We have designed all our bank cards to make your life easier .

How to use your Nat West Servicecard .

As a Switch card , it lets you par for all sorts of goods and services , wherever you see the Switch logo(標(biāo)志；標(biāo)識). The money comes straight out of your account, so you can spend as much as you like as long as you have enough money ( or an agreed overdraft (透支) to cover it . It is also a cheque guarantee (擔(dān)保 ) for up to the amount shown on the card . And it gives you free access to your money from over 31,000 each machines across the UK.

How to use your Nat West Cashcard

You can use your Cashcard as a Solo card to pay for goods and services wherever you see the Solo logo . It  can also give you access to your account and your cash from over 31,000 cash machines nationwide . You can spend or withdraw (提取 ) what you have in you account , or as much as your agreed overdraft limit .

Using your cards abroad

You can also use your Servicecard and Cashcard when you＇re abroad . You can withdraw cash machines and pay for goods and services wherever you acc the Cirrus or Macatro logo displayed .

We take a commission charge (手續(xù)費 )  of 2.25% of cash withdrawal you make ( up to &4 ) and a commission .

 Charge of 75 pence every time you use Maestro to pay for goods or services. We also apply a foreign-exchange transaction fee of 2.65%.

How to use your Nat West Credit Card

With your credit card you can do the following：

* Pay for goods and services and enjoy up to 56 days interest-free credit.

* Pay in over 24 million shops worldwide that display the Mastercard or Visa logos.

* Collect one AIR MILE for every ￡20 of spending that appears on your statement（結(jié)算單）.

（This does not include foreign currency or traveller’s cheques bought，interest and other charges.）

If you carry the Servicecard or the Cashcard.      

A．you can use it to guarantee things as you wish

B．you can draw your money from cash machines conveniently

C．you can spend as much money as you like without a limit

D．you have to pay some extra money when you pay for services in the UK

If you withdraw ￡200 from a cash machine abroad，you will be charged        .

A．￡4      B．￡4.5    C．￡5.25    D．￡5.3

Which of the following is TRUE about using your NatWest Credit Card?

A．You have to pay back with interest within 56 days.

B．You will be charged some interest beyond two months.

C．You can use the card in any shop across the world.

D．You will gain one air mile if you spend ￡20 on traveller’s cheques.

The purpose of the passage is to show you how to      .

A．play your cards right          B．use your cards abroad

C．draw cash with your cards      D．pay for goods with your cards

Holmes’ Knowledge

His ignorance was as remarkable as his knowledge. Of contemporary literature, philosophy and politics he appeared to know next to nothing. Upon my quoting Thomas Carlyle, he inquired in the naivest（天真的；幼稚的）way who he might be and what he had done. My surprise reached a climax, however, when I found incidentally that he was ignorant of the Copernican Theory and of the composition of the Solar system.

  “You appear to be astonished, ” Holmes said, smiling at my expression. “Now that I do know it I shall do my best to forget it. You see, I consider that a man’s brain originally is like a little empty attic, and you have to stock it with such furniture as you choose: A fool takes in all the lumber of every sort that he comes across, so that the knowledge which might be useful to him gets crowded out, or at best jumbled up with a lot of other things, so that he has difficulty in laying his hand upon it. It is a mistake to think that the little room has elastic walls and can distend to any extent. Depend upon it, there comes a time when for every addition of knowledge you forget something that you know before. It is of the highest importance, therefore, not to have useless facts elbowing out the useful ones.”

  “But the Solar System! ” I protested.

  “What the deuce is it to me?” he interrupted impatiently.

  One morning, I picked up a magazine from the table and attempted to while away the time with it, while my companion munched silently at his toast. One of the articles had a pencil mark at the heading, and I naturally began to run my eye through it.

  Its somewhat ambitious title was “The Book of Life, ” and it attempted to show how much an observant man might learn by an accurate and systematic examination of all that came in his way. It struck me as being a remarkable mixture of shrewdness and of absurdity. The reasoning was close and intense, but the deduction appeared to me to be far-fetched and exaggerated. The writer claimed by a momentary expression, a twitch of a muscle or a glance of an eye, to fathom a man’s inmost thought. Deceit, according to him, was impossibility in the case of one trained to observation and analysis. His conclusions were as infallible as so many propositions of Euclid. So startling would his results appear to the uninitiated that until they learned the processes by which he had arrived at them they might well consider him as a necromancer.

  “From a drop of water, ”said the writer, “a logician could infer the possibility of an Atlantic. So all life is a great chain, the nature of which is known whenever we are shown a single link of it. Like all other arts, the science of Deduction and Analysis is one which can be acquired by long and patient study, nor is life long enough to allow any mortal to attain the highest possible perfection in it. ”

  This smartly written piece of theory I could not accept until a succession of evidences justified it.

What is the author’s attitude toward Holmes?

A  Praising.    B Critical.         C Ironical.     D Distaste.

What way did the author take to stick out Holmes’ uniqueness?

A  By deduction.  B By explanation.    C By contrast.     D By analysis.

What was the Holmes’ idea about knowledge-learning?

A Learning what every body learned.  B Learning what was useful to you.

C Learning whatever you came across. D Learning what was different to you.

What did the article mentioned in the passage talk about?

A One may master the way of reasoning through observation.

B One may become rather critical through observation and analysis.

C One may become rather sharp through observation and analysis.

D One may become practical through observation and analysis.

Why do men die earlier than women? The latest research makes it known that the reason could be that men’s hearts go into rapid decline when they reach middle age.

The largest study of the effects of ageing on the heart has found that women’s longevity may be linked to the fact that their hearts do not lose their pumping power with age.

“We have found that the power of the male heart falls by 20-25 percent between 18 and 70 years of age,” said the head of the study, David Goldspink of Liverpool John Moores University in the UK.

“Within the heart there are millions of cells that enable it to beat. Between the age of 20 and 70, one-third of those cells die and are not replaced in men,” said Goldspink. “This is part of the ageing process.”

What surprises scientists is that the female heart sees very little loss of these cells. A healthy 70-year-old woman’s heart could perform almost as well as a 20-year-old one’s.

“This gender difference might just explain why women live longer than men,” said Goldspink. They studied more than 250 healthy men and women between the ages of 18 and 80, focusing on healthy persons to remove the confusing influence of disease. “The team has yet to find why ageing takes a greater loss on the male heart,” said Goldspink.

The good news is that men can improve the health of their heart with regular exercise. Goldspink stressed that women also need regular exercise to prevent their leg muscles becoming smaller and weaker as they age.

The underlined word “l(fā)ongevity” in the second paragraph probably refers to “________”.

A. health              B. long life             C. ageing              D. effect

The text mainly talks about ________.

A. men’s heart cells                           B. women’s ageing process、

C. the gender difference                     D. hearts and long life

according to the text, the UK scientists have known that ________.

A. women have more cells than men when they are born

B. women can replace the cells that enable the heart to beat

C. the female heart loses few of the cells with age

D. women never lose their pumping power with age

If you want to live longer, you should ________.

A. enable your heart to beat much faster      

B. find out the reason for ageing

C. exercise regularly to keep your heart healthy 

D. prevent your cells from being lost

We can know from the passage that ________.

A. the reason why ageing takes a greater loss on the male heart has been found out

B. scientists are on the way to finding out why the male heart loses more of the cells

C. the team has done something to prevent the male from suffering the greater loss

D. women over 70 could lose more heart cells than those at the age of 20

The United States government wants to know what the public thinks about its findings on the safety of cloned animals.

The Food and Drug Administration says meat and milk from clones of adult cattle, pigs and goats are safe to eat. An F.D.A. official called them "as safe to eat as the food we eat every day." And when those clones reproduce sexually（有性繁殖）, the agency says, their offspring（后代） are safe to eat as well. But research on cloned sheep is limited. So the F.D.A. proposes that sheep clones not be used for human food.

The United States this year could become the first country to approve the sale of foods from cloned animals. First, however, the public will have ninety days to comment on three proposed documents. On December 28th the F.D.A. released a long report, called a draft risk assessment, along with two policy documents.

The agency says it must receive comments by April second. The F.D.A. seemed ready to act several years ago, but an advisory committee called for more research.

For now, the government will continue to ask producers to honor a request that they not sell foods from cloned animals.

Clones are still rare. They cost a lot and are difficult to produce.

The F.D.A. says most food from cloning is expected to come not from clones themselves, but from their sexually reproduced offspring. It says clones are expected to be used mostly as breeding animals to spread good qualities.

Public opinion studies show most Americans do not like the idea of food from cloned animals. But this research also shows the public knows little about cloning.

Cloning differs from genetic engineering. A cell taken from a so-called donor animals is grown into an embryo（胚胎）in the laboratory. Next, the embryo is placed into the uterus（子宮）of a female animal. If the process is successful, the pregnancy reaches full term and a genetic copy of the donor animal is born.

From the passage we know that               .

A. foods from cloned animals are popular in America

B. cloned adult animals are safe to eat except sheep.

C. cloned animals will be easy to produce

D. most foods from cloning is expected to take place of other foods

The main purpose of the text is to               .

A. tell a interesting story     B. give some advice on foods

C. give a report            D. compare different opinions

Who believe that foods from cloning are safe to eat?

A. Most Americans     B. An advisory committee

C. Critics             D. The F.D.A.

It can be inferred from the last paragraph that         .

A. cloning has much in common with genetic

B. not every cell taken from a donor animal can grow into a genetic copy

C. the donor animal should be a female one

D. cloned animals grow faster than normal ones

An elderly woman died and several other passengers were critically injured when a crowded Virgin express train crashed in Cumbria last night.

     A huge rescue operation involving RAF helicopters and dozens of ambulances arrive. After passengers were trapped in the train for more than four hours because fallen power line poles made access for emergency workers difficult.

     Authorities reported up to 80 injuries. Thirteen people were taken to hospital in a“critical or serious condition.”

     Between 180 and 200 passengers were on the 5:15pm Virgin service from London Euston to Glasgow Central when all nine carriages left the rails between Oxenholme and Tebay. Witnesses said that the train shook violently before toppling(傾斜) over into an embankment(筑堤)with at least four carriages overturning. Early this morning, authorities confirmed an elderly woman had died and some other passengers had suffered injuries including back strains, head wounds and broken bones.

     Ruth Colton, a passenger on the train, said she was reading a book when the journey became uncomfortable. It seemed that the train was being beaten by heavy winds,“as if we were on a plane”.

     The accident brought concerns that Britain's busiest rail route would be crippled(癱瘓)for some time. The line between Preston and Carlisle was postponed as Virgin Trains promised a rapid investigation into the “serious incident”—the company's first big crash.

     It is understood that the investigation will examine whether there was an obstacle on the track and the possibility of speeding or mechanical breakdown. The driver, who was injured, will be interviewed and a black-box recorder installed in the train will be examined.

What made the rescue come so late?

    A. It's not accessible to reach the accident spot.

    B. No enough helicopters and ambulances could be found at that time.

    C. It was too far from hospital to Cumbria.

    D. No one called the emergency center.

According to the passage, the busiest rail route in Britain is          

    A. From Preston to Carlisle         B. Between Euston and Glasgow

    C. From Oxenholme to Tebay       D. Between Virgin and Pendolino

What does the underlined word “critical”mean?

     A. Important.      B. Careless.     C. Dangerous.      D. Surprising.

Which of the following is the possible cause of the accident?

     A. Careless driving.                 B. Heavy wind.

     C. Over loading.                    D. Obstacle on the track.

We can learn from the passage that Virgin Trains               

     A. made no quick reaction to this accident

     B. seldom had so serious an accident before

     C. had made full preparations for the accident

     D. didn't mind how many passengers the train can hold

Between ten and midnight the United States is politically leaderless—there is no center of information anywhere in the nation except in the New York headquarters of the great broadcasting companies and two wire services. No candidate and no party can afford the investment on election night to match the news-gathering resources of the mass media; and so as every citizen sits in his home watching his TV set or listening to his radio, he is the equal of any other in knowledge. There is nothing that can be done in these hours, for no one can longer direct the great strike for America’s power; the polls have closed. Good or bad, whatever the decision, America will accept the decision—and cut down any man who goes against it, even though for millions the decision runs contrary to their own votes. The general vote is an expression of national will, the only substitute for violence and blood. Its decision is to be defended as one defends civilization itself.

There is nothing like this American expression of will in England or France, India or Russia. Only one other major nation in modern history has tried to elect its leader directly by mass, free, popular vote. This was the Weiman Republic of Germany, which modeled its unitary vote for national leaders on the American practice. Out of its experiment with the system it got Hitler. Americans have had Lincoln, Wilson and two Roosevelts. Nothing can be done when the voting returns are flooding in; the White House and its power will move to one or another of the two candidates, and all will know about it in the morning. But for these hours history stops.

Between ten P.M. and midnight the United States is politically leaderless because ________.

A. the president has been murdered          

B. the general strike for power has ended

C. the government has resigned             

D. the general vote is being held

“The great strike for America’s power” in Paragraph 1 refers to ________.

A. the strike of the government members

B. the great vote

C. the election campaign

D. the strike of the government employees

The author believes that the decision at the polls will ________.

A. lead to a civil war             B. result in a general strike

C. cause violence and blood     D. be defended by all Americans

Without the general vote, the author implies ________.

A. there would be a civil war    B. there would be a general strike

C. there would be an election campaign    D. there would be a fierce debate

These achievements_______ without the contribution of Qian Xuesen, a key leader of the New China's nuclear, missile and so on．

         A．would have been unthinkable B．would not be unthinkable

         C．would be unthinkable         D．would not have been unthinkable

When we think of  leadership ,we often think of strength and power .But what are these really ,and how do they operate?

 Leadership today is not about forcing others to do things .If this is even possible .it is short-term ,and tends to backfire. If you order someone to do something against their will, they may do it because they feel they must , but the anger they feel will do more harm in the long-term ,They will also experience fear.

Fear causes the thinking brain to shut down , making the person unable to function at his or her best .If they associate you with this emotion of fear. They will become less functional around you ,and you will have succeeded in not only shooting yourself in the foot .but possibly making a very good employee or partner unable to perform effectively .Fear has no place in leadership.

  The way we influence people in a lasting way is by our own character, and our understanding and use of emotion .We can order someone to do something ,which may be part of the work day; or we can employ them at the emotional level ,so they became fully devoted to the projects and provide some of their own motivation(積極性)。Today’s work place is all about relationships as a human being as well as a worker .Everyone produces just a bit more for someone they like .Leaders understand the way things work .They know the pay check is not the single most motivating factor (因素) in the work life of most people.

The true strength of leadership is an inner strength that comes from the confidence of emotional intelligence---knowing your own emotions, and how to handle them, and those of others . Developing your emotional intelligence is the single best thing you can do if you want to develop your relationships with people around you , which is the key to the leadership skills .

An employee may have a feeling of fear in the work place when___.

A. he is forced to do things

B. be cannot work at his best

C. he feels his brain shut down

D he thinks of his work as too heavy

Which of the following is TRUE according to the passage?

A People tend to associate leadership with fear

B Working conditions affect people’s physical health

C Good relationship is the key to business success

D Smart people are more functional in the work place.

To positively influence employees a leader should first of all __

A provide better suggestions

B develop his own personality

C five his employees a pay raise

D hide his own emotion of fear

Good leadership is mainly seen in a leader’s ability to___

A .provide a variety of project for employees

B. help raise employee’s living standards

C. give employees specific instructions

D. deal wisely with employees’ emotions

Even as Americans have been gaining weight, they have cut their average fat intake from 36 to 34 percent of their total diets in the past 15 years.  And indeed,  cutting fat  to control or lose weight makes sense. Fat has nine calories per gram. Protein and carbohydrates（碳水化合物） have just four. Moreover, the body uses fewer calories to metabolize fat than it does to metabolize other foods. Compared with protein and carbohydrates — which break down into amino acids and simple sugars, respectively, and can be used to strengthen and energize the body —— dietary fat is more easily converted to body fat. Therefore, it’s more likely to stay on buttocks, thighs and bellies.? 

But cutting fat from your diet doesn’t necessarily mean your body won’t store fat. For example, between nonfat and regular cookies, there’s trivial difference in calories because manufacturers make up for the loss of fat by adding sugar. Low-fat crackers, soups and dressings can also be just as high in calories as richer versions. No matter where the calories come from, overeating will still cause weight again. The calories from fat just do it a little quicker. A Wisconsin computer programmer who decided with a diet coach to eat only 40 grams of fat a day learned the lesson firsthand. He wasn’t losing weight. Then he showed his food diary to his coach and revealed he’d been eating half a pound of jelly beans a day. “They don’t have any fat,” he explains. But they had enough sugar to keep him from shedding an ounce. ? 

Nonfat foods become add-on foods. When we add them to our diet, we actually increase the number of calories we eat per day and gain weight. That was borne out in a Pennsylvania State University study. For breakfast, Prof. Barbara Rolls gave two groups of women yogurt（酵母乳） that contained exactly the same amount of calories. One group’s yogurt label said “high fat”—the other, “l(fā)ow fat.” The “l(fā)ow fat” yogurt group ate significantly more calories later in the day than the other group. “People think they’ve saved fat and can indulge themselves later in the day with no adverse consequences,” says Richard Mattes, a nutrition researcher at Purdue University. “But when they do that, they don’t compensate very precisely, and they often end up overdoing it.”

What lessons did the computer programme learn ?

A. Overeating will cause weight gain

B. He can eat half a pound of jellybeans a day

C. He can’t didn’t eat any fat

D. His coach gave him a lecture

Prof. Barbara’s ecperiement proved that _______________.

A. two groups ate the same amount of calories

B. two groups ate the same wmount of yogurt

C. the “ low fat” yogurt group ate more calories later in the day than the other group

D. people increase the number of calories they eat per day and gain group

According to the author ,________has less calories.

A. fat                      

B. protein and carbohydrates

C. low-fat soups             

D. sugar

What can you infer from the text ?

A. To keep from being overweight, people have to eat nofat food

B. The calories from fat just do it a little quicker than from protein and carbohydrates

C. People should avoid temptation

D. Americans realize that it is necessary to count calories before eating the food

Happiness is U-shaped, for we are happier at the start and end of our lives but hit a slump when we are middle-aged, British and US researchers say.

Economists from the University of Warwick, central England, and from Dartmouth College, New Hampshire, looked at data on the mental health of two million people from 80 countries.

In Britain, the probability of depression for men and women peaks at around 44 years of age, Warwick University said in a press release.  

In the United States, though, ________________________between men and women. Among women, unhappiness peaked at around the age of 40, whereas among men, it was about 50.

But the U-shape of happiness is constant around the world, and mid-life depression occurs regardless of marital status(婚姻狀況), changes in job or income.

The study appears in Social Science & Medicine, published by the Dutch publishing house Elsevier.  

"It happens to men and women, to single and married people, to rich and poor, and to those with and without children." said co-author Andrew Oswald.

One possibility may be that people realize they won't achieve many of their ambitions at middle age. The researchers said.

Another reason could be that after seeing their fellow middle-aged peers begin to die, people begin to value their own remaining years and embrace life once more.

But the good news is that if people make it to aged 70 and are still physically fit, they are on average as happy and mentally healthy as a 20-year old.

"For the average persons in the modern world, the dip in mental health and happiness comes on slowly, not suddenly in a single year," Oswald said. "Only in their fifties do people emerge from this low period.  

1.Which sentence in the passage is the closest in meaning to the following one?

 There are chances that the middle-aged people will realize their ideal is likely to be unattainable. 

_________________________________________________________________________

2.Fill in the blank in Paragraph 3 with a proper sentence．(within 10 words)

3.How do you understand the sentence that “Happiness is U-shaped”? (within 20 words)

_________________________________________________________________________

4.Is mid-life depression a common Phenomenon in the world ? How do you know?(within 15 words) 

_________________________________________________________________________

5.Translate the underlined sentence in the last paragraph into Chinese

_________________________________________________________________________