_______ some people regard as a drawback is seen as a plus by many others.

A. Whether              B. What             C. That           D. How

—The weather has been very hot and dry.

—Yes. If it had rained even a drop, things would be much better now! And my vegetables______.

A. wouldn’t die                                          B. didn’t die

C. hadn’t died                                              D. wouldn’t have died

First impressions are the most lasting. After all, you never get _____ second chance to make _______ first impression.

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

I met Mrs. Neidl in the ninth grade on a stage-design team for a play and she was one of the directors. Almost instantly I loved her. She had an unpleasant voice and a direct way of speaking,  1  she was encouraging and inspiring. For some reason, she was impressed with my work and me.

Mrs. Neidl would ask me for my   2 . She wanted to know how I thought we should 3  things. At first I had no idea how to answer because I knew   4  about stage design! But I slowly began to respond to her   5 . It was cause and effect: She believed I had opinions, so I began to   6  them. She trusted me to complete things, so I completed them perfectly. She loved how   7  I was, so I began to show up to paint more and more. She believed in me, so I began to believe in myself.

Mrs. Neidl’s   8  that year was, “Try it. We can always paint over it   9 !” I began to take   10. I had been so afraid of failing but suddenly there was no failing-only things to be 11 upon. I learned to dip my brush into the paint and   12 create something.

The shy, quiet freshman achieved success that year. I was   13 in the program as “Student Art Assistant” because of the time and effort I’d put in. It was that year that I   14 I wanted to spend the rest of my life doing stage design.

Being on that stage-design team   15 Mrs. Neidl changed me completely. Not only was I stronger and more competent than I had thought, but I also   16 a strong interest and a world I hadn't known existed. She taught me not to   17 what people think I should do: She taught me to take chances and not be   18. Mrs. Neidl was my comforter when I was upset. Her   19 in me has inspired me to do things that I never imagined   20  .

1.    A. and                  B. yet                  C. so                  D. for

2.    A. opinion               B. impression            C. information           D. intention

3.    A. make                 B. keep                C. handle               D. change

4.    A. anything              B. something            C. everything            D. nothing

5.    A. questions             B. comments            C. explanations           D. remarks

6.    A. hold                 B. follow               C. evaluate              D. form

7.    A. happy                B. lively                C. reliable               D. punctual

8.    A. message              B. motto               C. saying               D. suggestion

9.    A. again                 B. more                C. instead              D. later

10. A. steps                B. control              C. charge               D. risks

11. A. improved             B. acted                C. looked               D. reflected

12. A. easily                B. carefully              C. confidently           D. proudly

13. A. introduced                   B. recognized            C. identified              D. considered

14. A. confirmed             B. decided              C. realized              D. acknowledged

15. A. with                 B. below                C. of                  D. by

16. A. developed             B. discovered                   C. took                D. fostered

17. A. accept                B. care                 C. judge                D. wonder

18.   A. bored                       B. lazy                 C. sad                 D. afraid

19. A. trust                 B. patience                     C. curiosity             D. interest

20. A. accessible             B. enjoyable      C. possible              D. favorable

Goldie’s Secret

She turned up at the doorstep of my house in Cornwall. No way could I have sent her away. No way, not me anyway. Maybe someone had kicked her out of their car the night before. “We’re moving house.” “No space for her any more with the baby coming.” “We never really wanted her, but what could we have done? She was a present.” People find all sorts of excuses for abandoning an animal. And she was one of the most beautiful dogs I had ever seen.

I called her Goldie. If I had known what was going to happen I would have given her a more creative name. She was so unsettled during those first few days. She hardly ate anything and had such an air of sadness about her. There was nothing I could do to make her happy, it seemed. Heaven knows what had happened to her at her previous owner's. But eventually at the end of the first week she calmed down. Always by my side, whether we were out on one of our long walks or sitting by the fire.

That’s why it was such a shock when she pulled away from me one day when we were out for a walk. We were a long way from home, when she started barking and getting very restless. Eventually I couldn't hold her any longer and she raced off down the road towards a farmhouse in the distance as fast as she could.

By the time I reached the farm I was very tired and upset with Goldie. But when I saw her licking （舔） the four puppies （幼犬） I started to feel sympathy towards them. “We didn’t know what had happened to her,” said the woman at the door. “I took her for a walk one day, soon after the puppies were born, and she just disappeared.” “She must have tried to come back to them and got lost,” added a boy from behind her.

I must admit I do miss Goldie, but I’ve got Nugget now, and she looks just like her mother. And I’ve learnt a good lesson: not to judge people.

1. How did the author feel about Goldie when Goldie came to the house?

A. Shocked.            B. Sympathetic.          C. Annoyed.             D. Upset.

2. In her first few days at the author's house, Goldie ____________.

A. felt worried              B. was angry                C. ate a little                 D. sat by the fire

3. Goldie rushed off to a farmhouse one day because she ____________

A. saw her puppies                          B. heard familiar barkings

C. wanted to leave the author                  D. found her way to her old home

4. The passage is organized in order of ____________.

A. time         B. effectiveness        C. importance         D. complexity

Open Letter to an Editor

I had an interesting conversation with a reporter recently-one who works for you. In fact, he's one of your best reporters. He wants to leave.

Your reporter gave me a copy of his resume（简历）and photocopies of six stories that he wrote for you. The headlines showed you played them proudly. With great enthusiasm, he talked about how he finds issues（问题）, approaches them, and writes about them, which tells me he is one of your best. I'm sure you would hate to lose him. Surprisingly, your reporter is not unhappy. In fact, he told me he really likes his job. He has a great assignment（分工）, and said you run a great paper. It would be easy for you to keep him, he said. He knows that the paper values him. He appreciates the responsibility you've given him, takes ownership of his profession, and enjoys his freedom.

So why is he looking for a way out?

He talked to me because he wants his editors to demand so much more of him. He wants to be pushed, challenged, coached to new heights.

The reporter believes that good stories spring from good questions, but his editors usually ask how long the story will be, when it will be in, where it can play, and what the budget is.

He longs for conversations with an editor who will help him turn his good ideas into great ones. He wants someone to get excited about what he’s doing and to help him turn his story idea upside down and inside out, exploring the best ways to report it. He wants to be more valuable for your paper. That’s what you want for him, too, isn’t it?

So your reporter has set me thinking.

Our best hope in keeping our best reporters, copy editors, photographers, artists-everyone-is to work harder to make sure they get the help they are demanding to reach their potential. If we can’t do it, they’ll find someone who can.

1. What does the writer think of the reporter?

A. Optimistic.            B. Imaginative.           C. Ambitious.            D. Proud.

2. What does the reporter want most from his editors in their talks?

A. Finding the news value of his stories.           B. Giving him financial support.

C. Helping him to find issues.                          D. Improving his good ideas.

3. Who probably wrote the letter?

A. An editor.             B. An artist.             C. A reporter.            D. A reader.

4. The letter aims to remind editors that they should ____________.

A. keep their best reporters at all costs

B. give more freedom to their reporters

C. be aware of their reporters’ professional development

D. appreciate their reporters’ working styles and attitudes

Pacing and Pausing

Sara tried to befriend her old friend Steve's new wife, but Betty never seemed to have anything to say. While Sara felt Betty didn’t hold up her end of the conversation, Betty complained to Steve that Sara never gave her a chance to talk. The problem had to do with expectations about pacing and pausing.

Conversation is a turn-taking game. When our habits are similar, there’s no problem. But if our habits are different, you may start to talk before I'm finished or fail to take your turn when I'm finished. That’s what was happening with Betty and Sara.

It may not be coincidental that Betty, who expected relatively longer pauses between turns, is British, and Sara, who expected relatively shorter pauses, is American. Betty often felt interrupted by Sara. But Betty herself became an interrupter and found herself doing most of the talking when she met a visitor from Finland. And Sara had a hard time cutting in on some speakers from Latin America or Israel.

The general phenomenon, then, is that the small conversation techniques, like pacing and pausing, lead people to draw conclusions not about conversational style but about personality and abilities. These habitual differences are often the basis for dangerous stereotyping（思维定式）. And these social phenomena can have very personal consequences. For example, a woman from the southwestern part of the US went to live in an eastern city to take up a job in personnel. When the Personnel Department got together for meetings, she kept searching for the right time to break in-and never found it. Although back home she was considered outgoing and confident, in Washington she was viewed as shy and retiring. When she was evaluated at the end of the year, she was told to take a training course because of her inability to speak up.

That’s why slight differences in conversational style-tiny little things like microseconds of pause-can have a great effect on one’s life. The result in this case was a judgment of psychological problems-even in the mind of the woman herself, who really wondered what was wrong with her and registered for assertiveness training.

1. What did Sara think of Betty when talking with her?

A. Betty was talkative.                                      B. Betty was an interrupter.

C. Betty did not take her turn.                                   D. Betty paid no attention to Sara.

2. According to the passage, who are likely to expect the shortest pauses between turns?

A. Americans.            B. Israelis.              C. The British.           D. The Finns.

3. We can learn from the passage that ___________.

A. communication breakdown results from short pauses and fast pacing

B. women are unfavorably stereotyped in eastern cities of the US

C. one’s inability to speak up is culturally determined sometimes

D. one should receive training to build up one’s confidence

4. The underlined word “assertiveness” in the last paragraph probably means ___________.

A. being willing to speak one’s mind

B. being able to increase one’s power

C. being ready to make one’s own judgment

    D. being quick to express one’s ideas confidently

The Cost of Higher Education

Individuals（个人）should pay for their higher education.

A university education is of huge and direct benefit to the individual. Graduates earn more than non-graduates. Meanwhile, social mobility is ever more dependent on having a degree. However, only some people have it. So the individual, not the taxpayers, should pay for it. There are pressing calls on the resources（资源）of the government. Using taxpayers' money to help a small number of people to earn high incomes in the future is not one of them.

Full government funding （资助）is not very good for universities. Adam Smith worked in a Scottish university whose teachers lived off student fees. He knew and looked down upon 18th-century Oxford, where the academics lived comfortably off the income received from the government. Guaranteed salaries, Smith argued, were the enemy of hard work; and when the academics were lazy and incompetent, the students were similarly lazy.

If students have to pay for their education, they not only work harder, but also demand more from their teachers. And their teachers have to keep them satisfied. If that means taking teaching seriously, and giving less time to their own research interests, that is surely something to celebrate.

Many people believe that higher education should be free because it is good for the economy （经济）. Many graduates clearly do contribute to national wealth, but so do all the businesses that invest（投资）and create jobs. If you believe that the government should pay for higher education because graduates are economically productive, you should also believe that the government should pay part of business costs. Anyone promising to create jobs should receive a gift of capital from the government to invest.

Therefore, it is the individual, not the government, who should pay for their university education.

1. The underlined word “them” in Paragraph 2 refers to ___________.

A. taxpayers                                     B. pressing calls

C. college graduates                               D. government resources

2. The author thinks that with full government funding ___________.

A. teachers are less satisfied

B. students are more demanding

C. students will become more competent

D. teachers will spend less time on teaching

3. The author mentions businesses in Paragraph 5 in order to ___________.

A. argue against free university education

B. call on them to finance students' studies

C. encourage graduates to go into business

D. show their contribution to higher education

根据短文内容，从短文后的七个选项中选出能填入空白处的最佳选项。选项中有两项为多余选项。

Muzak

The next time you go into a bank, a store, or a supermarket, stop and listen. What do you hear?   1   It’s similar to the music you listen to, but it’s not exactly the same. That’s because this music was especially designed to relax you, or to give you extra energy. Sometimes you don’t even realize the music is playing, but you react to the music anyway.

Quiet background music used to be called “elevator（电梯）music” because we often heard it in elevators. But lately we hear it in more and more places, and it has a new name “Muzak”. About one-third of the people in America listen to “Muzak” everyday. The music plays for 15 minutes at a time, with short pauses in between. It is always more lively between ten and eleven in the morning, and between three and four in the afternoon, when people are more tired.    2  

If you listen to Muzak carefully, you will probably recognize the names of many of the songs. Some musicians or songwriters don't want their songs to be used as Muzak, but others are happy when their songs are chosen. Why?   3  

Music is often played in public places because it is designed to make people feel less lonely when they are in an airport or a hotel. It has been proven that Muzak does what it is designed to do. Tired office workers suddenly have more energy when they hear the pleasant sound of Muzak in the background.   4   Supermarket shoppers buy 38 percent more groceries.

5  They say it’s boring to hear the same songs all the time. But other people enjoy hearing Muzak in public places. They say it helps them relax and feel calm. One way or another, Muzak affects everyone. Some farmers even say their cows give more milk when they hear Muzak!

A. Some people don't like Muzak.

B. The music gives them extra energy.

C. Music is playing in the background.

D. Factory workers produce 13 percent more.

    E. Muzak tends to help people understand music better.

F. They get as much as $4 million a year if their songs are used.

G. Muzak is played in most of the big supermarkets in the world.

It’s          good feeling for people to admire the shanghai world expo that gives them    

          pleasure.

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