“Mum, what does it mean when someone tells you that they have a skeleton(骨骼)in the closet(衣橱)?” Jessica asked. “A skeleton in the closet?” her mother paused thoughtfully. “Well, it’s something that you would rather not have anyone else know about. For example, if in the past, someone in Dad’s family had been arrested for stealing a horse, it would be ‘a skeleton in his family’s closet’. He really wouldn’t want any neighbor to know about it.”
“Why pick on my family?” Jessica’s father said with anger. “Your family history isn’t so good, you know. Wasn’t your great-great-grandfather a prisoner who was transported to Australia for his crimes?” “Yes, but people these days say that you are not a real Australian unless your ancestors arrived as prisoners.” “Gosh, sorry I asked. I think I understand now,” Jessica cut in before things grew worse.
After dinner, the house was very quiet. Jessica’s parents were still quite angry with each other. Her mother was ironing clothes and every now and then she glared at her husband, who hid behind his newspaper pretending to read. When she finished, she gathered the freshly pressed clothes in her arms and walked to Jessica’s closet. Just as she opened the door and reached in to hang a skirt, a bony arm stuck out from the dark depths and a bundle of white bones fell to the floor. Jessica’s mother sank in a faint(晕倒), waking only when Jessica put a cold, wet cloth on her forehead. She looked up to see the worried faces of her husband and daughter.
“What happened? Where am I?” she asked. “You just destroyed the school’s skeleton, Mum,” explained Jessica. “I brought it home to help me with my health project. I meant to tell you, but it seemed that as soon as I mentioned skeletons and closets, it caused a problem between you and Dad.” Jessica looked in amazement as her parents began to laugh madly. “They’re both crazy,” she thought.According to Jessica’s mother, “a skeleton in the closet” means ______.
A.a family honor | B.a family secret |
C.a family story | D.a family treasure |
What can we learn about some Australians’ ancestors form Paragraph 2?
A.They were brought to Australia as prisoners. |
B.They were the earliest people living in Australia. |
C.They were involved in some crimes in Australia. |
D.They were not regarded as criminals in their days. |
Why did Jessica bring a skeleton home?
A.She was curious about it. |
B.She planned to keep it for fun. |
C.She needed it for her school task. |
D.She intended to scare her parents. |
Jessica’s parents laughed madly at the end of the story probably because ______.
A.they were crazy |
B.they were over excited |
C.they realized their misunderstanding |
D.they both thought they had won the quarrel |
I used to watch her from my kitchen window. She seemed so small as she muscled her way through the crowd of boys on the playground. The school was across the street from our home and I would often watch the kids as they played during break. I remember the first day I saw her playing basketball. I watched in wonder as she ran circles around the other kids. She managed to shoot jump shots just over their heads and into the net. The boys always tried to stop her but no one could. I began to notice her at other times, basketball in hand, playing alone.
One day I asked her why she practiced so much. Without a moment of hesitation she said, “I want to go to college. The only way I can go is to get a scholarship. I am going to play college basketball. I want to be the best. My Daddy told me if the dream is big enough, the facts don’t count.” Well, I had to give it to her—she was determined. I watched her through those junior high years and into high school. Every week, she led her school team to victory.
One day in her senior year, I saw her sitting in the grass, head in her arms. I walked across the street and sat down in the cool grass beside her. Quietly I asked what was wrong. “Oh, nothing,” came a soft reply, “I am just too short.” The coach told her that at 5’5” she would probably never get to play for a top ranked team—much less offered a scholarship—so she should stop dreaming about college. She was heartbroken and I felt my own throat tighten as I sensed her disappointment. I asked her if she had talked to her dad about it yet. She told me that her father said those coaches were wrong. They just did not understand the power of a dream. He told her that if she truly wanted a scholarship and that nothing could stop her except one thing — her own attitude.
The next year, as she and her team went to the Northern California Championship game, she was offered a scholarship and on the college team. She was going to get the college education that she had dreamed of.The author was probably the girl’s .
A.neighbor | B.friend | C.mother | D.teacher |
Why was the girl heartbroken?
A.She was considered too short to be a top player. |
B.Her coach stopped her training because of her height. |
C.She couldn’t be on a college basketball team. |
D.She wouldn’t be admitted by an ideal college. |
We can learn from the passage that .
A.her family wouldn’t like to pay her college fee |
B.her father forced her to play basketball in collage |
C.being a top basketball player can win you a scholarship for college |
D.she wouldn’t like to turn to his father for help when in difficulty |
Which word can best describe her father?
A.Encouraging. | B.Optimistic. | C.Stubborn. | D.Cruel. |
Which proverb best matches the story?
A.Practice makes perfect. | B.Rome was not built in a day. |
C.Where there is a will, there is a way. | D.Pride comes before a fall. |
For some people, the sight of a mouse can be reason to scream. For other mice, the same sight can be reason to sing.
Mice will probably 21sing their way to any concert, but researchers in the United States have found 22that mice do, 23, sing.
Scientists already knew that mice make ultrasonic(超声波) sounds—noises that are too high-pitched(高音的) for people to hear 24special equipment.
To find out whether mice put such sounds together in song-like 25, the researchers recorded the sounds of 1 mice. Using computer 26, they were able to separate the sounds into specific types of syllables(音节), and found the mice produced about 10 syllables per second.
The results showed that nearly all of the mice repeated sequences(顺序) of syllables in different patterns. That’s enough to meet the definition of what scientists 27song. But not all scientists are 28 _ that what the mice are doing is 29singing. To prove it, the researchers must show that there’s learning involved. And, they need to __ 30why the mice sing.
21. A. almost B. even C. never D. usually
22. A. coincidence B. evidence C. guidance D. instance
23. A. at once B. by means C. for example D. in fact
24. A. during B. inside C. through D. without
25. A. fashions B. instructions C. patterns D. styles
26. A. access B. printer C. screen D. software
27. A. call B. hear C. sing D. write
28. A. accustomed B. convinced C. involved D. qualified
29. A. actually B. obviously C. simply D. unlikely
30. A. figure out B. get about C. run across D. talk over
One day last September, as Britney Spears was about to board a flight to Los Angeles from London, a blue bottle fell out of her purse. She quickly put it back in, but not before the camera recorded the event. Neither Spears nor her spokesman was willing to comment on the contents of the bottle, but the next morning London’s Daily Express published a page of pictures under the headline “EXCLUSIVE: POP PRINCESS SPOTTED AT AIRPORT WITH POT OF SLIMMING TABLETS.” Spears was apparently carrying Zantrex-3, one of the most popular weight-loss pills now sold in the United States. The pill, which is sold at about fifty dollars for a month’s supply, contains a huge amount of caffeine, some green tea, and three common South American herbs that also act as stimulants (兴奋剂). It hit the U.S. market last March and has had a success that would be hard to overstate. Millions of bottles have been sold, and during the Christmas season it was displayed in the windows of the nation’s largest chain of vitamin shops, G.N.C. (It is so highly sought after that many of the stores keep it in locked counters.) Zantrex-3 is also sold at CVS, RiteAid, Wal-Mart, and other chains, and over the telephone and on the Internet. If you type “Zantrex” into Google, more than a hundred thousand pieces of information about it will appear. At any moment, there are scores of people sell it on eBay.
Perhaps the most interesting thing about the success story of Zantrex-3, however, is that it is far from unique. There are hundreds of similar products on the market today, and they are bought by millions of Americans. And though Zantrex’s producer makes some exciting statements (“the most advanced weight control compound (化合物)period”), so do the people who sell Stacker 2 and Anorex along with those who sell Carb Eliminator and Fat Eliminator. Almost all of these compounds suggest that they can help people lose weight and regain lost energy, and often without diet, exercise, or any other effort.
51. Britney Spears is a / an______.
A. dancer B. singer C. athlete D. chemist
52. Which of the following is also a kind of weight-loss pill?
A. CVS B. Rite Aid C. Wal-Mart D. Anorex
53. The underlined part of the sentence in the first paragraph is most likely similar in meaning to ______.
A. it is difficult to say how successful Zantrex-3 is
B. you can’t overstate the success of Zantrex-3
C. you can’t think too highly of the success of Zantrex-3
D. Zantrex-3 is not very successful
54. From the second paragraph we know that ______ .
A. Zantrex-3 is one of the successful weight-loss pills on the US market
B. Zantrex-3 is the most successful weight-loss pills on the US market
C. Zantrex-3 is the only weight-loss pill on the US market
D. there are five kinds of weight-loss pills on the US market
55. The text mainly tells us ______.
A. when Britney Spears was found taking weight-loss pills with her
B. how Zantrex-3 became successful in the USA
C. weight-loss pills are very popular in the USA
D. Zantrex-3 is forbidden to be sold on the US market
Most mornings, the line begins to form at dawn: scores of silent women with babies on their backs, buckets balanced on their heads, and in each hand a bright-blue plastic jug. On good days, they will wait less than an hour before a water tanker goes across the dirt path that serves as a road in Kesum Purbahari, a slum on the southern edge of New Delhi. On bad days, when there is no electricity for the pumps, the tankers don’t come at all. “That water kills people,” a young mother named Shoba said one recent Saturday morning, pointing to a row of pails filled with thick, caramel (焦糖)-colored liquid. “Whoever drinks it will die.” The water was from a pipe shared by thousands of people in the poor neibourhood. Women often use it to wash clothes and bathe their children, but nobody is desperate enough to drink it.
There is no standard for how much water a person needs each day, but experts usually put the minimum at fifty litres. The government of India promises (but rarely provides) forty. Most people drink two or three litres—less than it takes to wash a toilet. The rest is typically used for cooking and bathing. Americans consume between four hundred and six hundred litres of water each day, more than any other people on earth. Most Europeans use less than half that. The women of Kesum Purbahari each hoped to drag away a hundred litres that day—two or three buckets’ worth. Shoba has a husband and five children, and that much water doesn’t go far in a family of seven, particularly when the temperature reaches a hundred and ten degrees before noon. She often makes up the difference with bottled water, which costs more than water delivered any other way. Sometimes she just buys milk; it’s cheaper. Like the poorest people everywhere, the people of New Delhi’s slums spend a far greater percentage of their incomes on water than anyone lucky enough to live in a house connected to a system of pipes.
46. The underlined word “slum” most likely means ______.
A. a village
B. a small town
C. an area of a town with badly-built, over-crowded buildings
D. the part of a town that lacks water badly
47. Sometimes the water tanker doesn’t come because ______.
A. the weather is bad
B. there is no electricity
C. there is no water
D. people don’t want the dirty water
48. A person needs at least ________ litres of water a day.
A. a hundred B. four hundred C. forty D. fifty
49. Which of the following statements is wrong?
A. a hundred litres of water a day is enough for Shoba’s family
B. Americans uses the largest amount of water each day
C. in Kesum Purbahari milk is cheaper than bottled water
D. Shoba has a family of seven people
50. The passage mainly tells us ______.
A. how women in Kesum Purbahari gets their water
B. how much water a day a person deeds
C. that India lacks water badly
D. how India government manages to solve the problem of water
Saturday, October 7th, was a marathon of sad tasks for Anna Politkovskaya. Two weeks earlier, her father, a retired official in the department of foreign affairs, had died of a heart attack as he emerged from the Moscow Metro while on his way to visit Politkovskaya’s mother, Raisa Mazepa, in the hospital. She had just been diagnosed(诊断) with cancer and was too weak even to attend her husband’s funeral. “Your father will forgive me, because he knows that I have always loved him,” she told Anna and her sister, Elena Kudimova, the day he was buried. A week later, she had an operation and since then Anna and Elena had been taking turns helping her deal with her grief.
Politkovskaya was supposed to spend the day at the hospital, but her twenty-six-year-old daughter, who was pregnant, had just moved into Politkovskaya’s apartment, on Lesnaya Street, while her own place was being prepared for the baby. “Anna had so much on her mind,” Elena Kudimova told me when we met in London, before Christmas. “And she was trying to finish her article.” Politkovskaya was a special reporter for the small newspaper Novaya Gazeta, and, like most of her work, the piece focused on the terror that can be seen all over the southern republic of Chechnya. This time, she had been trying to report repeated cruel acts done by people faithful to the Prime Minister, Ramzan Kadyrov, who are in favour of Russia. In the past seven years, Politkovskaya had written dozens of accounts of life during wartime; many had been collected in her book “A Small Corner of Hell: reports from Chechnya.” Politkovskaya was far more likely to spend time in a hospital than on a battlefield, and her writing bore frequent witness to robbery, and the uncontrolled cruelty of life in a place that few other Russians—and almost no other reporters—cared to think about.
41. Politkovskaya’s father died of ______.
A. tiredness B. a heart disease C. an attack D. an accident
42. From the text we know that Raisa Mazepa ______.
A. didn’t love her husband
B. didn’t attend her husband’s funeral
C. was having an operation the day her husband was buried
D. was too sad to attend her husband’s funeral
43. The underlined word “emerged” most likely means ______.
A. came out B. went into C. disappeared D. left for
44. How many family members of Anna are mentioned in the passage?
A. Three. B. Four C. Five D. Six
45. Which of the following words can best describe Politkovskaya’s character?
A. Curious B. easy-going C. careless D. responsible