Several years ago, while attending a communication course, I experienced a most unusual process. The instructor asked us to list__36__ in our past that we felt __37__ of, regretted, or incomplete about and read our lists aloud.
This seemed like a very __38__ process, but there’s always some __39__soul in the crowd who will volunteer. The instructor then __40__ that we find ways to __41__ people, or take some action to right any wrong doings. I was seriously wondering how this could ever __42__ my communication.
Then the man next to me raised his hand and volunteered this story: “Making my__43__, I remembered an incident from high school. I grew up in a small town. There was a Sheriff __44__ of us kids liked. One night, my two buddies（同伴） and I decided to play a __45__ on him.
After drinking a few beers, we climbed the tall water tank in the middle of the town, and wrote on the tank in bright red paint: Sheriff Brown is a s.o.b. (畜生). The next day, almost the whole town saw our glorious __46__. Within two hours, Sheriff Brown had us in his office. My friends told the truth but I lied. No one __47__ found out.”
“Nearly 20 years later, Sheriff Brown’s name __48__ on my list. I didn’t even know if he was still __49__. Last weekend, I dialed the information in my hometown and found there was a Roger Brown still listed. I tried his number. After a few __50__, I heard, “Hello?” I said, “Sheriff Brown?” Paused. “Yes.” “Well, this is Jimmy Calkins.”
“And I want you to know that I did it.” Paused. “I knew it!” he yelled back. We had a good laugh and a __51__ discussion. His closing words were: “Jimmy, I always felt bad for you __52__ your buddies got it off their chest, but you were carrying it __53__ all these years. I want to thank you for calling me...for your sake.”
Jimmy inspired me to __54__all 101 items on my list within two years, and I always remember what I learned from the course: It’s never too late to __55__the past wrongdoings.

On Halloween Night, children go trick-treating in their neighborhoods. Dressed up as ghosts, skeleton devils, and various other characters, children knock on doors to collect their treats. Seldom do they actually perform a “trick”.

It is thought that trick-or-treating comes from an old English custom. On All Souls Day, poor people went begging and promised to say prayers in exchange for food. Apple bobbing, still a favorite Halloween game, was originally an ancient ceremony honoring the harvest time.

A jack-o’-lantern is placed on porches and windows to tell children that treats are available. The legend was that a man named Jack could enter heaven because he played tricks on the devil. As punishment, he had to wander the earth carrying a lantern waiting to be judged fit to get into heaven.

People believed that Halloween marked the connection between the world of the living and the world of the dead. This meant that ghosts would roam the earth on this night. Some believed that these ghosts would go back to the homes they lived in before they died.

Thankfully, Halloween is an amusing night when children can dress up and get a bag full of candy. We don’t have to worry about ghosts. Or do we?

1.Apple bobbing was an ancient ceremony held originally to ____.

A. honor the harvest time               B. honor the dead

C. honor the living                    D. play a trick on each other

2.The underlined word “roam” is close in meaning to ____.

A. come back        B. place         C. collect       D. walk around

3.Which of the following is not true?

A. On Halloween Night, children often dress up as ghosts.

B. On Halloween Night, children often perform tricks.

C,. Trick-or-treating comes from an old English custom.

D. Children can get a lot of candy on Halloween Night.

4.According to the passage, Halloween is a(n) ____ festival.

A. sad               B. bad          C. interesting    D. boring

第三部分：阅读理解（共20小题；每小题2分，满分40分）
Before the mid 1860’s, the impact of the railroads in the United States was limited, in the sense that the tracks ended at this Missouri River, approximately the center of the country. At the point the trains turned their freight, mail, and passengers over to steamboats, wagons, and stagecoaches. This meant that wagon freighting, stagecoaching, and steamboating did not come to an end when the first train appeared; rather they became supplements or feeders. Each new “end of track” became a center for animal drawn or waterborne transportation. The major effect of the railroad was to shorten the distance that had to be covered by the older, slower, and more costly means. Wagon freighters continued operating throughout the 1870’s and 1880’s and into the 1890’s. Although over constantly shrinking routes, and coaches and wagons continued to crisscross the West wherever the rails had not yet been laid. The beginning of a major change was foreshadowed in the later 1860’s, when the Union Pacific Railroad at last began to build westward from the Central Plains city of Omaha to meet the Central Pacific Railroad advancing eastward from California through the formidable barrier of the Sierra Nevada. Although President Abraham Lincoln signed the original Pacific Railroad bill in 1862 and a revised, financially much more generous version in 1864, little construction was completed until 1865 on the Central Pacific and 1866 on the Union Pacific. The primary reason was skepticism that a Railroad built through so challenging and thinly settled a stretch of desert, mountain, and semiarid plain could pay a profit. In the words of an economist, this was a case of “premature enterprise”, where not only the cost of construction but also the very high risk deterred private investment. In discussing the Pacific Railroad bill, the chair of the congressional committee bluntly stated that without government subsidy no one would undertake so unpromising a venture; yet it was a national necessity to link East and West together. ?
61. The author refers to the impact of railroads before the late 1860’s as “limited” because
A. the track did not take the direct route from one city to the next?
B. passengers and freight had to transfer to other modes of transportation to reach western destinations              C. passengers preferred stagecoaches
D. railroad travel was quite expensive
62. What can be inferred about coaches and wagon freighters as the railroad expanded?
A. They developed competing routes.
B. Their drivers refused to work for the railroads.?
C. They began to specialize in private investment.?
D. There were insufficient numbers of trained people to operate them.
63.  Why does the author mention the Sierra Nevada in line 17? ?
A. To argue that a more direct route to the West could have been taken.??
B. To identify a historically significant mountain range in the West.?
C. To point out the location of a serious train accident.?
D. To give an example of an obstacle faced by the central pacific.   
64.  The word “subsidy” in line 27 is closest in meaning to_____.?
A. persuasion             B. financing              C. explanation           D. penalty ?

Hee-haw! Scores of farms across the country are opening up to overnight guests. The best have all the appeal of a first-rate inn ----- plus here a moo, there a moo.

Sure, you and your kids plan to conquer the theme parks. In the meanwhile, why not make a little hay? Farm stays are fast becoming the great American alternative to the pre-packaged vacation.

LIBERTY HILL FARM

Rochester, Vt.; 802/767-3926; www.libertyhillfarm.com. Adults$75, teens $50,kids 12 and under $35, including breakfast and dinner; shared baths.

Beth and Bob Kennett run a farm straight out of a storybook. You’ll find Beth in the kitchen, rolling out dough（生面团） for a pie. Bob’s busy with other work. Guests sleep in seven sunny bedrooms right in the farmhouse and can participate in any of the farm jobs. Maybe you and your kids won’t be up at 6 a.m. to meet the milk truck, but you can help with the milking twice a day, collect eggs, and pick sweet corn and wild blackberries in season.

HULL-O FARM

Durham, N.Y.; 518/239-6950; www.hull-o.com; Adults $110, kids 10—14 $60, 5—9 $50, 2—4 $35, under 2 free, including breakfast and dinner; private baths.

It started in 1993 as a way to bring in some extra money at a time of falling milk prices. But soon after Frank and Sherry Hull opened their Catskill Mountains dairy farm to overnight visitors, they discovered they loved it. As you drive up, Sherry greets you on the porch（入口处）of the 1825 farmhouse with a cow-shaped cookie jar. Before long your kids are playing around with the cows, sheep, ducks, goats and getting ready for a hayride（乘坐装满干草的牛车出游）.

MERAMEC FARM CABINS

Bourbon, Mo.; 573/732-4765; http://www.wine-mo.com Doubles with private bath $75, $10 per additional person. Trail and riding fees extra.

Climb onto the back of the Ford pickup and catch up with the herd. One gentle cow named Cricket will even let the kids sit on her back. At the barn（牲口棚）, Carol will introduce you to the horses ---15 Missouri Fox Trotters --- and lead you on a trail ride over the hills and down along the spring-fed Meramec River, where everyone swims. Grab a fishing pole and head back to the river. When you have your fill of the wild, try Carol and Dave’s favorite restaurants or wineries（酿酒厂）, within 20 miles of the farm.

The underlined sentence in the first paragraph implies that ___________.

A. you can enjoy the best cuisine at the first rate restaurant

B. some farm provide country experiences as well as good accommodations

C. farm work is hard, but you can enjoy it a lot, playing with the animals

D. if you want to hear a cow’s cry, please stay on a best farm

We can learn from the three ads that _____________.

A. Hull-O Farm was not built for overnight visitors

B. Frank and Sherry Hull run a farm out of a storybook

C. kids can sit on a gentle cow’s back on Hull-O Farm

D. you can’t milk a cow if you get up late on Liberty Hill Farm

The Browns have a 13-year-old son and 11-year-old daughter. If they stay on Liberty Hill Farm for one night, how much will they pay?

A. $175.                B. $220.                C. $235.                D. $250.

Who will be most likely interested in the webpage?

A. Kids who want to find pleasure in the theme parks.

B. People who expect to be employed on the farm.

C. Researchers who are interested in raising cows on farms.

D. Those who plan to have family vacations on working farms.

The painter Georgia O’keeffe was born in Wisconsin in 1887 and grew up on her family’s farm. At seventeen she decided she wanted to be an artist and left the farm for schools in Chicago and New York, but she never lost her bond with the land. Like most painters, O’Keeffe painted the things that were most important to her, and nearly all her works are simplified portrayals of nature.
O’Keeffe became famous when her paintings were discovered and exhibited in New York by the photographer Levered Stieglitz, whom she married in 1924. During a visit to New York in 1929, O’Keeffe was so moved by the bleak（荒凉的） landscape and broad skies of the Western desert that she began to paint its images. Cows’ skulls and other bleached（变白的） bones found in the desert figured prominently（突出的） in her paintings. When her husband died in 1946, she moved to New Mexico permanently and used the horizon lines of the desert, colorful flowers, rocks, barren(贫瘠的) hills, and the sky as subjects for her paintings. Although O’Keeffe painted her best known works in the 1920’s, 1930’s and 1940’s, she continued to produce tributes（贡品、颂词） to the Western desert until her death in 1986.
O’Keeffe is widely considered to have been a pioneering American modernist painter. While most early modern American artists were strongly influenced by European art, O’Keeffe’s position was more independent. She established her own vision and preferred to view her painting as a private endeavor. Almost from the beginning, her work was more indentifiably American than that of her contemporaries in its simplified and idealized treatment of color, light, space, and natural forms.
【小题1】 Which of the following best tells what this passage is about ?