―Why did you come late this morning? 

 ―We were          for an hour in the traffic jam.

       A．cast                    B．flashed                C．trapped               D．struck

There is no ___________ in trying to talk him into joining us. He enjoys being alone.

A．doubt                  B．wonder               C．hope                   D．point

In the increasingly heavy snowstorm, the two girls was unable to find their way back．They were___________  in the mountainous area.

A．missing               B．lost                     C．gone                   D．disappearing

South of the city ________ three high schools．One is senior high, and the other two are junior highs.

       A．lay                      B．lies                      C．lying                   D．lie

    As kids, my friends and I spent a lot of time out in the woods. “The woods” was our part-time address, destination, purpose, and excuse. If I went to a friend’s house and found him not at home, his mother might say, “Oh, he’s out in the woods, ” with a tone(語氣) of airy acceptance. It’s similar to the tone people sometimes use nowadays to tell me that someone I’m looking for is on the golf course or at the gym, or even “away from his desk.” For us ten-year-olds, “being out in the woods” was just an excuse to do whatever we feel like for a while.

    We sometimes told ourselves that what we were doing in the woods was exploring(探索). Exploring was a more popular idea back then than it is today. History seemed to be mostly about explorers. Our explorations, though, seemed to have less system than the historic kind: something usually came up along the way. Say we stayed in the woods, throwing rocks, shooting frogs, picking blackberries, digging in what we were briefly persuaded was an Italian burial mound.

    Often we got “l(fā)ost” and had to climb a tree to find out where we were. If you read a story in which someone does that successfully, be skeptical: the topmost branches are usually too skinny to hold weight, and we could never climb high enough to see anything except other trees. There were four or five trees that we visited regularly----tall beeches, easy to climb and comfortable to sit in.

    It was in a tree, too, that our days of fooling around in the woods came to an end. By then some of us had reached seventh grade and had begun the rough ride of adolescence（青春期）. In March, the month when we usually took to the woods again after winter, two friends and I set out to go exploring. We climbed a tree, and all of a sudden it occurred to all three of us at the same time that we really were rather big to be up in a tree. Soon there would be the spring dances on Friday evenings in the high school cafeteria.

72. The author and his fiends were often out in the woods to _______.

   A. play gold and other sports           B. spend their free time

   C. avoid doing their schoolwork        D. keep away from their parents

73. What can we infer from Paragraph 2?

   A. The activities in the woods were well planned.

   B. Human history is not the result of exploration.

   C. Exploration should be a systematic activity.

   D. The author explored in the woods aimlessly.

74. The underlined word “skeptical” in Paragraph 3 is closest in meaning to ______.

   A. calm          B. serious         C. doubtful       D. optimistic

75. How does the author feel about his childhood?

   A. Happy but short.                  B. Lonely but memorable.

   C. Boring and meaningless.            D. Long and unforgettable.

    A child who has once been pleased with a tale likes, as a rule, to have it retold in almost the same words, but this should not lead parents to treat printed fairy stories as formal texts. It is always much better to tell a story than read it out of a book, and, if a parent can produce what, in the actual situation of the time and the child, is an improvement on the printed text, so much the better.

    A charge made against fairy tales is that they harm the child by frightening him or making him sad thinking. To prove the latter, one would have to show in a controlled experiment that children who had read fairy stories were more often sorry for cruelty than those who had not. As to fears, there are, I think, some cases of children being dangerously terrified by some fairy story. Often, however, this arises(出現(xiàn)) from the child having never heard the story. Familiarity with the story by repetition turns the pain of fear into the pleasure of a fear faced and mastered.

    There are also people who object to fairy stories on the grounds that they are not objectively true, that giants, witches, two-headed dragons, magic carpets, etc. do not exist; and that, instead of being fond of the strange side in fairy tales, the child should be taught to learn the reality by studying history. I find such people, I must say so peculiar(奇怪的) that I do not know how to argue with them. If their case were sound, the world should be full of mad men attempting to fly from New York to Philadelphia on a stick or covering a telephone with kisses in the belief that it was their beloved girl-friend.

    No fairy story ever declared to be a description of the real world and no clever child has ever believed that it was.

67. The author considers that a fairy story is more effective when it is _______.

   A. made some changes by the parent                    B. treated as a joke

   C. repeated without any change                  D. set in the present

68. According to the passage, great fear can take place in a child when the story is _______.

   A. in a realistic setting                         B. repeated too often           

   C. heard for the first time                         D. told in a different way

69. The advantage claimed(提出) for repeating fairy stories to young children is that it _______.

   A. develops their power of memory

   B. makes them less fearful

   C. makes them believe there is nothing to be afraid of

   D. encourages them not to have strange beliefs

70. The author’s mention of sticks and telephones is meant to suggest that _______.

   A. fairy stories are still being made up

   B. there is some misunderstanding about fairy tales

   C. people try to modernize old fairy stories

   D. there is more concern for children's fears nowadays

71. One of the reasons why some people are not in favor of fairy tales is that _______.

   A. they are full of imagination

   B. they just make up the stories which are far from the truth

   C. they are not interesting

   D. they make teachers of history difficult to teach

    June  , 2000 ― the Human Genome(基因組) Project, a great $3 billion, 15-year task aimed at drawing the genetic(遺傳的) map of humans, is now more than 90 percent completed. The scientific and medical communities(團體) are very excited about the chances genetic research provides for getting rid of diseases and prolonging(延長) human life. But those communities and policy(政策) makers also are careful about the scientific door they are opening as the project uncovers the mysteries of life.

    For the last few years, the genetic advances in the developing field of biotechnology(生物技術) have provided material for all kinds of work, but the developments of modern science in unlocking the secrets of the human genetic code(密碼) have opened a world of possibilities for human health, as well as for the popular imagination.

    While European and Japanese researchers are making rapid progress in decoding(解碼) human DNA, the leading organization for genetic research in the United States, which began in 1990, is “unlocking the code” of the human body to learn how to defeat fatal(致命的)diseases. Already, the Human Genome Project has become widely known and praised for finding the genes(基因) connected with terrible diseases as yet (迄今), and making progress toward separating the genes that show a sign of breast cancer or AIDS.

    Once these genes are found and studied, researchers can develop new ways to attack infections(傳染), and genetic diseases. Medical companies are very interested in mapping the human genome, as they expect to develop a lot of new drugs for these illnesses.

64. Why did the scientists work hard at mapping the human genome?

   A. Because the human genome's completion can help them get rid of many diseases.

   B. Because the human genome can destroy many illnesses.

   C. Because they wanted to be better known than others.

   D. Because the human genome can provide a lot of chances of work.

65. Which country studied the genes most rapidly in the world?

   A. Japan.             B. Germany.              C. The United States.     D. China.

66. The main idea of this article is about _______.

   A. the genes' discovery                 B. unlocking genetic code  

   C. the great human genome             D. the genes and the scientists

    We can achieve knowledge either actively or passively（被動地）. We achieve it actively by direct experience, by testing and proving an idea, or by reasoning.

    We achieve knowledge passively by being told by someone else. Most of the learning that takes place in the classroom and the kind that happens when we watch TV or read newspapers or magazines is passive. Conditioned as we are to passive learning, it’s not surprising that we depend on it in our everyday communication with friends and co-workers. Unfortunately, passive learning has a serious problem. It makes us tend to accept what we are told even when it is little more than hearsay and rumor(謠言).

    Did you ever play the game Rumor? It begins when one person writes down a message but doesn’t show it to anyone. Then the person whispers it, word for word, to another person. That person, in turn, whispers it to still another, and so on, through all the people playing the game. The last person writes down the message word for word as he or she hears it. Then the two written statements are compared. Typically, the original message has changed.

    That’s what happens in daily life. The simple fact that people repeat a story in their own words changes the story. Then, too, most people listen imperfectly. And many enjoy adding their own creative touch to a story, trying to improve on it, stamping（打上標記）it with their own personal style. Yet those who hear it think they know.

    This process is also found among scholars and authors: A statement of opinion by one writer may be re-stated as fact by another, who may in turn be quoted by yet another; and this process may continue, unless it occurs to someone to question the facts on which the original writer based his opinion or to challenge the interpretation he placed upon those facts.

60. According to the passage, passive learning may occur in _______.

   A. doing a medical experiment          B. visiting an exhibition

   C. solving a math problem                D. doing scientific reasoning

61. The underlined word “it” in Paragraph 2 refers to _____.

   A. active learning   B. knowledge      C. passive learning      D. communication 

62. The author mentions the game Rumor to show that _____.

   A. a message may be changed when being passed on

   B. a message should be delivered in different ways

   C. people may have problems with their sense of hearing

   D. people tend not to believe in what they know as rumor

63. What can we infer from the passage?

   A. Active learning is less important.

   B. Active learning occurs more frequently.

   C. Passive learning may not be reliable.

   D. Passive learning is not found among scholars.

CARDIFF, Wales Poets, singers and musicians from across the globe gathered in Wales to celebrate the tradition of storytelling.

“It might seem strange that people still want to listen in the age of watching television, but this is an unusual art form whose time has come again,” said David Ambrose, director of Beyond the Border, an international storytelling festival in Wales.

“Some of the tales, like those Inuit from Canada, are thousands of years old. So our storytellers have come from distant lands to connect us with the distance of time,” he said early this month.

Two Inuit women, both in their mid 60s, are among the few remaining who can do Kntadjait, or throat singing, which has few words and much sound. Their art is governed by the cold of their surroundings, forcing them to say little but listen attentively.

Ambrose started the festival in 1993, after several years of working with those reviving (coming back into use or existence) storytelling in Wales.

“It came out of a group of people who wanted to reconnect with traditions, and as all the Welsh are storytellers, it was in good hands here.” Ambrose said.

56. Ambrose believes that the art of storytelling _______.

   A. will be popular again                  B. will be more popular than TV 

   C. started in Wales                      D. are in the hands of some old people

57. From the tales told by the Inuit, people can learn _______.

   A. how cold it has been where the Inuit live

   B. why they tell the stories in a throat-singing way

   C. about their life as early as thousands of years ago

   D. how difficult it is to understand the Inuit

58. According to the writer, which of the following is NOT true?

   A. Storytelling once stopped in Wales.

   B. Storytelling did not come back until 1993 in Wales.

   C. Storytelling is always well received in Wales.

   D. Storytelling has a long history in Wales.

59. The underlined phrase in good hands means _______.

   A. taken good care of                   B. grasped by good storytellers

   C. controlled by rich people                   D. protected by kind people