1.I don’t want to get ________in the argument. I know nothing about it.

2.The information office is ________in the city center.

3.Hotel ________is included in the price of your holiday.

4.People with______should enjoy equal rights with normal persons.

5. After having an argument with her best friend, she was too upset to say a _________word.

6. Without the teacher’s ________, no one can play outside the classroom while having classes.                           

7.________ in the traffic jam, many people throw away rubbish everywhere, which is a bad behaviour.

8.We went to see a(n) ________ play about the national hero Yue Fei in ancient China yesterday.

9.This invention made a major ______ to road safety.

10.The public transport ______in this country is always a headache for citizens.

Schedules, as the 21st century people know, simply did not exist in the 17th and 18th centuries. We are upset if a plane arrives an hour late. Our ancestors weren’t upset if an April ship didn’t show up until June. They began to worry in July and were often happy when it showed up in August. When a long-distance ship finally did get to the port, the whole city became busy and excited. Businessmen hurried down to check the goods they had ordered. The ship would probably stay in port for at least three days, often a week, to take on businessmen, give the sailors a rest, find out about the latest news, weather conditions, and so on.

Travel time could only be approximate. One never knew when the winds would be good. So even though “average sailing time” was given, time could change considerably, shortening the voyage by up to 25% or putting it off by up to 500% or more! The average run from England to Boston was about a month and a half, but there were also voyages of three months. One voyage in 1640 lasted six months!

Travel time is not the same in both directions, due to the winds and currents. This is especially true in the Caribbean, where winds are from the southeast the entire year. Ships sailing west across the Atlantic spend longer than ships sailing east, and the contrary winds can prevent a ship from actually making it to the harbor even if it gets close. One ship was held off the North Carolina coast for 17 days before being able to land!

1. What can we learn from the first paragraph?

A. No sailor was allowed to have fun when the ship reached land.

B. People in ancient times didn’t care about other people’s safety.

C. The ship would leave for a voyage when all of the preparations were made.

D. A long-distance ship would create a lot of excitement in the place where it landed.

2. According to the passage, travel time can’t be fixed due to ___________ .

A. the people at the port                                B. average sailing time

C. the changeable climate                          D. the businessmen and the sailors

3. The underlined word “currents” in the third paragraph means __________ .

A. the movement of water                         B. the movement of winds

C. direction of the traveling ship         D. travel time of ships

“Life is speeding up. Everyone is getting unwell.”

This may sound like something someone would say today. But in fact, an unknown citizen who lived in Rome in AD 52 wrote it.

We all love new inventions. They are exciting, amazing and can even change our lives. But have all these developments really improve the quality of our lives?

Picture this: You’re rushing to finish your homework on the computer. Your mobile phone rings, a QQ message from your friend appears on the screen, the noise from the television is getting louder and louder. Suddenly the computer goes blank and you lose all your work. Now you have to stay up all night to get it done. How calm and happy do you feel?

Inventions have speeded up our lives so much that they often leave us feeling stressed and tired. Why do you think people who live far away from noisy cities, who have no telephones, no cars, not even any electricity often seem to be happier? Perhaps because they lead simpler lives.

One family in the UK went “back in time” to see what life was like without all the inventions we have today. The grandparents, with their daughter, and grandsons Benjamin, 10, and Tomas, 7, spent nine weeks in a 1940s house. They had no washing machine, microwave, computer or mobile phones.

The grandmother, Lyn, said, “It was hard physically, but not mentally.” She believed life was less materialistic. “The more things you have, the more difficult life becomes,” She said. The boys said they fought less to fight over, such as their computer. Benjamin also noticed that his grandmother had changed from being a “trendy（时髦的）, beer-drinking granny, to one who cooked things.”

Here are some simple ways to beat the stress often caused by our inventions!

Don’t be available all the time. Turn off your mobile phone at certain times of the day. Don’t check your e-mail every day.

Don’t reply to somebody as soon as they leave a text message just because you can. It may be fun at first, but it soon gets annoying.

1.The passage is mainly about _______.

2.The writer quoted (引用) what a citizen in ancient Rome said at the beginning of the story in order to ______________.

3.Why did the family choose to spend some time in a 1940’s house? Because ______________.

4.What do you think the underlined word “available” in the first suggestion offered by the writer mean?

Research shows that much of our predisposition （倾向） towards determination, sociability and self - control and sense of purpose is in our genes．In fact, our DNA plays a bigger role in influencing these traits （ characteristics）than our upbringing （儿童期的教养）and the company we keep．Taken together, these aspects of personality can make the difference between success and failure, say the Edinburgh University researchers．        

They questioned more than 800 pairs of twins about their attitudes to life to tease apart the influences of nature and nurture．Comparing identical twins, who share all their DNA and their up bringing, with non-identical twins, who have a shared background but are no more genetically alike than other brothers and sisters, is a technique often used by researchers to quantify the influence of genetics．

The results, published in the Journal of Personality, showed that genes play a much bigger role than lifestyle, with self-control particularly etched （铭刻） into our DNA．                   

Our genes a222so largely determine how determined and persistent we are．This is important in terms of success, as someone who refuses to give up is more likely to achieve their dreams than someone who throws in the towel at the first hiccough．

Researcher Professor Timothy Bates said, "Ever since the ancient Greeks, people Lave de hated the nature of a good life and the nature of a virtuous life．Why do some people seem to manage their lives, have good relationships and cooperate to achieve their goals while others do not? Previously,  the role of family and the environment around the home often controlled people' s ideas about what affected psychological well-being．However, this work emphasizes a much more powerful influence from genetics．"

However, those who haven' t been dealt a helpful hand of genes shouldn' t he too depressed．The professor says a sense of purpose is the key and advises those who are eager for success to focus their thoughts on making a difference．

1.What does the result of the research indicate?

2.The underlined part in Paragraph 4 refers to someone who                ．

3.Timothy Bates mentions the ancient Creeks in order to indicate that          ．

4.According to the passage, the key personality trait is            ．

5.What is the best title for the passage?

Recently some American scientists have given a useful sincere piece of advice to people in industrialized nations that they would be much healthier if they ate more of the same kind of food eaten by humans living more than 10,000 years ago.

The scientists say that the human body has changed very little since humans first appeared on the earth, but the way we live has changed greatly. Our body has not been able to deal with these changes in life style and this has led to new kinds of sicknesses. These new sicknesses were not known in ancient times, so they are called “diseases of civilization”. Many cancers and diseases of the blood system, including heart attacks and strokes ( 中风 ) are examples of such diseases.

Scientists noted that people in both the Old Stone Age and the New Stone Age enjoyed very little alcohol or tobacco, probably none. Ancient people also got a great deal of physical exercise, but a change in food is one of the main differences between life in ancient times and that of today.

Stone-age people hunted wild animals for their meat, which had much less fat than domestic or tame ones ( 家畜 ). They also ate a lot of fresh wild vegetables and fruits. They didn’t have milk or any other dairy products, and they made very little use of grains. But today, we eat a large amount of these. We eat six times more salt than our remote ancestors. We eat more sugar. We eat twice as much fat but only one third as much protein and much less vitamin C.

People today probably do not want to live the way people thousands of years ago did, but scientists say that we would be much healthier if we ate much the same way as remote ancestors did, cutting the amount of fatty, salty and sweet food.

What is the main cause that people suffer from a lot of new sicknesses?

A. Ancient people did a great deal of physical exercise.

B. People today have a lot of alcohol.

C. People today have more tobacco.

D. Food today is quite different from that of ancient times.

Which of the following belongs to the dairy products?

A. Milk              B. Corn     C. Pork             D. Flour

New kinds of sicknesses have been found because ________.

A. the human body has changed compared with humans who first appeared on the earth

B. the way we live has changed a little

C. our body can’t deal with the changes in life style

D. the way we live today is proper for the human body

According to some scientists, Stone-age people were much healthier than people today because they ate a lot of ________.

A. milk and other dairy products                        B. salt and sugar

C. wild animals, fresh wild vegetables and fruits     D. grain foods