57. After a vacation with her girlfriend, a woman would talk to her again on the phone for hours in order to　　　　　　　 .

A. experience the happy time again　　　　　　 B. keep a close tie with her

C. recommend her a new scenic spot　　　　　 D. remind her of something forgotten

56.While watching TV with others, women Usually talk a lot because they

A. are afraid of awkward silence with their families and friends

B. can both talk and watch the screen at the Same time

C. think they can have a good time and develop relationships

D. have to explain the plot and body language to their husbands

72. Which of the following would be the best title for the text?

A. Three folding bike inventors

B. The making of a folding bike

C. Progress in folding bike design

D. Ways of separating a bike wheel

答案　 70.C　 71.A　 72.C

Passage 14

(09·江苏A篇)

When women sit together to watch a movie on TV, they usually talk simultaneously(同时的)about a variety of subjects, including children, men, careers and what' s happening in their lives. When groups of men and women watch a movie together, the men usually end up telling the women to shut up. Men can either talk or watch the screen -- they can' t do both -- and they don' t understand that women can. Besides, women consider that the point of all getting together is to have a good time and develop relationships -- not just to sit there like couch potatoes staring at the screen.

During the ad breaks, a man often asks a woman to explain the plot and tell him where the relationship between the characters is going. He is unable, unlike women, to read the subtle body language signals that reveal how the characters are feeling emotionally. Since women originally spent their days with the other women and children in the group,　 they developed the ability to communicate successfully in order to maintain relationships. For a woman, speech continues to have such a clear purpose: to build relationships and make friends. For men, to talk is to relate the facts.

Men see the telephone as a communication tool for sending facts and information to other people, but a woman sees it as a means of bonding. A woman can spend two weeks on vacation with her girlfriend and, when she returns home, telephone the same girlfriend and talk for another two hours.

There is no convincing evidence that social conditioning, the fact that girls' mothers talked them more, is the reason why girls talk more than boys. Psychiatrist Dr Michael Lewis, author Social Behaviour and Language Acquisition, conducted experiments that found mothers talked　 to and looked at, baby girls more often than baby boys. Scientific evidence shows parents res the brain bias of their children. Since a girl' s brain is better organized to send and receive speech ,

we therefore talk to them more. Consequently, mothers who try to talk to their sons are usually pointed to receive only short grunts in reply.

71. We can learn from the text that Fitzsimons’s invention　　　　 .

A. kept the tyre as a whole piece

B. was made into production soon

C. left little room for improvement

D. changed our views on bag design

70. We can learn from the text that the wheels of the Grout Portable　　　　 .

A. were difficult to separate

B. could be split into 6 pieces

C. were fitted with solid tyres

D. were hard to carry on a train

69. We can infer from Paragraph 1 that the Brompton folding bike　　　　 .

A. was portable

B. had a folding wheel

C. could be put in a pocket

D. looked like a magic carpet

[答案]A

[解析]逻辑推理题。从文章第一段Andrew Ritchie, inventor of the Brompton folding bicycle, once said that the perfect portable bike would be “like a magic carpet…ou could fold it up and put it into your pocket or handbag”.

68. What is the text mainly about?

A. Fish dieting and human dieting.

B. Dieting and health.

C. Human dieting.

D. Fish dieting.

答案　 65.A　 66.D　 67.B　 68.D

Passage 13

(09·湖南D篇)

Andrew Ritchie, inventor of the Brompton folding bicycle, once said that the perfect portable bike would be “like a magic carpet…You could fold it up and put it into your pocket or handbag”. Then he paused: “But you’ll always be limited by the size of the wheels. And so far no one has invented a folding wheel.”

It was a rare - indeed unique - occasion when I was able to put Ritchie right. A 19th-century inventor, William Henry James Grout, did in fact design a folding wheel. His bike, predictably named the Grout Portable, had a frame that split into two and a larger wheel that could be separated into four pieces. All the bits fitted into Grout’s Wonderful Bag, a leather case.

Grout’s aim: to solve the problems of carrying a bike on a train. Now doesn’t that sound familiar? Grout intended to find a way of making a bike small enough for train travel: his bike was a huge beast. And importantly, the design of early bicycles gave him an advantage: in Grout’s day, tyres were solid, which made the business of splitting a wheel into four separate parts relatively simple. You couldn’t do the same with a wheel fitted with a one-piece inflated (充气的) tyre.

So, in a 21st-century context, is the idea of the folding wheel dead? It is not. A British design engineer, Duncan Fitzsimons, has developed a wheel that can be squashed into something like a slender ellipse (椭圆). Throughout, the tyre remains inflated.

Will the young Fitzsimons’s folding wheel make it into production? I haven’t the foggiest idea. But his inventiveness shows two things. First, people have been saying for more than a century that bike design has reached its limit, except for gradual advances. It’s as silly a concept now as it was 100 years ago: there’s plenty still to go for. Second, it is in the field of folding bikes that we are seeing the most interesting inventions. You can buy a folding bike for less than £1,000 that can be knocked down so small that it can be carried on a plane - minus wheels, of course - as hand baggage.

Folding wheels would make all manner of things possible. Have we yet got the magic carpet of Andrew Ritchie’s imagination? No. But it’s progress.

67. The experiment showed that the smaller fish　　　　 .

A. fought over a feast 　　　　 B. went on diet willingly

C. preferred some extra food D. challenged the boss fish

66. The underlined words “the evicted fish” in Paragraph 3 refer to　　　　 .

A. the fish beaten up　 　 B. the fish found out

C. the fish fattened up 　 D. the fish driven away

65. When a goby grows to within 5-10% of the size of its larger competitor, it　　　　 .

A. faces danger　　　　　　 B. has breeding rights

C. eats its competitor　　　　　　 D. leaves the group itself