What kind of person becomes an addict? Someone  21  , with a lot of friends; or someone who is  22 from the rest, with only a few friends, or none at all? The 23 I am trying to make is that anyone can become an addict.

The only way that I  24  this out was by becoming an addict myself. I used to be a guy who was  25  in the popular crowd. Right before high school began, I started being  26  by most of my friends. I had never lived with the  27  that I had no friends, so I did almost anything to  28  the two good friends I still had. One of the things I did was  29  drugs for the first time. This was a big  30  from the way I lived when I was younger. I was a(n) 31 , and the last thing I thought I would get into was drugs. Drugs  32 me from being the best sports player I could be.

I  33  to smoke drugs after I entered high school because that was what my new "cool" friends were  34 . The next three years were filled with many  35 , I was arrested twice, and lost my license for two years. This made me sad and  36 .

I realized I could not live this way; I must stop the  37  of using drugs.

Since then, my  38  and actions have changed and so has my direction in life. I do see a future in water skiing.   39, I haven't killed my chance in  40 . I know that I must keep a clear head first. Keep Coming Back. It works if you work it.

1.A．interesting      B．anxious        C．popular          D．eager

2.A．free             B．safe           C．absent           D．different

3.A．point            B．sense          C．subject          D．promise 

4.A．brought          B．figured        C．held             D．kept

5.A．always           B．seldom         C．almost           D．already

6.A．known            B．attracted      C．preferred        D．rejected

7.A．doubt            B．hope           C．fear             D．danger

8.A．meet             B．keep           C．leave            D．move 

On Halloween Night, children go trick-treating in their neighborhoods. Dressed up as ghosts, skeleton devils, and various other characters, children knock on doors to collect their treats. Seldom do they actually perform a “trick”.

It is thought that trick-or-treating comes from an old English custom. On All Souls Day, poor people went begging and promised to say prayers in exchange for food. Apple bobbing, still a favorite Halloween game, was originally an ancient ceremony honoring the harvest time.

A jack-o’-lantern is placed on porches and windows to tell children that treats are available. The legend was that a man named Jack could enter heaven because he played tricks on the devil. As punishment, he had to wander the earth carrying a lantern waiting to be judged fit to get into heaven.

People believed that Halloween marked the connection between the world of the living and the world of the dead. This meant that ghosts would roam the earth on this night. Some believed that these ghosts would go back to the homes they lived in before they died.

Thankfully, Halloween is an amusing night when children can dress up and get a bag full of candy. We don’t have to worry about ghosts. Or do we?

1.Apple bobbing was an ancient ceremony held originally to ____.

A. honor the harvest time               B. honor the dead

C. honor the living                    D. play a trick on each other

2.The underlined word “roam” is close in meaning to ____.

A. come back        B. place         C. collect       D. walk around

3.Which of the following is not true?

A. On Halloween Night, children often dress up as ghosts.

B. On Halloween Night, children often perform tricks.

C,. Trick-or-treating comes from an old English custom.

D. Children can get a lot of candy on Halloween Night.

4.According to the passage, Halloween is a(n) ____ festival.

A. sad               B. bad          C. interesting    D. boring

I’ve been writing for most of my life. The book Writing Without Teachers introduced me to one distinction(区别)and one practice that has helped my writing processes tremendously. The distinction is between the creative mind and the critical mind. While you need to employ both to get to a finished result, they cannot work in parallel no matter how much we might like to think so.

Trying to criticize writing on the fly is possibly the single greatest barrier to writing that most of us encounter. If you are listening to that 5th grade English teacher correct your grammar while you are trying to capture a fleeting (稍纵即逝的) thought, the thought will die. If you capture the fleeting thought and simply share it with the world in raw form, no one is likely to understand. You must learn to create first and then criticize if you want to make writing the tool for thinking that it is.

The practice that can help you past your learned bad habits of trying to edit as you write is what Elbow calls “free writing.” In free writing, the objective is to get words down on paper non-stop, usually for 15-20 minutes. No stopping, no going back, no criticizing. The goal is to get the words flowing. As the words begin to flow, the ideas will come from the shadows and let themselves be captured on your notepad or your screen.

Now you have raw materials that you can begin to work with using the critical mind that you’ve persuaded to sit on the side and watch quietly. Most likely, you will believe that this will take more time than you actually have and you will end up staring blankly at the pages as the deadline draws near.

Instead of staring at a blank start filling it with words no matter how bad. Halfway through your available time, stop and rework your raw writing into something closer to finished product. Move back and forth until you run out of time and the final result will most likely be far better than your current practices.

1.When the author says the creative mind and the critical mind “cannot work in parallel” in the writing process, he means                .

A. one cannot use them at the same time             B. they cannot be regarded as equally important

C. they are in constant conflict with each other        D. no one can be both creative and critical

2.What prevents people from writing on is                .

A. putting their ideas in raw form                  B. ignoring grammatical soundness

C. attempting to edit as they write                     D. trying to capture fleeting thoughts

3.What is the chief objective of the first stage of writing?

A. To organize one’s thoughts logically.            B. To get one’s ideas down.

C. To choose an appropriate topic.                  D. To collect raw materials.

4.One common concern of writers about “free writing” is that                .

A. it overstresses the role of the creative mind        B. it does not help them to think clearly

C. it may bring about too much criticism                D. it takes too much time to edit afterwards

5.In what way does the critical mind help the writer in the writing process?

A. It allows him to sit on the side and observe.        B. It helps him to come up with new ideas.

C. It saves the writing time available to him.          D. It improves his writing into better shape.

Rome had the forum. London has Speaker’s Corner. Now always-on-the-go New Yorker has Liz and Bill.

    Liz and Bill, two college graduates in their early 20s, have spent a whole year trying to have thousands of people talk to them in the subway station and on busy street corners. Just talk.

    Using a 2-feet-high sign that says, “Talk to Me,” they attract conversationalists, who one evening included a mental patient, and men in business suits.

   They don’t collect money. They don’t push the religion. So what is the point?

   “To see what happens,” said Liz. “We simply enjoy life with open conversation（交流）.”

Shortly after the September 11, 2001 attacks, they decided to walk from New York city to Washington, a 270-mile trip. They found they loved talking to people along the way and wanted to talk with the strangers after their return.

    “It started as a crazy idea,” Liz said. “We were so curious about all the strangers walking by with their stories. People will talk to us about anything: their jobs, their clothes, their childhood, anything.”

    Denise wanted to talk about an exam she was going to take. She had stopped for the second time in two days, to let two listeners know how it went.

    Marcia had lost her husband to a serious disease. “That was very heavy on my mind,” Marcia said. “To be able to talk about it to totally strangers was very good,” she explained.

    To celebrate a year of talking, the two held a get-together in a city park for all the people they had met in the past year. A few hundred people showed up, as well as some television cameramen and reporters.

They may plan more parties or tried to attract more people to join their informal talks. Some publishers have expressed their interest in the book, something they say they’ll consider.

1.What did Liz and Bill start doing after September 2001?

A. Chatting with people                     B. Setting up street signs

C. Telling stories to strangers             D. Organizing a speaker’s corner

2. What they have been doing can be described as ______.

A. pointless       B. normal           C. crazy            D. successful

3.Why are Denise and Marcia mentioned in the text?

A. They knew Liz and Bill very well.  

B. They happened to meet the writer of the text.

C. They organized the get-together in the city park.

D. They are example of those who talked to Liz and Bill.

4.What will Liz and Bill do in the future?

A. Going for publishing.                B. Do more television program.

C. Continuing what they are doing.      D. Spending more time reading books.

Lots of people have hobbies. Some people collect old coins or foreign stamps; some do needlework; others spend most of their spare time on a particular sport.

A lot of people enjoy reading. But reading tastes differ widely. Some people only read newspapers or comics, some like reading novels, while others prefer books on astronomy, wildlife, or technological discoveries.

If I happen to be interested in horses or precious stones, I cannot expect everyone else to share my enthusiasm. If I watch all the sports programs on TV with great pleasure, I must put up with the fact that other people find sports boring.

Is there nothing that interests us all? Is there nothing that concerns everyone—no matter who they are or where they live in the world? Yes, dear Sophie, there are questions that certainly should interest everyone. They are precisely the questions this course is about.

What is the most important thing in life? If we ask someone living on the edge of starvation, the answer is food. If we ask someone dying of cold, the answer is warmth. If we put the same question to someone who feels lonely and isolated, the answer will probably be the company of other people.

But when these basic needs have been satisfied—will there still be something that everybody needs? Philosophers think so. They believe that man cannot live by bread alone. Of course everyone needs food. And everyone needs love and care. But there is something else—apart from that—which everyone needs, and that is to figure out who we are and why we are here.

Being interested in why we are here is not a “casual” interest like collecting stamps. People who ask such questions are taking part in a debate that has gone on as long as man has lived on this planet. How the universe, the earth, and life came into being is a bigger and more important question than who won the most gold medals in the last Olympics.

1. This text is most probably taken from __________. 

A. a research paper                 B. a course schedule

C. a personal letter                    D. a book review

2. Which of the following best states the main idea of the passage?

A. Philosophical questions are as interesting as collecting stamps.

B. Thinking about philosophical questions is a serious interest.

C. Figuring out who we are and why we are here is man’s basic needs.

D. Philosophy has universal appeal and concerns everybody in nature.

3. The author believes that __________.

A. no existing subject can interest everyone in the world

B. different people may have different interests and concerns

C. everyone has to figure out who we are and why we are here

D. people in modern society pay more attention to philosophical questions