Soccer is played by millions of people all over the world, but there have only been few players who were truly great. How did these players get that way---was it through training and practice, or are great players “born, not made”? First, these players came from places that have had famous stars in the past---players that a young boy can look up to and try to imitate. In the history of soccer, only seven countries have ever won the World Cup---three from South America and four from Western Europe. There has never been a great national team---or a really great player---from North America or from Asia. Second, these players have all had years of practice in the game. Alfredo Di Stefano was the son of a soccer player, as was Pele. Most players begin playing the game at the age of three or four.

Finally, many great players come from the same kind of neighborhood---a poor, crowded area where a boy’s dream is not to be a doctor, lawyer, or businessman, but to become a rich, famous athlete or entertainer. For example, Liverpool, which produced the Beatles, had one of the best English soccer teams in recent years. Pele practiced in the street with a “ball” made of rags. And George Best learned the tricks that made him famous by bouncing the ball off a wall in the slums(贫民窟) of Belfast.

All great players have a lot in common, but that doesn’t explain why they are great. Hundreds of boys played in those Brazilian streets, but only one became Pele. The greatest players are born with some unique quality that sets them apart from all the others.

1.According to the writer, which of the following statements is true?

A. Soccer is popular all over the world, but truly great players are few.

B. Millions of people all over the world are playing soccer, but only seven countries have ever had famous stars.

C. Only seven countries from South America and Western Europe have ever had national teams.

D. Soccer seems the least popular in North America and Asia.

2.The world “tricks” at the end of Paragraph 2 is closest in meaning to ______.

A. experience B. training

C. skills D.cheating

3.The Brazilian streets are mentioned to show that ______.

A. a great soccer player may be born in a slum area

B. people in poor areas are born with some unique quality

C. children in poor areas start playing football at the age of three or four

D. famous soccer players live in slum areas

4.The writer mentions all the factors that may affect a soccer player’s success except ______.

A. his family background B. his neighborhood

C. his character D. his practice

根据短文内容，从短文后的选项中选出能填入空白处的最佳选项。选项中有两项为多余选项。

Wrong Reasons for Going to College

A college education can be priceless. 1. If any of these following factors had a big influence on your decision, you’re probably right to second-guess yourself.

Because all your friends are going.

In only a few weeks’ time, the whole friend group will be scattered to a half dozen different colleges in a half dozen different places. Not to go will set yourself apart. 2.

Because someone else expects it from you.

Perhaps you come from a family where everyone goes to college, or maybe you’re the kid that everyone is proud to believe will be the first to get there. 3. It’s become so much a part of the air you breathe that you’ve never stopped to consider whether you want to go or whether you’re ready to go.

4.

It’s been tough to find even a summer job. You don’t have an alternative plan. Everyone else is doing it (see above). You think you might as well go to school. That is the lamest（无说服力的）of reasons to spend $ 20,000 or more in the next year.

Because you are afraid you’ll regret it if you don’t go.

Your uncle tells you that he regrets that he didn’t go to college. Others tell you they could have gone so much further in their career if only they had a college education. 5. So this is not a persuasive reason for you to go to college.

A. Because you don’t want to work.

B. Friends will wonder what’s wrong with you.

C. Because you don’t know what else to do.

D. Everyone seems more excited than you are.

E. It seems that for years everyone has just thought that of course you’ll go.

F. Whatever the story is, there are always people who regret decisions they’ve made.

G. But maybe in your heart you know that you are going for the wrong reasons.

书面表达

假如你是李华，Sara是你的英文笔友，她在微博上发帖求助。你就她的帖子中所提出的问题，简要分析其原因，并给出一些建议。

写作要点： 1. 就这个问题告诉Sara你的观点；

2. 简要分析其原因；

3. 给Sara提出解决问题的具体建议。

注意： 1. 信的开头、结尾已为你写好，但不计入总词数；

2. 词数120左右。

Hi, Sara,

As a student of your age, I understand your situation. __________________________

_________________________________________________________________________________

_________________________________________________________________________________

_________________________________________________________________________________

Yours,

Li Hua

The Queen’s English is now sounding less upper-class, a scientific study of the Queen’s Christmas broadcasts had found. Researchers have studied each of her messages to the Commonwealth countries since 1952 to find out the change in her pronunciation from the noble Upper Received to the Standard Received.

Jonathan Harrington, a professor at Germany’s University of Munich, wanted to discover whether accent changes recorded over the past half century would take place within one person. “As far as I know, there just is nobody else for whom there is this sort of broadcast records,” he said.

He said the noble way of pronouncing vowels (元音) had gradually lost ground as the noble upper-class accent over the past years. “Her accent sounds slightly less noble than it did 50 years ago. But these are very, very small and slow changes that we don’t notice from year to year.”

“We may be able to relate it to changes in the social classes,” he told The Daily Telegraph, a British newspaper. “In 1952 she would have been heard saying ‘thet men in the bleck het’. Now it would be ‘that man in the black hat’. Similarly, she would have spoken of ‘citay ’ and ‘dutay’ , rather than ‘citee’ and ‘dutee’ and ‘hame’ rather than ‘home’. In the 1950s she would have been ‘lorst’, but by the 1970s ‘lost’.”

The Queen’s broadcast is a personal message to the Commonwealth countries. Each Christmas, the 10-minute broadcast is put on TV at 3 pm in Britain as many families are recovering from their traditional turkey lunch.

The results were published in the Journal of Phonetics.

1.The Queen’s broadcasts were chosen for the study mainly because ______.

A. she has been Queen for many years.

B. she has a less upper-class accent now.

C. her speeches are familiar to many people.

D. her speeches have been recorded for 50 years.

2.Which of the following is an example of a less noble accent in English?

A. “dutay” B. “citee” C. “hame” D. “lorst”

3.We may infer from the text that the Journal of Phonetics is a magazine on _________.

A. speech sounds B. Christmas customs

C. TV broadcasting D. personal messages

4.What is the text mainly about?

A. The Queen’s Christmas speeches on TV.

B. The relationship between accents and social classes.

C. The changes in a person’s accent.

D. The recent development of the English language.

根据下列句子单词首字母或所给汉语注释，在横线上写出空缺处各单词的正确形式。（每空只写一词）

1.After the police arrested him, they went to the thief’s house to （追回）the stolen jewelry.

2.Some adverts about __________（环境）protection cater for our conscience or our desire to be respectable citizens.

3.Though he has retired, still he reads newspapers every day to keep himself i of the latest news.

4.Oh, I’ve put on weight recently. I should eat less and take exercise on a r basis.

5.As we know, Wardian cases improved the __________ （存活） rates of plants transported long distances.

6.In the center of the b of flats, there is a small courtyard where I can plant some flowers.

7.In France the children place their shoes by the fireplace, a tradition d back to when children wore wooden peasant shoes.

8.I was quite annoyed the other day, with Xiamen Airline c me extra for the overweight luggage.

9.The young girl has been __________（提拔）from an ordinary office clerk to a manager due to her excellent performance.

10.These comments came in r to specific questions often asked by local newsmen.

11.Some cigarette advertisements are not aimed at mature audiences but instead t at children.

12.Another __________（潜在）dangerous sea animal is the jelly fish, which can cause severe pain to anyone who touches them.

13.If an alarm is s , do get out of the water as quickly as possible, as sharks are spotted nearby.

14.Many countries have a government organization to deal with customers’ __________（投诉）about ads.

15.Teaching as a career ____________（吸引）to many young people because of the long holiday.

I fell in love with England because it was quaint (古雅)—all those little houses, looking terri­bly old-fashioned but nice, like dolls’ houses. I loved the countryside and the pubs, and I loved London. I’ve slightly changed my mind after seventeen years because I think it’s an ugly town now.

Things have changed. For everybody, England meant gentlemen, fair play, and good man­ners. The fair play is going, unfortunately, and so are the gentlemanly attitudes and good man­ners—people shut doors heavily in your face and politeness is disappearing.

I regret that there are so few comfortable meeting places. You’re forced to live indoors. In Paris I go out much more, to restaurants and nightclubs. To meet friends here it usually has to be in a pub, and it can be difficult to go there alone as a woman. The cafes are not terribly nice.

As a woman, I feel unsafe here. I spend a bomb on taxis because I will not take public trans­port after 10 p. m. I used to use it , but now I’m afraid.

The idea of family seems to be more or less non-existent in England. My family is well united and that’s typically French. In Middlesex I had a neighbor who is 82 now. His family only lived two miles away, but I took him to France for Christmas once because he was always alone.

1.The writer doesn’t like London because she ______.

A. is not used to the life there now

B. has lived there for seventeen years

C. prefers to live in an old-fashioned house

D. has to be polite to everyone she meets there

2.Where do people usually meet their friends in England?

A. In a cafe. B. In a restaurant.

C. In a nightclub. D. In a pub.

3.The underlined part “it” (in Para. 4) refers to______.

A. a taxi B. the money

C. a bomb D. public transport

4.The writer took her neighbors to France for Christmas because he ______.

A. felt lonely in England

B. had never been to France

C. was from a typical French family

D. didn't like the British idea of family

根据短文内容，从短文后的选项中选出能填入空白处的最佳选项。选项中有两项为多余选项。

All over the world people enjoy sports. Sports help to keep people healthy and happy, and to live longer. 1. . They buy tickets or turn on their TVs to watch the games. Often they get very excited when their player or team wins. 2. . Football, for example, has spread around the world. Swimming is popular in all countries near the sea or in those with many rivers. What fun it is to jump into a pool or lake, whether in China, Egypt or Italy! 3. . Think how many lovers to skate or ski in Japan, Norway or Canada. Some sports or games go back thousands of years, like running or jumping. Chinese wushu, for example, has a very long history. But basketball and volleyball are rather new. Neither one is a hundred years old yet. 4. . Water—skiing is one of the newest in the family of sports.

People from different countries may not be able to understand each other, but after a game together they often become good friends. 5. . One learns to fight hard but fight fair, to win without pride and to lose with grace.

A. And think of people in cold countries.

B. Sports help to train a person’s character.

C. Not a few people like sports in the word.

D. Many people like to watch others play games.

E. People aren’t inventing new sports or games.

F. Some sports are so interesting that people everywhere take part in them.

G. People are inventing new sports or games all the time.

书面表达

假如你是你校广播站的播音员，请根据下面表格的提示，拟一份英语广播稿，通知全校师生。

注意： 1. 广播应符合英语口语的习惯。2. 内容应包括所给提示的全部要点。

3. 词数100左右。

Dear teachers and schoolmates,

______________________________________________________________________________

______________________________________________________________________________

______________________________________________________________________________

语法填空

阅读下面材料，在空白处填入适当的内容或括号内单词的正确形式（不多于3个单词）。

Everyone has a childhood and childhood experiences are often very 1. ____ (interest). Children often make us laugh.

I often remember my childhood, the years 2. ______ many funny things happened. When I was a two-year-old child, both my parents were always very busy3.______ their work. My mother worked as4.______ sales manager in a company while my father served in the army. So I 5._____ (live) with my grandma in a village. I was always waiting for my parents at home. Once my father sent us a photo of 6.______ ( he ) in a soldier’s uniform, which 7.____ (post) on the table reminding me of him.

Once my mother came to see me and we were 8._____ (go) to the downtown together. On the way we saw a group of9.____ (soldier). And when I saw them, I became very excited. I shouted in a big voice, “This is my father; that one is my father; and he is my father, too…”

Hearing this, my mother laughed and said10.______ she would remember that moment all her life.

Deserts are found where there is little rainfall or where rain for a whole year falls in only a few weeks' time. Ten inches of rain may be enough for many plants to survive (存活)if the rain is spread throughout the year, If it falls within one or two months and the rest of the year is dry, those plants may die and a desert may form.

Sand begins as tiny pieces of rock that get smaller and smaller as wind and weather wear them down. Sand dunes (沙丘) are formed as winds move the sand across the desert. Bit by bit, the dunes grow over the years, always moving with the winds and changing the shape. Most of them are only a few feet tall, but they can grow to be several hundred feet high.

There is, however, much more to a desert than sand. In the deserts of the southwestern United States, cliffs (悬崖) and deep valleys were formed from thick mud that once lay beneath a sea more than millions of years ago. Over the centuries, the water dried up. Wind, sand, rain, heat and cold all wore away at the remaining rocks. The faces of the desert mountains are always changing –-very, very slowly ---as these forces of nature continue to work on the rock.

Most deserts have a surprising variety of life. There are plants, animals and insects that have adapted to life in the desert. During the heat of the day a visitor may see very few signs of living things, but as the air begins to cool in the evening, the desert comes to life. As the sun begins to rise again in the sky, the desert once again becomes quiet and lonely.

1.Many plants may survive in deserts when__________________.

A. it is dry all the year round

B. the rain falls only in a few weeks

C. there is little rain in a year

D. the rain is spread out in a year

2.Sand dunes are formed when___________________.

A. sand piles up gradually

B. there is plenty of rain in a year

C. the sea has dried up over the years

D. pieces of rock get smaller

3.The underlined sentence in the third paragraph probably means that in a desert there is____________.

A. too much sand

B. more sand than before

C. nothing except sand

D. something else besides sand

4.It can be learned from the text that in a desert____________.

A. there is no rainfall throughout the year

B. life exists in rough conditions

C. all sand dunes are a few feet high

D. rocks are worn away only by wind and heat