D
When I walked into the house after school, I found my dad at home.
"What are you doing home already?" I asked casually.
"Andrew, I was laid off today," he answered quietly.
I was sure he was joking. "No, you weren't. Why are you really home?"
Then I noticed his expression and realized he was telling the truth. My father has always been a hard worker and prided himself on his career. My father's unemployment created many changes in our lives. He was home all day, which meant my bed had to be made, my room cleaned up, and my homework done right after school. I would come home every day to find him at the computer searching for jobs. I began to notice how down he seemed, and how losing his job had affected his self-esteem (自尊心), though he tried to be optimistic. He asked my brother and me to spend less money. I gave up my allowance（零用钱）, which even though it wasn't much, felt like the right thing to do. I also found a part-time job.
After several difficult months of searching, my dad decided to go in a totally different direction. He explained that he never wanted to be laid off again, so he was going to start his own business. Day by day, I watched him build it, and I admired how much time and energy he devoted to it.
One evening I asked if he needed help. "Only if it doesn't interfere（打扰，妨碍） with school," he said, which sounded like a yes.
I showed up at his office the next afternoon, and most afternoons after that for two months. I always knew he was a hard worker, but watching him in action really influenced me. Although this was one of the worst experiences for our family, it taught me a lot about dealing with adversity. Now I know that through creative problem-solving, I can always find Plans, ask for help, and take risks. 
54．When the father was laid off, he ________.
A．was angry with his boss             B．didn't care about it at all
C．couldn't accept the fact easily         D．was as happy as usual
55．We can know from the passage that ________.
A．it was not easy for the father to find a new job
B．the father asked his sons to give up their allowance
C．the father found a good job when he changed his direction
D．Andrew and his brother helped his father set up his business
56．The underlined word "adversity" in the last paragraph probably means        .
A．poor feelings     B．bad situations     C．low spirits     D．old ideas
57．What has Andrew learned from his father?
A．The spirit of creative problem-solving.    B．The skills of surfing the Internet.
C．The experience of saving money.         D．The rich business skills.

Dou Kou, a Chinese boy, is called “the youngest writer in the world”. He has written three books till now. Dou Kou was born in Jiangsu in 1994. When he was 7 months old, his parents started working in over 30 different cities, such as Xi’an and Shenzhen. This kind of life gave him things to think and write about. When he was 9 months old, he could speak and at the age of one, he could say five to six hundred words. At three, he could look up words in the dictionary. At four, his father taught him how to learn by himself. His parents like reading very much. So does he. At the age of 5, he began writing fairy tales. At the age of 6, he wrote a novel about his life in different cities with his parents. His fairy tales are all from his life. One day, he found many mice in the house. They only ate their food but also hurt his mother’s hand. So he thought, “If we give mice the stomach of cows, they will eat grass and they will be helpful to people.” This was his first fairy tales Change Stomach for Mice. Now he studies well in a middle school. He has written his third book, the novel called Eyes of Children. He says, “I am not different from other children. I just wrote several books.
【小题1】How many books has Dou Kou written?

Sometimes, the simplest ideas are the best．For example, to absorb heat from the sun to heat water, you need large, flat, black surfaces．One way to do that is to build those surfaces specially, on the roofs of buildings．But why go to all that trouble when cities are full of     black surfaces already, in the form of asphalt （柏油） roads?
Ten years ago, this thought came into the mind of Arian de Bondt, a Dutch engineer．He finally persuaded his boss to follow it up．The result is that their building is now heated in winter and cooled in summer by a system that relies on the surface of the road outside．
The heat-collector is a system of connected water pipes．Most of them run from one side of the street to the other, just under the asphalt road．Some, however, dive deep into the ground．
When the street surface gets hot in summer, water pumped through the pipes picks up this heat and takes it underground through one of the diving pipes．At a depth of 100 meters lies a natural aquifer （蓄水层） into which several heat exchangers （交换器） have been built．The hot water from the street runs through these exchangers, warming the ground-water, before returning to the surface through another pipe．The aquifer is thus used as a heat store．
In winter, the working system is changed slightly．Water is pumped through the heat exchangers to pick up the heat stored during summer．This water goes into the building and is used to warm the place up．After performing that task, it is pumped under the asphalt and its remaining heat keeps the road free of snow and ice．
【小题1】Which of the following is true according to the first two paragraphs?

B
One night last February, a seventeen-year-old Duffy drove home along a winding road, he saw a strange light thrown against the tree. “I knew it wasn’t the moon”, he said. “I drive this road all the time and I notice little things out of place.”
Duffy stopped his car and got out to examine. Below him far down in the deep valley lay a broken car with its headlights on. Thirty minutes earlier, a man had driven off the edge of the road, which has no guardrail. His car fell and rolled end over end, landing on its top more than two hundred feet below.
Duffy rushed to call for help, then returned and got down to reach the injured driver. Snow covered the valley and the temperature was below freezing. After struggling back up the cliff, Duffy took off his jacket and shirt and wrapped the injured man in time, along with the blankets from his car.
Life-saving deeds are starting to become usual action for Duffy, the oldest of seven children. When he was 12, he saved his ten-year-old brother from drowning. Two years ago, his three-year-old sister ate rat poison, and Duffy cleaned out her mouth, make her drink milk to protect her stomach and called doctors.
“We have tried to teach the children good values, and it looks like we have got some reward for it.” His father says.
46. The strange light came from ________.
A. The bright moon.          B. Duffy’s car.
C. The broken car in the valley   D. an unknown place
47. The phrase” landing on its top” means the car lay_________.
A. on the top of the cliff    B. with its wheels upward 
C. with its head upward    D. on the road as usual
48. Duffy wrapped the man because_________.
A. he was badly injured    B. he had lost too much blood  
C. he had nothing on      D. it was too cold that day
49. From the above article, we can see Duffy has saved ________ at least.  
A. two     B. three     C. four      D. five
50. “We have tried to teach the children good values” may probably mean Duffy’s parents often tell their children_________.
A. to help people in danger         B. how to save people’s lives
C. to remember the value of the car     D. how to do business

Last week, I was invited to a doctor’s meeting at the Ruth Hospital. In one of the rooms a patient, an old man, got up from his bed and moved slowly towards me. I could see that he hadn’t long to live, but he came up to me and placed his right foot close to mine on the floor.
“Frank!” I cried in surprise. He couldn’t answer, as I knew, but he tried to smile, all the time keeping his foot close to mine.
My thoughts raced back more than thirty years － to the dark days of 1941, when I was a student in London. The scene was an air-raid shelter (防空洞), in which I and about a hundred other people slept every night. Among them were Mrs West and her son Frank, who lived nearby. Sharing wartime problems, we got to know each other very well. Frank interested me because he was not normal. He had never been normal, ever since he was born. His mother told me he was 37 then, but he had less of a mind than a baby has. Mrs West, then about 75, was a strong, able woman, as she had to be, of course, because Frank depended on her completely. He needed all the attention of a baby.
One night a policeman came into our shelter and told Mrs West that her house had been all destroyed. That wasn’t quite true, because the Wests went on living there for quite some time. But they certainly lost nearly everything they owned.
When that kind of thing happened, the rest of us helped the unlucky ones. So before we separated that morning, I stood beside Frank and measured my right foot against his.
They were about the same size. That night, then, I took a spare pair of shoes to the shelter for Frank. As soon as he saw me, he came running － and paced his right foot against mine. After that, he always greeted me in the same way.
【小题1】 How did the writer know that the patient was Frank?

A．to be friendly towards Frank

B．to see if Frank’s feet were normal

C．to find out if Frank could put on his shoes

D．to teach Frank to greet people in a special way