He wishes the holiday season would end already. His back aches, his red suit feels like a spacesuit , his cheeks have gone tight from smiling for 12 hours —and still the kids keep coming and coming , like ants at a picnic . As Christmas becomes more commercialized (商业化) across the U. S. and Canada, so must Santas. As the holiday begins earlier each year, so must its spokesmen .
The questions from children these days are harder than ever. Now, with thousands of children expecting a father or mother serving in Iraq or Afghanistan, the questions are as heart-breaking as they are unanswerable. For example, “Can you please bring Daddy home from the war in time for Christmas morning?”
Santas also have a pretty good chance of getting sued (指控). A professional Santa Claus in Canada told a story: A Santa had a girl on his knee, and he commented, “You have nice eyes and nice hair.” The girl later said it was sexual harassment (骚扰) . When a Santa feels anxious, he often shows it in the same ways ordinary people do: The Santas were always seen to hang around at the dinner table when the show ended. Many of them just sleep in bed for several days and don’t see other children again.In the first paragraph, “spokesmen” refers to .
| A．businessmen | B．political leaders |
| C．organizers of the activities | D．Santa Clauses |
The passage implies that the job of Santa Claus is .
| A．well-paid | B．very hard | C．worth doing | D．dangerous |
According to the third paragraph, Santas may sometimes be blamed(责备) for .
| A．doing something against the law | B．hanging around the dinner table |
| C．being lazy and sleeping in bed for days | D．not playing their roles as expected |
What would be the best title for the passage ?
| A．Christmas: Not a Good Festival for Santas | B．Is Santa Claus Really Alive? |
| C．A Christmas Story | D．What Does Santa Claus Do for Children? |
第二部分阅读理解（共两节，满分40分）
第一节（共15小题；每小题2分，满分30分）
阅读下列四篇短文，从每小题后所给的A、B、C、D四个选项中，选出最佳选项，并在答题卡上将该选项涂黑。
The Greenbelt, a wide belt of open land around the cities and towns of the San Francisco Bay Area, includes about 3.75 million of the Bay Area’s 4.5 million acres. The Bay Area Greenbelt is one of the largest areas of open land in any U.S. urban area. Open land is land that has few buildings and lots of natural areas. The Greenbelt’s open land includes parks, forests, beaches, and more than 8,500 farms.
What are the advantages of the Greenbelt?
The Greenbelt has many advantages for people in the Bay Area, which include:
walking and biking areas close to the cities and towns;
places for wild plants and animals;
cleaner air and water; and
income from farms.
Is the Greenbelt in danger?
Five hundred seventy thousand acres of the Greenbelt are in danger. There are builders who want to build suburbs on them. If those acres become suburbs, many things will change:
the urban and suburban area will almost double;
many farms will disappear;
traffic will become worse; and
the air will become dirtier.
What is Greenbelt Alliance (联盟)?
Greenbelt Alliance, an organization that saves land in the San Francisco Bay Area, works alone and with other groups to save the Greenbelt in four ways:
Try to persuade people to build new buildings on land that is already urban, not on open land.
Make sure that the city and town governments are all making plans to save the Greenbelt.
Help Bay Area towns and cities to buy pieces of open land to make into natural areas.
Teach people in the Bay Area why the Greenbelt is important and what they can do to help save it.
46. What can we learn about the Greenbelt from the first paragraph?
A. The Greenbelt is the largest open land in the United States.
B. The Greenbelt covers much more than half of the Bay Area.
C. There are few farms on the open land of the Greenbelt.
D. There are more than 8,500 natural areas on the Greenbelt.
47. One of the advantages of the Greenbelt for people in the Bay Area is __________.
A. convenience for exercise B. income from sightseeing
C. cleaner city streets D. more plants and animals
48. The Greenbelt is in danger because __________.
A. traffic is getting worse B. some plan to build suburbs on it
C. the suburban area has doubled D. pollution is becoming serious
49. Which of the following is TRUE about Greenbelt Alliance?
A. It builds new buildings on open land.
B. It buys large open land for the Bay Area.
C. It educates people how to save the Greenbelt.
D. It helps the city governments make plans.
Lex Kim English School Information Session Description
Lex Kim English School offers language improvement courses in reading, writing, grammar, and speech to students from Grades 3 to 11. All of our students are highly fluent in English and eager to take part in classroom discussions and debate. All classes are conducted in English and class sizes are no larger than 10 students.
We are looking for full-time teachers and assistant teachers who’re interested in challenging our highly motivated and demanding students. We are eager to hire teachers who are professional, creative, and very organized self-starters. Our application process includes a phone interview, an in-person interview, and a sample teaching period. Additionally, all applicants must meet the following standards for the available positions:
Native English speakers with at least 15 years’ experience in teaching
A Bachelor’s degree or higher (preferably in education, English, or related fields)
Teaching hours typically range from 1 P.M. to 9 P.M., Monday ～ Friday.
Benefits
Teacher pay ranges from $26,000 to $45,000 depending on experience plus overtime pay and various performance-based prizes throughout the year. Assistant teachers have good chances of promotion and pay increases are based on ability. We also offer housing, free dinners, and other benefits.
Required documents:
The cover letter ( please indicate the position you are applying for )
The resume（个人简历）with your Date of Birth, e-mail address, and contact number
The recent photo of yourself or the copy of your passport
At least two references（推荐信）from your former employer
Contact
Please visit our website at www.lexkimjob.com for more information and visit http://lexkimjob.com/apply/main.php to submit（提交）your application.
53. According to the passage, Lex Kim English School _______.
A. only offers classes to the students in the morning
B. has students of all ages who are weak in English
C. is very strict about the application process
D. is badly in need of part-time English teachers
54. Who is the most likely to be hired by Lex Kim English School ?
A. A Frenchman with a Bachelor’s degree in education
B. An American with a Master’s degree in economics
C. A Korean with a Doctor’s degree who has worked in America for 18 years
D. An Englishman who has 16 years’ experience in teaching in a Canadian college
55. We can know from the passage that _______.
A. applicants must hand in their passports to the school
B. teachers of Lex Kim English School must use English to teach grammar
C. the more experienced applicants are, the higher pay they will get
D. applicants can go directly to the school to apply for the positions
Every once in a while, it is necessary to take a step back in order to take a long, hard look at where we are in our lives. At this point, it is good to ask yourself a bunch of critical questions. Are you at the point in your career where you want to be ? Have you so far accomplished all of your goals in life ? If so, then maybe it is time to make goals that stretch yourself a bit more. If you have not accomplished your goals in life, then perhaps you have made the mistake of setting too many goals or trying to accomplish them at an unnaturally fast pace.
It is necessary to set reasonable, intelligent goals in order to succeed in life. Do not be unrealistic because life is not a fairy tale. But you should try to recognize what you want, and to be as specific as possible when attempting to visualize（形象化） or otherwise express what your goals in life are.
In order for a goal to sufficiently motivate you, it needs to be a major one. The bigger your goals are, then the more motivated you will need to be to work towards accomplishing them. If you want, for example, to be the greatest concert pianist, in the world, then you are going to find yourself a lot more motivated than you would be if your goal were merely to, say, play a couple of Beethoven pieces extremely well. If you are a beginner, then no doubt mastering those tough songs is a very intelligent and realistic goal to set. But if that is your only goal as a pianist, then you will stop growing as a pianist once that goal has been achieved. This is why it is necessary to constantly stop and re-evaluate our goals so that we are aware of what they are, and thus stay motivated.
49. From the passage, if your goals have all been achieved, you should then ______.
A. ask yourself some serious questions
B. take a hard look at your success
C. set some other intelligent goals
D. stretch yourself to relax
50. By saying “life is not a fairy tale”, the author suggests that you should ________ .
A. set as big a goal as possible
B. try hard to realize your dream
C. make your goals practical
D. abandon all your ambitions
51. To perform several Beethoven pieces well is a goal that _______.
A. is not suitable for the pianist
B. is appropriate for a beginner
C. stops you from growing as a pianist
D. is very easy to achieve
52. What is the best title for the passage ?
A. Set Intelligent Goals for Yourself
B. Try to Accomplish Your Goals
C. Get Yourself More Motivated
D. Goals Help You to Succeed
Home schooling offers other unforeseen advantages as well. One of these might be more available time. Home schooling can be an effective way to teach. The time you have during the day can be used resourcefully, in this manner reducing the overall time that the student in fact spends at school.
Home schooling allows the parent to develop into the main adviser and foundation of guidance for a child. Since a home schooled child relates to the parent a lot more, the child and the parent can form a tighter connection than they might otherwise form. This connection could be the basis of a higher degree of trust between the child and the parent where the child is more apt to come to the parent for help and direction as an alternative of turning somewhere else.
Home schooling can be an instrument for a special case where a child may have been a target of extreme harassment（侵扰）at a standard public school. School harassment is a major problem at some schools and is a hard problem to put an end to. The home schooling of a child mistreated in this way offers the child a way to re-focus on learning and makes the child be able to receive the close parental leadership.
It is a proven fact that home schooled students do well when it comes to college preparation. In general, home schooled students have performed equally to or better than public schooled students on SAT assessments. In addition, it is a fact that home schooled students can do as well as their public schooled peers in college.
Home schooling is not for every person. Each parent should cautiously assess whether home schooling will benefit their particular circumstances or not. There are many considerations to be made when choosing home schooling, but for many, home schooling has been a preference that has proven to be very beneficial to the student’s exceptional education.
45. The passage mainly talks about _______.
A. how to carry out home schooling
B. the advantages of home schooling
C. home schooling and standard public schooling
D. parents’ preference for home schooling
46. A student trapped in school harassment may not _______.
A. focus his / her attention on learning
B. get along well with others
C. form a good habit of learning
D. form a tight connection with his / her teacher
47. The college and SAT assessments are referred in this passage to prove that _______.
A. the final results of home schooling are doubtful
B. public schooled students do better than home schooled students
C. home schooling is equal to or better than public schooling
D. home schooling may not be beneficial to every person
48. Which of the following may the writer agree with ?
A. Home schooling has more advantages than disadvantages
B. Parents should devote their time to home schooling
C. Home schooling is usually not as effective as expected
D. Many factors should be considered before choosing home schooling
第四节：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。
Science Daily -------- Dutch ecologist Roxina Soler and her colleagues have discovered that subterranean（地下的）and above ground herbivorous（食草的）insects can communicate with each other by using plants as telephones. Subterranean insects issue chemical warning signals through the leaves of the plant. Thus, aboveground insects are warned that the plant is already “ occupied”.
Aboveground, leaf-eating insects prefer plants that have not yet been occupied by subterranean root-eating insects. Subterranean insects send out chemical signals through the leaves of the plant, which warn the aboveground insects about their presence. This message makes it possible for two different kinds of insects to avoid each other, so that they do not compete for the same plant.
In recent years it has been discovered that different types of aboveground insects develop slowly if they feed on plants that also have subterranean residents and vice versa（反之亦然）. It seems that a system has developed through natural selection, which helps the subterranean and aboveground insects to communicate with each other. This avoids unnecessary competition.
Through the “green telephone lines”, subterranean insects can also communicate with a third party, namely the natural enemy of caterpillars（毛虫）. Parasitic wasps（寄生的黄蜂）lay their eggs inside aboveground insects. The wasps also benefit from the signals sent by the leaves, as these help them find more insects for their eggs. The communication between subterranean and aboveground insects has only been studied in a few systems. It is still not clear how widespread this phenomenon is.
This research was carried out at the Netherlands Institute for Ecology by Roxina Soler, Jeffrey Harvey, Martijn Bezemer, Wim van der Putten and Louise Vet. The phD project, in which this study was carried out, was funded by the Free Competition of NOW Earth and Life Sciences.
41. After finding a plant occupied by root-eating insects, aboveground insects will usually ________.
A. send out warning signals
B. choose to leave the plant
C. fight with the root-eating insects
D. compete with them for the same plant
42. Aboveground insects will develop more quickly if their food plants _______.
A. have more green leaves
B. get more water and sunlight
C. are often visited by parasitic wasps
D. are not occupied by root-eating insects
43. The underlined part “a third party” in Paragraph 4 refers to ______.
A. caterpillars B. root-eating insects
C. parasitic wasps D. aboveground insects
44. What is the best title for the passage ?
A. Insects use plants as “telephones”
B. How do animals avoid competition
C. The living habit of different insects
D. Communication between different insects