There is a popular belief among parents that schools are no longer interested in spelling. No school I have ever taught in has ever ignored spelling or considered it unimportant as a basic skill. There are, however, different ideas about how to teach it, or how much priority (优先) it must be given over general language development and writing ability. The problem is how to encourage a child to express himself freely and confidently in writing without holding him back with the complexities (复杂性) of spelling.
If spelling becomes the only focal (焦点的) point of his teacher’s interest, clearly a bright child will be likely to “play safe”. He will tend to write only words within his spelling range, choosing to avoid adventurous language. That’s why teachers often encourage the early use of dictionaries and pay attention to content rather than technical ability.
I was once shocked to read on the bottom of a sensitive piece of writing about a personal experience: “This work is terrible! There are far too many spelling errors and your writing is terrible.” It may have been a sharp criticism of the pupil’s technical abilities in writing, but it was also a sad reflection on the teacher who had omitted to read the essay, which contained some beautiful expressions of the child’s deep feelings. The teacher was not wrong to draw attention to the errors, but if his priorities had centered on the child’s ideas, an expression of his disappointment with the presentation would have given the pupil more motivation (动机) to seek improvement.Teachers are different in their opinions about _________.
| A．the difficulties in teaching spelling |
| B．the role of spelling in general language development |
| C．the complexities of the basic writing skills |
| D．the necessity of teaching spelling |
The underlined expression “play safe” probably means ________.
| A．to write carefully | B．to do as teachers say |
| C．to use dictionaries frequently | D．to avoid using words one is not sure of |
Teachers encourage the use of dictionaries so that ____________.
| A．students will be able to express their ideas more freely |
| B．students will have more confidence in writing |
| C．students will have less trouble in correcting mistakes |
| D．students will learn to be independent of teachers |
The author seems to think that the teacher’s judgment on that sensitive piece of writing is __________.
| A．unfair | B．reasonable | C．foolish | D．careless |
The major point discussed in the passage is ___________.
| A．the importance of developing writing skills |
| B．the complexities of spelling |
| C．the correct way of marking compositions |
| D．the relationship between spelling and the content of a composition |
B
Studies show that laughter is something that makes you feel calm or relaxed for both physical and psychological wounds though it may seem futile to laugh in the face of pain and fear.
When Dan Rather interviewed comedian Bill Cosby just one week after his son, Ennis, was killed, Cosby said, “I think it is time for me to tell people that we have to laugh. You can turn painful situations around through laughter. If you can find humor in anything, you can survive it.”
Call it a flashlight for dark times: laughter just seems to adjust attitude better than anything else. Inspirational speaker Steve Rizzo recalls a TV interview with an injured firefighter a few days after 9.11．The man had fallen more than 30 stories in one of the towers and had broken a leg. Everyone was crying, and the reporter asked, “How is it that you’ve come out of this alive?” He looked at her and without missing a beat, said, “Look, lady, I’m from New York and I’m a firefighter; that’ all you need to know.”
“Everyone laughed and though the laughter was only a couple of seconds,” says Rizzo. “Sometimes that’s all you need to catch your second breath. Laughter gives you that couple of seconds. You’re sending a message to your brain, and the message is: If you can still laugh even a little among the pain, you are going to be OK.”
Of course, there is a difference between laughing off a serious situation and laughing off the fear that results. The firefighter was doing the latter, states Rizzo, the author of Becoming a Humorous Being, and so should we. “If there is anything we have learnt from 9.11, it’s how precious life really is,” she says. “We have to send a message that our spirit won’t die. One important thing that unites us is our ability to laugh.”
60．The writer uses the examples of the comedian and the firefighter to show .
A．laughter is a good way to get rid of pain and fear
B．laughter is the best way to cure psychological wounds
C．it is your attitude that decides whether you can survive the pain or not
D．laughing off a serious situation is different from laughing off the fear that results
61．We can infer from the passage that Steve Rizzo is .
A．a reporterB．a soldier C．a firefighterD．a doctor
62．The underlined word futile in the first paragraph means .
A．hopeless B．useless C．careless D．worthless
63．From the passage, we can know that Americans are .
A．really inspired after 9.11 B．hardly united after 9.11
C．nearly surprised by 9.11D．greatly hurt by 9.11
第二部分 阅读理解（共25小题，第一节第小题2分，第二节每小题1分；满分45分）
第一节 阅读下列短文，从每题所给的四个选项（Ａ、Ｂ、Ｃ、Ｄ）中，选出最佳选项。
A
The story goes that some time ago, a man punished his 3-year-old daughter for wasting a roll of gold wrapping paper. Money was tight and he became infuriated(愤怒的) when the child tried to decorate a box to put under the Christmas tree. Nevertheless, the little girl brought the gift to her father the next morning and said, "This is for you, Daddy."
The man was embarrassed by his earlier overreaction, but his anger flared again when he found out the box was empty. He yelled at her, stating, "Don't you know, when you give someone a present, there is supposed to be something inside? The little girl looked up at him with tears in her eyes and cried, "Oh, Daddy, it's not empty at all. I blew kisses into the box. They're all for you, Daddy."
The father was crushed. He put his arms around his little girl, and he begged for her forgiveness.
Only a short time later, an accident took the life of the child. It is also told that her father kept that gold box by his bed for many years and, whenever he was discouraged, he would take out an imaginary kiss and remember the love of the child who had put it there.
In a very real sense, each one of us, as humans beings, have been given a gold container filled with unconditional love and kisses from our children, family members, friends, and God. There is simply no other possession, anyone could hold, more precious than this.
56．The 3-year-old girl was punished by her father for ________.
A．wasting gold B．wasting wrapping paper
C．putting the box under the Christmas tree D．bringing the gift to her father
57．What’s inside the box according to the little girl?
A．nothing B．air C．kisses D．gold wrapping paper
58．The father remembered the love of his daughter by ________.
A．kissing the gold box
B．putting gold into the box.
C．taking out an imaginary kiss from the box.
D．keeping the little girl’s ash box by his bed.
59．Choose the best title for the passage.
A．The kisses in the box. B．A girl and his father
C．A love story D．The box under the Christmas tree.
E
Mass transportation revised the social and economic fabric（结构） of the American city in three fundamental ways. It catalyzed（加速） physical expansion, it sorted out people and land uses, and it accelerated the inherent instability of urban life. By opening vast areas of unoccupied land for residential expansion, the omnibuses, horse railways, commuter trains, and electric trolleys pulled settled regions outward two to four times more distant form city centers than they were in the premodern era. In 1850, for example, the borders of Boston lay scarcely two miles from the old business district; by the turn of the century the radius extended ten miles. Now those who could afford it could live far removed from the old city center and still commute there for work, shopping, and entertainment. The new accessibility of land around the periphery（周围）of almost every major city sparked an explosion of real estate development and fueled what we now know as urban sprawl. Between 1890 and 1920, for example, some 250,000 new residential lots were recorded within the borders of Chicago, most of them located in outlying areas. Over the same period, another 550,000 were plotted outside the city limits but within the metropolitan area. Anxious to take advantage of the possibilities of commuting, real estate developers added 800,000 potential building sites to the Chicago region in just thirty years – lots that could have housed five to six million people.
Of course, many were never occupied; there was always a huge surplus of subdivided, but vacant, land around Chicago and other cities. These excesses underscore a feature of residential expansion related to the growth of mass transportation: urban sprawl（建筑物无计划延伸） was essentially unplanned. It was carried out by thousands of small investors who paid little heed to coordinated land use or to future land users. Those who purchased and prepared land for residential purposes, particularly land near or outside city borders where transit lines and middle-class inhabitants were anticipated, did so to create demand as much as to respond to it. Chicago is a prime example of this process. Real estate subdivision （再划分小区）there proceeded much faster than population growth.
72．With which of the following subjects is the passage mainly concerned?
A．Types of mass transportation.
B．Instability of urban life.
C．How supply and demand determine land use.
D．The effect of mass transportation on urban expansion.
73．Why does the author mention both Boston and Chicago?
A．To demonstrate positive and negative effects of growth.
B．To exemplify cities with and without mass transportation.
C．To show mass transportation changed many cities.
D．To contrast their rate of growth.
74．According to the passage, what was one disadvantage of residential expansion?
A．It was expensive.
B．It happened too slowly.
C．It was unplanned.
D．It created a demand for public transportation.
75．The author mentions Chicago in the second paragraph as an example of a city,
A．that is large.
B．that is used as a model for land development.
C．where the development of land exceeded population growth.
D．with an excellent mass transportation system.
D
The income gap between China's rural and urban residents(居民) has continued to widen during the past few years in spite of rapidly rising rural incomes, Agricultural Minister Sun Zhengcai said here on Wednesday.
The income ratio(比率) between urban and rural residents was 3.28:1 in 2006, against 3.23:1 in 2003, said Sun in his report on the promotion of building a new countryside in 2007. Sun also said the net income of rural residents in different regions also varied widely. The income gap is only one of several problems in rural areas, according to Sun's report. While listing the achievements in rural areas in recent years, Sun believed that rural development still followed behind urban development.
"We have bigger pressure to ensure the supply of major agricultural products such as grain," he said. "China's urbanization(都市化) has been speeded up and more rural residents have gone to urban areas," he said.
"In this case, more agricultural producers become farm produce consumers, which created more pressure for supply," he said.
Another problem facing China's agricultural development is inadequate application of science and technology.
"Only 30 percent of scientific and technological achievements have been applied to agricultural production, which is 40 percentage points lower than developed countries," he said.
Despite increased government spending in rural areas, the infrastructure(基础下部组织) is still poor and easily hit by disasters.
According to Sun, the government spent 431.8 billion yuan ($59.15 billion) on agriculture, rural areas and farmers this year, an increase of 80.1 billion yuan over the previous year.
China set aside 11.38 billion yuan to promote a new rural cooperative medical care system and 27.98 billion yuan to support the new compulsory education mechanism in rural area to ensure that all citizens shared the fruits of China's reform and opening-up, Sun said.
68．Which of the following is TRUE according to the text?
A．Because of the rapidly rising rural incomes, the income gap between China's rural and urban residents will disappear this year.
B．The net income of rural residents in different regions is the same.
C．The government has taken measures to develop the economy in the rural areas.
D．Because of the rapidly rising rural incomes, the supply of major agricultural products is enough.
69．Can you infer the meaning of the underlined words in paragraph 5?
A．be made full use of B．be made little use of
C．be not made full use of D．be made good use of
70． How much is spent on agriculture, rural areas and farmers the previous year?
A．431.8 billion yuan B．511.9 billion yuan
C．351.7 billion yuan D．80.1 billion yuan
71． Which is NOT the problem in rural areas?
A．The income gap
B．The inadequate application of science and technology
C．The supply of major agricultural products
D．China's urbanization
C
Some futurologists have assumed that the vast upsurge(剧增)of women in the workforce may portend a rejection of marriage. Many women, according to this hypothesis, would rather work than marry. The converse(反面)of this concern is that the prospects of becoming a multi-paycheck household could encourage marriage. In the past, only the earnings and financial prospects of the man counted in the marriage decision. Now, however, the earning ability of a woman can make her more attractive as a marriage partner. Data show that economic downturns tend to putting off marriage because the parties cannot afford to establish a family or are concerned about rainy days ahead. As the economy comes to life, the number of marriages also rises.
The increase in divorce rates follows to the increase in women working outside the home. Yet, it may be wrong to jump to any simple cause-and-effect conclusions. The impact of a wife’s work on divorce is no less cloudy than its impact on marriage decisions. The realization that she can be a good provider may increase the chances that a working wife will choose divorce over an unsatisfactory marriage. But the reverse is equally plausible(似是而非的). Tensions grounded in financial problems often play a key role in ending a marriage. By raising a family’s standard of living, a working wife may strengthen her family’s financial and emotional stability.
Psychological factors also should be considered. For example, a wife blocked from a career outside the home may feel caged in the house. She may view her only choice as seeking a divorce. On the other hand, if she can find fulfillment through work outside the home, work and marriage can go together to create a stronger and more stable union.
Also, a major part of women’s inequality in marriage has been due to the fact that, in most cases, men have remained the main breadwinners. A working wife may rob a husband of being the master of the house. Depending upon how the couple reacts to these new conditions, it could create a stronger equal partnership or it could create new insecurities.
64．The word “portend” (Line 2, Para.1) is closest in meaning to“_____”.
A．defy B．signal C．suffer from D．result from
65．It is said in the passage that when the economy slides_____.
A．men would choose working women as their marriage partners
B．more women would get married to seek financial security
C．even working women would worry about their marriages
D．more people would prefer to remain single for the time being
66．One reason why women with no career may seek a divorce is that_____.
A．they feel that they have been robbed of their freedom
B．they are afraid of being bossed around by their husbands
C．they feel that their partners fail to live up to their expectations
D．they tend to suspect their husbands? loyalty to their marriage
67．Which of the following statements can best summarize the authors view in the passage?
A．The stability of marriage and the divorce rate may reflect the economic situation of the country．
B．Even when economically independent, most women have to struggle for real equality in marriage.
C．In order to secure their marriage women should work outside the home and remain
independent
D．The impact of the growing female workforce on marriage varies from case to case.