The deserts of the world are not all covered with sand. Many of them have surfaces of rock or clay or small stones. They are not flat, either. They often have high hills and deep valleys. There is some plants’ life in many parts of the desert. There is little rain in the desert, but it does fall often enough for most plants.
The deserts of the world are not uninhabited(not lived by people). People also live outside oases(绿洲), but these people are not farmers. They have camels, goats, donkeys, sheep, etc. These animals can live on the desert plants and do not need much water.
The people of the desert have to move constantly from place to place, they must always look for grass or desert plants for their animals. They usually live in tents. When there is no more food for their animals, they fold up their tents, pat them on their camels and donkeys, and move to another place. In good years, when there is enough food for their animals, they trade their skins and their goats and camel hairs with the people of oases for wheat and fruit. But in bad years, when there is not enough food for their animals, the people of the desert would attack the oases people. But they are also hospitable, no man in the desert would ever refuse to give a stranger food and water.According to the passage, deserts are mostly made up of _______.
| A．clay | B．rock |
| C．stones | D．sand |
The underlined word “hospitable” has the meaning of being _______.
| A．brave | B．cruel |
| C．strange | D．kind |
In the desert _______.
| A．it rains in spring only |
| B．there is some rain, but far from enough |
| C．it rains for a short time every month |
| D．the rainfall is just enough for the plants |
People live _______.
| A．only inside the oases |
| B．only outside the oases |
| C．both inside and outside the oases |
| D．in places with regular rainfalls |
From the passage we know that life _______.
| A．is hard in deserts |
| B．is happy in deserts |
| C．is impossible in deserts |
| D．in deserts in much better now |
第三部分：阅读理解（共20小题；每小题2分；满分40分）
阅读下列短文，从每题所给的四个选项（A、B、C、D）中选出最佳选项。
A
The first time I saw Carlos, I had my arms full of books and I was tearing into the classroom when I ran into something solid．It was Carlos．
"My, you're tall," he exclaimed． Of course, the class began to laugh．Annoyed, I walked to my seat without a word．
I glanced back to see if Reed Harrington was laughing with the rest．That would be the last straw．To my relief．Reed was studying and did not seem to be aware of it．I didn't know why I considered Reed my friend．Maybe just because he was a good two inches taller than I．
"Take that seat," Mr．McCarthy told the newcomer, pointing to the only empty one, in the back of the room．
Carlos smiled broadly．"But I need a couple of dictionaries．" Again the class laughed, but now they were laughing with Carlos, not at him．He had been here only 10 minutes and already he had them on his side．
It was the school election that made me think of Carlos again．Reed Harrington was voted president and Carlos vice-president．"How come?" I kept asking myself．"How come this shrimp （虾） who's only been in town for a little over a month gets to be so popular?"
So when I met Carlos this morning, I said to him, "It doesn't seem to bother you — being short, I mean．" He looked up at me．"Of course I mind being short．But there isn't anything I can do about it．When I realized I was going to have to spend my life in this undersized skin, I decided to make the best of it．My motto is — don't be afraid to be yourself．"
56．This passage is mainly about a short boy who ____________．
A．won the school election B．is ashamed of his height
C．has learned to accept his size D．is embarrassed by the class
57．From the story, we can see that Carlos is ________．
A．shy but diligent B．humorous and confident
C．proud and popular D．honest but sensitive
58．Paragraph 4 suggests that the author ______．
A．cared much about Reed's attitude
B．thought Reed was the same as the others
C．couldn't stand Carlos playing tricks on her
D．hoped Reed was laughing with the others
59．According to the passage, what happened after the election?
A．Carlos and the author argued with each other．
B．Carlos and Reed became very good friends．
C．The author changed her attitude toward Carlos．
D．Carlos was elected president of the student committee．
B
Studies show that laughter is something that makes you feel calm or relaxed for both physical and psychological wounds though it may seem futile to laugh in the face of pain and fear.
When Dan Rather interviewed comedian Bill Cosby just one week after his son, Ennis, was killed, Cosby said, “I think it is time for me to tell people that we have to laugh. You can turn painful situations around through laughter. If you can find humor in anything, you can survive it.”
Call it a flashlight for dark times: laughter just seems to adjust attitude better than anything else. Inspirational speaker Steve Rizzo recalls a TV interview with an injured firefighter a few days after 9.11．The man had fallen more than 30 stories in one of the towers and had broken a leg. Everyone was crying, and the reporter asked, “How is it that you’ve come out of this alive?” He looked at her and without missing a beat, said, “Look, lady, I’m from New York and I’m a firefighter; that’ all you need to know.”
“Everyone laughed and though the laughter was only a couple of seconds,” says Rizzo. “Sometimes that’s all you need to catch your second breath. Laughter gives you that couple of seconds. You’re sending a message to your brain, and the message is: If you can still laugh even a little among the pain, you are going to be OK.”
Of course, there is a difference between laughing off a serious situation and laughing off the fear that results. The firefighter was doing the latter, states Rizzo, the author of Becoming a Humorous Being, and so should we. “If there is anything we have learnt from 9.11, it’s how precious life really is,” she says. “We have to send a message that our spirit won’t die. One important thing that unites us is our ability to laugh.”
60．The writer uses the examples of the comedian and the firefighter to show .
A．laughter is a good way to get rid of pain and fear
B．laughter is the best way to cure psychological wounds
C．it is your attitude that decides whether you can survive the pain or not
D．laughing off a serious situation is different from laughing off the fear that results
61．We can infer from the passage that Steve Rizzo is .
A．a reporterB．a soldier C．a firefighterD．a doctor
62．The underlined word futile in the first paragraph means .
A．hopeless B．useless C．careless D．worthless
63．From the passage, we can know that Americans are .
A．really inspired after 9.11 B．hardly united after 9.11
C．nearly surprised by 9.11D．greatly hurt by 9.11
第二部分 阅读理解（共25小题，第一节第小题2分，第二节每小题1分；满分45分）
第一节 阅读下列短文，从每题所给的四个选项（Ａ、Ｂ、Ｃ、Ｄ）中，选出最佳选项。
A
The story goes that some time ago, a man punished his 3-year-old daughter for wasting a roll of gold wrapping paper. Money was tight and he became infuriated(愤怒的) when the child tried to decorate a box to put under the Christmas tree. Nevertheless, the little girl brought the gift to her father the next morning and said, "This is for you, Daddy."
The man was embarrassed by his earlier overreaction, but his anger flared again when he found out the box was empty. He yelled at her, stating, "Don't you know, when you give someone a present, there is supposed to be something inside? The little girl looked up at him with tears in her eyes and cried, "Oh, Daddy, it's not empty at all. I blew kisses into the box. They're all for you, Daddy."
The father was crushed. He put his arms around his little girl, and he begged for her forgiveness.
Only a short time later, an accident took the life of the child. It is also told that her father kept that gold box by his bed for many years and, whenever he was discouraged, he would take out an imaginary kiss and remember the love of the child who had put it there.
In a very real sense, each one of us, as humans beings, have been given a gold container filled with unconditional love and kisses from our children, family members, friends, and God. There is simply no other possession, anyone could hold, more precious than this.
56．The 3-year-old girl was punished by her father for ________.
A．wasting gold B．wasting wrapping paper
C．putting the box under the Christmas tree D．bringing the gift to her father
57．What’s inside the box according to the little girl?
A．nothing B．air C．kisses D．gold wrapping paper
58．The father remembered the love of his daughter by ________.
A．kissing the gold box
B．putting gold into the box.
C．taking out an imaginary kiss from the box.
D．keeping the little girl’s ash box by his bed.
59．Choose the best title for the passage.
A．The kisses in the box. B．A girl and his father
C．A love story D．The box under the Christmas tree.
E
Mass transportation revised the social and economic fabric（结构） of the American city in three fundamental ways. It catalyzed（加速） physical expansion, it sorted out people and land uses, and it accelerated the inherent instability of urban life. By opening vast areas of unoccupied land for residential expansion, the omnibuses, horse railways, commuter trains, and electric trolleys pulled settled regions outward two to four times more distant form city centers than they were in the premodern era. In 1850, for example, the borders of Boston lay scarcely two miles from the old business district; by the turn of the century the radius extended ten miles. Now those who could afford it could live far removed from the old city center and still commute there for work, shopping, and entertainment. The new accessibility of land around the periphery（周围）of almost every major city sparked an explosion of real estate development and fueled what we now know as urban sprawl. Between 1890 and 1920, for example, some 250,000 new residential lots were recorded within the borders of Chicago, most of them located in outlying areas. Over the same period, another 550,000 were plotted outside the city limits but within the metropolitan area. Anxious to take advantage of the possibilities of commuting, real estate developers added 800,000 potential building sites to the Chicago region in just thirty years – lots that could have housed five to six million people.
Of course, many were never occupied; there was always a huge surplus of subdivided, but vacant, land around Chicago and other cities. These excesses underscore a feature of residential expansion related to the growth of mass transportation: urban sprawl（建筑物无计划延伸） was essentially unplanned. It was carried out by thousands of small investors who paid little heed to coordinated land use or to future land users. Those who purchased and prepared land for residential purposes, particularly land near or outside city borders where transit lines and middle-class inhabitants were anticipated, did so to create demand as much as to respond to it. Chicago is a prime example of this process. Real estate subdivision （再划分小区）there proceeded much faster than population growth.
72．With which of the following subjects is the passage mainly concerned?
A．Types of mass transportation.
B．Instability of urban life.
C．How supply and demand determine land use.
D．The effect of mass transportation on urban expansion.
73．Why does the author mention both Boston and Chicago?
A．To demonstrate positive and negative effects of growth.
B．To exemplify cities with and without mass transportation.
C．To show mass transportation changed many cities.
D．To contrast their rate of growth.
74．According to the passage, what was one disadvantage of residential expansion?
A．It was expensive.
B．It happened too slowly.
C．It was unplanned.
D．It created a demand for public transportation.
75．The author mentions Chicago in the second paragraph as an example of a city,
A．that is large.
B．that is used as a model for land development.
C．where the development of land exceeded population growth.
D．with an excellent mass transportation system.
D
The income gap between China's rural and urban residents(居民) has continued to widen during the past few years in spite of rapidly rising rural incomes, Agricultural Minister Sun Zhengcai said here on Wednesday.
The income ratio(比率) between urban and rural residents was 3.28:1 in 2006, against 3.23:1 in 2003, said Sun in his report on the promotion of building a new countryside in 2007. Sun also said the net income of rural residents in different regions also varied widely. The income gap is only one of several problems in rural areas, according to Sun's report. While listing the achievements in rural areas in recent years, Sun believed that rural development still followed behind urban development.
"We have bigger pressure to ensure the supply of major agricultural products such as grain," he said. "China's urbanization(都市化) has been speeded up and more rural residents have gone to urban areas," he said.
"In this case, more agricultural producers become farm produce consumers, which created more pressure for supply," he said.
Another problem facing China's agricultural development is inadequate application of science and technology.
"Only 30 percent of scientific and technological achievements have been applied to agricultural production, which is 40 percentage points lower than developed countries," he said.
Despite increased government spending in rural areas, the infrastructure(基础下部组织) is still poor and easily hit by disasters.
According to Sun, the government spent 431.8 billion yuan ($59.15 billion) on agriculture, rural areas and farmers this year, an increase of 80.1 billion yuan over the previous year.
China set aside 11.38 billion yuan to promote a new rural cooperative medical care system and 27.98 billion yuan to support the new compulsory education mechanism in rural area to ensure that all citizens shared the fruits of China's reform and opening-up, Sun said.
68．Which of the following is TRUE according to the text?
A．Because of the rapidly rising rural incomes, the income gap between China's rural and urban residents will disappear this year.
B．The net income of rural residents in different regions is the same.
C．The government has taken measures to develop the economy in the rural areas.
D．Because of the rapidly rising rural incomes, the supply of major agricultural products is enough.
69．Can you infer the meaning of the underlined words in paragraph 5?
A．be made full use of B．be made little use of
C．be not made full use of D．be made good use of
70． How much is spent on agriculture, rural areas and farmers the previous year?
A．431.8 billion yuan B．511.9 billion yuan
C．351.7 billion yuan D．80.1 billion yuan
71． Which is NOT the problem in rural areas?
A．The income gap
B．The inadequate application of science and technology
C．The supply of major agricultural products
D．China's urbanization