Some years ago, writing in my diary used to be a usual activity. I would return from school and spend the expected half hour recording the day’s events, feelings, and impressions in my little blue diary. I did not really need to express my emotions by way of words, but I gained a certain satisfaction from seeing my experiences forever recorded on paper. After all, isn’t accumulating memories a way of preserving the past?

When I was thirteen years old, I went on a long journey on foot in a great valley, well-equipped with pens, a diary, and a camera. During the trip, I was busy recording every incident, name and place I came across. I felt proud to be spending my time productively, dutifully preserving for future generations a detailed description of my travels. On my last night there, I wandered out of my tent, diary in hand. The sky was clear and lit by the glare of the moon, and the walls of the valley looked threatening behind their screen of shadows. I automatically took out my pen…

At that point, I understood that nothing I wrote could ever match or replace the few seconds I allowed myself to experience the dramatic beauty of the valley. All I remembered of the previous few days were the dull characterizations I had set down in my diary.

Now, I only write in my diary when I need to write down a special thought or feeling. I still love to record ideas and quotations that strike me in books, or observations that are particularly meaningful. I take pictures, but not very often—only of objects I find really beautiful. I’m no longer blindly satisfied with having something to remember when I grow old. I realize that life will simply pass me by if I stay behind the camera, busy preserving the present so as to live it in the future.

I don’t want to wake up one day and have nothing but a pile of pictures and notes. Maybe I won’t have as many exact representations of people and places； maybe I’ll forget certain facts, but at least the experiences will always remain inside me. I don’t live to make memories—I just live, and the memories form themselves.

1.Before the age of thirteen, the author regarded keeping a diary as a way of ______.

A．observing her school routine              B．expressing her satisfaction

C．impressing her classmates                 D．preserving her history

2.What caused a change in the author’s understanding of keeping a diary?

A．A dull night on the journey.                B．The beauty of the great valley.

C．A striking quotation from a book.            D．Her concerns for future generations.

3.What does the author put in her diary now?

A．Notes and beautiful pictures.              B．Special thoughts and feelings.

C．Detailed accounts of daily activities.         D．Descriptions of unforgettable events.

4.The author comes to realize that to live a meaningful life is ______.

A．to experience it                        B．to live the present in the future

C．to make memories                      D．to give accurate representations of it

Sports are full of wonderful moments, but perhaps  36   is as exciting as the finish of the marathon. It is the longest, hardest  37   of all. The name “marathon” comes from a village in  38  . A famous battle was 39  there in the year 490 BC. When the Greeks had beaten the Persians, a soldier  40   all the way  41   Marathon to Athens, more than 40 kilometers to  42   people the good  43  . When the modern Olympic Games  44   in 1896, the organizers knew this  45  . The marathon has been a race  46  that time.
In the ancient world the Olympic Games were held  47   four years of 1000 years. They were an important part of life. In the  48   Games we try to copy their  49   . The finest sportsmen in the world are collected in one place   50   at least the finest “amateurs（业余爱好者 ） ” are. An amateur is someone who does not earn 51  money from sport. It is often difficult to say who is an amateur and who is not. It is  52  that Olympic athletes do not earn large amounts of  money like professional （职业的）sportsmen. But Olympic athletes are often students or teachers of a  53  . They have to  54   a lot of time training. Their governments pay for their training travel and pocket money, 55  they want them to win. Some people think this changes the Olympics. They feel that the Games are now a political marathon.

Almost a decade ago, the federal government dropped $10 million for an Earth-monitoring satellite that never made it into space. Today it sits in a closet in Maryland. Cost to taxpayers for storing it: $1 million a year. And that's just what's hiding in one closet. Who knows what's in the rest of them?
Because we think the government should be held to at least the same standards as a publicly traded company, and because as taxpayers, we're America's shareholders, we performed an audit （财务检查）of sorts of the federal books. We're not economists, but we do have common sense. We tried to get help from Congressional staffers from both parties, as well as various watchdog groups and agencies. In the end, we found that the federal government wastes nearly $1 trillion every year.
That's roughly equal to the amount collected annually by the Internal Revenue Service in personal income taxes. Put another way, it's also equal to about one-third of the country's $2.9 trillion total annual budget. And reclaiming that lost trillion could help wipe out the country's annual budget deficit（赤字）, improve education, and provide health insurance for those who don't have it.
So how do you define "waste"? David Walker of the Government Accountability Office (GAO), a federal watchdog agency, calls it "the government's failure to give taxpayers the most for their money." For our part, we used the kind of household test you would use on a piece of meat sitting in your refrigerator: If it smells rotten, it's waste. Our government regularly pays for products and services it never gets, wildly overpays companies to do things it could do more cheaply itself, loses money outright due to lax（不严格的）accounting and oversight, and spends money randomly on unnecessary programs.
How exactly does the federal government waste your hard-earned tax dollars? We've identified what we consider ten of the worst ways.
【小题1】The underlined sentence in Paragraph1 really means        .

III 阅读（共两节，满分40分）

第一节  阅读理解（共15小题；每小题2分，满分30分）

You must have been troubled by when to say "I love you" because it is one of the greatest puzzles in our life.

What if you say it first and your partner doesn’t love you back? Or if they do say it but you don’t feel they mean it? Being the first to declare your love can be never racking (紧张) and risky and can leave you feeling as vulnerable as a turtle with no shell. But is the person who says it first really in a position of weakness? Doesn’t it pay to hold back, play it cool and wait until the other half has shown their hand faster?

“A really good relationship should be about being fair and being equal,” says psychologist Sidney Crown. “But love is seldom equal.” “All relationships go through power struggles but,” he says, “if a love imbalance continues for years, the rot will set in.” That feeling of “I’ve always loved you more” may be subverted (颠覆，破坏) for a time, but it never goes away completely and it often emerges in squabbling (大声争吵). In love, at least, the silent, withholding type is not always the most powerful. “The strongest one in a relationship is often the person who feels confident enough to talk about their feelings,” says educational psychologist Ingrid Collins. Psychosexual therapist Paula Hall agrees. "The one with the upper hand is often the person who takes the initiative.” In fact, the person who says “I love you” first may also be the one who says  “I’m bored with you’ first.” Hall believes that much depends on how "I love you" is said and the motivation of the person saying it. Is it said when they’re drunk? Is it said before their partner flies off on holiday, and what it really means is “Please don’ t be unfaithful to me” ? By saying “I love you”, they are really saying “Do you love me?” If so, wouldn’t it just be more honest to say that. Collins agrees that intention is everything. "It’s not what is said, but how it’s said. What it comes down to is the sincerity of the speaker.”

41. What is the main idea of this passage?

　A. The importance of "I love you"   　   B. The meaning of "I love you"

　C. The time of saying "I love you".     　D. The place of saying "I love you"

42. In the first sentence the author means that____________.

　A. it is easy to say "I love you"  

　B. it is hard to say "I love you"

　C. we have many troubles in our life

　D. people usually do not know when to say "I love you"

43. According to the expert, a good relationship should be _____________.

　A. fair and equal          　    B. fair and kind

　C. powerful and equal            D. confident and fair

44. In the third paragraph, the phrase "with the upper hand" means __________.

　A. being low in spirit    　      B. having only one hand

　C. being active               　D. being passive

45. What is the most important for you to consider when somebody say "I love you" to you?

　A. The intention.  　B. The place.   　C. The time.   　D. The determination.

When most people think of giant pandas, the pictures of the cute, black-and-white bears from China that eat bamboo will immediately jump into their mind. Scientists from Mississippi State University, however, are interested in what they leave behind: their poop(排泄物). At a recent meeting in Denver, Professor Brown at the university presented her research showing how panda poop could inspire a new way to obtain energy from plants, which are a renewable energy source. Usually, plants can be called biomass(有机燃料) when they are used as an energy source.

     Burning biomass is one way to capture its energy, but Brown hopes panda poop can teach scientists something about breaking down biomass. Pandas—or at least the bacteria in their stomachs—are very good at getting energy out of bamboo. Unlike cows, which use 4 stomachs to digest large amounts of grass, a panda has only one stomach. Bamboo comes in, and poop goes out.

     Every day for 14 months, Brown and her team on this project, counted the bacteria in the poop of the two pandas, YaYa and LeLe living at the Memphis Zoo. Her studies turned up 12 species of bacteria that break down biomass, including one that had never been found in pandas. Brown says that because the poop contains bacteria that break down biomass, it could also be used to break down other types of biomass.

     Now the scientists hope to identify the chemicals that help with the process of breaking down biomass and then figure out how the bacteria work. If those chemicals can be made in the lab, they could be used to turn biomass—like grass or other plants—into fuel.

     Brown says she doesn’t mind handling panda poop. “It’s probably the most pleasant material to work with,” she says, “My colleagues and I have been working with other poop for a long time, and we can assure you it has a fairly pleasant smell associated with it.”

1.The importance of studying panda poop is _______.

A. to create a renewable energy from plants    

B. to explore a new way to get energy from plants

C. to learn a lesson of energy from panda poop 

D. to figure out how the bacteria work for us mankind

2.The process of the panda poop project can be described as ______.

A. a, b, d, c           B. a, d, c, b           C. b, a, d, c           D. b, d, a, c

3.What does the author mainly want to express in the 2nd paragraph?

A. Pandas don’t digest bamboo the same way as cows.

B. Pandas are capable of getting energy using stomachs.

C. Pandas can get energy from bamboo more efficiently.

D. Scientists have learnt something new from panda poop.

4.What does Professor Brown think of working with panda poop?

A. Sick             B. Challenging          C. Inspiring            D. Enjoyable