A recent study, published in last week’s Journal of the American Medical Association, offers a picture of how risky it is to get a lift from a teenage driver. Indeed, a 16-year-old driver with three or more passengers is three times as likely to have a fatal accident as a teenager driving alone. By contrast, the risk of death for drivers between 30 and 59 decreases with each additional passenger.
The author also found that the death rates for teenage drivers increased dramatically after 10 p.m., and especially after midnight, with passengers in the car, the driver was even more likely to die in a late-night accident.
Robert Foss, a scientist at the University of North Carolina Highway Safety Research Center, says the higher death rates for teenage drivers have less to do with “really stupid behavior” than with just a lack of driving experience. “The basic issue.” he says, “is that adults who are responsible for issuing licenses fail to recognize how complex and skilled a task driving is.”
Both he and the author of the study believe that the way to mitigate (使……缓解)the problem is to have states institute so-called graduated licensing systems, in which getting a license is a multistage process. A graduated license requires that a teenager first prove himself capable of driving in the presence of an adult, followed by a period of driving with night of passenger restrictions, before graduating to full driving privileges.
Graduated licensing systems have reduced teenage driver crashes, according to recent studies, About half of the states now have some sort of graduated licensing system in place, but only 10 of those states have restrictions on passengers, California is the strictest, with a novice (新手)driver prohibited from carrying any passenger under 20(without the presence of an adult over 25)for the first six months. Which of the following situations is most dangerous according to the passage?
| A．Adults giving a lift to teenagers on the highway after 10 p.m. |
| B．A teenager getting a lift from a stranger on the highway at midnight. |
| C．Adults driving with three or more teenage passengers late at night. |
| D．A teenager driving after midnight with passengers in the car. |
According to Robert Foss, the high death rate of teenage drivers is mainly due to ________.
| A．their frequent driving at night |
| B．their lack of driving experience |
| C．their improper way of driving |
| D．their driving with passengers |
According to Paragraph 3．which of the following statements is TRUE?
| A．The licensing authorities are partly responsible for teenagers' driving accidents. |
| B．Driving is a skill too complicated for teenagers to learn. |
| C．Restrictions should be imposed on teenagers applying to take driving lessons. |
| D．Teenagers should spend more time learning to drive. |
The most suitable measure to be taken to reduce teenagers' driving accidents is that ________ .
| A．driving in the presence of an adult should be made a rule |
| B．they should be prohibited from taking on passengers |
| C．the licensing system should be improved |
| D．they should not be allowed to drive after 10 p.m. |
What makes Americans spend nearly half their food dollars on meals away from home? The answers lie in the way Americans live today. During the first few decades of the twentieth century, canned and other convenience foods freed the family cook from full-time duty at the kitchen range. Then, in the 1940s, work in the wartime defense plants took more women out of the home than ever before, setting the pattern of the working wife and mother. Today about half of the country’s married women are employed outside the home. But, unless family members pitch in with food preparation, women are not fully liberated from that housework. Instead, many have become, in a sense, prisoners of the completely cooked convenience meals. It’s easier to pick up a bucket of fried chicken on the way home from work or take the family out for pizzas or burgers than to start opening cans or heating up frozen dinners after a long , hard day. Also, the rising divorce rate means that there are more single working parents with children to feed. And many young adults and elderly people, as well as unmarried and divorced mature people, live alone rather than as part of a family unit and don’t want to bother cooking for one.
Fast food is appealing because it is fast, it doesn’t require any dressing up, it offers a “fun” break in the daily outline, and the outlay of money seems small. It can be eaten in the car--- sometimes picked up at a drive-in window without even getting out---or on the run. Even if it is brought home to eat, there will never be any dirty dishes to wash because of the handy disposable (一次性的) wrappings. Children, especially, love fast food because it’s finger food, no struggling with knives and forks, no annoying instructions from adults about table manner.Americans enjoy fast food mainly because __________.
| A．it can be eaten in the car |
| B．it is much more tasty than home-made food |
| C．one only uses his fingers while eating it |
| D．it is time-saving and convenient |
It can be inferred that children __________.
| A．want to have more freedom at table |
| B．never wash dishes after each meal |
| C．are good at using forks and knives while eating |
| D．take eating time as a fun break |
Many Americans are eating out and not cooking at home partially because __________.
| A．they want to make a change after eating the same food for years at home |
| B．the food made outside home tastes better than food cooked at home |
| C．many of them live alone and don’t like taking trouble to cook |
| D．American women refuse to cook at home due to women’s liberation movement |
According to the text, a drive-in window is a __________.
| A．car window from which you can see the driver |
| B．window in the restaurant from which you get your takeout in the car |
| C．place where you check the mechanic condition of your car |
| D．place where you return the used plates after eating |
How the Americans view love
An old song says that " love makes the world go around" If you watch Americans on Valentine's Day, you can believe it. The whole country breaks out with little red hearts. Lovestruck people give cards, flowers and candy to their sweethearts.
The American concept of love and romance begins with dating. Young people date in several ways. At first they might have group dates with several boys and girls together. Later, they start going on single date - just one boy and one girl.
When two couples go out together, it's called double dating. A friend might even arrange a blind date for you with someone you don't know who your partner will be until the time of the date.
American young people see a date as a time just to have fun. They don't always have a romantic interest in mind. Someone may go out with one person this week, and another the next. After a while, a boy and a girl may decide they want to go steady. This means they think of each other as boyfriend and girlfriend. It also
means they don't want to date anyone else. Romance is beginning to bloom.
Romance love is v
ery much a part of American culture. Movies, TV shows and books in America all picture people falling in love. Actually, people all over the world search for happiness in a loving relationship. Maybe love does make the world go around. How do you understand the understand sentence in the first paragraph?
| A．Many young people's hearts break in America that day. |
| B．You can see many pictures of little red hearts all over America that day. |
| C．People all over the world show their hearts to each other that day. |
D．people go out with their warm hearts t hat day |
How many ki
nds of dates a
re mentioned in the passage?
| A．2 | B．3 | C．4 | D．5 |
What does blind date mean?
| A．You can not see who is your partner during the date. |
| B．The partner of your date is a stranger. |
| C．Your date is arranged secretly. |
| D．You will not know your partner until the date begins. |
W
hich of the following statement is true about American's view of romantic?
| A．Romance love is the most important thing in the world |
| B．People all over the world search for romance love |
| C．Date is one thing, romantic is another. |
| D．They can find their ideal love in movies, TV shows and books |
The holiday's upon us. Finally, after months of study, you have some time to yourself. so, why not read a book? Well, some people will say, "Why bother with books? We have the Internet
and other media that offer a lot more colorful entertainment. Books are history!" But don't be fooled. There's still a lot to be said for reading.
One clear reason is that a well-chosen book is a wonderful source of vocabulary, so long as you have a good dictionary, of course. Believe me, it's far easier to get new English words and phrases from a book or article than it is from the TV or the Internet.
But an even more important point is that books give you something that modern media simply can not. The average webpage is picture-heavy and the text is often designed to make it as easy to read as possible. While "easy" may be attractive, unfortunately it's little use for many long-term develo
pment 
of reading skills and the general language level. For that, there's still no substitute (替代品）of a book.
But perhaps the best single reason is that simply choosing what you read and doing it independently means that it's something you do by yourself. You can choose what you want to read. It's hard work, but something down the line, you will find that what once seemed like a duty is now a pleasure. We asked three bookworms -- an English teacher, a book editor and a film critic - to pick some favorite reads for you. How many reasons for reading a book does the author mention in the passage?
| A．One | B．Two | C．Three | D．Four |
According to this passage, we basically need a ______ in reading.
| A．computer | B．dictionary | C．notebook | D．pencil |
In the author's opinion, reading on the Internet may ________
| A．develop long-term reading skills | B．improve the general language ability |
| C．not take the place of reading books | D．be an effective way of reading |
The passage is written mainly to ____________.
| A．share the pleasure of reading books | B．advise readers to read books |
| C．stress the importance of reading online. | D．help readers to choose good books. |
You are walking down the street, minding your own business when you see a snowball. No big deal, right? Except the snowball is as tall as you are. And weighs about a ton. Did we mention that it is June?
That’s the experience thousand of Londoners had when they crossed paths with “ Snowball in Summer,” Goldsworthy makes sculpture （雕塑）from all sorts of things he finds outside – leaves, earth, and rocks, as well as ice and snow. He wanted to find out how busy people would react to an unexpected snowball melting in their midst.
During the winter of 2008, he rolled 13 giant snowballs near his home in Scotland. He filled each one with a surprise in the center – such as berries, feathers, little stones or sheep’s wool – which would appear as the snow melted. The finished snowballs were stored in a deep freeze until summer, then transported to London in refrigerated trucks. At midnight on June 21, 2008, while the city slept, Goldsworthy and his helpers rolled their snowballs into place.
People walking to work or school must have thought the sky was falling when they stumbled across snowballs the size of baby elephants. Some of them had never even seen snow in real life, and they couldn’t help touching them in great surprise. As the snow started to melt, things got even more interesting. The perfectly round snowballs took on different shapes as the stuff inside began to poke through. Two days later, most of Goldsworthy’s snowballs were gone, and their fillings scattered. But Londoners were left with a really good story about that odd summer day when the snowball came. What is really special about the snowballs is that ______________________.
| A．they lie in the street |
| B．they are in the shape of baby elephants. |
| C．they have berries, feathers, little stones and feathers in them. |
| D．they appear in June. |
What was the purpose of Goldsworthy in making the snowballs?
| A．To find out people’s reactions to them |
| B．To call up people’s memory of the cold winter. |
| C．To show off his skills in sculpture. |
| D．To let people experience the cold winter. |
Why did Gold
sworthy and his helpers roll their snowballs into place at mid-night?
A. They didn’t want to disturb other people.
B. It was quite at that time.
C. They wanted to avoid the traffic jam.
D, They wanted to give people a surprise.
Once an Englishman named Jack Brown went to Russia for a holiday. He stayed there for several months and then came home again. Some of his friends visited him a few days after he got back. “I had a very dangerous trip while I was in Russia.” Jack said to them. “I wanted to see a friend of mine in the country and the bad weather made me very late. So I was still travelling through a forest in sleigh<雪橇>when the sun went down. It was a long way fro
m my friend’s house when about 20 wolves began to follow my sleigh. It was very dark in the forest. There was thick snow on the ground. It was cold, and there were no houses for miles and miles. First I heard the wolves, and the noise was terrible! The horses heard them, too. They were frightened and began running faster. Then I saw long, grey forms among the trees, and soon the wolves were near us. They were running very fast, and they didn’t seem to get tired like the horses.” “What did you do?” one of his friends asked. “When the wolves got very near,” Jack answered, “I put up my gun and shot the first wolf. The sleigh was moving about, but I hit the animal and killed it. Then all the other wolves stopped and ate it, so our sleigh got away from them for a few minutes.” “Then they finished their meal, and I heard them coming again. The moon was shining brightly on the snow, and after a few minutes I saw them among the trees once more. They came nearer again, and then I shot another of them, and the others stopped once more to eat it.” “The same thing happened again and again, and my horses became more and more tired and ran slower and slower until, after about two hours, only one wolf was still alive and following us.”
“Wasn’t it too fat to run?” one of his friends asked. Jack told
his friends what happened to him when he was______________.
| A．in England one winter evening | B．in Russia one winter evening |
| C．in America one winter morning | D．in Russia one winter morning. |
In the sentence “They finished their meal.” “meal” here means ___________.
| A．the food Jack had brought with him | B．the meal prepared by Jack’s friends. |
| C．the wolf which had been killed by Jack | D．the dead animals on the way |
According to what Jack said, the last wolf ______________.
| A．had eaten up all the other wolves | |
| B．ran much faster than the other wolves | |
| C．was the strongest of all | D．was very fat and didn’t run fast. |
From what Jack’s friend said we know that _____________________.
| A．all the wolves had been shot by Jack. |
| B．the last wolf was too fat to run |
| C．Jack was telling the truth |
| D．the friends did not believe what Jack had said. |