Norah had a cottage on a cliff（悬崖）above a big bay. In winter it could be very unpleasant because of strong winds and sea waves. In fact, when a gale was blowing, Norah and her husband got used to sleeping in a small room downstairs, because their bedroom upstairs, which faced the gales, had a very big window, and they were afraid that an extra violent wind might break it and blow pieces of broken glass over them.
Also, the salt wave from the sea put an end to many of the colorful plants Norah planted in her garden. She tried putting up a fence to protect them, but the wind just hit it, went up over the top and then down the other side, so in the end she filled the garden with trees and bushes that liked salt.
But most of the summer Norah enjoyed her cottage and garden very much. At weekends she could sit out-of-doors in the sun, looking at the beautiful view, with interesting ships and boats passing by, and she could very easily cycle down to the sea for a swim.
Now, Norah and her husband had plenty of friends and relations. In the summer lots of them used to come to enjoy the beautiful place, and in the end it really became quite annoying for the couple. When they were at home, they found friends and relations arriving, expecting to be given unlimited drinks and meals, and to sit in the sun for hours, talking as if Norah and her husband had nothing else to do but entertain and listen to them.
This went on for several years. Norah didn’t wish to appear rude by refusing to let her friends and relations in, but on the other hand, she was getting tired every summer.
Then one day Norah was complaining about this to her hairdresser while she was doing her hair. “You’re disturbed by too many uninvited guests, are you?” said the hairdresser. “Why don’t you try my way of escaping?”
“What’s that?” asked Norah.
“Well,” the hairdresser answered, “when the bell rings, I put on my coat and take my shopping bag. If it’s someone I don’t want to see, I say innocently, ‘I’m sorry, but I’ve got to go out.’ But…”The underlined word “gale” can be replaced by _____.
| A．wind | B．ship | C．sea | D．animal |
We can infer that _____.
| A．lots of friends cam to visit them in winter |
| B．few friends came to visit them in winter |
| C．friends came to visit them only for drinks and meals |
| D．Norah was a good cook |
How did Norah go to the sea for a swim?
| A．She went there by ship. | B．She walked there. |
| C．She swam there. | D．She went there by bicycle. |
The hairdresser likely to continue to say “_____” in the end?
| A．if I’m tired, I say ‘Sorry, can you come next time?’ |
| B．if it’s someone I like to see, I say ‘How lucky! I’ve just come in!’ |
| C．if it is fine that day, I say, ‘I’m tired of this, but I’ll show you around the place.’ |
| D．if it’s someone I like to see, I say, ‘How happy to see you! But I was going shopping now .’ |
Which of the following is the best title?
| A．A Good Place of Enjoying the Sea | B．A Visit to Norah |
| C．A clever Way of Escaping | D．A Warm-hearted Couple |
| Ticket Types |
Regulations |
Notes |
| Single Day Admission |
*For all visitors *On any standard Day other than Peak Day *One ticket per person, valid(有效的)for one entry on the day of admission |
Standard Day tickets refer to the tickets for all visiting days(167 days in total) except for Peak Days during the Expo. |
| Special Admission |
*For the disabled * For people born in or before 1950 *For students with valid IDs *For children above 1.2m *For Chinese military personnel on active duty *Valid IDs are required upon ticket purchase and entry *On any Standard Day other than Peak Day *One ticket per person, valid for one entry on the day of admission |
|
| 3 Day Admission |
*For all visitors *Valid for any three days except Peak Days *One ticket per person, valid for one entry per day |
The tickets are designed to meet the multi-entry demand of visitors. |
| 7 Day Admission |
* For all visitors *Valid for any seven days except Peak Days *One ticket per person, valid for one entry per day |
_______ can get a Special Admission ticket for himself/ herself.
| A．A 56-year-old bus driver | B．A school girl with her valid student card |
| C．A policeman in his forties | D．A U.S. army officer on active duty |
If you want to enter the Expo Park once every week in one month and don’t want to bother to buy the ticket each time, you can buy a ______ ticket.
| A．Single Day Admission | B．Special Admission |
| C．3 Day Admission | D．7 Day Admission |
The function of the table is to ______ .
| A．remind the public of the difficulty buying the Expo tickets |
| B．show which groups of people can get admission into the Expo Park |
| C．provide information about the Expo tickets and regulations |
| D．introduce all the visiting regulations in the Expo Park |
Being able to multitask---doing several things at the same time---is considered a welcome skill by most people. But if we consider the situation of the young people aged from eight to eighteen, we should think again.
What we often see nowadays is that young people juggle an ever larger number of electronic devices as they study. While working, they also surf on the Internet, send out emails, answer the telephone and listen to music on their iPods. In a sense, they are spending a significant amount of time in fruitless efforts as they multitask.
Multitasking is even changing the relationship between family members. As young people give so much attention to their own worlds, they seem to have no time to spend with the other people around them. They can no longer greet family members when they enter the house, nor can they eat at the family table.
Multitasking also affects young people’s performance at university and in the workplace. When asked about their opinion of the effect of modern gadgets on their performance of tasks, many young people gave a positive response. However, the response from the worlds of education and business was not quite as positive.
Educators feel that multitasking by children has a serious effect on later development of study skills. They believe that many college students now need help to improve their study skills. Similarly, employers feel that young people entering the job market need to be taught all over again, as modern gadgets have made it unnecessary for them to learn special skills to do their work.What does the underlined word “juggle” in Paragraph 2 most probably mean?
| A．Want to buy. |
| B．Take the place of. |
| C．Use at the same time. |
| D．Seek for information from. |
In Paragraph 3, the author points out that ________.
| A．family members do not eat at the family table. |
| B．family members do not greet each other. |
| C．young people live happily in their families |
| D．young people seldom talk with their family members |
What is the main idea of the last paragraph?
| A．multitasking is harmful to young people’s development. |
| B．Young people benefit a lot from modern gadgets. |
| C．Multitasking is an important skill to young people. |
| D．Yong people must learn skills for future jobs. |
The author develops the passage mainly by ________.
| A．providing typical examples |
| B．following the natural time order |
| C．comparing opinions from different fields |
| D．presenting a cause and analyzing its effects |
A “blogger” is a person who writes on an Internet computer Web site called a “blog”. The word “blog” is a short way of saying web log, or personal Web site. Anyone can start a blog, and they can write about anything they like.
There are millions of blogs on the Internet today. They provide news, information and ideas to many people who read them. They contain links to other Web sites. And they provide a place for people to write their ideas and react to the ideas of others.
A research company called Peruse has studied more than 3,000 Web logs. It says that blogs are most popular with teenage girls. They use them to let their friends know what is happening in their lives. The study also says that more than 100,000 bloggers stopped taking part in the activity after a year.
However, some people develop serious blogs to present political and other ideas. For example, the Republican and Democratic parties in the southern state of Kentucky recently started their own blogs. And American companies are beginning to use blogs to advertise their products.
At the same time, some long-standing blogs have ended. Last week, blogging leader Dave Winner closed his free blog service, weblogs.com. He says the site became too costly to continue. He started the blog four years ago, and thousands of people had written on it.
One blog that is still going strong is called Rebecca’s Pocket. It involves much useful information for readers. Rebecca Blood created the Web site in 1999. She wrote about the history of blogs on the site. That article led to a book called “The Weblog Handbook”. It has been translated into four languages so far.
Ms Blood says Rebecca’s Pocket gets about 30,000 visitors a month. She writes about anything and everything----politics, culture and movies. She recently provided medical advice. And she wrote about how to prevent people from stealing money from online bank accounts.The text is written mainly to ____
| A．introduce an Internet computer Web site called “blog” |
| B．introduce a way of reading on blogs |
| C．tell readers about blogs |
| D．tell readers how to write blogs |
From the text we can learn that blogs cover almost everything except __ _.
| A．different ideas |
| B．medical advice |
| C．advertisements |
| D．account codes |
According to this passage , which of the following is NOT true?
| A．Politicians don’t use blogs at all |
| B．A lot of bloggers no longer write or read blogs |
| C．Those who like to use blogs are mostly teenage girls |
| D．Dave Winer closed his “weblogs.com” because of money shortage |
The reason why Rebecca’s Pocket is still going strong is that____
| A．it was created by a woman |
| B．it provides plenty of useful information and advice |
| C．it is about the history of books |
| D．it has editions in at least four different languages |
A Charlotte, N.C., man was charged with first-degree murder of a 79-year-old woman whom police said he scared to death. In an attempt to evade policemen after a bank robbery, the Associated Press reports that 20-year-old Larry Whitfield broke into the home of Mary Parnell. Police say he didn’t touch Parnell but that she died after suffering a heart attack that was caused by terror. Can the guy be held responsible for the woman’s death? Prosecutors(公诉人) said that he can under the state’s murder rule, which allows someone to be charged with murder if he or she causes another person’s death while committing or fleeing from a severe crime like robbery—even if he or she doesn’t kill someone on purpose.
But, medically speaking, can someone actually be frightened to death? We asked Martin Samuels, chairman of the neurology department at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston.
Absolutely, no question about it.
The body has a natural protective method called the fight-or-flight response(战或逃反应), which was originally described by Walter Cannon，the chairman of Harvard University’s physiology department from 1906 to 1942. If, in the wild, an animal is faced with a life-threatening situation, the autonomic nervous system responds by increasing heart rate, increasing blood flow to the muscles, and slowing digestion, among other things. All of this increases the chances of succeeding in a fight or running away from an aggressive beast. This process certainly would be of help to primitive humans. However, in the modern world there is obvious decline of the fight-or-flight response.
The autonomic nervous system uses the chemical messenger to send signals to various parts of the body to activate the fight-or-flight response. This chemical is toxic in large amounts; it damages the organs such as the heart, lungs, liver and kidneys. It is believed that almost all sudden deaths are caused by damage to the heart. There is almost no other organ that would fail so fast as to cause sudden death. Kidney failure, liver failure, those things don’t kill you suddenly.
By the way, any strong positive or negative emotions such as happiness or sadness can cause the same result. There are people who have died in intercourse or in religious passion. There was a case of a golfer who hit a hole in one, turned to his partner and said, “I can die now”, and then he dropped dead. For about seven days after the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon there was an increase of sudden cardiac death among New Yorkers.Why the Charlotte, N.C., man was charged?
A. Because he threatened the policemen to kill an old woman.
B. Because he caused an old woman’s terror and she died.
C. Because he beat an old woman and caused her heart attack
D. Because he murdered an old woman while robbing a bank. What is Martin Samuels’ attitude to the possibility of being frightened to death?
| A．Approval. | B．Disapproval. | C．Doubtful. | D．Indifferent. |
Which of the following about the fight-or-flight response is true?
A. The fight-or-flight response was raised and proved by Martin A. Samuels.
B. It is a natural protective method that can’t be found in all creatures but humans.
C. The ancient humans had a superior fight-or-flight response than modern ones.
D. The fight-or-flight response is beneficial to both our actions and organs. What activity can we infer is less likely to damage the organs?
| A．Winning a big lottery. | B．Missing a dead family. |
| C．Watching a horror movie. | D．Listening to a sweet song. |
The purpose of the passage is_________.
| A．to explain why people will die of a heart attack |
| B．to offer some advice on protecting us from heart failure |
| C．to compare different kinds of feelings to cause a death |
| D．to show strong emotions can cause a sudden death |
When I was growing up, I had an old neighbor named Dr. Gibbs. He didn’t look like any doctor I’d ever known. He never yelled at us for playing in his yard. I remember him as someone who was a lot nicer than most of the adults in our community.
When Dr. Gibbs wasn’t saving lives, he was planting trees. His house sat on ten acres, and his life’s goal was to make it a forest.
The good doctor had some interesting theories concerning plant care and growth. He never watered his new trees, which flew in the face of conventional wisdom. Once I asked why. He said that watering plants spoiled them so that each successive tree generation would grow weaker and weaker. So you have to make things rough for them and weed out(淘汰) the weaker trees early on. He talked about how watering trees made for shallow roots, and how trees that weren’t watered had to grow deep roots in search of moisture. I took him to mean that deep roots were to be treasured.
So he never watered his trees. He planted an oak and, instead of watering it every morning, he beat it with a rolled-up newspaper. Smack! Slap! Pow! I asked him why he did that, and he said it was to get the tree’s attention.
Dr. Gibbs passed away a couple of years after I left home. Every now and again, I walked by his house and looked at the trees that I’d watched him plant some twenty-five years ago. They’re extremely tall, big and robust since they have deep roots now. However, the trees in my garden trembled in a cold wind although I had watered them for several years.
It seems that adversity(逆境) and suffering benefit these trees in ways comfort and ease never could. I stood there deep in thought.
Every night before I go to bed, I check on my two sons. I stand over them and watch their little bodies, the rising and falling of life within. I often pray for them. Mostly I pray that their lives will be easy. But I think that it’s time to change my prayer(祷词) because now I know my children are going to encounter hardship.According to Dr. Gibbs’ theories, trees will become weaker if they _________.
| A．are lack of care | B．are watered | C．are weeded out | D．are beaten |
According to Para.3 and Para.4, we can infer that Dr. Gibbs’ motto(座右铭) may be .
| A．“Seeing is believing” | B．“Put everything in proper use” |
| C．“Practice makes perfect” | D．“No pain, no gain” |
The underlined word robust in Para.5 most probably means _________.
| A．strong | B．strange | C．deep | D．old |
Which of the following may be the author’s best prayer for his two sons now?
| A．I wish them strong wings, with which they can fly higher and touch the sky. |
| B．I wish them nice fortune so that they can meet people like Dr. Gibbs in the future. |
| C．I wish them deep roots into the earth since the rains fall and the winds blow often. |
| D．I wish them great shades under the tree since the sunlight is always sharp and bitter. |
Which of the following can be the best title of this passage?
A Nice Doctor B. The Deep Roots C. Adversity and Suffering D. My Childhood Memory