Every year thousands of tourists visit Pompeii, Italy. They see the sights that Pompeii is famous for-its stadium and theatres, its shops and restaurants. The tourists do not, however, see Pompeii’s people. They do not see them because Pompeii has no people. No one has lived in Pompeii for almost 2000 years.
Once, Pompeii was a busy city of 22,000 people. It lay at the foot of Mount Vesuvius, a grass-covered volcano. Mount Vesuvius had not erupted for centuries, so the people of Pompeii felt safe, But they were not.
In August of AD 79 , Mount Vesuvius erupted. The entire top of the mountain exploded, and a huge black cloud rose into the air. Soon stones and hot ash began to fall on Pompeii . When the eruption ended , Pompeii was hurried under 20 feet of stones and ashes. Almost all of its people were dead.
For centuries, Pompeii lay buried under stone and ash. Then, in the year 1861,an Italian scientist named Ginseppe began to uncover Pompeii. Slowly, carefully, Ginseppe and his men dug. The city looked almost the same as it had looked in AD79 , There were streets and fountains, houses and shops, There was a stadium with 20,000 seats , Perhaps the most important of all, there were everyday objects, which tell us a great deal about the people who lived in Pompeii. Many glasses and jars had some dark blue color in the bottom, so we know that the people of Pompeii liked wine, They liked bread, too; metal bread pans were in the bakery .In one bakery there were 81 round , flat loaves of bread –a type of bread that is still sold in Italy today . Tiny boxes filled with a dark, shiny powder tell us that women liked to wear eye-makeup.Why do large numbers of people come to Pompeii each year?
| A．To find the volcano |
| B．To shop and eat there |
| C．To watch sports and plays |
| D．To see how Pompeians lived |
Why did the city uncovered look almost the same as it had looked in AD 79?
| A．Ginseppe and his men dug it slowly and carefully. |
| B．The city was buried alive and remained untouched. |
| C．Scientists successfully rebuilt the city with everyday objects. |
| D．Nobody had lived in the city ever since the volcano erupted. |
What do we know about the Pompeians who lived 2000 years ago?
| A．They lived more or less the same as Italians now do . |
| B．They liked women wearing all kinds of makeup. |
| C．They enjoyed a lazy life with drinking and eating. |
| D．They went back to Pompeii after the eruption in AD79. |
Three Boys and a Dad
Brad closed the door slowly as Sue left home to visit her mother. Expecting a whole day to relax, he was thinking whether to read the newspaper or watch his favorite TV talk show on his first day off in months. “This will be like a walk in the park,” he’d told his wife. “I’ll look after the kids, and you can go visit your mom.”
Things started well, but just after eight o’clock, his three little “good kids”—Mike, Randy, and Alex—came down the stairs in their night clothes and shouted “breakfast, daddy.” When food had not appeared within thirty seconds, Randy began using his spoon on Alex’s head as if it were a drum. Alex started to shout loudly in time to the beat（节拍）. Mike chanted “Where’s my toast, where’s my toast” in the background. Brad realized his newspaper would have to wait for a few seconds.
Life became worse after breakfast. Mike wore Randy’s underwear on his head. Randy locked himself in the bathroom, while Alex shouted again because he was going to wet his pants. Nobody could find clean socks, although they were before their very eyes. Someone named “Not Me” had spilled a whole glass of orange juice into the basket of clean clothes. Brad knew the talk show had already started.
By ten o’clock, things were out of control. Alex was wondering why the fish in the jar refused his bread and butter. Mike was trying to show off his talent by decorating the kitchen wall with his color pencils. Randy, thankfully, appeared to be reading quietly in the family room，but closer examination showed that he was eating apple jam straight from the bottle with his hands. Brad realized that the talk show was over and reading would be impossible.
At exactly 11:17, Brad called the daycare centre (日托所）.“I suddenly have to go into work and my wife’s away. Can I bring the boys over in a few minutes?” The answer was obviously “yes” because Brad was smiling.When his wife left home. Brad expected to .
| A．go out for a walk in the park |
| B．watch TV talk show with his children |
| C．enjoy his first day off work |
| D．read the newspaper to his children |
Which of the following did Randy do?
| A．Drawing on the wall | B．Eating apple jam |
| C．Feeding the fish. | D．Reading in a room |
Why did Brad ask the daycare centre for help?
| A．Because he wanted to clean up his house. |
| B．Because he suddenly had to go to his office |
| C．Because he found it hard to manage his boys home. |
| D．Because he had to take his wife back |
This text is developed .
| A．by space | B．by comparison | C．by process | D．by time |
What brings a nation together? Of the four choices — shared values, language, history, and religion, it’s shared values. In our latest poll (民意调査), seven out of 16 countries chose values as the greatest factor (因素）bringing a nation together, and six preferred language. Both choices scored high in the poll, suggesting that our values and how we express them are closely linked .Still, history was not forgotten in some countries, particularly in Mexico and Russia. Even Canada and the United States chose national histories as the second-most important factor uniting their people. The biggest surprise? Not one country picked religion as its top choice.
| Respect your elders In most countries, the oldest generation considered values more important to a nation than did those who are under 45 years old. |
Do you speak Canadian? Language scored lower in Canada than in all other countries polled, perhaps because the country speaks two official languages, French and English. |
Church and state Most people polled do not connect their religious beliefs to their national pride. Religion ranked last in 13 countries — with France scoring it at 1%, the lowest of all. |
According to the poll, what was the most important factor in bringing a nation together?
| A．Language. | B．Values. | C．History. | D．Religion. |
In which country did language score the lowest in their national pride?
| A．Canada. | B．Mexico. | C．France. | D．America. |
According to the charts, shared values and language were considered equally important in .
| A．Australia | B．Brazil | C．China | D．India |
Diet Coke, diet Pepsi, diet pills, no-fat diet, vegetable diet .... We are surrounded by the word “diet” everywhere we look and listen. We have so easily been attracted by the promise and potential of diet products that we have stopped thinking about what diet products are doing to us. We are paying for products that harm us psychologically and physically.
Diet products significantly weaken us psychologically. On one level, we are not allowing our brains to admit that our weight problems lie not in actually losing the weight, but in controlling the consumption of fatty, high-calorie, unhealthy foods. Diet products allow us to jump over the thinking stage and go straight for the scale(秤) instead. All we have to do is to swallow or recognize the word “diet” in food labels.
On another level, diet products have greater psychological effects. Every time we have a zero-calorie drink, we are telling ourselves without our awareness that we don’t have to work to get results. Diet products make people believe that gain comes without pain, and that life can be without resistance and struggle.
The danger of diet products lies not only in the psychological effects they have on us, but also in the physical harm that they cause. Diet foods can indirectly harm our bodies because consuming them instead of healthy foods means we are preventing our bodies from having basic nutrients. Diet foods and diet pills contain zero calorie only because the diet industry has created chemicals to produce these wonder products. Diet products may not be nutritional, and the chemicals that go into diet products are potentially dangerous.
Now that we are aware of the effects that diet products have on us, it is time to seriously think about buying them. Losing weight lies in the power of minds, not in the power of chemicals. Once we realize this, we will be much better able to resist diet products, and therefore prevent the psychological and physical harm that comes from using them.From Paragraph 1, we learn that ______.
| A．diet products fail to bring out people’s potential |
| B．people have difficulty in choosing diet products |
| C．diet products are misleading people |
| D．people are fed up with diet products |
One psychological effect of diet products is that people tend to ______.
| A．try out a variety of diet foods |
| B．hesitate before they enjoy diet foods |
| C．pay attention to their own eating habits |
| D．watch their weight rather than their diet |
In Paragraph 3, “gain comes without pain” probably means ______.
| A．diet products bring no pain |
| B．it costs a lot to lose weight |
| C．losing weight is effortless |
| D．diet products are free from calories |
Diet products indirectly harm people physically because such products ______.
| A．are over-consumed |
| B．lack basic nutrients |
| C．are short of chemicals |
| D．provide too much energy |
Apparently，we are safe neither at home nor in the business office．We use water in both places，but the research shows that chemicals added to our local water supply to kill harmful bacteria can have unwanted side effects．These chemicals can cause potential harm through drinking and in seemingly harmless activities as cleaning one’s house．They are released(set free)from water by daily actions like water running out of tap，spraying from garden pipes，or splashing in dishwashers and washing machines．As the water is moving．these chemicals are released into the air and then breathed in. Once inside our bodies, they start to affect our health.
Does this mean we should stop bathing? No, say the scientists, but we should put all pollution into perspective. Activities at home such as the burning of coal, cooking oil, or even candles release carbon monoxide and particulates such as cigarette ashes which have been proven as harmful to health as working or living near heavy traffic. New tugs, bedding, and even clothing give off that“new smell, ”which is a sure sign of chemicals. In the office, newly applied paint, newly purchased telephones and other telecommunications equipment, and computers release polluting chemicals, too. As offices and homes often have inadequate ventilation (通风), these chemicals can build up to become health problems. Their poisonous effects are only now being slowly recognized.
These facts suggest that, at a minimum, proper airing of newly purchased goods with an obvious chemical smell is a wise warning. Home and office windows should be opened during good weather. Even one’s car needs to be ventilated as well while in the garage.
We need further research to understand better other potential health dangers, too. For example, the effects of overcrowding of schools (carbon dioxide build-up ), the factory work environment ( an endless list of potentially dangerous substances ), and even home heating and cooling (the air conditioner may be our enemies, not our friends) have only recently started to come to light. Until we understand the effects of our new technological environment better, we can only hope that“there is no place like home.”What is the main idea of the first paragraph?
| A．The air we breathe in is harmful. |
| B．The water in everyday use is unsafe. |
| C．Chemicals are added to the drinking water. |
| D．Chemicals are released in the running water. |
In Paragraph 2, the underlined sentence means that.
| A．bathing should be done with caution |
| B．homes and offices should be aired often |
| C．any pollution should be taken into consideration |
| D．we should prevent any pollution from doing harm to us |
What is the purpose of the passage?
| A．To call on us to guard our water. |
| B．To show us that no place is like home. |
| C．To make us aware of the pollution around us. |
| D．To argue that neither homes nor offices are safe. |
I passed all the other courses that I took at my university, but I could have never passed botany. This was because all botany students had to spend several hours a week in a laboratory looking through a microscope at plant cells, and I could never once see a cell through a microscope. This used to make my professor angry. He would wander around the laboratory pleased with the progress all the students were making in drawing the structure of flower cells, until he came to me. I would just be standing there. “I can’t see anything,”I would say. He would begin patiently enough, explaining how anybody can see through a microscope, but he would always end up angrily, claiming that I could too see through a microscope but just pretended that I couldn’t. “It takes away from the beauty of flowers anyway.”I used to tell him.“We are not concerned with beauty in this course,”he would say.“We are concerned with the structure of flowers.” “Well,” I’d say.“I can’t see anything.” “Try it just once again,” he’d say, and I would put my eye to the microscope and see nothing at all, except now and again something unclear and milky. “You were supposed to see a clear, moving plant cells shaped like clocks.” “I see what looks like a lot of milk.” I would tell him. This, he claimed, was the result of my not having adjusted the microscope properly, so he would readjust it for me, or rather, for himself. And I would look again and see milk.
I failed to pass botany that year, and had to wait a year and try again, or I couldn’t graduate. The next term the same professor was eager to explain cell-structure again to his classes. “Well,”he said to me, happily, “we’re going to see cells this time, aren’t we?” “Yes,sir,” I said. Students to the right of me and to the left of me and in front of me were seeing cells; what’s more, they were . Of course, I didn’t see anything.
So the professor and I tried with every adjustment of the microscope known to man. With only once did I see anything but blackness or the familiar milk, and that time I saw, to my pleasure and amazement, something like stars. These I hurriedly drew. The professor, noting my activity, came to me, a smile on his lips and his eyebrows high in hope. He looked at my cell drawing. “What’s that?”he asked.“That’s what I saw,”I said.“You didn’t, you didn’t, you didn’t!”he screamed, losing control of himself immediately, and he bent over and looked into the microscope. He raised his head suddenly. “That’s your eye!”he shouted.“You’ve adjusted the microscope so that it reflects!You’re drawn your eye!”Why couldn’t the writer see the flower cells through the microscope?.
| A．Because he had poor eyesight |
| B．Because the microscope didn’t work properly |
| C．Because he was not able to adjust the microscope properly |
| D．Because he was just playing jokes on his professor by pretending not to have seen it |
What does the writer mean by “his eyebrows high in hope”in the last paragraph?
| A．His professor expected him to have seen the cells and drawn the picture of them |
| B．His professor hoped he could perform his task with attention |
| C．His professor wished him to learn how to draw pictures |
| D．His professor looked forward to seeing all his students finish their drawings |
What is the thing like stars that the writer saw in the last paragraph?
| A．Real stars | B．His own eye |
| C．Something unknown | D．Milk |
In what writing style did the writer write the passage?
| A．Realistic | B．Romantic | C．Serious | D．Humorous |