Dear Mom and Dad,

I'm afraid I have some very bad news for you. I have been very naughty and the school master is very angry with me. She is going to write to you. You must come and take me away from here. She does not want me in the school any longer. The trouble started last night when I was smoking a cigarette in bed. As I was smoking, I heard footsteps coming towards the room .I did not want a teacher to catch me smoking, so I threw the cigarette away. Unfortunately, the cigarette fell into the waste-paper basket. It caught fire.

There was a curtain near the waste-paper basket. It caught fire too. Soon the whole room was burning. The master phoned the fire brigade. The school is a long way from the town and before the fire brigade arrived, the whole school was on fire. The master said that the fire was all my fault and I must pay for the damage. She will send you a bill for about a million dollars.

I'm very sorry for this.

                                                 Much love   

                                                       Sarah     

1.Why did Sarah write to his parents?

A．He missed them very much for they hadn’t seen each other for a long time.

B．He told his parents what he had done in school.                              

C．He was tired of studying, and wanted to leave school.

D．He thought he was old enough to help them do something.

2. Where did Sarah smoke?

A．In the classroom  B．In the Dinning hall  

C．In the street                       D．In the dormitory

3. Why was the school master angry with him?

A．Because he was too naughty      

B．Because he was too lazy

C．Because he caused a big fire                          

D．Because he stole something from the school

4.According to the passage, what should the students not do?

A．They should not smoke, because smoking is dangerous to them

B．They should not dance, because dancing would waste a lot of money

C．They should not make friends, because making friends would take them absent

D．They should not wear expensive clothes because they would waste a lot of money

I was working as a consultant in a beer company, helping the president and senior vice-presidents form and carry out their new planning projects. It was really a great challenge.
At the same time, my mother was in the final stages of cancer.
I worked during the day and drove 40 miles home to be with her every night. It was tiring and stressful, but it was what I wanted to do. My commitment was to continue to do excellent consulting during the day, even though my evenings were very hard. I didn’t want to bother the president with my situation, yet I felt someone at the company needed to know what was going on. So I told the vice-president of Human Resources, asking him not to share the information with anyone.
A few days later, the president called me into his office.
I figured he wanted to talk to me about one of the many issues we were working on. When I entered, he asked me to sit down. He faced me from across his large desk, looked at me in the eye and said, “I hear your mother is very ill”.
I was totally caught by surprise and burst into tears. He just looked at me, let my crying subside(平息), and then gently said a sentence I will never forget: whatever you need.
That was it. His understanding and his willingness to both let me be in my pain and to offer me everything were qualities of sympathy（同情）that I carry with me to this day.
【小题1】When the author was working in a beer company, his mother        .

Benjamin Franklin was born on January 17,1706 in Boston，America. In his life he built a successful printing and publishing business in Philadelphia；he conducted scientific studies of electricity and made several important discoveries；he was a diplomat (外交官) and statesman；he helped establish Pennsylvania’s first university and America’s first city hospital；he also organized the country’s first subscription library (收费图书馆)．

Franklin was also unequaled in America as an inventor until Thomas Edison. Ben had poor eyesight  and needed glasses to read. He got tired of always taking them off and putting them back on，so he decided to figure out a way to make his glasses let him see both near and far. He had two pairs of glasses cut in half and put half of them together. Today，we call them bifocals (双光眼镜)．Another invention of his，an iron stove，allowed people to warm their homes.

He loved to learn about new things. He also thought it was important to make life better with the things that he invented. Electricity was one of the things he experimented with when he retired from his business. Ben discovered that lightning (闪电) and electricity were the same thing. The lightning rod was an important invention that we still use today to protect buildings and ships from lightning damage.

Franklin preferred to have his inventions used freely for the comfort and convenience of everyone. Thomas Jefferson，the third president of America，called Benjamin Franklin “the greatest man of the age and country in which he lived”．To Benjamin Franklin there was no greater purpose in life than to “live usefully”．

1.Benjamin Franklin was NOT a________.

A．diplomat                              B．scientist

C．businessman                           D．president

2.The underlined word “unequaled” in Paragraph 2 means________.

A．better than any other                    B．worse than any other

C．the same as others                      D．confident as others

3.Which of the following is NOT Benjamin’s invention?

A．Bifocals.                              B．The iron stove.

C．Printing.                              D．The lightning rod.

4.What was Benjamin Franklin’s purpose in life?

A．To live comfortably every day.

B．To be useful to others.

C．To be a famous person in the world.

D．To earn a lot by inventing things.

E
Edwin Powell Hubble was born in 1889 in Marshfield , Missouri . He spent his early years in the state of Kentucky . Then he moved with his family to Chicago , Illinois . He attended the University of Chicago . He studied mathematics and astronomy .
He was a member of the University of Chicago championship basketball team in 1909 . He was also an excellent boxer . Several people urged him to train for the world heavyweight boxing championship after college . Instead , he decided to continue his studies . He went to Queen’s College at Oxford , England . At Oxford , Hubble studied law . He was interested in British Common Law , because his family had come to America from England many years before . He spent 7 years at Oxford .
In 1913 , Hubble returned to the United States . He opened a law office in Louisville , Kentucky . After a short time , however , he decided he did not want to be a lawyer . He returned to the University of Chicago . There , once again , he studied astronomy .
Hubble watched the night sky with instruments at the university’s Yerkes Observatory . His research involved a major question astronomers could not answer : What are nebulae（星云）?
In his research paper , Hubble said the issue could be decided only by more powerful instruments . And those instruments had not yet been developed .
Soon after , Hubble bagan working with a larger and more powerful telescope at Mount Wilson . Its mirror was 250 centimeters across . It was the most powerful telescope in the world for 25 years .It had the power Hubble needed to make his major discoveries .
From 1922 on , Edwin Hubble began examining more and more distant objects . His first great discovery was made when he recognized a Cepheid variable star . It was in the outer area of the great nebula called Andromeda . Cepheid variable stars are stars whose brightness changes at regular periods .
Hubble’s discovery ended a long dispute . He proved wrong those who believed nebulae lay inside the Millky Way . And he proved that nebulae were galaxies themselves . Astronomers now agree that far distant galaxies do exist .
72. Why did Hubble close his law office ?
A. Because it could not bring him fortune .
B. Because he was tired of office work .
C. Because he wanted to be devoted to astronomy .
D. Because he couldn’t control himself sometimes .
73. The larger and more powerful telescope at Mount Wilson_______.
A. belonged to the state of Kentucky
B. was once the most powerful
C. cost Hubble all his money
D. was of little help to Hubble’s research
74. Which of the following statements is NOT true about Edwin Powell Hubble ?
A. He studied law for three years at Oxford , England .
B. He corrected people’s wrong idea about nebulae .
C. He made some important discoveries at Mount Wilson .
D. He showed little interest in sports while studying astronomy at college .
75. Cepheid variable stars’ brightness can be described as__________.
A. changeable       B. fixed          C. weak           D. colorful

I shall never forget the night, a few years ago, when Marion J. Douglas was a student in one of my adult-education classes. He told us how tragedy had struck at his home, not once, but twice. The first time he had lost his five-year-old daughter. He and his wife thought they couldn’t bear that first loss; but, as he said, “Ten months later, God gave us another little girl and she died in five days.”

This double bereavement was almost too much to bear. “I couldn’t take it,” this father told us. “I couldn’t sleep, eat, rest or relax. My nerves were entirely shaken and my confidence gone.” At last he went to the doctors: one recommended sleeping pills and another recommended a trip, but neither helped. He said, “My body felt as if it was surrounded in a vice(大钳子), and the jaws of the vice were being drawn tighter and tighter.” The tension of grief(悲伤) --- if you have ever been paralyzed(使瘫痪) by sorrow, you know what the meant.

“But thank God, I had one child left --- a four-year-old son. He gave me the solution to the problem. One afternoon as I sat around feeling sorry for myself, he asked, ‘Daddy, will you build a boat for me?’ I was in no mood to build a boat; in fact, I was in no mood to do anything. But my son is a persistent fellow! I had to give in. Building that toy boat took me about three hours. By the time it was finished, I realized that those three hours spent building that boat were first hours of mental relaxation and peace that I had had in months! I realized that it is difficult to worry while you are busy doing something that requires planning and thinking. In my case, building the boat had knocked worry out of the ring. So I determined to keep busy.”

“The following night, I made a list of jobs that ought to be done. Scores of items needed to be repaired. Amazingly, I had made a list of 242 items that needed attention. During the last two years I have completed most of them. I am so busy now that I have no time for worry.”

No time for worry! That is exactly what Winston Churchill said when he was working eighteen hours a day at the height of the war. When he was asked if he worried about his huge responsibilities, he said, “I am too busy. I have no time for worry.”

The underlined word “bereavement” in the second paragraph refers to _________.

Marion felt his body as if it was caught in a vice because _________.

Marion made a list of over 200 items that needed to be repaired because _________.

At the end of the passage, the author wrote about Winston Churchill in order to ________.

D. make it clear how his conclusion was reached