B

From E-mail to online shopping, you may think you’ve heard everything there to know about the electronic frontier （新领域）．But with hundreds of thousands of Web pages being added weekly, there are plenty of surprises out there．Here are some of the most intriguing （有迷惑力的）．

……

Put your kid on a greeting card．Here is how: simply take some pictures with a regular camera, and then ask the photo service to develop them digitally （数字化）．For a small fee, you’ll receive your photos on a desk．Put that into your computer and, with a few clicks of the mouse, you can view your photos on the screen．With a few more keystrokes, you can attach the photos to email and send them to friends and relatives worldwide．

　　Sign on to one or several greeting card’s Websites （http://www．cardcentral．net/ is an index of more than 1200 electronic card sites） and create an electronic birthday or holiday card．Using your digital photos, you can paste your grandchildren onto the cover．

　　If you don’t want to use your own photos, go to cards．amzon．com to browse （浏览） hundreds of images in over 30 categories…all of which you can attach to an electronic greeting card for free．For a nominal fee（很低的费用）you can choose from a library of 75,000 images at http://www．phontodisc．com/．

　　Call Australia for free．To have a telephone conversation over the Internet, the person you want to talk to no longer needs a computer．Now all you need to talk to someone in Sydney is one computer with speakers, a microphone, a sound card and some software （available at http://www．vocaltec．com/ or Mricrosoft．com）．Typically, you’ll pay a monthly fee （usually under $20） to a service provider, but after that, the calls themselves are local．Sound quality is the same as that of a cell phone．

　　Even if you don’t have a computer, you can still use the Web to reduce your long distance phone costs．Some companies offer a service that lets you use an ordinary phone to call another ordinary phone, but charge only a few cents per minute for US calls, because they send them through the Internet．

　　Today 48 percent of American homes have computers…a figure that is expected to climb to 60 percent by 2003．And by the end of the next decade, Americans will likely be spending more time shopping, banking, investing and learning on the Internet than in the real world．If you can’t do or find something on the Net today, you probably can tomorrow．

60．Over the Internet, you ________．

       A．can hear everything there

       B．will meet with plenty of surprises which come out every week．

       C．will hear the things about the electronic frontier

       D．can find some things are very interesting

61．From the passage we can infer that _________．

       A．fewer people will use the Internet in the following ten years

       B．more people will study in the regular school by the end of the next decade

       C．fewer people will go to the regular school in the following ten years

       D．more money will be needed for a long-distance call by the end of the next decade

62．If you want to attach to photo to your e-mail, you have to ________ it．

       A．digitalize　　  B．take　　　　   C．picture　　　　      D．send

63．Which of the following is NOT true?

       A．A telephone conversation over the Internet can be carried out without computers．

       B．Over the Internet, the receiver of the phone conversation doesn’t need a computer．

       C．The phone conversations over the Internet are much cheaper．

       D．The long-distance calls are local themselves．

A university graduate described as a “respectable and intelligent” woman is seeking professional help after being convicted of （证明有……罪）shoplifting for the second time in six months．

       Ana Luz, recently studying for her PhD, has been told she could end up behind bars unless she can control the desire to steal from shops．

       Luz ,who lives with her partner in Fitzwilliam Road ,Cambridge ,admitted stealing clothes worth ￡9．95 from John Lewis in Oxford Street ,London ,on March 9．

       Phillip Lemoyne ,prosecuting（起诉）,said Luz selected some clothes from a display and took them to the ladies’ toilet in the store．When she came out again she was wearing one of the skirts she had selected ,having taken off the anti-theft security alarms（防盗警报装置）．

       She was stopped and caught after leaving the store without paying ,Mr Lemoyne said．

       He added that she was upset on her arrest and apologized for her actions．

       Luz,28, was said to have been convicted of shoplifting by Cambridge judges last October ,but Morag Duff, defending ,said she had never been in trouble with the police before that．

       “She is ashamed and embarrassed but doesn’t really have any explanation why she did this ,” Miss Duff said．“She didn’t intend to steal when she went into the store．She is at a loss to explain it．She is otherwise a very respectable and intelligent young lady．She went to her doctor and asked for advice because she wants to know if there is anything in particular that caused her to do this．”

       Judge David Azan fined Luz ￡ 50,  and warned : “You’ve got a criminal record．If you carry on like this ,you will end up in prison ,which will ruin your bright future you may have．”

       Luz achieved a degree in design at university in her native Spain ,went on to a famous university in Berlin , Germany for her master’s degree and is now studying for a PhD at Cambridge University ,UK．

What is Ana Luz’s nationality?

       A．American．     B．British．  C．Spanish． D．German．

What does the underlined sentence “She is at a loss to explain it” mean?

       A．In her opinion it was a loss to the clothes shops where she stole things．

       B．She doesn’t have any idea why she has the desire to steal from shops．

       C．She thinks it is a loss for her to explain why she stole things from shops．

       D．Personally she feels ashamed and embarrassed for her shoplifting actions．

Which of the following best explains the meaning of the word “shoplifting” used in the passage?

       A．Carrying goods in a lift for a shop．    

       B．Taking goods to the ladies’ toilet．

       C．Selecting some goods from a display． 

       D．Taking goods from a shop without paying．

From the passage we can learn that          ．

       A．Ana Luz is already got her PhD at Cambridge University ,UK

       B．Ana Luz is ashamed and embarrassed and knows why she often did so

       C．the university graduate will be put in prison if she steals in shops once more

       D．Phillip Lemoyne is the “respectable and intelligent” woman’s defense lawyer

A few years ago, when I was still in high school, I met a wonderful and warm teacher. At that time in my life, there were many changes to adjust to, apart from the usual teenage troubles. My parents had divorced, so my elder brother and I had chosen to stay with my dad. Due to the fact that he was keeping the house, we didn’t have to move.

During this time, my teacher took a special interest in me. Being my English teacher, she encouraged my mind to travel to creativity I had long given up. She brought me out of the shell I built.

She became my mother, my older sister, my friend and my teacher. The one thing she couldn’t do though was to make me more girly as growing up with only my dad and brother made me a real tomboy.

Sometimes, I would be really immature（不成熟的）, especially if she was scoring me less than others on purpose. She knew I could do better than what I was handing in and so pushed me to extend further than limits.

When I finished school and then after college I was about to leave my hometowns she gifted me a watch that every second, with my pulse, should remind me of the one person who will forever wait and love me without reservation.

Time has passed and our friendship is distant, but in my heart, soul and mind, she is the closest I ever got.

The writer and her elder brother chose to live with their father simply because _________.

A. their mother was expecting to have another baby

    B. they didn’t have to move out of their house

    C. they hated their mother remarried

    D. they had a closer relationship with their father

How did the writer get along with her studies before she met her English teacher?

    A. She was hopeless and had given up her studies.

    B. She was getting along well with her studies.

    C. She had some trouble with her studies.

    D. She lacked interest in creativity.

The writer behaved herself like a boy because ________.

    A. she needed the love of mother

    B. she wanted to learn from her father and brother

    C. she lived with only men all the time

    D. her English teacher didn’t care about her

What was the writer’s attitude to the watch given by the teacher?

    A. She considered it to be very useful.

    B. She valued it very much.

    C. She kept it very well.

D. She wanted to do something later in return for it.

A

A higher reading rate, with no loss of comprehension, will help you in other subjects as well as in English, and the general principles apply to any language. Naturally, you will not read every book at the same speed. You would expect to read a newspaper, for example, much more rapidly than a physics or economics textbook-but you can raise your average reading speed over the whole range of materials you wish to cover so that the percentage gained will be the same whatever kind of reading you are concerned with.

The reading passages which follow are all of an average level of difficulty for your stage of instruction. They are all about five hundred words long. They are about topics of general interest which do not require a great deal of specialized knowledge. Thus they fall between the kind of reading you might find in your textbooks and the much less demanding kind you will find in a newspaper or light novel. If you read this kind of English, with understanding at four hundred words per minute, you might skim (浏览) through a newspaper at perhaps 650-700, while with a difficult textbook you might drop to two hundred or two hundred and fifty.

Perhaps you would like to know what reading speeds are common among native English-speaking university students and how those speeds can be improved. Tests in Minnesota, USA, for example, have shown that students without special training can read English of average difficulty, for example, Tolstoy's War and Peace in translation, at speeds of between 240 and 250 words per minute with about seventy percent comprehension. Students in Minnesota claim that after twelve half-hour lessons, once a week, the reading speed can be increased, with no loss of comprehension, to around five hundred words per minute.

According to the passage, the purpose of effective reading with higher speed is most likely to help you ________.

A. only in your reading of a physics textbook

B. improve your understanding of an economics textbook

C. not only in your language study but also in other subjects

D. choose the suitable materials to read

Which of the following does not describe the types of reading materials mentioned in the second paragraph?

A. Those beyond one's reading comprehension.

B. Those concerned with common knowledge.

C. Those without much demand for specialized knowledge.

D. Those with the length of about five hundred words.

The average speed of untrained native speakers in the University of Minnesota is ________.

A. about 300 words per minute

B. about 245 words per minute

C. about 650-700 words per minute

D. about 500 words per minute

According to the passage, how fast can you expect to read after you have attended twelve half-hour lessons in the University of Minnesota?

A. You can increase your reading speed by three times.

B. No real increase in reading speed can be achieved.

C. Yon can increase your reading speed by four times.

D. You can double your reading speed.

A new study finds that the animal known as man’s best friend can also be a good friend to the heart. Researchers in California say they have found that even just a short visit with a dog helped ease the worries of heart patients.               

The study divided the patients into three groups. In Group A, a dog and a person visited each patient for twelve minutes. Patients in Group B received just a human visitor for twelve minutes. And members of Group C received no visitor, human or canine(犬的).

The dogs would lie on the hospital bed so the heart patients could touch them. The researchers say some patients immediately smiled and talked to the dog and the human visitor. Dogs, in her words, “make people happier, calmer and feel more loved.”

The researchers examined the patients before, during and after the visits. They measured stress levels based on blood flow and heart activity. They say they found a twenty-four percent decrease in the group visited by both a dog and a person. They reported a ten percent decrease in the group visited by a person only. There was no change in the patients without any visit. These patients, however, did have an increase in their production of the hormone epinephrine (epinephrine肾上腺素). The body produces epinephrine during times of stress.

The increase was an average of seven percent. But the study found that patients who spent time with a dog had a seventeen percent drop in their levels of epinephrine. Patients visited by a human but not a dog also had a decrease, but only two percent.

The author believes that _______.  

   A. the dog can take the place of most medicines

   B. the dog is the most popular pet for man

   C. the findings of the research cannot be trusted

   D. visits by a human work better than visits by a dog

Which of the following best shows the stress level changes in the groups of patients? BACC

From the research findings we may conclude that _______.

A. the less the body produces epinephrine, the better

B. the longer a visit lasts, the happier the patient should be

C. the patients enjoyed the dogs’ company more than the human visitors’

D. it’s impossible for heart patients to recover without dogs’ visits

Which of the following is the best title for the passage?

  A. Worried Heart Patients               B. Epinephrine and Stress

  C. Good Friend to the Heart             D. Three Groups of Patients