Mr.Clinton and his 13-year-old son Tony are basketball fans. Last October 10th was Tony’s birthday, so Mr.Clinton decided to drive him to New York, for the first game of the World Series. They had no ticket but hoped to buy a pair from scalpers.
It was a two hours’ ride. After they arrived, they walked in the street for two hours, carrying a sign(牌子) that read, “
We need two tickets.” There were many scalpers around, but the cheapest ticket was $200. They were about to leave when suddenly a man stopped them. He took out two tickets and handed them to Mr. Clinton.
“How much do you want?”
“Just a present,” said the man. “Enjoy the game.”
Mr. Clinton wouldn’t accept, so the man explained, “I’m Jackson. Hans is my boss. He and his wife haven’t missed a World Series in 18 years. But he is ill and can’t watch the game this time. So he told me to give the two tickets to people who I thought would actually enjoy the game. A lot of people looked as if they might just take th
e tickets and sell them. Then I saw you and I followed you for a while. You seemed very disappointed. You made me think of my dad and me when I was a child. I dreamed of going to a World Series game with my father. But my dream never came true.”
How do you suppose this made Mr. Clinton and his son feel? Here is what Mr. Clinton said: “This is the most wonderful thing that ever happened to us. My boy and I must have turned to each other over 30 times and said, ‘I can’t believe this.’ We still never forget Jackson and Hans.” The underlined word scalpers in the first paragraph means ____
__.
| A．people who buy tickets at a reasonable price |
| B．people who sell tickets at a reasonable price |
C．p eople who buy tickets at a high price |
| D．people who sell tickets at a high price |
To many web-building spiders, most of whom are nearly blind, the web is their essential window on the world: their means of communicating, capturing prey（猎物）, meeting mates and protecting themselves. A web-building spider without its web is like a men cast away on an island of solid rock，totally out of touch and destined to
starve to death.
So important is the web to an orb-web spider's survival that the animal will continue to construct new webs daily even if it is being starved. For 16 days the starving spider builds completely normal webs. Then, as the animal gets scrawnier（憔悴的）， it constructs a wider-meshed web using fewer strands（线）. Such webs would only trap larger prey, which is more economical from the perspective of a starving spider.
The spider stores energy by recycling web protein. It simply eats its own web each evening and reuses it to produce new silk. In studies with radioactively，labeled materials, it was found that 95 percent of web protein reappears in the next day' web. Most of the energy needed for web-building is used in walking over the strands as they are laid down．
Scientists are impressed by the adaptability of the spider's highly preprogrammed brain, which is larger for its size than the brain of any other invertebrate（无脊推动物）．If web-building is interrupted, or if some of the existing strands are destroyed，the spider simply goes back to see where the web is left off and then finishes building a normal web. One spider will finish building the incomplete web of another. Which of the following best expresses the main ideas of the passage?
| A．Secrets of Spiders' Adaptability | B．Importance of Webs to Spiders |
| C．Secrets of the Spiders' Life | D．Spiders' Highly Preprogrammed Brain |
According to the passage, which of the following statements is TRUE?
| A．Most spiders will stop conducting webs when hungry. |
| B．One Web-building spider usually conducts one web. |
| C．Web-building spiders will probably die without their webs． |
| D．Web-building spiders have good eyesight. |
A spider conducts a wider-meshed web when____________.
| A．it is 16 days old | B．it is getting weaker |
| C．it has fewer wends | D．it hunts for food |
A spider's ability to finish an incomplete web proves that___________.
| A．it has a highly preprogrammed brain | B．it reuses its web protein to reproduce new silk |
| C．the web is everything for a spider | D．it is able to rebuild a destroyed web |
It's not a new phenomenon, but have you noticed how many nouns are being used as verbs? We all use them, often without noticing what we're doing.
I was arranging to meet someone for dinner last week, and I said “I’ll pencil it in my diary”, and my friend said “You can ink it in”, meaning that it was a firm arrangement not a tentative one!
Many of these new verbs are linked to new technology. An obvious example is the word fax, which is a shortening of facsimile originally, an exact copy of a book or document. We all got used to sending and receiving faxes, and then soon started talking about faxing something and promising we'd fax it immediately. So, nouns turn into verbs in two easy stages. Then along came email, and we were soon all emailing each other madly. How did we do without it? I can hardly imagine life without my daily emails.
Email reminds me, of course， of my computer and its software, which has produced another couple of new verbs. On my computer I can bookmark those pages from the World Wide Web that I think I'll want to look at again, thus saving all the effort of remembering their addresses and calling them up from scratch. I can do the same thing on my PC, but there I don't bookmark; I favorite—coming from “favorite pages”, so the verb is derived from an adjective not a noun． I wasn’t really sure whether people said this，but someone told me recently that they had favorited a site I was looking for and so they could easily give me its address.
In the late 1980s I noticed that lots of my friends had acquired pagers, and kept saying things like “I’ll page you as soon as I know what time we’re meeting”. They couldn't say it to me, though; 1 refused to have one． So my children bought me a mobile phone, now known simply as a mobile and I had to learn yet more new verbs. I can message someone, that is, I can leave a message （either spoken or written）for them on their phone．Or I can text them, write a few words suggesting when and where to meet, for example. How long will it be before I can mobile them, that is, phone them using my mobile? I haven’t heard that verb yet, but I’m sure I will soon. Perhaps I’ll start using it myself! “I’ll pencil it in my diary” in the second paragraph probably means .
| A．it was a firm arrangement | B．it was an uncertain arrangement |
| C．the arrangement should be written as a diary | D．he prefers a pencil to a pen |
A website address can be easily found if it has been＿____.
| A．emailed | B．messaged | C．favorited | D．texted |
Which of the following has not been used as a verb, yet?
| A．message | B．page | C．email | D．mobile |
The best title for this passage is____．
| A．New Verbs from Old Nouns | B．The Development of the English language |
| C．New Technology and New words | D．Technology and Language. |
 |
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If you happen to be the 200th customer to buy Cholestrolblock, you will .
| A．be able to buy it at a low price | B．be the luckiest one online |
| C．try it free of charge | D．change your diet |
Liptor®，Zocor®，Crestor® are．
| A．diseases | B．side effects | C．medicines | D．cholesterol |
Where can you most probably read this passage?
| A．In a travel guide book． | B．On a university bulletin board． |
| C．In a health magazine. | D．In a doctor's prescription. |
Erik Weihenmayer was born with an eye disorder. As a child his eyesight became worse and then, at the age of 13, he lost his sight completely. However, he did not lose his determination to lead a full and active life.
Erik became an adventurer. He took up parachuting, wrestling and scuba diving. He competed in long-distance biking, marathons and skiing. His favorite sport, thought, is mountaineering.
As a young man, Erik started to climb mountains. He reached the summit of Mount McKinley in 1995 and then climbed the dangerous 1000-metre rock wall of EI Capitan. Two years later, while climbing Mount Kilimanjaro in Kenya with his girlfriend, they stopped for a time at 13,000 feet above sea level－in order to get married. In 1999, he climbed Aconcagua, the tallest mountain in South America. And then , on May 25, 2001, at the age of 33, Erik successfully completed the greatest mountaineering challenge of all. He climbed Mount Everest, the highest mountain in the world.
Erik invented his own method for climbing mountains. He carries two long poles: one to lean on and the other to test the way ahead of him. The climber in front of him wears a bell to guide him. Erik is a good team member. He does his share of the job, such as setting up tents and building snow walls.
Although he could not enjoy the view, Erik felt the excitement of being on the summit of Everest. He hopes that his success will change how people think about the blind. “When people think about a blind person or blindness, now they will think about a person standing on top of the world.” When was Erik born?
| A．In 1968. | B．In 1995. | C．In 1967. | D．In 1969. |
What was unusual about his wedding?
| A．He got married on the summit of Mount McKinley. |
| B．He got married when climbing Mount Everest. |
| C．.His wedding was held after he prepared a lot. |
| D．His wedding was held at 13,000 feet above sea level. |
What is Erik’s special method for climbing a mountain?
| A．He takes his girlfriend with him. | B．He does his share of the jobs. |
| C．He uses two long poles to help himself. | D．He keeps a good team around him. |
Which of the following shows the right order of what happened?
a. He topped Mount McKinley.
b. He became blind.
c. He challenged Mount Everest.
d. He reached the peak of Kilimanjaro.
e. He climbed the rock wall of EI Capitan.
| A．b, e, d, c, a | B．b, a, e, d, c | C．a, b, e, d, c | D．b, d, a, c, d |
Every year, whenever Spring Festival arrives, a lot of Chinese people cannot wait to go home. They queue for long hours in front of the ticket offices in railway stations, or do whatever they can in order to get a ticket. They tolerate the long journey on the train only to want to ______ with their near and dear ones.
According to The Beijing Youth Daily, most Chinese celebrate the Spring Festival not only because they want to follow tradition, there are also some practical reasons to explain Chinese people's fever for the holiday. Compared with one's workplace, home provides a more humane environment for one to relax oneself.
Society may do with or without you, but at home, you become unique and indispensable. You may be the father or mother, daughter or son, grandfather or grandmother in the family and the family will be incomplete if anyone is absent, because every member in the family is bound together, and everyone in the family is pleased with the feeling that he or she is unique and irreplaceable.
In addition, family provides an ideal environment for one to fully relax oneself. At home, one can take one's time do whatever he or she wants, and one can spend money whenever one likes. In society, however, one needs to do everything fast and with high efficiency, because society always reqiores efficiency and maximum profits. Such company principles make people merely a tool in modern society.
Chinese people's strong desire for Spring Festival shows that they feel oppressed and have a sense of predicament(困境) of existence in modern society. The Spring Festival provides a chance for them to escape from such anxiety and treasure the long-lost tradition of community spirit. With the Spring Festival, people can find back the warm, family atmosphere often seen in days gone by.
1. What's the passage mainly talking about? (Please answer within 10 words. )
2. Fill in the blanks with proper words or phrases to complete the sentence. (Please answer within 10 words. )
3. Which sentence in the passage can be replaced by the following one?You may not be a necessary part in society, but in your family, you are very important and no one else can take the place of you.
4. Do you think home is important for Chinese to celebrate the Spring Festival?Why or why not? (Please answer within 30 words. )
5. Translate the underlined sentence in the last paragraph into Chinese.