Kilimanjaro Climb : a Rite of Passage for Father and Son
Climbing Kilimanjaro is a transformational experience for many people. The things that make the mountain hard are the very things that make it so powerful. In the case of my son Josh and I，the walk up Kilimanjaro proved a powerful symbol ofhis transition into manhood, and a great change in our relationship.
Day three on the mountain, Josh was hit with massive headaches. He told me every step felt like a nail driving into his head. And then, on the night we climbed the crater rim, less than 40 minutes from the summit, Josh fell. I was walking ahead, and did not even see it. He was so exhausted that he could not get up. He recalled our guides, debating whether or not they should take him straight down. Josh snapped out of it. He forced himself to his feet, shook the guides off. He set his face towards the peak and just kept marching. Near the summit he caught up with me and we reached the peak together.
“ I’ve never been in so much pain and so happy at the same time，，，he said, as we sat side by side on the frozen rock and looked down over Africa. “You know, in the past when we’d go on camping and rafting trips, you guided and took care of me through it all. But on Kilimanjaro it was different. From the bottom up, I climbed it. I never feltlike a kid, even when 1 was in pain. You never acted like a parent.”
“That’s not quite true，”I replied. “When you told me that on the summit you fell-and I did not even notice, my first thought was, ‘Oh my God! I’m such an awful parent!’ But then it hit me, ‘He got himself up. He walked to the peak on his own. He didn't need me to help.，”
I realized as I spoke that two people had died that night on Kilimanjaro. A child and a parent. It wasjust two friends who walked down the mountain together.What is NOT mentioned in the first paragraph?
| A． Kilimanjaro is powerful. |
| B． Kilimanjaro is hard to climb. |
| C． Many people, including Josh, have changed after climbing Kilimanjaro. |
| D． The writer has a distant relationship with his son after climbing Kilimanjaro. |
From the second paragraph we know that_____
| A． Josh had a slight headache. |
| B． Josh reached the top of the mountain with the help of the guides. |
| C． Josh overcame various difficulties on his way to the summit. |
| D． Climbing Kilimanjaro was too hard for such a child as Josh. |
What does the underlined phrase in the second paragraph mean?
| A． cheered up | B．gave up | C．burst out | D．ran out |
What can be inferred from the talk between the father and the son?
| A． Josh felt quite good about his independence. |
| B． Josh appreciated his parents ，company and care. |
| C． The father felt guilty all the time. |
| D． The father should have taken good care of Josh as usual. |
Why did the father feel that two people had died?
| A． Because two people had lost their lives while climbing Kilimanjaro. |
| B． Because the father and son had become friends. |
| C． Because they had witnessed an accidence of a father and son. |
| D． Because two friends had misled him. |
Mr. Peter Johnson, aged twenty-three, battled for half an hour to escape from his trapped car yesterday when it landed upside down in three feet of water. Mr. Johnson took the only escape route—through the boot(行李箱).
Mr. Johnson’s car had finished up in a ditch(沟渠) at Romney Marsin, Kent after skidding on ice and hitting a bank. “Fortunately, the water began to come in only slowly,” Mr. Johnson said. “I couldn’t force the doors because they were jammed against the walls of the ditch and dared not open the windows because I knew water would come flooding in.”
Mr. Johnson, a sweet salesman of Sitting Home, Kent, first tried to attract the attention of other motorists by sounding the horn and hammering on the roof and boot. Then he began his struggle to escape. Later he said, “It was really a half penny that saved my life. It was the only coin I had in my pocket and I used it to unscrew the back seat to get into the boot.
It took ten minutes to unscrew the seat, and a further five minutes to clear the sweet samples from the boot. Then Mr. Johnson found a wrench and began to work on the boot lock. Fifteen minutes passed by. “It was the only chance I had. Finally it gave, but as soon as I moved the boot lid, the water and mud poured in. I forced the lid down into the mud and jumped out of the ditch.”
His hands and arms cut and bruised(擦伤), Mr. Johnson got to Beckett Farm nearby, where he was looked after by the farmer’s wife, Mrs. Lucy Bates. Huddled in a blanket, he said, “That thirty minutes seemed like hours.” Only the tips of the car wheels were visible, police said last night. The vehicle had sunk into two feet of mud at the bottom of the ditch.
56. What is the best title for this newspaper article?
A. The Story of Mr. Johnson, A Sweet Salesman
B. Car Boot Can Serve As The Best Escape Route
C. Driver Escapes Through Car Boot
D. The Driver Survived A Terrible Car Accident
57. Which of the following objects is the most important to Mr. Johnson?
A. The hammer. B. The coin. C.The screw. D. The horn.
58. Which statement is true according to the passage?
A. Mr. Johnson’s car stood on its boot as it fell down.
B. Mr. Johnson could not escape from the door because it was full of sweet jam.
C. Mr. Johnson’s car accident was partly due to the slippery road.
D. Mr. Johnson struggled in the pouring mud as he unscrewed the back seat.
59. “Finally it gave” (Paragraph 4) means that _______.
A. Luckily the door was torn away in the end
B. At last the hammer went broken
C. The lock came open after all his efforts
D. The chance was lost at the last minute
60. It may be inferred from the passage that _______.
A. the ditch was along a quiet country road
B. the accident happened on a clear warm day
C. the police helped Mr. Johnson get out of the ditch
D. Mr. Johnson had a tender wife and was well attended
All the wisdom of the ages and all the stories that have delighted mankind for centuries are easily and cheaply available to all of us within the covers of books. The most unfortunate people in the world are those who have never discovered how satisfying it is to read good books.
Reading is the pleasure of the mind, which means that it is a little like a sport: your eagerness and knowledge and quickness make you a good reader. Reading is fun, not because the writer is telling you something, but because it makes your mind work. Your own imagination works along with the author's or even goes beyond his. Your experience, compared with his, brings you to the same or different conclusions, and your ideas develop as you understand his.
Every book stands by itself, like a one--family house, but books in a library are like houses in a city. Although they are separate, together they all add up to something. They are connected with each other and with other cities. Books influence each other; they link the past, the present and the future and have their own generations, like families. Wherever you start reading, you connect yourself with one of the families or ideas, and in the long run, you not only find out about the world and the people in it but also you find out about yourself, too.
Reading can only be fun if you expect it to be. If you concentrate on books somebody tells you "you ought" to read, you probably won't have fun. But if you put down a book you don’t like and try another till you find one that means something to you, and then relax yourself with it, you will almost certainly have a good time and if you become, as a result of reading, better, wiser, kinder, or more gentle, you won't have suffered during the process.
72. In the writer's opinion, in fact reading is a process of ________.
A. listening to the author B. accepting the author's ideas
C. communicating with the author and yourself D. judging the author's work
73. The writer thinks that the most unfortunate people are those _______.
A. who don't have any books B. who can't enjoy reading books
C. who don’t like books D. who read too many books
74. To find pleasure in reading, you should read the books _______.
A. written by famous writers B. written in humor style
C. which you like to read D. which are recommended by your friends
75. The author's purpose in writing the passage is to _______.
A. show the importance of reading B. tell us how to make reading more effective
C. tell us how to read D. show the pleasure of reading
72-75 CBCD
In classrooms across the USA, students from different speech backgrounds give speeches in English. It is important to remember that the major goal of the speech is communication of ideas, not perfection of language skills. Therefore, as you listen to a speaker who is not fluent in the language, seek to understand what is being said by concentrating on the ideas of the message rather than on the specific words of the speaker. This may require a special kind of patience as well as the ability to take the perspective (视角) of the communicator. Perspective taking means that you can put yourself in the other person’s shoes. That is, you try to imagine what it would be like to give a speech in a foreign language to a group of native speakers of that language. Keep in mind that non-fluency is not linked to low intelligence or lack of education~ it is linked to experiences with the second language.
These guidelines can help you be a better listener in these situations.
1. Approach the speech with a positive attitude, and expect to understand.
2. Listen all the way through. Make special efforts to keep your mind from wandering in the middle of the speech. It may help to take notes.
3. Plan to give proper nonverbal (非语言的) feedback to prove your interest, patience, and support for the speaker.
4. Control your negative emotional responses. Let's face it, it is difficult to deal with linguistic barriers (语言障碍), and people often get disappointed or bored when there are language differences.
5. Do not laugh, even if the speakers do, at their language skills. Often they laugh nervously to relieve tension.
68. What is the main idea of this passage?
A. How to become a good listener.
B. How to become a good speaker.
C. We should take a positive attitude towards speech.
D. How to communicate with others
69. The underlined phrase "put yourself in the other person’s shoes" in the first paragraph means ____.
A. to know one's shoes is to know one's problem
B. try to wear the other person’s shoes
C. understand others by trying on their shoes
D. look at something from the point of others
70. What can we learn from the passage?
A. People should be strict with speakers speaking in a foreign language.
B. Taking notes helps keep your mind from wandering in listening to a speech.
C. Whenever the speaker is nervous, he laughs.
D. It's hard to concentrate when the speaker is not fluent.
71. What advice is given on listening to a speech?
A. Believing you can understand every word of the speech.
B. Showing your support for the speaker nonverbally.
C. Laughing when the speaker laughs at himself.
D. Commenting on the speech at times.
London: What could possibly he wrong with planting trees? The benefits are obvious: they firm the soil, absorb extra water and take carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere.
However, it now turns out that planting trees could add to global warming. Tree roots do a great job of keeping soil firmly on the ground and out of the wind's power. The problem is that some of those dust clouds play an important part in taking in carbon dioxide.
Huge dust storms blow out over the oceans from dry parts of North Africa and central Asia. Tons of dust are lifted and left as a thin film over the ocean surface.
Dust from China is carried east and left in the Pacific Ocean. If a tree-planting program there is successful and the dust supply reduced, the final result may be that less carbon dioxide gets locked away in the ocean.
Andy Ridgwell, an environmental scientist from the University of East Anglia, has spent the past few years studying dust and says his work shows clearly the complexity of the system and the importance of not working uselessly with it without understanding the results. For this reason the need is to focus on cutting carbon dioxide giving off rather than dealing with the land surface aimlessly.
An American scientist, Robert Jackson, has shown that when native grassland areas are occupied by trees, carbon is lost from the soil. "We are studying why the soil carbon disappears, but one theory is that trees do a lot more of their growing above ground compared to grasses, so less carbon goes directly into the soil from trees. " said Jackson.
In wet areas of the world, the gain from trees absorbing carbon dioxide above ground seems to be outweighed by the loss of carbon from the soil below ground.
Countries that plan to combat global warming by planting trees may have to think again. Solutions to environmental problems are often more complex than they first appear, and understanding the Earth's climate is a very great challenge.
64. People usually hold the opinion that _______.
A. huge dust storms can destroy carbon dioxide
B. huge dust storms can destroy the oceans on the earth
C. planting trees could reduce global warming
D. planting trees is the only way to control huge dust storms
65. Andy Ridgwell, the environmental scientist, believes that _______.
A. environmental problems are more complex than expected
B. trees shouldn't have been planted in dry places
C. dust plays a more important part than trees
D. carbon dioxide is harmful to everything
66. Robert Jackson's experiment proves that _______.
A. carbon can turn grass into dust
B. trees hold more carbon than grass
C. less carbon can make trees grow faster
D. grassland areas should be covered by forests
67. The underlined word "combat" in the last paragraph means _______.
A. learn about B. give up C. live with D. fight against
Channel Islands
The two main islands, Jersey and Quernsey, are remarkable in that they present a combination of enjoyment, peace and quiet. Neither island is very big (only ten miles long) and so all parts of these coasts are easily reached from the main centers -- St. Helier and St. Peter Port. In both these towns and particularly in Jersey's St. Helier are the amusements of really big resorts (度假胜地). The nearness of France gives a continental atmosphere; the weather here is far better than that of any other part of England. The other three islands, Jethou, Hern and Sark are small and quiet.
Isles of Scilly
The islands are really small and quiet; the weather is warm but windy. The islands are excellent for those who enjoy exploring small inlets (水湾), creeks (小溪) and bays on foot, or better, in a boat.
Isle of Wight
he island is 24 miles across and therefore quite large. The scenery is good and varied. The resorts are neither overlarge nor showy. The island has the best sunshine record in Britain.
Isle of Man
An island with a unique atmosphere -- it is different from England, Scotland or Wales. Thirty miles long, with good roads and good public transport, the mountains, hills and deep valleys are easily reached. Douglas is a major British resort and other holiday places are lively.
60. If you want to drive to the mountains and hills, you would choose
A. the Isle of Man B. the Isle of Wight C. Jersey D. the Isles of Stilly
61. If you want to be fairly sure you would have a lot of sunshine on holiday, you would choose ____.
A. the Channel Islands B. the Isle of Man
C. the Isle of Wight D. the Isles of Scilly
62. It can be concluded from Paragraph One that _______.
A. the Channel Islands consist of two islands
B. the Channel Islands are really ideal resorts
C. Jersey and Quernsey are excellent for those who enjoy exploring nature
D. there are many resorts in Jethou, Hem and Sark
63. In which way are the Channel Islands different from all the other places in England?
A. The coasts are easily reached from the main centers.
B. There are more islands there.
C. The weather is far better.
D. The crowds there can enjoy more entertaining but quieter holidays.