Holidays

1.What can you do if you like to go on holidays with pets?

A. Choose the holiday in Devon.                 B. Go to the Snowdonia Centre.

C. Join the World Sea Trip of 2008.             D. Visit Acapulco and Hawaii.

2.In what way is the Snowdonia Centre different from the other two holidays?

A. It provides chances of family gatherings.

B. It provides customers with good food.

C. It offers a ports lesson.

D. It offers comfortable room.

3.What is special about the World Sea Trip of 2008?

A. You can have free meals on deck every day.

B. You can sleep on a ship and tour many places.

C. You will have chances to watch and act in a play.

D. You have to do your own packing and unpacking.

4.At the Snowdonia Centre, the beginners’ costs of 157 do not cover           .

A. food         B. rooms            C. body exercises      D. walking shoes

  Contrary to the impression that grandmothers are delighted to help their grown daughters and care for their grandchildren, a study of multigenerational families shows that many older women hate the frequent demands that the younger generations make on their time and energy.

  “Young women with children are under a lot of pressure these days, and they expect their mothers to help them pick up the pieces,” noted Dr. Bertram J. Cohler, a behavioral scientist at the University of Chicago. “This is often the strongest source of complaint on the part of Grandmother, who has finished with child caring and now has her own life to live. Grandmothers like to see their children and grandchildren, but on their own time.”

  Dr. Cohler is director of a study, sponsored by the National Institute of Aging, of 150 workingclass families that live in a Midwestern suburb. He and Dr. Henry U. Gruebaum of Harvard Medical School, have already completed their study of four such families in New England.

  Dr. Cohler tells of a middle-aged Boston woman who works as a cook all week and for her parish (教区) on Sundays. Every Saturday, her one day off, her daughter and family visit, expecting mother to make lunch, shop, and visit. “That's not how she wants to grow old,” said Dr. Cohler, who was told by the older woman, “My daughter would never speak to me if she knew how angry and unhappy I get.”

  In all the four New England families studied, the older women disliked the numerous phone calls and visits from their grown daughters, who often turned to the mothers for advice, physical resources, love, and companionship as well as baby-sitting services. “American society keeps increasing the burdens for older people, particularly those in their 50s and 60s,” Dr. Cohler said in an interview here. “They're still working and they're taking care of their grown children and maybe also their aged parents. Sometimes life gets to be too much.”

Which of the following is closest in meaning to the expression “pick up the pieces” in the second paragraph?

   A. Save a bad situation.              B. Put children's toys in their proper places.

   C. Gather up pieces of clothing.       D. Keep the room in good order.

The middle-aged Boston woman ______.

   A. expects her mother to cook lunch for her

   B. enjoys the room in good order  

   C. visits an older woman every Saturday

   D. works six days a week

The passage is mainly about ______.

   A. young women's inability to look after their children

   B. Grandmothers' attitudes toward helping their grown daughters

   C. average American women's family life

   D. grandmother should give more help to their daughters

From Dr. Cohler's study we may reach the conclusion that ______.

   A. daughters should be independent of their old grandmothers

   B. grandmother should give more help to their daughters

   C. mothers and daughters should support each other

   D. daughters should be more considerate toward their mothers

Ⅲ. 阅读（共两节，满分40分）

第一节　阅读理解（共15小题；每小题2分，满分30分）

阅读下面短文，掌握其大意，然后从41—55各题所给的四个选项（A、B、C、D）中，选出最佳选项，并在答题卡上将该项涂黑。

Although April did not bring us the rains we all hoped for, and although the Central Valley doesn’t generally experience the sound and lightning that can go with those rains, it’s still important for parents to be able to answer the youthful questions about thunder and lightning.

The reason these two wonders of nature are so difficult for many adults to explain to children is that they are not very well understood by adults themselves. For example, do you know that the lightning we see flashing down to the earth from a cloud is actually flashing up to a cloud from the earth? Our eyes trick us into thinking we see a downward motion when it’s actually the other way round. But then, if we believed only what we think and we see, we’d still insist that the sun rises in the morning and sets at night.

Most lightning flashes take place inside a cloud, and only a relative few can be seen jumping between two clouds or between earth and a cloud. But, with about 2,000 thunderstorms taking place above the earth every minute of the day and night, there’s enough activity to produce about 100 lightning strikes on earth every second.

Parents can use thunder and lightning to help their children learn more about the world around them. When children understand that the light of lightning flashing reaches their eyes almost at the same moment, but the sound of the thunder takes about 5 seconds to travel just one mile, they can begin to time the interval(间隔) between the flash and the crash to learn how close they are to the actual spark(闪光).

1. According to the author, in the area of the Central Valley, ___________.

A. rains usually come without thunder and lightning

B. it is usually dry in April

C. children pay no attention to the two natural wonders

D. parents are not interested in thunder and lightning

2. We believe that lightning is a downward motion because ___________.

A. we were taught so by our parents from our childhood

B. we are taken in by our sense of vision

C. it is a common natural sight

D. it is a truth proved by science

3. What is TRUE about lightning according to the passage?

A. Only a small number of lightning flashes occur on earth.

B. Lightning travels 5 times faster than thunder.

C. Lightning flashes usually jump from one cloud to another.

D. There are far more lightning strikes occurring on earth than we can imagine.

4. The underlined word “activity” is most closely related to the word(s)___________.

A. “cloud”                                       B. “lightning strikes”        

C. “lightning flashes”                              D. “thunderstorms”

5. It can be concluded from the passage that____________.

A. we should not believe what we see or hear

B. things moving downward are more noticeable

C. people often have wrong ideas about ordinary phenomena (现象)

D. adults are not as good as children in observing certain natural phenomena

Veronica

By Mary Gaitskill.

Pantheon Books, $ 23.

This attractively dark novel from the author of Bad Behavior and Two Girls, Fat and Thin is narrated by a former Paris model who is now sick and poor; her reflections on beauty and cruelty have clarity and an uncanny bite.

On Beauty

By Zadie Smith.

Penguin Press, $ 25.95

In her new book, a cultural – politics novel set in a place like Harvard, the author of White Teeth brings everything to the table: a crisp intellect, a lovely wit and enormous sympathy for the men, women and children who read her story.

Saturday

By Ian McEwan.

Nan A. Talese / Doubleday. $ 26.

As exciting and as carefully constructed as anything McEwan has written, this astringent (尖锐的) novel traces a day in the life of an English neurosurgeon who comes face to face with senseless violence.

De Kooning: An American Master

By Mark Stevens and Annalyn Swan.

Alfred A. Knopf, $ 35.

A brilliant biography, impressively researched and absorbingly written, of the talented immigrant who stood at the vortex (中心) of mid – 20th – century American art.

A History of Europe Since 1945

By Tony Judt.

Penguin Press, $ 39.95.

Judt’s massive, learned, truthfully detailed account of Europe’s recovery from the wreckage of World War Ⅱpresents a whole continent in panorama (全景) even as it sets off detonations (爆炸) of insight on almost every page.

1．According to the passage, the most probable non – fiction novel is          .

A．Veronica         B．Saturday

C．On Beauty              D．A History of Europe Since 1945

2．If you’re fond art, which of the following would be your favorite?

A．On Beauty              B．Saturday

C．Veronica          D．De Kooning : An American Master

3．The novels published by the same company are           .

A．On Beauty & A History of Europe Since 1945

B．Saturday & De Kooning : An American Master

C．Veronica & On Beauty

D．A History of Europe Since 1945 & Saturday

4．Which of the following is NOT true according to the passage?

A．Mary Gaitskill is the author of both Veronica and Bad Behaviour.

B．On Beauty describes the stories that happened in Harvard.

C．Two authors finished De Kooning : An American Master together.

D．A post – war Europe can be found in A History of Europe Since 1945.

5．Which of the following novels are written by Zadie Smith?

A．On Beauty & Bad Behavior

B．Saturday & De Kooning : An American Master

C．On Beauty & White Teeth

D．Veronica & White Teeth

Mr. King lived with six hundred wild animals on the Greek Island of Kyklos. Ever since he left school, he had traveled all over the word collecting animals for his own zoo. He hoped to collect two examples of every kind of animal on his island. But he was afraid that people would find him someday.

He wrote books about his travels and about his animals that he collected. The money from the books helped to pay for all the food that these animals ate.

One day, when Mr. King was out looking for drinking water, he found oil. He needed money for his travels and for his zoo, and a little oil would buy enough water for what he needed all his life, but he knew that if he told anyone else about it, it would be the end of his zoo and his life’s work. So he decided not to tell anyone else about what he had found, because oil and water couldn’t mix.

Mr. King traveled all over the world for collecting ______.

  A. oil       B. water    C. animals      D.money

What Mr. King needed for his travels and his zoo was_______.

  A.water    B.money   C. support      D.friends

Mr. King was afraid that people would find him someday because ________.

  A. he hadn’t got enough money for them       

  B. that would be the end of his zoo

C. he hadn’t got enough water and oil         

D. they would buy his animals

Mr. King wrote books to _______.

  A. tell people about his story               

  B. tell people how to find oil

C. get enough money for his animals          

D. make money for his travels

In the passage, “oil and water couldn’t mix” means that “_________”.

  A. Mr. King needed not only water but also oil   

B. oil and water were rather difficult to be mixed together

C. Mr. King’s animals only needed water, not oil

  D. if he told the others he found oil, his life’s work would be stopped