Ireland has had a very difficult history. The problems started in the 16th century when English rulers fried to conquer (征服) Ireland. For hundreds of years, the Irish people fought against the English. Finally, in 1921, the British government was forced to give independence to the south of Ireland. The result is that today there are two “Irelands”. Northern Ireland, in the north, is part of the United Kingdom. The republic of Ireland, in the south, is an independent country.

In the 1840s ,the main crop, potatoes was affected by disease and about 750, 000 people died of hunger. This, and a shortage (短缺) of work, forced many people to leave Ireland and live in the USA, the UK, Australia and Canada. As a result of these problems, the population fell from 8.2 million in 1841 to 6.6 million in 1851.

For many years, the majority of Irish people earned their living as farmers. Today, many people still work on the land but more and more people are moving to the cities to work in factories and offices. Life in the cities is very different from life in the countryside, where things move at a quieter and slower pace.

The Irish are famous for being warm-hearted and friendly, Oscar Wilde, a famous Irish writer, once said that the Irish were “the greatest talkers since the Greeks”. Since independence, Ireland has revived (复兴) its own culture of music, language, literature and singing. Different areas have different styles of old Irish songs which are sung without instruments. Other kinds of Irish music use many different instruments such as the violin, whistles, etc.

1.What does the author tell us in Paragraph 1?

A. How the Irish fought against the English.

B. How Ireland gained independence.

C. How two “Irelands” came into being.

D. How English rulers tried to conquer Ireland.

2.The last paragraph is mainly about____.

A. the Irish character                B. Irish culture

C. Irish musical instruments          D. a famous Irish writer

3.We learn from the text that in Ireland _____.

A. different kinds of old Irish songs are all sung with instruments

B. people are moving to the cities for lack of work in the countryside

C. it is harder to make a living as a farmer than as a factory worker

D. food shortages in the 1840s led to a decline in population

4.What can be the best title for the text?

A. Life in Ireland

B. Ireland, Past and Present

C. A Very Difficult History

D. The Independence of Ireland

By 2050

Futurologists（未来学家）predict that life will probably be very different in 2050.

TV channels（频道）will have disappeared. Instead, people will choose a program from a “menu” and a computer will send the program directly to the television. Today, we can use the World Wide Web to read newspaper stories and see pictures on a computer thousands of kilometers away. By 2050, music, films, programs, newspapers, and books will come to us by computer.

Cars will run on new, clean fuels and they will go very fast. Cars will have computers to control the speed and there won’t be any accidents. Today, many cars have computers that tell drivers exactly where they are. By 2050, the computer will control the car and drive it to your destination. Space planes will take people halfway around the world in 2 hours. Today, the United States Space Shuttle can go into space and land on Earth again. By 2050, space planes will fly all over the world and people will fly from Los Angeles to Tokyo in just 2 hours.

Robots will have replaced people in factories. Many factories already use robots. Big computers prefer robots—they don’t ask for pay rises or go on strike, and they work 24 hours a day. By 2050, we will see robots everywhere—in factories, schools, offices, hospitals, shops and homes.

Medical technology will have conquered many diseases. Today, there are devices（设备）that connect directly to the brain to help people hear. By 2050, we will be able to help blind and deaf people to see and hear again.

Scientist will have discovered how to control genes（基因）. Scientists have already produced clones（克隆）of animals. By 2050, scientists will be able to produce clones of people, and decide how they look, how they behave and how clever they are. Scientists will be able to do these things, but should they?

1.According to the passage, the following can be realized today EXCEPT __________.

2.We can learn from the passage that some big companies prefer robots to human workers, because human workers __________.

3.From Paragraph 5 we can infer that __________.

4.What is the author’s attitude towards the cloning technology?

The first newspapers were written by hand and put up on walls in public place. The earliest daily newspaper was started in Rome in 59 BC. In the 700’s the world’s first printed newspaper was published. Europe didn’t have a regularly published newspaper until 1609, when one was started in Germany.
The first regularly published newspaper in the English language was printed in Amsterdam in 1620. In 1621, an English newspaper was started in London and was published once a week. The first daily English newspaper was the Daily Courant (每日新闻). It came out in March 1702.
In 1690, Benjamin Harris printed the first American newspaper in Boston. But not long after it was first published, the government stopped the paper. In 1704, John Campbell started The Boston Newsletter (波斯顿新闻通讯), the first newspaper published in the American colonies. By 1760, the colonies had more than thirty daily newspapers. There are now about 1,800 daily papers in the United States.
Today, as a group, English language newspapers have the largest circulation (发行量) in the world. But the largest circulation for a newspaper is that of the Japanese newspaper Asahi Dhimbun (朝日新闻). It sells more than eleven million copies every day.
【小题1】The first daily newspaper came out in _____.

Canada is a very large country .It is the second largest country in the world .By contrast it has a very small population. There are only about 30 million people there. Most Canadians are of British or French origin, and French is an official language of Canada as well as English. About 45% of the people are of British origin, that is, they or their parents or grandparents, etc, come from British. Nearly 30% are of French origin. Most of the French –Canadians live in province of Quebec.

Over the years, people have come to live in Canada from many countries in the world. They are from many countries in the world. They are from most European countries and also from China, besides other Asian countries.

However, Canada was not an empty country when the Europeans began to arrive. Canadian Indians lived along the coast, by the rivers and lakes and in forests. Today, there are only about 350 000 Indians in the whole country, with their own languages. In the far north live the Inuit. There are only 27 000 Canadian-Inuit. Their life is hard in such a difficult climate.

1. About ________ live in Quebec.

A. 35% of the French –Canadians     B . 45% of the Canadians

C. 30 000 000  people              D. 8 700 000 French –Canadians

2. The official languages of Canada are ________ .

A. English and Chinese             B . French and English

C. Indian and French               D . Chinese and Inuit

3. The word “origin” in the passage means ________.

A 血统        B .后裔        C . 先驱          D . 猿人

4.About 23% of people came from _________ .

A China         B. England  

C. France       D. some other countries except France and Britain

5.Which of the following is TRUE according to this passage?

A. There are 27 000 Canadian-Indians in Canada

B. More than 13 million people have come from Britain and France recent years.

C. There are 30% of the population whose parents or grandparents come from France

D. There are no people when the Europeans began to arrive in Canada

People __1.___________ (live) in different countries made different kinds of words. Today there are about fifteen hundred __2.________ in the world. Each contains many thousands of words. A very large dictionary, for example, contains four __3.__________ five hundred thousand words. But we do not need __4.________ these. To read short stories you need to know only about two thousand words. __5._________ you leave school, you will learn only one thousand or more.

The words you know are called your vocabulary. You should try to make your vocabulary __6.____________ (big). Read as many books as we can. There are a lot of books __7.___________ (write) in easy English. You will enjoy them. When you come across __8.___________ new word, look it ___9.____________ in your dictionary. Your dictionary is your __10.__________ (much) useful book.