One of the greatest contributions to the first Oxford English Dictionary was also one of its most unusual. In 1879, Oxford University in England asked Prof. James Murray to serve as editor for what was to be the most ambitious dictionary in the history of the English language. It would include every English word possible and would give not only the definition but also the history of the word and quotations (引文) showing how it was used.
This was a huge task. So Murray had to find volunteers from Britain, the United States, and the British colonies to search every newspaper, magazine, and book ever written in English. Hundreds of volunteers responded, including William Chester Minor. Dr. Minor was an American Surgeon who had served in the Civil War and was now living in England. He gave his address as "Broadmoor, Crowthorne, Berkshire," 50 miles from Oxford.
Minor joined the army of volunteers sending words and quotations to Murray. Over the next years, he became one of the staff's most valued contributors.
But he was also a mystery. In spite of many invitations, he would always decline(拒绝) to visit Oxford. So in 1897, Murray finally decided to travel to Crowthorne himself. When he arrived, he found Minor locked in a book-lined cell（地窖） at the Broadmoor Asylum (精神病院) for the Criminally insane.
Murray and Minor became friends, sharing their love of words. Minor continued contributing to the dictionary, sending in more than 10,000 submissions in 20 years. Murray continued to visit Minor regularly, sometimes taking walks with him around the asylum grounds.
In 1910, Minor left Broadmoor for an asylum in his native America. Murray was at the port to wave goodbye to his remarkable friend.
Minor died in 1920, seven years before the first edition of the Oxford English Dictionary was completed. The 12 volumes defined（下定义） 414,825 words, and thousands of them were contributions from a very scholarly and devoted asylum patient.
【小题1】According to the text, the first Oxford English Dictionary           .

Sarah Williams went to a boarding school.  Here is one of the
letters she wrote to her parents from the school.
Wentworth Girls' School
Beachside
July 20th
Dearest Mom and Dad,
I'm afraid I have some very bad news for you. I have been very naughty and the school principal is very angry with me. She is going to write to you. You must come and take me away from here. She does not want me in the school any longer.
The trouble started last night when I was smoking in bed.  This is against the rules, of course. We are not supposed to smoke at all.
As I was smoking, I heard footsteps coming towards the room. I did not want a teacher to catch me smoking, so I threw the cigarette away.
Unfortunately, the cigarette fell into the waste-paper basket, which caught fire.
There was a curtain near the waste-paper basket which caught fire, too. Soon the whole room was burning.
The principal phoned for the fire department. The school is a long way from the town and by the time the fire department arrived, the whole school was in flames. Many of the girls are in the hospital.
The principal says that the fire was all my fault and you must pay for the damage. She will send you a bill for about a million dollars.
I’m very sorry about this.
Much love,
Sarah
P. S. None of the above is true, but I have failed my exams. I just want you to know how bad things could have been!
【小题1】Why did Sarah write home?

Mr. and Mrs. Wu were fed up with their neighbor. He was always borrowing things from them.
“It’s not right.” Mr. Wu said to his wife one evening. “At some time or another that man has borrowed nearly everything we have. Almost every day he comes over to borrow something.”
“You are quite right,” his wife replied, “and most of the things he’s never returned.”
“What I want to know,” her husband said, “is why he can’t buy the things he needs like everyone else.”
“Because people like us are foolish enough to lend him what he needs.” she replied. “As long as we are willing to lend, he’ll keep on borrowing.”
“Then we’ll never lend him anything again.” Mr. Wu said. “The next time he asks to borrow something, I’ll say no.”
“We must have a good reason for saying no,” his wire said, “and we must always try to be polite to him. We don’t want to make an enemy of the man.”
It was not long before their decision not to lend their neighbor anything ever again was put to the test.
The next morning there was a knock on the door.
Mr. Wu went to answer it.
Their neighbor was standing there. Mr. Wu knew he was going to ask to borrow something, and was ready to refuse him politely.
“Good morning,” their neighbor said, “I’m sorry to trouble you, but I wonder if I could borrow your garden scissors.”
“I’m sorry,” Mr. Wu said, “but I’m afraid my wife and I will be using them today. We’ll be spending all day working in the garden.”
“Oh, ! see.” the neighbor said, “In that case, may I borrow your golf clubs? You won’t be needing them if you are working in the garden all day, will you?”
【小题1】What did the neighbor do with most of the things he had borrowed?

Jenny went to visit her friends in New York last weekend. Her friends met her at the airport on Friday afternoon and drove her to the hotel. They had dinner at a Chinese restaurant and went to see a film after that.
　Jenny and her friends set out early on Saturday morning for a farm and stayed there until Sunday morning. During their stay, they went fishing and swimming in the small river on the farm. They played football in the field and enjoyed a big meal around a camp fire（篝火）, singing and dancing till late into the night.
　Nobody could get up early on Sunday morning. So when they got back to New York City, it was about three o’clock in the afternoon. They drove right to the airport because Jenny didn’t want to miss her plane back home. Jenny only stayed in New York for two nights but she had a great time with her friend.
【小题1】Jenny went to New York________.

Once there was a poor farmer and his farm belonged to(属于) a rich man. One day he brought a basket of apples to the rich man’s house. On the doorsteps, he met two monkeys dressed like children. They jumped onto the basket to eat the apples and threw some on the ground. The farmer politely took off his hat and asked the monkeys to get off. They obeyed(服从) and the farmer went into the house. He asked to see the rich man. A servant took him to the room where the rich man was sitting.
“I have brought you the basket of apples you asked for,” he said.
“But why have you brought a half-empty basket?” the rich man asked.
“I met your children outside, and they stole some of the apples.”
【小题1】Why did the farmer bring apples to the rich man? Because        .

I receive many letters from children and can’t answer them all – there wouldn’t be enough time in a day. I’ll try to answer some of the questions that are commonly asked.
Where did I get the idea for Stuart Little and for Charlotte’s Web? Well, many years ago, I went to bed one night in a railway sleeping car, and during the night I dreamed about a tiny boy who acted rather like a mouse. That’s how the story of Stuart Little got started.
As for Charlotte’s Web, I like animals and my farm is very pleasant place to be – at all hours. One day, when I was on my way to feed the pig, I began feeling sorry for the pig because, like most pigs, he was going to die. This made me sad. So I started thinking of ways to save his life. Three years after I started writing it, it was published. (I am not a fast worker, as you can see.)
Sometimes I’m asked when I started to write, and what made me want to write. I started early – as soon as I could spell. Children often find pleasure through trying to set their thoughts down on paper, either in words or in pictures. I was not good at drawing, so I used words instead. As I grew older, I found that writing could be a way of earning a living.
Well, here is the answer to the last question. No, they are imaginary (虚构的) tales. In real life, a family doesn’t have a child who looks like a mouse and a spider doesn’t write words in her web. Although my stories are imaginary, I like to think that there is some truth in them, too – truth about the way people and animals feel, think and act.
【小题1】E.B. White wrote this passage to ______.
A. introduce his new books
B. introduce two funny stories
C. explain why he enjoys writing
D. answer some readers’ questions
【小题2】We can know from the passage that E.B. White is a writer who ______.
A. writes very fast
B. works on a friends’ farm
C. mainly writes stories for adults
D. writes imaginary tales for children
【小题3】What inspired E.B. White to write Charlotte’s Web?
A. That he wanted children to love animals.
B. That he was deeply impressed by a clever pig.
C. That he wanted to use his own way to save a pig.
D. That he wanted to save the animals on a farm.
【小题4】 E.B. White started to write because he wanted to ______.
A. improve his spelling
B. express his thoughts
C. show his sadness
D. make a good living
【小题5】What is probably the last question?

About twenty of us had been fortunate enough to receive invitations to a film-studio(影棚)to take part in a crowd-scene. Although our "act" would last only for a short time, we could see quite a number of interesting things.
We all stood at the far end of the studio as workmen prepared the scene, setting up trees at the edge of a winding path. Very soon, bright lights were turned on and the big movie-camera was wheeled into position. The director shouted something to the camera operator and then went to speak to the two famous actors nearby. Since it was hot in the studio, it came as a surprise to us to see one of the actors put on a heavy overcoat and start walking along the path. A big fan began blowing tiny white feathers down on him, and soon the trees were covered in "snow". Two more fans were turned on, and a "strong wind" blew through the trees. The picture looked so real that it made us feel cold.
The next scene was a complete contrast (对比). The way it was filmed was quite unusual. Pictures in front taken on an island in the Pacific were shown on a glass screen (幕). An actor and actress stood of the scene so that they looked as if they were at the water’s edge on an island. By a simple trick like this, palm trees, sandy beaches, and blue, clear skies had been brought into the studio!
Since it was our turn next, we were left wondering what scene would be prepared for us. For a full three minutes in our lives we would be experiencing the excitement of being film "stars"!
【小题1】Who is the author?

Susan Sontag (1933 ------ 2004) was one of the most noticeable figures in the world of literature.  For more than 40 years she made it morally necessary to know everything----- to read every book worth reading, to see every movie worth seeing.  When she was still in her early 30s, publishing essays in such important magazines as Partisan Review, she appeared as the symbol of American culture life, trying hard to follow every new development in literature, film and art.  With great effort and serious judgment, Sontag walked at the latest edges of world culture.
Seriousness was one of Sontag’s lifelong watchwords (格言), but at a time when the barriers between the well-educated and the poorly-educated were obvious, she argued for a true openness to the pleasure of pop culture.  In Notes Camp, the 1964 essay that first made her name, she explained what was then a little-known set of difficult understandings, through which she could not have been more famous. Notes on Camp, she wrote, represents “a victory of ‘form’ over ‘content’, ‘beauty’ over ‘morals’”.
By conviction she was a sensualist (感觉论者), but by nature she was a moralist, and in the works she published in the 1970s and 1980s, it was the latter side of her that came forward.  In Illness as Metaphor ------published in 1978, after she suffered cancer ------ she argued against the idea that cancer was somehow a special problem of repressed (被压抑的) personalities, a concept that effectively blamed the victim for the disease.  In fact, re-examining old positions was her lifelong habit.
In America, her story of a 19^th century Polish actress who set up a perfect society in California, won the National Book Award in 2000.  But it was as a tireless, all-purpose cultural view that she made her lasting fame.
“Sometimes,” she once said, “I feel that, in the end, all I am really defending… is the idea of seriousness, of true seriousness.”  And in the end, she made us take it seriously too.
【小题1】It is implied but not stated in the first paragraph that Sontag _________.

I found out one time that doing a favor for someone could get you into a lot of trouble. I was in the eighth grade at the time, and we were having a final test. During the test, the girl sitting next to me whispered something, but I didn’t understand. So I leaned over her way and found out that she was trying to ask me if I had an extra pen. She showed me that hers was out of ink and would not write. I happened to have an extra one, so I took it out of my pocket and put it on her desk.
Later, after the test papers had been turned in, the teacher asked me to stay in the room when all the other students were dismissed. As soon as we were alone she began to talk to me about what it meant to grow up; she talked about how important it was to stand on your own two feet and be responsible (负责任) for your own acts. For a long time, she talked about honesty and emphasized the fact that when people do something dishonest, they are really cheating themselves. She made me promise that I would think seriously about all the things she had said, and then she told me I could leave. I walked out of the room wondering why she had chosen to talk to me about all those things.
Later on, I found out that she thought I had cheated on the test. When she saw me lean over to talk to the girl next to me, it looked as if I was copying answers from the girl’s test paper. I tried to explain about the pen, but all she could say was it seemed very very strange to her that I hadn’t talked of anything about the pen the day she talked to me right after the test. Even if I tried to explain that I was just doing the girl a favor by letting her use my pen, I am sure she continued to believe that I had cheated on the test.
【小题1】The story took place exactly ____ .

Churchill's full name was Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill. He was born in 1874. He was educated at Harrow School and the Royal Military College, Sandhurst.
In 1900 Churchill was elected a member of parliament .As First Lord of the Admiralty , in 1911, he was responsible for strengthening the British navy.
During World War I, he still remained a member of parliament, but he resigned from his post in the British navy, and became a soldier again, fighting in France. In 1917, however, he became Minister of Munitions . In this job, he encouraged the development and use of the tank, which was then a new weapon. After the war, Churchill held several government posts.
From 1931 to 1939, he was only a member of parliament. He had fallen into dislike because of his militant (war-loving) attitude. Even his closest friends discouraged him from seeking higher office. But when World War II started in 1939. Churchill returned to his former job as First Lord of the Admiralty.
In May 1940, he became Prime Minister. Throughout the war, Churchill showed great strength and energy. He worked for long periods with little sleep and traveled many thousands of miles. By the courage and determination expressed in his speeches, he inspired the people of Britain to keep on fighting. His speeches also gave hope to people in parts of Europe occupied by enemy forces.
In the general election at the end of the war, the Conservative Party, of which he was leader, was defeated. But he became Prime Minister again in 1951. He resigned as Prime Minister in 1955. However, he remained a member of parliament until 1964. Some time later, in 1965, he died.
【小题1】Before World War I, Churchill worked for his country as ____.