Cleverness is a gift while kindness is a choice.Gifts are easy—they’re given after all.Choice can be hard.
I got the idea to start Amazon 16 years ago.I came across the fact that the Internet usage was growing at 2300 percent per year.I’d never seen or heard of anything that grew that fast，and the idea of building all online bookstore with millions of titles was very exciting to me. I had just turned 30 years old，and I’d been married for a year.I told my wife MacKenzie that I wanted to quit my job and go to do this crazy thing that probably wouldn’t work since most start-ups don’t and I wasn’t sure what to expect.MacKenzie told me I should go for it.As a young boy，I’d been a garage inventor.I’d always wanted to be all inventor，and she wanted me to follow my passion.
I was working at a financial firm in New York City with a bunch of very smart people and I had a brilliant boss that I much admired.I went to my boss and told him I wanted to start a company selling books on the Internet.He took me on a long walk in Central Park，listened carefully to me，and finally said，“That sounds like a really good idea，but it would be an even better idea for someone who didn’t already have a good job.”That 1ogic made some sense to me，and he convinced me to think about it for 48 hours before making a final decision.Seen in that light,it really was a difficult choice，but finally，I decided I had to give it a shot.I didn’t think I’d regret trying and failing.And I suspected I would always be haunted by a decision to not try at all.
After much consideration ，I took the less safe path to follow my passion ，and I’m proud of that choice.For all of us，in the end，we are our choice.What inspired the author with the idea of building an online bookstore?
| A．His dream of being an inventor. |
| B．The support of his wife. |
| C．The greatly increasing usage of the Internet. |
| D．Millions of exciting titles, |
Which of the following is closest in meaning to the underlined sentence?
| A．The idea of not trying would keep coming to his mind and disturb him. |
| B．He would be very excited if he tried it out. |
| C．Be would be always having a doubt if he didn’t try. |
| D．The decision to not try the online bookstore would terrify him. |
Which of the following would be the best title for the passage?
| A．Cleverness and Kindness | B．The Starting of Amazon |
| C．Following My Passion | D．We Are What We Choose |
We can know from the passage that_______.
| A．the boss thought the idea was suitable for the author |
| B．the author wanted someone else to try the idea |
| C．the author might not regret if he failed the idea |
| D．the author might go back to his boss if he failed |
The United States will introduce a new and comprehensive(综合的) exam for students who seek to study in American and other English-speaking countries, Xinhua News Agency reported from New York.
The exam, which stands for a great change from the current English level test, was disclosed by Theresa Chang Wei Jen, associate director of the International Service of the US College Board, America’s leading educational organization.
The Advanced Placement International English Language (APIEL) will be offered for the first time throughout the world, said Jen.
However, the APIEL is a strange title to most Chinese students, and it is unlikely to soon gain the similarity of other already existing exams, such as the TOEFL(Test of English as a Foreign Language), the GRE(Graduate Record Examination), or the IELTS(International English Language Testing System).
“I have never heard of such a test and I would prefer the IELTS if I need another exam,” said Xu Jingyan, a graduating student from Beijing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, who wants to study in England and has already taken the TOEFL.
Most of Xu’s classmates have never heard of the APIEL. “The APIEL is designed for international students who wish to get university studies in English-speaking countries, including the United States, Britain, Canada, and Australia.” said Jen.
The APIEL has been adopted, said Jen, because the TOEFL can no longer accurately reflect the abilities of students of using the English language comprehensively in an academic environment. Xinhua reported that a fairly large number of foreign students who earned high scores in TOEFL exam turned out to be very ordinary educational performers after admission.
Compared with the TOEFL, the APIEL measures a student’s ability to read, write, speak and understand English through testing his or her skills in listening comprehension, speaking with accuracy(精确) and resourcefulness, and writing with clarity and fluency(流畅), Jen said.
60. The United States will introduce a new exam because _______.
A. it will bring the US government quite a lot of money
B. the Chinese people pay special attention to English studies
C. the already existing exam systems seem to be far from perfect
D. more and more students want to get further education in the USA
61. Which of the following statements is TRUE according to the selection？
A. The TOEFL is more popular with the Chinese than the IELTS.
B. It will take quite a period of time for people to accept the APIEL.
C. Chinese students will prefer the IELTS rather than the APIEL even in the future.
D. A student will have to take the APIEL if he or she wants to study in English-speaking
countries.
62. The best title for this news report is_____.
A. New Exam Designed for Students
B. The Key to Improving Your English
C. TOEFL, IELTS and GRE to be Out of Date
D. The Four Skills in Learning English
Fifty years from now the world’s population will be declining, with no end in sight. Unless people’s values change greatly, several centuries from now there could be fewer people living in the entire world than live in the United States today. The big surprise of the past twenty years is that in not one country did fertility (生育能力) stop falling when it reached the replacement rate（出生率）—2.1 children per woman. In Italy, for example, the rate has fallen to 1.2. In Western Europe as a whole and in Japan it is down to 1.5. The evidence now indicates that within fifty years or so world population will peak at about eight billion before starting a fairly rapid decline.
Because in the past two centuries world population has increased from one billion to nearly six billion, many people still fear that it will keep “exploding” until there are too many people for the earth to support. But that is like fearing that your baby will grow to 1,000 pounds because its weight doubles three times in its first seven years. World population was growing by two percent a year in the 1960s; the rate is now down to one percent a year, and if the patterns of the past century don’t change completely, it will head into negative numbers. This view is coming to be widely accepted among population experts, even as the public continues to focus on the threat of uncontrolled population growth.
As long ago as September of 1974 Scientific American published a special issue on population that described what demographers (人口统计学家) had begun calling the “demographic transition” from traditional high rates of birth and death to the low ones of modern society. The experts believed that birth and death rates would be more or less equal in the future, as they had been in the past, keeping total population stable after a level of 10-12 billion people was reached during the transition.
56. Which of the following statement is NOT true according to the passage?
A. The world’s population in the future will be reducing endlessly.
B. When the earth population reaches 8 billion, it will see a rapid decrease.
C. In modern society the birth and death rates will be more or less equal in the future.
D. The public now pay little attention to the threat of uncontrolled population growth.
57. What’s reason for the sharp increase of world population in the past two centuries?
A. Because people fear that the world will explode.
B. Because the world’s replacement rate keeps falling.
C. Because people’s values has greatly changed.
D. The passage doesn't mention it.
58. The expression “demographic transition” (Paragraph 3) probably means _______.
A. high death rate to the low one
B. high birth rate to the low one
C. high rates of birth and death to the low ones
D. low rates of birth and death to the high ones
59. We can learn from the passage that _______.
A. in the near future there will be a rapid decline of the world population
B. the birth and death rates of modern society will be unequal in the future
C. there would be the same population living in the world than it in the US today
D. in Western Europe the replacement rate has declined to a negative number
We all know that everyone becomes a little more forgetful as they get older, but men's minds decline(衰退) more than women's, according to the results of a worldwide survey.
General differences seem to be inherent in male and female brains: Men are better at maintaining and dealing with mental images (useful in mathematical reasoning and spatial skills), while women tend to excel (擅长) at recalling information from their brain's files. Many studies have looked for a connection between sex and the amount of mental decline people experience as they age, but the results have been mixed. Some studies found more age-related decline in men than in women, while others saw the opposite or even no relationship at all between sex and mental decline. Those results could be improper because the studies involved older people, and women live longer than men: The men tested are the survivors, "so they're the ones that may not have shown such cognitive decline," said study team leader Elizabeth of the University of Warwick in England.
Scientists surveyed completed four t
asks that tested sex-related cognitive skills: matching an object to its rotated form, matching lines shown from the same angle, typing as many words in a particular category (范畴) as possible in the given time, e.g. "object usually colored gray", and recalling the location of objects in a line drawing. The first two were tasks at which men usually excel; the latter are typically dominated by women. Within each age group studied, men and women performed better in their separate categories on average. And though performance declined with age for both genders, women showed obviously less decline than men overall.
49．According to the passage, which of the following can NOT be typed into the same category?
A．cloud B．sheep C．trees D．goose
50．Which of the following statements is true according the article?
A．Men do better than women when it comes to learning English.
B．Women stand out at remembering people’s names.
C．Men excel at typing as many words in a particular category as possible in the given time.
D．Women excel at dealing mathematic problems.
51．One important factor that affects the correctness of the results is that _________.
A．the old men tested may not have shown such cognitive decline
B．people surveyed are all old
C．people taking part in this test came from all over the world
D．women live longer than men
52．The author aims to tell us that __________.
A．women’s minds perform better than men’s
B．men’s minds decline more with age
C．everyone becomes a little more forgetful as they get older
D．a survey on human’s mind decline was done recently
A few years ago, Paul Gerner began to gather a group of architects in Las Vegas to ask them what it would take to design a public school that used 50 percent less energy, cost much less to build and obviously improve
d student learning. “I think half of them fell off their chairs,” Gerner says.
Gerner manages school facilities（设施）for Clark County, Nevada, a district roughly the size of Massachusetts. By 2018, 143,000 additional students will enter the already crowded public-education system. Gerner needs 73 new schools to house them. Four architecture teams have nearly finished designing primary school prototypes（样品）; they plan to construct their schools starting in 2009. The district will then assess how well the schools perform, and three winners will copy those designs in 50 to 70 new buildings.
Green schools are appearing all over, but in Clark County, which stands out for its vastness, such aggressive targets are difficult because design requirements like more natural light for students go against the realities of a desert climate. “One of the biggest challenges is getting the right site orientation（朝向）,” Mark McGinty, a director at SH Architecture, says. His firm recently completed a high school in Las Vegas. “You have the same building, same set of windows, but if its orientation is incorrect and it faces the sun, it will be really expensive to cool.”
Surprisingly, the man responsible for one of the most progressive green-design competition has doubts about ideas of eco-friendly buildings. “I don’t believe in the new green religion,” Gerner says. “Some of the building te
chnologies that you get are impractical. I’m interested in those that work.” But he wouldn’t mind if some green features inspire students. He says he hopes to set up green energy systems that allow them to learn about the process of harvesting wind and solar power. “You never know what’s going to start the interest of a child to study math and science,” he says.
45. How did the architects react to Gerner’s design requirements?
A. They lost balance in excitement. B. They showed strong disbelief.
C. They expressed little interest. D. They burst into cheers.
46. Which order of steps is followed in carrying out the project?
A. Assessment — Prototype — Design — Construction.
B. Assessment — Design — Prototype — Construction.
C. Design — Assessment — Prototype — Construction.
D. Design — Prototype — Assessment — Construction.
47. What makes it difficult to build green schools in Clark County?
A. The large size. B. Limited facilities.
C. The desert climate. D. Poor natural resources.
48. What does Gerner think of the ideas of green schools?
A. They are questionable. B. They are out of date.
C. They are advanced. D. They are practical.
Americans love sports – they love to play them, to watch them on television and to talk about them. But this hobby sometimes has serious results – at least to the players. For example, when people play tennis, sometimes they hurt their elbow and in this way they develop “tennis elbow”. Also it is easy to hurt a knee in a football game. These injures happen while the player is having fun, but they still hurt.
A few months ago, Kathleen Simmons, who loves playing volleyball, hurt her knee in a volleyball game. Her doctor told her that she needed a very difficult operation or she might not be able to play again. She felt very sad and didn’t know what to do.
Then Simmons learned about “video operation”. With the help of this new science in medicine, doctors can now repair many 
injures and get people back on the playing field and back to their jobs much faster. Simmons found a hospital that was using this new science and went to see the doctor there. The doctors told her the operation could help.
For this operation, her doctor didn’t have to open her knee. Instead he put a very small camera lens(镜头) inside her knee. The lens sent back pictures, which appeared on a television screen. As he worked, he could see the inside of her knee on the TV. With the help of the large pictures on the screen, the doctor knew exactly what to do when he was making the repairs.
Simmons started walking five days after her operation. “My knee hurt a lot the first few days,” she said. “But I felt better very quickly.” Now, six months after her operation, Simmons can do everything she did before her injury. “It feels like a new knee,” she said. “I can even play volleyball again.”
41. “Tennis elbow” means ______.
A. tennis players are easy to hurt their elbow when they play tennis
B. the elbow is suitable for playing tennis
C. all the players should use elbow to play tennis
D. don’t hurt your elbows
42. “Video operation” is ________.
A. a kind of new science in medicine B. a kind of new TV program
C. a kind of new radio D. a kind of new lens
43. Although people love sports, many players suffer from ______.
A. injures B. operations C. results D. illness
44. A patient ______________________.
A. could make an operation himself with the help of screen
B. could see the inside of his knee on the TV
C. could put a very small camera lens inside his knee
D. would become better soon after the “video operation”
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