As the forceful king of Macedonia(马其顿), Alexander the Great overthrew the Persian Empire, becoming a hero that would survive centuries after his death.
Born in 356 B.C., Alexander III was the son of Philip II and Olympias. Alexander’s parents wanted him to receive the finest education, and arranged for him to study under Aristotle, regarded as one of the greatest scholars.
Alexander’s father was a strong leader. Philip II built an impressive army and established the Macedonian kingdom; he was even planning to attack Persia shortly before his death.
In 336, Philip was murdered by one of his guards. Although it was obvious that the guard had a personal hatred, there are clues that other people were related to it.
After Alexander was cleared as a suspect, he succeeded his father without opposition, and killed those said to be responsible for his father’s murder, as well as all rivals. He was then just 20 years old. He then prepared to attack Persia.
In the spring of 334, Alexander led the army made up of nearly 50,000 soldiers into Asia, which is called “the most powerful military expedition ever to leave Greece”, He soundly defeated the Persian army at the Granicus River, sending a strong message to Darius III, leader of the Persian Empire.
In 333, Alexander faced Darius at Issus, a mountain pass. The Macedonian army was greatly outnumbered but able to work the narrow mountain passageway to their advantage. Darius managed to escape. Continuing down the Mediterranean Coast, Alexander took every city in his path.
In 332 Alexander declared Egypt to be part of the Greek Empire and was crowned Pharaoh(法老).
When Alexander left Egypt in 331, he defeated the Persians again and was crowned leader of Asia.
In 323, however, Alexander developed a fever on the way back home and died 10 days later at Babylon. He was just 33 years old. What can we know about Philip’s death?
| A．He was killed by someone intending to take power from him. |
| B．Alexander sent someone who hated Philip to kill him. |
| C．His death was related to his plan of fighting Persia. |
| D．The murder might be organized by a group of people. |
The Macedonian army could defeat the Persians at Issus mainly because _________.
| A．Darius didn’t command his army in the battlefield |
| B．Macedonian soldiers were more than the Persian soldiers |
| C．Macedonian soldiers could fight better at the mountain pass |
| D．Macedonia was more powerful than the Persian Empire |
In which order did Alexander do the following things?
a．Totally overthrew the Persian Empire.
b．Defeated the Persian army at Issus.
c．Was crowned Pharaoh of Egypt.
d．Defeated the Persian army at the Granicus River.
e．Became the leader of Macedonia.
| A．e, d, b, c, a | B．d, e, a, c, b |
| C．e, b, d, c, a | D．d, a, c, e, b |
According to the passage, we can infer _________.
| A．Aristotle taught Alexander how to defeat other nations |
| B．Alexander was happy about his father’s death |
| C．Persia is tougher to defeat than Egypt |
| D．Macedonia soon declined after Alexander died |
My son and a bunch of his 13-year-old friends piled into the back seat of my car, ready for the last-day-of-school party at McDonald’s on report card day last year. “Jack got a laptop for getting straight A’s, and Laurie got a cell phone,” one boy said. “Oh, yeah, and Sarah got an iPod Nano, and she’s only in third grade,” said another. “And how about Brian? He got $ 10 for each A.”
I suddenly became concerned. These payoffs might get parents through grammar school, but what about high school and beyond? What would be left after the electric guitar, the cell phone, and the portable DVD player?
I saw the road ahead: As the homework load increased, my income would decrease. I saw my comfortable lifestyle disappear before my eyes — no more of those $5 bags of already-peeled organic carrots. No more organic anything!
I started to feel surprised and nervous. Would every goal attained by my two children fetch a reward? A high grade point average? A good class ranking? Would sports achievements be included in this reward system: soccer goals, touchdowns, runs-batted-in? What about orchestra? Would first chair pay more than second? I’d be penniless by eighth-grade graduation.
“We never paid anything for good grades,” said my neighbor across the street, whose son was recently accepted at MIT. “He just did it on his own. Maybe once in a while we went out for pizza, but that’s about it.”
Don’t you just hate that? We’re all running around looking for the MP3 player with the most updates, and she’s spending a few dollars on pizza. She gets motivation; we get negotiation.
46．Why did the writer suddenly become concerned?
A．Because many kids were getting very good grade at school.
B．Because he was worried about the current reword system.
C．Because he wasn’t making enough money to buy things for his kids’ good grades. D．Because kids were having too many parties after school.
47．The underlined sentence “As the homework load increased, my income would decrease.” (in
Paragraph 3) probably means that _________.
A．taking care of the children would influence my work
B．I would spend more money on my children’s homework
C．reducing children’s homework load would cost me a lot
D．more rewards would be needed as the children grew up
48．The example of the author’s neighbor shows that _________.
A．pizza is the best way to encourage children
B．the author’s neighbor was very poor
C．reward is not the only way to encourage children
D．the son of the author’s neighbor’s didn’t like reward
49．It can be inferred from the passage that _________.
A．children would think that you should if you pay them for good grades
B．children would work harder if you buy them pizza for good grades
C．children would not ask for rewards when they enter high school
D．children would not ask for rewards when they enter university
50．What is the author’s attitude toward paying children reward for good grades?
A．Helpful. B．Uncertain. C．Unpleasant. D．Unknowable.
III阅读 (共两节，满分40分)
第一节阅读理解 (共15小题；每小题2分，满分30分)
阅读下列短文，从每题所给的A、B、C和D项中，选出最佳选项，并在答题卡上将该项涂黑。
Some people bring out the best in you in a way that you might never have fully realized on your own. My mom was one of those people.
My father died when I was nine months old, making my mom a single mother at the age of eighteen. While I was growing up, we lived a very hard life. We had little money, but my mom gave me a lot of love. Each night, she sat me on her lap and spoke the words that would change my life, “Kemmons, you are certain to be a great man and you can do anything in life if you work hard enough to get it.”
At fourteen, I was hit by a car and the doctors said I would never walk again. Every day, my mother spoke to me in her gentle, loving voice, telling me that no matter what those doctors said, I could walk again if I wanted to badly enough. She drove that message so deep into my heart that I finally believed her. A year later, I returned to school — walking on my own!
When the Great Depression(大萧条) hit, my mom lost her job. Then I left school to support the both of us. At that moment, I was determined never to be poor again.
Over the years, I experienced various levels of business success. But the real turning point occurred on a vacation I took with my wife and five kids in 1951. I was dissatisfied with the second-class hotels available for families and was angry that they charged an extra $2 for each child. That was too expensive for the average American family. I told my wife that I was going to open a motel(汽车旅馆) for families that would never charge extra for children. There were plenty of doubters at that time.
Not surprisingly, mom was one of my strongest supporters. She worked behind the desk and even designed the room style. As in any business, we experienced a lot of challenges. But with my mother’s words deeply rooted in my soul, I never doubted we would succeed. Fifteen years later, we had the largest hotel system in the world — Holiday Inn. In 1979 my company had 1,759 inns in more than fifty countries with an income of $ 1 billion a year.
You may not have started out life in the best situations. But if you can find a task in life worth working for and believe in yourself, nothing can stop you.
41. What Kemmons’ mom often told him during his childhood was _________.
A. caring B. moving C. encouraging D. interesting
42. According to the author, who played the most important role in making him walk back to
school again?
A. Doctors. B. Nurses. C. His friends. D. His mom。
43. What caused Kemmons to start a motel by himself?
A. His terrible experience in the hotel.
B. His previous business success of various level.
C. His mom’s strongest support.
D. His wife’s valuable suggestion.
44. Which of the following best describes Kemmons’ mother?
A. Modest, helpful and hard-working. B. Loving, supportive and strong-willed.
C. Careful, helpful and beautiful. D. Strict, sensitive and supportive.
45. Which of the following led to Kemmons’ success according to the passage?
A. Self-confidence, hard work, higher education and a poor family.
B. Clear goals, mom’s encouragement, a poor family and higher education.
C. Mom’s encouragement, clear goals, self-confidence and hard work.
D. Mom’s encouragement, a poor family, higher education and opportunities.
Throughout the history of the arts, the nature of creativity has remained constant to artists. No matter what objects they select, artists are to bring forth new forces and forms that cause change-to find poetry where no one has ever seen or experienced it before.
Landscape(风景) is another unchanging element of art. It can be found from ancient times through the 17th-century Dutch painters to the 19th-century romanticists and impressionists. In the 1970s Alfred Leslie, one of the new American realists, continued this practice. Leslie sought out the same place where Thomas Cole, a romanticist, had produced paintings of the same scene a century and a half before. Unlike Cole who insists on a feeling of loneliness and the idea of finding peace in nature, Leslie paints what he actually sees. In his paintings, there is no particular change in emotion, and he includes ordinary things like the highway in the background. He also takes advantage of the latest developments of color photography(摄影术) to help both the eye and the memory when he improves his painting back in his workroom.
Besides, all art begs the age-old question: What is real? Each generation of artists has shown their understanding of reality in one form or another. The impressionists saw reality in brief emotional effects, the realists in everyday subjects and in forest scenes, and the Cro-Magnon cave people in their naturalistic drawings of the animals in the ancient forests. To sum up, understanding reality is a necessary struggle for artists of all periods.
Over thousands of years the function of the arts has remained relatively constant. Past or present, Eastern or Western, the arts are a basic part of our immediate experience. Many and different are the faces of art, and together they express the basic need and hope of human beings.
46. The underlined word “poetry” most probably means __________.
A. an object for artistic creation B. a collection of poems
C. an unusual quality D. a natural scene
47. Leslie's paintings are extraordinary because _________.
A. they are close in style to works in ancient times
B. they look like works by 19th-century painters
C. they draw attention to common things in life
D. they depend heavily on color photography
48. What is the author's opinion of artistic reality?
A. It will not be found in future works of art.
B. It does not have a long-lasting standard.
C. It is expressed in a fixed artistic form.
D. It is lacking in modern works of art.
49. What does the author suggest about the arts in the last paragraph?
A. They express people's curiosity about the past.
B. They make people interested in everyday experience.
C. They are considered important for variety in form.
D. They are regarded as a mirror of the human situation.
50. Which of the following is the main topic of the passage?
A. History of the arts. B. Basic questions of the arts.
C. New developments in the arts. D. Use of modern technology in the arts.
After the Summer Olympics are over, when all the athletes and viewers have gone home and the television audience has switched off, another group of athletes and fans will arrive at the host city, and another competition will begin. These are the Paralympics, the games for athletes with a disability. But in Beijing in 2008, for the first time, one of the greatest paralympians will not be taking part.
She is a British athlete by the name of Tanni Grey-Thompson. Born with spina bifida （脊椎裂） which left her paralysed（瘫痪的） from the waist down, Tanni used a wheelchair from the age of 7. At first, she was not keen on sport, apart from horse-riding, which gave her a sense of freedom. But in her teens, she started taking sports more seriously. She tried swimming, basketball and tennis. Eventually she found athletics, and never looked back.
Indeed, Tanni's athletic career took off. In 1984, when she was 15, she pulled off a surprise victory in the 100 meters at the Junior National Wheelchair Games.
In 1988, Tanni went to her first Paralympic Games in Seoul. She won bronze in the 400 meters. Even greater success followed at the 1992 Barcelona Paralympics. Tanni won gold in the100, 200, 400 and 800 meters relay, setting two world records in the process. In the same year she achieved the first of her six London Wheelchair Marathon victories.
Tanni's enduring success has been part motivation, part preparation. “The training I do that enables me to be a good sprinter （短跑运动员） enables me to be good at a marathon too. I train 50 weeks of the year and that keep me prepared for whatever distance I want to race... I am still competing at a very high level, but as 1 get older things get harder and 1 want to retire before 1
fall apart."
Indeed Tanni retired finally after the Visa Paralympic World Cup in 2007. Her wish is to coach young athletes for Beijing 2008 Olympic Games.
In spite of ups and downs, she never takes her fate lying down. In her splendid life, she has won an amazing eleven gold medals, four silvers and one bronze in a series of Paralympics— a top level athletic career covering two decades. She has won the London Wheelchair Marathon six times, more than any other competitor, and she has set over thirty world records.
What advice does she have for young athletes? "Work hard at your studies, and then train, train and train again."
41. Which of the following sports did Tanni like before thirteen?
A. Basketball. B. Swimming. C. Tennis. D. Horse-riding.
42. When did Tanni win her first Olympic gold medal?
A. In 1984. B. In 1988. C. In 1992. D. In 2007.
43. The underlined word "that" in the 5th paragraph refers to____.
A. fifty weeks' training B. being a good sprinter
C. training almost every day D. part motivation and part preparation
44. What's the right order of the events related to Tanni?
a. She works as a coach.
b. She took up athletics.
c. She won four gold medals in Barcelona.
d. She competed in her first Paralympic Games.
e. She achieved a victory in her first London Wheelchair Marathon.
A. b, d, c, e, a B. a, d, b, c, e C. a, d, c, e, b D. b, d, a, e, c
45. What can we learn from Tanni's success?
A. Union is strength. B. Never too late to learn.
C. Well begun is half done.D. No pains, no gains.
IV. Reading(30)
A
Mathematical ability and musical ability may not seem on the surface to be connected, but people who have researched the subject -- and studied the brain—say that they are. Three quarters of the bright but speech-delayed children in the group I studied had a close relative who was an engineer, mathematician or scientist, and four fifths had a close relative who played a musical instrument. The children themselves usually took readily to math and other analytical subjects and to music.
Black, white and Asian children in this group show the same patterns. However, it is clear that blacks have been greatly overrepresented in the development of American popular music and greatly underrepresented in such fields as mathematics, science and engineering.
If the abilities required in analytical fields and in music are so closely related, how can there be this great discrepancy? One reason is that the development of mathematical and other such abilities requires years of formal schooling, while certain musical talents can be developed with little or no formal training, as has happened with a number of well-known black musicians.
It is precisely in those kinds of music where one can acquire great skill without formal training that blacks have excelled popular music rather than classical music, piano rather than violin, blues rather than opera. This is readily understandable, given that most blacks, for most of American history, have not had either the money or the leisure for long years of formal study in music.
Blacks have not merely held their own in American popular music. They have played a large role in the development of jazz, both traditional and modern. A long string of names comes to mind—W.C. Handy, Louis Armstrong, Charlie Parker…and so on.
None of this presupposes(假设，意味着) any special innate（先天的）ability of blacks in music. On the contrary, it is perfectly consistent with blacks having no more such inborn ability than anyone else, but being limited to being able to express such ability in narrower channels than others who have had the money, the time and the formal education to spread out over a wider range of music, as well as into mathematics, science and engineering.
36. what is the main idea of the first paragraph?
A. Mathematical ability and musical ability are connected.
B. Mathematical ability has more to do with the brain than musical ability.
C. More people are good at music than math.
D. More research should be done into the relationship between mathematical ability and math ability.
37. The word “discrepancy” (Para. 3) most probably means ____.
A. difference B. excellence C. inborn ability D. inability
(38. What can be inferred about opera?
A. It requires formal training.
B. It is often enjoyed by those with strong analytical ability.
C. It is disliked by blacks.
D. It is more difficult to learn than classical music.
39. Which of the following statements is true according to the last paragraph?
A. Blacks have special innate ability in music.
B. Unlike others, blacks do not have innate ability in music.
C. Jazz is one of the narrow channels through which blacks express their ability in music.
D. Those who have money and time choose mathematics over music.
40. which of the following questions does the passage mainly concern?
A. Are musical ability and mathematical ability connected?
B. Why have blacks been greatly over represented in the development of American popular misic?
C. What kinds of music require formal training?
D. What are the contributions made by black musicians?