An astronomer is making a case for launching pop singer Justin Bieber into suborbital（亚轨道的）space aboard a private rocket ship. The idea is not to rid the world of the Canadian teenager — he would come back down to Earth eventually, after all — but rather to help jump-start the emerging suborbital spaceflight industry.
It would generate a lot of public interest, which would help commercial spaceflight pick up some much-needed momentum, said Seth Shostak, senior astronomer at the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) Institute in Mountain View, California. “If there’s more interest, there are more customers. If there are more customers, there's more technical development. It's a positive feedback loop, and obviously that's good.”
Such missions would return to Earth without completing a full lap around the planet. Instead, the flights would hit the edge of space about 62 miles (100 kilometers) above Earth, experience a few minutes of weightlessness, then re-enter the atmosphere and land back at a spaceport.
None of these firms are ready to fly customers yet, but some are getting close. For instance, Virgin Galactic hopes to begin powered test flights of its SpaceShipTwo vehicle later this year, with commercial operations perhaps beginning in 2013 or 2014. It is SpaceShipTwo that reportedly grabbed the attention of Beyonce and Jay-Z.
Virgin Galactic has collected deposits from nearly 500 customers willing to pay $200,000 for a ride aboard SpaceShipTwo, and both Virgin and XCOR have inked deals to fly scientists and their experiments on research flights. So a suborbital market already exists — but Shostak is thinking about ways to make it grow.
A celebrity launch isn't Shostak’s only idea. Suborbital firms should also promote their activities aggressively via social media, Shostak said, and they should make sure their spaceships are bristling（充满）with cameras both inside and out, to give the public dramatic views of every mission.
Some observers view commercial suborbital spaceflight as a potentially transformative industry, saying it could serve as a stepping stone to the exploration and exploitation of space on an unprecedented scale. While the industry’s success is far from assured, Shostak offered some reason for optimism: The American public remains keen on space.Why may Justin Bieber be sent into suborbital space?
| A．To show his bravery and make him a role model for teenagers. |
| B．To arouse the American public’s interest. |
| C．To help reform the spaceflight industry. |
| D．To film an advertisement about space. |
What can we learn about suborbital spaceflight?
| A．A trip will return to Earth before finishing a lap. |
| B．The whole trip will leave passengers weightless. |
| C．Each trip can take 500 passengers. |
| D．The trip will be too expensive even for celebrities. |
What can we infer from the text?
| A．SpaceShipTwo will be the first to fly. |
| B．Famous people will be the main passengers in the future. |
| C．The space trip is still in preparation. |
| D．Every space trip will be made into a film. |
The last paragraph suggests that _________.
| A．space is too mysterious to explore |
| B．the suborbital market is promising |
| C．the spaceflight industry is more successful than people think |
| D．developing the industry is risky |
What is the main purpose of the text?
| A．To predict a change in the space market. |
| B．To discuss a recent launch. |
| C．To introduce the status of the spaceflight industry. |
| D．To remove public doubt about the spaceflight industry. |
第二部分：阅读理解（共两节，满分40分）
第一节（共15小题；每小题2分，满分30分）
阅读下列四篇短文，从每小题后所给的A、B、C、D四个选项中，选出最佳选项,并在答题卡上将该选项涂黑。
In learning a foreign language, one should first pay attention to speaking. It is the groundwork of reading and writing. You’d better try your best to speak. Don’t be afraid of making mistakes. But be careful not to let them keep you from improving the language. While you are doing this, a good exercise is to write – keep a diary, write notes, letters or
articles, then if you can, ask someone to go through what you have written and tell you where is wrong . Many mistakes in your speaking will be easily found when you write. Through correcting the mistakes, you can do better in learning a language.
If you are slow in speaking, don’t worry. One of the helpful ways is by reading, either aloud or to yourself. The important thing is to choose something interesting to read. It can’t be too difficult for you. When you are reading in this way, don’t stop to look up the words if you can guess their meanings or if they have nothing important to do with the sentence. You can do that some other time.
46. From the passage we know the groundwork is ___ while you are learning a foreign language.
A. reading B. writing C. speaking D. listening
47. To improve the language, one has to .
A. pay attention to speaking only
B. try not to make mistakes
C. correct mistakes only
D. keep a diary and write notes, letters or articles
48. When you find some new words in reading, you shouldn’t ___
A. guess their meaningB. go 
on reading
C. stop to look them up in the dictionary D. keep on reading the important sentence
49. The best title of this passage might be .
A. How to Learn a Foreign Language B. How to Improve Reading
C. How to learn Writing D. More reading, .Less speaking
I've been writing for most of my life. The book Writing Without Teachers introduced me to one difference and one practice that have greatly helped my writing processes. The difference is between the creative mind and the critical mind. While you need to use both of the creative mind and the critical mind to reach a finished result，they cannot work in parallel no matter how much we might like to think so.
Trying to criticize writing on the fly is possible the single greatest trouble with writing that most of us meet. If you are listening to a 5th grade English teacher correcting your grammar while you are trying to capture a fleeting（稍纵即逝的）thought, the thought will die. If you catch the fleeting thought and simply share it with the world in raw form, no one is likely to understand. You must learn to create first and then criticize if you want to make writing the tool for thinking as it is.
The practice that can help you overcome your learned bad habits of trying to edit as you write is what Elbow calls“free writing”. In free writing, the goal is to get words down on paper non-stop，usually for 15—20 minutes. No stopping, no going back, no criticizing. The aim is to get the words flowing. As the words begin to flow，the ideas will come from the shadows and let themselves be captured on your notepad or your screen.
Now you have raw materials that you can begin to work with using the critical mind that you’ve persuaded to sit on the side and watch quietly. Most likely，you will believe that this will take more time than you actually have and you will end up staring blankly at the pages as the deadlines draws near.
Instead of staring at a blank start and filling it with words no matter how bad they could be，stop halfway through your available time and rework your raw writing into something closer to the finished product. Move back and forth until you run out of time and the final result will most likely be far better than your current practices.
67．When the author says the creative mind and the critical mind“cannot work in parallel”in the writing process，he means_____.
A．no one can be both creative and critical
B．they can’t be regarded as equally important
C．they are in constant conflict with each other
D．one cannot use them at the same time
68．What usually prevents people from writing on is_____.
A．putting their ideas in raw form
B．attempting to edit as they’re writing
C．ignoring grammatical problems
D．trying to capture their fleeting thoughts
69．What is the chief purpose of the first stage of writing？
A．To organize one’s thoughts logically.
B．To choose an appropriate topic.
C．To get one’s ideas down quickly.
D．To collect many more raw materials.
70．In what way does the critical mind help the writer in the writing process？
A．It refines his writing into a better shape.
B．It helps him to come up with new ideas.
C．It saves the writing time available to him.
D．It allows him to sit on the side and observe.
Friendship can deeply affect the physical and mental health of both men and women. Studies show that people who have no friends or who are lonely，are more likely to die earlier，get sick more often and suffer greater physical wear and tear（折磨）than those who have a support system of friends.
Sometimes，family members may be more likely to give you advice or tell you what you don’t want to hear. It may not be as good as a friend who will listen to you and guide you，but support your decisions anyway. The most important elements about friendship are those who suffer support and do not judge your decisions based on society.
One reason for the link between social support and good health practice seems to be that people who feel cared for by others are less stress-out and are protected against the symptoms（症状）of depression and loneliness.
Generally，women benefit most because of how they deal with stress. Women are more social in how they deal with stress than men, while men are more likely to have a“fight or flight”reaction.
Women also tend to have larger，denser social network，in which more people know each other and help each other, while men typically have smaller groups of friends and will rely on their wives or other important people for more support. While all these affect people psychologically（心理上），friendship brings comfort that reduces the ill effects of stress, and the sex difference also contributes to the difference in the length of one’s life time.
63．In the author’s opinion，a real friend should _____.
A．tell you what to do even if you refuse to hear it
B．try to persuade you to change your mind quickly
C．judge your decision according to his／her experience
D．give you advice but respect your own decision
64．Women benefit more from friendship than men because_____.
A．women are always cared for by more people than men
B．women are usually less stress—out when staying with others
C．women are more likely to solve problems with friends’ help
D．women can always keep more long-life friendship than men
65．According to the passage we can infer that _____.
A．it’s good for women to tell men what they should do or not
B．friends are always more important than family members
C．men don’t want to share their problems with many people
D．the trend that women can live longer makes them more relaxed
66．This passage mainly talks about _____.
A．why people should develop friendship
B．when friendship affects people’s health
C．people’s different attitudes towards friendship
D．the friendship which can make people live longer
There is no doubt about it. The best way to learn new words is to do it unconsciously. I don’t mean while you’re unconscious. I mean while you are unconscious of the fact that it is sinking in.
That is how I learnt the 30,000 words in my vocabulary by living in an English-speaking world，mother tongue. I just pick them up. But some of them may be misunderstood. Now，to misunderstand does not mean not to understand. To misunderstand is to understand but incorrectly.
The 5％ mislearnt of all the words we“know”will be the least frequently used words，as the more frequently used words are less likely to be mislearnt. Some of the misunderstandings may live with all our lives，without knowing that we got them wrong.
Many English teachers think that this natural method of learning words in one’s own mother tongue can be used for a second language learning. They teach their students how to play the Guessing Game.“There is no time to look up in your dictionaries all the new words you come across，”they will say.“You have to practise guessing what the word means from the context.”
This method of guessing in a second language learning does not work. It may succeed in many cases，but results in hundreds or thousands of wrongly-guessed meanings of words.
And what’s more，there are more separate meanings than there are words themselves. Our learners’ dictionaries usually have many meanings. A good dictionary is what makes self-learning possible.
Don’t guess! Look it up!
59．It is certain that the best way to learn new words is_____.
A．to learn them by oneself
B．to learn by living in an English-speaking world and using them frequently
C．to guess them from the context
D．to get more separate meanings of each word
60．The underlined word“them”in Paragraph 2 refers to_____.
A．the 30，000 words
B．English teachers
C．misunderstood words
D．frequently used words
61．Which of the following is most likely NOT true？
A．Some of the words the writer knows must have been misunderstood.
B．Most of the 30,000 words the writer learned are frequently used ones.
C．How many words the writer got wrong are not known.
D．All the words the writer knows were learned by reading them.
62．It can be inferred that_____.
A．when somebody is conscious，he or she usually can’t learn new words by heart
B．we must use the words as often as possible in order to master them
C．it’s the best way to learn new words that one should only guess their meanings from the context
D．only dictionaries can help us learn language well
Russian President Putin named Time magazine’s“Person of the Year”
Russian President Vladimir Putin was named Time magazine’s“Person of the Year”on December 19th.2007 for strengthening stability（稳定）that made Russia a world power again.
The magazine recognized Putin’s“extraordinary feat（技艺）of leadership in taking a country that was in a mess and bringing it stability，”said Richard Stengel，Time’s managing editor.
The magazine noted that“Person of the Year”is not an honor or an endorsement（认可）but a recognition of leadership that shapes the world.
Putin，who is 56 years old，is very popular in Russia，making a great effort to cause economy to come to life on revenue（收入）from oil and natural gas.
Putin recently supported vice-PM Dmitry Medvedev’s presidential bid，and said he would accept Medvedev’s offer to serve as prime minister if Medvedev is elected on March 2.
The Kremlin said Wednesday the Time recognition was seen there as an acknowledgement of Putin’s role in helping Russia pull out of its social and economic troubles in the 1990s.
Others considered for“Person of the Year”included Nobel Prize-winner Al Gore and author J.K. Rowling.
This year’s choice was a return to the magazine’s tradition of picking an individual rather than last year’s choice of“You”，which refers to anyone creating or using content on the World Wide Web.
Putin is the fifth Russian（or Soviet）leader to be named Person of the Year：Gorbachev，Andropov，Khrushchev and Stalin，who was named twice.
55．How did Putin try to make Russia a world power again？
A．By performing arms race.
B．By making war.
C．By strengthening stability.
D．By getting foreign help.
56．Which of the following is Not True according to the passage？
A．Russia used to be in a mess.
B．Time always picks an individual to be the“Person of the Year”.
C．Oil and natural gas caused Russia’s economy to come to life.
D．Putin will leave office on March 2,2007.
57．What does the underlined word“acknowledgement”mean？
A．Praise. B．Support.
C．Scold. D．Recognition.
58．How many times have Russian leaders been named“Person of the Year”so far？
A．Five times. B．Six times.
C．Seven times. D．Eight times.