Lucky is the man who has no “skeleton in his closet”. When a man has done something in his life that he is ashamed of, that he wants to hide, he is said to have a “skeleton in his closet”. Some people may have more than one skeleton.

As we have noted many times, it is hard to find out how these expressions begin. Sometimes, we get some hard facts. But more often we have to depend on guesswork. And that is true of this phrase, which came from England.

Before 1932, English law did not permit a doctor to cut open a dead human body for scientific examination, unless it was the corpse(尸体) of an executed(处决) criminal.

But when it became legal, more and more doctors demanded skeletons for a more scientific study of medicine. It was helping in the advance of modern medicine. The demand had become so strong that men began to rob tombs and sell skeletons to doctors at high prices.

We are told that a doctor would usually buy just one skeleton for scientific study. It became very important in his work. But he had to keep it hidden because most people objected to keeping such a thing. As a rule, the doctor would keep his skeleton in some dark corner where it could not be seen, or hide it in a closet.

After a time, people began to suspect(怀疑) every doctor of hiding a skeleton in the closet. From this suspicion, the phrase “a skeleton in the closet” took on a broader, more general meaning to describe anything that a man wanted to keep others from discovering. It could be proof of a criminal act, or something much less serious. Well, that is one theory.

One writer, however, believes that the phrase might have come from something that really happened. It is his guess that a hidden closet in some old English country home may have turned up a real skeleton, clear proof of some old family shame or crime. Well, one man’s guess is as good as another. But this sounds like a story by the great French novelist, Balzac.

Baizac tells us of a man who suspected his wife of having a lover. The husband comes home by surprise. But she hears him and quickly hides her lover in the closet of her bedroom. He enters her room and asks her if she is hiding her lover. He says he will not open the door to the closet if she promises him there is no one there; He will believe her. She answers firmly that she is not hiding anyone in the closet.

The husband then begins to build a solid brick wall against the closet. His wife watches, knowing that her lover will never come out alive. But she will not change her story and admit her guilt.   

Which of the following situations is suitable for using the phrase “skeleton in the closet” ?

A. You have stolen something precious and don’t want it discovered.

B. You are a doctor and have to keep a skeleton for research.

C. If you have cut open a dead human body for scientific examination you should keep the skeleton secret.

D. You have done a crime or done something foolish, but you want to keep other from discovering it.

From the text we know that there are _______ theories about how the phrase “skeleton in the closet” came into being.

A. one    B. two    C. three D. four

In Chinese the world “skeleton” means _______.

A. 尸体 B. 标本 C. 收藏 D. 骷髅

Which of the following is right according to the text?

       A. In the 20th century, doctors realized the importance of anatomy(解剖) in the development of medicine.

B. The doctors of the ancient times liked to collect as many skeleton as possible.

C. The thieves stole skeletons from tombs in order to help the doctors.

D. It was legal that corpses of anybody were cut open for scientific examination in history.

From the story Balzac told we know that the wife’s lover must have become _______.

A. a corpse B. a phrase C. a skeleton 　D. a secret

I cheated on a unit test in math class this morning during second period with Mr. Burke. Afterward, I was too sick to eat lunch just thinking about it.
I came straight home from school, went to my room, and lay on the floor trying to decide whether it would be better to run away from home now or after supper. Mostly I wished I was dead. It wasn't even an accident that I cheated.
Yesterday Mr. Burke announced there'd be a unit test and anyone who didn't pass would have to come to school on Saturday, most particularly me, since I didn't pass the last unit test. I did plan to study just to prove to him that I'm plenty smart—which I am mostly—except in math.
Anyway, I got my desk ready to study on . Just when I was ready to work, Nicho came into my room with our new rabbit and it jumped on my desk and knocked the flashcards all over the floor. What a mess! Nicho and I finally took the rabbit outside but then Philip came to my room and also Marty from next door and before long it was dinner.
After dinner my father said I could watch a special on television if I'd done all my homework. Of course I said I had. That was the beginning. I felt terrible telling my father a lie about the homework.
It was nine o'clock when I got up to my room and that was too late to study for the unit test so I lay in my bed with the light off and decided what I would do the next day when I was in Mr. Burke's math class not knowing the 8- and 9-times tables. So, you see, the cheating was planned after all.
The next day, I'd go into class as usual, acting like things were going just great. I'd sit down next to Stanley Plummer—he is so smart in math it makes you sick—and from time to time, I'd glance over at his paper to copy the answers.
Lying on the floor of my room, I begin to think that probably I've been bad all along. It just took this math test to clinch it. I'll probably never tell the truth again. I tell my mother I'm sick when she calls me to come down for dinner. She doesn't believe me, but puts me to bed anyhow. I lie there in the early winter darkness wondering what terrible thing I'll be doing next when my father comes in and sits down on my bed.
"What's the matter?" he asks. "I've got a stomachache," I say. Luckily, it's too dark to see his face. "Is that all?" "Yeah." "Mommy says you've been in your room since school." "I was sick there too," I say. "She thinks something happened today and you're upset." That's the thing that really drives me crazy about my mother. She knows things sitting inside my head the same as if I was turned inside out.
"Well," my father says. I can tell he doesn't believe me. "My stomach is feeling sort of upset." I hedge. "Okay," he says and he pats my leg and gets up.
Just as he shuts the door to my room I call out to him in a voice I don't even recognize as my own. "How come?" he calls back not surprised or anything. So I tell him I cheated on this math test. To tell the truth, I'm pretty much surprised at myself. I didn't plan to tell him anything.
He doesn't say anything at first and that just about kills me. I'd be fine if he'd spank me or something. And then he says I'll have to call Mr. Burke. It's not what I had in mind. "Now?" I ask surprised. "Now," he says. He turns on the light and pulls off my covers. "I'm not going to," I say.
But I do it. I call Mr. Burke, and I tell him exactly what happened, even that I decided to cheat the night before the test. He says I'll come on Saturday to take another test, which is okay with me, and I thank him a whole lot for being understanding and all.
"Today I thought I was turning into a criminal," I tell my father when he turns out my light. Sometimes my father kisses me good night and sometimes he doesn't. I never know. But tonight he does.
【小题1】After the author cheated on the math test, he felt ____________.

JAKARTA, INDONESIA - Walking with long steps and his smile lighting up a rainy afternoon, Barack Obama seems to have arrived to visit a school he attended as a boy. But wait. He's not real Obama. The US president is back in Washington, D. C.

    So who is this guy? He's llham Anas, 34, a magazine photographer who has taken advantage of his perfect resemblance(相像) to Obama and turned it into his own wealth.

    When his sister first mentioned the resemblance, Anas dismissed it. Then a friend asked him to pose as Obama in front of a US flag. He also refused. "I'm a photographer, not an object for the camera," he said.

    However, as soon as he accepted the idea, his career took off. Recently a group of reporters followed him on a tour of the school Obama once attended. Anas sat in the classroom where the present US president once studied. He spoke a few lines in English. The moment he opened his mouth, however, the differences became clear. “Obama is a baritone (男中音) ,” Anas said.  “I'm not. I sound like a little boy.” He is also shorter than the president, but he makes up for that by practicing Obama's actions.    

    He says he has made a request to meet President Obama when he arrives, but he hasn't heard back from the president' s schedules. Now he no longer sees an average guy. Now he sees a superstar.

   Now, Anas hopes that Obama will win a second term in the White House. “The longer he's in office, the longer my fame will last,” he said.

1. What does the underlined part in Paragraph 4 mean?

A. Anas also thought he looked like Obama.   

B. Anas was satisfied with his sister's comment.

C. Anas didn't think about the resemblance seriously.

D. Anas didn' t understand what his sister talked about.

2. Which of the following is TRUE according to the passage?

A. Obama has met Anas once in Indonesia.

B. Anas didn't become rich until he got to know Obama.

C. Obama studied in Indonesia when he was young.

D. Anas is a baritone but he can sound like a little boy.

3. We can learn from the passage that Anas now ______ .

A. longs for a simple life             B. is proud of his appearance

C. keeps in touch with Obama         D. wants to become a politician

4. Why does Anas hope Obama will be president in the next term？

A. He is a supporter of Obama.         B. He hopes Obama will see him.

C. He wants to be famous for longer.     D. He thinks Obama is a great politician.

5. What would be the best title for the passage?

A. An Obama Lookalike Becomes Popular in Asia

B. Obama Visits His Old School in Indonesia   

C. A Man Practices Obama’s Typical Actions

D. Obama’s Face and Smile to Be Seen on TV

A 33-year-old financial analyst in California recently quit his job to devote himself to an unpaid job teaching math on the Internet, and his lessons are reaching almost 100,000 people a month. Salman Khan’s voice is heard every day on the net --- by tens of thousands of students around the world who are hungry for help learning math. He has posted 1,200 lessons on YouTube ... lessons that appear on an electronic blackboard, which range from basic addition to advanced mathematics for science and finance. And they are free.
Khan lives in Silicon Valley, with his wife, a doctor, and their new baby. He got the idea for his “Khan Academy” four years ago, when he taught a young cousin how to convert kilograms to grams. With Khan’s help, the cousin got good at math, and Khan began a new career.
Now, Khan records his lessons himself, but he never goes on camera. “It feels like my voice in their head. You’re looking at it and it feels like someone’s over your shoulder talking in your ear, as opposed to someone at the blackboard, which is distant from you,” he said.
When Springfield High School in Palo Alto, California invited Khan to speak in person --- he immediately connected to the students there.
The idea of short lessons that can be played over and over again attracted high school senior Bridget Meaney. She says she had trouble with math in the seventh grade. “I think the teachers are good, but they can’t teach at a speed that’s perfect for everyone,” she said. “I like the idea of learning something in class but then going back and pressing pause or rewind and actually getting a deeper understanding of it.”
Originally, Khan kept his lessons short because of YouTube restrictions. Now, he thinks short is better. “Education researchers now tell me that 10 minutes is how long someone can have a high level of concentration. And anything beyond that and your brain switches off,” he said.
For Khan, teaching math, science, and finance is just the beginning. He says he’s ready to expand his YouTube site to include other subjects as well.
【小题1】What gave Khan the idea of teaching math online?

If you go to Juliano’s restaurant in San Francisco,you can’t get a cup of coffee or a hot cheese sandwich.All the food in the restaurant is raw,including the pizza and the rice.

Juliano thinks that cooked food makes us sick. “Food is alive,like you and me.When you cook food,you take away some of the vitamins,”he says,Juliano never eats food that is over 50 degrees.His restaurant doesn’t have a stove(火炉) or a microwave(微波炉).But he has lots of clever ideas for making raw food taste great.Instead of heat,Juliano uses water to prepare foood.He puts foods in water to make them soft.For example,he places beans in water for a few days and rice in water for two or four weeks.

Everything at the restaurant is cold,and the pizza and the rice taste good.So do the fruit and vegetable juices made from carrots ,apples,oranges and so on.Juliano’s restaurant doesn’t serve meat,but some people who cat raw food also eat raw meat.Juliano has three friends who ate raw meat.They all got very sick..One of them is still sick.

Juliano eats mostly fruits,vegetables,nuts,rice and beans.He says he feels very healthy. “Raw food gives you lots of energy,”he says,Juliano says he needs only six hours of sleep a night,and he never gets sick..

61.What is the main idea of the passage?

A.A man who eats only raw food.               B.A special restaurant in San Francisco.

C.Raw food is better than cooked food.          D.How to make raw food taste good.

62.How is the food in Juliano’s restaurant prepared?

A.Foods are put into water to make them soft.

B.Foods are cooled in a fridge.

C.Foods are heated on a stove to a certain degree.

D.Foods are boiled and then cooled.

63.What is NOT served in Juliano’s restaurant?

A.Carrot juice.         B.Cold pizza.          C.Raw rice.          D.Hot meat.