The small number of newborn babies, which has been caused by high prices and the changing social situation of women, is one of the most serious problems in Asia. When people talk about it, you can hear a word invented in Japan. which means Double Income Kids(小孩).
In many major Asian cities like Seoul, Singapore, and Tokyo, the cost of a house is extremely high. A young couple who want to buy their own house may have to pay about $3000,000 (though prices have fallen). For a flat with one bedrooms, one dining-room, a kitchen, and a bathroom, the couple will pay about $900 a month. What’s more, if they want to have a child, the child’s education is very expensive. For example, most kindergarten charges are at least $5.000 a year. In such a situation, it’s difficult to afford children.
The number of married women who want to continue working because they enjoy their jobs. However, if they want to have children, they immediately have serious problems. Though most companies allow women to leave their jobs for a short time to have a baby, they expect women with babies to give up their jobs. In short, if they want to bring up children properly, both parents have to work, but it is hard for mothers to work. Indeed, women who want to contimue working have to choose between having children or keeping their jobs.
In a word, Asian governments must take steps to improve the present situation as soon as possible.What is the main problem being discussed in the passage?
| A．The small number of newborn babies. |
| B．The changing social situation of women. |
| C．The high prices of houses and education. |
| D．The necessary steps of Asian government. |
According to the passage, which of the following is true?
| A．It is easy for a couple to afford a child in Asia. |
| B．The prices of in Asia are quite low now. |
| C．Fewer and fewer married women wan to have a job. |
| D．The word “DINKS” appeared in an Asian country. |
To buy a flat and send a child to kindergarten, how much will a couple pay each year?
| A．85,000 | B．85,900 | C．$10.800 | D．$15.800 |
The author seems to believe that Asian governments should ________.
| A．let women stay at home and have a baby |
| B．allow one of the parents to go out to work |
| C．care for the growing needs of women for job. |
| D．the companies that permit women to leave. |
Schedules (timetables), as the 21st century people know, simply did not exist in the 17th and 18th c
enturies. We are upset if a plane arrives an hour late. Our ancestors weren’t upset if an April ship didn’t show up until June. They began to worry in July and were often happy when it showed up in August. When a long-distance ship finally did get to the port, the whole city became busy and excited. Businessmen hurried down to check the goods they had ordered. The ship would probably stay in port for at least three days, often a week, to take on businessmen, give the sailors a rest, find out about the latest news, weather conditions, and so on.
Travel time could only be approximate (近似的). One never knew when the winds would be good. So even though “average(平均的) sailing time” was given, time could change considerably, shortening the voyage (travel by sea) by up to 25% or putting it off by up to 500% or more! The average run from England to Boston was about a month and a half, but there were also voyages of three months. One voyage in 1640 lasted six months!
Travel time is not the same in both directions, due to the winds and currents. This is especially true in the Caribbean, where winds are from the southeast the entire
year. Ships sailing west across the Atlantic spend longer than ships sailing east, and the contrary (opposite) winds can prevent a ship from actually making it to the harbor even if it gets close. One ship was held off the North Carolina coast for 17 days before being able to land! What can we learn from the first paragraph?
| A．No sailor was allowed to have fun when the ship reached land. |
| B．People in ancient times didn’t care about other people’s safety. |
| C．The ship would leave for a voyage when all of the preparations were made. |
| D．A long-distance ship would create a lot of excitement in the place where it landed. |
According to the passage, travel time can’t be fixed due to _____.
| A．the people at the port | B．average sailing time |
| C．the changeable climate | D．the businessmen and the sailors |
The underlined word “currents” in the third paragraph means ______.
| A．the movement of water | B．the movement of winds |
| C．direction of the traveling ship | D．travel time of ships |
What is the difference between a modern voyage timetable and the one from the 17th or 18th century?
| A．There were no exact timetables for traveling both in ancient and modern times. |
| B．Travel time was the same in both directions in ancient times while the modern one was not. |
| C．The modern voyage timetable is more exact than the ancient one. |
| D．The modern voyage timetable is only approximate while the ancient one was not. |
Why did the ships sailing west spend longer than ships sailing east in Caribbean?
| A．Because of the southeast winds the entire year. |
| B．Because sailors didn’t know when the winds blew. |
| C．Because travel time was not affected by wind. |
| D．Because sometimes the ship was held off by the wind. |
Robert Altman’s films were different from the usual methods of Hollywood movie storytelling. In the 1940s, he started his film career directing industrial movies in his hometown of Kansas City, Missouri. Later, he moved to Hollywood, California, to make television shows.
His first major film, MASH, was released in 1970. It tells about a group of American medical workers in an army hospital in Korea during the Korean War in the 1950s. The movie was a great success. It questioned the rules of the military in a way that was sharply funny and clever.
Robert Altman continued to make movies with strong political and social points. His next major movie, Nashville, came out in 1975. This movie provides a complex (not simple) look at changes in the country music industry.
Robert Altman’s movies have a very special style. Often, his actors speak so naturally that it is hard to believe they are performing. Altman liked his actors to be free to make up their own lines. Altman wanted to copy the way people talked and acted in real life. And he was willing to fight with movie studio businessmen to make sure that he had total creative (有创造力的) control over his work.
Even as an old man, Robert Altman continued to make movies. Many of his 33 films were nominated (提名) for Academy Awards, including The Player and Gosford Park. Robert Altman died in November in Los Angeles, California. He was 81 years old. According to the passage, Altman was ______.
| A．a writer | B．an actor | C．a director | D．a soldier |
Robert Altman began to make films ______.
| A．in the 1940s | B．in the 1950s | C．in 1970 | D．in 1975 |
What is special about Altman’s films is that ______.
A. they were all industrial films
B
. they were true to life
C. they were films with strong political points
D. many of them were nominated for Academy AwardsThe passage mainly tells us that ______.
| A．the Korean War took place in the 1950s |
| B．Robert Altman made his first major film in 1970 |
| C．Robert Altman’s films have a different style |
| D．Robert Altman received many Academy Awards |
The best title for this passage should be ______.
| A．Robert Altman - Director of Special Style Movie |
| B．Some Famous Films from Hollywood |
| C．How Robert Altman Directed His Films |
| D．Actors in the Films of Robert Altman |
Why do men die earlier than women? The latest research makes it known that the reason could be that men's hearts go into rapid decline when they reach middle age.
The largest study of the effects of ageing on the heart has found that women's longevity may be linked to the fact that their hearts do not lose their pumping power with age.
"We have found that the power of the male heart falls by 20--25 percent between 18 and 70 years of age,”said the head of the study, David Goldspink of Liverpool John Moores University in the UK.
"Within the heart there are millions of cells that enable it to beat. Between the age of 20 and 70，one-third of those cells die and are not replaced in men,”said Goldspink. "This is part of the ageing process."
What surprises scientists is that the female heart sees very little loss of these cells. A
healthy 70-year-old woman's heart could perform almost as well as a 20-year-old one's.
"This gender difference might just explain why women live longer than men,”said Goldspink.
They studied more than 250 healthy men and women between the ages of 18 and 80，focusing on healthy persons to remove the confusing influence of disease.
The team has yet to find why ageing takes a greater loss on the male heart, said Goldspink.
The good news is that men can improve the 
health of their heart with regular exercise. Goldspink stressed that women also need regular exercise to prevent their leg muscles becoming smaller and weaker as they age. The underlined word“longevity" in the second paragraph probably refers to ______.
| A．health | B．long life | C．ageing | D．effect |
The text mainly talks about ______.
| A．men's heart cells | B．women's ageing process、 |
| C．the gender difference | D．hearts and long life |
According to the text, the UK scientists have known that
| A．women have more cells than men when they are born |
| B．women can replace the cells that enable the heart to beat |
| C．the female heart loses few of the cells with age |
| D．women never lose their pumping power with age |
If you want to live longer, you should
| A．enable your heart to beat much faster |
| B．find out the reason for ageing |
| C．exercise regularly to keep your heart healthy |
| D．prevent your cells from being lost |
We can know from the passage that
| A．the reason why ageing takes a greater loss on the male heart has been found out |
| B．scientists are on the way to finding out why the male heart loses more of the cells |
| C．the team has done something to prevent the male from suffering the greater loss |
| D．women over 70 could lose more heart cells than those at the age of 20 |
I've been writing for most of my life. The book Writing Without Teachers introduced me to one difference and one practice that have greatly helped my writing processes. The difference is between the creative mind and the critical mind. While you need 
to use both of the creative mind and the critical (批判) mind to reach a finished result，they cannot work in parallel (平行，并行) no matter how much we might like to think so.
Trying to criticize writing on the fly is possibly the single greatest trouble with writing that most of us meet. If you are listening to a 5th grade English teacher correcting your grammar while you are trying to capture a fleeting（稍纵即逝的）thought, the thought will die. If you catch the fleeting thought and simply share it with the world in raw form, no one is likely to understand. You must learn to create first and then criticize if you want to make writing the tool for thinking as it is.
The practice that can help you overcome your learned bad habits of trying to edit as you write is what Elbow calls"free writing". In free writing, the goal is to get words down on paper non-stop，usually for 15-20 minutes. No stopping, no going back, no criticizing. The aim is to get the words flowing. As the words begin to flow，the ideas will come from the shadows and let themselves be captured on your notepad or your screen.
Now you have raw materials that you can begin to work with using the critical mind that you've persuaded to sit on the side and watch quietly. Most likely，you will believe that this will take more time than you actually have and you will end up staring blankly at the pages as the deadline draws near.
Instead of s 
taring at a blank start and filling it with words no matter how bad they could be，stop halfway through your available time and rework your raw writing into something closer to the finished product. Move back and forth until you run out of time and the final result will most likely be far better than your current practices.
| 1． |
When the author says the creative mind and the critical mind"cannot work in parallel"in the writing process，he means _______.
|
| 2． |
What usually prevents people from
|
| 3． |
What is the chief purpose of the first stage of writing？
|
| 4． |
In what way does the critical mind help the writer in the writing process？
|
You’re in a department store and you see a couple of attractiv
e young women looking at a sweater. You listen to their conversation：
“I can’t believe it—a Lorenzo Betrolla! They are almost impossible to find. Isn’t it beautiful？And it’s a lot cheaper than the one Sara bought in Rome”.
They leave and you go over to see this incredible sweater. It’s nice and the price is right. You’ve never heard of Lorenzo Bertolla, but those girls looked really stylish. They must know. So，you buy it. You never realize that those young women are employees of an advertising agency. They are actually paid to go from store to store, talking loudly about Lorenzo Bertolla clothes.
Every day we notice what people are wearing, driving and eating. If the person looks cool，the product seems cool，too. This is the secret of undercover marketing. Companies from Ford to Nike are starting to use it.
Undercover marketing is important because it reaches people that don’t pay attention to traditional advertising. This is particularly true of the MTV generation—consumers between the age of 18 and 34. It is a golden group. They have a lot of money to spend, but they don’t trust ads.
So advertising agencies hire young actors to “perform” in bars and other places where young adults go. Some people might call this practice misleading, but marketing executive Jonathan Ressler calls it creative.“Look at traditional advertising. Its effectiveness is decreasing”.
However，one might ask what exactly is “real” about the young women pretending to be enthusiastic about a sweater. Advertising executives (主管) would say it’s no less real than flu ad. The difference is that y
ou know an ad is trying to persuade you to buy something. You don’ t know a conversation you overhear is just a performance.The two attractive young women were talking so that they could _______.
| A．get the sweater at a lower price | B．be heard by people around |
| C．be admired by other shoppers | D．decide on buying the sweater |
Lorenzo Bertolla is _______.
| A．a very popular male singer | B．an advertising agency |
| C．a clothing company in Rome | D．the brand name of a sweater |
Which of the following can be inferred from the passage？
| A．The two girls are in fact employed by the Lorenzo Bertolla Company. |
| B．The MTV generation tends to be more easily influenced by ads. |
| C．Traditional advertising is becoming less effective because it’s too direct. |
| D．Undercover marketing will surely be banned soon by the government. |
Which of the following would be the best title for the text？
| A．Two Attractive Shoppers | B．Lorenzo Bertolla Sweatersk.&s~5*u |
| C．Ways of Advertising | D．Undercover Marketing |
important