A

“What are you bringing in to show and tell tomorrow?” Alex asked Sam as they walked onto the school playground.

“It’s a secret. A special secret,” Sam answered.  “You can tell me,” Alex said. “I’m your best friend!”

“We-l-l-l,” Sam said. “Promise you won’t tell anybody?” “Sure,” Alex agreed.

Just then the bell rang. As they lined up in front of the classroom, Sam whispered his secret to Alex.

“What?” Alex whispered back, “Did you say your aunt’s farm?”

“No talking!” Their teacher warned.

“That’s right,” Sam whispered.

Now Alex was excited. This was too cool. What would it hurt to tell just one person?

“Listen, Jake,” Alex said during the break. “Sam has a secret, but I can tell you if you promise not to tell anybody else.” “OK,” Jake answered.

“Sam’s bringing in his aunt’s farm to show and tell tomorrow!”

But on the way home from school, he was bursting to tell Garth. And then Garth told Kenny.

The next morning the four boys arrived at school dressed like cowboys. Sam came toward them carrying a large box under his arm.

“Why are you guys dressed like that?” Sam asked.  “So we can ride the horses,” Kenny said.

“What are you talking about?” Sam scratched (撓) his head.

“Alex said you were bringing in your aunt’s farm to show.” Jake told him.

“So?” Kenny asked. “Where are the animals?”

“I never said, ‘My aunt’s farm.’ I said, ‘My ants’ farm!’” Sam said. He pulled a container out of the box. “Look inside. You can see how the ants build roads and tunnels and how they make their homes and take care of the baby ants.”

1. Why didn’t Alex hear what Sam said ?

A. Because it was noisy in the classroom.

B. Because Sam said in a low voice.

C. Because Alex was affected by the teacher.

D. Because Sam wanted to fool him.

2. Alex told Sam’s secret to          .

A. one classmate    B. two classmates

C. three friends                D. four friends

3. It can be inferred that Sam and the other four boys were           to see each other the next morning.

A. excited                      B. angry     C. disappointed        D. confused

4. By telling the story, what did the writer probably want to express?

A. Honesty is the best policy to achieve our goals.

B. Lying will get people into more trouble.

C. It’s not easy for people to keep secrets.

D. We should think about what we see carefully.

B

Earl Guilford started working when he was 15 years old. For the first time in 64 years, he will be without a job. He’s had many jobs over the years, from painting cars to packaging meats. His time at the post office in Washington has lasted 28 years. Guilford has been through three different postmasters, and he retired as a full-time maintenance worker around 1998. But Guilford couldn’t stay out of work for long. He was in the process of becoming a school-bus driver when the post office asked him to come back as a part-time custodian(看守人). “I was over there taking the test when they called me,” he said.

Guilford has made quite an impression around the post office with his gentle attitude and friendly smile. Leverne Buck has worked with “Mr. Earl”, as some affectionately call Guilford, since 1993. Buck said， “He has a lot of wisdom, is always optimistic and never says anything negative about other people, especially in the workplace.” Buck said Guilford could tell when he was stressed and would pass by and say, “Don’t let it worry you,” or would make a quick joke to make him smile. He described his friendships with fellow employees as close. “You know the kind of people you can get along with and can say anything and it’s OK,” he said.

When Guilford agreed to return to the post office, he was under a year-by-year contract. “They are not going to renew his contract, and they’ve already got somebody else,” Buck said, adding the decision not to keep Guilford is unfortunate but is mainly because of concern for his health. Guilford isn’t happy about leaving his post-office family, and that family is unhappy to see him go. “I planned on retiring this year, and I’ll go how the Lord leads me,” Guilford said.

He wants to spend time with his wife, Ruth, and visit people who are living alone to “l(fā)et them know somebody’s thinking about them”. “I will miss the people I work with and the people I see coming and going,” he said. Even though he didn’t know all of them by name, it was his routine to greet people as they entered the post office. “You always have time for ‘Good morning,’” he said.

5. What would be the best title of the passage?

A. It’s Never Too Old to Learn

B. Grandfather of Washington Post Office Retires Again

C. What  Leads  to  Earl  Guilford’s  Workaholic Behavior

D. Hard Work Leads to Success

6. The post office in Washington won’t renew Guilford’s contract because ______.

A. they wish Guilford to spend more time with his wife

B. Guilford is tired of doing the job

C. his family is unhappy to see him go

D. his advanced age prevents him from working again

7. We can infer from Paragraph 2 that ______.

A. Guilford is a warm-hearted man and he’s popular among his fellow employees

B. Guilford keeps in tight touch with his fellow employees

C. people in the post office help and love each other

D. Guilford is not good at communication

8. How does Guilford probably feel working in the post office?

A. Very enjoyable.             B. Rather busy.

C. Fairy dull.               D. Hard and tired.

C

With 14,000 laborers working day and night, the first of Dubai’s three palm-shaped islands is finally about to get its first residents. The Palm Jumeirah（珠美拉棕櫚島嶼群）, a 12-square-mile island group, is part of what’s regarded as the largest land-cultivation project in the world, the product of five years of carrying of millions of tons of sand and rock.

On Nov. 30, the palm will open to some 4,000 residents, said Issam Kazim, a spokesman for Dubai’s state-owned developer Nakheel. When fully complete by 2010, the Palm Jumeirah will be an offshore city, with some 60,000 residents and at least 50,000 workers in 32 hotels and dozens of shops and attractions, Nakheel said.

Observers say they are surprised that the young developer has been able to build such a complex project more or less as planned, despite with several difficulties that delayed the opening from last year. “The project has captured people’s imagination,” said Colin Foreman of the Middle East Economic Digest. “Nothing like it has been done anywhere else in the world.”

Nakheel’s island projects, the world’s largest land cultivation effort, are reshaping Dubai’s coast. The $14 billion project is a key part of this city’s ambitions to compete with Singapore and Hong Kong as a business center, and be better than Las Vegas as a leisure capital. The rapid pace of development has transformed Dubai from a sleepy trading and pearl-diving village in the 1950s to a big city of 1.5 million.

The island’s construction has not all been smooth, and most buyers were supposed to get keys to their island homes a year ago. Some of the new land sank and Nakheel needed an extra year to add more and pack it with land compactors（壓土機）. Those moving onto the Palm Jumeirah this year will have to live with construction for another three years, and then a large number of tourists. Most of the owners are foreigners, with Britons making up the largest group.

9. What’s probably the best title for the passage?

A. The Process from a Pearl-diving Village to a Big City

B. The World’s Largest Land-cultivation Project

C. Dubai’s Man-made Island Nears Completion

D. The Palm Jumeirah

10. Which of the following statements is TRUE according to the passage?

A. The island’s construction goes smoothly.

B. It’s hard for the young developer to build the complex project as planned.

C. Dubai is sure to do better than Singapore and Hong Kong as a business centre.

D. The rapid pace of development of Dubai is beyond people’s imagination.

11. It can be inferred from the last paragraph that _____.

A. the island’s construction has attracted a large number of tourists

B. a lot of Englishmen are rushing to buy the real estate of the island

C. the construction made some of the new land sink

D. those people moving onto the palm Jumeirah have a strong appeal for the tourists

12. The passage wants to tell us that ______.

A. wisdom and determination works wonder

B. whatever you do, do it well

C. the largest land-cultivation project is wonderful

D. the young developer Nakheel

D

NEW YORK(Reuters)―Two of America’s top authors, John Irving and Stephen King, made a plea to J.K. Rowling on Tuesday not to kill Harry Potter in the final book of the series, but Rowling made no promises.

“My fingers are crossed for Harry,” Irving said at a joint news conference before a charity reading by the three writers at New York’s Radio City Music Hall. The author of “The World According to Garp” and other bestsellers said he and King felt like “warm-up bands” for Rowling, who is working on the seventh and last book in the Harry Potter series, and who has said two characters will die. King, who shot to fame in 1974 with “Carrie”, said he had confidence that Rowling would be “fair” to her hero.

Rowling, a Briton whose books have sold 300 million copies worldwide according to her publishers, said she was well into the process of writing the final book. “I feel quite liberated,” she said. “I can end the story now and it’s fun in a way because finally I’ve reached my decision, and I think some people will hate it and some people will love it, but that’s how it should be.” “We’re working toward the end I always planned but a couple of characters I expected to survive have died and one character got a reprieve（死刑撤銷）,” she said, refusing to explain.

Asked about the wisdom of killing off fictional characters, Rowling said，“I understand why an author would kill a character from the point of view of not allowing others to continue writing after the original author is dead,” leaving the door open to the worst fears of some fans―that Harry could die.

“When fans accuse me of sadism, which doesn’t happen that often, I feel I’m toughening them up to go on and read John and Stephen’s books,” she said. “I think they’ve got to be toughened up somehow. It’s a cruel literary world out there.”

13. The underlined sentence in Paragraph 2 means _____.

A. I am praying for Harry

B. I demand Harry go on alone

C. I am happy about Harry                 

D. I take the side of Harry

14. Rowling will set the plot of Harry Potter’s death in the final book of series because ____.

A. it’s fun for her to end the story in such a way

B. she wishes others not to continue writing Harry Potter after her death

C. she is working toward the end she always planned

D. she will lead readers to experience the cruel literary

15. What do you know about Rowling?

A. She is worldly wise and plays safe.

B. She is good at the long-term planning.

C. She sticks to her way whatever others say.

D. she pays no attention to her sadism.

16. What can we learn from the end of the story?

A. Readers are happy that Rowling won’t kill Harry Potter in her final book.

B. Rowling persuades her readers to read more other bestsellers.

C. More and more fans accuse her of sadism.

D. The death of Harry Potter gets a reprieve.

E

For most people, filmmaking calls up an image of famous directors like Steven Spielburg, backed by big Hollywood studios with multi-million dollars budgets. But digital filmmaking in the form of a portable digital video camera, special effects opera and at-home editing means that anyone can be a filmmaker.

Bart Cheever (producer): Digital technology is completely rewriting the way films are made. It’s letting a lot of people outside the traditional Hollywood film studio system make film for the first time. We’re going to see a lot of new stories come out in a lot of new perspectives that have never been seen before.

Halfden Hussey: What this is doing is freezing up(使不能正常運轉(zhuǎn)) film-makers on lower budgets to do work that they could never have done before. So these innovations are turning the world of film in a new direction.

Lynn Herschmann (Producer & Director): Film?鄄makers can take advantage of technology as it’s being invented, that is the technology of our time. It is what Fresco painting was to the Renaissance.

A thirty-minute digital videocassette costs about twenty dollars. Now shooting that same thirty minutes on a sixteen-millimeter film, developing it, and then transferring it to video for editing cost a hundred times more. With prices ranging from one to four thousand dollars, digital video cameras, like this Sony VX1000, are giving independent filmmakers high quality images at low budget prices.

Halfden Hussey: A lot of creative forces in this world do not have the resources of a studio and now with the digital camera, they can do work that can compete with the studio.

Rodney Asher(Filmmaker & FX Artist): An important part of trying to make a documentary is capturing the world as it is without interference(干擾) from you, and a little DV camera can let you do that.

17. What do you suppose the word “innovations” in Paragraph 3 means?

A. Ideas.                   B. Inventions.

C. Changes.             D. Improvements.

18. There are several reasons why digital filmmaking can greatly reduce the budgets EXCEPT that _____.

A. the prices of digital video cameras are relatively low so that independent filmmakers can afford it     

B. shooting with a sixteen-millimeter film is a hundred times more than using a digital video cassette     

C. digital filmmaking does not need much equip?鄄ment and can be edited at home

D. it makes it possible to have a lot of new stories come out in many new ways

19. What does Lynn Herschmann believe the invention of digital technology means to our time?

A. It can help the maker of a documentary capture the world without interfering it.

B. It means that anyone can become a filmmaker if he has his own digital camera. 

C. It is a revolutionary invention as what Fresco painting was to the Renaissance.

D. It means that people can see a lot of new stories which are not made in Hollywood.

20. It can be inferred from the passage that _____.

A. films made by digital cameras will replace traditional ones

B. making films with digital cameras will become more popular

C. Hollywood films which cost a lot of money are not good films

D. the cost of Hollywood films will be greatly reduced in the future

F

We all know that our eyes are sometimes bigger than our stomach when it comes to food intake and now a new study reveals that your stomach really does need a while to make up its mind that it is full.

The concept that eating slower limits appetite has been, though not seriously, discussed for ages, but there was never any scientific proof―now there is.

“It started in about 1972 as a supposition that eating slowly would allow the body time for the development of satiety (fullness) and we would eat less,” said Kathleen Melanson, a researcher from the University of Rhode Island. “Since then we’ve heard it everywhere and it has become common knowledge. But no studies had been conducted to prove it.”

In the study 30 college-aged-women were given large plates of pasta and told to eat as much as they wished.

When asked to eat quickly, they consumed 646 calories in nine minutes. But when they were told to slow down and chew the food 15 to 20 times, their calorie consumption was about 579 calories in 29 minutes.

“Satiety signals clearly need time to develop,” Melanson said. “Not only did the women take in fewer calories when they ate more slowly, they had a greater feeling of satiety at meal completion and 60 minutes afterwards, which strongly suggests benefits to eating more slowly.”

The women who ate slowly also reported enjoying their meals more.

The results were reported at the annual meeting of the North American Association for the Study of Obesity in October.

21. By “...our eyes are sometimes bigger than our stomach when it comes to food intake”, the author means “______”.

A. sometimes our eyes can be very big when we are eating

B. at times we are surprised at good food

C. sometimes we can eat more than we can find

D. attracted by food, we sometimes eat too much

22. According to the findings of the research from the University of Rhode Island, people should eat slowly in order to ______.

A. have the feeling of satiety          

B. eat the appropriate amount of food  

C. enjoy the meal as much as possible 

D. consume fewer calories

23. All the following are included in the findings of the research EXCEPT ______.

A. by eating more slowly, people are in need of less heat during a meal

B. the faster you eat, the more calories you will take in for a meal  

C. eating slowly benefits people by way of limiting the amount of food to take in

D. people can have a better appetite by eating slowly

24. Interestingly enough, if eating very fast, the moment he / she feels full, the eater ______.

A. is really full                    

B. is still hungry

C. can still eat something else          

D. has eaten too much

G

Herbaceous(草本的) peony in Chinese language is shaoyao which means “medicinal herb plant”. The root of shaoyao was what first interested the Chinese. At a spring festival of song and dance, presenting the root of a peony most probably was like giving a forget-me-not.

The tree peony entered the lives of the Chinese people through the herbaceous peony, shaoyao. It was first called tree shaoyao and other names, eventually mudan. Mudan means “male scarlet flower” because its reproduction is principally by root division, instead of the usual way, by seeds that requires the combination of pollen of male and female flowers.

The earliest record of the tree peony was found in 1972 in a first century tomb. On one of the bamboo slips (before paper was invented in 105 A.D. in China), a prescription was written: using the skin of the tree peony’s root to improve blood flow. We have no exact record on when and how the esthetic aspect of the tree peony became a favorite of Chinese flower lovers. A famous painter, Gu Kaizhi (345-406 AD), painted a garden scene with tree peonies in the background. Judging from this garden scene, we may assume that it must have been for some time already that the tree peony was domesticated and planted in gardens for enjoyment. During the time of Emperor Yang of the Sui Dynasty (605-618), we found in recorded history that at one time a tribute(貢品) of 20 cases of tree peony of various names in red and yellow were presented to the Emperor.

25. According to the passage, peony is useful in several aspects, which are ______.

A. medical, ornamental, and love-showing     

B. magic, fantastic, and romantic

C. garden-building and inspiring             

D. burial, decorative, and fantastic

26. The underlined word “domesticate” in the third paragraph has the similar meaning to ______.

A. put some plant at home          B. make (some plant) adaptive   

C. protect                       D. harvest

27. From the passage we can draw the conclusion that ______.

A. most emperors in ancient China liked flowers

B. emperor Yang cared more for flowers than for his country

C. in the Sui Dynasty peony was only liked by the nobles

D. peony has gained a high position in people’s mind

28. The passage above is probably taken from an article entitled ______.

A. Peony-the national flower of China   

B. A history of peony, or Shaoyao

C. A wild flower and a domestic flower   

D. Mudan-a medicinal flower

H

The favors we do for friends and others have complicated and various results. But the significance of the little acts of kindness we do or refuse to do may not be known until many years in the future. Because we cannot see the consequences of our actions when we carry them out, we tend to ignore them. We may think our small acts of kindness make very little difference and are unimportant. However, do not belittle your charity. A jug fills drop by drop.

Constantly being asked to do favors is not a burden, but a sign that one has many friends. And it is an opportunity to gain new experiences as well as gain the wisdom to decide which favors to grant and which to turn down. Our little acts of kindness can pay big dividends to our friends. For example, by spending ten minutes with a friend to share my knowledge of cameras, I may save him hours of work as he decides which camera to buy. Similarly, he may recommend to me a book to read, a web site to visit, or a piece of software to try. So, the time we spend with others adds value to the time we spend with ourselves. This is not to suggest, however, that we should willingly grant favors because we will eventually receive benefits. No, the biggest favor we can do for ourselves is to grant favors to others with no expectation or hope of any reward. For by doing so, we can make the world a favorable place for all by blessing it with the favors we do as we pass by.

29. According to the author, the favours we do ______.

A. might be very helpful even though we don’t know the value of them   

B. are always rewarding and fruitful

C. should be granted without exceptions or reward

D. should be mutual and interactive

30. By the saying “A jug fills drop by drop”, the author wants to tell us that ______.

A. one should do favours with perseverance

B. the more good deeds, the better

C. good deeds are like drops of water

D. small favours can be accumulated to big charities

31. Which of the following statements is NOT true accordingly?

A. Rewarding favours are incidental.

B. Not all favours we do are traceable.

C. No favour should be turned down.

D. Small acts of kindness might pay big dividends to others.

32. This passage is meant to ______.

A. make clear to people the value of friendship

B. call on people to help others   

C. distinguish favours of various kinds

D. enable people to tell right favours from wrong ones

1-5 BADCB     6-10 DAACD    11-15 BAABC  16-20 BBDCB 21-25 DBBDA

26-30 BDAAD   31-32 CB