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。
My wife and I used to feel that it was impossible to be a true friend to someone whose name we didn’t know. How wrong we were! Years of Sunday-morning bus trips through the city with the same group of “nameless” people have changed our thinking.
Before the bus takes off, we all join in a conversation: where’s the silent woman who sits up front and never responds to our cheery greetings? Here she comes. Her worn clothing suggests she doesn’t have much money to spare, but she 
always takes an extra cup of coffee for the driver.
We get smiles from a Mexican couple as they get on the bus hand in hand. When they get off, they’re still holding hands. The woman was pregnant late last year, and one day her change of shape confirmed that she’d delivered the child. We even felt a little pride at the thought of our extended family.
For many months, our only sadness lay in our inability to establish the same friendship with the silent woman at the front of the bus. Then, one evening, we went to a fish restaurant. We were shown to a table alongside someone sitting alone. It was the woman from the bus.
We greeted her with friendly familiarity we’d
shown all year, but this time her face softened, then a shy smile. When she spoke, the words escaped awkwardly from her lips. All at once we realized why she hadn’t spoken to us before. Talking was hard for her.
Over dinner; we learned the stay of a single mother with a disabled son who was receiving special care away from home. She missed him desperately, she explained.
“I love him… and he loves me, even though he doesn’t express it very well,” she murmured. “Lots of us have that problem, don’t we? We don’t say what we want to say, what we should be saying. And that’s not good enough.”
The candles flared on our tables. Our fish had never tasted better. But the atmosphere grew pleasant, and when we parted as friends—we shared names.
56.Which of the following might be the best title of this passage?
Friends of the Road B. The Silent Woman on the Bus
C. Going to Work by Bus D. Different Kinds of Friendship
57.All the following statements can describe the woman except ______.
A. poor B. warm hearted C. silent D. cold
58. The underlined word “establish” in the fourth passage probably has the same meaning as ______.
A. keep B. discover C. set up D. accept
59. Why did the woman usually keep silence while taking the bus?
A. She was worried about her disabled son.
B. She was sad to see the happy Mexican couple us a single mother.
C. She had difficulty in expressing herself. D. She was only interested in the bus driver.
60. The woman had the same problem with her son in the way that ______.
A. they both disabled people B. they both had some difficulty in expressing
C. they both liked bus travel D. they both brought interest to the passengers
Win a Week in England
You still don’t know what to do this summer? Well, here’s your chance to win a one-week language course in Kent, England! Free4Fun and ETC(English Travel Connections) are giving away two trips to Rochester. This historic city is less than an hour’s drive from London and close to the sea resort of Herne Bay. It is also the home of one of England’s most famous writers, Charles Dickens. The town of the Rochester is in Southeast England. Charles Dickens often wrote about it in his books. His home, Gad’s Hill，is there too. A popular attraction is Rochester Castle，a large Norman fortress（堡垒）. It was built in the 11th century and rebuilt during the 14th century. Other attractions are Rochester Cathedral, which was built during the 13th century, and Dickens Centre. It has got it’s name in honour of Dickens himself.
The trip to England includes:
* travel by train (via the Eurotunnel) to and from any railway station in Germany
* room and full board with a guest family for one week
* language course in small groups
* two trips to London
* large choice of sports and entertainment
* German-speaking advisors available 24 hours a day
Interested? All you have to do is to answer the following question: When was Charles Dickens born?
So, take the chance and send your answer by May1 to:
Free4Fun “Rochester”
Free4Fun, 24 Elphinstone Road, Hastings, 2FQ6VJ
Fax: 089/85-763-103
e-mail: free4fun@netlight.com
The two winners will be contacted directly before May5. They will also be announced in the June issue of Free4Fun. Good luck!
For further information contact:
Phone: (03212)144-43
Fax: (03212) 144-42
e-mail: info@etc.comRochester Cathedral was built in the ___________.
| A．1400s | B．1300s | C．1200s | D．1100s |
What activities can you participate in during the trip?
| A．Enjoying sports and entertainment. |
| B．Learning the German language. |
| C．Traveling by train with a guest family. |
| D．Working as a language advisor. |
This advertisement was designed to target _______.
| A．Italians | B．Germans |
| C．Europeans | D．Americans |
How could we tell time if there were no watches or clocks anywhere in the world?
The sun was probably the world’s first “clock”, except in the far north, where the Eskimos(爱斯基摩人) live. There it’s dark most of the winter, and light most of the summer. But in most of the world, people have used the sun for a clock. Even today if you don’t have a clock that shows time, you still know that when the sun shines, it’s day; and when it’s dark, it’s night. The sun can not only tell you whether it’s day or night but also it’s morning, noon, or afternoon. When the sun is almost directly overhead, it’s noon.
People who live near the sea can tell time from the tides. In the daytime, for about six hours, the water rises higher and higher on the beach. And then it goes down and down for another six hours. The same thing happens again at night. There are two high tides and two low tides every 24 hours.
Seamen on a ship learn how to tell time by looking at the moon and the stars .The whole sky is their clock.
In some places in the world the wind comes up at about the same time every day or changes direction or stops blowing. In these places, the wind can be the clock.
A sand clock is an even better clock. If you had fine dry sand in a glass shaped like the one in the picture above, you would have what is called an hourglass. The sand in the hourglass goes from the top part to the bottom part in exactly one hour. When the hourglass it turned over, the sand will take another hour to go back again.The Eskimos in the far north can’t use the sun for a clock because ______.
| A．they know very little about the sun |
| B．the sun there never goes down in winter. |
| C．it’s too cold for them to go out to watch the sun |
| D．there are long dark winters and long light summers in the far north |
The underlined word “tides” in paragraph 3 means ___________.
| A．ocean current |
| B．storm |
| C．a regular rise and fall of the sea |
| D．wave |
In which part of the newspaper can you probably read this passage?
| A．News | B．Science |
| C．Business | D．Advertisement |
What’s the best title for the passage?
| A．Different Ways to Tell Time |
| B．Useful Machine to Tell Time |
| C．The History of the Clock |
| D．The Development of the Clock |
How many ways are mentioned in the passage to tell time?
| A．Five | B．Four | C．Six | D．Three |
How long has 3-D technology been around? Most of us might think of crowds of teenagers in a 1950’s movie house watching Bwana Devil in 3-D. But 3-D technology made its first appearance on the scene in 1838 with the first stereoscope(体视镜). And the first actual 3-D movie was a 1903 film called Le Ariveed’un Train.
Although it has such a long history, the technology has still remained based on one simple principle-----to make 3-D effects you must find a way to project two slightly different pictures to each eye. Modern 3-D technology works by rapidly flickering(闪动) two versions of the movie and projecting them onto each eye. The brain does the rest of the work, combining the two pictures together into one and giving the show the appearance of depth, the third dimension.
But does this exposure, especially long exposures, cause harm to the child’s developing brain and visual system? Unfortunately, long-term studies on new flicker digital 3-D technology and children aren’t yet available. We do not know if regular or daily 3-D viewing over years affects the developing visual system, although older 3-D methods basically do the same thing and are not considered harmful.
The question of possible harm in modern 3-D use in TV is really based on two facts: the amount of time children will now be watching 3-D TV each day and the sensitivity some children show in reaction to 3-D viewing. It is difficult to make actual lab studies of longer term 3-D viewing in children because of the possible harm of the experiment. Researchers will have to wait until 3-D TV technology is already in the marketplace for a number of years, then check heavy 3-D TV watchers and compare them with non-watchers.
With a 3-D television technology in the home, we will soon be able to answer the question of whether or not longer and more frequent periods of 3-D exposure cause more changes in the visual system. We may find that the bigger problem is the introduction of a new technology that leads to even more time spent on TV rather than playing outdoors.
| A．was refused by people when it first appeared. |
| B．will soon change the way we watch TV. |
| C．does no good to our visual system. |
| D．has a history of nearly 200 years. |
| A．how 3-D technology works. |
| B．why 3-D movies are popular |
| C．the history of 3-D technology. |
| D．the influence of 3-D technology. |
| A．To wait and see | B．To carry out lab studies |
| C．To stop making 3-D movies | D．To improve 3-D technology |
| A．ask children not to watch 3-D movies |
| B．discuss if 3-D viewing is harmful to children. |
| C．introduce the advantages of 3-D technology. |
| D．predict the development of 3-D technology. |
The nervous-looking young man had waited for a few moments outside the jeweler’s before he got enough courage to enter. He was warmly greeted by a young assistant. James felt a rush of blood to his face as he explained he would be bringing in his future wife to choose a birthday present.
The assistant listened carefully and told him he’d better buy a necklace. He wasn’t used to buying jewelry and was a little worried about overspending, because he was not very rich. After some discussion as to a reasonable price and the type, the assistant showed him dozens of necklaces and helped him to choose.
At last James chose one and left the shop promising to return at five o’clock. Half an hour later than planned, James did return to the shop with his future wife, Laura. The assistant acted as if she had never seen him before. When she was asked to show them some necklaces, she first brought out some inexpensive ones for them to choose, and then gave them the ones she had prepared. A choice was soon made and they went away satisfied. Later James would certainly come back to buy what he wanted when he got married.
| A．A Clever Assistant. | B．Buying a Birthday Present |
| C．How to Choose a Necklace | D．A Brave Young Man |
| A．spending too much |
| B．spending too much time |
| C．spending more time than he planned |
| D．spending too much money |
| A．4:30 | B．5:30 | C．5:00 | D．6:00 |
People fell in love with Elizabeth Taylor in 1944, when she starred in National Velve－the story of Velvet Brown, a young girl who wins first place in a famous horse race. At first, the producers of the movie told Taylor that she was too small to play the part of Velvet. However, they waited for her for a few months as she exercised and trained—and added three inches(英寸) to her height in four months! Her acting in National Velvet is still considered the best by a child actress.
Elizabeth Taylor was born in London in 1932. Her parents, both Americans, had moved there for business reasons. When World War II started, the Taylor moved to Beverly Hills, California, and there Elizabeth started acting in movies. After her success as a child star, Taylor had no trouble moving into adult(成人)roles and won twice for Best Actress: Butterfield 8(1960) and Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf ? (1966)
Taylor’ s fame(名声)and popularity gave her a lot of power with the movie industry, so she was able to demand very high pay for her movies. In 1963, she received $1 million for her part in Cleopatra—the highest pay received by any star up to that time.
Elizabeth Taylor is a legend (传奇人物) of our time. Like Velvet Brown in National Velvet, she has been lucky, she has beauty, fame and wealth. But she is also a hard worker. Taylor seldom acts in movies any more. Instead, she puts her time and efforts into her businesses, and into helping others —several years ago, she founded an organization that has raised more than $40 million for research and education.
| A．did not show much interest. | B．was too young. |
| C．did not play well enough. | D．was small in size. |
| A．popular all their lives |
| B．famous actresses |
| C．successful when very young |
| D．rich and kind-hearted |
| A．12 | B．28 | C．31 | D．34 |
| A．doing business and helping others |
| B．turning herself into a legend |
| C．collecting money for the poor |
| D．going about research and education work |