Aboriginal is a term used to describe the people and animals that lived in a place from the earliest known times or before Europeans arrived. Examples are the Maori in New Zealand, the Aborigines in Australia and the Indians in South America.

Maori

The Maori were the first people to go to New Zealand about 1,000 years ago. They came from the islands of Polynesia in the Pacific. They brought dogs, rats and plants with them and settled mainly on the Northern Island. In 1769, Captain James Cook took possession of the Island, and from that time on British people started to settle. The Maori signed an agreement with these settlers, but in later years there were arguments and battles between them over land rights.

Aborigine

Native people of Australia came from somewhere in Asia more than 40,000 years ago. They lived by hunting and gathering. Their contact with British settlers began in 1788. By the 1940s almost all of them were mixed into Australian society as low-paid workers. Their rights were limited. In 1976 and 1993 the Australian government passed laws that returned some land to the Aborigines and recognized their property rights.

Indians

Long before the Europeans came to America in the 16th and 17th century, the American Indians, or Native Americans, lived there. It is believed that they came from Asia. Christopher Columbus mistook the land for India and so called the people there Indians. The white settlers and American Indians lived in peace at the beginning, but conflicts finally arose and led to the Indian Wars (1866 —1890). After the war the Indians were driven to the west of the country. Not until 1924 did they gain the right to vote.

68. What is the subject discussed in the passage?

A. European settlers.

B. Native people from three countries.

C. Lifestyles of aboriginals.

D. History of three groups of aboriginals.

69. Which of the following statements is an opinion instead of a fact?

A. The Maori were the first people to go to New Zealand.

B. The Europeans were greedy because they always fought for land.

C. Native people of Australia lived by hunting and gathering.

D. After the war the Indians were driven to the west of the country.

70. The native people in America were called Indians because ________.

A. they originated from India

B. their appearances are similar to those of Indians

C. the land was mistaken for India

D. their personalities are comparable to those of Indians

71. By saying “almost all of them were mixed into Australian society as low-paid workers”(in Paragraph 3), the author implies that _____.

A. natives in Australia led a different life from the settlers

B. most natives in Australia were unemployed

C. natives in Australia were separated from Australia

D. most natives in Australia earned a small salary

Mark Twain has been called the inventor of the American novel. And he surely deserves additional praise: the man who popularized the clever literary attack on racism.
I say clever because anti-slavery fiction had been the important part of the literature in the years before the Civil War. H. B. Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin is only the most famous example. These early stories dealt directly with slavery. With minor exceptions, Twain planted his attacks on slavery and prejudice into tales that were on the surface about something else entirely. He drew his readers into the argument by drawing them into the story.
Again and again, in the postwar years, Twain seemed forced to deal with the challenge of race. Consider the most controversial, at least today, of Twain’s novels, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Only a few books have been kicked off the shelves as often as Huckleberry Finn, Twain’s most widely read tale. Once upon a time, people hated the book because it struck them as rude. Twain himself wrote that those who banned the book considered the novel “trash and suitable only for the slums (贫民窟).” More recently the book has been attacked because of the character Jim, the escaped slave, and many occurences of the word nigger. (The term Nigger Jim, for which the novel is often severely criticized, never appears in it.)
But the attacks were and are silly—and miss the point. The novel is strongly anti-slavery. Jim’s search through the slave states for the family from whom he has been forcibly parted is heroic. As J. Chadwick has pointed out, the character of Jim was a first in American fiction—a recognition that the slave had two personalities, “the voice of survival within a white slave culture and the voice of the individual: Jim, the father and the man.”
There is much more. Twain’s mystery novel Pudd’nhead Wilson stood as a challenge to the racial beliefs of even many of the liberals of his day. Written at a time when the accepted wisdom held Negroes to be inferior (低等的) to whites, especially in intelligence, Twain’s tale centered in part around two babies switched at birth. A slave gave birth to her master’s baby and, for fear that the child should be sold South, switched him for the master’s baby by his wife. The slave’s lightskinned child was taken to be white and grew up with both the attitudes and the education of the slave-holding class. The master’s wife’s baby was taken for black and grew up with the attitudes and intonations of the slave.
The point was difficult to miss: nurture (养育), not nature, was the key to social status. The features of the black man that provided the stuff of prejudice—manner of speech, for example— were, to Twain, indicative of nothing other than the conditioning that slavery forced on its victims.
Twain’s racial tone was not perfect. One is left uneasy, for example, by the lengthy passage in his autobiography (自传) about how much he loved what were called “nigger shows” in his youth—mostly with white men performing in black-face—and his delight in getting his mother to laugh at them. Yet there is no reason to think Twain saw the shows as representing reality. His frequent attacks on slavery and prejudice suggest his keen awareness that they did not.
Was Twain a racist? Asking the question in the 21st century is as wise as asking the same of Lincoln. If we read the words and attitudes of the past through the “wisdom” of the considered moral judgments of the present, we will find nothing but error. Lincoln, who believed the black man the inferior of the white, fought and won a war to free him. And Twain, raised in a slave state, briefly a soldier, and inventor of Jim, may have done more to anger the nation over racial injustice and awaken its collective conscience than any other novelist in the past century.
【小题1】 How do Twain’s novels on slavery differ from Stowe’s?

完形填空（共20小题；每小题1．5分，满分30分）

阅读下面短文，掌握其大意，然后从各题所给的四个选项（A、B、C和D）中，选出最佳选项。

Wranglers（争吵者） and Stranglers（扼杀者）

Years ago there was a group of brilliant young men at the University of Wisconsin, who seemed to have amazing creative  36   talent. They were would-be poets, novelists, and essayists. They were extraordinary in their   37    to put the English language to its best use. These promising young men  38   regularly to read and critique (评论) each other's work. And critique it they did!

These men were merciless with one another. They  39   the minutest literary expression into a hundred pieces. They were heartless, tough, even mean in their  40   .The sessions became such areas of literary criticism that the  41   of this special club called themselves the “Stranglers (扼杀者)”.

In order to  42   , the women of literary talent in the university  43   to start a club of their own, one comparable to the Stranglers. They  44   themselves the “Wranglers (争论者)”.They, too, read their  45   one another. But there was one great difference. The criticism was much softer, more  46   , more encouraging. Sometimes, there was almost no criticism at all. Every effort, even the weakest one, was   47   .

Twenty years later an alumnus (男校友；男毕业生) of the university was making an exhaustive (详尽的；彻底的)  48    of his classmates' careers when he   49    a vast difference in the literary accomplishments of the Stranglers as opposed to the Wranglers. Of all the  50   young men in the Stranglers, no one had made a significant literary   51    of any kind. From the Wranglers had come six or more successful   52   , some of national renown (名望；声誉) such as Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, who wrote The Yearling.

Talent between the two？Probably the same. Level of   53   ？Not much difference. But the Stranglers were strangled, while the Wranglers were determined to give each other a(an)   54   .The Stranglers   55    an atmosphere of argument and self-doubt. The Wranglers highlighted the best, not the worst.

1.A. architectural              B. artistic                   C. literary                  D. musical

2.A. strength                      B. ability                    C. performance       D. power

3.A. gathered                             B. organized    C. challenged           D. collected

4.A. turned                        B. translated    C. combined    D. divided

5.A. appreciation              B. criticism                C. assessment           D. judgment

6.A. leaders                       B. organizers  C. members              D. arrangers

7.A. participate                           B. practice                C. succeed                D. compete

8.A. determined               B. agreed                  C. promised     D. dreamed

9.A. regarded                             B. called                    C. thought                 D. recognized

10.A. works                        B. letters                   C. books                    D. papers

11.A. fantastic                            B. critical                   C. positive                 D. serious

12.A. required                            B. spared                   C. made                     D. encouraged

13.A. experiment             B. study            C. analysis                 D. judgment

14.A. reflected                           B. resolved               C. explained    D. noticed

15.A. optimistic                          B. confident              C. bright                    D. honest

16.A. achievement                    B. influence              C. contribution         D. improvement

17.A. engineers                          B. writers                  C. doctors                 D. lawyers

18.A. courage                             B. patience               C. education    D. skill

19.A. reward                     B. favor            C. honor                    D. lift

20.A. ruined                      B. lightened              C. promoted             D. enjoyed

For more than twenty years scientists have been searching for signs of life on other planets. Most of these searches have been done over the radio. The hope is that someone in outer space may be trying to get in touch with us. Scientists also have sent radio and television messages on spaceships traveling through space, on the chance that someone may be receptive to such messages.

Scientists are using powerful radio telescopes to listen to signals from about 1,000 stars, all within 100 light years of earth. In addition, they will scan the entire sky to “listen” for radio messages from more distant stars. Using a computer, they will be able to monitor more than eight channels at one time. Scientists are looking for any signal that stands out from the background noise.

Of the 200 billion stars in the Milky Way galaxy (银河星系), scientists find that 5% are like our sun. Perhaps half of them have a planet like earth. Such a planet would be a reasonable distance from the star for temperatures to be right for the evolution (进化) of life. Based on the inhabitable (that can be lived in) planets in our galaxy, most scientists agree that chances are likely that one or more of these planets support some life.

However, many scientists wonder whether intelligent (智能的) life exists on other planets. Some believe that twenty years of searching without any intelligible messages shows that no one is out there. They say that the evolution of intelligence comparable to ours is unlikely.

Other scientists believe that our search hasn’t been long enough to rule out the possibility that intelligent life exists in our galaxy. Although our sun family is only about five billion years old, our galaxy is about 20 billion years old. In that time, some scientists think it is likely that civilization much more advanced than ours have developed. Perhaps these civilizations send us no signals; perhaps we have not recognized the signals they have sent us. If we hope to find intelligent life, these scientists believe that we have to keep looking.

According to the passage, how many planets in our galaxy might be inhabitable?

A. 5 billion．　　 B. 10 billion.　　         C. 15 billion.　　         D. 200 billion

The first paragraph in this passage is mainly about ________ .

A. how scientists are looking for signs of life on other planets

B. why scientists are looking for signs of life on other planets

C. where scientists are looking for signs of life on other planets

D. when scientists are looking for signs of life on other planets

Which of these statements is True based on the information in the passage?

A. The earth is one of the oldest planets in our galaxy.

B. Most scientists believe that there is intelligent life on other planets.

C. Scientists don’t believe that there might be life on other planets.

D. Scientists are trying different ways to find signs of life on other planets.

The earliest controversies about the relationship between photography and art centered on whether photograph’s fidelity to appearances and dependence on a machine allowed it to be a fine art as distinct from merely a practical art. Throughout the nineteenth century, the defence of photography was identical with the struggle to establish it as a fine art. Against the charge that photography was a soulless, mechanical copying of reality, photographers asserted that it was instead a privileged way of seeing, a revolt against commonplace vision, and no less worthy an art than painting.

Ironically, now that photography is securely established as a fine art, many photographers find it pretentious or irrelevant to label it as such. Serious photographers variously claim to be finding, recording, impartially observing, witnessing events, exploring themselves—anything but making works of art. They are no longer willing to debate whether photography is or is not a fine art, except to proclaim that their own work is not involved with art. It shows the extent to which they simply take for granted the concept of art imposed by the triumph of Modernism: the better the art, the more subversive it is of the traditional aims of art.

Photographers’ disclaimers of any interest in making art tell us more about the harried status of the contemporary notion of art than about whether photography is or is not art. For example, those photographers who suppose that, by taking pictures, they are getting away from the pretensions of art as exemplified by painting remind us of those Abstract Expressionist painters who imagined they were getting away from the intellectual austerity of classical Modernist painting by concentrating on the physical act of painting. Much of photography’s prestige today derives from the convergence of its aims with those of recent art, particularly with the dismissal of abstract art implicit in the phenomenon of Pop painting during the 1960’s. Appreciating photographs is a relief to sensibilities tired of the mental exertions demanded by abstract art. Classical Modernist painting—that is, abstract art as developed in different ways by Picasso, Kandinsky, and Matisse—presupposes highly developed skills of looking and a familiarity with other paintings and the history of art. Photography, like Pop painting, reassures viewers that art is not hard; photography seems to be more about its subjects than about art.

Photography, however, has developed all the anxieties and self-consciousness of a classic Modernist art. Many professionals privately have begun to worry that the promotion of photography as an activity subversive of the traditional pretensions of art has gone so far that the public will forget that photography is a distinctive and exalted activity—in short, an art.

What is the author mainly concerned with? The author is concerned with

[A]. defining the Modernist attitude toward art.

[B]. explaining how photography emerged as a fine art.

[C]. explaining the attitude of serious contemporary photographers toward photography as art and placing those attitudes in their historical context.

[D]. defining the various approaches that serious contemporary photographers take toward their art and assessing the value of each of those approaches.

Which of the following adjectives best describes “the concept of art imposed by the triumph of Modernism” as the author represents it in lines 12—13?

[A]. Objective [B]. Mechanical. [C]. Superficial. [D]. Paradoxical.

Why does the author introduce Abstract Expressionist painter?

[A]. He wants to provide an example of artists who, like serious contemporary photographers, disavowed traditionally accepted aims of modern art.

[B]. He wants to set forth an analogy between the Abstract Expressionist painters and classical Modernist painters.

[C]. He wants to provide a contrast to Pop artist and others.

[D]. He wants to provide an explanation of why serious photography, like other contemporary visual forms, is not and should not pretend to be an art.

How did the nineteenth-century defenders of photography stress the photography?

[A]. They stressed photography was a means of making people happy.

[B]. It was art for recording the world.

[C]. It was a device for observing the world impartially.

[D]. It was an art comparable to painting.