After years of research and testing, the hybrid car was developed and put on the market. It’s an interesting and exciting new improvement in today’s world as we look for better ways to protect the quality of the air we breathe and conserve our natural resources.
The quality of our air is affected by many different things. But one of the largest sources of air pollution is the burning of fossil fuels such as coal and gasoline which are used to power a car’s engine. The EPA has set national standards to help control the level of harmful pollutants sent off into the air, and the automobile industry has acted by producing a hybrid car that uses less gas and therefore causes less pollution.
A hybrid car is a combination of a regular car that runs on gasoline and an electric car that is battery powered. Some people tend to think that since the hybrid car is partially electric, you have to plug it in to charge it. But that’s not how it works. The 144 volt battery pack is actually recharged( 充电 ) through the energy that is produced when the car’s brakes are used. This is referred to as “regenerative braking”, because it generates electricity.
Although the hybrid car still runs on gasoline most of the time, this helps it use less gas than a regular car. When the driver stops at a traffic light, the engine automatically ( 自动地；机械地 )shuts off to save fuel. Then, as soon as the driver puts the car in gear and touches the gas pedal, the engine starts back up.
Have you ever ridden in a car with someone who ran out of gas? That probably wouldn’t happen if you were riding in a hybrid car. It flashes a warning on its computer screen that says, “I am low on gas”. When it completely runs out, the warning reads, “YOU ARE NOW OUT OF GAS!” Then the electric power supply kicks in to let the driver travel a few more miles to a gas station.According to the passage, the word “hybrid” refers to ________.
| A．a high tech discovery | B．energy saving |
| C．a new invention | D．a combination of two things |
“Regenerative braking” is an important process of the hybrid car because ________.
| A．it allows the car to come to a quick stop |
| B．it gives the driver a smoother ride |
| C．it produces energy to charge the battery |
| D．it can control the speed of the car |
Which of the following is right about the EPA?
| A．They designed hybrid cars. |
| B．They outlawed (宣布……为不合法) the burning of fossil fuels. |
| C．They set important guidelines that help control pollution. |
| D．Their main purpose is to protect endangered plants and animals. |
Which of the following is the reason for developing hybrid cars?
| A．They use less gas than regular cars. |
| B．They’re safer to drive than most cars. |
| C．They’re more modern than other cars. |
| D．They cost less than regular cars |
I would like to talk to you about one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever seen. I was born and raised there and now I visit it from time to time. My family moved to the city, so I only go back to see friends or to camp and fish.
I grew up in a small town called Antonito Co. It is surrounded by mountains. So camping is a big source of happiness in the valley. There are so many beautiful places to hike.
The town itself is very small. It is said that if you blink when you’re going through it, you’ll miss it. This has some truth in it considering the size of the town. We have one grocery store, a tiny post office, and a tiny bank. There are also a few gas stations, bars, some excellent restaurants, a small hospital and of course several schools. However, for clothing and shoes, you have to drive thirty miles to Alamosa to shop there.
Everyone in the town is nice and we all know each other. The crime rate is zero unless you count some weekend fights that break out because some people drink too much. The classes in school are small, so you get a lot of attention from the teacher.
You’re probably wondering why I don’t live there. Well, I can’t get a job there. A lot of the businesses are family-owned. And they never fire their employees. So the employees work there usually until they retire. Most people have to go to other places to get a job . What is this passage mainly about?
| A．An introduction to the writer’s hometown. |
| B．A travel guide of the writer’s hometown . |
| C．The history of the writer’s hometown . |
| D．The scenery of the writer’s hometown . |
By the underlined part in paragraph 3, the writer wants to show that the town is.
| A．beautiful | B．small | C．exciting | D．faraway |
What can you find in the writer’s hometown ?
a bank b. a post office c. some gas stations and bars d. a clothing store
e. a shoe shop f. some restaurants and a hospital
| A．abce | B．bdef | C．abcf | D．cdef |
What do we know about the classes given at the schools in the writer’s hometown ?
| A．The classes are usually very short . |
| B．Students usually don’t get much attention . |
| C．One teacher has to teach many classes |
| D．Each class has just a small number of students . |
We can learn from the last paragraph that in the writer’s hometown.
| A．not many job opportunities are provided |
| B．employees don’t make much money |
| C．most people live a very hard life |
| D．only the old still live there |
My boss’s daughter was studying in the Philippines. He asked me if my husband and I could take care of her. He thought his daughter would be able to improve her English communication skills in this way.
After days of thinking, we agreed. He then brought her here and left after 3 days. I thought that my boss’s daughter was well-mannered, but that was wrong.
After a month of staying in the Philippines, she started to show her true colors. When my husband asked her what she wanted for breakfast, she answered him in a rude way. From then on, we experienced fights at home. There was a time when we didn’t talk to her for a week as a punishment of not being good to us. What I hated most was that she didn’t care about other people’s feelings. She ate ahead of us when we were still working and didn’t leave anything for us. So we had to separate her food from ours to avoid such a problem.
The worst thing about her was that she shouted at us. I was wondering if she did this to her parents. We told this to her parents, but unfortunately I didn’t think that solved the problem. This situation lasted for almost 8 months. Our patience was tested during that time.
We tried to teach her everything we could to make her a better person, but I guess 8 months may not to be enough. We even tried to understand her and adjust for her, but it didn’t work. I just hope that she learned something from us and from other Filipinos. This passage is mainly about the writer’s experience of.
| A．trying to please her boss |
| B．changing a girl’s bad behavior |
| C．improving her communication skills |
| D．dealing with a teenage girl staying in her house |
Why did the boss want his daughter to stay with the writer ?
| A．Because he was too busy to take care of his daughter |
| B．Because he wanted his daughter to take a holiday there |
| C．Because he wanted his daughter to improve her English in this way |
| D．Because he wanted the writer to teach his daughter good manners . |
What do the examples in paragraph 3 tell us ?
| A．The daughter wasn’t behaving well. |
| B．The writer and her husband were careless. |
| C．The writer and her husband hated children. |
| D．The daughter tried her best to make others happy. |
The underlined word “that” in paragraph 4 refers to.
| A．being patient with her |
| B．her parents punishing her |
| C．asking her parents about her |
| D．telling her parents about her behavior |
After reading the passage , we learn that.
| A．the writer had known the daughter was hard to deal with |
| B．the daughter learnt to behave well in the end |
| C．the writer didn’t enjoy the daughter’s stay |
| D．the daughter hated dealing with others |
When Emily Beardmore first heard that a trip was being planned by the biology class at Windsor High School, she thought about how much fun it would be.
“I thought it would be a really good experience to go with other friends and teachers to another country in an environment other than a vacation environment,” the 17-year-old girl said.
A few months later, Emily got her chance when she and 14 of her classmates, along with biology teacher Tamara Pennington went to Costa Rica for eight days in late May.
“It was not just a tour,” said Pennington, who organized the trip. “You can go any place in the world on just a tour. This one was really working with the sea turtles (海龟) and practicing conservation(保护). It just seemed like the perfect science field trip for kids who think they want to get into science to see what it's really like to be out in the field and enjoy themselves.”
Emily said her time on the turtle program, which was the focus of the trip, was “crazy.” “We were walking on the beach at night and you can’t see anything—just see a big black dot.” She said with a laugh. “I was not expecting the turtles to be that big.” The turtles are leatherback turtles, which are becoming extinct (灭绝) because their eggs are used as food.
“When they would move their legs while laying their eggs they were really hard to control because they were a lot more powerful than you would imagine,” Emily said.
Once the eggs were collected, the students took them back to a hatchery(孵化场) and dug holes to copy the hole the mother turtle had made and then buried the eggs for the 60 days needed to hatch.
“The experience was so cool,” Emily said. “You go to another country to see what their culture is like and learn what their everyday lives are like. It made me really want to help out my mom a lot more than I do, and value what I have.”What did Pennington consider the trip to be?
| A．It was a common tour to a foreign country. |
| B．It was a journey to practice what students learned. |
| C．It was to attract students’ interest in science. |
| D．It was a trip to do practical science activities. |
From what Emily said on her turtle program, we know that.
| A．she was afraid of walking on the beach at night |
| B．she didn’t dare to catch the powerful turtles |
| C．she had thought turtles were small animals |
| D．she got crazy at the sight of turtles at night |
What did Emily learn from her experience?
| A．She learned to be grateful to her teachers. |
| B．She understood the importance of what she had. |
| C．She realized the beauty of foreign culture. |
| D．She knew the importance of everyday life |
What would be the best title for the passage?
| A．Teens Help Fight Turtle Extinction. |
| B．Teens Take a tour to Costa Rica. |
| C．Teens Have a Research on Turtles. |
| D．Teens Learn to be Independent. |
I have been using the Internet since I was five years old, when my dad first sat me down in front of a computer and connected me the World Wide Web.
I’ve always felt like a master of the Internet world. AOL Instant Messaging, MSN, Gmail, Facebook, Myspace -- I’ve got it all under control. I thought there was nothing more to it besides checking my e-mail and wasting my time, until I was introduced to electronic commerce(e-commerce): business on the Internet.
Some online businesses are run from one-room home offices. Others have hundreds of employees (雇员) across the world. Have you ever heard of Amazon.com, Yahoo.com?
My friends often said they got cheap textbooks off Amazon.com, or had a good deal (交易) on Steve Madden shoes that were on sale at SteveMaden.com. Unfortunately for me, I continued my “e-commerceless” Web-surfing, not knowing about all the deals I was missing out on.
That is, of course, until my sister finally sold the idea to me.
“Why are all these packages arriving in the mail for you, Katy?” I asked her one day. Strange envelopes (信封) had been put on our doorstep for weeks now, each one always addressed to my sister; and we all know little sisters should never be getting more mail than their elders!
“Oh, it’s the things I ordered online!” she answered. I watched speechlessly as she opened them. There was no way our parents were letting her spend that much money- online or off!
“How much did all of this coat?”
“Oh, only about $15 in all!” She said excitedly. “Everything on eBay is on sale! It’s a way better than going to the mall.”
I felt as if there had been a store right in my backyard that I had never walked into! That week, I ordered a used Spanish textbook for my summer course online for 10 percent of the publishing price. A few days later, I bought an iPod protector and a book or two via the wonderful eBay.com.From the first two paragraph we can conclude that the author
| A．had no experience using computers |
| B．had no idea of what e-commerce is |
| C．only used the Internet to check e-mail |
| D．thought surfing the Internet was a waste of time |
The writer didn’t find out about e-commerce until
| A．he stopped web-surfing |
| B．he visited a store in his backyard |
| C．his sister explained the packages she got by mail |
| D．his friends told him about the online deals they made |
We can infer from the last paragraph that the author.
| A．never enjoyed shopping that much |
| B．loves the big store in her backyard |
| C．feels she is a true master of the Internet |
| D．has begun to enjoy online shopping |
What’s the purpose of the article?
| A．To tell the readers how he begins online shopping. |
| B．To do business on the Internet. |
| C．To make an online shopping ad. |
| D．To advise people not to do online shopping |
John H. Johnson was born in a black family in Arkansas City in 1918. His father died in an accident when John was six. He was reaching the high school age, but his hometown offered no high school for blacks.
Luckily he had a strong-willed caring mother. John remembered that his mother told him many times, “Son，you can be anything you want really to be if you just believe.” She told him not to depend on others，including his mother. “You have to earn success,” she said. “All the people who work hard don’t succeed, but the only people who do succeed are those who work hard.”
These words came from a woman with less than a third grade education. She also knew that believing and hard work don’t mean everything. So she worked hard as a cook for two years to save enough to take her son, who was then 15，to Chicago.
Chicago in 1933 was not the promised land that black southerners were looking for. John’s mother and stepfather could not find work. But here John could go to school, and here he learned the power of words — as an editor of the newspaper and yearbook at Du Sable High School. His wish was to publish a magazine for blacks.
While others discouraged (使气馁) him, John’s mother offered him more words to live by: “Nothing beats a failure but a try.” She also let him pawn（典当）her furniture to get the ＄500 he needed to start the Negro magazine.
It is natural that difficulties and failures followed John closely until he became very successful. He always keeps his mother’s words in mind: “Son, failure is not in your vocabulary!”
Now John H. Johnson is one of the 400 richest people in America — worth $150 million. John’s father died in ________.
| A．1922 | B．1933 | C．1924 | D．1923 |
John’s mother decided to move to Chicago because _______.
| A．his father died when John was very young |
| B．life was too hard for them to stay on in their hometown |
| C．there were no schools for black people in their hometown |
| D．John needed more education badly |
John’s mother ________．
| A．didn’t believe in or depend on others |
| B．thought no one could succeed without working hard |
| C．believed one would succeed without working hard |
| D．thought one could be whatever one wanted to be |
The story mainly tells us ________ .
| A．about the spiritual support John’s mother gave him |
| B．how John H. Johnson became successful |
| C．about the importance of a good education |
| D．about the key to success for blacks |