Nearly all our food comes from the soil（土地）. Some of us eat meat, of course, but animals live on plants. If there were no plants, we would have no animals and no meat. So the soil is very necessary for life. The top of the ground is usually covered with grass or other plants. There may be dead leaves and dead plants on the grass. The waste matter（粪）from animals also falls on it.

All soil needs food. If we do not give it any, the plants will be weak. Farmers found that animals’ waste is the best food for the soil, but chemical fertilizers（化肥）are also very useful. The same crop（庄稼）should not be grown in the same place every year, it’s better to have a different crop. A change of crop and the use of a good fertilizer will keep the land good.

1.Which of the following is true?

2.What does the writer tell us in the first paragraph?

3.Which is the best food for soil in the field?

4.Why do we often grow a different crop in the same place every year?

A young man once went into town and bought himself a pair of trousers. When he got home, he went upstairs to his bedroom and put them on. He found that they were about two inches (英尺) longer.

He went downstairs to the kitchen. His mother and two sisters were washing up the tea-things there. “The new trousers are too long,” he said. “They need shortening（缩短）by about two inches.

Could one of you do it for me, please?” His mother and sisters were busy and none of them said anything. But when his mother  finished washing up, she went quietly upstairs to her son’s bedroom and shortened the trousers by two inches. She came downstairs without saying anything to her daughters.

Later on, after supper, the elder sister remembered her brother’ s trousers. She was a kind girl,so she went quietly upstairs withoutsaying anything to anyone, and shortened the trousers by two inches.  The younger sister went to the cinema, but when she came home she,too, remembered her brothers trousers. So she ran upstairs and did as her mother and sister had done. You can imagine（想象）the look on the young man’s face when he put the trousers on the   next morning.   .

1.What were the young man’s new trousers like at first?

2.Why didn’t the young man’s mother and sisters answer him in the kitchen?

3.When did his elder sister shortened the trousers?

4.What did the young man find about the trousers the next morning?

He found that the trousers were ______ inches too short for him. 

5.How did the young man feel when he put the trousers on the next morning?

Bobby was sitting out in his back yard in the snow. There were a few holes in his shoes. He thought hard, but he could not come up with an idea for his mother’s Christmas gift.

Ever since his father had died three years ago, his mother worked nights at the hospital, but the small money she made could hardly be enough for their needs.

Although the family lacked in money and material things, they got more love in the family. The children ran the family when their mother was absent. All three of Bobby’s sisters had already made beautiful gifts for their mother.

It was Christmas Eve already, and he had nothing. Bobby started to walk down to the street. He walked from shop to shop. Everything seemed so beautiful and so far away. It was getting dark. Suddenly he found a shiny dime (一角硬币) on the ground. Never has anyone felt so wealthy as Bobby did at the moment. It was enough to buy a rose with one dime.

He went inside a flower shop. When the owner asked if he could help him, Bobby took out the dime and asked if he could buy one flower. The shop owner looked at Bobby, then said, “You just wait here and I’ll see what I can do for you.”

The shop owner returned holding a dozen of red roses in his hand. Bobby’s heart sank (下沉) as the owner put them gently into a long white box. “That will be a dime, young man,” said the shop owner, reaching out his hand for the dime. Slowly, Bobby moved his hand to give the man his dime.

Then the shopkeeper’s wife appeared. “Where are the red roses?”

The shop owner said, “A strange thing happened to me this morning. I thought I heard a voice telling me to leave a dozen of my best roses for a special gift. When I saw that little boy tonight, I knew who that voice was.”

1.The underlined phrase “lacked in” means _____.

     A. had less            B. gave up      C. had more     D. looked down upon

2.Bobby slowly gave the dime to the shop owner because _____.

    A. he wanted to buy other things

    B. he needed to give the dime to his mum

    C. the roses were too expensive

        D. he could hardly believe what had happened

3.From the last two paragraphs we can infer that the shop owner _____.

    A. was moved by the boy’s voice

    B. was ready to help others

    C. knew the boy before

   D. was good at telling stories