4、I was hurrying to our basketball game one morning when Hillary Barnes, the most popular girl in school, stopped me. “Are you the twin who won the art competition?” she asked.

“No, that’s Christine. I’m Katie,” I said.

We were not identical twins; we looked quite different. She could defeat Snow White in a beauty contest! Compared to Christine, I felt like one of Cinderella’s stepsisters.

One Saturday Christine gave me a painting lesson because I was always attempting to be artistic too. But I knocked over the vase of flowers, spilling water onto Christine’s painting. Instead of becoming angry, though, she turned the whole mess into a dreamy masterpiece （杰作）. You could look at five different ways and see five different things. With this brilliant creation, she won First Prize in the art competition. I really envied her, but I knew it wasn’t her fault and I was the one with wild, unmanageable hair and no talent.

Joining Christine’s basketball team was my latest effort to be like her.

On the way to the gym, I’d made up my mind to give my best performance in that day’s game. I made preparations with great enthusiasm. “Christine, here!” I tossed her a ball. But it was too high, she leapt for it; it slipped through her fingers and crashed into the tape recorder that was used to play the national anthem before each mage.

I muttered apologies as I picked up the broken pieces of the recorder. Coach looked at the mess and asked, “How are we going to play the song now?”

Christine suggested, “Let Katie sing it! She’s always singing at home.”

Coach asked, “Would you?” I found myself nodding.

Coach announced the national anthem and everyone stood.  Standing before a microphone, I looked up to the flag. The notes seemed to flow from deep inside me, and my voice was steady and clear. When I finished, the gym was silent. Then it was filled with applause. As the game started, teammates patted my back and gave me the “thumbs up” sign. Laura Jamison said, “You should try out for the school musical!” I nodded and said that I might.

The next morning, Hillary Barnes stopped me in the hallway and asked, “Are you the twin who sings?”

“Yes, that’s me,” I answered, grinning （露齿笑） as I walked to class.

1．The author uses “Snow White” and “Cinderella’s stepsisters” to show          .

       A．how dissimilar the twins were in appearance

       B．why Christine could win the art competition

       C．who was the most popular girl at school

       D．what the twins’ characters were like

2．What can we learn from Paragraph 4?

       A．Christine was unpleasant to her sister.

       B．Katie showed a lot of ability in painting too.

       C．The masterpiece was painted by the two sisters.

       D．Katie took a reasonably balanced view of her sister.

3．Christine recommended Katie for the national anthem because         .

       A．she knew perfectly well what Katie had a gift for

       B．she wanted to repair the damage she had caused

       C．she thought Katie should be punished

       D．she would like to help the coach

4．What is the message of the story?

      A．Bad situations help become popular.

       B．People are talented in different ways.

       C．People should always be nice to others.

       D．Unsuccessful attempts are well worth the effort.

3、When a caterpillar （毛毛虫） feeds on a tomato leaf, the plant moves rapidly to meet with a defensive response, systematically releasing “proteinase inhibitors” – proteins that interfere （干扰） with the caterpillar’s digestion – throughout the plant, especially in the leaves. But how does the message get from the wounded leaf to the rest of the plant?

Most scientists believed the alarm was spread by chemical messengers until a team of researchers headed by David Weldon – a biologist at the University of East Anglia in Norwich, England – made a shocking discovery. An injured leaf, the researchers found, sends an electrical signal to warn neighboring leaves of upcoming danger. It’s a “terribly tiny current” driven by an electrical potential difference of only 20 millvots（瓦特）, says Weldon, who measured the voltage after electrodes were attached to the plan’s surface.

“Right now, all we can say is that there is a correlation,” Weldon notes. “If you wound the plant, you’ll see an electrical signal accompanied by a biochemical response.” To learn more about the reaction, Weldon’s team plans to insert electrodes within the plant tissue （rather than on the surface） to determine what’s going on at the cellular level. The findings may help explain other mysteries surrounding plants. For example, many plants start to flower in springtime, as days grow longer, but plants sense the change in the day length through their leaves, while flowers begin to bloom at the buds （蓓蕾）. “There must be a signal from the leaf to the growing points”, Weldon says. “So far, no one has come up with a convincing chemical mechanism. Maybe an electrical signal is involved.”

1．What is the function of the “proteinase inhibitors” in tomato plants?

       A．They create nutritional matter.

       B．They produce electrical signals.

       C．They protect the plant from insects.

       D．They cure diseases by changing chemicals.

2．The researchers discovered that          .

       A．the alarm was increased by chemical messengers

       B．the wounded leaf raised danger signals by tiny currents

       C．the whole plant was aware of the risk through different signals

       D．proteinase inhibitors expanded the warning to the plant’s surface

3．What question do scientists hope to answer with further research?

       A．Do plants send chemical messengers that register pain?

       B．Do plants create cell tissues that help rebuild the leaves?

       C．Do plants create proteinase inhibitors that warn them of danger?

       D．Do plants send electrical signals that tell them it is time to grow?

4．The best title of this passage is              .

       A．Electrical Tomatoes

       B．Endless Cycles of Plants

       C．A debatable Research

       D．A Magic Role of Caterpillars

2、You Can’t Do it Even If It Hurts Nobody

    Who do you think breaks the law in our society? If you believe that only tough guys commit crimes, you may have to think again. Unlike in the movies, we can’t divide the world into bad guys and model citizens. Real life is much more complex. In the same way that diseases range from the common cold to fatal forms of cancer, crimes vary in degree. For example, smoking in an elevator will inconvenience people, but much less than threatening them with a gun.

In addition to breaking the law themselves, people tolerate various levels of crime. Why are we tolerant of some crimes? It may be that, by seeing others do something, we accept it more easily. For instance, most people will find it easier to speed on a highway when everybody else is driving over the speed limit. When people celebrate a sports championship, if they see someone breaking store windows, they might start breaking windows themselves or even steal from the store. So the people around us influence how much law-breaking we can tolerate.

We must also wonder whether seeing violence on television or reading about it in the newspapers every day makes us tolerate crime more than we should. We become used to seeing blood on the news on television, or in full color in newspapers and magazines. Because we see thousands of dead people on TV, maybe we just try to ignore of the situation behind the violence.

If so many citizens tolerate violence and crime, or even commit crimes themselves, it may simply be because of the human mind. our minds may not care about specific laws. Instead, our minds may have a system of values that usually prevents us from hurting other people to improve our own lives. Yet, when it comes to respecting the rights of a mass of anonymous（不知名的） individuals, we might not be so responsible. While most people would not steal a wallet containing $50, they may not mind cheating on taxes, because cheating on taxes does not hurt any one person. It hurts society, but “society” remains an abstract idea that is not as real as a neighbor or a friend’s friend.

When we realize that many people have misconceptions about law-breaking, we could think it is surprising that so many people have a criminal record. How could we improve the level of honesty in our society? Would severe laws help make our society better? Probably not. Honesty will have to come from social pressure: in the family, at school, on the job, each and every one of us can encourage honesty by showing which behaviors are unacceptable. And teaching respect should become everyone’s responsibility.

1．According to the author, “Real life is much more complex.” Probably means        .

       A．there is a wide range of people and crimes in the real life

       B．smoking in an elevator goes against laws in the real life

       C．there are more crimes than diseases in the real life

       D．model citizens sometimes break laws in the real life

2．What does the author think of the people who cheat on taxes?

       A．They take no notice of the human mind.

       B．They break the laws unaccepted in their minds.

       C．They hurt other people to improve their own lives.

       D．They aren’t concerned with some particular laws.

3．People tolerate violence and crime because           .

       A．their behavior is the same as that of most other people

       B．they pay no attention to the truth behind the crimes

       C．most unlawful acts are not harmful to the individual

       D．they hold mistaken beliefs about law - breaking

4．What is the author’s purpose in writing this passage?

       A．To discuss whether laws are severe.

       B．To remind people to behave with honesty.

       C．To show people the importance of school education.

       D．To explain why so many people have criminal records.

1、Age has its special advantages in America. And one of the more impressive of them is the senior citizen discount. Anyone who has reached a certain age – in some cases as low as 55 – is automatically entitled to plenty of price reductions at nearly every level of commercial life. Eligibility （资格） is determined not by one’s need but by the date on one’s birth certificate. Practically the discounts have become a routine part of many businesses – as common as color televisions in motel rooms and free coffee on airliners.

People with gray hair often are given the discounts without even asking for them; yet, millions of Americans above age 60 are healthy and solvent （有支付能力的）. Businesses that would never dare offer discounts to college students or anyone under 30 freely offer them to older Americans. The practice is acceptable because of the widespread belief that “elderly” and “needy” are synonymous（同义的）. Perhaps that once was true, but today, to be sure, there is economic variety within the elderly, and most of them aren’t poor.

It is impossible to determine the effect of the discounts on individual companies. For many firms, they are a stimulus to income. But in other cases the discounts are given at the expense, directly or indirectly, of younger Americans. Moreover, they are a directly annoy some politicians and scholars who consider it a coming conflict between the generations.

Generational tensions are being fueled by continuing debate over Social Security benefits, which mostly involves a transfer of resources from the young to the old. Employment is another point. Supported by laws and court decisions, more and more older Americans are refusing the retirement dinner in favor of staying on the job — thereby lessening employment and promotion opportunities for younger workers. Far from a kind of charity they once were, senior citizen discounts have become a powerful economic privilege（特权） to a group with millions of members who don’t need them.

It no longer makes sense to treat the elderly as a single group whose economic needs deserve priority over those of others. Senior citizen discounts only enrich the myth that older people can’t take care of themselves and need special treatment; and they threaten the creation of a new myth, that the elderly are ungrateful and taking for themselves at the expense of children and other age groups. Senior citizen discounts are the heart of the very thing older Americans are fighting against — discrimination by age.

1．We learn from the first paragraph that _______.

A．offering senior citizens discounts has become routine commercial practice

B．senior citizen discounts have enabled many old people to live a good life

C．giving senior citizens discounts has increased the market for the elderly

D．senior citizens have to show their birth certificates to get a discount

2．The reason to give the senior citizen discount is that          .

       A．the elderly need humane help from society

       B．businesses should do something for society in return

       C．old people are entitled to special treatment for their contribution to society

       D．the senior discounts can make up for the lack of the Social Security system

3．What does the author think of the Social Security system?

       A．It encourages elderly people to retire in time.

       B．It opens up broad career chances for young people.

       C．It benefits the old at the expense of the young.

       D．It should be strengthened by laws and court decisions.

4．What does the author mainly argue in the passage?

       A．Senior citizens should fight hard against age discrimination.

       B．The elderly are selfish and taking senior discounts for granted.

       C．Senior citizen discounts may well be a type of age discrimination.

       D．Discounts should be given to the economic needs of senior citizens.

25、从A、B、C、D四个选项中，找出其划线部分与所给单词的划线部分读音相同的选项。

1． library     A． liberate           B． silence           C． silly               D． magazine

2． cinema    A． receive           B． accept            C． special           D． physics

3． weight     A． height            B． seize              C． ceiling            D． neighbour

4． opposite  A． close             B． hospital          C． notebook        D． remove

5． laugh       A． though           B． through          C． enough          D． taught

24、It’s really _____ type I’ve been after, but I’d like to give it _______second thought．

A． a; 不填                B． a; the               C． the; a              D． the; the

21、I ________ be slow, but at least I don't make stupid mistakes.

A．must             B．need              C．should            D．may