He wishes the holiday season would end already. His back aches, his red suit feels like a spacesuit , his cheeks have gone tight from smiling for 12 hours —and still the kids keep coming and coming , like ants at a picnic . As Christmas becomes more commercialized (商业化) across the U. S. and Canada, so must Santas. As the holiday begins earlier each year, so must its spokesmen .
The questions from children these days are harder than ever. Now, with thousands of children expecting a father or mother serving in Iraq or Afghanistan, the questions are as heart-breaking as they are unanswerable. For example, “Can you please bring Daddy home from the war in time for Christmas morning?”
Santas also have a pretty good chance of getting sued (指控). A professional Santa Claus in Canada told a story: A Santa had a girl on his knee, and he commented, “You have nice eyes and nice hair.” The girl later said it was sexual harassment (骚扰) . When a Santa feels anxious, he often shows it in the same ways ordinary people do: The Santas were always seen to hang around at the dinner table when the show ended. Many of them just sleep in bed for several days and don’t see other children again.In the first paragraph, “spokesmen” refers to .
| A．businessmen | B．political leaders |
| C．organizers of the activities | D．Santa Clauses |
The passage implies that the job of Santa Claus is .
| A．well-paid | B．very hard | C．worth doing | D．dangerous |
According to the third paragraph, Santas may sometimes be blamed(责备) for .
| A．doing something against the law | B．hanging around the dinner table |
| C．being lazy and sleeping in bed for days | D．not playing their roles as expected |
What would be the best title for the passage ?
| A．Christmas: Not a Good Festival for Santas | B．Is Santa Claus Really Alive? |
| C．A Christmas Story | D．What Does Santa Claus Do for Children? |
It was a village in India. The people were poor . However, they were not unhappy. After all , their forefathers had lived in the same way for centuries.
Then one day, some visitors from the city arrived . They told the villagers there were some people elsewhere who liked to eat frog’s legs. However, they did not have enough frogs of their own, and so they wanted to buy frogs from other places.
This seemed like money for nothing . There were millions of frogs in the fields around, and they were no use to the villagers. All they had to do was catch them . Agreement was reached, and the children were sent into the fields to catch frogs. Every week a truck arrived to collect the catch and hand over the money. For the first time ,the people were able to dream of a better future. But the dream didn’t last long.
The change was hardly noticed at first ,but it seemed as if the crops were not doing so well. More worrying was that the children fell ill more often ,and ,there seemed to be more insects around lately.
The villagers decided that they couldn’t just wait to see the crops failing and the children getting weak. They would have to use the money earned to buy pesticides （杀虫剂）and medicines. Soon there was no money left .
Then the people realized what was happening. It was the frog .They hadn’t been useless. They had been doing an important job-eating insects. Now with so many frogs killed , the insects were increasing more rapidly. They were damaging the crops and spreading diseases.
Now, the people are still poor .But in the evenings they sit in the village square and listen to sounds of insects and frogs. These sounds of the night now have a much deeper meaning. From Paragraph 1 we learn that the villagers .
| A．worked very hard for centuries |
| B．dreamed of having a better life |
| C．were poor but somewhat content |
| D．lived a different life from their forefathers |
Why did the villagers agree to sell frogs?
| A．The frogs were easy money. |
| B．They needed money to buy visitors. |
| C．They wanted to please the visitors. |
| D．The frogs made too much noise. |
What might be the cause of the children’s sickness?
| A．The crops didn’t do well. |
| B．There were too many insects. |
| C．The visitors brought in diseases. |
| D．The pesticides were overused. |
What can we infer from the last sentence of the text?
| A．Happiness comes from peaceful life in the country. |
| B．Health is more important than money. |
| C．The harmony between man and nature is important. |
| D．Good old days will never be forgotten. |
Too much TV-watching can harm children’s ability to learn and even reduce their chances of getting a college degree, new studies suggest in the latest effort to examine the effects of television on children.
One of the studies looked at nearly 400 northern California third-graders. Those with TVs in their bedrooms scored about eight points lower on math and language arts tests than children without bedrooms TVs.
A second study, looking at nearly 1,000 grown-ups in New Zealand, found lower education levels among 26-year-olds who had watched lots of TV during childhood. But the results don’t prove that TV is the cause and don’t rule out that already poorly motivated youngsters(年轻人)may watch lots of TV.
Their study measured the TV habits of 26-year-olds between ages 5 and 15. Those with college degrees had watched an average of less than two hours of TV per weeknight during childhood, compared with an average of more than 2½ hours for those who had no education beyond high school.
In the California study, children with TVs in their rooms but no computer at home scored the lowest, while those with no bedroom TV but who had home computers scored the highest.
While this study does not prove that bedroom TV sets caused the lower scores, it adds to accumulating findings that children shouldn’t have TVs in their bedrooms.
According to the California study, the low-scoring group might____________.
| A．have watched a lot of TV |
| B．not be interested in math |
| C．be unable to go to college |
| D．have had computers in their bedrooms |
What is the researchers’ understanding of the New Zealand study results?
| A．Poorly motivated 26-year-olds watch more TV. |
| B．Habits of TV watching reduce learning interest. |
| C．TV watching leads to lower education levels of the 15-year-olds. |
| D．The connection between TV and education levels is difficult to explain. |
What can we learn from the last two paragraphs?
| A．More time should be spent on computers. |
| B．Children should be forbidden from watching TV. |
| C．TV sets shouldn’t be allowed in children’s bedrooms. |
| D．Further studies on high-achieving students should be done. |
What would be the best title for this text?
| A．Computers or Television |
| B．Effects of Television on Children |
| C．Studies on TV and College Education |
| D．Television and Children’s Learning Habits |
If you ask people to name the one person who had the greatest effect on the English language, you will get answers like “Shakespeare,” “Samuel Johnson,” and “Webster,” but none of these men had any effect at all compared to a man who didn’t even speak English-William the Conqueror.
Before 1066, in the land we now call Great Britain lived peoples belonging to two major language groups. In the west central region lived the Welsh, who spoke a Celtic language, and in the north lived the Scots, whose language, though not the same as Welsh, was also Celtic. In the rest of the country lived the Saxons, actually a mixture of Anglos, Saxons, and other Germanic and Nordic peoples, who spoke what we now call Anglo-Saxon (or Old English), a Germanic language. If this state of affairs had lasted, English today would be close to German.
But this state of affairs did not last. In l066 the Normans led by William defeated the Saxons and began their rule over England. For about a century, French became the official language of Eng-land while Old English became the language of peasants. As a result, English words of Politics and the law come from French rather than German. In some cases, modern English even shows a distinction (区别) between upper-class French and lower-class Anglo-Saxon in its words. We even have different words for some foods, meat in particular, depending on whether it is still out in the fields or at home ready to be cooked, which shows the fact that the Saxon peasants were doing the farming, while the upper-class Normans were doing most of the eating.
When Americans visit Europe for the first time, they usually find Germany more "foreign" than France because the German they see on signs and advertisements seems much more different from English than French does. Few realize that the English language is actually Germanic in its beginning and that the French influences are all the result of one man's ambition. The two major languages spoken in what is now called Great Britain before l066 were
| A．Welsh and Scottish | B．Nordic and Germanic |
| C．Celtic and Old English. | D．Anglo-Saxon and Germanic |
Which of the following groups of words are, by inference, rooted in French?
| A．president, Lawyer, beef | B．president, bread, water |
| C．bread, field, sheep | D．folk, field, cow |
Why does France appear less foreign than Germany to Americans on their first visit to Europe?
| A．Most advertisements in France appear in English. |
| B．They know little of the history of the English language. |
| C．Many French words are similar to English ones. |
| D．They know French better than German. |
What is the subject discussed in the text?
| A．The history of Great Britain. |
| B．The similarity between English and French. |
| C．The rule of England by William the Conqueror. |
| D．The French influences on the English language. |
Shanghai: Car rentals(出租) are becoming more and more popular as an inexpensive way of taking to the roads. Business people, foreigners and families alike are making good use of the growing industry.
The first car rental firm opened in Shanghai in 1992 and now 12 car rental players are in the game, with more than 11,500 cars in their books.
The largest Player----Shanghai Bashi Tourism Car Rental Center Offers a wide variety of choices-deluxe sedans, minivan, station wagons, coaches. Santana sedans are the big favorite.
Firms can attract enough customers for 70 percent of their cars every month. This figure shoots up during holiday seasons like National Day, Labor Day and New Year's Day, with some recording 100 percent rental.
The major market force rests in the growing Population of white-collar employees (白领雇员工),who can afford the new service, said Zhuang Yu, marketing manager of Shanghai Angel Car Rental Co.The words “deluxe sedans'," minivans" and station wagons" used in the text refer to
| A．cars in the making | B．bar rental firms. |
| C．cars for rent | D．car makers |
Which of the following statements is true according to the text?
| A．70% of the cars can be rented out on holiday |
| B．70% of the customers are white-collar employees. |
| C．More firms are open for service during holiday seasons. |
| D．Some firms rent out all their cars during holiday seasons. |
Shanghai's car rental industry is growing so fast mainly due to --,
| A．better cars supplied by producers |
| B．fast service offered by car rental firms |
| C．the increasing number of white-collar employees. |
| D．people's growing interest in travelling during holidays |
In the days when an ice cream sundae cost much less, a 10-year-old boy entered a hotel coffee shop and sat at a table. A waitress put a glass of water in front of him. “How much is an ice cream sundae?”“Fifty cents,” replied the waitress. The little boy pulled his hand out of his pocket and studied a number of coins in it. “How much is a dish of plain ice cream?” he required. Some people were now waiting for a table and the waitress was a bit impatient. “Thirty-five cents,” she said rudely. The little boy again counted the coins. “I’ll have the plain ice cream,” he said. The waitress brought the ice cream, put the bill on the table and walked away. The boy finished the ice cream, paid the bill and departed. When the waitress came back, she began wiping down the table and then swallowed hard at what she saw. There, placed nearly beside the empty dish, were two five-cent coins and five one-cent coins---her tip.In the days , an ice cream is ______________.
| A．dearer than usual | B．as dear as usual |
| C．much cheaper than usual | D．as cheap as usual |
How much money did the boy probably have in his pocket?
| A．thirty-five cents. | B．More than fifty cents. |
| C．only fifty cents. | D．Less than fifty cents. |
Why did the little boy have only a dish of plain ice cream?
| A．The plain ice cream cost him much less. |
| B．He enjoyed the cheaper ice cream better. |
| C．The coins were not enough for an ice cream sundae. |
| D．He wanted to save some coins to tip the waitress. |
We can infer that the waitress might have felt _____ when she got the tip.
| A．very surprised. | B．a bit of shame |
| C．quite pleased | D．a little worried |
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