The deserts of the world are not all covered with sand. Many of them have surfaces of rock or clay or small stones. They are not flat, either. They often have high hills and deep valleys. There is some plants’ life in many parts of the desert. There is little rain in the desert, but it does fall often enough for most plants.
The deserts of the world are not uninhabited (not lived by people). People also live outside oases(绿洲), but these people are not farmers. They have camels, goats, donkeys, sheep, etc. These animals can live on the desert plants and do not need much water.
The people of the desert have to move constantly from place to place, they must always look for grass or desert plants for their animals. They usually live in tents. When there is no more food for their animals, they fold up their tents, pat them on their camels and donkeys, and move to another place. In good years, when there is enough food for their animals, they trade their skins and their goats and camel hairs with the people of oases for wheat and fruit. But in bad years, when there is not enough food for their animals, the people of the desert would attack the oases people. But they are also hospitable, no man in the desert would ever refuse to give a stranger food and water.The underlined word “hospitable” has the meaning of being _______.
| A．brave | B．cruel | C．strange | D．kind |
In the desert _______.
| A．it rains in spring only |
| B．it rains for a short time every month |
| C．there is some rain, but far from enough |
| D．the rainfall is just enough for the plants |
People live _______.
| A．only inside the oases |
| B．only outside the oases |
| C．both inside and outside the oases |
| D．in places with regular rainfalls |
Powered by courage and determination，Felicity Aston,33，became the first person to ski alone across Antarctica on 15，Jan,2012.
Aston finished the 59day trip almost exactly a century after Roald Amundsen first reached the South Pole in 1911.Aston crossed 1,084 miles from the Ross Ice Shelf to Hercules Inlet.
Aston，a freelance travel writer，and explorer，faced temperatures that averaged－25 degrees as she pulled two sleds across the ice and thick snow on her nearly twomonth trip. The scariest moment came when her two lighters failed to work while she was in the Transantarctic Mountains. The lighters started working again at lower altitudes.
While early Antarctic explorers were cut off from the outside world，Aston's access to a satellite phone meant that friends and family could follow her online as she regularly tweeted(在Twitter上发微博)and made almost daily podcasts(播客)about her journey. An interactive map showed Aston's progress in real time. And while she skied，Aston listened to bands.
On New Year's Eve she noted that there would be no champagne.“No wine with me to toast the new year but treating myself to spoonfuls of the peanut butter，” Aston tweeted as the new year approached.
In Aston's last podcast，the emotional traveler recorded after she reached Hercules Inlet, “I seem to have got here in a rush or something and I don't really feel prepared for it，”said Aston.“It feels amazing to be finished and greatly sad that it's over at the same time.”
Weather permitting，Aston will return home today where she says she is looking forward to some “red wine and a hot shower”．What is Aston's most possible purpose to ski alone across Antarctica?
| A．To memorize human's arrival at the South Pole. |
| B．To become the first woman to cross the South Pole. |
| C．To make an exploration by herself and write about it. |
| D．To explore Antarctica and do science researches. |
What is the difference between Aston's trip and the early explorers'?
| A．She brought an electronic map with her. |
| B．She was monitored by a special satellite. |
| C．She suffered much lower temperatures. |
| D．She was followed online all through the trip. |
It was the most difficult for Aston when ________.
| A．the temperatures fell below－25 degrees |
| B．her two lighters failed to work in mountains. |
| C．there was no champagne on New Year's Eve |
| D．her trip across Antarctica was coming to an end |
Aston feels ________ about the ending of her trip.
| A．depressed and sorry |
| B．amazed but sad |
| C．excited and proud |
| D．tired but cheerful |
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。
If cars had wings，they could fly and that just might happen，beginning in 2011.The company Terrafugia，based in Woburn，Massachusetts，says it plans to deliver its carplane，the Transition，to customers by the end of 2011.
“It's the next ‘wow’ vehicle，” said Terrafugia vice president Richard Gersh.“Anybody can buy a Ferrari，but as we say，Ferraris don't fly.”
The carplane has wings that unfold for flying－a process the company says takes one minute－and fold back up for driving. A runway is still required to take off and land.
The Transition is being marketed more as a plane that drives than a car that flies，although it is both. The company has been working with FAA to meet aircraft regulations，and with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to meet vehicle safety regulations.
The company is aiming to sell the Transition to private pilots as a more convenient and cheaper way to fly. They say it saves you the trouble from trying to find another mode of transportation to get to and from airports：You drive the car to the airport and then you're good to go. When you land，you fold up the wings and hit the road. There are no expensive parking fees because you don't have to store it at an airport－you park it in the garage at home.
The carplane is designed to fly primarily under 10,000 feet. It has a maximum takeoff weight of 1,430 pounds，including fuel and passengers. Terrafugia says the Transition reduces the potential for an accident by allowing pilots to drive under the bad weather instead of flying into marginal(临界的) conditions.
The Transition's price tag：$194,000.But there may be additional charges for options like a radio，a transponder or a GPS. Another option is a fullplane parachute.
“If you get into a very awful situation，it is the necessary safety option，” Gersh said.
So far，the company has more than 70 orders with deposits. “We're working very closely with them，but there are still some remaining steps，” Brown said.We can learn from the first two paragraphs that ________.
| A．carplanes will be popular in 2011 |
| B．people might drive a carplane in 2011 |
| C．both the Transition and Ferrari can take off and land |
| D．Richard Gersh is the vice president of Massachusetts |
It takes the carplane one minute to ________.
| A．fold and unfold its wings |
| B．unfold wings for flying |
| C．land in the airport |
| D．meet flying safety regulations |
According to the passage，which of the following is NOT true?
A．The carplane needs a runway to take off and land.
B．To meet aircraft regulations，the company has been working with FAA.
C．The carplane may fly as high as normal planes.
D．People can park the carplane in the garage at their home.The underlined word “it” in the last but one paragraph refers to ________.
| A．the radio |
| B．the transponder |
| C．the GPS |
| D．the fullplane parachute |
What's the best title for the passage?
| A．Cars with wings may be just around the corner |
| B．Which to choose：a Ferrari or a carplane? |
| C．A more convenient and cheaper way to fly |
| D．Cars with wings can fly as fast as planes |
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。
Environmentalists said our planet was doomed to die. Now one man says they are wrong.
“Everyone knows the planet is in bad shape，”thundered a magazine article last year. Species(物种) are being driven to die out at record rates，and the rivers are so poisonous that fish are floating on the surface，dead.
But there's a growing belief that what everyone takes for granted is wrong：things are actually getting better. A new book is about to overturn our most basic assumptions about the world's environment. Rivers，seas，rain and the atmosphere are all getting cleaner. The total amount of forests in the world is not declining. The Skeptical Environmentalist by Bjorn Lomborg，professor of statistics at the University of Aarhus in Denmark，is an attack on the misleading claims of environmental groups，and the “bad news” culture that makes people believe everything is getting worse.
Now the attacks are increasingly coming from leftwing environmentalists such as Lomborg，a former member of Greenpeace. The accusation is that，although the environment is improving，green groups－with profits of hundreds of millions of pounds a year－are using scare tactics(谋略) to gain donations. Lomborg's book doesn't deny global warmingprobably the biggest environmental threat－but destroys almost every other environmental claim with many official statistics.
The Worldwatch Institute claims that “deforestation has been accelerating over the last 30 years”．But Lomborg says that is simply rubbish. Since the dawn of agriculture the world has lost about 20 per cent of its forest cover，but in recent decades the forest area's depleting has come to a stop. According to UN figures，the area of forests has remained almost steady，at about 30 per cent of total land area，since the 1940s.Forests in countries such as the US，the UK and Canada have actually been expanding over the past 40 years. Despite all the warnings the Amazon rainforest has only shrunk(缩小) by about 15 per cent.
Nor are all our species dying out. Some campaigners claim that 50 per cent of all species will have died out within 50 years. But other studies show only 0.08 per cent of species are dying out each year. Conservation efforts have been successful. Whales are no longer threatened and the bald eagle is off the endangered list.
Environmental groups claim that many of the improvements are the results of the success of their campaigns. Stephen Tindale，director of Greenpeace UK，said，“There are important examples，such as acid rain and ozone，where things aren't as bad as predicted，and that's because behavior has changed.”In his book，The Skeptical Environmentalist，what is Lomborg's main argument?
| A．Our planet is in bad shape. |
| B．The world's environment is improving. |
| C．The total amount of forests in the world is not declining. |
| D．Conservation efforts have been successful. |
What is Lomborg's main accusation of environmentalists?
| A．They scared people into making donations. |
| B．They overturned our basic assumptions about the world's environment. |
| C．They changed their behavior toward the environment. |
| D．They only told people bad news about the environment. |
The underlined word “depleting” in Paragraph 5 is closest in meaning to “________”．
| A．reducing |
| B．limiting |
| C．expanding |
| D．accelerating |
According to the passage，which of the following statements is true?
| A．The total area of forests in the world has increased significantly. |
| B．The effects of global warming are not as bad as first expected. |
| C．It appears that the bald eagle will survive. |
| D．In the last 50 years the number of whales has increased. |
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。
We may all have had the embarrassing moment：Getting halfway through a story only to realize that we've told this exact tale before，to the person we're boring with it now. Why do we make such memory mistakes?
According to a research published in Psychological Science，it may have to do with the way our brains process different types of memory.
Researchers Nigel Gopie，of the Rotman Research Institute in Toronto，and Colin Macleod，of the University of Waterloo，divided memory into two kinds. The first was source memory，or the ability to keep track of where information is coming from. The second was destination memory，or the ability to recall who we have given information to.
They found that source memory functions better than destination memory，in part because of the direction in which that information is travelling.
To study the differences between source and destination memory，the researchers did an experiment on 60 university students，according to a New York Times report. The students were asked to associate 50 random(随意的) facts with the faces of 50 famous people. Half of the students “told” each fact to one of the faces，reading it aloud when the celebrity's picture appeared on a computer screen. The other half read each fact silently and saw a different celebrity picture afterward.
When later asked to recall which facts went with which faces，the students who were giving information out (destination memory) scored about 16 percent lower on memory performance compared with the students receiving information(source memory)．
The researchers concluded that outgoing information was less associated with its environmental context(背景)－that is，the person－than was incoming information.
This makes sense given what is known about attention. A person who is giving information，even little facts，will devote some mental resources to thinking about what is being said. Because our attention is finite(有限的)，we give less attention to the person we are giving information to.
After a second experiment with another group of 40 students，the researchers concluded that selffocus is another factor that undermines destination memory.
They asked half the students to continue giving out random information，while the other told things about themselves. This time around，those who were talking about themselves did 15 percent worse than those giving random information.
“When you start telling these personal facts compared with nonself facts，suddenly destination memory goes down more，suggesting that it is the selffocus component(成分) that's reducing the memory，”Gopie told Live Science.The point of this article is to ________.
| A．give advice on how to improve memory |
| B．say what causes the memory to worsen |
| C．explain why we repeat stories to the same person |
| D．introduce different kinds of memories |
Those who read each fact silently and saw a different celebrity picture afterward ______.
| A．can memorize more information |
| B．have worse memory |
| C．are more likely to repeat stories |
| D．paid more attention to themselves |
The person who is giving information ________.
| A．may receive little facts |
| B．focuses more on what he is saying |
| C．has finite attention |
| D．pays much attention to his own behavior |
The underlined word “undermines” probably means ________.
| A．weakens |
| B．benefits |
| C．explains |
| D．supports |
What did the scientists conclude from the second experiment?
| A．Destination memory is weaker than source memory. |
| B．Focusing attention on oneself leads to relatively poor source memory performance. |
| C．Associating personal experience with information helps people memorize better. |
| D．Selffocus is responsible for giving information twice or more to the same person. |
“I never expected that I would be so busy. Why can't there be 25 hours in a day？” complained Liu Ran in Hong Kong as midterm exams were going on.
The 18yearold was Shandong Province's top scorer in this year's college entrance examination. After graduating from Tai'an No.1 High School，she chose the Chinese University of Hong Kong (香港中文大学)，although both Peking University and Tsinghua University promised her a place.
“I want to experience a more international school and social life in Hong Kong. I'm majoring in journalism，so Hong Kong will surely help widen my horizons，” Liu said.
It is two months since Liu first set foot on Hong Kong. She missed home a lot at the beginning，because of the food and language problems.
“The canteen offers mostly western or Guangdong food，but it's convenient to cook for ourselves in our dorm if we like. People speak Cantonese and almost all classes are in English，” Liu explained.
Her English and Cantonese are now both improving，but she still needs more time to adapt to the new environment.
“I'm happy that I made the right decision to study here. With a mix of the Eastern and Western cultures，there is so much to discover and learn，” she said.
Liu has 18 credit hours(学分)of classes every week and 23 noncredit hours every other week. She has signed up for four associations including the Chinese Language Debating Team and the drama club. Essays，book reports and presentations also take plenty of time to prepare. And，of course，there are various parties to attend.
“I wasn't a party animal before，but that may be interesting part of college. I sense myself changing，” Liu said.Liu Ran chose the Chinese University of Hong Kong，because________.
| A．she couldn't be admitted to Peking University |
| B．Hong Kong is a good place to learn Eastern cultures |
| C．she wants to be far from her homeland |
| D．Hong Kong can widen her horizons |
According to the passage，we can infer________.
| A．Liu Ran still doesn't like attending parties |
| B．Liu Ran hates the busy life in the Chinese University of Hong Kong |
| C．Liu Ran likes the food of Hong Kong |
| D．the full life makes Liu Ran feel good |
Liu Ran had to overcome the difficulties in many aspects EXCEPT________.
| A．food |
| B．language |
| C．missing home |
| D．no friends |