Passage Five Many superstitious people are afraid of black cats. They believe that black

Passage Five

The Northern Pike is a very bad fish. It is a big, hungry fish, and swallows little fish such as trout and perch. Many Northern Pikes live in Lake Davis. They are killing all the smaller fish in the lake. The Northern Pike are a serious threat to the lake because they eat all the smaller fish. Soon, all other species of fish in the lake will be killed off. This is not healthy for the environment.

Experts are afraid that the Northern Pike will swim out of Lake Davis through many smaller rivers that feed into the lake. They could spread all over the country and damage many other water environments. If that happens, it would be too late to stop the Northern Pike.

For ten years, officials have been trying to remove the Northern Pike from Lake Davis. They haw. tried using nets, explosives and poisons. However, the Northern Pike population is still doing well in Lake Davis. Many people do not like the idea of using poison to kill the fish. They worry that the poi- sons are bad for humans who use the water. No trace of the poisons has ever been found in local wells, however.

Scientists are going to try the poison again. This time, they will drain the lake before they add the poison to the water. A public hearing will be held to talk about the problem.

52. Why are some people against the use of poisons to kill Northern Pike？

A. Fishermen will be poisoned too.

B. The poisons are expensive.

C. They think that wells will be polluted.

D. The lake will become unsafe.

Passage Five

In the United States, it is important to be on time, or punctual, for an appointment, a class, etc. However, this may not be true in all countries. An American professor discovered this difference while teaching a class in a Brazilian (巴西的) university. The two-hour class was scheduled' to begin at 10 A. M. and end at 12. On the first day, when the professor arrived on time, no one was in the classroom. Many students came after the scheduled time. Several arrived half an hour later. Few apologized for their lateness. Were these students being rude？ He decided to study the students, behavior.

The professor talked to American and Brazilian students about lateness in both an informal and a formal situation: at a lunch with a friend and in a university class. He found that if they had a lunch appointment with a friend, the average American student defined lateness as 19 minutes after the agreed time. However, the average Brazilian student felt the friend was late after 33 minutes.

In an American university, classes not only begin at the scheduled time in the United States, but also end at the scheduled time. In the Brazilian class, only a few students left the class at 12: 00; many remained past 12: 30 to discuss the class and ask more questions. While arriving late may not be very important in Brazil, neither is staying late.

51. The word "punctual' most probably means______.

A. leaving soon after class

B. coming early

C. arriving a few minutes late

D. being on time

Passage Five

In the 1900's, American townspeople usually washed and brushed their teeth and combed their hair in the kitchen. Or they kept a water pitcher (大水罐) and a wash basin in their rooms and took care of these things there.

The bathtub was a wash tub (澡盆) filled with water from the stove. If you were small enough you could sit down by drawing your knees to your chest, Otherwise, you washed yourself standing up. Often all the women and girls in the family bathed together. Then the men and boys did. In most families this was Saturday-night because Sundays they went to church.

A small number of families did have running water. But that depended on Whether there was a water system where they lived and on whether they could afford the plumbing (水管实施 ). Some people had bathtubs in their homes as early as 1895. But many others did not have their first bath in a bathtub until 1910 or later when they were fifteen or sixteen years old.

51. In the first paragraph, "took care of" means ______.

A. kept

B. looked after

C. used

D. kept and used

as been a remarkable shortening of the time of woman's life spent in caring for children. A woman marrying at the end of the nineteenth century would probably have been in her middle twenties, and would be likely to have seven or eight children, of whom four or five lived till they were five years old. By the time the youngest was fifteen, the mother would have been in her early fifties and would expect to live a further twenty years, during which health made it unusual for her to get paid work. Today women marry younger and have fewer children. Usually a woman's youngest child will be fifteen when she is forty-five and can be expected to live another thirty years and is likely to take paid work until retirement, at sixty. Even while she has the care of children, her work is lightened by modem living conditions.

This important change in women's life pattern has only recently begun to have its full effect on women's economic position. Even a few years ago most girls left school at the first chance, and most of them took a full time job. However, when they married, they usually left work at once and never returned to it. Today the school-leaving age is sixteen. Many girls stay at school after that age, and though women usually marry younger, more married women stay at least until shortly before their first child is born. Many more afterwards return to fuller part-time job. Such changes have led to a new relationship in marriage, with the husband accepting a greater share of the duties and satisfactions of family life, and with both husband and wife sharing more equally in providing the money, and running the house, according to the abilities and interests of each of them.

6. According to the passage, around the year 1900 most women married ____.

A. at about twenty-five

B. in their early fifties

C. as soon as possible after they were fifteen

D. at any age from fifteen to forty-five

7. We are told that in a common family in 1890s _____.

A. seven or eight children lived to be more man five

B. many children died before they were five

C. the youngest children would be fifteen

D. four or five children died when they were five

8. When she was over fifty, the late nineteenth century mother ____.

A. would be healthy enough to take paid jobs

B. was usually expected to die fairly soon

C. was unlikely to find a job if she wanted one

D. would expect to work till she died

9. According to the passage, the women of today usually____.

A. marry instead of getting paid work

B. marry before they are twenty-five

C. have more children under fifteen

D. have too few children

10. The best title for this passage is____.

A. Women’s Life

B. The Change of Women's life

C. Women's Marriage

D. Women's New Life

Passage Five

On the fourth Thursday of November, every year, Americans celebrate Thanksgiving Day. The day is a national holiday which is set aside each year as a time to give thanks to God for our blessings (祝福).

Legend has it that the first English colonists (殖民者) in Massachusetts (马萨诸塞州) started the custom. According to the story, the Pilgrims~ first winter in the New World was difficult. They had arrived too late to grow many crops, and without fresh food, half of the colonists died from disease. The following spring the Indians taught them how to grow corn. In the autumn of 1621, bountiful crops of corn, beans and pumpkins were harvested. The colonists had much to be thankful for, so a feast was planned. They invited their Indian friends to join them in a large feast to share in the bounties (慷慨) of the land. This is the first Thanksgiving.

The traditional foods of the big Thanksgiving Day meal include roast turkey, cranberries, sweet potatoes, pumpkin pie, and Indian bread puddings.

Since the day is set aside for giving thanks, it has also become a traditional family day. Large dinners with many relatives are common throughout America on this special day.

51. When was the Thanksgiving Day tradition begun？

A. In the 17(上标)th century.

B. On Thursday.

C. Last November.

D. In the 16(上标)th eentury.

Ⅳ. Reading Comprehension (75 points)

Directions: There are five reading passages in this part. Each passage is followed by five questions. For each question there are four suggested answers marked A, B, C and D. Choose the best answer and blacken the corresponding letter on the answer sheet.

Passage One

Are you a good reader？ Good readers know that reading isn't just about knowing words— it's a way of thinking. Here are some tips that may be of some help.

Think before you read. Before you read the text, ask yourself the questions that why you are reading it and what you want to get from it. These will help you choose what words you need to know and what words you can skip or scan.

Think while you are reading. Can you get the meaning of the text without looking up new words in a dictionary？ A text will often give examples that may help you understand some words. For example: Many large Russian cities, such as Chelyabinsk and Irkutsk, have taken steps to protect their culture. The words "Chelyabinsk' and "Irkutsk' may be new to us, but the sentences before and after it tell us what they are.

Think after you read. What is the main idea of the text？ Is the text too easy or too hard for you？

If you practice reading and thinking in this way, you will become a better reader and you will learn better and faster.

31. This passage is probably taken from______.

A. a newspaper for general readers

B. a magazine for language teachers

C. a book for language learners

D. an advertisement for a new book

Passage Five

A young girl and a man were recently found murdered in a parked car in a Boston suburb. The police found no clue (线索) in the car. Then they found a witness who had seen a car pass by the murdered couple's car. He said it was a 1950 or 1951 Chevrolet (雪佛莱牌汽车).

Ordinarily, searching through the files for owners of elderly Chevies would have been an impossibly difficult task because there were two and a half million such cars. In this case, however, the police had a powerful tool--the computer.

The Boston Registry of Motor Vehicles programmed its computer to screen all 1950 and 1951 Chevrolets within a fifteen-mile radius (半径) of the suburb--the area in which the police believed the murderer was most likely to be found. Within minutes, the computer uncovered one thousand of the wanted cars. A few hours of careful hand screening turned up a 1950 Chevrolet owner who lived close to the scene of the crime and who had received many traffic tickets (交通罚款). He was among the first suspects to be investigated, and evidence linking him to the murdered couple was found. He was arrested, and is now waiting for trial (审判).

51. The computer DIDN'T help the police ______.

A. to find the suspect

B. to find the murdered couple

C. to arrest the suspect

D. to search a 1950 or 1951 Chevrolet

Passage Five

Some people hate everything that is modern. They cannot imagine how anyone can really like modern music; they find it hard to accept the new fashions in clothing; they think that all modern painting is ugly; and they seldom have a good word for the new buildings that are being built everywhere in the world. Such people look for perfection in everything, and they take their standards of perfection from the past. They are usually impatient with anyone who is brave enough to experiment with new or to express himself or the age in materials original ways. It is, of course, true that many artists do not succeed in their work and instead produce works that can only be considered as failures. If the work of art is a painting, the artist's failure concerns himself alone, but if it is a building, his failure concerns others too, because it may damage the beauty of the whole place. This does sometimes happen, but it is completely untrue to say, as some people do, that modern architecture is nothing.

We can't judge every modern building by the standards of the ancient time, even though we admire the ancient buildings. Technologically, the modern buildings are more advanced. The modern architect knows he should learn from the ancient works, but with his greater resources of knowledge and materials, he will never be content to imitate the past. He is too proud to do that.

51. Some people hate everything that is modern because ______.

A. they are aged

B. they find it hard to accept modern things

C. they take their standards of perfection from the Greek

D. they look at things by the standards of the past

From the passage we can infer that the story happened in______.

A. spring

B. summer

C. autumn

D. winter

IV. Reading Comprehension (60 points)

Directions: There are five reading passages in this part. Each passage is followed by four questions. For each question there are four suggested answers marked A, B, C and D. Choose one best answer and blacken the corresponding letter on the Answer Sheet.

Passage One

Wild and farm birds often get a flu virus. Yet they usually are able to carry the virus without getting sick.

In 1997 six people in Hong Kong died of a different kind of bird flu virus. It is called the h-five-n-one virus. The Hong Kong government quickly ordered the killing of all farm birds there. That stopped the spread of h-five-n-one to people in Hong Kong.

Yet the virus bad already spread to other parts of Asia. It was found in 16 countries between 2003 and 2006.

The h-five-n-one virus first appeared in Africa. This raised many concerns about the spread of the disease. Scientists do not know exactly how bird flu came to Africa. At first, they thought wild birds were to blame. Now, officials with the U. N. Food and Agriculture Organization believe the main cause is trade in farm birds.

The bird flu virus is found in the waste and liquids of infected birds. The virus spreads when healthy birds or people touch sick birds or nay infected (被感染了的) part of sick birds. Right now, the virus is not spreading among person to person. But the virus could change and start spreading among people. Health officials believe that it is even more possible now that bird flu has spread in Africa, and that is why international organizations are working so hard to stop its spread.

The best way to stop the spread of bird flu is to kill all the chickens in an area where bird flu has been discovered. More than 145 000 chickens have been killed in Nigeria since bird fin was first found one year ago.

36. The passage focuses on ______.

A. wild and farm birds

B. a fin virus

C. bird flu

D. infected birds