Here’s an idyllic(田园风光的) scene: a small village where the sun always shines, crops always grow and your friends drop by to sweep your yard to the sound of guitar music. Animals do what they are told, there is no disease, and lending folks a helping hand makes you richer and wiser. Welcome to FarmVille — current population 69m and rising fast.

“It reminds me of my childhood,” says one player, Lia Curran, 37, a chemist from London. “Right now I’m growing wheat and poinsettia, I’ve got a small orchard, and I’m keeping some chickens and some cows. I like having the animals. It’s comfortable.”

Curran’s young animals, however, are nothing more than a collection of computer-controlled cartoons. FarmVille is an online computer game built into the social networking site Facebook and is described by its players as “addictive”. Launched last June by Zynga Game Network, FarmVille now has more players than Twiter’s entire user base — or more than the population of the UK. The players are largely women over the age of 35.

Jenny Glyn, 33, a London housewife, started playing in September. “I had a look at a friend’s farm and was hooked,” she says. “My first motivation was to overtake her, but I did that pretty quickly. Now there’s something satisfying about growing crops.”

FarmVille intellectually unites the worlds of social networking and gaming. Players are given a patch of ground with six fields, “cash”, a few seeds and a plough and have to build up wealth, skills and neighbors to create bigger, better, richer farms.

Inviting your online friends to play means you earn more and get free gifts; you rise rapidly through the first levels but, once hooked, have to work harder and harder with no final level or goal in sight.

“It’s very moreish,” says Curran. She hasn’t yet paid real-world money to advance in the game, but her friends do. One buys extra virtual currency at the exchange rate of $240 (??145) in FarmVille for $40 (??24) in the real world.

“I’d expanded on FarmVille as much as I could, but I just wanted a pond and some bushes and trees around it,” says the woman, who is too embarrassed to be named. “I didn’t tell my husband I’d paid real money because he’d think I’m mad. But then he did keep me waiting in the car outside our house while he harvested his raspberries.”

Brian Dudley, chief executive at Broadway Lodge, an addiction treatment centre, warns that this sort of obsessive(令人着魔的) play can lead to an addiction as severe as gambling.

59. What does Curran do in the passage?

   A. She is a player.                                                      B. She is a farmer who grows wheat and poinsettia.

   C. She is a chemist.                                                  D. She is a housewife who raises chickens and cows.

60. By FarmVille, the writer means ______.

   A. an addictive farm on which live 69 million farmers

   B. a London housewife’s farm

   C. an online computer game built into the social networking site

   D. a farm on which people grow real crops and play as well

61. In the last but one paragraph, the husband kept the woman waiting outside ______.

   A. because he was angry at his wife’s being mad about the farm

   B. because he himself was busy with his farm

   C. in order to punish his wife for her having paid real money

   D. so that his wife would wake up from her addiction to the farm

62. According to the passage, which of the following is NOT true?

   A. The population of the UK is less than 69 million.

   B. This sort of obsessive play can cause very severe addiction.

   C. Once hooked, one has to make greater efforts to reach a higher level.

   D. Up till now, nobody has yet paid real-world money to advance in the play.

Joe came to New York from the Middle West, dreaming about painting. Delia came to New York from the South, dreaming about music. Joe and Delia met in a studio. Before long they were good friends and got married.
They had only a small flat to live in , but they were happy. They loved each other, and they were both interested in art. Everything was fine until one day they found they had spent all their money.
Delia decided to give music lessons. One afternoon she said to her husband:
“Joe, I’ve found a pupil, a general’s daughter. She is a sweet girl. I’m to give three lessons a week and get $5 a lesson.”
But Joe was not glad.
“But how about me?” he said.” Do you think I’m going to watch you work while I play with my art? No, I want to earn some money too.”
“Joe, you are silly,” said Delia. “You must keep at your studies. We can live quite happily on $15 a week.”
“Well, perhaps I can sell some of my pictures,” said Joe.
Every day they parted in the morning and met in the evening. A week passed and Delia brought home fifteen dollars, but she looked a little tired.
“Clementina sometimes gets on my nerves. I’m afraid she doesn’t practice enough. But the general is the oldest man! I wish you could know him, Joe.”
And then Joe took eighteen dollars out of his pocket.
“I’ve sold one of my pictures to a man from Peoria,” he said, “and he has ordered another.”
“I’m so glad,” said Delia. “Thirty-three dollars! We never had so much to spend before. We’ll have a good supper tonight.”
Next week Joe came home and put another eighteen dollars on the table. In half an hour Delia came, her right hand in a bandage.
“What’s the matter with your hand?” said Joe. Delia laughed and said:
“Oh, a funny thing happened! Clemantina gave me a plate of soup and spilled some of it on my hand. She was very sorry for it. And so was the old general. But why are you looking at me like that, Joe?”
“What time this afternoon did you burn your hand, Delia?”
“Five o’clock, I think. The iron-I mean the soup-was ready about five, Why?”
“Delia, come and sit here,” said Joe. He drew her to the couch and sat beside her.
“What do you do every day, Delia? Do you really give music lesson? Tell me the truth.”
She began to cry.
“I couldn’t get any pupils,” she said, “So I got a place in a laundry ironing shirts. This afternoon a girl accidentally set down an iron on my hand and I got a bad burn. But tell me, Joe, how did you guess that I wasn’t giving music lessons?”
“It’s very simple,” said Joe. “I knew all about your bandages because I had to send them upstairs to a girl in the laundry who had an accident with a hot iron. You see, I work in the engine-room of the same laundry where you work.”
“And your pictures? Did you sell any to that man from Peoria?”
“Well, your general with his Clemantina is an invention, and so is my man from Peoria.”
And then they both laughed.
【小题1】To support the family, Delia worked as             .

Recently, an Internet game has become a new fashion among young office workers and students. People can “farm” on a piece of “land” and “grow”, “sell” or even “steal” “vegetables”, “flowers” and “fruits” on the Net. They earn some e-money and buy more “seeds”, “pets” and even “houses”.

Joyce interviewed some young people. Here are their opinions.

Harold: I don’t quite understand why they are so mad about the childish game. Maybe they are just not confident enough to face the real world.

Allan: I enjoy putting some “bugs” (小虫子) in my friends’' gardens and we’ve become closer because of the game. Having fun together is the most exciting thing about it.

Laura: You know, people in the city are longing for the life in the countryside. It reduces my work pressure in the office; besides, it gives me the exciting feeling of being a “thief”.

Ivy: Well, it’s just a waste of time. Teenagers playing the game spend so many hours on it that they cannot pay more attention to their study.

1.By playing the game, people can ______.

2. The people “steal” someone else’s “vegetables” to ______.

3. Among the people interviewed, ______ doesn't like the game at all.

4. What can you learn about Laura from the passage?

When I learned that 71-year-old mother was playing Scrabble —a word game, I knew I had to do something. My husband suggests we give her a computer to play against herself. I wasn’t sure whether my mother was ready for it. After all, it had taken 15 years to persuade her to buy an electric cooker. Even so, we packed up our old computer and delivered it to my parents’ home. And so began my mother’s adventure in the world of the computers.

It also marked the beginning of an unusual teaching task for me. I’ve taught people of all ages, but I never thought I would be teaching my mother how to do anything.

She has been the one teaching me all my life: to cook and sew; to enjoy the good times and put up with the bad. Now it was my turn to give something back.

   It wasn’t easy at the beginning. There was so much to explain and to introduce. Slowly but surely, my mother caught on, making notes in a little notebook. After a few months of Scrabble and other games, I decided it was time to introduce her to word processing. This proved to be a bigger challenge to her, so I gave her some homework. I asked her to write me a letter, using different letter types, colors and spaces. 

“Are you this demanding with your kindergarten pupils?” she asked.

“No, of course not,” I said.”They already know how to use a computer.”

 My mother isn’t the only one experiencing a fast personal growth period. Thanks to the computer, my father has finally got over his phone allergy(过敏). For as long as I can remember, any time I called, my mother would answer. Dad and I have had more phone conversations in the last two months than we’ve had in the past 20 years.

1.What does the author do?

A．She is a cooker

B．She is a teacher

C．She is a housewife

D．She is a computer engineer

2.The author decided to give her mother a computer _____.

A．to let her have more chances to write letters

B．to support to her in doing her homework

C．to help her through the bad times

D．to make her life more enjoyable

3.The author asked her mother to write her a letter _____.

A．because her mother had stopped using the telephone

B．because she wanted to keep in touch with her mother

C．so that her mother could practice what she had learned

D．so that her mother could be free from the housework

I am a writer. I spend a great deal of my time thinking about the power of language — the way it can evoke（唤起） an emotion, a visual image, a complex idea, or a simple truth. Language is the tool of my trade. And I use them all — all the Englishes I grew up with.

    Born into a Chinese family that had recently arrived in California, I've been giving more thought to the kind of English my mother speaks. Like others, I have described it to people as "broken" English. But I feel embarrassed to say that. It has always bothered me that I can think of no way to describe it other than "broken", as if it were damaged and needed to be fixed, as if it lacked certain wholeness. I've heard other terms used, "limited English," for example. But they seem just as bad, as if everything is limited, including people's perceptions(认识) of the limited English speaker.

    I know this for a fact, because when I was growing up, my mother's "limited" English limited my perception of her. I was ashamed of her English. I believed that her English reflected the quality of what she had to say. That is, because she expressed them imperfectly her thoughts were imperfect. And I had plenty of evidence to support me: the fact that people in department stores, at banks, and at restaurants did not take her seriously, did not give her good service, pretended not to understand her, or even acted as if they did not hear her.

I started writing fiction in 1985. And for reasons I won't get into today, I began to write stories using all the Englishes I grew up with: the English she used with me, which for a lack of a better term might be described as "broken", and what I imagine to be her translation of her Chinese, her internal (内在的) language, and for that I sought to preserve the essence, but neither an English nor a Chinese structure: I wanted to catch what language ability tests can never show; her intention, her feelings, the rhythms of her speech and the nature of her thoughts.

46. By saying "Language is the tool of my trade", the author means that ______.

   A. she uses English in foreign trade                     B. she is fascinated by languages

   C. she works as a translator                          D. she is a writer by profession

47. The author used to think of her mother's English as ______.

   A. impolite              B. amusing            C. imperfect                 D. practical

48. Which of the following is TRUE according to Paragraph 3?

   A. Americans do not understand broken English.

   B. The author's mother was not respected sometimes.

   C. The author' mother had positive influence on her.

   D. Broken English always reflects imperfect thoughts.

49. The author gradually realizes her mother's English is _____.

   A. well structured                                B. in the old style

   C. easy to translate                               D. rich in meaning

50. What is the passage mainly about?

   A. The changes of the author's attitude to her mother's English.

   B. The limitation of the author's perception of her mother.

   C. The author's misunderstanding of "limited" English.

   D. The author's experiences of using broken English.