Since my retirement(退休) from teaching music in 2001 , I have spent a good deal of time painting as an artist . I actually began drawing again in the summer of 1995 when my father died , so perhaps I was trying to recover from the loss of my father , or maybe it was just that it brought back memories of him . In any case , I drew pen and ink animals and landscapes(风景画) much influenced by Krenkel and St. John for five years .
For some strange reason , I had been waiting until my retirement to start doing
watercolors again , but as soon as I walked out of the school door for the last time I picked up my brushes and rediscovered Andrew Wyeth , who quickly became my favorite artist . I had looked through all the art books I had on my shelves and found his watercolors to be the closest to how I thought good watercolors should look . So I painted landscapes around Minnesota for three years and tried out many other types of painting . However , watercolors remained my first choice , and I think I did my best work there , showing my paintings at a number of art exhibitions .
Art is now together with my piano playing and reading . There is a time of everything in my world , and it is wonderful to have some time doing what I want to do . As Confucius once said , “ At seventy I can follow my heart’s desire .”
1. What is the text mainly about ?
A. Learning to paint in later life . B. How to paint wathercolors .
C. An artist-turned teacher . D. Life after retirement .
2. The author started drawing again in 1995 because__________.
A. he hoped to draw a picture of his father
B. he couldn’t stop missing his father
C. he had more time after retirement
D. he liked animals and landscapes
3. We can infer from the text that the author_______.
A. had been taught by Krenkel and St.John
B. painted landscapes in Minnesota for 5 years
C. believed Wyeth to be the best in watercolor
D. started his retirement life at the age of seventy
4. How does the author probably feel about his life as an artist?
A. Very en
joyable B. A bit regretful C. Rather busy D. Fairly dull
第三部分: 阅读理解（共20小题；每小题2分, 共40分）
阅读下列短文, 从每题所给的A、B、C、D四个选项中, 选出最佳选项, 并在答题卡上将该项涂黑。
Dear mommy and daddy,
I write this letter to you in hopes that you should consider your method of parenting me before I arrive. I am a joyous child. I expect love and respect, order and discipline. When I arrive, I will seem very small to you. Even though I don’t look like an adult, please understand that I am a human being.
Even though I will not speak words to you, I will know you with my heart. I will feel all your feelings, absorb your thoughts. I will come to know you more than you may know yourself. Do not be misled (误导) by my silence. I am open, growing and learning more rapidly than you can imagine.
I will keep in heart all that I see, so please give me sweet music and language that tells me how much I am loved. Give me silence to rest my ears. I will absorb all that I feel, so please wrap life in love.
I am waiting patiently to be with you. I am so happy to have the opportunity to be alive. Maybe when you see me you will remember how precious life is too!
Your joyous child
56. According to the letter, why did the child write this letter?
A. Because the child wanted to apologize to its parents.
B. Because the child wanted t
he parents to consider the method of being parents.
C. Because the child expressed the happiness of having such
parents.
D. Because the child wanted to show how much it understood its parents.
57. According to the text, we can infer the “child” is in fact _______ .
A. a lovely boy B.
a joyous child
C. an unborn baby D. a lovely girl
58. The child in the text required all the following EXCEPT that ________ .
A. it should be looked on as a human being
B. it would like to be loved by its parents
C. it wanted to be with the parents an soon as possible
D. it wanted a place full of beautiful music and love language
59. The letter is likely to be printed in the part of ______ in a magazine.
A. “Baby’s world” B. “Current news”
C. “Young parent center” D. “Science and our life”
As parents we like to make sure that our children are eating well and getting all the nutrients（营养）they need. Children need two to three kinds of vegetables every day.
A simple way to get our children to eat vegetables is by eating them ourselves. Following our example, they may start eating vegetables themselves. Don’t say things like, “If you eat your vegetables, you can have dessert. ” These methods work for a little while but can possibly lead them to hate vegetables more. Give your children new varieties of foods which will help them develop a taste for trying new things.
Sometimes the simple things just don’t work. We have to start becoming a little creative to make our children eat vegetables. By doing this in the beginning when children are small, we will help them learn to love vegetables.
Think of creative ways to make children eat vegetables. For example, cut up vegetables like carrots, cucumbers and place them in a creative way on a plate for an afternoon snack. Or try using cheese sauce either by dipping the vegetables in it or by putting the cheese right on top of cooked or raw vegetables.
If you prefer, you can also add a teaspoon of sugar on top of cooked green beans and peas to make them taste a little sweeter. Doing this shouldn’t lead to a sweet tooth as long as you only give them a small amount.
If you have children that refuse to eat vegetables, some of these suggestions I’ve listed will help to turn that around. In the end, you’re not only just getting them to eat vegetables, you’re also helping them to live a healthier lifestyle.According to the passage, all the following ways to get children to eat vegetables are creative EXCEPT _____.
| A．preparing carrots in an attractive way |
| B．adding some cheese sauce to vegetables |
| C．putting cheese on top of vegetables |
| D．making vegetables much sweeter |
If you want your children to develop the habit of eating vegetables, you should _____.
| A．set an example to them | |
| B．be very patient to them | |
C．give dessert to them as an award |
D．cut vegetables into different types to meet their tastes |
The best title for the passage would probably be “_____”.
| A．Vegetables are very important for children’s health |
| B．How to make children eat more vegetables |
| C．More and more children like eating vegetables |
| D．There are many kinds of vegetables for children |
French surgeons have performed what they said on Wednesday was the world's first partial face transplant--- giving a new nose, chin and lips to a woman attacked by a dog.
Specialists from two French hospitals carried out the operation on a 38-year-old woman on Sunday in the northern city of Amiens by taking the face from a brain-dead woman, who had hanged herself just hours before the operation. Her family agreed on the operation.
“The patient is in an excellent state and the transplant looks normal,” the hospitals said in a brief statement after waiting three days to announce the pioneering surgery.
The woman had been left without a nose and lips after the dog attacked her last May, and was unable to talk or chew properly. Such injuries are “extremely difficult, if not impossible” to repair using normal surgical techniques, the statement said.
The statement did not say what the woman would look like when she had fully recovered, but medical experts said she was unlikely to resemble the woman who had been the source of her new face.
The operation was led by Jean-Michel Dubernard, a specialist from a hospital in Lyon who has also carried out hand transplants,
Skin transplants have long been used to treat burns and other injuries, but operations around the mouth and nose have been considered very difficult because of the area's high sensitivity to foreign tissue.
Teams in France, the United States and Britain had been developing techniques to make face transplants a reality
There was a short-term risk for the patient if blood vessels became blocked, a medium-term danger of her body rejecting the new skin and a long-term possibility that the drugs used could cause cancers.
Experts say that although such medical advances should be celebrated, the transplant had thrown up moral（道德的）and ethical(伦理的)issues. Little is known about the psychological effect of the transplant.The best title for the passage would be ________.
| A．French Woman has First Partial Face Transplant |
| B．First Face Transplant Opens Debate |
| C．Risks and Ethical Problems of a Face Transplant |
| D．A Complete Face Transplant of a French Woman |
Why did the woman need such an operation?
| A．Her face had been bitten by a dog |
| B．Her face had been burnt in a fire. |
| C．She was born especially ugly |
| D．She wanted to test such an operation. |
The underlined word "resemble" means ________.
| A．to remember forever |
| B．to recognize immediately |
| C．to set as an example |
| D．to present similarity or likeness to |
What can we learn about the operation?
| A．The woman had used the dead woman' s whole face. |
| B．There has arisen a debate about the operation. |
| C．The woman will suffer from psychological damage soon. |
| D．Such transplants have been performed by doctors. |
The United Nations says forty million people or so around the world went hungry in 2008, mainly because of higher food prices. Early estimates from the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) show that 963 million people did not get enough to eat.
World food prices have dropped since early 2008. Prices of major crops have decreased by more than half from their height earlier last year. But they remain high compared to earlier years.
But FAO official Hafez Ghanem says lower prices have failed to end the food crisis (危机) in many poor countries. “For millions in developing countries,” he says, “getting enough food every day to live an active and healthy life is a distant dream. ”
The FAO says food shortage is a threat to people's health. Today, two-thirds of the world's undernourished people live in just a few countries. These are India, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Pakistan, Ethiopia and so on.
A report on food insecurity warns that the current economic crisis could send even more people into hunger and poverty.
In sub-Saharan Africa, the percentage of the people who continually go hungry fell from 34% in 1997 to 30% in 2008. But the FAO says Ghana is the only country that has reached two sets of hunger reduction targets. These were set by the 1996 World Food Summit and the Millennium Development Goals. The main reason is the growth in agricultural production in Ghana.
The FAO says some countries in Southeast Asia like Thailand and Vietnam have made progress in hunger reduction goals. But South Asia and Central Asia haven't, and North Korea is still in hot water.What FAO official Hafez Ghanem says implies（暗示）__________
| A．it's easy but takes long to provide people with enough food |
| B．enough food can make people more active and healthier |
| C．there is difficulty solving the food shortage in a short time |
| D．people in developing countries will never get enough food |
The underlined word "undernourished" in Para. 4 probably means ________.
| A．hungry and unhappy | B．unhealthy for lack of food |
| C．not fat because of poverty | D．undeveloped and poor |
What is the best title of this passage?
| A．The food production of the world |
| B．The hunger reduction target of the FAO |
| C．The food shortage around the world |
| D．The solution to the global food shortage |
.
The thing is, my luck’s always been ruined. Just look at my name: Jean. Not Jean Marie, or Jeanine, or Jeanette, or even Jeanne. Just Jean. Did you know in France, they name boys Jean? It’s French for John. And okay, I don’t live in France. But still, I’m basically a girl named John. If I lived in France, anyway.
This is the kind of luck I’ve had since before Mom even filled out my birth certificate. So it wasn’t any big surprise to me when the cab driver didn’t help me with my suitcase. I’d already had to tolerate arriving at the airport to find no one there to greet me, and then got no answer to my many phone calls, asking where my aunt and uncle were. Did they not want me after all? Had they changed their minds? Had they heard about my bad luck—all the way from Iowa—and decided they didn’t want any of it to rub off on them?
So when the cab driver, instead of getting out and helping me with my bags, just pushed a little button so that the trunk (汽车后备箱) popped open a few inches, it wasn’t the worst thing that had ever happened to me. It wasn’t even the worst thing that had happened to me that day.
According to my mom, most brownstones in New York City were originally single-family homes when they were built way back in the 1800s. But now they’ve been divided up into apartments, so that there’s one—or sometimes even two or more families—per floor.
Not Mom’s sister Evelyn’s brownstone, though. Aunt Evelyn and Uncle Ted Gardiner own all four floors of their brownstone. That’s practically one floor per person, since Aunt Evelyn and Uncle Ted only have three kids, my cousins Tory, Teddy, and Alice.
Back home, we just have two floors, but there are seven people living on them. And only one bathroom. Not that I’m complaining. Still, ever since my sister Courtney discovered blow-outs, it’s been pretty frightful at home.
But as tall as my aunt and uncle’s house was, it was really narrow—just three windows across. Still, it was a very pretty townhouse, painted gray. The door was a bright, cheerful yellow. There were yellow flower boxes along the base of each window, flower boxes from which bright red—and obviously newly planted, since it was only the middle of April, and not quite warm enough for them.
It was nice to know that, even in a sophisticated (世故的) city like New York, people still realized how homey and welcoming a box of flowers could be. The sight of those flowers cheered me up a little.
Like maybe Aunt Evelyn and Uncle Ted just forgot I was arriving today, and hadn’t deliberately failed to meet me at the airport because they’d changed their minds about letting me come to stay.
Like everything was going to be all right, after all.
Yeah. With my luck, probably not.
I started up the steps to the front door of 326 East Sixty-Ninth Street, then realized I couldn’t make it with both bags and my violin. Leaving one bag on the sidewalk, I dragged the other up the steps with me. Maybe I took the steps a little too fast, since I nearly tripped and fell flat on my face on the sidewalk. I managed to catch myself at the last moment by grabbing some of the fence the gardeners had put up…
62. Why did the author go to New York?
A. She intended to go sightseeing there.
B. She meant to stay with her aunt’s family.
C. She was homeless and adopted by her aunt.
D. She wanted to try her luck and find a job there.
63. According to the author, some facts account for her bad luck EXCEPT that ________.
A. she was given a boy’s name in French
B. the cab driver didn’t help her with her bags
C. her sister Courtney discovered blow-outs
D. nobody had come to meet her at the airport
64. The underlined phrase “rub off on” in Paragraph 3 probably means _________.
A. have an effect on B. play tricks on C. put pressure on D. throw doubt on
65. From the passage, we can know that _________.
A. the author left home without informing her mother
B. the author arrived in New York in a very warm season
C. her aunt’s family lived a much better life than her own
D. her aunt and uncle were likely to forget about her arrival