1 . How do we know the time? A clock, a watch or a mobile phone can help us. However, many years ago there were no clocks and knowing the time was not so easy. Over the centuries people have developed different ways of telling the time.
About 5, 500 years ago, the Egyptians invented the sun clock. This was a tall stone building. Its shadow(影子)showed the movement of the sun. So people were able to know midday. The Egyptians made a sundial about 3,500 years ago. It was smaller than the sun clock and could let people know the time for half a day. On cloudy days or at night it was impossible to tell the time with a sun clock or a sundial. Water clocks not were the first clocks not to use the sun. The idea is simple. Water flows(流动) from one bottle to another. When the water reaches a certain level, it shows the hours. The Egyptians used water clocks about 3,400 years ago. These clocks were popular in the Middle East and China. But they failed to make people know the exact time.
In the 13th century, the mechanical clock was invented. This was more exact, but it was expensive to make one. Over the next few centuries it was developed. For example springs(发条) were added around 1500. This enabled people to get the correct time and allowed clocks to be smaller. In 1927, the first quartz watch was developed. Clocks became cheaper to make. It’s also cheaper for ordinary people to own a clock. People began depending on them more and more to run businesses, markets and so on. More recently, in 1956, came the digital clock. And nowadays satellites send our mobile phones the time to the exact second.
There has been a lot of progress in timekeeping. Clocks are always changing but some things never change. Many of us sill have trouble getting out of bed on time and not being late for school or work.
1. According to the passage, we can’t use a ________ tell the time on a rainy day.| A．water clock | B．sun clock | C．digital clock | D．mechanical clock |
| A．现代的 | B．特殊的 | C．富有的 | D．普通的 |
| A．Four. | B．Five. | C．Six. | D．Seven. |
(①= Paragraph 1 ②= Paragraph 2...)
A． | B． |
C． | D． |
| A．The importance of time. | B．The development of timekeeping |
| C．The inventions of clocks. | D．The history of a digital clock. |
2 . Bi Sheng was born in Song Dynasty. He lived in a small village which lies in Huanggang today. He was the world’s first inventor of the printing. It is about 400 years earlier than the printing in Germany.
The printing is also called the movable type printing(活字印刷). But how did it work in the past?
First of all, the clay was made into movable types. Then words were engraved carefully onto the types. After that the words were chosen and put in right order in a box according to the text. Next, the workers brushed ink onto the movable types. Finally the types could be used for printing. They could be used again and again for different books.
The movable type printing plays an important role in Chinese culture. With the help of it, Chinese culture spread around the world more quickly. At the same time, the movable type printing was widely used in the world at that time. As a result, more and more culture communication among countries took place.
The movable type printing, the compass (指南针), gunpowder and the paper—making are called four great inventions of China. They make China own an important and even top position in the history of human civilization(文明).
1. What should the workers do after the words were chosen and put in right order?| A．Print by using the types. | B．Make the clay into movable types. |
| C．Brush ink onto the types. | D．Engrave words onto the types. |
| A．Three | B．Four | C．Five | D．Six |
| A．the movable type printing | B．gunpowder |
| C．the paper—making | D．the compass |
| A．The movable type printing and the importance for the culture communication. |
| B．Bi Sheng invented the movable type printing after trying many times. |
| C．How Bi Sheng invented the movable type printing in Song Dynasty. |
| D．Four great inventions and their position in the history of human civilization. |
3 . In the 13th century, Marco Polo, the world-known Italian traveller saw many wonderful things in China. One of the things he discovered was money made of paper. People in the West did not have such kind of money until the I5th century. However, the Chinese began to use it in the 7th century.
Paper was invented by a Chinese man called Cai Lun almost 2,000 years ago. But it was not made in Europe until the year 1100. Four hundred years later, a German discovered that he could make the best paper from trees. After that countries rich in forests, such as Canada, Sweden, America and Finland became the most important ones in paper making.
Paper can be used in many ways. The common uses include newspapers, magazines and books. But do you know that paper can be used for keeping warm? In Finland, the farmers wear paper boots to keep their feet warm in the snow. And even houses can be insulated (使绝缘) from heat or cold with paper.
However, we have to understand that paper still comes from trees now. If we keep on wasting so much paper, there will not be any trees left on the earth some day in the near future. Every day people throw away about 2, 800 tons of paper in our city. It takes 17 trees to make one ton of paper. This means that we are cutting down nearly 48,000 trees every day. The fact is that it takes more than 10 years for a tree to grow.
So we must start saving paper right now. We can use both sides of every piece of paper. We can make useful things out of used paper. We can use china cups instead of paper ones. When shopping, we can use fewer paper bags and reuse them if possible.
In short, we should keep a balance (平衡) between using paper and protecting trees, and do it now before it is too late.
1. When did the Chinese begin to use paper money?| A．In the 5th century | B．In the 6th century |
| C．In the 7th century | D．In the 15th century |
| A．Because it was a large country. |
| B．Because it had lots of forests. |
| C．Because it was a very rich country. |
| D．Because the inventor was from Canada. |
| A．making beds | B．reducing waste |
| C．making umbrellas | D．keeping warm |
| A．how paper boots are made | B．how paper was invented |
| C．how we can save paper | D．how we can make useful things |
Tofu history in China
Tofu is very popular in the East today, and tofu was first used in China over 2, 000 years ago. There is an ancient picture. It shows a kitchen scene which proves that soymilk (豆浆) and tofu were being made in China. The oldest history of tofu also appeared in China around 1,500 AD, in a poem Ode to Tofu by Su Ping.
Tofu history in Japan
Kento priests ( 教 士 ), who went to China, brought tofu back to Japan during the Nara Era (奈良时代)（710-794）. The word tofu was first mentioned in Japan in the diary of another priest called Nakaomi. In 1489, the word tofu was first written in the actual Japanese characters. Tofu gradually became popular in Japan. The cooking book Tofu Hyakuchin came out in 1782 and sold very well.
Tofu history in Western world
In 1603, The Spanish Dictionary was the first European document (文献) with the word tofu. The first English reference (参考书目) to tofu was in 1704. And tofu was first produced in France by Paillieux in 1880. Hirata & Co started to make tofu in San Francisco in 1895.
1. 完成句子2. 完成句子
3. 简略回答问题When was the poem Ode to Tofu made?
4. 按要求归纳The passage mainly talks about
5. 将画线句子译成汉语。
The Silk Road is the name of different roads that long ago connected Europe, Africa and Asia. People reached these different places along these roads. Scientists believe people began to travel the Silk Road about 3000 years ago. By the time the Chinese silk trade became important in the world.The Silk Road covered almost 6500 kilometres. It spread from Rome to China, which is from the West to the Far East.
Traders travelling along the Silk Road carried silk, of course. They also carried and traded spices (香料), cloth, valuable stones and gold.
Along and around these ancient path（小路）, have come many fascinating and mysterious stories
It is said that Roman soldiers (士兵) travelled through central Asia. They started to live somewhere near the ancient Chinese village of Liqian. Some of these Romans married local Chinese women and the story of blue-eyed villages of China was started.
During its busiest period, the Silk Road allowed people from many different cultures and countries to meet each other and mix. The Silk Road allowed the sharing of valuable goods and new ideas. These included people and trading goods from the Mediterranean, Persian, Magyar, Armenian, Bactrian, Indian and Chinese areas. All these peoples travelled the Silk Road, and they shared goods, stories, languages, and cultures.
In modern times, the old Silk Road routes (路线) are still used, but now they are crossed by trains instead of camels and horses. There is even a Silk Route Museum in Jiuquan in China. It has over 35,000 objects from all along the Silk Road. In this way, China protects the history of many countries and peoples.
1. 完成句子When people began to travel the Silk Road, the Chinese silk trade
2. 完成句子
People from many different cultures and countries
3. 简略回答问题 How did people use to cross the Silk Road routes?
4. 找出并写下全文的主题句
5. 将文中划线句子译成汉语
6 . Many people begin to use pencils from an early age. There are many kinds of pencils: some have erasers on top; some are colorful. You may have used many kinds of them for many years, but do you know the history of pencils?
Many years ago, people in Egypt used lead (铅) to write. Now pencils are made from graphite (石墨) instead of lead. In 1564, people found that graphite could leave black marks. At first, people used it to make marks on their sheep. Later they used the graphite to write. They thought it was lead. Graphite left a blacker mark than lead, but it was not strong enough so it needed something to hold it.
In 1565, Conrad Gesner first put graphite into something to hold it. Later, in the 1600s, German people mixed graphite with some other things and used them for writing. Later, France couldn’t get pencils from both the English and the Germans, so Nicholas Jacques Conte began to make pencils. In France, there was little graphite, so he mixed graphite with clay (粘土).
In 1812, William Munroe made the first American wood pencils. Later, a man put a small eraser on top of a pencil. A new kind of pencil was born.
1. The passage is mainly about the _______ of pencils.| A．kinds | B．history |
| C．materials | D．shapes |
| A．Egypt | B．England |
| C．Germany | D．China |
| A．blacker and softer | B．blacker and harder |
| C．softer and lighter | D．softer and harder |
| A．he needed something to hold graphite |
| B．France couldn’t get pencils from both the English and the Germans |
| C．he couldn’t find enough graphite in France |
| D．he wanted to put a small eraser on top of a pencil |
| A．Today pencils are not made from lead or graphite. |
| B．The first wood pencils were made in America. |
| C．German people first used mixed materials to make pencils. |
| D．People first used graphite to make marks on their sheep. |
