While watching the Olympics the other night, I came across an unbelievable sight. It was not a gold medal, or a world record broken, but a show of courage.

The event was swimming and started with only three men on the blocks. For one reason or another, two of them false started, so they were disqualified. That left only one to compete. It would have been difficult enough, not having anyone to race against, even though the time on the clock is important.

I watched the man dive off the block and knew right away that something was wrong. I’m not an expert swimmer, but I can tell a good dive from a poor one, and this was not exactly medal quality. When he resurfaced, it was evident that the man was not out for gold – his arms were waving in an attempt at freestyle. The crowd started to laugh. Clearly this man was not a medal competitor.

I listened to the crowd begin to laugh at this poor man who was clearly having a hard time. Finally he made his turn to start back. It was pitiful. He made a few desperate strokes and you could tell he was worn out.

But in those few awful strokes, the crowd had changed.

No longer were they laughing, but beginning to cheer. Some even began to stand and shout “Come on, you can do it!” and he did.

A clear minute past the average swimmer, this young man finally finished his race. The crowd went wild. You would have thought that he had won the gold, and he should have. Even though he recorded one of the slowest times in Olympic history, this man gave more heart than any of the other competitors.

Just a short year ago, he had never even swum, let alone race. His country had been invited to Sydney.

From the passage we can learn that the young man         .

      A．made his turn to start back pitifully         B．was skillful in freestyle in the game

       C．swam faster than the average swimmer      D．was not capable enough to win the medal

The crowd changed their attitudes because          .

       A．they felt sorry for the young man        B．they were moved by the young man’s courage

       C．they wanted to show their sympathy     D．they meant to please the young man

What’s the best title for the passage?

       A．Compete for Gold!        B．Try again!   C．Break a Record!   D．Go for it!

This Mexican roll is very delicious．and I want ________．

1. A.
   two more
2. B.
   more two
3. C.
   other two
4. D.
   over two

There are still many things that Peter Cooke would like to try his hand at — paper-making and feather-work are on his list. For the moment, though, he will stick to the skill that he has been delighted to make perfect over the past ten years: making delicate and unusual objects out of shells.

As he leads me round his apartment showing me his work, he points to a pair of shell-covered ornaments(装饰品) above a fireplace. “I shan’t be at all bothered if people don’t buy them because I have got so used to them, and to me they’re lovely. I never meant to sell my work commercially. Some friends came to see me about five years ago and said, ‘You must have an exhibition — people ought to see these. We’ll talk to a man who owns an art gallery’”. The result was an exhibition in London, at which 70 per cent of the objects were sold. His second exhibition opened at the gallery yesterday. Considering the enormous prices the pieces command —around ￡2,000 for the ornaments — an empty space above the fireplace would seem a small sacrifice for Cooke to make.

There are 86 pieces in the exhibition, with prices starting at￡225 for a shell-flower in a crystal vase. Cooke insists that he has nothing to do with the prices and is cheerily open about their level: he claims there is nobody else in the world who produces work like his, and, as the gallery-owner told him, “Well, you’re going to stop one day and everybody will want your pieces because there won’t be any more.”

“I do wish, though,” says Cooke, “that I’d taken this up a lot earlier, because then I would have been able to produce really wonderful things — at least the potential would have been there. Although the ideas are still there and I’m doing the best I can now, I’m more limited physically than I was when I started.” Still, the work that he has managed to produce is a long way from the common shell constructions that can be found in seaside shops. “I have a miniature(微型的) mind,” he says, and this has resulted in boxes covered in thousands of tiny shells, little shaded pictures made from shells and baskets of astonishingly realistic flowers.?

Cooke’s quest(追求) for beautiful, and especially tiny, shells has taken him further than his Norfolk shore: to France, Thailand, Mexico, South Africa and the Philippines, to name but a few of the beaches where he has lain on his stomach and looked for beauties to bring home. He is insistent that he only collects dead shells and defends himself against people who write him letters accusing him of stripping the world’s beaches. “When I am collecting shells, I hear people’s great fat feet crunching(嘎吱嘎吱地踩) them up far faster than I can collect them; and the ones that are left, the sea breaks up. I would not dream of collecting shells with living creatures in them or diving for them, but once their occupants have left, why should I not collect them?” If one bases this argument on the amount of luggage that can be carried home by one man, the beauty of whose work is often greater than its natural parts, it becomes very convincing indeed.

What does the reader learn about Peter Cooke in the first paragraph?

A. He has produced hand-made objects in different materials.?

B. He hopes to work with other materials in the future.?

C. He has written about his love of making shell objects.?

D. He was praised for his shell objects many years ago. 

When mentioning the cost of his shell objects, Cooke ____.

       A. cleverly changes the subject.

       B. defends the prices charged for his work.

       C. says he has no idea why the level is so high.

       D. notes that his work will not always be so popular.

The “small sacrifice” in Paragraph 2 refers to _________.?

A. the loss of Cooke’s ornaments?          B. the display of Cooke’s ornaments?

C. the cost of keeping Cooke’s ornaments    D. the space required to store Cooke’s ornaments

What does Cooke regret about his work?

A. He is not as famous as he should have been.?B. He makes less money than he should make.

C. He is less imaginative than he used to be.?    D. He is not as skillful as he used to be. ?

What does the reader learn about Cooke's shell-collecting activities?

A. Not everyone approves of what he does.

B. Other methods might make his work easier.

C. Other tourists get in the way of his collecting.

D. Not all shells are the right size and shape for his work

Coketown was a town of red brick, or of brick that would have been red if the smoke and ashes had allowed it; but in fact it was a town of unnatural red and black like the painted face of savage（野人）. It was a town of machinery and tall chimney, out of which smoke trailed themselves for ever and ever. It had a black canal in it, and a river that ran purple with ill smelling color, and large piles of building full of windows where there was a rattling and a trembling all day long, and where the steam-engine worked up and down like the head of an elephant in a state of madness. The town contained several large streets all very like one another, and many small streets still more like one another, inhabited by people equally like one another.

A sunny midsummer day. There was such a thing sometimes even in Coketown. Seen from a distance in such weather, Coketown lay covered in a smoke of its own. You only knew the town was there, because you knew there could have been no such a place upon the view without a town.

The streets were hot and dusty on the summer day, and the sun was so bright that it even shone through the smoke over Coketown, and could not be looked at steadily. Workers appeared from low underground doorways into factory yards, and sat on steps, wiping their face sand looking at coals. The whole town seemed to be frying in oil. There was a smell of hot oil everywhere. The atmosphere of those places was like the breath of hell（地狱）, and their inhabitants wasting with heat, walked lazily in the desert. But no temperature made the mad elephants more mad or more sane（理智的）. Their tiresome heads went up and down at the sane rate, in hot weather and in cold, wet weather and dry. The measured movement of their shadows of wood; while for the summer noise of insects, it could offer all the year round, from the dawn of Monday to the night of Saturday.

67. Which of the following words is NOT properly used to describe Coketown ?

A. unpleasant           B. dirty               C. noisy             D. deserted

68. From the passage we know that Coketown was mainly a（n）_____town.

A. industrial               B. agricultural        C. historical            D. cultural

69. Only _____ were not affected by weather.

A. the workmen          B. the habitants       C. the steam-engines     D. the woods

70. Which is the author’s opinion of Coketown?

A. Coketown should be replaced by woods       B. The town had too much oil in it

C. The town was seriously polluted             D. The town’s atmosphere was unchanged