Most likely, you aren’t the family breadwinner. But doing a small job or getting a weekly allowance would put some money in your pocket. For kids and grown-ups alike money is easy to spend. If you aren’t careful, it can be gone in no time.
Being responsible with your money is an important skill to learn and the sooner you start the better. Whether you are tracking your spending or saving for something special, creating a budget can help you deal with expenses and plan for the future. All you need are paper and a pencil and some self-control.
First, take a look at our sample monthly budget. Then, use a separate sheet of paper to plan your own. In the first two columns, list your sources of income and how much you expect to earn from them. In the third and fourth columns, list what you expect to spend your money on and the amount.
Sample Monthly Budget
| Monthly income |
Amount |
Monthly Expenses |
Amount |
| Allowance |
$ 20.00 |
Snacks |
$ 26.00 |
| Money earned selling drinks |
$ 25.00 |
Music downloads |
$ 12.00 |
| Money earned babysitting |
$ 12.50 |
Movies |
$ 18.00 |
| Money earned delivering newspapers |
$ 30.00 |
Video Rentals |
$ 10.00 |
| Total: |
$ 87.50 |
Total： |
$ 66.00 |
The left-hand total should be more than or equal to the right-hand total. If it is, you have an effective budget.
Budgets are not complex, but sticking to them can be tough. When planning your budget, be realistic about your expenses. If you know that you drop $18 at a movie, don’t write $12 in that space simply because you wish you were spending less.
If you are eyeing a big purchase, such as a $150 skateboard, spend less and save more until you have the total amount. No matter how attractive it may be, avoid spending your savings. One day, you will thank yourself!The purpose of making a budget is to help people ___.
| A．learn to be realistic |
| B．manage their money well |
| C．increase their savings |
| D．test their power of self-control |
What should people do when planning a budget?
| A．Fill in the expenses as they really are. |
| B．Avoid spending money on expensive things. |
| C．Set aside a fixed amount of money as savings. |
| D．List income and expenses on two pieces of paper. |
Who is the passage written for?
| A．Bank manager | B．Parents |
| C．Breadwinners | D．Children |
D
This is a time of year when we think about giving and receiving presents. Can you find little extra to give? On this page we suggest a few organizations you might like to help.
Littleton Children’d Home
We DON’T want your money, but children’s toys, books and clothes IN GOOD CONDITION would be very welcome.
Also,we are looking for friendly families who would take our children into their homes for a few hours or days as guests. You have so much —will you share it?
Phone Sister Thomas on 55671.
Children’s Hospice
We look after a small number of very sick children. This important work needs skill and love. We cannot continue without gifts or money to pay for more nursting staff(职员). We also need story books and toys suitable for quiet games.
Please contact :The Seeretary, Little Children’s Hospice, Newly Road.
Street Food
In the winter weather, it’s not fun being homeless. It’s even worse if you’re hungry. We give hot food to at least fifty people every night. It’s hard work, but necessary. Can you come and help? If not, can you find a little money? We used a very old kitchen, and we need some new saucepans. Money for new ones would be most welcome in
deed.
Contact Stree Food, c/o Mary’s House, Elming Way. Littleton Phone 55823.
Littleton Youth Club
Have you got an unwanted chair?record player? a pot of paint?
Because we use them!
We want to get to work on our meeting room!
Please phone 55231and we’ll be happy to collect anything you can give us!
Thank you !
The Night Shelter
We offer a warm bed for the night to anyone who has nowhere to go. We rent the former Commercial Hotel on Green Street. Although it is not expensive,we never seem to have enough money. Can you let us have a few pounds ? Any amount, however small, will be such help.
Send it to us 15, Greet St, Littleton. Please make check payable to Night Shelter.
58．Reading the passage, you might like to help these organizations while working for .
A．homeless and sick children
B．less fortunate members of our society
C．hungry people who have no beds to sleep in
D．friendly members of our society to help others
59．We can infer .
A．there are too many social problems in this country
B．people are very poor during the time for giving
C．warm-hearted people like to give away money
D．this passage is taken from a local newspaper
60．If your children have grown up, you my take the children’s things to.
A．Children’s Home and Children’s Hospice
B．Youth Club and Children’s Home
C．Children’s Hospice and Night Shelter
D．Youth Club and Night Shelter
C
Centuries ago, man discovered that removing moisture（湿气） from food helps to store it, and that the easiest way to do this is to expose the food to sun and wind.
All foods including water — cabbage and other leaf vegetables contains as much as 93% water, potatoes and other root vegetables 80%, lean (瘦的) meat 75% and fish, anything from 80% to 60%, depending on how fatty it is. If this water is removed, the activity of the bacteria which cause food to go bad is controlled.
Nowadays most foods are dried mechanically. The conventional method of such dehydration (脱水) is to put food in chambers (室) through which hot air is blown at temperature of about ll0'C at entry to about 43'C at exit. This is the usual method for drying such things as vegetables, minced meat, and fish.
Liquids such as milk, coffee, tea, soups and eggs may be dried by pouring them over a heated steel cylinder (圆筒), then put them into a chamber through which a current of hot air passes. In the first process, the dried material comes off the roller (滚筒) as a thin film which is then broken up into small, though still relatively flakes (薄片). In the second process it falls to the bottom of the chamber as small powder. Where recognizable pieces of meat and vegetables are required, as in soup, the ingredients (成分) are dried separately and then mixed.
Dried foods take up less room and weigh less than the same food packed in cans orfrozen, and they do not need to be stored in special conditions. For these reasons theyare invaluable to the climbers, explorers and soldiers in battle, who have little storagespace. They are also popular with housewives because it takes so little time to cook them.
54．It can be inferred from the passage that ________.
A．the fattier fish contain as much water as the lean one
B．the fattier the fish is, the more water it may contain
C．a fatty fish holds less water than a lean one
D．the water content of fish has nothing to do with the content of their fat
55．The underlined word "conventional" in Paragraph 3 can most probably be replaced by ______.
A．traditional B．scientific C.particular D.special
56．Which of the following statements is NOT true about drying food?
A．The removal of water in food helps prevent it from going rotten.
B．The open-air method of drying food has been known for hundreds of years.
C．In the course of dehydration, the temperature of hot current coming from entry to exit is
gradually going up.
D．The process of drying liquids is much more complex than that of drying solid food.
57．The last paragraph mainly talks about __________.
A．the reason why housewives like dried food
B．the general convenience of dried food
C．the methods of storing food
D．the advantages of dried, canned and frozen food
B
I am a good mother to three children. I have tried never to let my profession stand in the way of being a good parent.
I no longer consider myself the center of the universe. I show up.I listen. I try to laugh. I am a good friend to my husband. I have tried to make marriage vows(誓约) mean what they say. I am a good friend to my friends, and they to me. Without them, there would be nothing to say to you today.
So here's what I wanted to tell you today: Get a life. A real life,not a desire of the next promotion(
提升), the bigger paycheck, the larger house.
Get a life in which you are not alone. Find people you love, and who love you. And remember that love is not leisure(空闲), it is work.Pick up the phone. Send an e-mail. Write a letter. And realize that life is the best thing and that you have no business taking it for granted.
It is so easy to waste our lives, our days, our hours, our minutes. It is so easy to exist instead of to live. I learned to live many years ago. Something really, really bad happened to me, something that changed my life in ways that, if I had my choice, it would never have been changed at all. And what I learned from it is what, today, seems to be the hardest lesson of all.
I learned to love the journey, not the destination. I learned to look at all the good in the world and try to give some of it back because I believed in it, completely and totally. And I tried to do that, in part, by telling others what I had learned.
By telling them this: Read in the backyard with the sun on your face. Learn to be happy.And think of life as a deadly illness, because if you do, you will live it with joy and passion as it ought to be lived.
50．The best title of this passage probably is
A．Love your friends B．Live a real life
C．Don't waste time D．Be a good mother and wife
51．How did the author form her view of life?
A．Through working and social experience.
B．By learning from her friends.
C．Through an unfortunate experience.
D．From her children and husband
52.By the underlined sentence "It is so easy to exist instead of to live" in the fifth paragraph, the
author really means that people tend to_____.
A．make a living rather than live a real life
B．work rather than enjoy life
C．waste a lot in life
D．forget the most important lessons in life
53．What's the author's attitude toward work?
A．Do it well to serve others.
B．To earn enough money to make life better.
C．Try your best to get higher position and pay.
D．Don't let it affect your real life.
第二部分：阅读理解（共两节，满分40分）
第一节（共15小题；每小题2分，满分30分）
阅读下列四篇短文，从每小题后所给的A、B、C、D四个选项中，选出最佳选项,并在答题卡上将该选项涂黑。
A
A businessman walks into a bank in San Francisco and asks for the loan officer. He says he is going to Europe on business for two weeks and needs to borrow $5,000．The bank officer says the bank will need some kind of security for such a loan. So the businessman hands over the keys to a Rolls Royce parked on the street in front of the bank. Everything checks out, and the bank agrees to accept the car as collateral for the loan. An employee drives the Rolls into the bank’s underground garage and parks it there.
Two weeks later, the businessman returns, and repays the $5,000 and the interest, which comes to $15.41.
The loan officer says, “We are very happy to have had your business, and this transaction(业务) has worked out very nicely, but we are a little puzzled. While you were away, we checked you out and found that you are a multimillionaire. What puzzles us is that why would you bother to borrow $5,000?”
Laughing, the businessman replies, “Where else in San Francisco can I park my car for two weeks for $15?”
46．The businessman walks into the bank with the true purpose of _________.
A．borrowing $5,000 B．meeting the loan officer
C．finding a place to park his car D．showing how rich he is
47．The loan officer is puzzled because _________.
A．he never thought he could meet a multimillionaire in his bank
B．he thinks the businessman is crazy to leave his car in the bank
C．he never thought the businessman could drive a Rolls Royce
D．he thinks $5,000 is so small a sum of money to the businessman
48．The underlined word “collateral” in Paragraph 1 most probably means “_________”.
A．security B．payment C．reward D．deal
49．Which of the following words can best describe the businessman according to the story?
A．Honest. B．Clever. C．Rich. D．Kind.
Speeding off in a stolen car, the thief thinks he has got a great catch. But he is in for an unwelcome surprise. The car is fitted with a remote immobiliser (锁止器), and a radio signal from a control centre miles away will ensure that once the thief switches the engine off, he will not be able to start it again.
The idea goes like this. A control box fitted to the car contains a mini-cellphone, a micro- processor and memory, and a GPS (全球定位系统) satellite positioning receiver. If the car is stolen, a coded cellphone signal will tell the control centre to block the vehicle's engine management system and prevent the engine being restarted.
In the UK, a set of technical fixes is already making life harder for car thieves. 'The pattern of vehicle crime has changed,’ says Martyn Randall, a security expert. He says it would only take him a few minutes to teach a person how to steal a car, using a bare minimum of tools. But only if the car is more than 10 years old.
Modern cars are far tougher to steal, as their engine management computer won't allow them to start unless they receive a unique ID code beamed out by the ignition (点火) key. In the UK, technologies like this have helped achieve a 31% drop in vehicle-related crime since 1997.
But determined criminals are still managing to find other ways to steal cars, often by getting hold of the owner's keys. And key theft is responsible for 40% of the thefts of vehicles fitted with a tracking system.
If the car travels 100 metres without the driver confirming their ID, the system will send a signal to an operations centre that it has been stolen. The hundred metres minimum avoids false alarms due to inaccuracies in the GPS signal.
Staff at the centre will then contact the owner to confirm that the car really is missing, and keep police informed of the vehicle's movements via the car's GPS unit.
66. What's the function of the remote immobilizer fitted to a car?
A .To allow the car to lock automatically when stolen.
B. To prevent the car thief from restarting it once it stops.
C. To help the police make a surprise attack on the car thief.
D. To prevent car theft by sending a radio signal to the car owner.
67. By saying 'The pattern of vehicle crime has changed' (Lines 1-2. Para. 3). Martyn Randall suggests that ____.
A. self-prepared tools are no longer enough for car theft
B. the thief has to make use of computer technology
C. it takes a longer time for the car thief to do the stealing
D. the thief has lost interest in stealing cars over 10 years old
68. What is essential in making a modern car tougher to steal?
A. A GPS satellite positioning receiver. B. A unique ID card.
C. A special cellphone signal. D. A coded ignition key.
69. Why does the tracking system set a 100-metre minimum before sending an alarm to the operations centre?
A. To give the driver time to contact the operations centre.
B. To allow for possible errors in the GPS system.
C. To keep police informed of the car's movements.
D. To leave time for the operations centre to give an alarm.
70. What will the operations centre do first after receiving an alarm?
A. Start the tracking system. B. Locate the missing car.
C. Contact the car owner. D. Block the car engine