When I was a teenager, my dad did everything he could do to advise me against becoming a brewer(造酒人). He’d  36   his life brewing beer for local breweries only to make a living, 37    had his father and grandfather before him. He didn’t want me  38   near a vat(酿酒用的桶)of beer. So I did as he asked. I got good 39  , went to Harvard and in 1971 was accepted into a graduate program there that  40   me to study law and business at the same time.

In my second year of graduate school, I began to realize that I’d  41   done anything but go to school. So, at  24 I decided to drop out. 42  , my parents didn’t think this was a great idea. But I felt strongly that you can’t  43   till you’re 65 to do what you want in life.

I packed my stuff into a bus and headed for Colorado to become an instructor at Outward Bound. Three years later, I was ready to go back to  44  . I finished Havard and got a highly-paid job at the Boston Consulting Group Still, after working there five years, I  45  ,  “Is this what I want to be doing when I’m 50?”  At that time, Americans spent good  money on beer in  46    quality. Why not make good beer for 47  ? I thought.

I decided to give up my job to become  48  . When I told Dad, he was  49  , but in the end he  50   me. I called my beer  Samuel Adams, 51   the brewer and patriot(爱国者) who helped to start  the Boston Tea Party. 52   I sold the beer direct to beer drinkers to get  the 53   out. Six weeks later, at the Great American Beer Festival, Sam Adams Boston Lager（淡啤酒） won the top prize for American beer. In the end I was destined(注定) to be a brewer. My  54   to the young is simple: Life is very  55  , so don’t rush to make decisions. Life doesn’t let you plan.

36.A.cost B.spent    C.taken   D.paid

37.A.like B.as if     C.so D.nor

38.A.anywhere       B.anyway       C.anyhow       D.somewhere

39.A.habits     B.teachers       C.grades  D.work

40.A.promised       B.convinced    C.advised       D.allowed

41.A.never     B.ever     C.always D.hardly

42.A.Fortunatnely  B.Obviously   C.Possibly      D.Surprisingly

43.A.assure     B.decline C.deny    D.wait

44.A.school    B.Colorado     C.my home     D.my decision

45.A.thrilled   B.stressed       C.wondered    D.sneezed

46.A.cheap     B.expensive    C.low      D.high

47.A.Englishmen   B.Europeans   C.the world    D.Americans

48.A.a lawyer B.a brewer      C.an instructor       D.an engineer

49.A.astonished      B.satisfied      C.interested    D.anxious

50.A.hated      B.supported    C.raised   D.left

51.A.for  B.at C.in D.after

52.A.Therefore      B.Otherwise    C.Also    D.Yet

53.A.price      B.name   C.company     D.party

54.A.advice    B.life      C.job      D.experience

55.A.hard       B.busy    C.short    D.long

The U.S. Department of Labor statistics(统计) show that there is an oversupply of college trained workers and that this oversupply is increasing. Already there have been more than enough teachers, engineers, physicists, aerospace experts, and other specialists. Yet colleges and graduate schools continue every year to turn out highly trained people to compete for jobs that aren’t there. The result is that graduates cannot enter the professions for which they were trained and must take temporary jobs which do not require a college degree.

On the other hand, there is a great need for skilled workers of all sorts: carpenters, electricians, mechanics, plumbers, TV repairmen. These people have more work than they can deal with, and their annual incomes are often higher than those of college graduates. The old gap that white —collar workers make a better living than blue collar workers no longer holds true. The law of supply and demand now favors the skilled workmen.

The reason for this situation is the traditional myth that college degree is a passport to a prosperous future. A large part of American society matches success in life equally with a college degree. Parents begin indoctrinating(灌输) their children with this myth before they are out of grade school. High school teachers play their part by acting as if high school education were a preparation for college rather than for life. Under this pressure the kids fall in line. Whether they want to go to college or not doesn’t matter. Everybody should go to college, so of course they must go. And every year college enrollments(入学) go up and up, and more and more graduates are overeducated for the kinds of jobs available to them.

One result of this emphasis on a college education is that many people go to college who do not belong there. Of the sixty percent of high school graduates who enter college, half of them do not graduate with their class. Many of them drop out within the first year. Some struggle on for two or three years and then give up.

1. It’s implied but not stated in the passage that _______.

    A. many other countries are facing the same problem

    B. white-collar workers in the US used to make more money than blue-collar workers

    C. fewer students will prefer to go to college in the future

    D. the law of supply and demand has a strong effect on American higher education

2. Which of the following is NOT a reason why college enrollments go up every year？   

    A. Many people believe that the only way to success is a college education.

    B. Many parents want their children to go to college.

    C. High school teachers urge their students to go to college.

    D. Every young man and woman wants to go to college.

3. By saying that “many people go to college who do not belong there”, the author means that _______.

    A. many people who are not fit for college education go to college

    B. many people who do not have enough money go to college

    C. many people who go to college drop out within the first year

    D. many people who go to college have their hopes destroyed

4. We can infer from the passage that the author believes that _______.

    A. every young man and woman should go to college

    B. college education is a bad thing

    C. people with a college education should receive higher pay

    D. fewer people should go to college while more should be trained for skilled jobs

Renata Di Pietro was studying to be an opera singer. But at 23, while on a music scholarship at the University of Iowa in 1976, her sight began to fail. Soon, it became increasingly difficult to read scores and pick up hand signals from conductors, and the gifted singer was forced to drop out.

After moving to Cleveland, Georgia in 2005, Di Pietro relied on guide dogs to get around. Over the years, she became depressed when she’d lose one of the dogs, who had become her best friend, to old age or death. “It’s very painful, because you love each one,” she says.

In 2009, Di Pietro was intrigued by information from a friend that miniature horses typically live for at least 30 years and make calm and strong guides. She started with a male horse, but he was too hard to control. Angel came next, a mini white female horse Di Pietro has mostly trained herself. “Horses have the ability to avoid the things in the way,” she says. “If I am about to run into something, she slides her body in front of me.”

Di Pietro, now 59, has taught her guide horse to make some sounds with her hoof (马蹄)when she comes to stairs. “Angel can find a chair and locate the nearest door for me,” Di Pietro says. Currently, she’s training Angel to pull her wheelchair and to fetch.

Despite her disability, Di Pietro still sings, performing with her husband, musician Carl Hummer, at special events. Angel is always by her side. “I fight a battle every day to take courage to engage the world,” Di Pietro says. “Angel is my warhorse. We fight that battle together.”

1.Why did Di Pietro have to give up her studying in the university?

A.She disliked her major in music.

B.She failed to get high scores.

C.She couldn’t understand hand signals from conductors.

D.She found it difficult to see things clearly.

2.What does the underlined word “intrigued” in Paragraph 3 probably mean?

A.Puzzled.        B. Interested.        C. Satisfied.         D. Frightened.

3.Angel can do a lot of things for Di Pietro now EXCEPT_________.

A.supporting her in case of her falling

B. helping her find a chair to sit on

C. keeping her company every day

D. fighting with her against others

4.Which of the following can best describe the author?

A.Caring and strong-minded.               B. Honest and responsible.

C. Kind and helpful.                      D. Ambitious and sensitive.

How far would you be willing to go to satisfy your need to know? Far enough to find out your possibility of dying from a terrible disease? These days that’s more than an academic question, as Tracy Smith reports in our Cover Story.

There are now more than a thousand genetic tests, for everything from baldness to breast cancer, and the list is growing. Question is, do you really want to know what might eventually kill you? For instance, Nobel Prize-winning scientist James Watson, one of the first people to map their entire genetic makeup, is said to have asked not to be told if he were at a higher risk for Alzheimer’（老年痴呆症）.

“If I tell you that you have an increased risk of getting a terrible disease, that could weigh on your mind and make you anxious, through which you see the rest of your life as you wait for that disease to hit you. It could really mess you up.” Said Dr. Robert Green, a Harvard geneticist.

“Every ache and pain,” Smith suggested, “could be understood as the beginning of the end.” “That ’s right. If you ever worried you were at risk for Alzheimer’s disease, then every time you can’t find your car in the parking lot, you think the disease has started.”

Dr. Green has been thinking about this issue for years. He led a study of people who wanted to know if they were at a higher genetic risk for Alzheimer’s. It was thought that people who got bad news would, for lack of a better medical term, freak out. But Green and his team found that there was “no significant difference” between how people handled good news and possibly the worst news of their lives. In fact, most people think they can handle it. People who ask for the information usually can handle the information, good or bad, said Green.

1.Which of the following is true about James Watson？

A．He doesn’t want to know his chance of getting a disease.

B．He is strongly in favor of the present genetic tests.

C．He believes genetic mapping can help cure any disease.

D．He is more likely to suffer from Alzheimer’s disease.

2.The first paragraph is meant to__________.

A．ask some questions                      B．satisfy readers’ curiosity

C．introduce the topic                      D．describe an academic fact

3.According to Paragraphs 3 and 4, if a person is at a higher genetic risk, it is__________.

A．necessary to remove his anxiety            B．impossible to hide his disease

C．better to inform him immediately           D．advisable not to let him know

4.The underlined part “freak out” in Paragraph 5 is closest in meaning to“_________”.

A．leave off          B．break down        C．drop out          D．turn away

5.The study led by Dr. Green indicates that people__________.

A．can accept some bad news                B．tend to find out the truth

C．prefer to hear good news                 D．have the right to be informed

John Denver has got international fame as a pop star, songwriter, actor and environmental activist ( 环境保护者). Songs like Take Me Home, Country Road, Rocky
Mountain High and Annie's Song have become very popular. But less than thirty years ago, John Denver was a young man with little more than a fine voice, a guitar, and a dream. Growing up in conservative (保守的) family, he was not believed to drop out of college and head to Los Angeles, where the music scene was flowering. Nor was he believed to succeed.
In Take Me Home, John Denver talked about the story that shaped his life, with the story of the rich inner journey of a shy Midwestern boy. With honesty and cleverness, he wrote about his childhood, the feeling of moving to Los Angeles as the 60s came, his first lucky breaks, his first songwriting success with leaving on a Jet Plane and finally got a world fame.
He also wrote about his relationship with his first and second wife, as well as his parents, his children, his partners through his life and his friends.
Honest and rich in the book that only a natural-born storyteller could write so well, Take Me Home is very good from the beginning to the end. It's like spending a few days with a good friend.
【小题1】This passage is probably about         .