It happened to me recently. I was telling someone how much I had enjoyed reading Barack Obama’s Dreams From My Father and how it had changed my views of our President. A friend I was talking to agreed with me that it was, in his words, “a brilliantly （精彩地）written book”. However, he then went on to talk about Mr. Obama in a way which suggested he had no idea of his background at all. I sensed that I was talking to a book liar.
And it seems that my friend is not the only one. Approximately two thirds of people have lied about reading a book which they haven’t. In the World Book Day’s “Report on Guilty Secrets”, Dreams From My Father is at number 9. The report lists ten books, and various authors, which people have lied about reading, and as I’m not one to lie too often (I’d hate to be caught out), I’ll admit here and now that I haven’t read the entire top ten. But I am pleased to say that, unlike 42 percent of people, I have read the book at number one, George Orwell’s 1984. I think it’s really brilliant.
The World Book Day report also has some other interesting information in it. It says that many people lie about having read Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, Fyodor Dostoevsky (I haven’t read him, but haven’t lied about it either) and Herman Melville.
Asked why they lied, the most common reason was to “impress” someone they were speaking to. This could be tricky if the conversation became more in–depth!
But when asked which authors they actually enjoy, people named J. K. Rowling, John Grisham, Sophie Kinsella (ah, the big sellers, in other words). Forty-two percent of people asked admitted they turned to the back of the book to read the end before finishing the story (I’ll come clean: I do this and am astonished that 58 percent said they had never done so).How did the author find his friend a book liar?
| A．By judging his manner of speaking. |
| B．By looking into his background. |
| C．By mentioning a famous name. |
| D．By discussing the book itself. |
Which of the following is a “guilty secret” according to the World Book Day report?
| A．Charles Dickens is very low on the top-ten list. |
| B．42% of people pretended to have read 1984. |
| C．The author admitted having read 9 books. |
| D．Dreams From My Father is hardly read. |
By lying about reading, a person hopes to .
| A．control the conversation | B．appear knowledgeable |
| C．learn about the book | D．make more friends |
What is the author’s attitude to 58% of readers?
| A．Favorable. | B．Uncaring |
| C．Doubtful | D．Friendly |
Paris in the springtime was, is and always will be, something rather special. Why not experience it for yourself with this excellent break for four days? This attractive city has something to offer to everyone and with prices at just £129.
Your break begins with comfortable bus transfer (运送) from local pick-up points and travel to Paris is via cross-channel ferry, arriving at your hotel in the evening. The Ibis is an excellent quality hotel with private equipments in all rooms: satellite TV, radio, telephone and alarm clock. It has a bar and restaurant and is situated about two miles south of Notre Dame enabling you to explore Paris with ease.
The following day, after continental breakfast (included), the bus takes you on a comprehensive sightseeing tour of the city, during which you will see the Eiffel Tower, Champs Elysees, L’Arc de Triomphe, the Louvre, in fact almost every famous landmark you have ever heard of. You then leave Paris and take a short drive to the magnificent Palace of Versailles, the home of Louis XIV. The tour ends mid-afternoon back in Paris where you will have the remainder of the day at your leisure. In the evening there is a “Paris by Night” tour showing you the beautiful buildings with bright lights.
Day three takes you to Montmarter, perhaps the most attractive quarter of Paris and home of the Sacre Coeur and the Moulin Rouge. In the afternoon you are free to explore this beautiful city as you wish, perhaps a pleasure voyage on the River Seine, wander around the beautiful gardens or look among the antique shops（古董店）. In the evening you will have the opportunity to visit the best nightclub in the city, the splendid Paradis Latain. On the final day it’s back to the UK via channel ferry.
Included in the price of £129 per person :
●Return comfortable bus travel to Paris
●Return ferry crossings
●3 nights housing in a twin bedded room in a Central Paris hotel with private facilities
●Continental breakfast during your stay
●Guided sightseeing tour of “Paris by Day” and Paris by Night”
●Visit to the Chateau of Versailles (admission not included )
●Tour around Montmartre
●Services of experienced bi-lingual tour guide at all times
64. What is the purpose of this passage ?
| A．To show the price of traveling to Paris . |
| B．To tell tourists the routes to Paris. |
| C．To introduce the city of Paris. |
| D．To attract tourists to Paris. |
65. During the stay in Paris , the tourists will .
| A．have a “Paris by Night” tour on the first evening |
| B．live in a hotel two miles away from Paris |
| C．have free time for half a day |
| D．have a pleasure voyage on the River Seine together |
66. What does the underlined word quarter mean in the passage ?
| A．An area of a town. |
| B．A period of 15 minutes. |
| C．A coin used in the US and Canada worth 25 cents. |
| D．One of four equal parts into which something can be divided. |
67. According to the passage , which of the following is true ?
| A．The Palace of Versailles is not in the center of Paris. |
| B．The tourists can telephone in the Ibis without paying. |
| C．It will take you a long time to get to Montmartre from Paris. |
| D．The tourists will spend the night in the antique shops on the third day. |
It's not a new phenomenon, but have you noticed how many nouns are being used as verbs? We all use them, often without noticing what we're doing.
I was arranging to meet someone for dinner last week, and I said “I’ll pencil it in my diary”, and my friend said “You can ink it in”, meaning that it was a firm arrangement not a tentative one!
Many of these new verbs are linked to new technology. An obvious example is the word fax, which is a shortening of facsimile originally, an exact copy of a book or document. We all got used to sending and receiving faxes, and then soon started talking about faxing something and promising we'd fax it immediately. So, nouns turn into verbs in two easy stages. Then along came email, and we were soon all emailing each other madly. How did we do without it? I can hardly imagine life without my daily emails.
Email reminds me, of course, of my computer and its software, which has produced another couple of new verbs. On my computer I can bookmark those pages from the World Wide Web that I think I'll want to look at again, thus saving all the effort of remembering their addresses and calling them up from scratch. I can do the same thing on my PC, but there I don't bookmark; I favorite—coming from “favorite pages”, so the verb is derived from an adjective not a noun. I wasn’t really sure whether people said this, but someone told me recently that they had favorited a site I was looking for and so they could easily give me its address.
In the late 1980s I noticed that lots of my friends had acquired pagers, and kept saying things like “I’ll page you as soon as I know what time we’re meeting”. They couldn't say it to me, though; I refused to have one. So my children bought me a mobile phone, now known simply as a mobile and I had to learn yet more new verbs. I can message someone, that is, I can leave a message （either spoken or written）for them on their phone．Or I can text them, write a few words suggesting when and where to meet, for example. How long will it be before I can mobile them, that is, phone them using my mobile? I haven’t heard that verb yet, but I’m sure I will soon. Perhaps I’ll start using it myself!
60. “I’ll pencil it in my diary” in the second paragraph probably means .
| A．it was a firm arrangement |
| B．it was an uncertain arrangement |
| C．the arrangement should be written as a diary |
| D．he prefers a pencil to a pen |
61. A website address can be easily found if it has been .
| A．emailed | B．messaged | C．favorited | D．texted |
62. Which of the following has not been used as a verb yet?
| A．message | B．page | C．email | D．mobile |
63. The best title for this passage is．
| A．New Verbs from Old Nouns |
| B．The Development of the English language |
| C．New Technology and New words |
| D．Technology and Language |
Nothing says love like a dozen long – stemmed roses on Valentine’s Day. More than a million roses will be sold during this festival for lovers, the biggest day of the year for the nation’s rose industry. It’s going to remain the most popular flower because love never goes out of style.
Yes, a rose is a rose is a rose. But selling them is no longer a beautiful experience for traditional flower shops. Supermarkets now offer convenience to the busy and discount rose shops help those hopelessly in love save money. Roses only is a good example of a discount rose retailer that was transformed from a traditional shop to answer the challenge in the’ 90s.
Inside this store on Sixth Avenue near 40 th Street, contemporary white furniture and wall – to – wall mirrors give it an expensive look. Customers move about freely among the counters, looking eagerly at the roses in more than 50 colors from shelf to shelf. Some customers say it’s the high quality of the roses that attracts them there. “I spent $ 20 but the flowers looked like I paid 60 or 70 dollars,” says one customer.
Studies show more people are buying roses in ones, two and threes these days. In fact, more than half of all roses are sold in bunches of fewer than a dozen. But Roses Only's low prices encourage people to spend. Even on Valentine's Day, when the price of a dozen roses and delivery can soar as high as $150, 12 of Roses Only's most expensive flowers sell for just $35. The company's key to success is to hold prices down by controlling every link in the rose chain. It grows its own roses in the sunshine of the Andes Mountains. In addition, the company also sells other items such as ballons and stuffed animals.
While discount rose retailers are witnessing their business bloom, U.S. rose growers aren’t able to compete with the fierce foreign competition. More than 57% of roses sold in the USA are grown in other countries. The biggest foreign producers are Colombia and Ecuador, which accounted for almost 90% of the total imported last year. The trend has hurt domestic rose growers such as Johnson Flowers of California, considered to be this country's leading producer.
Now, instead of fighting overseas rivals, the Johnsons are trying to work with them. "We have a few big fighting overseas rivals, the Johnsons are trying to work with them. “We may also widen our business to include the service area and be a representative for overseas flower producers.”
As a result of severe competition, those in the rose business long for the good old days, whereas ordinary people benefit from the low price.
60．What is the central theme of this text?
| A．The US rose business is going from bad to worse in spite of the efforts made. |
| B．The rose will remain the most popular flower as love never goes out of date. |
| C．The rose business is trying to meet the challenges in the market to succeed. |
| D．The rose industry plays an important role in American economy. |
61．How does Roses Only obtain success in the discount rose retailing field?
| A．By setting up more chain stores across the country. |
| B．By selling roses in supermarkets. |
| C．By selling high quality roses at a low price. |
| D．By selling roses by the dozen. |
|
62．Which of the following shows the structure of the passage?(①to ⑦ represent paragraphs 1 to 7)
| A．Selling roses is no longer as easy for traditional flower shops as it was. |
| B．Almost 90% of roses sold in US are imported from Colombia and Ecuador. |
| C．US rose growers are faced with intense foreign competition. |
| D．the Johnsons are trying to co-operate with foreign competitors instead of fighting them. |
The National Outline for Medium and Long Term Education Reform and Development (2010 - 20) was released over the weekend. Here are some of the highlights:
Four – percent effort
The government says spending on education will be 4 percent of GDP by 2012. globally, average spending on education is about 4.5% of GDP. China spend 3,33% in 2008. according to Hu Angang, of Tsinghua University’s Center for China Studies, even if China reaches that goal, it will only rank about 100 th out of 188 countries.
Administrative rank
Administrative rankings for school leaders are to be phased out to tackle the bureaucracy (官僚机构) problem that limits educational development, according to Cheng Fangping, of the national Institute for Educational Research. Areas like teaching programs, scientific research, and technological development will be more independent.
Vocational Education
The system will be free of charge. According to Wu Yan, of Beijing Institute of Educational Sciences, this will be key to developing China’s production capacity and will improve poor people’s lives dramatically.
Entering college
Universities could eventually have the freedom to choose some of their own high school applicants. Normally, students are accepted based on the uniform national exam scores. Also, students who agree to go to a remote area could be admitted to university under special circumstances. The most likely change could come on the college entrance English test, which might be modeled on the IELTS or TOEFL. Students will be able to take it several times and pick their best score.
56．Which of the following is true in the future according to the passage?
| A．Applicants could take the IELTS or TOEFL instead of the college entrance English test. |
| B．Colleges will be given the right to choose all of their own applicants. |
| C．Vocational education will be party free to make people’s lives better. |
| D．Applicants could sit for the college entrance English test more than once. |
57．Which of the following words is closest in meaning to “uniform” in the last paragraph?
| A．formal | B．official | C．same | D．united |
58．We can learn from the passage even though our country spends 4% of GDP on education in 2012, .
| A．there will still be 188 countries ahead of China in this aspect |
| B．China will certainly overtake the global average spending on education |
| C．there might be nearly 100 countries ahead of China in this aspect |
| D．China will be the 100 th country to spend over the global average on education |
59．From the third paragraph, we can infer that .
| A．school leaders will have more freedom to manage the school |
| B．schools will have more limits from the government |
| C．School administrative rankings are to be strengthened to solve the bureaucracy problem |
| D．schools and research centers will be fully independent from the government |
America is grooving older. Fify years ago, only 4 out of every 100 people in the United Satates were 65 or older. Today, 10 out of every 100 Americans are over 65. The aging of the population will affect American society in many ways - education, medicine, and business. Quietly, the graying of America has made us a very different society-one in which people have a quite different idea of what kind of behavior(行为) is suitable at various ages.
A person’s age no longer tells you anything about his/her social position, marriage or health. There’s no longer a particular year in which one goes to school or goes to work or gets married or starts a family. The social clock that kept us on time tells ads it used to be. It doesn’t surprise us to hear of a 29 -year-old man who has become a father for the first time. Public ideas are changing. Many people say, “I’m much younger than my mother or my father was at my age.” No one says “act your Age” anymore. We’ve stopped looking with surprise at older people who act in youthful ways.
72. It can be learnt from the text that the aging of the population in America _____.
| A．has made people feel younger |
| B．has changed people’s social position |
| C．has changed people’s understanding of age |
| D．has slowed down the country’s social development |
73. The underlined word “one” refers to_______ .
| A．a society | B．America | C．a place | D．population |
74. “Act your age” means people should ____ .
| A．be active when they are old |
| B．do the right thing at the right age |
| C．show respect for their parents young or old |
| D．take more physical exercise suitable to their age |
75. If a 25-year-old man becomes general manager of a big firm the writer of the text would most probably consider it _________.
| A．normal | B．wonderful | C．unbelievable | D．unreasonable |
