DIY sailor Owen Warboys has finally launched his homemade boat — after spending nearly 30 years building it in his mum’s garden.
Owen, 66, a retired engineer from Hordle, New Milton, Hants, first started work on the 40ft—long boat in 1982 because he could not afford to buy his own. He told mum Edith that it would only take five years but after suffering “a few problems” it lasted nearly three decades.
When he finally finished, he was left with the head-scratching task of getting the 18-tonne boat out of the back garden. After some time he found a way. A huge crane (起重机) was brought in to carefully raise it 40ft in the air over his mother’s house and onto a lorry. It was then driven to the seaside and, to Owen’s delight, it floated and showed no signs of leaking when lowered into the water.
Now, 28 years after he first started, Owen is at last preparing to set sail in his beloved boat, Wight Dolphin, with his long-suffering wife Anne. Owen said, “I am so relieved that it’s finished. There were times when I thought it would never end but I’m the sort of person who likes to finish something once I’ve started.”
At first he persuaded his mum to let him do it in her garden and started taking in sheets of steel and pieces of wood. “My mother was happy for me to build it at her house but only bacause I told her it would only take five years.”Why did Owen decide to make his own boat by himself?
| A．He wanted to kill time after his retirement |
| B．He wished to set a new world record |
| C．He didn’t have enough money to buy a boat |
| D．He had a hobby of making things by hand |
What problem did Owen face when he finished his boat?
| A．It leaked when lowered into the water |
| B．It couldn’t be sent onto a truck |
| C．He couldn’t afford to hire a crane. |
| D．He didn’t know how to move it out. |
Which of the following is TRUE about the boat ?
| A．It was built by Owen and his supportive wife |
| B．It was in good condition after being put in the sea |
| C．Owen’s mother was relieved to see it was finished |
| D．Owen and his wife will sail around the world in it |
We can infer from the passage that _____.
| A．the boat will enter a race competition |
| B．Owen retired early in order to make his boat |
| C．Owen’s wife gave the boat the name of Wight Dolphin |
| D．It took 23 more years to finish the boat than expected |
Oprah Winfrey, the queen of American daytime talk TV, is considered one of the most powerful women in the world. Now, after 25 years’ hosting The Oprah Winfrey Show, the star has announced she is calling it quits.
According to the Los Angeles Times, the move “signals the beginning of the decline for the daytime talk show.” More women are working full-time jobs, and people are turning to cable (有线电视) and pre-recorded shows for their entertainment.
It may be that Oprah isn’t quitting so much as moving on. She has created the Oprah Winfrey Network (OWN), and will most likely move her show to the network. If audiences around the world need Oprah, they well know where to look.
Oprah Winfrey was born to a single teenage mother in a small town in rural Mississippi, US. As a child, she lived with poverty and abuse. But she got a job at a local radio station, where her honesty, emotional style won her many fans. She quickly rose through the ranks of radio and television before launching her own production company and starting her own show.
Oprah’s talk show was not the first of its kind, but it quickly became the best and most popular. It made talk shows popular, and others jumped in to start similar shows. But while other talk shows turned ugly, featuring guests who argued and attacked each other with chairs, Oprah rose above the mess.
“Part of her power lies in the fact that her life story resonates (产生共鸣) with her audience, as a kind of version of the American dream,” writes Kevin Connolly, a reporter with the BBC.
She became a star because of the way she opened up about her problems to her audience. She shared her own struggles with relationships and weight. She focused on self-help. Connolly believes “something in her honesty and her sometimes painfully emotional directness struck home with a certain type of American”.
60. Which of the following statements is NOT true?
A. The stop of Oprah’s show reflects the decrease of audience.
B. Oprah hosted her showfor about 25 years.
C. American talk show was pioneered by Oprah.
D. Oprah used to be a radio presenter.
61. What does the underlined sentence mean?
A. Oprah could deal with the guests fighting very well.
B. Oprah’s show stood out with her unique style.
C. Oprah turned a deaf ear to other people’s quarrel.
D. Oprah’s fame rose because lots of people watch her show.
62. From Kevin Connolly, we know people like Oprah’s show for all the reasons EXCEPT ________.
A. Oprah always shares people’s life stories in her show
B. the audiences are touched by Oprah’s honesty and frankness
C. Oprah’s life story reflects the truth of American dream
D. some audiences are inspired by Oprah’s show
63. According to the text, Oprah ________.
A. always volunteers to help those who need help
B. has practiced presentational skills since she was young
C. believes that one should rely on himself to solve problems
D. calls on women to work full-time jobs
Recently, one of my best friends, whom I’ve shared just about everything with since the first day of kindergarten, spent the weekend with me. Since I moved to a new town several years ago, we’ve both always looked forward to the few times a year when we can see each other.
Over the weekend, we spent hours and hours, staying up late into the night, talking about the people she was hanging around with. She started telling me stories about her new boyfriend, about how he experimented with drugs and was into other self-destructive behavior. I was blown away! She told me how she had been lying to her parents about where she was going and even stealing out to see this guy because they didn’t want her around him. No matter how hard I tried to tell her that she deserved better, she didn’t believe me. Her self-respect seemed to have disappeared.
I tried to convince her that she was ruining her future and heading for big trouble. I felt like I was getting nowhere. I just couldn’t believe that she really thought it was acceptable to hang with a bunch of losers, especially her boyfriend.
By the time she left, I was really worried about her and exhausted by the experience. It had been so frustrating, I had come close to telling her several times during the weekend that maybe we had just grown too far apart to continue our friendship，but I didn’t. I put the power of friendship to the final test. We’d been friends for far too long. I had to hope that she valued me enough to know that I was trying to save her from hurting herself. I wanted to believe that our friendship could conquer anything.
A few days later, she called to say that she had thought long and hard about our conversation, and then she told me that she had broken up with her boyfriend. I just listened on the other end of the phone with tears of joy running down my face. It was one of the truly rewarding moments in my life. Never had I been so proud of a friend.
56. In the writer’s opinion, her friend ________.
A. was a girl with no self-respect
B. could find a better boyfriend
C. was brave enough to stick to her own choice
D. didn’t value the writer’s suggestion
57. What did the writer worry about?
A. She would lose the friendship with her.
B. Her friend’s parents would be worried about their daughter.
C. Her friend would get into great trouble with the boy.
D. Her friend’s boyfriend would be in great trouble.
58. We may leam from Paragraph 3 that the writer ________.
A. didn’t want to go anywhere else
B. hated her friend’s hanging with her boyfriend
C. couldn’t believe that her friend’s choice was acceptable
D. doubted that she could in any way help her friend
59. What can be concluded from the passage?
A. Friendship starting from childhood is not reliable.
B. Friendship is a cure for any injury in life.
C. Friendship should be everlasting once begun.
D. Friendship can have magical power in life.
E
No matter how long your life is, you will, at best, be able to read only a few books of all that Have been written, and he few you do read should include the best. It is to be expected that the selections will change over time. Yet there is a surprising uniformity（一致）in the lists which represent the best choices of any period.
What are the signs by which we may recognize a great book? The four I will mention may not be all there are, but they are the ones I’ve found most useful in explaining my choices over the years.
Great books are probably the most widely read. They are not bet sellers for a year or two. But they are long lasting ones. Gone With the Wind has had relatively few readers compared to the plays of Shakespeare or Don Quixote. It would be reasonable to estimate that Homer Iliad（《伊利亚特》）has been read by at least 25,000,000 people in the last 3000 years.
Great books are popular, not pedantic（书生气的）.They are not written by specialists about specialties for specialists. Whether they are philosophy or science, or history or poetry, they treat of human, not academic problems. They are written for men, not professors. To read a textbook for advanced students, you have to read an elementary textbook first. But the great books can be considered elementary in the sense that they treat the elements of any subject matter. They are not related to one another as a series of textbooks, graded in difficulty or in the technicality of the problems with which they deal.
Great books are always contemporary, the most readable and instructive.
Great books deal with the persistently unsolved problems of human life. There are genuine mysteries in the world that mark the limits of human knowing and thinking. Great minds acknowledge mysteries honestly. Wisdom ins strengthened, not destroyed, by understanding its limitations.
72．Which is NOT the standard in the following when evaluating a great book?
A．Although not a best seller, it must be the most widely read.
B．It can be read without much relevant knowledge.
C．Great books are never out of date.
D．Great books will not disappoint you.
73．According to the author, Gone With the Wind is .
A．sure to enjoy a large number of readers in the long run
B．disliked by readers who like Shakespeare
C．not a great book because of the few readers
D．read more often than Don Quixote
74．After reading the passage, we can infer that .
A．different periods have different lists of great books because there are many books for people to choose from
B．if you don’t read an elementary textbook, you may have difficulty in understanding in understanding an advanced one
C．Homer Iliad must be a best seller when it came out
D．great books often deal with unsolved problems of human life for the writers have confidence in settling them
75．The best title for this passage is .
A．Great Books in Your Life B．Great Books in Your Specialty
C．How to Find a Great Book D．What Is a Great Book
D
As public playgrounds grow increasingly worn and shabby, the for-profit centers offer clean, safe, supervised activity as well as a variety of challenging exercises to develop youngsters’ physical fitness, usually for a fee of around $5 an hour. “Playgrounds are dirty, not supervised,” says Dick Guggenheimer, owner of the two-month-old Discovery Zone in Yonkers, N.Y., part of a Kansas City-based chain. “We’re indoors; we’re padded(铺上软垫); parents can feel their child is safe.”
Discovery Zone has sold 120 outlets in the past 14 months, boasting sandboxes full of brightly colored plastic balls, mazes(迷宫), obstacle courses, slides and mountains to climb. Now McDonalds is getting into the act. The burger giant is test-marketing a new playground, Leaps&Bounds, in Naperville, Ill. Phys Kids of Wichita has opened one center and has plans to expand.
American parents are rightly worried about their kids leisure life. There are 36 million children in the U.S. aged 2 to 11 who watch an average of 24 hours of TV a week and devote less and less energy to active recreation. Nationwide decrease in education budgets are making the problem worse, as gym classes and after-hours sports time get squeezed. Says Discovery Zone president Jack Gunion: “we have raised a couple of pure couch potatoes.”
In an attempt to attract more people , the new facilities cater to the concerns of two-earner families, staying open in the evenings, long after traditional public playground have grown dark and unusable. At Naperville’s Leaps&Bounds, families can play together for $4.95 per child, parents free. Fresh-faced assistants, dressed in colorful sport pants and shirts, guide youngsters to appropriate play areas for differing age group.
These new playground are not meant to be day-care facilities; parents are expected to stay and play with their kids rather than drop them off. But several also provide high-tech baby-sitting services. At some of the Discovery Zones, parents can register their children in special supervised programs, then leave them and slip away for a couple of hours to enjoy a movie or dinner.
The most fun of all, though, is getting to do what parents used to do in the days before two-career families and two-hour commutes: play with their kid. That, at least, is old-fashioned, even at per-hour rates.
68. What is this article mainly talking about?
A. Children can play in the public playground without parents’ care.
B. The fast development of Discovery Zone.
C. A new type of playground for kids.
D. The decay of outdoor playground.
69. According to the article, which of the following is true to the new playground?
A. The cost is high for a family.
B. It’s a place where kids can watch TV while eating potatoes.
C. It doesn’t allow parents to leave their kids.
D. It’s a place where parents can play together with their kids.
70. What does the writer mean by saying “old-fashioned”?
A. The so-called new playground is outdated.
B. the new playground offers a fashion which is popular in the past.
C. The new playground is also enjoyed by old people.
D. The new playground is actually enjoyed by parents
71. What is the writer’s attitude toward the new playground?
A. Agreeable. B. Indifferent. C. Objective. D. Neutral.
C
Not even Dan Brown and his Da Vinci code—breakers(密码破译者)dared deal with the mystery of Mona Lisa，s smile．But Nicu Sebe，a computer expert the University of Amsterdam，the Netherlands，did．He used’emotion recognition’software to process the famous painting and found Mona Lisa happy(83 per cent)and slightly disgusted(厌烦的)(9 per cent)．
Faces show emotions. Psychology，computer science，and engineering researchers are joining forces to teach machines to read expressions．If they succeed，your computer may one day“read”your mood．Machines equipped with emotional skills could also be used in teaching，gaming，mind－reading，etc.
“Mind Reader”，a system developed by Rosalind Picard at MIT(the Massachusetts Institute of Tech’nology)in the US, uses input from a video camera to do real—time analysis of facial expressions. It reports on whether you seem“interested”or“agreeable”or if you’re“confused”．The system can help people recognize others’emotions．Picard says this means we could teach a machine to be as sensitive as a human．In fact，a machine can be even smarter than people since it can tell if a person is lying or just“performing”by analyzing one’s facial movements．
Jeffrey Cohn，a psychologist at the University of Pittsburgh，uses the Facial Action Coding System to recognize human emotions．The system sorts more than 40 action units(AUs)of the face to tell people’s real emotions．He studied a videotape of a criminal who said to be sad about the murder of several family members and tried to pin the blame on someone else．But Cohn saw no real sadness in the woman’s face.
Sadness is a group of AUs that is difficult to do at the same time．You have to pull down the woman’s of your lips while bringing your eyebrows together and raising them．What the woman did was raise her cheeks to make a lip cud(撇嘴)。Her brows stayed smooth．
64．The best title of this passage is“ ________ ”．
A．The emotion on your faceB．Look at your face
C．Your face tells a story D．Telling a lie
65．The missing sentence“This means，even though your mouth lice，your face doesn’t，and the machine will know it all. ”should be put at the end of ___________．
A．Paragraph 2 B．Paragraph 3C．Paragraph 4 D．Paragraph 5
66．How many facial emotion analyses are mentioned in this passage?
A．Four． B．Three． C．Two． D．One
67．The underlined word“it”refers to________．
A．MIT B．the video camera
C．one’s face emotion D．the real—time analysis