E
Thirty years ago, when the movie version of my novel Jaw was published, few people including me knew very much about great white sharks. For hundreds of generations, we humans have been taught to fear and hate sharks, and the movie touched a nerve of horror.
Now something long thought impossible has happened. A great white shark was successfully held in capacity for several months. In August last year a very young female great white shark was caught accidentally in a fisherman's net off Huntington Beach, California, and then kept in an ocean pen (栏栅) for 25 days. After being moved to the Monterey Bay Aquarium (水族馆), she grew well in the million-gallon Outer Bay Exhibit. She was so lovely that people all liked her very much. Perhaps she was too young to understand that the big tank was not her natural environment, because she didn't hit her head against the walls in an attempt to swim away as others of her kind have done. And she began to feed almost immediately on small fish offered to her on a pole. In the months that followed, the shark suffered no serious injuries, caught no diseases, and grew noticeably larger, breaking all records for great white sharks in capacity. The longest that any other great white shark had been held was 16 days.
Until February 23, that is, when she hit and killed a soup fin shark (翅鲨) , as she grew bigger and her behavior grew more aggressive, officials at the Aquarium knew the time had come. On March 31, after 198 days in the aquarium, the great white shark was released into the Pacific.
Scientists still have a lot to learn about sharks, especially great white sharks which are now considered to be in danger. Scientists do know that sharks are necessary to ocean health. Remove any significant animal from the sea food chain and you will risk destroying the balance of nature.
72. We can see that in the film Jaw the shark was once described as______.
A. a pet of children B. a horror to human beings
C. a friend of the aged D. a guard of its owner
73. Different from the others of her kind, the young female great white shark was somewhat _____in the beginning.
A. terrible and dangerous B. fierce and cruel C. loyal and friendly D. gentle and lovely
74. By saying that "officials at the aquarium knew the time had come", the writer probably means that the female great white shark______.
A. had to be killed B. escaped from the big tank
C. had to be set free D. began to hit and kill other animals
75. What conclusion can be drawn from the text?
A. We should protect great white sharks as well as other ocean animals.
B. The female great white shark will be attacked by some other animals.
C. Great white sharks are becoming more and more
D. We should kill the enemies of white sharks in the oceans.
CBC is a famous air company which has over twenty planes carrying passengers and goods, flying along 12 fixed lines all over the world. Its service is very good but some passengers are still not satisfied with it and that is why in 2004 and 2005 the company received letters of complaints from consumers or passengers who pointed out over a dozen kind of problems which are divided in groups in the following table. Those concerning passengers’ things carried on the plane are baggage problems. Customer service refers to service work which passengers are not satisfied with. Overselling of tickets is about the fact that more seats are sold and as a result the plane is too crowded to be safe. Refund problems appear when passengers fail to receive the money paid back to them because of what they have lost. Fares are problems concerning the price of tickets.
Consumer Complaints Received By the CBC
| Category |
2004 |
2005 |
| Flight problems |
20.2% |
22.1% |
| Baggage |
18.3% |
21.8% |
| Customer service |
3.1% |
11.3% |
| Over sales of seats |
10.5% |
11.8% |
| Refund problems |
10.1% |
8.1% |
| Fares |
6.4% |
6.0% |
| Reservation & Ticketing |
5.8% |
5.6% |
| Tours |
3.3% |
2.3% |
| Smoking |
3.2% |
2.9% |
| Advertising |
1.2% |
1.01% |
| Credit |
1.0% |
0.8% |
| Special passengers |
0.9% |
0.9% |
| Others |
6.0% |
5.3% |
| Total Number of Complaints |
2,988 |
1,792 |
About how many complaints about Credit were received by the CBC in 2004?
| A．28 | B．29 | C．30 | D．31 |
By about what percentage did the total number of complaints decrease from 2004 to 2005?
| A．40% | B．60% | C．75% | D．100% |
If the circle graphs below show total consumer complaints for 2004, which graph shows a dark part that is about Flight problems and Refund problems together?
Which of the following statements can be inferred from the table?
a. In 2004 and in 2005, complaints about Flight problems, Baggage, and Customer service
together took more than 40 percent of all consumer complaints received by the CBC Company.
b .The number of special passengers complaints was unchanged from 2004 to 2005.
c .From 2004 to 2005 the number of Flight problems complaints increased by more than 2 percent.
| A．only a | B．only b | C．a and b | D．a and c |
From the passage we can know that _______ .
| A．customers are not satisfied with CBC |
| B．sometimes CBC sells more tickets than its plane’s fixed seats |
| C．CBC has more than twenty planes which fly to all the capital cities of the world |
| D．customers can only buy tickets with cash |
Some say everyday miracles(奇迹) are predestined(注定的)—the right time for the appointed meeting. And it can happen anywhere.
In 2001, 11-year-old Kevin Stephan was a bat boy for his younger brother’s Little League team in Lancaster, New York. It was an early evening in late July. Kevin was standing on the grass away from the plate, where another youngster was warming up for the next game. Swinging his bat back and forth, giving it all the power an elementary school kid could give. The boy brought the bat back hard and hit Kevin in the chest. His heart stopped.
When Kevin fell to the ground, the mother of one of the players rushed out of the stands to his aid. Penny Brown hadn’t planned to be there that day, but at the last minute, her shift(换班)at the hospital had been changed to see her son’s performance. She was given the night off. Penny bent over the senseless boy, his face already starting to turn blue, and giving him CPR(心肺复苏术), breathing into his mouth and giving him chest compressions. And he revived in the end.
After his recovery, he became a volunteer junior firefighter, learning some of the emergency first-aid techniques that had saved his life. He studied hard in school and was saving money for college by working as a dishwasher in a local restaurant in his spare time.
Kevin, now 18, was working in the kitchen when he heard people screaming, customers in confusion, employees rushing toward a table. He hurried into the main room and saw a woman there, her face turning blue, her hands at her throat. She was choking.
Quickly Kevin stepped behind her, wrapped his arms around her and clasped his hands. Then, he used skills he’d first learned in Scouts. The food that was trapped in the woman’s throat was freed. The colour began to return to her face.
“The food was stuck in my throat. I couldn’t breathe,” she said. She thought she was dying. “I was very frightened.”
Who was the woman?
Penny Brown. The author wrote the passage to show us that .
| A．miracles are predestined and they can happen anywhere |
| B．whoever helps you in trouble will get a reward one day |
| C．God will help those who give others a helping hand |
| D．miracles won’t come without any difficulty sometimes |
Which of the following statements is TRUE of Kevin Stephan?
| A．He was hit in the face by a boy and almost lost his life. |
| B．He was a volunteer junior firefighter, teaching the players first-aid skills. |
| C．He worked part-time in a local restaurant to save money for college. |
| D．He saved Penny Brown though he didn’t really know how to deal with food choke. |
Why did Penny Brown change her shift and was given the night off that night?
| A．She was invited to give the players directions. |
| B．She volunteered to give medical services. |
| C．She was a little worried about his son’s safety. |
| D．She came to watch her son’s game and cheered for him. |
The underlined word “revived” in the third paragraph most likely means.
| A．came back to life | B．became worse | C．failed | D．moved |
When Kevin knew the woman was Penny Brown, probably he first felt.
| A．happy | B．surprised | C．sad | D．worried |
In a recent class I was asked “What is a short story?” My first answer was that it was something that could be read in one sitting and brought an illumination（启示）to the reader, sudden and golden like sunlight cracking(破裂,砸开) through a heavy cloud. I went on to say that in my opinion a “real” short story was closer to poetry than to a novel.
Here are some definitions of the short story. My favorite is Benet’s: “something that can be read in an hour and remembered for a lifetime”. One writer said, “The theme of a novel won’t fit into the framework of a short story; It’s like trying to squeeze a large painting done on a wall into the frame of a miniature （微型画）。 And as in a miniature painting, the details need to be sharp. ”
The short story is an example of one aspect of human nature. Often a character undergoes some event, something that offers him or her change. This is why it’s said that short stories usually “say something ”， often a small something, but sometimes delivered with such accuracy that the effect is strongly felt, even a life-moment for some readers, something similar to a religious experience or to witnessing a never-to-be-repeated scene in nature.
Ok, let’s form a definition here: A short story is an account, rarely over 10, 000 words or below 500 words-more commonly 1, 500 to 5, 000 words-a single-sitting read, but with enough time and weight to move the reader. It is narrow and focused to produce an effect through the story, most commonly through events affecting some change in an individual.
Writer Isabelle Allende once wrote: “Novels are, for me, adding up details, just work, work, work, then you’re done. Short stories are more difficult-they have to be perfect, complete in themselves. ”The writer of the passage is probably a ______.
| A．poet | B．painter | C．teacher | D．student |
What should the ideal short story be in length?
| A．at most 10, 000 words | B．below 500 words | C．over 5, 000words | D．around 2, 000 words |
The underlined word “undergoes ” in the third paragraph probably means “________ ”。
| A．experiences | B．discovers | C．discusses | D．appreciates |
What’s the difference between novels and short stories?
| A．Novels are too long for us to read. |
| B．Short stories are too short for us to read. |
| C．Short stories have more details than novels. |
| D．Short stories are more perfect and difficult than novels. |
What would be the best title for the passage?
| A．How Do You Write a Short Story? | B．What Exactly Is a Short Story? |
| C．Is a Short Story Similar to Poetry? | D．Are Short Stories Perfect and Complete? |
Not many years ago，a wealthy and rather strange old man named Johnson lived alone in a village in the south of England. He had made a lot of money in trading with foreign countries. When he was seventy-five， he gave ￡ 12，000 to the village school to buy land and equipment for a children’s playground.
As a result of his kindness，many people came to visit him. Among them was a newspaperman. During their talk, Johnson remarked that he was seventy-five and expected to live to be a hundred. The newspaperman asked him how he managed to be healthy at seventy-five. Johnson had a sense of humor. He liked whisky and drank some each day. “I have an injection （注射） in my neck each evening.”he told the newspaperman, thinking of his evening glass of whisky.
The newspaperman did not understand what Johnson meant. In his newspaper he reported that Johnson was seventy-five and had a daily injection in his neck. Within a week Johnson received thousands of letters from all over Britain, asking him for the secret of his daily injectionJohnson became a rich man through _________.
| A．doing business. |
| B．making whisky. |
| C．cheating. |
| D．buying and selling land |
The gift of money to the school suggests that Johnson __________.
| A．had no children. |
| B．was a strange man. |
| C．was very fond of children. |
| D．wanted people to know how rich he was. |
Many people wrote to Johnson to find out __________.
| A．what kind of whisky he had. | B．how to live longer. |
| C．how to become wealthy. | D．in which part of the neck to have an injection. |
The newspaperman ____________.
| A．should have reported what Johnson had told him. |
| B．shouldn’t have asked Johnson what injection he had. |
| C．was eager to live a long life. |
| D．should have found out what Johnson really meant. |
When Johnson said he had an injection in his neck each evening，he really meant that ______.
| A．he liked drinking a glass of whisky in the evening. |
| B．he needed an injection in the neck. |
| C．a daily injection in the evening would make him sleep well. |
| D．there was something wrong with his neck. |
When other nine-year-old kids were playing games, she was working at a petrol station. When other teens were studying or going out, she struggled to find a place to sleep on the street. But she overcame these terrible setbacks to win a highly competitive scholarship（奖学金）and gain entry to Harvard University. And her amazing story has inspired a movie, “Homeless to Harvard: The Liz Murray Story”, shown in late April.
Liz Murray, a 22-year-old American girl, has been writing a real-life story of willpower and determination. Liz grew up in the shadow of two drug-addicted（吸毒）parents. There was never enough food or warm clothes in the house. Liz was the only member of the family who had a job. Her mother had AIDS and died when Liz was just 15 years old. The effect of that loss became a turning point in her life. Connecting the environment in which she had grown up with how her mother had died, she decided to do something about it.
Liz went back to school. She threw herself into her studies, never telling her teachers that she was homeless. At night, she lived on the streets.“What drove me to live on had something to do with understanding, by understanding that there was a whole other way of being. I had only experienced a small part of the society,”she wrote in her book Breaking Night.
She admitted that she used envy to drive herself on. She used the benefits that come easily to others, such as a safe living environment, to encourage herself that “next to nothing could hold me down”. She finished high school in just two years and won a full scholarship to study at Harvard University. But Liz decided to leave her top university a couple of months earlier this year in order to take care of her father, who has also developed AIDS. “I love my parents so much. They are drug addicts. But I never forget that they love me all the time.”
Liz wants moviegoers to come away with the idea that changing your life is “as simple as making a decision”.In which order did the following things happen to Liz?
a. Her mother died of AIDS. b. She worked at a petrol station.
c. She got admitted into Harvard. d. The movie about her life was put on.
e. She had trouble finding a place to sleep.
| A．b, a, e, c, d | B．a, b, c, e, d | C．e, d, b, a, c | D．b, e, a, d, c |
The main idea of the passage is ________.
| A．how Liz managed to enter Harvard University | B．what a hard time Liz had in her childhood |
| C．why Liz loved her parents so much | D．how Liz struggled to change her life |
What actually made her go towards her goal?
| A．Envy and encouragement. | B．Willpower and determination. |
| C．Decisions and understanding. | D．Love and respect for her parents. |
When she wrote “What drove me to live on...I had only experienced a small part of the society”, she meant that ________.
| A．she had little experience of social life | B．she could hardly understand the society |
| C．she would do something for her own life | D．she needed to travel more around the world |