A year ago, I paid no attention to English idioms, though my teacher emphasized the importance again and again. But soon, the importance of English idioms was shown in an amusing experience.
One day, I happened to meet an Englishman on the road, and soon we began to talk. As I was talking about how I was studying English, the foreigner seemed to be astonished, gently shaking his head, shrugging his shoulders, he said,“You don’t say!” I was puzzled. I thought, perhaps this is not an appropriate topic. “Well, I’d better change the topic.” So I said to him, “Well, shall we talk about the Great Wall? By the way, have you ever been there?” “Certainly, everyone back home will laugh at me if I leave China without seeing it. It was magnificent.” He was deep in thought when I began to talk like a tourist guide.” “The Great Wall is one of the wonders in the world. We are very proud of it.” Soon I was interrupted again by his words. “You don’t say!” I couldn’t help asking, “Why do you ask me not to talk about it?” “Well, I didn’t request you to do so,” he answered, greatly surprised. I said, “Didn’t you say ‘You don’t say’?” Hearing this, the Englishman laughed to tears. He began to explain, “‘You don’t say’ actually means ‘really’. It is an expression of surprise. Perhaps you don’t pay attention to English idioms.”
Only then did I know I had made a fool of myself. Since then I have been more careful with idiomatic expressions. Remember: what the English teachers said is always right to us students.A year ago, I paid no attention to English idioms because_________.
| A．English idioms were not important |
| B．I had no interest in English learning |
| C．my teacher didn’t emphasize the importance of them |
| D．I cared little about the teacher’s instruction |
At first, on hearing “You don’t say”, I thought the foreigner meant_________.
| A．I had talked too much |
| B．he was only interested in the Great Wall |
| C．he was not interested in the topic |
| D．I had to stop talking |
The underlined word “amusing” in paragraph 1 means_________.
| A．funny | B．important | C．lucky | D．terrible |
After the Englishman explained the idiom, _________.
| A．I thought the Englishman had made me a fool |
| B．the Englishman became a real fool |
| C．I felt very silly |
| D．I became more careful in everything |
Which of the following is true according to the passage？
| A．The Englishman left china without seeing the Great Wall. |
| B．The Englishman wanted to see the Great Wall after I talked about it. |
| C．The Englishman wanted me to act as his guide. |
| D．The Englishman visited the Great Wall and thought it worth visiting. |
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Saving the Planet with Earth-Friendly Bamboo Products
Jackie Heinricher’s love with bamboo started in her backyard. “As a child, I remember playing among the golden bamboo my dad had planted, and when there was a slight wind, the bamboos sounded really musical.”
A fishing biologist, Heinricher, 47, planned to work in the industry in Seattle, where she lived with her husband, Guy Thornburgh, but she found it too competitive. Then her garden gave her the idea for a business: She’d planted 20 bamboo forests on their seven-acre farm.
Heinricher started Boo-Shoot Gardens in 1998. She realized early on what is just now beginning to be known to the rest of the world. It can be used to make fishing poles, skateboards, buildings, furniture, floors, and even clothing. An added bonus: Bamboo absorbs four times as much carbon dioxide as a group of hardwood trees and releases 35 percent more oxygen.
First she had to find a way to mass-produce the plants—a tough task, since bamboo flowers create seed only once every 50 to 100 years. And dividing a bamboo plant frequently kills it.
Heinricher appealed to Randy Burr, a tissue culture expert, to help her. “People kept telling us we’d never figure it out,” says Heinricher. “Others had worked on it for 27 years! I believed in what we were doing, though, so I just kept going.”
She was right to feel a sense of urgency. Bamboo forests are being rapidly used up, and a United Nations report showed that even though bamboo is highly renewable, as many as half of the world’s species are threatened with dying out. Heinricher knew that bamboo could make a significant impact on carbon emissions (排放) and world economies, but only if huge numbers could be produced. And that’s just what she and Burr figured out after nine years of experiments—a way to grow millions of plants. By placing cuttings in test tubes with salts, vitamins, plant hormones, and seaweed gel, they got the plants to grow and then raised them in soil in greenhouses.
Not long after it, Burr’s lab hit financial difficulties. Heinricher had no experience running a tissue culture operation, but she wasn’t prepared to quit. So she bought the lab.
Today Heinricher heads up a profitable multimillion-dollar company, working on species from all over the world and selling them to wholesalers. “If you want to farm bamboo, it’s hard to do without the young plants, and that’s what we have,” she says proudly.
72. What was the main problem with planting bamboo widely?
A. They didn’t have enough young bamboo.
B. They were short of money and experience.
C. They didn’t have a big enough farm to do it.
D. They were not understood by other people.
73. What does Heinricher think of bamboo?
A. Renewable and acceptable B. Productive and flexible.
C. Useful and earth-friendly. D. Strong and profitable.
74. The underlined word “renewable” in Paragraph 6 probably means “________”.
A. able to be replaced naturally B. able to be raised difficultly
C. able to be shaped easily D. able to be recycled conveniently
75. What do you learn from the passage?
A. Heinricher’s love for bamboo led to her experiments in the lab.
B. Heinricher’s determination helped her to succeed in her work.
C. Heinricher struggled to prevent bamboo from disappearing.
D. Heinricher finally succeeded in realizing her childhood dream.
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A device that stops drivers from falling asleep at the wheel is about to undergo(接受) testing at Department of Transport laboratories and could go on sale within 12 months.
The system, called driver Alert, aims to reduce deadly road accidents by 20%--40% that are caused by tiredness. Airline pilots can also use it to reduce the 30% of all pilot-error accidents that are related to tiredness.
Driver Alert is based on a computerized wristband. The device, worn by drivers or pilots gives out a sound about every four minutes during a car journey. After each sound the driver must respond by pressing the steering wheel. A sensor in the wristband detects this pressing action and measures the time between the sound and the driver’s response.
Tiredness is directly related to a driver’s response time. Usually, a watchful driver would take about 400 milliseconds to respond, but once that falls to more than 500 milliseconds, it suggests that the driver is getting sleepy.
In such cases the device gives out more regular and louder sounds, showing that the driver should open a window or stop for a rest. If the driver’s response continues to slow down, the sounds become more frequent until a nonstop alarm warns that the driver must stop as soon as possible.
The device has been delivered to the department’s laboratories for testing. If these tests, scheduled for six months’ time, are successful, the makers will bring the product to market within about a year.
68. How should a driver respond to the sounds from Driver Alert?
A. By sounding a warning. B. By touching the wristband.
C. By checking the driving time. D. By pressing the steering wheel.
69. We can learn from the text that the driver needs to stop for a break when his response time is ________
A. about 400 milliseconds B. below 500 milliseconds
C. over 500 milliseconds D. about 4 minutes
70. When the driver gets sleepy while driving, Driver Alert ______.
A. moves more regularly B. stops working properly
C. opens the window for the driver D. sounds more frequently and loudly
71. According to the text, Driver Alert ______.
A. aims to reduce tiredness-related accidents
B. has gone through testing at laboratories
C. aims to prevent drivers from sleeping
D. has been on sale for 12 months
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Being the boss might mean more money and challenging work but it can also cause damage to physical and mental well-being, according to a Canadian study.
For years studies have shown people in lower-status jobs generally have higher rates of heart disease and other illnesses and die earlier than those in higher-status positions while job authority has shown no relationship with workers’ health.
But University of Toronto researchers, using data from 1,800 US workers, found the health of people in higher positions is affected by work as they are more likely to report conflicts with co-workers and say work disturbs their home life.
However, the positive aspects of having a power position at work, such as higher status, more pay and greater independence, seemed to cancel out the negative aspects when it came to people’s physical and psychological health.
These latest findings, reported in the journal Social Science & Medicine, suggest that the advantages and disadvantages authority positions basically cancel each other out, giving the general impression that job authority has no health effects.
For the study, the researchers surveyed participants about various aspects of their work, life and well-being. Job authority was judged based on whether a person managed other employees and had power over hiring, firing and pay.
Physical health complaints included problems like headaches, body aches, heartburn and tiredness. Psychological complaints included sleep problems, difficulty concentrating and feelings of sadness, worry and anxiety.
“This isn’t to suggest that having authority is ‘bad’—in fact, we show it has benefits ... but it is important to identify the negative sides and deal with them.” researcher Scott Schieman said.
Schieman said conflicts with co-workers or involvement of work into home life may destroy at physical and mental well-being by creating stress.
“These are key stressors that can tax individuals’ ability to function effectively,” Schieman said.
64. Work will have a negative effect on job authority’s health probably because __________.
A. they are not fit for their work
B. they have power over hiring and pay
C. they are faced with severe competition
D. they don’t get on well with their co-workers
65. Most people don’t see that bosses have health effects because __________.
A. their health problems are not serious enough to see
B. they have enough money to keep themselves healthy
C. their problems are quite different from those of workers
D. the advantages and disadvantages of their status work against each other
66. From the passage we can infer that the study aims to _________.
A. warn people not to be a boss for ever
B. remind the boss to deal with the bad effects of their work
C. show that having authority is harmful to one’s health
D. prove that being a boss can benefit a lot
67. The best title for this passage might be ________.
A. Lower-status can affect health B. Authority can affect health
C. Positive aspects of a power position D. Disadvantages of being a boss
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Scientific experiments can sometimes go wrong and when they do, the results may range from the disastrous to the troubling. One such experiment took place in South America about fifty years ago. Whether its final consequences will cause serious damage or nothing more than a small trouble still remains to be seen.
The story began in 1956 when an American scientist working in Brazil decided to solve the problem of increasing the productivity of that country’s bees. He imported a very active type of African bee from Tanzania and mated (交配) it with the more easygoing native variety to produce a new kind of bees. The new bees worked harder and produced twice as much honey. It seemed that Professor Kerr, for that was the scientist’s name, had a total success on his hands.
Then things began to go wrong. For some reason as yet unseen, but perhaps as a result of something in their environment, the new bees began to develop extremely attacking personalities. They became bad-tempered and easy to be angry, attacked the native bees and drove them from their living places.
But worse was to follow. Having taken over the countryside, the new bees, with their dangerous stings (叮) , began to attack its neighbors—cats , dogs, horses, chickens and finally man himself. A long period of terror began that has so far killed a great number of animals and about 150 human beings.
This would have been enough if the bees had stayed in Brazil. But now they are on the move, heading northwards in countless millions towards Central and North America, and moving at the alarming speed of 200 miles a year. The countries that lie in their path are naturally worried because it looks as if nothing can be done to stop them.
60. Which of the following statements is right?
A. The results of the South American experiment have caused a serious trouble.
B. Scientific experiments in South America have proved to be wrong.
C. The results of the South American experiment are not yet certain.
D. It’s clear that scientific experiments in South America are not important.
61. The experiment mentioned in this passage was designed to _________.
A. increase the amount of honey in Brazil
B. make Brazilian bees more easy-going
C. increase the number of bees in Brazil
D. make African bees less active
62. Which of the following may be the cause of the new bees attacking personalities?
A. Their production of honey. B. Their hard work.
C. Their living environment. D. Their bad temper.
63. The last paragraph implies that __________.
A. the bees have been driven to Central and North America
B. The bees may bring about trouble in more countries
C. the bees must be stopped from moving north
D. the bees prefer to live in Brazil
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第三部分：阅读理解（共20小题，每题2分，满分40分）
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,并在答题卡上将该项涂黑。
Watching television more than two hours a day early in life can lead to attention problems later in adolescence, according to a study released on Tuesday.
The roughly 40 percent increase in attention problems among heavy TV viewers was observed in both boys and girls. The link was established by a long-term study of the habits and behaviors of more than 1,000 children born in Dunedin, New Zealand, between April 1972 and March 1973.
The children aged 5 to 11 watched an average of 2.05 hours of weekday television. From age 13 to 15, time spent in front of the tube rose to an average of 3.1 hours a day.
"Those who watched more than two hours, and particularly those who watched more than three hours, of television per day during childhood had above-average symptoms（症状） of attention problems in adolescence," Carl Landhuis of the University of Otago in Dunedin wrote in his report, published in the journal Pediatrics.
Young children who watched a lot of television were more likely to continue the habit as they got older, but even if they did not the damage was done, the report said.
"This suggests that the effects of childhood viewing on attention may be long lasting," Landhuis wrote.
Landhuis offered several possible explanations for the relations.
One was that the rapid scene changes common to many TV programs may over stimulate（刺激）the developing brain of a young child, and could make reality seem boring by comparison. "Hence, children who watch a lot of television may become less patient of slower-paced and more mundane（世俗） tasks, such as school work," he wrote.
It was also possible that TV viewing may take the place of other activities that promote concentration, such as reading, games, sports and play, he said.
Previous studies have linked the forever habit of TV watching among children to obesity and so on, and another study in the same journal referred to the poor nutritional content of the overwhelming majority of food products advertised on the top-rated US. children's television shows.
Up to 98 percent of the TV ads promoting food products that were directed at children aged 2 through 11 "were high in either fat, sugar, or sodium," wrote Lisa Powell of the University of Illinois in Chicago.
56. The recent survey shows that _________.
A. watching TV can cause all kinds of diseases for children
B. TV sets have played an important part in our daily lives
C. Watching TV over 2 hours a day early in life can cause attention problems later in adolescence
D. watching TV has side effects on children’s future
57. People used to think that _________.
A. watching TV more than 2 hours every day did good to children’s health
B. the habit of TV watching among children could easily lead to obesity and diabetes
C. the children weren’t patient with their homework because of watching TV too much
D. it was very important for children to watching TV early in life
58. The underlined word “Hence” means _________.
A. In that case B. And yet C. On the contrary D. For this reason
59. In Landhuis’ opinion, _________.
A. attention problems caused by watching TV during childhood may be hard to get rid of
B. how to develop children’s attention problems is a lasting problem
C. the key of settling attention problems is not watching TV too much
D. there shouldn’t be many food products ads on children's television shows