Among all the fast growing science and technology，the research of human genes，or biological engineering as people call it，is drawing more and more attention now．Sometimes it’s a hot topic discussed by people．

The greatest thing that gene technology can do is to cure serious diseases that doctors at present can almost do nothing with，such as cancer and heart disease．Every year，millions of people are murdered by these two killers．And to date，doctors have not found an effective way to cure them．But if the gene technology is applied，not only these two diseases can be cured completely，bringing happiness and more living days to the patients，but also the great amount of money people spend on curing their diseases can be saved，therefore it benefits the economy as well．In addition，human life span（寿命） can be prolonged．

Gene technology can help people to give birth to more healthy and clever children．Some families，with the English imperial（皇帝的） family being a good example，have hereditary（遗传的） diseases．This means their children will for sure have the family disease，which is a great trouble for these families．In the past，doctors could do nothing about hereditary diseases．But gene technology can solve this problem perfectly．Scientists just need to find the wrong gene and correct it，and a healthy child will be born．

Some people are worrying that the gene research can be used to manufacture（生产） human beings in large quantities．In the past few years，scientists have succeeded in cloning a sheep; therefore these people predict that human babies would soon be cloned．But I believe cloned babies will not come out in large quantities，for most couples in the world can have babies in very normal way．Of course，the governments must take care to control gene technology．

1．What does "these two killers" in the second paragraph refer to?

A．Gene technology and another treatment of the two diseases．

B．The two murderers who killed the cloned baby．

C．The two diseases of cancer and heart disease．

D．Hereditary diseases and cancer．

2．What’s the main idea of the third paragraph?

A．Gene technology can help people to give birth to a baby．

B．Gene technology can be used to clone human babies．

C．How gene technology can be used to treat hereditary diseases．

D．Gene technology can solve all the problems of the English imperial family．

3．In what way can gene technology help to treat hereditary diseases?

A．Gene technology helps people with hereditary diseases to live longer．

B．Using gene technology，scientists find the wrong gene and correct it．

C．Using gene technology，human babies can be cloned．

D．Doctors can cure cancer and heart disease with the help of gene technology．

4．What is the main purpose of writing this passage?

A．Expressing the writer's idea that gene technology will benefit people．

B．Telling people the advantages and disadvantages of gene technology．

C．Telling the readers that gene technology will not benefit people．

D．Explaining that gene technology will also do harm to the humanity．

More surprising, perhaps, than the current difficulties of traditional marriage is the fact that marriage itself is alive and thriving（旺盛的）. As Skolnich notes, Americans are a marrying people: relative to Europeans, more of us marry and we marry at a younger age. Moreover, after a decline（衰退）in the early 1970s, the rate of marriage in the United States is now increasing. Even the divorce（离婚）rate needs to be taken in this pro- marriage context: some 80 percent of divorced individuals remarry. Thus, marriage remains by far the preferred way of life for the vast majority of the people in our society.

　　What has changed more than marriage is the nuclear family. Twenty- five years ago, the typical American family consisted of the husband, the wife, and two or three children. Now, there are many marriages in which couples have decided not to have any children, and there are many marriages where at least some of the children are from the wife’s previous marriage, or the husband’s, or both. Sometimes these children spend all of their time with one parent from the former marriage; sometimes they are shared between the two former spouses （配偶）．

　　Thus, one can find every type of tamely arrangement. There are marriages without children; marriages with children from only the present marriages; marriages with “full - time” children from both the present and former marriages; marriages with“full- time”children from the present marriage and“ part- time”children from former marriages. There are stepfathers, stepmothers, half- brothers and half - sisters. It is not all that unusual for a child to have four parents and eight grandparents! These are enormous changes from the traditional nuclear family. But even so, even in the midst of all this, there remains one constant: most Americans spend most of their adult lives married.

By calling Americans a marrying people the writer means that ________.

　　A. Americans are more traditional than Europeans

　　B. Americans expect more out of marriage than Europeans

　　C. there are more married couples in the USA than in Europe

　　D. more of Americans, as compared with Europeans, prefer marriage and they accept it at a younger age

Divorced Americans ________ .

　　A. prefer the way they live

　　B. will most likely remarry

　　C. have lost interest in marriage

　　D. are the majority of people in the society

Which of the following can be presented as the picture of today’s American families？

　　A. Which types of family arrangements have become socially acceptable.

　　B. A typical American family consists of only a husband and a wife.

　　C. Americans prefer to have more kids than before.

　　D. There are no nuclear families any more.

第二部分．阅读理解（共25小题。第一节每小题2分，第二节每小题1分；满分45分）

第一节 阅读下面五篇短文，从每题后所给的四个选项中选出最佳答案。

   Most of us lead unhealthy lives; we spend far too much sitting down. If in addition we are careless about our diets, our bodies soon become loose and fatty and our systems slow moving. There are some aspects(方面) of our unhealthy lives that we cannot avoid. I am thinking of such features of modern city life as pollution, noise, rushed meals and stress. But keeping fit is a way to reduce the effects of these evils. The usual suggestion to a person who is looking for a way to keep fit is to take up some sport or other. While it is true that every weekend you will find people playing football and hockey in the local park, they are outnumbered a hundred to one by the people who are simply watching them.

　　For those who do not particularly enjoy competitive sports — and it is especially difficult to do so if you are not good at them — there are such separate activities as cycling, walking, jogging and swimming. What often happens though is that you do them in such a leisurely way, so slowly, that it is doubtful if you are doing yourself much good, except for the fact that you have at least managed to get up out of your armchair.

　　Even after you have found a way for keeping in shape, through sport or gymnastics, you are still only half way to good health, because, according to the experts, you must also master the art of complete mental and physical relaxation(放松). It has to do with deep breathing, emptying your mind of all thoughts, meditation, and so on. Yoga, as practiced in the West, is the most widely known and popular of the systems for achieving the necessary state of relaxation. It seems ironical (讽刺性的), though, that as our lives have improved in a material sense we have found it increasingly necessary to go back to forms of activity — physical effort on the one hand and relaxation on the other — which were the natural way of life of our forefathers.

41. Pollution, noise and stress are examples of _____.

A. the causes of unfitness                                                       B. bad features of modern living

C. the things we can completely do away with                D. unavoidable things in town

42. We don’t get much out of separate sports because we _____.

A. don’t do them very often                                                   B. don’t do them actively enough

C. find it hard to get out of our armchairs                          D. don’t find them interesting

43. To be healthy we must _____.

A. keep fit and active                                                              B. keep fit and learn to relax

C. be active and practise Yoga                                                        D. have a sound mind

44. Our forefathers were healthy because______.

A. their way of life closely connected with both exercise and relaxation

B. they were careful to get plenty of fresh air

C. they spent most of the time out of doors

         D. their environment was not polluted