Are you an optimist? Do you look at your glass and see it as half full? Do you believe that every cloud has a silver lining and that generally things turn out for the best? Do you believe that if something is meant to be, it will be? If you reply “yes” to all of these questions, then you are an optimist. You probably are enthusiastic, cheerful and outgoing. You may well be successful atwork and in love.

But you may be misguided because things don’t turn out for the best. You may believe that when one door closes another one opens (for example，you may fail to obtain a new job，another chance will come around soon), Wrong. When one door closes, another door slams in your face. That's bitter reality.
Now a book has been published which confirms what we pessimists(悲观者）have suspected all along. It's called The Positive Power of Defensive Pessimism. Its author argues that defensive pessimism can lead to positive results. Defensive pessimism is a strategy used to manage fear, anxiety and worry. Defensive pessimists prepare for things by setting low outcomes for themselves. They carefully consider everything that may go wrong and plan for ways to handle these problems. And this gives them a sense of control. Lawrence Sanno, a psychology professor, says, “What’s interesting about defensive pessimists is that they tend to be very successful people, so their low opinion of the situation’s outcomes is not realistic. They use it to motivate themselves to perform better. ”
So far, so good. This is not rocket science. Defensive pessimists prepare carefully and consider what might go wrong, whether at work, on a date or even in a sports game. It makes sense to have a back-up plan. There are many sayings in English urging caution. For example, “Don’t put all your eggs in one basket,” and “ Don’t count your chickens until they hatch. “ To have a confident and optimistic approach to life’s problems is good. But listen to what Woody Alien，the American comedian says, ”Confidence is what you have before you understand the problem.”
There are pros and cons to being an optimist and a pessimist. Don’t feel bad if you see the glass half empty. You are a realist. But lighten up and hook up with someone who sees the same glass half full.
【小题1】What is the passage mainly about?

It’s our hope that the calculator will promote action, awareness and empowerment by showing you that one person can make a difference and help stop global warming.
There are many simple things you can do in your daily life—what you eat, what you drive, how you build your home—that can have an effect on your immediate surroundings, and on places as far away as Antarctica. Here is a list of things that you can do to make a difference.
Use Compact Fluorescent Bulbs
Replace 3 frequently used light bulbs with compact fluorescent bulbs. Save 300lbs (pounds) of carbon dioxide and $60 per year.
Use Recycled Paper
Make sure your printer paper is 100% post consumer recycled paper. Save 5lbs of carbon dioxide per ream of paper.
Take Shorter Showers
Showers account for 2/3 of all water heating costs. Save 350 lbs of carbon dioxide and $99 per year.
Buy Products Locally
Buy locally and reduce the amount of energy required to drive your products to your home.
Carpool When You Can
Own a big vehicle？Carpooling with friends and co-workers saves fuel. Save 790 lbs of carbon dioxide and hundreds of dollars per year.
Don’t Idle in Your Car
Idling wastes money and gas, and generates pollution and global warming causing emissions. Except when in traffic, turn your engine off in you must wait for more than 30 seconds.
Buy Organic food
The chemicals used in modern agriculture pollute the water supply, and require energy to produce.
Turn Off Your Computer
Shut off your computer when not in use, and save 200 lbs of carbon dioxide. Conserve energy by using your computer’s “sleep mode” instead of a screensaver.
With a Stop Global Warming calculator which costs you only $50 in hand, you will find what you do does count.
【小题1】 The Stop Global Warming calculator can serve the following purposes EXCEPT __________.

Sir William Osler has a few words for you: “In the Life of a young man the most essential thing for happiness is the gift of friendship.” Truer words were never spoken. For what more could you ask than comradeship during the peaks and valleys of life? To whom else but a close, valuable friend can you show off your successes and complain about your failures or losses?
What is a “good friend”? How is he best described? Well, it has been my observation that although many will cry with you, few can sincerely rejoice (欣喜) with you. Therefore, in my opinion, a good friend is one who can enjoy your successes without envy; one who can say, “That was wonderful! You can do it again, even better if you want!” and mean it. Nothing taxes a friendship more than the prosperity of one and not the other. Even the closest of friendships often cannot resist such pressure and fail. No wonder many minor friendships go down day by day for the same reason.
A person of good character and sound moral, of honor and humor, of courage and belief is a friend to be sought and treasured — for there are few. Too often we hear, “If you can count your good friends on more than one hand, consider yourself blessed.”
What makes a friendship last? Well, I don’t know all the answers, but one of my observations is that most good friends usually have similar tastes. They generally like and dislike many of the same things. There also usually seems to exist a similarity of personality types — especially in the fundamental values of life such as honesty, sincerity, loyalty, and dependability. More often than not, birds of a feather do fly together. I don’t think it matters a lot whether one prefers jazz or hockey to another’s Mozart or ballet. Much other matters far more: relying, sharing, giving, getting, enjoying; a sympathetic ear always there; criticism when it can help; praise — even if only because it would help. With not many people on this earth will you find this much in common. When you find one, hang on to him, for a good friend found is a rare treasure.
1. The function of Paragraph 1 is to introduce _____.
A. a famous saying 
B. the topic for discussion
C. a famous person 
D. two different attitudes
2. What is the meaning of the underlined sentence in Paragraph 2?
A. People don’t have to pay taxes to develop friendship with others.
B. Success of one person can promote his friendship with others.
C. Friendship can be affected by the difference in success between friends.
D. Nothing can affect friendship because it has gone through the peaks and valleys of life.
3. What is the main idea of Paragraph 3?
A. One is lucky to have many friends.
B. A friend should have a good character.
C. We should count our friends on more than one hand.
D. A true friend should be treasured because there are few.
4. According to the passage, which of the following plays the LEAST important role in a long-lasting friendship?
A. Hobbies.                            B. Tastes.
C. Personality.                          D. Sympathy.

These days we are all conditioned to accept newness, whatever it costs. Very soon, there is no doubt that Apple's tablet (平板电脑) will seem as a vital tool of modern living to us as sewing machine did to our grandparents. At least, it will until someone produces an even smarter, thinner and more essential tablet, which, if recent history is any guide, will be in approximately six months' time. Turn your back for a moment and you find that every electronic item in your possession is as old as a tombstone. Why should you care if people laugh just because you use an old mobile phone? But try getting the thing repaired when it goes wrong. It's like walking into a pub and asking for an orange juice. You will be made to feel like some sort of time-traveler from the 1970s. "Why not buy a new one?" you will get asked.

And so the mountain of electrical rubbish grows. An average British person was believed to get rid of quite a number of electronic goods in a lifetime. They weighed three tons, stood 7 feet high, and included five fridges, six microwaves, seven PCs, six TVs, 12 kettles, 35 mobile phones and so on. Even then, the calculation seemed to be conservative. Only 35 mobiles in a lifetime? The huge number of electronic items now regularly thrown away by British families is clearly one big problem. But this has other consequences. It contributes greatly to the uneasy feeling that modem technology is going by faster than we can keep up. By the time I've learnt how to use a tool it's already broken or lost. I've lost count of the number of TV remote-controls that I've bought, mislaid and replaced without working out what most of the buttons did.

And the technology changes so unbelievably fast. It was less than years ago that I spotted an energetic businessman friend pulling what seemed to be either a large container or a small nuclear bomb on wheels through a railway station. I asked. "What have you got in there? Your money or your wife?" "Neither," he replied, with the satisfied look of a man who knew he was keeping pace with the latest technology, no matter how ridiculous he looked. "This is what everyone will have soon—even you. It's called a mobile telephone."

I don't feel sorry for the pace of change. On the contrary, I'm amazed by those high-tech designers who can somehow fit a camera, music-player, computer and phone into a plastic box no bigger than a packet of cigarette. If those geniuses could also find a way to keep the underground trains running on the first snowy day of winter, they would be making real progress for human beings. What I do regret, however, is that so many household items fall behind so soon. My parents bought a wooden wireless radio in 1947, the year they were married. In 1973, the year I went to university, it was still working. It sat in the kitchen like an old friend—which, in a way, it was. It certainly spoke to us more than we spoke to each other on some mornings. When my mum replaced it with a new-style radio that could also play cassette-tapes, I felt a real sense of loss.

Such is the over-excited change of 21st-century technology that there's no time to satisfy our emotional needs. Even if Apple's new products turn out to be the most significant tablets I very much doubt if they will resist this trend.

1.When you try getting an old mobile phone repaired, ____.

A. you are travelling through time            B. you are thought to be out of date

C. you will find everything wrong            D. you have got to buy a new one

2.Throwing away so much electronic rubbish makes the writer feel quite _____.

A. lost and upset    B. unbelievably fast

C. broken or lost     D. regularly wasteful

3.The example of the businessman implies that____.

A. the businessman mastered the latest technology   

B. mobile phones used to be quite big just years ago

C. the businessman was a very ridiculous person     

D. the writer failed to follow modern technology

4.The passage is organized in the pattern of ____.

A. time and events    B. comparison and contrast   

C. cause and effect      D. examples and analysis

5.Which of the following is conveyed in the passage?

A. The fast pace of change brings us no good.     

B. We have to keep up with new technology.

C. Household items should be upgraded quickly.   

D. We should hold on for new technology to last.

  George, when your big brother and your little dog and I walked you up to schools today, you

had no idea how I was feeling.

You were so excited. You had packed and unpacked your pencils and safety scissors in your backpack a dozen times. I am really going to miss those lazy mornings when we waved your brother and sister off to school.

Because you are my youngest, I had learned a few things by the time you came along. I found out that the seemingly endless days of babyhood are gone like lightning. I blinked(眨眼), and your older siblings were setting off for school as eagerly as you did this morning, I was one of the lucky ones; I could choose whether to work or not. By the time it was your turn, the shining prizes of career advancement and a double income had lost their brightness. A splash(溅水) in the pool with you in your bright red boots or "just one more" rereading of your favorite book, Frog and Toad Are Friends, meant more. You didn't go to preschool and I hope that doesn't hold you back. You learned numbers by helping me count the soda cans we returned to the store.

I have to admit that in my mind's eye, an image of myself while you're in school has developed, I see myself updating all the photo albums and starting that novel I always wanted to write. As the summer wound down and more frequent quarrels erupted between you and your siblings, I was looking forward to today. And then this morning, I walked you up the steep hill to your classroom. You found the coat hook with your name above it right away, and you gave me one of your characteristically fierce, too-tight hugs. This time you were ready to let go before I was.

Maybe someday you will deliver a kindergartner to the first day of school. When you turn at the door to wave good-bye, he or she will be too deep in conversation with a new friend to notice. Even as you smile, you'll feel something warm on your cheek.

    And then, you’ll know…

64．What does the author mean by the underlined sentence?

       A．She gave up the job with a big salary and prizes.

       B．She could only recall her good job at home now.

       C．Many good jobs with better pay attracted her but she didn’t take them.

       D．Compared with bringing up the baby, work seemed to fade to her.

65．Which statement is NOT TRUE about George’s family according to the letter?

       A．George’s parents gave birth to three children

       B．The Georges is a double income family.

       C．The children had more arguments during the summer.

       D．They recyled soda cans.

66．The passage tries to show us          .

       A．how excited a child will be on his first day to school

       B．how deeply a mother loves her child

       C．how many efforts a mother has made to raise a child

       D．how a mother plans her future life after her children go to school