Chinese Ministry of Agriculture (MOA) has sent 13 teams of experts to 8 of the areas to _____ .
A. help the farmers plant crops B. give money to the farmers
C. give directions to the farmers with their technic（技术；技巧）.
D. deliver crops for the farmers.
A new planet-hunting technique has detected the most earth-like planet yet around a star other than our sun, raising hopes of finding a space rock that might support life, astronomers (天文学家) reported recently.
“This is an important discovery to answer the question ‘Are we alone?’” said Michael Turner of the National Science Foundation.
“The team has discovered the most earth-like planet yet, and more importantly, has proved the power of a new technique that is sensitive (灵敏的) to detecting planets that are fit for people to live on,” Turner said in a statement.
In the last decade, astronomers have detected more than 160 planets moving around stars outside our solar system. Most of these have been gas giant planets like Jupiter, which are unfit for life.
But an international team has detected a cold planet about 5.5 times more massive than the earth — still small enough to be considered earth-like — moving around a star about 20,000 light years away, close to the center of the Milky Way.
To find this new planet, the team used a technique called gravitational microlensing (引力微观透镜法). When a planet is circling the closest star, the planet’s gravity can add its own signature to the light. This kind of light signature was observed on July 11 by a group of telescopes in a project known as OGLE, short for Optical Gravitational Lensing Experiment.
“The main advantage of microlensing is the signals for low-mass planets: They’re not weak signals. They’re just rare,” Bennett of the University of Notre Dame in Indiana said by telephone. “If there happens to be a straight line between a foreground star with its planet and the background source star, then you’re able to detect that planet.”The underlined word “detected” in Paragraph 1 probably means “_________”.
| A．discovered | B．destroyed |
| C．created | D．searched |
The author’s purpose in writing this passage is to ____.
| A．prove that scientists have a lot of difficulties in doing scientific research |
| B．explain why this planet moves around a star like our sun |
| C．teach the readers some basic knowledge about the universe |
| D．tell people about a new technique that finds the most earth-like planet moving round another star |
From the news report we can infer that _________.
| A．the planet is like the earth because it is close to the center of the Milky Way |
| B．it is quite possible that life may exist on other planets in the universe |
| C．people have no interest in finding a planet that might support life |
| D．the question “Are we alone” is too difficult for scientists to answer |
Which of the following statements is NOT true according to the passage?
| A．The signals coming from low-mass planets are too weak to be noticed. |
| B．Most of the discovered planets are not fit for people to live on. |
| C．If a star with its planet happens to be in line with the source star, then the planet can be found. |
| D．The power of the new technique is proved by the discovery of the earth-like planet. |
When students and parents are asked to rate subjects according to their importance, the arts are unavoidably at the bottom of the list. Music is nice, people seem to say, but not important. Too often it is viewed as mere entertainment, but certainly not an education priority（优先）. This view is shortsighted. In fact, music education is beneficial and important for all students.
Music tells us who we are. Because music is an expression of the beings who create it, it reflects their thinking and values and the social environment it came from. Rock music represents a lifestyle just as surely as does a Schubert song. The jazz influence that George Gershwin and other musicians introduced into their music is obviously American because it came from American musical traditions. Music expresses our character and values. It gives us identity as a society.
Music provides a kind of perception（感知）that cannot be acquired any other way. Science can explain how the sun rises and sets. The arts explore the emotive meaning of the same phenomenon. We need every possible way to discover and respond to our world for one simple but powerful reason: No one way can get it all.
The arts are forms of thoughts as powerful in what they communicate as mathematical and scientific symbols. They are ways we human beings “talk” to each other. They are the language of civilization through which we express our fears, our curiosities, our discoveries, our hopes. The arts are ways we give form to our ideas and imagination so that they can be shared with others. When we do not give children access to an important way of expressing themselves such as music, we take away from them the meanings that music expresses.
Science and technology do not tell us what it means to be human. The arts do. Music is an important way we express human suffering, celebration, the meaning and value of peace and love.
So music education is far more necessary than people seem to realize.According to Paragraph 1, students _______.
| A．disagree with their parents on education |
| B．regard music as a way of entertainment |
| C．view music as an overlooked subject |
| D．prefer the arts to science |
In Paragraph 2, the author uses jazz as an example to _______.
| A．compare it with rock music |
| B．introduce American musical traditions |
| C．show music identifies a society |
| D．prove music influences people’s lifestyles |
According to the passage, the arts and science _______.
| A．approach the world from different angles |
| B．explore different phenomena of the world |
| C．express people’s feelings in different ways |
| D．explain what it means to be human differently |
What is the main idea of the passage?
| A．Music is an effective communication tool. |
| B．Music should be of top education priority. |
| C．Music makes students more imaginative |
| D．Music education deserves more attention. |
The Chinese word “Shanzhai” means a small mountain village, but now it becomes an accepted name for fakes (假货), after “Shanzhai Cell-phones” produced by small workshops in southern China became popular in the mainland market over the past two years.
Besides “Shanzhai” electronic products, there are “Shanzhai” movies, “Shanzhai” stars and even a “Shanzhai” Spring Festival Gala (联欢晚会), a copy of the 25-year-old traditional show presented by CCTV on Chinese Lunar New Year’s Eve.
“Shanzhai” has become a culture of its own, meaning anything that imitates something famous.
In Chongqing, “Shanzhai” version “Bird’s Nest” and “Water Cube” woven by farmers with bamboo attract wide attention from tourists. Both are copies of the famous Olympic buildings in Beijing.
A literature critic said that taking the “Shanzhai” Gala as an example, when the traditional CCTV program becomes less and less attractive to the audience, the“Shanzhai” version appears timely to attract people. “Although it is often connected with poor techniques and operation, ‘Shanzhai’ culture meets the psychological needs of common people and could be a comfort to their minds,” he said.
To the mainstream (主流的) culture, the rise of “Shanzhai” culture is a challenge and a motivation (动力). People believe different kinds of cultures developing together is a perfect situation and it is for the public to choose.The Chinese word “Shanzhai” may have started with ______.
| A．Spring Festival Gala | B．electronic products |
| C．fake cell-phones | D．Olympic buildings |
According to the passage, “Shanzhai” culture refers to ______.
| A．the action that a person imitates famous people |
| B．products with poor techniques and quality |
| C．those similar names to famous brands |
| D．anything that imitates something famous |
We can infer that the mainstream culture ______.
| A．may develop faster because of the challenge of “Shanzhai” culture |
| B．is the challenge of “Shanzhai” culture |
| C．will be replaced by “Shanzhai” culture |
| D．is held back by “Shanzhai” culture |
Women are overtaking men in education and in the workplace, a senior Government minister said yesterday – creating a new generation of stay-at-home fathers.
Universities minister David Willetts predicted relationships and traditional household structures will be transformed as the female’s power ahead, and women earn more than their male partners.
Successful women will have to “marry down” by choosing partners less qualified than them – and may increasingly select men based on how supportive they might be to their careers, rather than whether they can support them financially.
And experts say women will often become the main breadwinners, with more men staying at home to look after children. Mr. Willetts said there was clear evidence from schools that boys are “lagging behind”, and are being overtaken by female students at university．He said: “I am not against women having those advantages but there is now a rather striking gap, if you look at the statistics, where it looks as if approximately 50 percent of women are graduating from university by the time they’re 30 and perhaps about 40 percent of men.” He added: “It may lead to changes in the patterns of household living．So there are some deep questions here.” The Philadelphia-based Pew Research Centre study, published in The Atlantic magazine, suggests female graduates are being put in similar situation to that faced for some time by black women．In America, 70 percent of black women have no husband and there are twice as many black women as black men with university degrees.
Many educated British women believe there is already a dearth of traditional husbands．Claire Davis, 33, who works in financial services and lives in south London, told The Times: “I have a good job and my own flat and I can pretty much do what I want, but a lot of them I meet aren't really of the right quality. If I look at the friends I went to university with, the men don't tend to be doing as well as the women.”David Willetts’ attitude toward women’s overtaking men in education and in the workplace could be described as .
| A．worried | B．positive |
| C．supportive | D．excited |
Claire Davis’ example is used to indicate that .
| A．a lot of women prefer to be single |
| B．black women do not want to be married |
| C．women are less excellent than men in general |
| D．excellent women have difficulty in looking for a good husband |
The underlined word “dearth” in the last paragraph most probably means .
| A．shortage | B．respect |
| C．oversupply | D．pride |
The best title of this passage would probably be .
| A．Successful Women Forced to “Marry Down” |
| B．A Poor Generation of Stay-at-home Fathers |
| C．The Marriages’ Influence on Economy |
| D．The Advantages of the Traditional Family Pattern |
“A good book for children should simply be a good book in its own right” says Mollie Hunter. Born and brought up near Edinburgh，Mollie has devoted her talents to writing primarily for young people. She firmly believes that there is and should always be a wider audience for any good book whatever its main market is. In Mollie’s opinion it is necessary to make full use of language and she enjoys telling a story，which is what every writer should be doing. “If you aren’t telling a story, you’re a very dead writer indeed.” She says. With the chief function of a writer being to entertain，Mollie is indeed an entertainer. “I have this great love of not only the meaning of language but of the music of language,” she says. “This love goes back to early childhood. I had a school teacher who used to ask us what we would like to be when we grew up and，because my family always had dogs，and I was very good at handling them，I said I wanted to work with dogs，and the teacher always said ‘Nonsense，Mollie；dear，you’ll be a writer.’ So finally I thought that this woman must have something，since she was a good teacher and I decided when I was nine that I would be a writer.”
This childhood intention is described in her novel，A Sound of Chariots，which although written in the third person is clearly autobiographical (自传体的) and gives a picture both of Mollie’s ambition and her struggle towards its achievement. Thoughts of her childhood inevitably (不可避免地) brought thoughts of the time when her home was still a village with buttercup meadows and strawberry fields—sadly now covered with modern houses. “I was once taken back to see it and I felt that somebody had lain dirty hands all over my childhood. I’ll never go back，”she said “Never. When I set one of my books in Scotland” she said “I can recall my romantic feelings as a child playing in those fields，or watching the village blacksmith at work. And that’s important because children now know so much so early that romance can’t exist for them, as it did for us.”What does Mollie Hunter feel about the nature of a good book?
| A．It should not aim at a narrow audience. |
| B．It should be attractive to young readers. |
| C．It should be based on original ideas. |
| D．It should not include too much conversation. |
In Mollie Hunter’s opinion，which of the following is one sign of a poor writer?
| A．Being poor in life experience. |
| B．Being short of writing skills. |
| C．The weakness of description. |
| D．The absence of a story. |
What do we learn about Mollie Hunter as a young child?
| A．She didn’t expect to become a writer. |
| B．She didn’t enjoy writing stories. |
| C．She didn’t have any particular ambitions. |
| D．She didn’t respect her teacher’s views. |
What’s the writer’s purpose in this text?
| A．To share her enjoyment of Mollie Hunter’s books. |
| B．To introduce Mollie Hunter’s work to a wider audience. |
| C．To provide information for Mollie Hunter’s existing readers. |
| D．To describe Mollie Hunter’s most successful books. |