From the beginning of human history, wild animals provided food, clothing and sometimes medicine for man. We may not depend as much on wild animals now. But we hear about them every day. Americans use the names of animals in many ways. Automobile manufacturers and gasoline companies especially like to use big cats to sell their products. They like lions, tigers and wildcats. When Americans say wildcat, they usually mean a lynx, an ocelot or a bobcat. All these cats attack quickly and fiercely. So wildcats represent something fast and fierce.
An early American use of the word wildcat was quite different. It was used to describe members of Congress who declared war on Britain in 1812. A magazine of that year said the wildcat congressmen went home. It said they were unable to face the responsibility of having involved their country in an unnecessary war.
Wildcat also has been used as a name for money in the 1800s. At that time, some states permitted banks to make their own money. One bank in the state of Michigan offered paper money with a picture of a wildcat on it. Some banks, however, did not have enough gold to support all the paper money they offered. So the money had little or no value. It was called a wildcat bill or a wildcat banknote. The banks who offered this money were called wildcat banks. A newspaper of the time said those were the days of wildcat money. It said a man might be rich in the morning and poor by night.
Wildcat then was also used for an oil well or gold mine that had almost no oil or gold in it. Dishonest developers would buy such property. Then they would sell it and leave town with the money. The buyers were left with worthless holes in the ground. Today, wildcat oil wells are in areas that are not known to have oil.What is the main idea of the passage?
| A．Wildcats and their stories. |
| B．Wildcats and their characters. |
| C．Varieties of animal species. |
| D．Relationship between animals and humans. |
The underlined words "a lynx, an ocelot or a bobcat" in Paragraph 1 may refer to "__________".
| A．gasoline companies | B．automobile manufacturers |
| C．brands of automobile | D．names of wildcats |
Which of the following would people like to have or trust according to the passage?
| A．Wildcat congressmen. | B．Wildcat oil wells. |
| C．Wildcat banks. | D．Wildcat cars. |
It can be inferred that during the days of wildcat money__________.
| A．people couldn't buy anything with the money |
| B．people complained and suffered a lot |
| C．the rich invested too much on oil wells |
| D．people didn't know how to save money |
If we are asked exactly what we were doing a year ago, we might have to say that we could not remember. But if we had kept a book and written in it an account (陈述) of what we did each day, we should be able to give an answer to the question.
It is the same in history. Many things have been forgotten because we do not have any written account of them. Sometimes men did keep a record of the important happenings in their country, but often it was destroyed by fire or in a war. Sometimes there was never any written record at all because the people of that time and place did not know how to write. For example, we know a great deal about the people who lived in china 4,000 years ago, because they could write and leave written records for whose who lived after them. But we know almost nothing about the people who lived even 200 years ago in central Africa, because they had not learned go write.
Sometimes, of course, even if the people cannot write, they may know something of the past. They have heard about it from older people, and often songs and dances and stories have been made about the most important happenings, and those have been sung and acted and told for many generations, for most people are proud to tell what their fathers did in the past. This we may call ‘remembered history’. Some of it has now been written history, because words are much more easily changed when used again and again in speech than when copied in writing. But where there are no written records, such spoken stories are often very helpful. Which of the following ideas is NOT talked about in the passage above?
| A．“Remembered history” is less reliable than written history. |
| B．Written records of the past played a most important in our learning of the human history. |
| C．A written account of our daily activities helps us to remember what we have done |
| D．Where there are no written records, there is no history. |
Remembered history”refers to .
| A．history based on a person’s imagination |
| B．stories of important happenings passed down from mouth to mouth |
| C．history written down in books |
| D．what we have learned and remembered in history lessons |
“Remembered history”is regarded as valuable only when .
| A．it is written down | B．there is no written account |
| C．is proves down | D．people are interested in it |
It can be inferred from the passage that we could have learned much more about our past than we do now if our ancestors had .
| A．kept a written record of every past event |
| B．not fought against one another in wars |
| C．told exact stories of the most important happenings |
| D．produced and taught more songs and dances |
You might think the largest library in the world would be in Europe. But it isn’t. It’s in Washington D.C. It’s called the Library of Congress.
President John Adams started the library in 1800 for members of Congress. He wanted them to be able to read books about law. The first 740 books were bought in England. They were simply set up in the room where Congress met. Then Thomas Jefferson sold Congress many of his own books. He felt Congress should have books on all subjects, not just on law. This idea changed the library forever.
The library grew and grew. Now it covers a large area of land. It contains20million books as well as many pictures, movies, globes and machines. Experts in every field work there. Hundreds of people call every day with all kinds of questions. Many of them get answers right over the phone.
The library is a huge storehouse. Thomas Edison’s first movie and Houdini’s magic books are preserved there. And it is the proud owner of the world’s best collection of humorous books.The first step in starting the Library of Congress was .
| A．buying Thomas Jefferson’s books |
| B．buying books from England |
| C．putting up the library building |
| D．asking experts in every field to work there |
Thomas Jefferson’s opinion about the library was that .
| A．it should buy books on law |
| B．it should be the largest in the world |
| C．it should have books on all subjects |
| D．it should answer all kinds of questions |
Which of the following is NOT true?
A. Thomas Jefferson enriched the collection of the Library.
B. The Library of Congress is in Washington D.C.
C. The Library of Congress has books on all subjects from the very beginning.
D. You can ask the experts in the Library of Congress all kinds of questions by phone.The best title for this passage is .
| A．General Introduction to the library of congress |
| B．The building of the Library of Congress |
| C．The Library of Congress—the American’s Pride |
| D．The Library of Congress—the World’s Best Collection of Humorous Books |
John H. Johnson was born in a black family in Arkansas City in 1981. His father died in an accident when John was six. He was reaching the high school age, but his hometown offered no high school for blacks.
Fortunately he had a strong—willed caring mother. John remembered that his mother told him many times, “Son, you can be anything you want really to be if you just believe.” She told him not to depend on others, including his mother. “You have to learn success” she said. “All the people who work hard don’t succeed, but the only people who do succeed are those who work hard.”
These words, came from a woman with less than a third grade education. She also knew that believing and hard work don’t mean everything. So she worked hard as a cook for two years to save enough to take her son, who was then 15, to Chicago.
Chicago in 1933 was not the promised land that black southerners were looking for. John’s mother and stepfather could not find work. But here John could go to school, and here he learned the power of words--as an editor of the newspaper and yearbook at Du Sable High School. His wish was to publish a magazine for blacks.
While others discouraged him, John’s mother offered him more words to live by “Nothing beats a failure but a try.” She also let him pawn（典当） her furniture to get the $ 500 he needed to start the Negro magazine.
It is natural that difficulties and failures followed john closely until he become very successful. He always keeps his mother’s words in mind:” Son, failure is not in your vocabulary!” Now John H. Johnson is one of the 400 richest people in America--worth $150 million. What does the story mainly want to show us?
| A．The key to success for blacks. |
| B．The mental support John’s mother gave him. |
| C．The importance of a good education. |
| D．How John H. Johnson became successful. |
Why did John’s mother decide to move to Chicago?
| A．Because his father died when John was very young. |
| B．Because life was too hard for them to stay on in their hometown. |
| C．Because John needed more education badly. |
| D．Because there were no schools for Negroes in their hometown. |
Which of the following statements is TRUE according to the passage?
| A．John’s mother didn’t believe in or depend on others. |
| B．John’s mother believed one would succeed without working hard. |
| C．John’s mother thought one could be whatever one wanted to be. |
| D．John’s mother thought no one could succeed without working hard. |
What does the underlined sentence “Nothing beats a failure but a try.” in Passage 5 mean?
| A．No failure can be beaten unless you try. |
| B．If you try, you would succeed. |
| C．A try is always followed by a failure. |
| D．A failure is difficult to beat, even if you try. |
Whatever our differences as human beings are we all think we’re more like the rest of the animal world than we realize. It is said that we share 40 per cent of our genetic（遗传的）structure with the simple worm.
But that fact has helped Sir John Sulston win the 2002 Nobel Prize for Medicine. Sir John is the founder of the Sanger Institute in Cambridge, which was set up in 1992 to get further understanding of the human genome（染色体组）.
To help them do this, they turned to the worm. The nematode（线虫类的）worm is one of the earliest creatures on planet earth. It is less than one millimeter long, completely transparent and spends its entire life digging holes through sand. But it still has lots to say about human life, and what can be done to make it better.
What the worm told Sir John and his colleagues was that each of the cells in the human body is programmed like a computer. They grow, develop and die according to a set of instructions that are coded in our genetic make-up.
Many of the diseases that humans suffer from happen when these instructions go wrong or are not obeyed. When the cell refuses to die but carries on growing instead, this leads to cancer. Heart attacks and diseases like AIDS cause more cell deaths than normal, increasing the damage they do to the body. Sir John was the first scientist to prove the existence of programmed cell death.Sir John Sulston got a Nobel Prize for Medicine because he has .
| A．found that human beings are similar to the worm |
| B．got the fact we share 40 per cent of our genetic structure with the simple worm |
| C．found the computer which controls each of the cells in the human body |
| D．proved that cell death is programmed |
People might be seriously ill if the cells in their body .
| A．grow without being instructed | B．die regularly |
| C．fail to follow people’s instructions | D．develop in the human body |
The underlined word“they”（paragraph 5）refers to .
| A．cell deaths | B．diseases | C．instructions | D．cells |
What is the subject discussed in the text?
| A．The theory of programmed cell deaths. | B．A great scientist—Sir John Sulston. |
| C．The programmed human life. | D．Dangerous diseases. |
The 12—year—old CEO（首席执行官）of a Web site design company will be one of 300 business and political leaders accompanying Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien on a trade visit to China in March.
Keith Peiris, who founded Cyberteks Design in June 1999 and now has 25 clients （客户）in North America ,insisted in an interview that he is “just like any other kid.”
He and his father will spend nine days on the Team Canada trip to Beijing ,Shanghai and Hong Kong ,where Chretien aims to showcase the best of Canadian business in the most populous country in the world .
A glance at the complex ,elegant animations （动画）on his www.cybertecks.com site shows the extent of Peiris’ talent . “He doesn’t want to be No.2,”his father Deepal said proudly .
His father ,who is now vice president of operations at Cyberteks ,said , “I am teaching my son what I know .We make decisions together .I haven’t done anything my son disagreed with .He makes the final decision .”
The company has seven offices in the United States and five part—time employees who ,like the Peiris family ,work from their London homes .
Keith Peiris admitted some potential clients change their minds when they learn his age ,but the well—informed not—yet—teenager tries to ignore them .
“Suddenly ,I’ve been called a whiz kid or geek ,which I am not too happy about .A few people have asked if they should call me ‘mister’, but I stay casual , I am still a kid .That Keith Peiris insisted that he is “just like any other kid” shows he is .
| A．proud | B．modest | C．honest | D．excited |
Who makes the final decision on operations at Cyberteks Design?
A．Keith Peiris B．Deepal Peiris C．Jean Chretien D．Both A and B.According to the information in the passage ,which is the best and fastest way to know more about the Web giant ?
| A．We can go to Canada to pay him a visit . |
| B．We can make an international telephone call to him. |
| C．We’d better visit his web site—www.cyberteks.com. |
| D．We can write to his father for the kid’s information. |
Which of the following statements is NOT TRUE?
| A．Keith Peiris is a Canadian boy . |
| B．All the employees of the child’s company work at home . |
| C．The Canadian Prime Minister means to show off Keith’s success during his stay in China . |
| D．Keith always tries his best to be the best in the field of web site designing . |
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