The day my fiancé fell to his death, it started to snow, just like the bottom hadn’t fallen out of my world when he fell off the roof. His body, when I found it, was lightly covered with snow. It snowed almost every day for the next four months, while I sat on the couch and watched it pile up.
One morning, I shuffled(拖着脚步走) downstairs and was surprised to see a snowplow(扫雪机) clearing my driveway and the bent back of a woman shoveling my walk. I dropped to my knees, crawled through the living room, and back upstairs so those good Samaritans would not see me. I was mortified. My first thought was, how would I ever repay them? I didn’t have the strength to brush my hair, let alone shovel someone’s walk.
Before Jon’s death, I took pride in the fact that I rarely asked for help or favors. I defined myself 
by my competence and independence. How could I respect myself if all I did was sit on the couch everyday and watch the snow fall?
Learning how to receive the love and support that came my way wasn’t easy. Friends cooked for me and I cried because I couldn’t even help them set the table. “I’m not usually this lazy,” I swept. Finally, my friend Kathy sat down with me and said, “Mary, cooking for you is not a burden. It makes me feel good to be able to do something for you.”
Over and over, I heard similar words of comfort from the people who supported me during those dark days. One very wise man told me, “You are not doing nothing. Being fully open to your grief may be the hardest work you will ever do.”
In many ways I have changed for the better. I have been surprised to learn that there is incredible freedom that comes from facing one’s worst fear and walking away whole. What made the author feel sad?
| A．Her fiancé’s sudden death. | B．Constant heavy snow. |
| C．Her fiancé abandoning her. | D．Her job being refused again. |
What’s the meaning of the underlined word “mortified” in Paragraph 1?
| A．Surprised. | B．Angry. | C．Ashamed. | D．Moved. |
It is _______ that helped the author out of darkness.
| A．herself | B．her friends | C．her fiancé | D．a snowplow |
Which of the following statements is NOT true?
| A．The author was a capable and independent woman. |
| B．The author was so lazy that she wouldn’t shovel the walk. |
| C．Finally the author got through hardest work bravely. |
| D．When facing the worst fear, you will get strength. |
What’s the author’s purpose in the passage?
| A．To talk about her hardest work in her life. |
| B．To talk about her real love between her and her fiancé. |
| C．To tell us to walk out of hardest work confidently and bravely. |
| D．To tell us the importance of friendship. |
Computer programmer David Jones earns $35,000 a year designing new computer games. Yet he cannot find a bank ready to let him have a credit card(信用卡)．Instead he has been told to wait another two years until he is 18.The 16-year-old works for a small firm in Liverpool where the problem of most young people of his age is finding a job. David’s firm releases(推出)two new games for the fast growing computer market each month.
But David’s biggest headache is what to do with his money. Even though he earns a lot，he cannot drive a car，take out a mortgage(抵押贷款)，or get credit cards. David got his job with the Liverpool-based company four months ago，a year after leaving school with six O-levels and working for a time in a computer shop.“I got the job because the people who run the firm knew I had already written some programs”，he said. David spends some of his money on records and clothes and gives his mother 50 pounds a week. But most of his spare time is spent working.
“Unfortunately，computing was not part of our studies at school”，he said，“But I had been studying it in books and magazines for four years in my spare time. I knew what I wanted to do and never considered staying on at school. Most people in this business are fairly young，anyway”．David added，“I would like to earn a million and I suppose early retirement is a possibility. You never know when the market might disappear.”In what way is David different from people of his age?
| A．He often goes out with friends. |
| B．He lives with his mother. |
| C．He has a handsome income. |
| D．He graduated with six O-levels. |
What is one of the problems that David is facing now?
| A．He is too young to get a credit card. |
| B．He has no time to learn driving. |
| C．He has very little spare time. |
| D．He will soon lose his job. |
David was able to get the job in the company because _____.
| A．He had done well in all his exams. |
| B．He had written some computer programs. |
| C．He was good at playing computer games. |
| D．He had learnt to use computers at school. |
Why did David decide to leave school and start working?
| A．He received lots of job offers. |
| B．He was eager to help his mother. |
| C．He lost interest in school studies. |
| D．He wanted to earn his own living. |
My father had returned from his business visit to London when I came in, rather late, to supper. I could tell at once that he and my mother had been discussing something. In that half-playful, half-serious way I knew so well, he said," How would you like to go to Eton?"
"You bet, "I cried quickly catching the joke. Everyone knew it was the most expensive, the most famous of schools. You had to be entered at birth, if not before. Besides, even at 12 or 13, I understood my father. He disliked any form of showing off. He always knew his proper station in life, which was in the middle of the middle class, our house was medium-sized; he had avoided joining Royal Liverpool Golf Club and went to a smaller one instead; though once he had got a second-hand Rolls-Royce at a remarkably low price, he felt embarrassed driving it, and quickly changed it for an Austin 1100.
This could only be his delightful way of telling me that the whole boarding school idea was to be dropped. Alas! I should also have remembered that he had a liking for being different from everyone else, if it did not conflict（冲突）with his fear of drawing attention to himself.
It seemed that he had happened to be talking to Graham Brown of the London office, a very nice fellow, and Graham had a friend who had just entered his boy at the school, and while he was in that part of the world he thought he might just as well phone them. I remember my eyes stinging（刺痛）and my hands shaking with the puzzlement of my feelings. There was excitement, at the heart of great sadness.
"Oh, he doesn't want to go away," said my mother, "You shouldn't go on like this.” "It's up to him," said my father. "He can make up his own mind.”The house the writer's family lived in was _______ .
| A．the best they could afford |
| B．right for their social position |
| C．for showing off |
| D．rather small |
His father sold his Roils-Royce because _______ .
| A．it made him feel uneasy |
| B．it was too old to work well |
| C．it was too expensive to possess |
| D．it was too cheap |
What was the writer's reaction to the idea of going to Eton?
| A．He was very unhappy. | B．He didn't believe it. |
| C．He was delighted. | D．He had mixed feelings. |
We can know from the passage that _______ .
| A．Children who can go to Eton are very famous |
| B．Children can go to Eton if they will |
| C．It is very difficult for a child to get admitted by Eton |
| D．Children don't have the right to decide whether they will go to Eton |
The famous American gorilla(大猩猩) expert Diane Fossey had a completely new way to study gorillas — she pretended to be one of them. She copied their actions and way of life — eating plants and getting down on her hands and knees to walk the way a gorilla does. It was a new relationship.
Diane Fossey was murdered in Rwanda in 1985 and her story was made into the popular film Gorillas in the Mist. It was a long way from King Kong, which is about a gorilla as a monster (a frightening animal), and helped to show a new idea: the real monster is man, while the gorilla is to be admired.
Today there are thought to be around 48,000 lowland gorillas and maybe 400—450 mountain gorillas in the wild. From the Congo in West Africa, to Rwanda and Uganda further east, they are endangered by hunting and by the cutting down of their forest homes.
Some time ago, I found in my letterbox a little magazine from the World Wide Fund for Nature. It had two photos side by side. One was of a young gorilla. “This is a species of mammal(哺乳类动物),”said the words below it. “It is being destroyed by man. We must save it for our own good.” The other photo showed a human baby. The words also read, “This is a species of mammal,” but then went on: “It is the most destructive(破坏性的) on earth. We must retrain it for its own good.”The text mainly talks about _____.
| A．Diane Fossey |
| B．the gorillas in Rwanda |
| C．the protection of the gorillas |
| D．the film Gorillas in the Mist |
We can learn from the text that _____.
| A．Gorillas in the mist was based Fossey’s experiences |
| B．Lowland gorillas live longer than mountain gorillas |
| C．King Kong showed us that a gorilla is admirable |
| D．Diane Fossey was murdered by a gorilla |
What message can we get from the two photos in the magazine?
| A．Gorillas are man’s close friends. |
| B．Both man and the gorilla need to be saved. |
| C．Young gorillas are as lovely as human babies. |
| D．Man should live peacefully with the gorilla. |
As more and more people speak the global languages of English, Chinese, Spanish, and Arabic, other languages are rapidly disappearing. In fact, half of the 6,000-7,000 languages spoken around the world today will likely die out by the next century, according to the United Nations Educational , Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).
In an effort to prevent language loss, scholars from a number of organizations -----UNESCO and National Geographic among them—have for many years been documenting dying languages and the cultures they reflect.
Mark Turin, a scientist at the Macmillan Centre Yale University, who specializes in the languages and oral traditions of the Himalayas, is following in that tradition. His recently published book, A Grammar of Thangmi with an Ethnolinguistic Introduction to the Speakers and Their Culture, grows out of his experience living, working, and raising a family in a village in Nepal.
Documenting the Thangmi language and culture is just a starting point for Turin, who seeks to include other languages and oral traditions across the Himalayan reaches of India , Nepal, Bhutan, and China . But he is not content to simply record these voices before they disappear without record.
At the University of Cambridge Turin discovered a wealth of important materials-including photographs, films, tape recordings, and field notes—which had remained unstudied and were badly in need of care and protection.
Now, through the two organizations that he has founded -----the Digital Himalaya Project and the World Oral Literature Project -----Turin has started a campaign to make such documents, for the world available not just to scholars but to the younger generations of communities from whom the materials were originally collected. Thanks to digital technology and the widely available Internet, Turin notes, the endangered languages can be saved and reconnected with speech communities.Many scholars are making efforts to ______.
| A．rescue disappearing languages |
| B．promote global languages |
| C．search for language communities |
| D．set up language research organizations. |
What does “that tradition’ in Paragraph 3 refer to ?
| A．Telling stories about language users |
| B．Writing books on language teaching. |
| C．Having full records of the languages |
| D．Living with the native speaker. |
What is Turin’s book based on?
| A．The cultual studies |
| B．His personal experience in Nepal. |
| C．His language research in Bhutan. |
| D．The documents available at Yale. |
Which of the following best describe Turin’s work?
| A．Write, sell and donate. |
| B．Collect, protect and reconnect. |
| C．Record, repair and reward. |
| D．Design, experiment and report. |
Salvador Dali (1904-1989) was one of the most popular of modern artists. The Pompidou Centre in Paris is showing its respect and admiration for the artist and his powerful personality with an exhibition bringing together over 200 paintings, sculptures, drawings and more. Among the works and masterworks on exhibition the visitor will find the best pieces, most importantly The Persistence of Memory. There is also L’Enigme sans Fin from 1938, works on paper, objects, and projects for stage and screen and selected parts from television programmes reflecting the artist’s showman qualities.
The visitor will enter the World of Dali through an egg and is met with the beginning, the world of birth. The exhibition follows a path of time and subject with the visitor exiting through the brain.
The exhibition shows how Dali draws the viewer between two infinities (无限). “From the infinity small to the infinity large, contraction and expansion coming in and out of focus: amazing Flemish accuracy and the showy Baroque of old painting that he used in his museum-theatre in Figueras,” explains the Pompidou Centre.
The fine selection of the major works was done in close collaboration (合作)with the Museo Nacional Reina Sofia in Madrid, Spain, and with contributions from other institutions like the Salvador Dali Museum in St. Petersburg. Which of the following best describe Dali according to Paragraph 1?
| A．Optimistic. | B．Productive |
| C．Generous. | D．Traditional. |
What is Dali’s The Persistence of Memory considered to be?
| A．One of the beat TV programmes |
| B．A successful screen adaptation. |
| C．An artistic creation for the stage. |
| D．One of his masterworks. |
How are the exhibits arranged at the World of Dali?
| A．By popularity. | B．By time and subject. |
| C．By size and shape. | D．By importance. |
What does the word “contributions” in the last paragraph refer to?
| A．Documents. | B．Projects. |
| C．Donations. | D．Artworks. |