The Marches were a happy family. Poverty, hard work, and even the fact that Father March was away with the Union armies could not down the spirits of Meg, Jo, Amy, and Marmee, as the March girls called their mother.

The March sisters tried to be good but had their share of faults. Pretty Meg was often displeased with the schoolchildren she taught; boyish Jo was easy to become angry; golden-haired schoolgirl Amy liked to show up; but Beth, who kept the house, was loving and gentle always.

   The happy days passed and darkness came when a telegram arrived for Mrs. March. “Your husband is very ill,” it said, “come at once.” The girl tried to be brave when their mother left for the front. They waited and prayed. Little Beth got scarlet fever (猩红热) when she was taking care of the sick neighbor. She became very ill but began to recover by the time Marmee was back. When Father came home from the front and at that joyful Christmas dinner they were once more all together.

  Three years later the March girls had grown into young womanhood. Meg became Mrs. Brooke, and after a few family troubles got used to her new state happily. Jo had found pleasure in her literary efforts. Amy had grown into a young lady with a talent for design and an even greater one for society. But Beth had never fully regained her health, and her family watched her with love and anxiety.

  Amy was asked to go and stay in Europe with a relative of the Marches. Jo went to New York and became successful in her writing and had the satisfaction of seeing her work published there. But at home the bitterest blow was yet to fall. Beth had known for some time that she couldn’t live much longer to be with the family and in the spring time she died.

   News came from Europe that Amy and Laurie, the grandson of a wealthy neighbor, had planned to be married soon. Now Jo became ever more successful in her writing and got married to Professor Bhaer and soon afterwards founded a school for boys.

   And so the little women had grown up and lived happily with their children, enjoying the harvest of love and goodness that they had devoted all their lives to.

The members of the March family were Father March, Mrs. March and their _______.

   A. four daughters                 B. five daughters   

C. son and four daughters     D. son and five daughters

Who was the most successful in career (事业) among the March girls?

  A. Jo                B. Beth                 C. Amy                 D. Meg 

Which of the following would be the best title for the passage?

  A. The march Family              B. The March Parents  

C. The March Girls            D. The March Relatives

It can be inferred from the passage that the March family had ______.

  A. both happiness and sadness     B. wealthy neighbors 

  C. more girls than boys           D. a lot of rich relatives 

There are still many things that Peter Cooke would like to try his hand at — paper-making and feather-work are on his list. For the moment, though, he will stick to the skill that he has been delighted to make perfect over the past ten years: making delicate and unusual objects out of shells.

As he leads me round his apartment showing me his work, he points to a pair of shell-covered ornaments(装饰品) above a fireplace. “I shan’t be at all bothered if people don’t buy them because I have got so used to them, and to me they’re lovely. I never meant to sell my work commercially. Some friends came to see me about five years ago and said, ‘You must have an exhibition — people ought to see these. We’ll talk to a man who owns an art gallery’”. The result was an exhibition in London, at which 70 per cent of the objects were sold. His second exhibition opened at the gallery yesterday. Considering the enormous prices the pieces command —around £2,000 for the ornaments — an empty space above the fireplace would seem a small sacrifice for Cooke to make.

There are 86 pieces in the exhibition, with prices starting at225 for a shell-flower in a crystal vase. Cooke insists that he has nothing to do with the prices and is cheerily open about their level: he claims there is nobody else in the world who produces work like his, and, as the gallery-owner told him, “Well, you’re going to stop one day and everybody will want your pieces because there won’t be any more.”

“I do wish, though,” says Cooke, “that I’d taken this up a lot earlier, because then I would have been able to produce really wonderful things — at least the potential would have been there. Although the ideas are still there and I’m doing the best I can now, I’m more limited physically than I was when I started.” Still, the work that he has managed to produce is a long way from the common shell constructions that can be found in seaside shops. “I have a miniature(微型的) mind,” he says, and this has resulted in boxes covered in thousands of tiny shells, little shaded pictures made from shells and baskets of astonishingly realistic flowers.?

Cooke’s quest(追求) for beautiful, and especially tiny, shells has taken him further than his Norfolk shore: to France, Thailand, Mexico, South Africa and the Philippines, to name but a few of the beaches where he has lain on his stomach and looked for beauties to bring home. He is insistent that he only collects dead shells and defends himself against people who write him letters accusing him of stripping the world’s beaches. “When I am collecting shells, I hear people’s great fat feet crunching(嘎吱嘎吱地踩) them up far faster than I can collect them; and the ones that are left, the sea breaks up. I would not dream of collecting shells with living creatures in them or diving for them, but once their occupants have left, why should I not collect them?” If one bases this argument on the amount of luggage that can be carried home by one man, the beauty of whose work is often greater than its natural parts, it becomes very convincing indeed.

What does the reader learn about Peter Cooke in the first paragraph?

A. He has produced hand-made objects in different materials.?

B. He hopes to work with other materials in the future.?

C. He has written about his love of making shell objects.?

D. He was praised for his shell objects many years ago. 

When mentioning the cost of his shell objects, Cooke ____.

       A. cleverly changes the subject.

       B. defends the prices charged for his work.

       C. says he has no idea why the level is so high.

       D. notes that his work will not always be so popular.

The “small sacrifice” in Paragraph 2 refers to _________.?

A. the loss of Cooke’s ornaments?          B. the display of Cooke’s ornaments?

C. the cost of keeping Cooke’s ornaments    D. the space required to store Cooke’s ornaments

What does Cooke regret about his work?

A. He is not as famous as he should have been.?B. He makes less money than he should make.

C. He is less imaginative than he used to be.?    D. He is not as skillful as he used to be. ?

What does the reader learn about Cooke's shell-collecting activities?

A. Not everyone approves of what he does.

B. Other methods might make his work easier.

C. Other tourists get in the way of his collecting.

D. Not all shells are the right size and shape for his work

 Demands for stronger protection for wildlife in Britain sometimes hide the fact that similar needs are felt in the rest of Europe. Studies by the Council of Europe, of which 21 countries are members, have shown that 45 per cent of reptile (爬行动物) species and 24 per cent of butterflies are in danger or dying out.

  European concern for wildlife was outlined by Dr Peter Baum, an expert in the environment and natural resources division of the council, when he spoke at a conference arranged by the administrators of a British national park. The park is one of the few areas in Europe to hold the council’s diploma for nature reserves of the highest quality, and Dr Baum had come to present it to the park once again. He was afraid that public opinion was turning against national parks, and that those set up in the 1960s and 1970s could not be set up today. But Dr Baum clearly remained a strong supporter of the view that natural environments needed to be allowed to survive in peace in their own right.

  “No area could be expected to survive both as a true nature reserve and as a tourist attraction,” he went on. The shortsighted view that reserves had to serve immediate human demands for outdoor recreation should be replaced by full acceptance of their importance as places to preserve nature for the future.

  “We forget that they are the guarantee (保证) of life systems, on which any built-up area depends,” Dr Baum went on. “We could manage without most industrial products, but we could not manage without nature. However, our natural environment areas, which are the original parts of our countryside, have become mere islands in a spoiled and highly polluted land.”

59. Recent studies by the Council of Europe have declared that ____ .

 A. wildlife needs more protection only in Britain

 B. all species of wildlife in Europe are in danger of dying out

 C. there are fewer species of reptiles and butterflies in Europe than elsewhere

 D. many species of reptiles and butterflies in Europe need protecting

60. Why did Dr Baum come to a British national park?

 A. Because he needed to present it with a council's diploma.

 B. Because he was concerned about its management.

 C. Because it was the only national park of its kind in Europe.

 D. Because it was the only park that had ever received a diploma from the council.

61. The last sentence in the second paragraph implies that ____ .

 A. people should make every effort to create more environment areas

 B. people would go on protecting national parks

 C. certain areas of the countryside should be left intact (完整的)

 D. people would defend the right to develop the areas around national parks

62.Which of the following can be inferred from the last paragraph?

 A. We have developed industry at the expense of countryside.

 B. We have forgotten what our original countryside looked like.

 C. People living on islands should protect natural resources for their survival.

 D. We should destroy all the built-up areas.

If you dream in color, you’re not alone: the majority of people today claim to have colorful dreams. But it wasn’t always thus. Research conducted in the early part of the last century consistently found that people reported dreaming most often in black and white.

According to Eva Murzyn at the University of Dundee, there are at least two possible explanations for this strange situation.

The first is the methods used in the researches. The early studies tended to use questionnaires(问卷), while more modern studies use dream diaries (filled in upon rising in the morning) or so-called “REM-awakening”, which involves interrupting people’s dream-filled periods of sleep to find out what they were dreaming about. People’s memories of their dreams are likely to be less accurate by using the questionnaire approach and they are more likely to reflect their beliefs about the form dreams generally take in an unclear way.

The second explanation has to do with black and white television and film. It's possible that the sudden increase in black and white film and television during the first half of the last century either affected the form of people’s dreams at that time, or affected their beliefs about the form dreams generally take.

According to Murzyn’s findings, it’s the explanation based on media exposure that carries more weight. She used both questionnaire and diary methods to study the dreams of 30 older (average age 64) and 30 younger people (average age 21).

The methodological technique made no difference to the type of dreams people reported. However, the extremely important thing was that, across both questionnaires and diaries, the older participants (who had had significant early life exposure to black and white media) reported experiencing significantly more black and white dreams over the last ten days than the younger participants (22 per cent vs. 4 per cent).

Another finding was that older participants reported black and white dreams and colorful dreams to be of equal clearness. By contrast, the younger participants reported that the quality of black and white dreams was poorer. This raises the possibility that the younger participants didn’t really have any black and white dreams at all, but were simply regarding poorly remembered dreams as black and white.

We learn from the text that ______.

       A. people in the first half of the last century never had colorful dreams

       B. older people are more likely to have black and white dreams

       C. the dreams of younger people are always colorful

       D. people today don’t have white and black dreams any more

What did Murxyn do to find out the explanations for the colors in people’s dreams?

       A. She applied both questionnaire and diary methods to study people’s dreams.

       B. She used diary methods to record people’s dreams.

       C. She chose 60 people to answer her questions about their dreams.

       D. She woke people up to record the colors of their dreams.

What does the underlined expression “carry more weight” in paragraph 5 mean?

       A. be heavier  B. be more powerful      C. be more important     D. be more useful

From Murxyn’s findings we can infer that ______.

       A. both older people and younger people could report colorful dreams clearly

       B. young people don’t have any black and white dreams in fact

       C. the color of a person’s dream is decided by one’s age

       D. it is probably the color of media that affects the color of one’s dream

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