Alibaba started taking the lead in China by connecting big Chinese manufacturers(制造商) with big buyers across the world. Its business-to-business site, Alibaba.com allowed business to buy almost everything. Alibaba’s advantage wasn’t hard to judge: size. Alibaba is just big, even by Chinese standards. Its market attracts 231 million active buyers, 8 million sellers, 11.3 billion orders a year — and Alibaba is just the middleman. It encourages people to use its markets — not charging small sellers a percentage of the sale.
If you want a quick look into the influence of Alibaba on daily Chinese life, take my experience. I moved to Beijing a year ago and quickly got tired of visiting small stores across the crowded, polluted city of 20 million people in search of new electronics, bathroom furnishings, and anything else my wife wanted. “You’re looking for what exactly? Why not try it? ” my Chinese teacher asked me one day. With that, my wonderful new relationship with Alibaba began.
Alibaba’s original business-to-business model now is second to consumer buying. Chinese retail(零售) buying makes up 80% of Alibaba’s profit, and leading that group is Taobao, with 800 million items(物品) for sale and the most unbelievable selection of things you’ll ever find. TMall.com is Alibaba’s other big site, where you can find brand name goods from Nike and Unilever near the lowest prices.
What I have a hard time explaining to friends and family back in the U.S. is how China has gone beyond traditional shopping — big-box retailers especially —in favor of online purchases on Taobao and a few other sites. In smaller towns than Beijing, where big retailers have not yet traveled, shopping online is shopping, and shopping is Taobao.
I have a list of some of my recent purchases on Taobao for a sense of how wide the marketplace is. Almost everything arrived a day or two after ordering with free shipping. I’m not even a big buyer, because I need friends to help me search the Chinese-language site. When I was searching my purchase history on my Chinese teacher’s iPad, which helps me buy goods, I looked through with great difficulty about 10 of her purchases for every one of mine.Alibaba’s advantage mainly lies in .
| A．its business-to-business service |
| B．its big size |
| C．its not charging small sellers |
| D．its low price |
What can we learn from the underlined sentence in the passage?
| A．Alibaba is of middle size among all the online sites. |
| B．Alibaba will continue to develop. |
| C．Alibaba acts as a bridge between the buyers and sellers. |
| D．Alibaba stands out as the best online site. |
What can be inferred from the passage?
| A．Alibaba’s business-to-business service earns more money than retail. |
| B．Taobao has no obvious advantage over other similar online sites. |
| C．TMall.com provides more profit than Taobao. |
| D．The author’s Chinese teacher is also an online purchase lover. |
What is the passage mainly about?
| A．Shopping online in China is TaoBao. |
| B．Alibaba influences people’s daily purchase in China. |
| C．Shopping online goes beyond traditional shopping. |
| D．How the author purchases online in China. |
One of Britain’s bravest women told yesterday how she helped to catch suspected (可疑的) police killer David Bieber — and was thanked with flowers by the police. It was also said that she could be in line for a share of up to ￡30,000 reward money.
Vicki Brown, 30, played a very important role in ending the nationwide hunt. Vicki, who has worked at the Royal Hotel for four years, told of her terrible experience when she had to walk silently into Bieber’s bedroom and to watch him secretly. Then she waited alone for three hours while armed police prepared to storm the building.
She said: “I was very nervous. But when I opened the hotel door and saw 20 armed policemen lined up in the car park I was so glad they were there.”
The alarm had been raised because Vicki became suspicious (怀疑) of the guest who came at 3 pm the day before New Year’s Eve with little luggage and wearing sunglasses and a hat pulled down over his face. She said: “He didn't seem to want to talk too much and make any eye contact .” Vicki, the only employee on duty, called her bosses Margaret, 64, and husband Stan McKale, 65, who phoned the police at 11 pm.
Officers from Northumbria Police called Vicki at the hotel in Dunston, Gateshead, at about 11:30 pm to make sure that this was the wanted man. Then they kept in touch by phoning Vicki every 15 minutes.
“It was about ten past two in the morning when the phone went again and a policeman said ‘Would you go and make yourself known to the armed officers outside?’. My heart missed a beat.”
Vicki quietly showed eight armed officers through passages and staircases to the top floor room and handed over the key.
“I realized that my bedroom window overlooks that part of the hotel, so I went to watch. I could not see into the man’s room, but I could see the passage. The police kept shouting at the man to come out with his hands showing. Then suddenly he must have come out because they shouted for him to lie down while he was handcuffed (戴上手铐).”
68.The underlined phrase “be in line for” (paragraph 1) means________.
A. get B. be paid C. ask for D. own
Vicki's heart missed a beat because ________.
A. the phone went again B. she would be famous
C. the policemen had already arrived D. she saw 20 policemen in the car park
David Bieber was most probably handcuffed in ________.
A. the passage B. the man's room
C. Vicki's bedroom D. the top floor room
The whole event probably lasted about ________ hours from the moment Bieber came to the hotel to the arrival of some armed officers.
A. 6 B. 8 C. 11 D. 14
Animation(动画) means making things which are lifeless come alive and move.
Since earliest times, people have always been surprised by movement. But not until this century have we managed to take control of movement, to record it, and in the case of animation, to retranslate it and recreate it. To do all this, we use a movie camera and a projector.
In the world of cartoon animation, nothing is impossible. You can make the characters do exactly what you want them to do.
A famous early cartoon character was Felix the Cat, created by Pat Sullivan in America in the early nineteen twenties. Felix was a wonderful cat. He could do all sorts of things no natural cat could do like taking off his tail, using it as a handle and then putting it back.
Most of the great early animators lived and worked in America, the home of the moving picture industry. The famous Walt Disney cartoon characters came to life after 1928. Popeye the Sailor and his girl friend Olive Oyo were born at Max Ficischer in 1933.
But to be an animator, you don’t have to be a professional. It is possible for anyone to make a simple animated film without using a camera at all. All you have to do is to draw directly on to an empty film and then run the film through a projector.
64. Which of the following statements is TRUE?
A. People were unable to cause the movement to last or record it in the last century.
B. Pat Sullivan was a famous early cartoon character.
C. It is impossible to make cartoon characters do what they are designed to do.
D. In ancient times people were surprised by movement.
65. According to the passage, Felix the Cat________.
A. was created by the American cartoonist Felix
B. was designed by Pat Sullivan in the early twentieth century
C. was unable to do what natural cats could not do
D. was created in the United States in the nineteenth century
66. It can be inferred from the passage that ________.
A. Walt Disney’s cartoon characters were born earlier that Pat Sullivan’s
B. only professionals can create cartoon characters
C. Popeye the Sailor and Olive Oyo were famous cartoonists
D. the cartoon industry started in the United States
67. Which of the following statements best describes the author’s attitude towards cartoon making?
A. Cartoon making is an easy job. Anyone can do it.
B. Only trained people can be employed in cartoon making industry.
C. Anyone can make cartoons under the instructions of professionals.
D. Cartoon making is no easy job. You have to spend much time drawing onto the empty film.
I was telling my boy Sonny the story of the hare (兔子) and the tortoise (乌龟). At the end I said. “Son, remember: Slow and steady (稳固的) wins the race. Don’t you think there’s something to learn from the tortoise?”
Sonny opened his eyes wide, “Do you mean next time when I’m participating in the 60-metre race I should wish that Billy and Tony and Sandy would all fall asleep halfway?”
I was shocked, “But the tortoise didn’t wish that the hare would fall asleep on the way!”
“He must have wished that,” Sonny said. “Otherwise how could he be so stupid as to race with the hare? He knew very well the hare ran a hundred times faster than he himself did.”
“He didn’t have such a wish,” I insisted, “He won the race by perseverance , by pushing on steadily.”
Sonny thought a while. “That’s a lie,” he said. “He won it because he was lucky. If the hare hadn’t happened to fall asleep, the tortoise would never have won the race. He could be as steady as you like, or a hundred times steadier, but he’d never have won the race. That’s for sure.”
I gave up. Today’s children are not like what we used to be. They’re just hopeless.
61.Sonny believed that the tortoise ________.
won the race by his own effort
B. took a risk by agreeing to race
C. was not given a fair chance in the race
D. in fact did not win the race
62.Billy, Tony and Sandy must be ________.
A. boys who were unknown to Sonny’s father
B. boys Sonny had run races with before
C. boys Sonny had never raced with before
D. boys Sonny did not expect to race with again
63.The writer thinks that his generation (代) ________.
A. were more clever than Sonny’s generation
B. had the same ideas about life as Sonny’s generation
C. were more hopeful than Sonny’s generation
D. had different ideas about life from Sonny’s generation
Education is not an end, but a means to an end. In other words, we do not educate children only for the purpose of educating them. Our purpose is to fit them for life.
In some modern countries it has for some time been fashionable to think that by free education for all whether rich or poor, clever or stupid, one can solve all the problems of society and build a perfect nation. But we can already see that free education for all is not enough: we find in such countries a far larger number of people with university degrees; they refuse to do what they think “low” work; and in fact, work with hands is thought to be dirty and shameful. But we have only to think a moment to understand that the work of a completely uneducated farmer is far more important than that of a professor; we can live without education, but we die if we have no food. If no one cleaned our streets and took the rubbish away from our houses, we would get terrible diseases in our towns.
In fact, when we say that all of us must be educated to fit us for life, it means that we are educated in such a way that, firstly, each of us can do whatever work suited to his brains and ability, and secondly, that we realize that all jobs are necessary to society, and that it is very bad to be ashamed of one’s work. Only such a type of education can be considered valuable to society.
52. The writer of this passage thinks that________.
A. free education can solve all of the world’s problems
B. free education for all probably leads to a perfect world
C. free education won’t help to solve social problems
D. all the social problems can’t be solved by free education
53. The writer wants to prove that___________.
A. our society needs all kinds of jobs
B. our society needs free education for all
C. a farmer is more important than a professor
D. people with university degrees earn more money
54. According to the passage, ____________.
A. work with hands is dirty and shameful
B. work with hands is low work
C. work with hands is the most important
D. we can’t regard work with hands as low work
55. The purpose of education is ___________
A. to choose a system of education
B. to let everyone receive education
C. to prepare children for their future life
D. to prepare children for well-paid jobs
I travel a lot in my work, and what I dislike about my job is eating alone. It always makes me feel lonely to see others laughing and talking. So, room service for several nights was a better choice for me.
After having room service three nights at a hotel in Houston, however, I needed to get out of my room. Although the restaurant opened at 6:30, I arrived at 6:25. The waiter at the front desk made a comment(评论) about my “being there really early”. I explained my dislike of eating alone in restaurants. He then seated me at a lovely table and asked me whether I would mind if he sat down with me for a while.
I was glad! He sat and talked with me about his career goals and the difficulty of being at work on nights, weekends and holidays. He said he hadn’t enough time to be with his family. After 15 minutes, he saw some customers at the front desk and excused himself. I noticed that before he went to the front desk, he stopped in the kitchen for a moment.
Then another waiter came out of the kitchen and had a wonderful chat with me. Before I left that night, some other waiters, even the cook, had come out of the kitchen and sat with me!
When I asked for my bill about one hour later, all the people who had sat down with me came over in a big group to my table, and presented me with a red rose. And I cried! What had begun as a lonely night ended as a beautiful experience.
48. The author asked for room service because _______.
A. a lot of money would be saved in this way
B. he didn’t like to eat with other people around
C. he didn’t wanted to be recognized by the waiters
D. seeing people laughing and talking made him feel bad
49. How did the waiter feel when he saw the author come in at 6:25?
A. Dissatisfied.B. Pleased.C. Surprised. D. Angry.
50. From the third paragraph, we can learn that the waiter at the front desk ______.
A. knew how to attract more customers to his restaurant
B. found it hard to balance his work and his family
C. was getting tired of his present job
D.had never had such a chance to talk about his worries
51. The author wants to tell us that ______.
A. people are actually all lonely in their own way
B. restaurants should put the need of customers first
C. the kindness of strangers can make you less lonely
D.restaurants are full of surprises for lonely people