In the summer of 1978 an English farmer was driving his tractor through a field of wheat when he discovered that some of his wheat was lying flat on the ground. The flattened wheat formed a circle about six meters across. Around this circle were four smaller circles of flattened wheat. The five circles were in a formation（结构） like five dots. During the following years, farmers in England found the strange circles in their fields more and more often.
The circles are called “crop circles” because they appear in the fields of grain ― usually wheat or corn. The grain in the circles lies flat on the ground but is never broken; it continues to grow, and farmers can later harvest it. Farmers always discover the crop circles in the morning, so the circles probably form at night. They appear only in the months from May to September.
At first, people thought that the circles were a hoax. Probably young people were making them as a joke, or farmers were making them to attract tourists. To prove that the circles were a hoax, people tried to make circles exactly like the ones that farmers had found. They couldn’t do it. They couldn’t enter a field of grain without leaving tracks, and they couldn’t flatten the grain without breaking it.
Many people believe that beings from outer space are making the circles to communicate with us from far away and that the crop circles are messages from them.
Scientists who have studied the crop circles suggested several possibilities. Some scientists say that a downward rush of wind leads to the formation of the circles — the same downward lash of air that sometimes causes an airplane to crash. Other scientists say that forces within the earth cause the circles to appear. There is one problem with all these scientific explanations: crop circles often appear in formations, like the five-dot formation. It is hard to believe that any natural force could form those.In the summer of 1978, an English farmer discovered in his field that ______.
| A．some of his wheat had fallen onto the ground |
| B．some of his wheat had been damaged |
| C．his grain was growing up in circles |
| D．his grain was moved into several circles |
The underlined word "hoax" in Paragraph 3 is probably ______.
| A．a research on the force of winds |
| B．an attempt made to fool people |
| C．an experiment for the protection of crops |
| D．a special way to plant crops |
Which of the following may prove that the crop circles are not made by man?
| A．The farmers couldn’t step out of the field. |
| B．The farmers couldn’t leave without footprints. |
| C．The farmers couldn’t make the circles round. |
| D．The farmers couldn’t keep the wheat straight up. |
One explanation given by scientists for the crop circles is that they are made by _____.
| A．air movement | B．airplane crashes |
| C．unknown flying objects | D．new farming techniques |
There was a king who gave his daughter a beautiful diamond necklace. The necklace was stolen and his people in the kingdom searched everywhere but could not find it. So the king asked to search for it and put a reward for＄50,000 for anyone who found it.
One day, a clerk was walking home along a river when he saw something shinning in the river and when he looked, he saw the diamond necklace. He decided to try and catch it to get the ＄50,000 reward.
He put his hand in the river and tried to catch the necklace, but somehow missed it and didn’t catch it. He took his hand out and looked again and the necklace was still there. He tried again.
But strangely, he still missed the necklace! He came out and started walking away, feeling sad. Just then, an old man walking by saw him, and asked him what was the matter. The clerk didn’t want to share the secret with him, thinking he might take the necklace for himself, so he refused to tell him anything.
The old man could see this man was troubled. He again asked the clerk to tell him the problem and promised that he would not tell anyone about it. The clerk told him about the necklace and how he tried and tried to catch it, but kept failing.
The old man then told him that perhaps he should try looking upward, toward the branches of the tree, instead of in the river. The clerk looked up and true enough, the necklace was hanging on the branch of a tree. He had been trying to take a reflection of the real necklace all this time. The clerk tried to get the diamond necklace to __________.
| A．make the king happy. | B．keep it for himself. |
| C．get the big reward. | D．sell it at a high price. |
Before the old man asked the clerk what was the matter, the clerk .
| A．was searching in the water | B．was trying to find help |
| C．felt rather tired | D．was not feeling good |
Where did the clerk find the necklace at last?
| A．On the tree | B．On the bank | C．In the river | D．In the sand |
What might be the best title for the passage?
| A．A beautiful diamond necklace | B．A king’s promise |
| C．A lucky young clerk | D．Changing the way of thinking |
I remember a day when I was a little kid. I was making a sandwich in the kitchen when I noticed the date on one of the wine bottles.
“ Dad, dad!” I cried. “This wine is too old to drink.”
“ Son, hold on,” he said.
“ No, you can’t drink this tonight! This bottle of wine was made 10 years ago.”
“ Wait, let me tell you…”
“ Would you like me to throw it away from you?” I asked.
“ Son, wait a second,” he said. “Son, some wines get better over time. The longer you wait to drink it, the better it will be. Although this may seem strange, it is true.”
When I was young, I didn’t have any understanding of what this meant, but now, this would have been very helpful to remember as I went through my teenage years.
In our society, we forget this simple rule: The longer you want for certain things, the better they will be. But we want the best job as quickly as possible; we want to graduate from college in as few years as possible; we even speed through our homework just to chat with friends. When we do this, we lose something of great importance.
We all want to get to the next step so quickly that perhaps we don’t get ready enough to get there. This has a negative effect on our society. When trying to go to the right college, we will do anything to get in and when we rush through our class-work, we may not study enough for the test, and end up failing. We need to be ready for whatever comes, ready for the unexpected. Wine gets better over time, so do the things in our paths of life.Why did the author tell his father not to drink the bottle of wine?
| A．Because it smelt terrible. |
| B．Because it was mixed with something else. |
| C．Because his father drank too much that night. |
| D．Because it had been kept for years. |
What the author’s father said __________.
| A．made the author puzzled when he was a little child. |
| B．was too simple a rule to be meaningful to the author. |
| C．threw the author into deep thought then. |
| D．was an excuse to drink the wine. |
In the author’s opinion, if we do things too quickly, we will __________.
| A．do it better | B．save much time |
| C．graduate from college more quickly | D．miss something useful to us in life |
Which of the following best reflects the main idea of the passage?
| A．Well begun is half done. | B．More haste（匆忙）, less speed. |
| C．Failure is the mother of success. | D．Nothing is impossible to a willing heart. |
CBC is a famous air company which has over twenty planes carrying passengers and goods, flying along 12 fixed lines all over the world. Its service is very good but some passengers are still not satisfied with it and that is why in 2004 and 2005 the company received letters of complaints from consumers or passengers who pointed out over a dozen kind of problems which are divided in groups in the following table. Those concerning passengers’ things carried on the plane are baggage problems. Customer service refers to service work which passengers are not satisfied with. Overselling of tickets is about the fact that more seats are sold and as a result the plane is too crowded to be safe. Refund problems appear when passengers fail to receive the money paid back to them because of what they have lost. Fares are problems concerning the price of tickets.
Consumer Complaints Received By the CBC
| Category |
2004 |
2005 |
| Flight problems |
20.2% |
22.1% |
| Baggage |
18.3% |
21.8% |
| Customer service |
3.1% |
11.3% |
| Over sales of seats |
10.5% |
11.8% |
| Refund problems |
10.1% |
8.1% |
| Fares |
6.4% |
6.0% |
| Reservation & Ticketing |
5.8% |
5.6% |
| Tours |
3.3% |
2.3% |
| Smoking |
3.2% |
2.9% |
| Advertising |
1.2% |
1.01% |
| Credit |
1.0% |
0.8% |
| Special passengers |
0.9% |
0.9% |
| Others |
6.0% |
5.3% |
| Total Number of Complaints |
2,988 |
1,792 |
About how many complaints about Credit were received by the CBC in 2004?
| A．28 | B．29 | C．30 | D．31 |
By about what percentage did the total number of complaints decrease from 2004 to 2005?
| A．40% | B．60% | C．75% | D．100% |
If the circle graphs below show total consumer complaints for 2004, which graph shows a dark part that is about Flight problems and Refund problems together?
Which of the following statements can be inferred from the table?
a. In 2004 and in 2005, complaints about Flight problems, Baggage, and Customer service
together took more than 40 percent of all consumer complaints received by the CBC Company.
b .The number of special passengers complaints was unchanged from 2004 to 2005.
c .From 2004 to 2005 the number of Flight problems complaints increased by more than 2 percent.
| A．only a | B．only b | C．a and b | D．a and c |
From the passage we can know that _______ .
| A．customers are not satisfied with CBC |
| B．sometimes CBC sells more tickets than its plane’s fixed seats |
| C．CBC has more than twenty planes which fly to all the capital cities of the world |
| D．customers can only buy tickets with cash |
Some say everyday miracles(奇迹) are predestined(注定的)—the right time for the appointed meeting. And it can happen anywhere.
In 2001, 11-year-old Kevin Stephan was a bat boy for his younger brother’s Little League team in Lancaster, New York. It was an early evening in late July. Kevin was standing on the grass away from the plate, where another youngster was warming up for the next game. Swinging his bat back and forth, giving it all the power an elementary school kid could give. The boy brought the bat back hard and hit Kevin in the chest. His heart stopped.
When Kevin fell to the ground, the mother of one of the players rushed out of the stands to his aid. Penny Brown hadn’t planned to be there that day, but at the last minute, her shift(换班)at the hospital had been changed to see her son’s performance. She was given the night off. Penny bent over the senseless boy, his face already starting to turn blue, and giving him CPR(心肺复苏术), breathing into his mouth and giving him chest compressions. And he revived in the end.
After his recovery, he became a volunteer junior firefighter, learning some of the emergency first-aid techniques that had saved his life. He studied hard in school and was saving money for college by working as a dishwasher in a local restaurant in his spare time.
Kevin, now 18, was working in the kitchen when he heard people screaming, customers in confusion, employees rushing toward a table. He hurried into the main room and saw a woman there, her face turning blue, her hands at her throat. She was choking.
Quickly Kevin stepped behind her, wrapped his arms around her and clasped his hands. Then, he used skills he’d first learned in Scouts. The food that was trapped in the woman’s throat was freed. The colour began to return to her face.
“The food was stuck in my throat. I couldn’t breathe,” she said. She thought she was dying. “I was very frightened.”
Who was the woman?
Penny Brown. The author wrote the passage to show us that .
| A．miracles are predestined and they can happen anywhere |
| B．whoever helps you in trouble will get a reward one day |
| C．God will help those who give others a helping hand |
| D．miracles won’t come without any difficulty sometimes |
Which of the following statements is TRUE of Kevin Stephan?
| A．He was hit in the face by a boy and almost lost his life. |
| B．He was a volunteer junior firefighter, teaching the players first-aid skills. |
| C．He worked part-time in a local restaurant to save money for college. |
| D．He saved Penny Brown though he didn’t really know how to deal with food choke. |
Why did Penny Brown change her shift and was given the night off that night?
| A．She was invited to give the players directions. |
| B．She volunteered to give medical services. |
| C．She was a little worried about his son’s safety. |
| D．She came to watch her son’s game and cheered for him. |
The underlined word “revived” in the third paragraph most likely means.
| A．came back to life | B．became worse | C．failed | D．moved |
When Kevin knew the woman was Penny Brown, probably he first felt.
| A．happy | B．surprised | C．sad | D．worried |
In a recent class I was asked “What is a short story?” My first answer was that it was something that could be read in one sitting and brought an illumination（启示）to the reader, sudden and golden like sunlight cracking(破裂,砸开) through a heavy cloud. I went on to say that in my opinion a “real” short story was closer to poetry than to a novel.
Here are some definitions of the short story. My favorite is Benet’s: “something that can be read in an hour and remembered for a lifetime”. One writer said, “The theme of a novel won’t fit into the framework of a short story; It’s like trying to squeeze a large painting done on a wall into the frame of a miniature （微型画）。 And as in a miniature painting, the details need to be sharp. ”
The short story is an example of one aspect of human nature. Often a character undergoes some event, something that offers him or her change. This is why it’s said that short stories usually “say something ”， often a small something, but sometimes delivered with such accuracy that the effect is strongly felt, even a life-moment for some readers, something similar to a religious experience or to witnessing a never-to-be-repeated scene in nature.
Ok, let’s form a definition here: A short story is an account, rarely over 10, 000 words or below 500 words-more commonly 1, 500 to 5, 000 words-a single-sitting read, but with enough time and weight to move the reader. It is narrow and focused to produce an effect through the story, most commonly through events affecting some change in an individual.
Writer Isabelle Allende once wrote: “Novels are, for me, adding up details, just work, work, work, then you’re done. Short stories are more difficult-they have to be perfect, complete in themselves. ”The writer of the passage is probably a ______.
| A．poet | B．painter | C．teacher | D．student |
What should the ideal short story be in length?
| A．at most 10, 000 words | B．below 500 words | C．over 5, 000words | D．around 2, 000 words |
The underlined word “undergoes ” in the third paragraph probably means “________ ”。
| A．experiences | B．discovers | C．discusses | D．appreciates |
What’s the difference between novels and short stories?
| A．Novels are too long for us to read. |
| B．Short stories are too short for us to read. |
| C．Short stories have more details than novels. |
| D．Short stories are more perfect and difficult than novels. |
What would be the best title for the passage?
| A．How Do You Write a Short Story? | B．What Exactly Is a Short Story? |
| C．Is a Short Story Similar to Poetry? | D．Are Short Stories Perfect and Complete? |