Everybody may have seen the film “Death on the Nile (n. 尼罗河)”, but nobody can imagine that the writer of the story, Agatha Christie, saved a baby in a most unusual way.
In June 1977, a baby girl became seriously ill in Deleville. Doctors there were unable to find out the cause of her illness, so she was sent to a famous hospital in London, where there were many excellent doctors. The baby was so seriously ill that a team of doctors hurried to examine the baby without delay. The doctors, too, were puzzled by the baby’s illness and they also became discouraged. Just then a nurse asked to speak to them.
“I think the baby is suffering from thallium (n. 铊) poisoning. ” said the nurse. “A few days ago, I read a story ‘A Pale Horse’ written by Agatha Christie. Someone uses thallium poison, and all the symptoms are written in the book. They are exactly the same as the baby’s.”
“You’re very good at observing things,” said a doctor, “and you may be right. We’ll carry out some tests and find out whether the cause is thallium poisoning or not.”
The tests proved that the baby had indeed been poisoned by thallium. Once they knew the cause, the doctors were able to give her correct treatment. The baby soon got well and was sent back to Deleville A week later, it was reported that the poison might have come from an insecticide (n. 杀虫剂) used in Deleville.The baby was sent to a hospital in London because __________.
| A．her parents were living in London then |
| B．the hospitals in Deleville were full at that time |
| C．she was the daughter of a famous doctor in London |
| D．doctors in Deleville were not sure about the cause of her illness |
When the baby was first sent to the hospital in London, her illness was considered to be ____________.
| A．quite easy to treat |
| B．the result of thallium poisoning |
| C．a common one |
| D．extraordinarily serious |
From this passage it seems that the baby’s illness had something to do with __________.
| A．a dead writer |
| B．the water in Deleville |
| C．a dangerous murderer |
| D．a harmful substance (n. 物质) used to kill pests |
As far as we can tell from the story, Agatha Christie ____________.
| A．had never met this baby |
| B．had spent a long time studying the baby’s illness |
| C．visited the baby both in Deleville and London |
| D．gave the nurse some advice on the telephone |
A阅读理解
One of those big social networking sites, Facebook, has attracted over 58 million members. Commentator Melody Cramer is no longer one of them. Here is what she shares with us about her story.
I deleted all 1,281 of my coworkers, secondgrade classmates and people who I don’t know at all. I shut down my account, completely. I’m 30, and I’ve been on Facebook since March of 2004, which makes me one of the website’s earliest users.
At first, I used it obsessively. If I had a free moment, I’d log on to see whether my friends had updated their profiles. I’d sit alone scrolling through these updates and then run into someone at a coffee shop and have nothing to say because I already knew everything about them, and they knew everything about me.
In November, I went to my tenyear high school reunion and was not pleasantly surprised. Lauren became a model, Josh went to law school, Dina was a teacher. I hadn’t talked to any of them since graduation, but I knew exactly what they were doing, both now and last week. But lately, I’m overwhelmed(应接不暇). Facebook opened up to everyone, not just college students, and my coworkers started to join, which meant they now knew what I was doing when I wasn’t at work.
And as a rule: you can NOT make friends with your coworkers because then they’ll ask you the next day. But I thought we were friends. And you are friends but not the kind of friends who tell each other what they do outside of work. So now the people you work with can see what you did last night, and you’re constantly worrying what people might say about what you did last night instead of actually doing anything tonight.So Iquit. I became a 30yearold Luddite, a person who is strongly against technology development. I’ve retuned to how the world worked when I was 20, before I knew when my friends and coworkers were counting down the seconds to vacation or entering a complicated relationship. I’m hoping life will be a lot simpler now. Peoplewill be more mysterious now that I actually have to talk to them to find out their favorite books or hobbies orneurosis(神经症). I don’t know when my college roommate goes to the supermarket, and I think I’m a better person for not knowing. In fact, you could say getting off a social network was the best thing I’ve done thisweek.Melody Cramer decided to quit Facebook mainly because ______.
| A．she thought it wasted too much time |
| B．she was afraid of the strangers on her account |
| C．she was tired of exposing her life to coworkers |
| D．she thought it made realworld life less interesting |
We can learn from the passage that Melody Cramer ______.
| A．had a 10year membership of Facebook |
| B．used to be very objected to Facebook |
| C．was unpleasant to attend high school reunion |
| D．was one of the co-founders of Facebook |
Which of the following about Melody Cramer is TRUE?
| A．She owes her communication skills to Facebook. |
| B．She wishes she could be several years younger. |
| C．She prefers to face her friends and co-worders in reality. |
| D．She is no longer curious about anything around her. |
The best title for this passage can be _____.
| A．Addiction to Facebook |
| B．Farewell to Facebook |
| C．Friends Online |
| D．A Simpler Life |
“Beauty is only skin deep." This expression means that beauty is only a temporary surface quality. Some beauty products can cause lasting damage that goes far below the surface of the skin.
In America，many people use sunlight and non-natural light to darken their skin. Health experts advise against what is called“tanning”because of its links to akin cancer. In the African country of Senegal（塞内加尔），some women take health risks trying to do just the opposite.
An average beauty supply shop in Dakar has many kinds of skin-lightening creams and soaps. The World Health Organization says that 25％of Senegalese women use skin-lightening production a usual basis. These products can contain chemicals，like mercury（汞），hydroquinone（对苯二酚），etc. These are dangerous ingredients that can cause cancer and possibly other physical damage to the akin. They can actually burn the eyes and skin.
Shop worker Adama Diagne advises her visitors to avoid the stronger products that promise fast results. She users a cream that is made from carrots，not the strong chemical，hydroquinone. She says that it is a personal choice and that no one pressures her. Some women want to be black every day，but for her，she likes to be a shade of brown.
Women in Senegal say they lighten their skin for the same reason that women all over the world make changes to their appearance. They say they want to look beautiful，to find a husband to stand out in a crowd or simply to look great for a special event.
This thinking troubles Senegalese film-maker Khardiata Pouye Sall. So，she made“This Color That Bothers Me"，a film about the subject of skin lightening. She said，“I used the most shocking images so that women would see the dangers. It is hard to understand why a woman says that dark skin is not beautiful. It is in their heads. They want to please a man，to he loved or they want to please society，to succeed."
Ms. Sall says that the government needs to better control the marketing and the sale of skin-lightening products. But she adds that education is the best way to persuade people against using them.The underlined part“the opposite" in Paragraph 2 means some Senegalese women ．
| A．use sunlight to darken their skin |
| B．try creams to prevent skin cancer |
| C．use products to lighten their skin |
| D．take health risks to become beautiful |
According to Adama Diagne，women shouldn't believe ·
| A．beauty is just a personal choice |
| B．a cream from carrots is healthier |
| C．it is beautiful to be black every day |
| D．a product can make you beautiful quickly |
We can infer that women in Senegal ．
| A．attract attention with shockingimages |
| B．don't consider dark skin to be beautiful |
| C．find it hard to understand the true beauty |
| D．put beauty in the first place in their heads |
What is Sall's attitude towards skin-lightening products?
| A．Unsupportive. | B．Casual. |
| C．Responsible. | D．Positive. |
The year of 2014 saw smart people always busy inventing useful things，which have helped to
make the world better，smarter and a little more fun. Now，let's take a look at some of the inventions.
Super banana
Australian biogeneticist（生物遗传学家）James Dale
visited Uganda，a poor African country，in the early 2000s，
where he found that 15％-30% of children under 5 were at
the risk of going blind because they didn't get enough vitamin
A. Dale also learned that people there love bananas. They
eat 3 to 11 bananas a day. So hecame up with an idea to
plant bananas containing added nutrition in order to improve
Ugandans' health ．With the help of Bill Gates' foundation，Dale developed the“super banana，’·He added a gene to the fruit，making it rich in vitamin A.
Which of the following statements would James Dale agree with?
| A．Children in Uganda should eat fewer bananas. |
| B．Vitamin A is largely found in fruits like bananas. |
| C．Super bananas are definitely a safe biological product. |
| D．People's eating habits can be used to develop new food. |
What is the biggest advantage of the 94Fifty Basketball?
| A．The sensors hidden inside can help players run faster in a game. |
| B．It can help players to improve their shooting and ball-handling skills. |
| C．It allows players to connect to their smartphones while playing basketball. |
| D．The Bluetooth chip inside allows its users to listen to music while playing basketball. |
What can we learn about the hovercraft from the text?
| A．It enables its users to float off the ground freely. |
| B．It can work on many different kinds of surfaces. |
| C．It still needs to improve its power and efficiency. |
| D．It is an affordable means of transport for a family. |
What do the hovercraft and wireless electricity have in common according to the text?
| A．They create magnetic fields to produce power. |
| B．They apply technologies to many things in life. |
| C．They are technologies which can produce electricity. |
| D．They use wireless technology to improve their products. |
When I began planning to move to Auckland to study，my mother was a little worried about the uncertainty of living in a place that was so different from India，where we lived. She worried particularly about the lack of jobs，the cultural differences and the chance that I would face racism.
Despite these worries，I came to New Zealand in July 2009. I have found the place and people very nice and supportive. Soon after I arrived，I realized the importance of getting a job to supply my living expenses.
Determined to do this on my own ，I spent a whole day going from door to door asking for a job. However，I received little or no response. This became my routine every day after college for
a few weeks.
One afternoon，I walked into a building to ask if there were any job opportunities. The people there were very surprised，and advised me not to continue my job search in that manner. As I was about to leave，a clerk in the building，who had been listening to what the others had said, approached me and asked if I would wait outside. Fifteen minutes later，he returned. He asked me what my plans were and encouraged me to stay confident. He then offered to take me to the Royal Oak area to search for a job.
I was a little surprised，but had a good feeling about him，so I went along. Along the way I realized that I had run out of copies of my resume（简历）．The man stopped at his business partner's office to make me 15 extra copies. He also gave me tips on dressing and speaking，and added that I should give him, a call if I ever needed anything. I handed out my resumes and went home feeling very satisfied. The following day，I received：call from。store in Royal Oak offering me a job.
It seems that the world always gives back to you when you need it. And this time，it was a complete stranger who turned out to be a real blessing.What wasn't the author's mother worried about?
| A．People might look down on the author. |
| B．The author couldn't speak the local language. |
| C．The author wasn't familiar with local customs. |
| D．It might be difficult for the author to find a job. |
After staying in New Zealand for a short time, the author
| A．decided to go back to his own country |
| B．felt the local people were not very friendly |
| C．had to find a job to cover his living expenses |
| D．wanted to get a job that needed practical skills |
When the author went into a building to look for a job
| A．a clerk gave him encouragement and advice |
| B．he was confident that he would find a good one |
| C．he found many college students like him already there |
| D．a clerk recommended him to the company he worked for |
What is the story mainly about?
| A．How a stranger offered the author a job. |
| B．How a stranger turned out to be a real blessing. |
| C．How the author adapted himself to a new situation. |
| D．How the author was helped to get a job by a stranger. |
In April 2014，the world's oldest known message in a bottle was discovered floating in theBaltic Sea. It had spent 101 years lost in the ocean！The message was finally sent to the author's granddaughter.
A German fisherman named Konrad Fischer found the brown bottle near Kiel，Germany. He said he nearly threw the bottle back into the water after pulling it out of a fishing net. Then he noticed something inside.
The bottle in good condition contained a Danish postcard with two German stamps，dated May 17，1913. Although dampness had made most of the writing illegible（字迹模糊的），thereadable part of the message asked whoever found it to return it to an address in Berlin. It even contained two stamps to pay for postage.
From the address，researchers found that the postcard was written by a man named Richard Platz，who was 20 years old when he wrote the message. While he was hiking on the Baltic coast with a nature appreciation group，he threw the bottle into the sea. Then the researchers began a search for any living relatives of his. Sure enough，they were able to find his 62-year-old granddaughter，Angela Erdmann，who still lives in Berlin.
“It was almost unbelievable，”Erdmann said upon being presented with her grandfather's bottle and message.“That was a pretty moving moment. Tears rolled down my face."
Erdmann never knew her grandfather，who died in 1946，but says that the discovery of the bottle has made her want to learn more about him.
The bottle remained on display at the International Maritime Museum in Hamburg until May 1 ．After that，the researchers examined the postcard and tried to figure out the meaning of the rest of the message.
Previously，the oldest message found in a bottle spent nearly 98 years at sea and was discovered in April 2012，according to Guinness World Records.When Konrad Fischer picked up the bottle from the sea， ．
| A．he thought it would bring him good luck |
| B．he noticed the postcard inside immediately |
| C．he decided to uncover the secret of the bottle |
| D．he wanted to throw it back into the sea at first |
Why did Richard Platz throw the bottle with the message into the sea?
| A．He expected his granddaughter could find the postcard. |
| B．He wished the finder would send the postcard to his home. |
| C．He believed his postcard would be kept secret at sea forever. |
| D．He thought he could make friends with the finder of the bottle. |
What can be the best title for this passage？
| A．The finding of a floating bottle at the sea |
| B．A one-century-old letter to a granddaughter |
| C．The world's oldest message in a floating bottle |
| D．The oldest Danish postcard in a floating bottle |