According to US research, it can take up to ten years to become a near-native English speaker. Asian and Spanish students took between five and ten years to reach native speaker performance in English-only schools. Fluency obviously doesn’t happen overnight. But time can definitely make you a better speaker.

After testing his own memory, German psychologist Hermann Ebbinghaus discovered that humans forget most of what they learn in the first 20 minutes.

So cramming right before a speaking exam is not likely to be as effective as practicing regularly over time. The more you practice, the more familiar new words will become. In the classroom, studies have also shown that repeating oral tasks improves a speaker’s performance.

One of the best repetition exercises is the 4/3/2 technique. Speakers give the same talk to three different listeners with a progressive decrease in delivery time, starting at four minutes, then three, and finally two minutes. This exercise has been proven to help learners speak faster. It can also result in less hesitation and more grammatical accuracy. While time dose make a difference when it comes to speaking perfect English, it would not hurt to brush up on your other language skills.

Studies have also shown that reading can increase your speaking vocabulary. After one month of an extensive reading program, a 27-year-old student of French became more familiar with 65 percent of the new words.

Aside from choosing the right learning methods, having certain personality traits may also help. US linguistics expert Stephen Krashen believes those with high motivation, self-confidence and a low level of anxiety are better equipped for speaking success.

Krashen says students who don’t have these qualities are more likely to have a “mental block”. “Even if they understand the message, the input will not reach the part of the brain responsible for language acquisition,” he writes in his book Principles and Practice in second Language Acquisition.

1.According to the passage, if you want to be a near-native speaker, you need _____.

2.The author put forward the 4/3/2 technique just to show that _____.

3.The example of a 27-year-old student of French in the passage mainly means that _____.

4.The underlined phrase “linguistics expert” means a person who is quite expert at _____.

第二部分：阅读理解（共两节，满分50分）
第一节 阅读下列短文，从每题所给的四个选项（A、B、C、D）中，选出最佳选项，并在答题卡上将该项涂黑。（共20小题；每小题2分，满分40分）
A
Michael Phelps and his U.S. teammates crowned the greatest single Olympic performance Sunday morning with a win in the 4×100－meter medley relay(混合泳接力).
The victory gave Phelps his eighth gold medal of the Beijing Olympics, the most golds ever won by an athlete at one Games. With gold No. 8, Phelps earned an unusual place in the Olympic record books.
"There is no comparison in the swimming world for what Michael has done," said Gregg Troy, coach of U.S. swimmer Ryan Lochte, who finished third to Phelps in two races here in Beijing but also won gold alongside him in the 4×200－meter freestyle relay. It's hard to find comparisons even in the sports world overall. Phelps is solidly in the company of seemingly undefeatable superstars such as Michael Jordan and Tiger Woods.
"I think years and years down the road we'll realize more and more how amazing he is and how special he really is." U. S. teammate Natalie Coughlin said. The 23－year－old from Baltimore capped a brilliant meet at the Water Cube. He set a world record in every event aside from the 100 butterfly which he narrowly won on Saturday, completing a program of 17 races in nine days.
Phelps has won 14 Olympic gold medals and 16 total medals. He holds the record for most medals won by a man, surpassing Soviet gymnast Nikolai Andrianov, who won 15 from 1972－1980. Soviet female gymnast Larysa Latynina holds the record with 18.
At the 2004 Athens Games, Phelps won six gold medals and two bronze. He has already said he'll swim in the 2012 London Games. Phelps' victories in Beijing include: 200－meter freestyle, 200 and 400 individual medleys, 100 and 200 butterfly, 4×200 free relay, 4×100 medley relay, and 4×100 free relay.
41．Which of the following would be the best title for the text?
A．Phelps Plans To Attend 2012 London Games
B．Phelps Wins 4×100－meter Medley Relay
C．Phelps Writes Games Gold History
D．Phelps Finishes His Competitions
42．Why are Michael Jordan and Tiger Woods mentioned in the 3rd paragraph?
A．To memorize the two heroes' contributions to the world.
B．To indicate Phelps' great efforts to his championship.
C．To attract the world's attention to the young Phelps.
D．To emphasize Phelps' unique position in swimming.
43．Which of the following is true of Phelps?
A．Phelps has got the most gold medals in Beijing Olympic.
B．Phelps has won 18 Olympic gold medals till now.
C．Phelps won 8 gold medals at the Athens Games.
D．Phelps defeated Nikolai Andrianov in Beijing.
44．It can be inferred from the text that __________.
A．Phelps is a swimming genius by nature
B．Phelps succeeded in Athens at the age of 18
C．Phelps has won the most golds all by himself
D．Phelps will have a brilliant future in the 2012 London Games

When Alice started to cycle home from Jenny’s house, she wasn’t nervous. She was certainly not afraid of the dark.  31 , it was only a 15-minute ride home. But halfway there, she began to wish that she hadn’t been so   32 .
As she rounded a sharp bend, it suddenly   33  cold－very cold. Alice’s breath became puffs of white cloud and her legs were so cold that it became hard to ride.
With her heart beating fast, she struggled so hard to move   34  that she didn’t hear the car which suddenly appeared beside her. She stopped by the road. The big black car also   35 . Slowly, the passenger-window began to slide down. Alice held her breath. In the soft light inside the car, something   36 . Then, the light brightened and Alice was staring at a sweet, grey-haired old lady. “Hello, dear,” said the old lady. “I need   37 . I’m afraid I’m lost. I need to find the nearest airport. I must be there in the next five minutes. ”
“Airport? You   38  are lost,” Alice said. “You need to go back five kilometers   39  you reach the T-junction. Turn left and  40 for about another 10 kilometers to the main highway. From there, just follow the 41 to the airport. But I’m afraid there’s no  42 you’ll get there in five minutes!”
“Thank you very much, dear.” replied the old lady. “Don’t worry—I’ll  43 in  time. ”
The  44 moved up and the car started off. A little way ahead, it  45 and with headlights flashing, it drove past Alice. But then, something  46 happened. The car began changing. First, its color  47 from black to silvery- grey.  And then the wheels began disappearing, but the car continued to move forward,  48 just above the ground. As the car  49 into the dark sky, the big red tail-lights grew larger and larger and glowed more and more brightly. With a faint whistling  50 , the car was gone in seconds, leaving Alice shaking her head in disbelief…

Gao Xiaosong was born with a silver spoon in his mouth. His grandfather was headmaster of the famous Tsinghua University. His wife’s father graduated from the Imperial College London and founded Shenzhen University. He basically grew up on Tsinghua's campus, and studied in the top schools in China, before he, unsurprisingly, entered Tsinghua's electronic engineering department, one of the school's best majors.

He wrote On the Same Page as You are at age 24. Almost overnight, every young person knew the song by heart. That tune and his later works made him a household name in the country. He later became a judge on the hot variety show (综艺节目) China's Got Talent. 

Everything has gone right for him aside from one major bump in the road—he was arrested for drunken driving in 2011, after he left the first press conference for his film, My Kingdom.

Electric ears are dirty.In fact, not only are they dirty, they might even be more dirty than their gasoline-powered cousins.
People in California love to talk about "zero-emissions vehicles", but people in California seem to be clueless about where electricity comes from. Power plants mostly use fire to make it. Aside from the new folks who have their roofs covered with solar cells, we get our electricity from generators. Generators are fueled by something---usually coal, oil,but also by heat generated in nuclear power plants. There are a few wind farms and geothermal plants as well, but by far we get electricity mainly by burning something.
In other words, those "zero-emissions" cars are likely coal-burning cars. It's just because the coal is burned somewhere else that it looks clean. It is not. It's as if the California Greens are. covering their eyes---"If I can't see it, it's not happening." Gasoline is an incredibly efficient way to power a vehicle; a gallon of gas has a lot of energy in it.But when you take that gas (or another fuel) and first use it to make electricity, you waste a nice part of that energy, mostly in the form of wasted heat---at the generator, through the transmission lines, etc.
A gallon of gas may propel your car 25 miles. But the electricity you get from that gallon of gas won't get you nearly as far---so electric cars bum more fuel than gas-powered ones. If our electricity came mostly from nukes; or geothermal,or hydro, or solar, or wind,then an electric car truly would be clean. But for political, technical,and economic reasons,we don't use much of those energy sources.
In addition,electric cars' batteries which are poisonous for a long time will eventually end up in a landfill.And finally, When cars are the polluters, the pollution is spread across all the roads. When it's a power plant, though, all the junk is in one place. Nature is very good at cleaning up when things are too concentrated, but it takes a lot longer when all the garbage is in one spot.
【小题1】 What does "clueless" mean in paragraph 2?