Whales live in the ocean, but they are not fish. They are warm-blooded mammals and must have air to breathe. The babies are born alive and drink milk from the mother's body. It took millions of years for the whale to develop as it is today.
Every spring groups of whales swim hundreds of kilometers to warm places to bear their young. Each group goes to the same place every year. The mothers take very good care of their babies. The fully grown whales are very gentle and playful with each other, and with humans. They “talk” to each other with a high noise that  sounds beautiful. This“talking” can be heard for more than 300 kilometers in open waters.
Yet humans kill over a hundred whales a day. They kill them to make whale oils and a lot of other things. Killing them is a modern business with modern machines and even harpoons( 鱼叉炮) that explode( 爆炸) inside the whales. A whale dies very slowly and in great pain. Some ships kill every whale they can find, even the mothers and babies. Then there are no young whales to grow up or to bear more young.
【小题1】A commonly mistaken belief is that ____.

第四部分：任务型阅读(共10小题；每小题l分，满分10分)

请认真阅读下列短文，并根据所读内容在文章后表格中的空格里填入一个最恰当的单词。注意：每个空格只填1个单词。请将答案写在答题卡上相应题号的横线上。

Experts debunk Maya doomsday（末日） predictions -- But that hasn't stopped books, movies from cashing in.

If the ancient Maya and filmmaker Roland Emmerich are correct, the apocalypse（大灾变） will happen very fast, maybe quicker than his new 2½-hour movie.

Predictions of global ruination are rippling around the globe with seismic（地震的） force, all loosely based on a 5,000-year Maya calendar that ends Dec. 21, 2012. Countless Web sites and blogs anticipate(预料) the end of days, as do various New Age groups and would-be prophets(预言者) offering guidance and how-to tips. On Amazon.com , you can read hundreds of book titles combining the year 2012 with terms such as “apocalypse,” “catastrophe” and “end of the world.”

As always, doomsday sells — and a lot of people are buying it.

“There's the psychobabble(心理呓语) aspect,” said Robert Epstein, former editor of Psychology Today magazine and a lecturer at the University of California San Diego. “It's the Sigmund Freud/death wish idea: People glom onto（对…感兴趣） doomsday predictions because there's some small part of them that wants to die, and die spectacularly（壮观的）. I don't believe it, but it's one way to look at this.”

It's Emmerich's way. The German director specializes in wreaking havoc on an epic scale, from climatic cataclysm in 2004's “The Day After Tomorrow” to angry aliens and reptiles in “Independence Day” and “Godzilla.”  In “2012,” he finishes the job.

The digitized disasters of “2012” are oversized, overwrought and sometimes literally over the top, as when a humongous tsunami washes over the Himalayan mountains, whose average height exceeds 20,000 feet. Meanwhile in Los Angeles, a 10.5-magnitude earthquake — a temblor at least 30 times more powerful than any real quake ever recorded — yanks the city apart like a giant zipper, sending chunks sliding into the Pacific Ocean.

That's not physically possible, of course. Nor is a 10.5-magnitude quake, said Thomas Rockwell, a geologist at San Diego State University. To generate that much energy, “you'd need a rupture that extends all around the planet.”

All of that other stuff “is pure Hollywood bunk,” said Bernard Jackson at the UCSD Center for Astrophysics and Space Sciences.

Entertaining, though, unless you happen to believe the Maya really predicted the end of the world. They didn't, said Geoff Braswell, a UCSD anthropologist. The long-count calendar doesn't signal the end of anything except the end of that particular calendar. “It's just like a car odometer. Unfortunately, hardly anybody reads ancient Mayan. Modern media hype（骗局）, on the other hand, is almost inescapable.

Nicholas Christenfeld, a professor of psychology at UCSD, suggests a more elemental human need. Being swallowed by the Earth or incinerated in a giant fireball “fits neatly with the idea that people want to believe there's a plan, that existence isn't random and pointless,” Christenfeld said.

“We all missed creation, but if we can bear witness at the other end, be part of some grand cosmic destruction, that gives life meaning,” he said. 

It helps, too, not to think very hard about the facts, said Lou Manza, a professor of psychology at Lebanon Valley College in Annville, Pa. “These claims have been around forever, and they have all been false, 100 percent wrong,” Manza said.

Of course, prognosticators（预言者, 占卜者） usually have an explanation for that, Christenfeld said.

“They might say it was a misinterpretation,” he said. “They got the date wrong. They might claim humanity acted in time to prevent the destruction. Or faith came to the rescue because people believed something bad was going to happen, it didn't have to happen.”

Great changes ___ in my hometown and a lot of factories _______.

A. have been taken place , are being set up  B. have taken place , have been set up

C. are taken place , had been set up        D. had taken place , will be set up

短文填词。(共l0小题；每小题1分，满分10分)

阅读下面短文，根据以下提示：1)汉语提示；2)首字母提示；3)语境提示，在每个空格内填入一个适当的英语单词，并将该词完整地写在右边相对应的横线上。所填单词要求意义准确、拼写正确。

Sixteen years ago,Charles was a college________ (教授)with  76____________

a huge________(六房)house and $2million.Today he lives      77____________

in a small d_________room where there is only               78____________

_________(二手的)furniture.There are certainly no            79______________

s______that Charles was a                                80______________

_________（百万富翁）！There is a small garden             81______________

o__________ with a few fruit trees.Charles                82______________

__________ (种植)some vegetables and flowers.             83______________

He gets his c__________and a lot of things from           84______________

c________shops.                                         85______________

    Of all the men who ever liked fresh air, no one liked it more than James Wilson did. He _1__ slept with his window open even when snow was falling outside.

    One winter, he went to Finland on business. When he _2__ his room in the hotel, he found that the windows were closed to __3__ the icy air out. He did his best to open one but failed. The bed was really __4___, but Wilson couldn’t sleep. He __5__ forget the closed windows. No fresh air! It was __6___ to think of.

    At about one o’clock in the morning, he was __7__ awake. Worrying about the air in the room. He became very angry. Where was the __8__ ? He could see something that looked like __9___ over there. He threw a shoe at it through the darkness with all the force of his strong right arm. A terrible sound of breaking glass _10__ the room, but to Wilson’s sad heart, it seemed like the sound of __11___ music.

    When daylight came through the window, he __12___ and lay with his eyes close. There was __13__ to worry about. __14___ was it ? Oh, the broken window! Yes, indeed. He would have to pay __15__ that. He opened his eyes to look.

    Suddenly he sat up in __16__. The window was not broken at all. The __17__ was all in one piece, just as good as it had been the night before. __18__ fresh air was entering the room through the window!

    He then turned his eyes to the __19__ and saw a broken picture __20__ on the wall. There was a shoe on the floor below it, and a lot of broken glasses around the shoe.

1. A. seldom           B. often                 C. sometimes          D. always

    2. A. left             B. cleaned               C. entered            D. examined

    3. A. prevent          B. keep                  C. stop               D. send

    4. A. cold             B. comfortable           C. bad                D. terrible

    5. A. shouldn’t       B. wasn’t able to       C. couldn’t          D. wouldn’t

    6. A. unlucky          B. anxious               C. difficult          D. terrible

    7. A. already          B. nearly                C. hardly             D. still

    8. A. waiter           B. manager               C. window             D. light

    9. A. paper            B. glass                 C. a picture          D. a man

    10. A. destroyed       B. covered               C. filled             D. entered

    11. A. funny           B. strange               C. beautiful          D. famous

    12. A. got up          B. woke up               C. went in            D. came down

    13. A. a lot           B. little                C. something          D. someone

    14. A. What            B. How                   C. Where              D. Who

    15. A. to              B. with                  C. from               D. for

    16. A. silence         B. surprise              C. trouble            D. pain

    17. A. window          B. picture               C. glass              D. shoe

    18. A. Much            B. No                    C. Still              D. Yet

    19. A. outside         B. top                   C. side               D. bottom

    20. A. lying           B. hanging               C. falling            D. put