B

When you’re lying on the white sands of the Mexican Riviera, the stresses(压力) of the world seem a million miles away. Hey, stop! This is no vacation-you have to finish something!

Here lies the problem for travel writer and tood critic(评论家),Edie Jarolim “I always loved traveling and always liked to eat, but it never occurred to me that I could make money doing both of those things,” Jarolim said. Now you can read her travel advice everywhere in Arts and Antiques, in Brides, or in one of her there books, The Complate Idiot’s Travel Guide to Mexican Beach Resarts.

……writing began some eight years ago. After getting a PhD in English in Canada, she took a

Test Frommer’s travel guides, passed it, and got the job. After working at Frommer’s, Jarolim worked

for a while at Rough Guides in London, then Fodor’s, where she fell so in love with a description of the Southwest of the U.S. that she moved there.

Now as a travel writer, she spends one-third of her year on the road. The rest of the time is spent completing her tasks and writing reviews of restaurants at home in Tucson, Arigona.

As adventurous as the job sounds, the hard part is fact-checking all the information. Sure, it’s great to write about a tourist attraction, but you’d better get the local(当地的)museum hours correct or you could really ruin someone’s vacation.

46. Which country does Jarolim live in now?

A．Mexico    B．The U.S.    C．The U.K.    D．Canada

47. What is most difficrlt for Jarolim?

A．Working in different places to collect information

B．Checking all the facts to be written in the guides

C．Finishing her work as soon as possible

D．Passing a test to write travel guides

48. What do we know about Jarllim from the text?

A．She is successful in her job

B．She finds her life full of stresses

 C．She spends half of her time traveling

D．She is especially interested in museums

49. What would be the best title for the text?

A．Adventures in Travel Writing

B．Working as a Food Critic

C．Travel Guides on the Market

D．Vacationing for a Living

B

When you’re lying on the white sands of the Mexican Riviera, the stresses(压力) of the world seem a million miles away. Hey, stop! This is no vacation-you have to finish something!

Here lies the problem for travel writer and tood critic(评论家),Edie Jarolim “I always loved traveling and always liked to eat, but it never occurred to me that I could make money doing both of those things,” Jarolim said. Now you can read her travel advice everywhere in Arts and Antiques, in Brides, or in one of her there books, The Complate Idiot’s Travel Guide to Mexican Beach Resarts.

……writing began some eight years ago. After getting a PhD in English in Canada, she took a

Test Frommer’s travel guides, passed it, and got the job. After working at Frommer’s, Jarolim worked

for a while at Rough Guides in London, then Fodor’s, where she fell so in love with a description of the Southwest of the U.S. that she moved there.

Now as a travel writer, she spends one-third of her year on the road. The rest of the time is spent completing her tasks and writing reviews of restaurants at home in Tucson, Arigona.

As adventurous as the job sounds, the hard part is fact-checking all the information. Sure, it’s great to write about a tourist attraction, but you’d better get the local(当地的)museum hours correct or you could really ruin someone’s vacation.

46. Which country does Jarolim live in now?

A．Mexico    B．The U.S.    C．The U.K.    D．Canada

47. What is most difficrlt for Jarolim?

A．Working in different places to collect information

B．Checking all the facts to be written in the guides

C．Finishing her work as soon as possible

D．Passing a test to write travel guides

48. What do we know about Jarllim from the text?

A．She is successful in her job

B．She finds her life full of stresses

C．She spends half of her time traveling

D．She is especially interested in museums

49. What would be the best title for the text?

A．Adventures in Travel Writing

B．Working as a Food Critic

C．Travel Guides on the Market

D．Vacationing for a Living

B

When I asked my daughter which item she would keep; the phone, the car, the cooker, the computer, the TV, or her boyfriend, she said “the phone”. Personally, I couldn’t do without the phone entirely, which makes me unusual, Because the telephone is changing our lives more than any other piece of technology.

Point 1 The telephone creates the need to communicate, in the same way that more roads create more traffic. My daughter comes home from school at 4:00 pm and then spends an hour on the phone talking to the very people she has been with at school all day. If the phone did not exist, would she have anything to talk about?

Point 2 The mobile phone means that we are never alone. “The mobile saved my life,” says Crystal Johnstone. She had an accident in her Volvo on the A45 between Otley and Skipton. Trapped inside, she managed to make the call that brought the ambulance to her rescue.

Point 3 The mobile removes our secret. It allows marketing manager of Haba Deutsch, Carl Nicolaisen, to ring his sales staff all round the world at any time of day to ask where they are , where they are going, and how their last meeting went.

Point 4 The telephone separates us. Antonella Bramante in Rome says, “We worked in separate offices but I could see him through the window. It was easy to get his number. We were so near——but we didn’t meet for the first two weeks!”

Point 5 The telephone allows us to reach out beyond our own lives. Today we can talk to several complete strangers simultaneously (同时地) on chat lines (at least my daughter does. I wouldn’t know what to talk about). We can talk across the world. We can even talk to astronauts (if you know any) while they’re space-walking. And, with the phone line hooked up to the computer, we can access the Internet, the biggest library on Earth.

45．How do you understand ‘Point 1 —The telephone creates the need to communicate,…’？

       A．People don’t communicate without telephone. 

B．People communicate because of the creating of the telephone.

       C．People communicate more since telephone has been created.

 D．People communicate more because of more traffic.

46．Which points do you think support the idea that phones improve people’s life?

a．Point 1．  b．Point2．   c．Point3．   d．Point 4．   e．Point 5．

A．c, d B．a, e   C．a, c   D．b, e

47．It is possible to talk to several complete strangers simultaneously through        .

       A．the TV screen               B．a fax machine     

       C．the phone line hooked up to the computer     D．a microphone

48．The best heading for the passage is .

       A．Phone Power                  B．Kinds of Phone 

C． How to Use Phones           D．Advantage of Phones

B

When I was a boy, my father told me that he could do anything he wanted to. Dad said that he wanted to be the first to develop color prints in our city. And so he did.

When I was 16，Dad looked closely at the violin I played and announced that he want to make one. He read about violinmaking，and then became a violinmaker at the age of 43. He bought the tools and materials，opened a small store and set Mom up as the shopkeeper，while he worked at a local company. He retired from the company 17 years later and continued to make violins and other instruments.

Dad often guessed why the Stradivarius violins sound so beautiful. Some experts claimed that it was the unique varnish(油漆)that gave those instruments their beautiful sound. Dad argued that chemists could analyze the varnish—if that were the answer.

One of Dad’s friends asked him once which kind of wood was used to make violins. When Dad explained that the top was made of spruce(云杉)，his friend said that he had an old piece of spruce Dad might be interested in.

He worked for the next 12 months making a violin from the wood that his friend had given him. It proved to be a superior violin and it would become Dad’s masterpiece. He was convinced that the secret of the Stradivarius sound was in the wood itself.

Later，the instrument was stolen. Dad’s spirit was broken by the robbery, and he stopped making instruments. But he kept the music shop until he was 80 years old, selling guitars and violins.

My father has been gone for 14 years now. The violin has been missing for more than 25 years. Somewhere a musician is playing a late-20th-century violin with an excellent tone. The owner today may never understand why this ordinary-looking violin sounds so much like Stradivarius.    

45. The author mentions his father’s developing color prints____________.

A. to show that his father’s real interest was not in making violins

B. to prove that his father could do anything he wanted to

C. to give an example proving that his father was an inventor

D. to describe the real thing that made the author believe his father

46. What did the author's father think about Stradivarius violins?

A. The varnish was different from the others.

B. The way of making them was special.

C. The wood of the violins was special.

D. They could only be analyzed by chemists.

47. From the underlined sentence, we can learn that the author’s father________.

A. 1iked the violin very much

B. got crazy after this happened

C. 1ost interest in instruments

D. didn't want to become famous

48. We can infer from the last paragraph that the author __________ .

A. really hates the thief

B. misses his father a 1ot

C. really wants to play the violin

D. wonders who’s playing the violin now

When a group of children politely stop a conversation with you, saying: “We have to go to work now,” you’re left feeling surprised and certainly uneasy. After all, this is the 1990s and the idea of children working is just unthinkable. That is, until you are told that they are all pupils of stage schools, and that the “work” they go off to is to go on the stage in a theatre.

　　Stage schools often act as agencies（代理机构）to supply children for stage and television work. More worthy of the name “stage school” are those few places where children attend full time, with a training for the theatre and a general education.

　　A visit to such schools will leave you in no doubt that the children enjoy themselves. After all, what lively children wouldn’t settle for spending only half the day doing ordinary school work, and acting, singing or dancing their way through the other half of the day?

　Then of course there are times for the children to make a name and make a little money in some big shows. Some stage schools give their children too much professional work at such a young age. But the law is very tight on the amount they can do. Those under 13 are limited to 40 days in the year; those over 13 to 80 days.

　The schools themselves admit that not all children will be successful in the profession for which they are being trained. So what happens to those who don’t make it? While all the leading schools say they place great importance on children getting good study results, the facts seem to suggest this is not always the case.

　People would stop feeling uneasy when realizing that the children they’re talking to________.

　　  A. attend a stage school　　　　  B. are going to the theatre

　　  C. have got some work to do 　　  D. love singing and dancing

　　 In the writer’s opinion, a good stage school should ________.

　　  A. produce star performers

　　  B. help pupils improve their study skills

　　  C. train pupils in language and performing arts

　　  D. provide a general education and stage training.

　“Professional work” as used in the text means ________.

　　  A. ordinary school work　　　　　  B. money-making performances

　　  C. stage training at school 　 　  D. acting, singing or dancing after class

　 Which of the following best describes how the writer feels about stage schools?

　　  A. He thinks highly of what they have to offer.　　　　

　　  B. He favours an early start in the training of performing arts.

　　  C. He feels uncomfortable about children putting on night shows.

　　  D. He doubts the standard of ordinary education they have reached.