.
Some schools that are not year-round often have summer programs. In many cases, students take summer classes to repeat a subject they failed. This way they get a second chance to succeed. But schools also offer summer classes to students who want to be free of a required class during the next school year.
Generally, students in these classes want to take fewer subjects during the year because they are involved in a lot of activities. They might be involved in sports or music programs. Or both – and more.
These summer school students do the same amount of work as if they took the class during the school year. But they do it in a much shorter time, one or two months. They say it makes for a lot of reading and homework and not much time for anything else. Some education experts are worried about high school students who take summer school because of pressure to attend a top university.
The New York Times recently reported about summer classes at one of the best high schools in the United States. New Trier High School is in Winnetka, Illinois. Almost six hundred students are in school this summer. Only twenty are repeating classes that they failed. The others are in difficult courses like physics and history.
The students say taking classes like these in the summer means that they can take even more difficult classes next year. They say this shows not only that they are serious about their studies but that they have experienced the most difficult high school program.
Another place with a lot of students in summer school is Palo Alto, California. The Mercury News reported that about twenty percent of the students in the city schools are in class this summer. That is more than two thousand teenagers.
A third are in classes they failed before. The others are taking subjects they do not have time for during the normal school year.
But they are not taking subjects like physics and history. The students in Palo Alto are in classes like creative writing, film studies, literature and cooking.
63. This passage mainly talks about ______.
A. summer classes in American schools
B. why American schools offer summer classes
C. the advantages of American summer school
D. experts’ anxiety(担忧)about American summer school
64. Which of the following is NOT the reason for the students’ attending summer classes in America?
A.Repeating a subject.
B.Completing a required subject ahead of time.
C.Improving their physical quality
D.Learning some special skills
65. What’s the biggest difference between the summer classes in New Trier High School and in Palo Alto?
A.There are more students attending classes that they failed before in Palo Alto.
B.Some students in Palo Alto learn some special skills instead of taking physics and history.
C.Some students in Palo Alto take some subjects so that they can join in sports or music programs later.
D.The students’ attitude towards studies in Palo Alto is worse than that in New Trier High School.
66. What can we infer from the passage?
A.American students in schools don’t have any pressure to attend top universities.
B.Summer school students don’t do the same amount of work as they do during the school year.
C. American students attend summer schools in order to relax themselves very much.
D. American students in high schools face great pressure to attend top universities.
The Peales were a famous family of American artists. Charles Willson Peale is best remembered for his portraits of leading figures of the American Revolution. He painted portraits of Franklin and Jefferson and over a dozen of George Washington. His life-size portrait of his sons Raphaelle and Titian was so realistic that George Washington reportedly once tipped his hat to the figures in the picture.
Charles Willson Peale gave up painting in his middle age and devoted his life to the Peale museum, which he founded in Philadelphia. The world’s first popular museum of art and natural science mainly covered paintings by Peale and his family as well as displays of animals in their natural settings. Peale found the animals himself and found a method to make the exhibits more lifelike. The museum’s most popular display was the skeleton (骷髅) of a huge, extinct（灭绝的）elephant, which Peale unearthed on a New York farm in 1801.
Three of Peale’s seventeen children were also famous artists. Paphaelle Peale often painted still lives of flowers, fruit, and cheese. His brother Rembrandt studied under his father and painted portraits of many noted people, including one of George Washington. Another brother, Rubens Peale, painted mostly landscapes and portraits.
James Peale, the brother of Charles Willson Peale, specialized in miniatures (小画像). His daughter Sarah Miriam Peale was probably the first professional female portrait painter in America.
1. What is the main topic of the passage?
A. The life of Charles Willson Peale. B. Portraits in the 18th century.
C. The Peale Museum. D. A family of artists.
2. The author mentions in Paragraph 1 that Washington tipped his hat to the figures in the painting to show that ________.
A. Charles Willson Peale’s painting was very lifelike
B. Washington respected Charles Willson Peale’s work
C. Washington was friendly with Raphaelle and Titian Peale
D. the painting of the two brothers was very large
3. The underlined word “unearthed” is closest in meaning to“ ______”.
A. showed B. dug upC. inventedD. looked over
4. Which of the following is NOT the child of Charles Willson Peale?
A. Titian Peale.B. Rubens Peale. C. Raphaelle Peale. D. Sarah Miriam Peale.
5. The author’s attitude toward the Peales is in general _______.
A. puzzled B. excited C. admiring D. disappointed
NOT all memories are sweet. Some people spend all their lives trying to forget bad experiences. Violence and traffic accidents can leave people with terrible physical and emotional scars. Often they relive these experiences in nightmares.
Now American researchers think they are close to developing a pill, which will help people forget bad memories. The pill is designed to be taken immediately after a frightening experience. They hope it might reduce ,or possibly erase(抹去),the effect of painful memories.
In November, experts tested a drug on people in the US and France. The drug stops the body releasing chemicals that fix memories in the brain. So far the research has suggested that only the emotional effects of memories may be reduced, not that the memories are erased.
The research has caused a great deal of argument. Some think it is a bad idea, While others support it.
Supporters say it could lead to pills that prevent or treat soldiers' troubling memories after war. They say that there are many people who suffer from terrible memories.
"Some memories can ruin people's lives . They come back to you when you don't want to have them in a daydream or nightmare. They usually come with very painful emotions," said Roger Pitman, a professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. "This could relieve a lot of that suffering."
But those who are against the research say that changing memories is very dangerous because memories give us our identity (特质). They also help us all avoid the mistakes of the past.
"All of us can think of bad events in our lives that were horrible at the time but make us who we are. I'm not sure we want to wipe those memories out, "said Rebecca Dresser, a medical ethicist.
1. The passage is mainly about_____________.
A. a new medical invention B. a new research on the pill
C. a way of erasing painful memories D. an argument about the research on the pill
2. The drug tested on people can_____________.
A. cause the brain to fix memories
B. stop people remembering bad experiences
C. prevent body producing certain chemicals
D. Wipe out the emotional effects of memories
3. We can infer from the passage that_____________.
A. people doubt the effects of the pills
B. the pill will stop people's bad experiences
C. taking the pill will do harm to people's health
D. the pill has probably been produced in America
4. Which of the following does Rebecca Dresser agree with?
A. Some memories can ruin people's lives.
B. People want to get rid of bad memories.
C. Experiencing bad events makes us different from others.
D. The pill will reduce people's sufferings from bad memories.
第三部分阅读理解(共20小题；每小题2分，满分40分)
阅读下列短文，从每题所给的四个选项(A、B、C和D) 中，选出最佳选项，并在答题卡上将该项涂黑。
O.Henry was a pen name used by an American writer of short stories. His real name was William Sydney Porter. He was born in North Carolina in 1862. As a young boy he lived an exciting life. He did not go to school for very long ,but he managed to teach himself everything he needed to know . When he was about 20years old , O.Henry went to Texas, where he tried different jobs. He first worked on a newspaper, and then had a job in a bank. When some money went missing from the bank, O.Henry was believed to have stolen it. Because of that ,he was sent to prison, .During the three years in prison , he learned to write short stories . After he got out of prison, he went to New York and continued writing . He wrote mostly about New York and the life of the poor there. People liked his stories, because simple as the tales were, they would finished with a sudden change at the end, to the readers’surprise.
1. People enjoyed reading O.Henry’s stories because________________.
A. they were about New York city B. they had surprising endings
C.they were easy to understandD. they showed his love for the poor.
2. O.Henry went to prison because _____________.
A. he broke the law by not using his own name
B. he wanted to write stories about prisoners
C. people thought he had stolen money from the newspaper.
D. people thought he had taken money that was not his
3. Where did O.Henry get most materials for his short stories?
A. His life inside the prison B. The newspaper articles he wrote
C. The city and people of New York D. His exciting early life as a boy
Have you ever seen people dance? Some dances are fast and others are slow. People’s feet always move when they dance. They keep on moving until the music stops.
People have enjoyed dancing for a very long time. This story is of a different kind of dance. It is a dance without people or music. Yet this dance is one of the oldest in the world. It is the dance of bees.
If you have ever watched bees, you know that they are very clever. They also work hard looking for food and bringing it back to their home.
The home of the bees is called a bee hive. Here hundreds even thousand of bees live. They work day and night building small walls. There they make their honey. This is the same honey that we eat.
Where does the honey come from? Bees live on food from flowers. Have you seen bees flying around a flower garden? When a bee rests on a flower, it tries to go to the centre of it. There it takes in as much food as its body can hold. Then it flies to take the food back to the hive.
At the hive, bees change flower food into honey. Then they fly away for more food.
How do the bees know where to find the best food in the sweetest flowers? One bee acts as a guide. When it discovers good flowers, it flies back to the hive and tells the others. It does this by dancing for them.
The bee dances on one side. This tells the other bees which way to go to find the flowers. But that is not all. The bee dances for some time. And the length of its dance tells the other bees how far they must fly to reach the flowers.
When the bees see the dance, they know where the flowers are. They fly away and return with more food for the hive.
Sometimes we hear the music of the bees as they fly around. But few people have ever seen them dance. Yet without that dance we might never have sweet honey to eat.
1. The writer believes that_________.
A. people dance better than bees
B. people learned dance from bees
C. bees dance more often than people
D. bees don’t like music
2. From this passage we know that the dance of bees means_______.
A. They are good at dancing
B. they want to show their beauty
C. they communicate with each other
D. they have nothing to do
3. Which of the following is true?
A. People get honey from flowers directly.
B. People draw honey from bees’ bodies.
C. People produce honey in a secret place.
D. People get honey from bees indirectly.
4. What character do bees have?
A. dance-loving B. hard-working C. music-loving D. active
Most Americans enjoy moving from place to place. For example, they often drive their cars 120 to 160 kilometers away just to have dinner with a friend or even fly to Europe just for watching a football match. In some states only one person in five lives in a place for more than five years. One may be born in one city, and go to school in another. He may finish his middle school in two or three cities, and then attend a college far across the country. When he has entered business, he may possibly move from job to job. Moving from one job to another, which is called “job-hopping”, is a very common practice in the United States. Job-hopping is good to workers, because every change of a job gives them a chance to move up to a higher position and to get better pay. And job-hopping also gives bosses the chance to get new ideas and skills that different people bring to their companies and factories.
1. According to this passage, Americans often travel_______.
A. in order to have dinner with their friends
B. in order to watch football matches
C. to enjoy themselves
D. in order to find a new job
2. In some places in America, ________ for more than five years.
A. most people stay in one place
B. about 20% of the people live in one place
C. the owners of houses stay in one place
D. the owners of five house stay in one place
3. In the USA, job-hopping_______.
A. has become the custom (习惯)
B. has helped young people to attend to college
C. has helped students to enter business
D. has helped worker in traveling
4. The writer thinks________.
A. job-hopping does good either to workers or to the bosses
B. job-hopping does good neither to the workers nor to the bosses
C. little of the job-hopping
D. highly of the job-hopping