A couple had a son eleven years after they married. They were a loving couple and the boy was the apple of their eye. When the boy was around four years old, one day the father was very tired after work so he asked his wife to pick up their son. The mother, who was very busy in the kitchen, totally forgot about it.
Later the boy lost his way on the street. When the son was found missing, the mother hurried to look for him, but she didn’t find him. The mother felt very sad and didn’t know how to face her husband.
When the father went to the police station after hearing that the son was missing, he looked at his wife and said just four words. What do you think the four words were? The husband just said "I love you, darling."
The son was missing. If she had picked him up earlier, this would not have happened. There is no point in blaming (责备) anyone. His wife had also lost her only child. What his wife needed at that moment was comfort and understanding from her husband. That is what the husband gave his wife. Several weeks later, with the help of the police, the couple finally found their lost son. The family’s relationship became stronger over that time.
Sometimes we spend lots of time asking who is to blame. We miss many chances to give each other support and let each other feel the warmth of human relationships. Get rid of all your unwillingness to forgive, selfishness, and fears and you will find the world is much more wonderful. What is the meaning of the underlined phrase “the apple of their eye”
| A．A person who always has a sweet smile in their opinion. |
| B．A person who is as pretty as an apple in their opinion. |
| C．A person who is loved more than anyone else in their opinion. |
| D．A person who looks like an apple in their opinion. |
Why didn’t the father pick the boy up himself?
| A．He was very lazy. |
| B．He thought the mother had picked him up. |
| C．He forgot to pick him up. |
| D．He was too tired to do it. |
What can we learn from this passage?
| A．Be careful in everything you do. | B．Love is the most important thing. |
| C．Learn to forgive others. | D．Everyone can make mistakes. |
What do you think of the husband?
| A．Warm-hearted. | B．Careful. | C．Hard-working. | D．Broad-minded. |
WASHINGTON, Sept. 23—The House of Representatives, which prides itself on being “the People’s House” has been turning into a rich man’s club.
The representatives newly elected in 1984 were almost four times as wealthy as the first term lawmakers elected only six years before, according to a new study on the members’ financial reports.
Behind this remarkable swing, the study says, are two main factors: a court decision that outlawed limits on what candidates could give to their own campaigns, and the enormous growth in the cost of pursuing a seat in congress. As a result, it is increasingly difficult for candidates of modest means, particularly women to amount successful challenge to entrenched office holders.
One solution, the authors contend, is a system of public financing for campaigns, but congress seems in no mood to change the political rules any time soon.
“The lower chamber is going upper class,” said Mark Green, the president of The Democracy Project, a public policy institute based in New York. “But this evolution from a House of Representatives to a House of Lords denies the diversity of our democracy. It establishes a de facto property qualification for office that increasingly says: low and middle income need not apply.
The Democracy Project produced the study in cooperation with the United States Public Interest Research Group, a similar institute situated in Washington. But their research was not entirely theoretical. In 1980 Mr Green was the unsuccessful Democratic candidate for Congress in New York’s 15th District, in Manhattan. The winner was Bill Green, one of the wealthiest members of CongresWhat can we know from the passage?
| A．The House of Representatives is poor men’s club. |
| B．The House of Representatives was made up of people with low and middle income. |
| C．The House of Representatives was rich men’s club. |
| D．The House of Representatives is made up of people with low and middle income. |
What does “this remarkable swing” in the second paragraph refer to?
| A．The House of Representatives prides itself on being “the people’s House”. |
| B．The new study based on the members’ financial reports. |
| C．A court decision that outlawed limits on what candidates could give to their own campaigns. |
| D．The representatives elected now are much wealthier than those elected a few years ago. |
Which of the following is NOT true according to the study?
| A．Any honest man can become a representative of the House. |
| B．Women are more difficult than men to be an entrenched office holder. |
| C．Limits on what a candidate could give to his campaign are outlawed. |
| D．One must spend much money getting a seat in the Congress. |
What is the United States Public Interest Research Group like?
| A．The House of Representatives. |
| B．A public policy institute based in New York. |
| C．A public policy institute based in Washington. |
| D．The House of lords. |
To Chinese immigrants, in the mid-1800s, California was “The Land of the Golden Mountain.” In their homeland they had heard the words, “There’s gold in California.” They sailed 7,000miles to join the gold rush and strike it rich. Between 1849 and 1882, more than 30,000 Chinese came to California. Most were men. They had been farmers in China. They came here to be miners and laborers. They ended up doing many other jobs, too.
Like many other immigrants, they did not plan to stay in America. They came because of their ties to their homeland and their families. They planned to return to China with their fortunes and help their families.
Only a few Chinese gold miners struck it rich. Most picked over the areas that had been mined already. But still, white miners resented the Chinese. Slowly, they drove the “yellow peril” from the mining camps.
By the end of the 1850s, many Chinese returned home. Those who stayed found other jobs.
Few women had come west in the gold rush. The Chinese saw a good business opportunity. They began doing the jobs women would have done. Many became house servants. Many more opened laundries.
The Chinese opened restaurants. Chop suey and show mein are popular Chinese-American dishes. The Chinese probably created these dishes to serve to the white miners.
Other Chinese became fishermen, farmers, and even cigar makers. Why did Chinese go to America in the mid-1800s?
| A．Because they could find good jobs there. |
| B．Because they had found gold there. |
| C．Because they could open laundries and restaurants there. |
| D．Because they heard there was gold there. |
The underlined word “resented” mean “________”.
| A．liked | B．helped | C．hated | D．served |
of the following was NOT mentioned in the passage?
| A．Some Chinese became drivers. |
| B．Many Chinese opened shops to help wash clothes. |
| C．Many Chinese picked gold around the old mines. |
| D．Many Chinese returned to China by the end of the 1850s. |
should be the title of the passage?
| A．Early Chinese immigrants in America |
| B．Dream to strike it rich |
| C．The difference between men and women |
| D．Gold miners in America |
The first breath-taking pictures of the Earth taken from space showed it as a solid ball covered by brown land masses and blue-green oceans. We had never seen the Earth from that distance before. To us, it appeared as though the Earth had always looked that way and always would. Scientists now know, however, that the surface of the Earth is not as permanent as we had thought.
Scientists explain that the surface of our planet is always moving. Continents moves about the Earth like huge ships at sea. They float on pieces of the Earth’s outer skin. New outer skin is created as melted rock pushed up from below the ocean floor. Old outer skin is destroyed as it rolls down into the hot area and melts again.
Only since the 1960s have scientists really began to understand that the planet Earth is a great living machine. Some experts have said this new understanding is one of the most important revolutions in scientific thought. The revolution is based on the work of scientists who study the movement of the continents—a science called plate tectonics.
The modern story of plate tectonics begins with the German scientist Alfred Wegener. Before World War One, Wegener argued that the continents had moved and were still moving. He said the idea first occurred to him when he observed that the coastlines of South America and Africa could fit together like two pieces of a puzzle. He proposed that the two continents might have been one and then split apart.
Wegener was not the first person to wonder about the shape of the continents. About 500 years ago, explorers thought about it when they made the first maps of Americas. The explorers noted the east coast of North America and South America would fit almost exactly into the west coast of Europe and south Africa. What the explorers did not do, but Wegener did, was to investigate the idea that the continents move.What does the writer mainly tell us in the passage?
| A．The first breath-taking pictures of the Earth taken from space. |
| B．Human’s recognition of the earth’s surface. |
| C．The German scientist Alfred Wegener. |
| D．The early explorers’ discovery. |
Which of the following is true according to the passage?
| A．We didn’t see the Earth from far away until we saw the picture taken in the space. |
| B．Our ancient thought that the surface of the earth is still. |
| C．Alfred Wegener was not the first person to investigate the idea that the continents move. |
| D．The coastline of India and Africa fit together. |
The last word of the third paragraph “tectonics” mean “________”.
| A．study of construction |
| B．study of architecture |
| C．earth surface |
| D．structural geology |
What did the explorers find?
| A．The coastlines of South America and Africa could fit together. |
| B．The coastlines of North America and Africa could fit together. |
| C．The east coastlines of North America and the west coast of Europe could fit together. |
| D．The coastlines of North America and India could fit together. |
Why do men die earlier than women? The latest research makes it known that the reason could be that men’s hearts go into rapid decline when they reach middle age.
The largest study of the effects of ageing on the heart has found that women’s longevity may be linked to the fact that their hearts do not lose their pumping power with age.
“We have found that the power of the male heart falls by 20-25 percent between 18 and 70 years of age,” said the head of the study, David Goldspink of Liverpool John Moores University in the UK.
“Within the heart there are millions of cells that enable it to beat. Between the age of 20 and 70, one-third of those cells die and are not replaced in men,” said Goldspink. “This is part of the ageing process.”
What surprises scientists is that the female heart sees very little loss of these cells. A healthy 70-year-old woman’s heart could perform almost as well as a 20-year-old one’s.
“This gender difference might just explain why women live longer than men,” said Goldspink. They studied more than 250 healthy men and women between the ages of 18 and 80, focusing on healthy persons to remove the confusing influence of disease. “The team has yet to find why ageing takes a greater loss on the male heart,” said Goldspink.
The good news is that men can improve the health of their heart with regular exercise. Goldspink stressed that women also need regular exercise to prevent their leg muscles becoming smaller and weaker as they age.The underlined word “longevity” in the second paragraph probably refers to “________”.
| A．health | B．long life | C．ageing | D．effect |
The text mainly talks about ________.
| A．men’s heart cells | B．women’s ageing process、 |
| C．the gender difference | D．hearts and long life |
according to the text, the UK scientists have known that ________.
| A．women have more cells than men when they are born |
| B．women can replace the cells that enable the heart to beat |
| C．the female heart loses few of the cells with age |
| D．women never lose their pumping power with age |
If you want to live longer, you should ________.
| A．enable your heart to beat much faster |
| B．find out the reason for ageing |
| C．exercise regularly to keep your heart healthy |
| D．prevent your cells from being lost |
We can know from the passage that ________.
| A．the reason why ageing takes a greater loss on the male heart has been found out |
| B．scientists are on the way to finding out why the male heart loses more of the cells |
| C．the team has done something to prevent the male from suffering the greater loss |
| D．women over 70 could lose more heart cells than those at the age of 20 |
In recent years many countries of the world have been faced with the problem of how to make their workers more productive. Some experts claim the answer is to make jobs more varied. But do more various jobs lead to greater productivity? There is evidence to suggest that while variety certainly makes the worker’s life more enjoyable, it does not actually make him work harder. As far as increasing productivity is concerned, then variety is not an important factor.
Other experts feel that giving the worker freedom to do his job in his own way is important, and there is no doubt that this is true. The problem is that this kind of freedom cannot easily be given in the modern factory with its complicated machinery which must be used in a fixed way. Thus while freedom of choice may be important, there is usually very little that can be done to create it.
Another very important consideration is how each worker contributes to the product he is making. In most factories the worker sees only one part of the product. Some car factories are now experimenting with having many small production lines rather than one large one, so that each worker contributes more to the production of the cars on his line. It would seem that not only is degree of the worker contribution an important factor, therefore, but it is also one we can do something about.
To what extent does more money lead to greater productivity? The workers themselves certainly think this is important. But perhaps they want more money only because the work they do is boring. Money just lets them enjoy their spare time more. A similar argument may explain demands for shorter working hours. Perhaps if we succeed in making their jobs more interesting, they will neither want more money, nor will shorter working hours be so important to them. Which of the following is the best way to make workers work harder according to the author?
| A．Increasing their pay. |
| B．Giving them more spare time. |
| C．Making the work itself meaningful. |
| D．Replacing large production lines with small ones. |
The reason why a worker cannot have freedom in doing the job in his own way is that _______.
| A．the machinery is so complex that it should be fixed |
| B．the production lines are too large in modern factories |
| C．the bosses can create very little freedom of choices for workers |
| D．the machines must be operated strictly according to instructions and rules |
For a worker on an assembly line in a car factory, the job is not enjoyable because _______.
| A．he can only make a part of a car |
| B．he does not know what he is doing |
| C．his life in spare time is more interesting |
| D．the importance of his job is not clear to him |
In the article, the word “productivity” means _______.
| A．the activity of producing something |
| B．the production volume in a time unit |
| C．the plan and the method of production |
| D．both the quantity and quality of a product |
The best title for this passage may be _______.
| A．Problems of Modern Workers |
| B．Making Jobs More Interesting |
| C．Pushing Workers to Produce More |
| D．How to Improve Labor Conditions |