Is there a limit to the number of years that a person can expect to live? Can changes in life-style add years to one’s life? Throughout history people have sought answers to these questions and others.
Various myths offer the hope of great longevity. In the imaginary land of Shangri-La, for example, people are said to lead a charmed existence for a thousand years. The Spanish explorer Ponce de Leon was convinced that he would find the Foundation of Youth in what is now the state of Florida. According to the Bible, Methuselah lived to be more than 900 years old.
The subject of longevity is fascinating, and scientists study individuals such as Jeanne Calment to learn about the aging process. Calment died in 1997 in Arles, France, at the age of 122. She never married, and she lived in her own apartment until moving to a retirement community when she was 109.
Most scientists agree that bodies will last, at best, about 125 years. This potential has changed little since modern human beings appeared more than 100 thousand years age. Recent improvements in medicine and the environment have extended life expectancy, especially for those from poorer parts of the world. It is not clear, however, whether such improvements will lengthen life expectancy beyond a certain point.
Life expectancy is the number of years an infant can be expected to live, given the conditions into which it is born. Life expectancy, therefore, is affected by nutrition, medical care, and social and political circumstances. An individual’s genetic makeup is also an important factor. Children from long-lived families can hope to enjoy long lives themselves. According to recent data, the average life expectancy worldwide in 1998 was 67 years. This can be compared with an average life expectancy of 77 in the United States.
In 1970 the average life expectancy worldwide was 61 years, or 6 years less than it was in 1998. This same period saw a drop in infant mortality -— the death of a child before the first birthday-—from 80 births out of 1,000 to 54 births out of 1,000. According to some researchers, the rise in the average life expectancy is due primarily to the drop in infant mortality. It is not so much that adults are living to an older age. It is, rather, that more people are living into adulthood because more children are surviving beyond their first birthdays.Infant mortality is defined as ________ .
| A．the number of children born alive |
| B．the kinds of behavior typical of very young children |
| C．the number of children, out of 1,000 births, who die before their first birthday |
| D．the typical and obvious thoughts of very young children |
Although it may be possible to improve the life expectancy of a particular group of people, ________ .
| A．it is more difficult to affect the rate of infant mortality |
| B．it is unlikely that one will be able to extend the potential life span of human beings in general |
| C．the process of evolution is extending the potential life span beyond 125 years |
| D．the potential that bodies will last, at best, about 125 years has changed much since modern human beings appeared |
One can infer that people have at times imagined that ________ .
| A．people live longer in the state of Florida |
| B．a long life is a burden rather than a blessing |
| C．it is possible to find a way to live for centuries |
| D．life expectancy is affected by a couple of factors |
One can conclude that ________ .
| A．the aging process can be stopped. |
| B．the aging process is inevitable. |
| C．life expectancy in the United States will soon reach 125 years. |
| D．the average life expectancy worldwide is decreasing |
D
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 the problem is that 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!
67. 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^
68. The underlined word “them” in paragraph 2 refers to_______. 
A. the 30,000 words B. English teachers
C. misunderstood words D. frequently used words
69. 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.
70. 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.
C
8:30 PM
Outlook
Outlook is back with a new series of reports to keep you up date with all that’s new in the world of entertainment. Stories go all the way from the technical to the romantic from stage to screen. There will be reports of the stars of the moment, the stars of the future and the stars of the past. The director with his new film, the designer with the latest fashion, and the musician with the popular song are part of the new Outlook. The program is introduced by Fran Levine.
9:00 PM
Discovery
When a 10-year-old boy gets a first class degree in mathematics or an 8-year-old plays chess like a future grand master, they are considered as geniuses. Where does the quality of genius come from? Is it all in the genes（基因）or can any child be turned into a genius in the future, what should they do? In this 30-minute film, Barry Johnson, the professor at School of Medicine, New York University will help you discover the answer.
10:00 PM
Science/ Health
Is it possible to beat high blood pressure without drugs? The answer is “yes”, according to the researchers at Johns Hopkins and three other medical centers. After a study of 800 persons with high blood pressure, they found that after 6 months, these devoted to weigh loss-exercise and eating a low-salt, low-fat food lost about 13 pounds and became fitter. Plus 35% of them dropped into the “normal” category(范畴). This week, Dr. Alan Duckworth will tell you how these people reduce their blood to a level similar to what’s achieved with Hypertension drugs.
64. The main purpose of writing these three texts is _____
A. to invite people to see films
B. to invite people to topic discussions
C. to attract more students to attend lectures
D. to attract more people to watch TV programs
65. Who will be most probably interested in Discovery?
A. Parents who to send their children to school of medicine.
B. Children who are good at mathematics.
C. Parents who want their child to become another Albert Einstein.
D. Children who are interested in playing chess.
66. According to the third text, which of the following has almost the same effect as hypertension drugs?
A. Exercise plus a healthy diet. B. Loss of thirteen pounds in weight.
C. Six months of exercise without drugs. D. Low-salt and low-fat food.
B
In the course of working my way through school, I took many jobs I would rather forget. But none of these jobs was as dreadful as my job in an apple plant. The work was hard, the pay was poor; What’s more, the working conditions were terrible.
First of all, the job made huge demands on my strength. For ten hours a night, I took boxes that rolled down a metal track and piled them onto a truck. Each box contained twelve heavy bottles of apple juice. I once figured out that I was lifting an average of twelve tons of apple juice every night.
I would not have minded the difficulty of the work so much if the pay had not been so poor. I was paid the lowest wage of that time—two dollars an hour. Because of the low pay, I felt eager to get as much as possible. I usually worked twelve hours a night but did receive a low pay.
But even more than the low pay, what made me unhappy was the working conditions. During work I was limited to two ten-minute breaks and an unpaid half hour for lunch. Most of my time was spent outside loading trucks with those heavy boxes in near-zero-degree temperatures. The steel floors of the trucks were like ice, which made my feet feel like stone. And after the production line shut down at night and most people left, I had to spend two hours alone cleaning the floor.
I stayed on the job for five months, all the while hating the difficulty of the work, the poor money, and the conditions under which I worked. By the time I left, I was determined never to go back there again.
60. Why did the writer have to take many jobs at the time?
A. to pay for his schooling B. to save for his future
C. to contribute to charities D. to gain some experience
61. The following facts describe the terrible working conditions of the plant EXCEPT ________.
A. loading boxes in the freezing cold B. having limited time for breaks
C. working and studying at the same time D. getting no pay for lunch time
62. What is the subject discussed in the text?
A. The writer’s unhappy school life.
B. The writer’s eagerness to earn money.^
C. The writer’s experience as a full-time worker.
D. The writer’s hard work in an apple plant.
63. How is the text organized?
A. Topic-Argument-Explanation
B. Opinion-Discussion-Description
C. Main idea-Comparison-Supporting examples
D. Introduction-Supporting examples-Conclusion
Ⅳ、阅读理解（每小题2分; 满分30分）
A
Beijing’s markets will soon be flooded with more and cheaper colorful fruit such as orange mangos and green durian all year around.
Thanks to a new free trade agreement signed last Monday between China and the Association of Southeast Asia Nations(ASEAN), more and more tropical（热带的）South-east Asian fruit will enter the country.
The agreement means that from July 1, 2010, China and ASEAN countries will begin to cut tariffs（关税）. There are about 7,000 products included in the cuts.
As global communication develops, countries are trading more and more goods with each other. When products are sold across national boundaries（边界）,countries put a tax on them. This type of tax is called a tariff.
Just like removing an obstacle（障碍）from the path of these goods, the reduction of tariffs will encourage trade between China and ASEAN countries. It means more productions and lower prices.
The agreement will bring real benefits for Chinese customers, said a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman. “In the Beijing markets you will easily find more tropical fruit like durian, which used to be very, very expensive. Now they will be cheaper.” The current tariff rate on durian is 22 percent but will fall to zero in 2010.
In the first 10 months of this year China did US $84.6 billion of trade with ASEAN countries. Experts believe this may reach US $100 billion next year.
Founded in 1967, ASEAN now includes Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, the Philippines, Thailand, Brunei, Vietnam, Myanmar, Cambodia and Laos.
56. More and more tropical fruits will enter China because_________.
A. there are too many of them in foreign countries
B. an agreement to cut tariffs was made
C. Chinese people are rich enough to afford them
D. The trading business is developing^
57. Which of the following statements about the agreement is NOT true?
A. It will lead to an increase in trade between China and ASEAN countries.
B. It might cause the prices of ASEAN products to fall.
C. It may greatly benefit the Chinese customers.
D. It won’t bring any benefits to producers of ASEAN countries.
58. We can infer from the story that_______ .
A. China is short of fruit
B. tariffs are an important factor in foreign trade
C. tropical countries have cheaper fruit
D. China prefers to trade with ASEAN countries
59. The best title for this passage is
A. Tariff Cut Increases Trade B. Best Ways To Sell Fruits
C. Tropical Fruit To China D. China Joins ASEAN
A team of researchers in California has developed a way to predict what kinds of objects people are looking at by scanning what’s happening in their brains.
When you look at something, your eyes send a signal about that object to your brain. Different regions of the brain process the information your eyes send. Cells in your brain called neurons(神经元) are responsible for this processing.
The fMRI (functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging功能性磁共振造影) brain scans could generally match electrical activity in the brain to the basic shape of a picture that someone was looking at.
Like cells anywhere else in your body, active neurons use oxygen. Blood brings oxygen to the neurons, and the more active a neuron is, the more oxygen it will consume. The more active a region of the brain, the more active its neurons, and in turn, the more blood will travel to that region. And by using fMRI, scientists can visualize which parts of the brain receive more oxygen- rich blood--and therefore, which parts are working to process information.
An fMRI machine is a device that scans the brain and measures changes in blood flow to the brain. The technology shows researchers how brain activity changes when a person thinks, looks at something, or carries out an activity like speaking or reading. By highlighting the areas of the brain at work when a person looks at different images, fMRI may help scientists determine specific patterns of brain activity associated with different kinds of images.
The California researchers tested brain activity by having two volunteers view hundreds of pictures of everyday objects, like people, animals, and fruits. The scientists used an fMRI machine to record the volunteers' brain activity with each photograph they looked at. Different objects caused different regions of the volunteers' brains to light up on the scan, indicating activity. The scientists used this information to build a model to predict how the brain might respond to any image the eyes see.
In a second test, the scientists asked the volunteers to look at 120 new pictures. Like before, their brains were scanned every time they looked at a new image. This time, the scientists used their model to match the fMRI scans to the image. For example, if a scan in the second test showed the same pattern of brain activity that was strongly, related to pictures of apples in the first test, their model would have predicted the volunteers were looking at apples.
51. What is responsible for processing the information sent by your eyes?
A A small region of the brain.
B The central part of the brain.
C Neurons in the brain.
D Oxygen-rich blood.
52. Which of the following statements is NOT meant by the writer?
A Cells in your brain are called neurons.
B The more oxygen a neuron consumes, the more blood it needs.
C fMRI helps scientists to discover which parts of the brain process information.
D fMRI helps scientists to discover how the brain develops intelligently.
53. "Highlighting the areas of the brain at work" means
A "marking the parts of the brain that are processing information"
B "giving light to the parts of the brain that are processing information"
C "putting the parts of the brain to work"
D "stopping the parts of the brain from working"
54. What did the researchers experiment on?
A Animals, objects, and fruits.
B Two volunteers.
C fMRI machines.
D Thousands of pictures.
55.What is the best title for the passage?
A Mind-reading Machine
B A Technological Dream
C Device that can Help You Calculate
D The Recent Development in Science and Technology