Her frozen fingers touched the flame trying to feel alive. She could feel the warmth but it was a cold heat, as if the candle was rejecting her.
Her arms turned red because of the cold, her short sleeved shirt not giving her enough warmth. The winter air grabbed(抓住) at her arms, causing her pain, but she didn’t mind. She knew she should put her jacket on, it was winter in Connecticut, but that would be giving up. Up here, in this tree she felt safe.
She looked at the candle, surrounded by hardening wax(蜡). She placed her fingers gently on the warm green wax. This candle was a reminder of her life inside that house, a life she would have to return to eventually.
As a child, she had gotten this candle. She spent all she had on it. The beautiful crystal box （水晶盒）had caught her eye. Five whole nickels（五分币） had brought her that candle.
She gave it to her mother for Mother’s Day. Her mother had managed a smile and put it on a shelf. “It’s very pretty, honey! I will put it right here.” Since then that candle had never been moved, never been lighted, sitting dusty on a cluttered shelf that no one could see. Later on, her parents got divorced.
By now the candle was colder than the air and the darkness was complete. The snow on the ground made the night lighter and less satisfying than it had been before the first snowfall. She liked the darkness because she felt safe in it. From the glances of her friends who liked the girl she used to be. From the boys who could never figure out who she was. From her guidance counselor(顾问) whose endless worried looks never made her feel any better.
No one was outside at this time of night. She was alone in the world, just how she liked it. Just as she was about to lean back against the branch, she heard a sound.
She heard footsteps breaking the ice in the snow, heading toward her. He was making his way toward the white fence at the edge of the building, right against the road. Normally she would have ignored this person and stayed on her branch faraway from human contact, but this figure had something with him. He trudged(吃力地走) toward the white fence carrying a case. The figure reached the fence, opened the case and took out a shiny object.
She took her eyes off this figure only long enough to climb down the tree to get a better view of him. She reached the bottom and saw that the person had turned to face the street, sitting on the white fence that she and her friends once sat on. She stepped carefully on the ice, making her way toward him.
And then a beautiful sound of music came from the shiny object. She stopped and listened to it. She started walking towards the guy again. Just as she was about to step onto the snow banks, she slipped on the ice crashing to the ground. The figure turned around in surprise and a sudden recognition fell upon them both.The girl was hiding in the tree at deep night to ______.
| A．keep herself from the cold |
| B．wait for the boy to come |
| C．want to be left alone |
| D．seek safety from any hurt |
From the story, we can learn that ______.
| A．the girl suffered a lot in her life |
| B．the girl’s parents divorced because of her |
| C．teachers and friends treated the girl badly |
| D．the girl used to stay in the tree when feeling sad |
The underlined word “it” in the story refers to ______.
| A．leaning back against the branch |
| B．being alone in the world |
| C．not being disturbed at night |
| D．it being dark with snow around |
From the end of the story, it can be known that the girl _______.
| A．knew the person |
| B．knew what the object was |
| C．realized her wishes |
| D．would never feel alone any more |
Saturday, October 7th, was a marathon of sad tasks for Anna Politkovskaya. Two weeks earlier, her father, a retired official in the department of foreign affairs, had died of a heart attack as he emerged from the Moscow Metro while on his way to visit Politkovskaya's mother, Raisa Mazepa, in the hospital. She had just been diagnosed(诊断) with cancer and was too weak even to attend her husband's funeral. “Your father will forgive me, because he knows that I have always loved him，” she told Anna and her sister, Elena Kudimova, the day he was buried. A week later, she had an operation and since then Anna and Elena had been taking turns helping her deal with her grief.
Politkovskaya was supposed to spend the day at the hospital, but her twentysixyearold daughter, who was pregnant, had just moved into Politkovskaya's apartment, on Lesnaya Street, while her own place was being prepared for the baby. “Anna had so much on her mind，” Elena Kudimova told me when we met in London, before Christmas. “And she was trying to finish her article.” Politkovskaya was a special reporter for the small newspaper Novaya Gazeta, and, like most of her work, the piece focused on the terror that can be seen all over the southern republic of Chechnya. This time, she had been trying to report repeated cruel acts done by people faithful to the Prime Minister, Ramzan Kadyrov, who are in favour of Russia. In the past seven years, Politkovskaya had written dozens of accounts of life during wartime; many had been collected in her book “A Small Corner of Hell: reports from Chechnya.” Politkovskaya was far more likely to spend time in a hospital than on a battlefield, and her writing bore frequent witness to robbery, and the uncontrolled cruelty of life in a place that few other Russiansand almost no other reporterscared to think about. Politkovskaya's father died of ________.
| A．tiredness | B．a heart disease |
| C．an attack | D．an accident |
From the text we know that Raisa Mazepa ________.
| A．didn't love her husband |
| B．didn't attend her husband's funeral |
| C．was having an operation the day her husband was buried |
| D．was too sad to attend her husband's funeral |
The underlined word “emerged” most likely means ________.
| A．came out | B．went into |
| C．disappeared | D．left for |
How many family members of Anna are mentioned in the passage?
| A．Three. | B．Four. | C．Five. | D．Six. |
For more than two days in September 1974, the people of Honduras shut their windows, locked their doors and covered in their homes. Fifi was outside, and they were frightened.
By the time Fifi had left, 8,000 people were dead, Fifi wasn't a pet dog as the name suggests. It was a hurricane, one of the most destructive natural phenomena in the world.
Why do we give human names to storms and hurricanes?
We didn't always. Two hundred years ago, many hurricanes in the Caribbean were named after the saint's(基督徒的)day on which the storm occurred. Later, storms were known by the name of the city where they came ashore.
Meteorologists (气象学家) then tried naming storms after the latitude (纬度) and longitude (经度) where they occurred.
Finally, in 1953, hurricanes started getting people's names —specifically, female names. Male names were added in 1979.
There are six sets of names for what the experts call “Atlantic tropical cyclones”( 热带风暴)．
Each list is used every six years and consists of 21 names, starting with every letter but Q, U, X, Y ，Z. the names alternate (交替)between male and female.
A storm won't get a name until its winds reach 39 mph or about 62.4 kph, at which point it becomes a tropical storm. At 74 mph or 118.4 kph it's declared a hurricane.
The 126 names on the list are used only for storms that form off the Atlantic coast of the US. There are separate lists for the Pacific.
So what happens if a hurricane should cross from the Atlantic to the Pacific? It's happened before. The storm just gets a new name and sometimes a new sex.
Max Mayfield is the director of the National Hurricane Centre, headquartered in Miami, Florida. He is in charge of picking new names for storms off the Atlantic coast.
He doesn't do it alone, though. His counterparts in two dozen other countries in the Caribbean, Central America and North America vote on what names will replace retired names.From the first paragraph we can find that ________.
| A．Honduras is a country which was destroyed by Fifi |
| B．Honduras is a country which has no mountains |
| C．Honduras is a country which faces the ocean |
| D．Honduras is a country which lies at high latitude |
Which of the following is true according to the passage?
| A．There were no hurricanes two centuries ago. |
| B．The Caribbean is a state of the United States. |
| C．The Caribbean is a place where hurricanes occur often. |
| D．Fifi was formed off the Pacific. |
The names for storms and hurricanes, as this passage shows，________.
| A．are set for use. |
| B．are all from American English |
| C．are difficult to spell |
| D．are easy to fix |
The underlined word “counterparts” in the last paragraph means ________.
| A．citizens holding the same opinion |
| B．people with a similar position or function |
| C．passengers traveling by sea |
| D．assistants working abroad |
Diana Jacobs thought her family had a workable plan to pay for college for her 21yearold twin sons: a combination of savings, income, scholarships, and a modest amount of borrowing. Then her husband lost his job, and the plan fell apart.
“I have two kids in college, and I want to say ‘come home'，but at the same time I want to provide them with a good education，” says Jacobs.
The Jacobs family did work out a solution: They asked and received more aid from the schools, and each son increased his borrowing to the maximum amount through the federal loan (贷款) program. They will each graduate with $20,000 of debt, but at least they will be able to finish school.
With unemployment rising, financial aid administrators expect to hear more families like the Jacobs. More students are applying for aid, and more families expect to need student loans. College administrators are concerned that they will not have enough aid money to go around.
At the same time, tuition(学费)continues to rise. A report from the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education found that college tuition and fees increased 439% from 1982 to 2007, while average family income rose just 147%. Student borrowing has more than doubled in the last decade.
“If we go on this way for another 25 years, we won't have an affordable system of higher education，” says Patrick M. Callan, president of the center. “The middle class families have been financing it through debt. They will send kids to college whatever it takes, even if that means a huge amount of debt.”
Financial aid administrators have been having a hard time as many companies decide that student loans are not profitable enough and have stopped making them. The good news, however, is that federal loans account for about three quarters of student borrowing, and the government says that money will flow uninterrupted. According to Paragraph 1，why did the plan of Jacobs family fail?
| A．The twins wasted too much money. |
| B．The father was out of work. |
| C．Their saving ran out |
| D．The family fell apart. |
How did the Jacobses manage to solve their problem?
| A．They asked their kids to come home. |
| B．They borrowed $20,000 from the school. |
| C．They encouraged their twin sons to do parttime jobs. |
| D．They got help from the school and the federal government. |
Financial aid administrators believe that ________.
| A．more families will face the same problem as the Jacobses |
| B．the government will receive more letters of complaint |
| C．college tuition fees will double soon |
| D．America's unemployment will fall |
．What can we learn about the middle class families from the text?
| A．They blamed the government for the tuition increase. |
| B．Their income remained steady in the last decade. |
| C．They will try their best to send kids to college. |
| D．Their debts will be paid off within 25 years |
The dollar is becoming weaker and weaker. What effects will it have?
Look at the recordhigh price of oil. Even if the same amount of oil is being pumped out of the ground，since it is traded in dollars and the dollar has weakened，the price of oil has increased to make up for the lost value of the dollar，creating a sort of vicious cycle(恶性循环)．
Oilproducing countries don't want to keep all the dollars they are getting for their oil，since it's declining in value，so they exchange their dollars for euros or other currencies. That pushes more dollars back out into currency markets，which in turn pushes down the dollar's value.
One expert told ABC News that Russia used to have 90 percent of its financial reserves in dollars. It now has 45 percent in dollars,45 percent in euros and 10 percent in British pounds.
In the US itself，the news is mixed. It's good，because it makes what we produce here cheaper to sell in foreign markets，and that in turn spurs(刺激) exports of our products around the world. That translates into more manufacturing and more jobs.
But a weak dollar is bad，because it leads to inflation (通货膨胀) in this country. Imports from foreign countries will become more expensive，and in particular，oil will be more expensive. That puts pressure on businesses to increase prices for anything that uses oil or products that come from overseas. One benefit for American shoppers is that China has largely pegged its currency to ours，so that keeps the price of Chinesemade goods low and therefore，keeps a check on inflation.Which of the following would be the best title for this passage?
| A．Why is the dollar losing value? |
| B．What caused the weak dollar? |
| C．What to do with the weak dollar? |
| D．What effects will the weak dollar have? |
With the dollar losing its value，oilproducing countries will do all of the following EXCEPT ________.
| A．raising the price of oil |
| B．raising their production of oil |
| C．exchanging their dollars for other currencies |
| D．decreasing their financial reserves in dollars |
It can be inferred that ________.
| A．the American economy is having a hard time |
| B．Russia is making the situation worse on purpose |
| C．American export businesses would like a stronger dollar |
| D．Chinesemade goods remain as competitive as before in the USA |
Americans like to travel all their yearly holiday. Today，more and more travelers in the United States are spending nights at small houses or inns instead of hotels. They get a room for the night and the breakfast the next morning.
Rooms for the night in private homes with breakfast have been popular with travelers in Europe for many years. In the past five to ten years，these bedbreakfast places have become popular in the United States.Many of these America's bedandbreakfast inns are old historic buildings.Some bedbreakfast inns have only a few rooms；others are much larger.Some inns do not provide telephones or televisions in the rooms；others do.
Staving at a bedandbreakfast inn is much different from staying at a hotel.Usually the cost is much less.Staying at an inn is almost like visiting someone's home.The owners are glad to tell about the areas and the interesting places to visit.Many vacationers say that they enjoy the chance to meet local families.Americans like to take a holiday trip ________.
| A．all the year round | B．for years |
| C．every year | D．every other year |
According to the passage，which of the following is NOT true?
| A．Some Americans like to stay at bedandbreakfast homes instead of at hotels. |
| B．The bedandbreakfast inns are private homes opened to vacationers. |
| C．The bedandbreakfast inns have been popular in America for a long time. |
| D．The bedandbreakfast inn owners provide a morning meal for their visitors and a room for the night. |
Why do American travelers prefer staying at bedandbreakfast inns?
| A．It is like visiting someone's home. |
| B．The money they spend there is much less. |
| C．They can meet local families. |
| D．All of the above. |
Staying at the bedandbreakfast inns，________.
| A．the travelers needn't pay anything |
| B．the travelers don't have to pay for the telephone or television |
| C．the travelers can meet and talk with the local people |
| D．the owners will show the travelers around the area |