1 . Before James Blunt became a musician, he served in the army. He spent four and a half years there, with six months in Kosovo as part of the peacekeeping force. Before leaving the army, Blunt had decided to achieve his dream of becoming a musician. In 2003, he was discovered by a music producer Linda Perry who signed him to her Custard label. However, the road to success never runs smoothly. It seemed that he would become another struggling singer trying to live from hand to mouth (现挣现吃地) when his first two singles failed to make an impact on the British charts. But everything changed when his third single You’re Beautiful made it all the way to No.1 on the UK singles charts, and remained there for five weeks. The album (专辑) Back to Bedlam soon followed and quickly became one of the biggest selling records of the year, remaining ten continual weeks at No. 1. Since then, he has sold more than three million records, making him the first British artist to top the American singles charts in nearly a decade.
Blunt, 34, a throwback (返祖者)to the 1970s soft rock golden age, has been quoted by Western media as saying that he will never get used to people screaming at him in the street.
His success proves a lasting theory: You spend years chasing the right song. Then, if you’re lucky, and if the song really takes off, you spend the rest of your life trying to escape it, or learning to live with it. A few years removed from You’re Beautiful, he can still fill stages worldwide with fans who stay until the end.
1. Which of the following can describe James Blunt’s life as a musician before he sang the song You’re Beautiful?| A．Difficult. | B．Happy. | C．Boring. | D．Smooth. |
| A．Blunt will never adjust himself to the noisy environment around. |
| B．The popularity of Blunt has been gaining him an increasing number of fans out of his expectation. |
| C．What Blunt sings disturbs people so much that they yell to him their anger. |
| D．People in the street are rude civilians who are against any form of entertaining, including Blunt’s songs. |
| A．Blunt is wellknown in the world for his talent |
| B．Blunt’s fame as a musician came easily |
| C．Blunt wasn’t lucky enough to win his fans’ support |
| D．Blunt has to face the inconvenience his fame has caused |
2 . New technology rules the whole world now. But I still remember when I was a child, I did not have a cell phone or a computer because it was not necessary at all in those days. The internet was not popular, and the touch screen technology was unknown.
At this time here in the US smartphone are really a need, especially for young and business people. There are many applications really useful like maps, dictionaries, e-mails and games.
For me, I use my smartphone to check the weather and to look for something on the internet and of course to keep communicating through calls and texts. Besides, I like music applications, GPS and Facebook.
Many tests have discovered that cell phones cause damages to us because they send out radioactive(具有放射性的) waves to our bodies and this could cause cancer.
Psychologists say that these devices can affect behavior and I believe everyone knows it is harmful to the eyes if we are sitting for a long time in front of computer. However, it seems to be difficult for us to give up, even if we know how bad it is for our health. The use of technology becomes more and more important in our lives.
I think the use of technology has brought us unimaginable things. If we use technology correctly, I am sure it would be possible to decrease the damage to our bodies.
Keep in mind that it is important not to focus only on technology, but to spend time with our families and people close to us.
1. What can we know from the passage?| A．The author is a businessman working for a cell phone company. |
| B．The author has suffered a lot from the use of electrical devices. |
| C．The author knows little about the functions of modern cellphones. |
| D．The author is quite pleased with the various functions of cell phones. |
| A．It’s not necessary to add more applications to the cell phone. |
| B．Cell phones have made our world a boring place to live in. |
| C．New technology has done people more harm than good. |
| D．New technology makes people separated from each other. |
| A．keep | B．cause | C．reduce | D．add |
3 . A few weeks ago, I sat with a California farmer named Dave Ribeiro. I asked him what he wished more people knew about farmers. He smiled and said, “That we walk among you. We look like you and talk like you. We have advanced degrees and hobbies, just like you.”
Take Dave: He’s a young man with a music degree. And if you walked past him on the street, you’d never think, “There goes a farmer.”
Is someone like Dave who you picture when you think of a farmer? Probably not. I think that most people would picture a man in his overalls. I can tell you, that does not represent Dave or any of the many other farmers I have gotten to know.
Not only do we have to throw out our stereotypes of farmers, but farming as a whole doesn’t look much like it used to either. We recently sent a team out to see what modern farming looks like, and they found farmers to be completely different from our usual ideas about them and also came across them in some unexpected places.
In a parking lot in a neighborhood of Brooklyn, they met a new crop of young farmers who are trying to bring fresh greens closer to eaters in the city by growing them in high-tech indoor vertical farms. In a Florida field under the flight path of an airport, they discovered farmers with university degrees growing algae (藻类) that might someday fuel our cars. And in a modern farm in California, they observed how farmers are using technology to take the best possible care of their animals.
These farmers all spend their days in very different ways — none of them looks like the stereotypical farmer we have in our mind — but they’re all working on new ways to feed our planet. Not only do we need to change our idea of what farming looks like, but we also need to change our view of where solutions can come from. Feeding all of us is going to take all of us working together.
1. How does Dave describe today’s farmers?| A．They often walk on the street. | B．They are leading a very busy life. |
| C．They are similar to ordinary people. | D．They have little time to make friends. |
| A．They usually wear overalls. | B．They have interesting hobbies. |
| C．They are skilled at growing crops. | D．They know modern farming practices. |
| A．To deepen connections among farmers. |
| B．To study different technologies in farming. |
| C．To report on the new developments of farming. |
| D．To encourage farmers to use new farming methods. |
| A．They all work in the city. | B．They all use high technology. |
| C．They all do hard physical work. | D．They all work with universities. |
4 . These people are studying English. However, they are now facing some problems.
I am Pablo. I work 50 hours a week as a taxi driver, so I talk to people all day. They understand me, but I know I make a lot of mistakes. No one corrects me. My vocabulary is strong. Grammar is my problem. I’m trying to change little by little. For example, I don’t use the past tense(时态). I always say, “I drive him to the office this morning” instead of “I drove him to the office this morning”.
My name is Maria Luisa. I’m teaching myself English, and I’m good at grammar. However, it’s really difficult to find ways to practise English. I live in an area where everyone speaks my language. My neighbours and friends speak Spanish. I can speak Spanish in the supermarket and at the post office.
I am Li Ping. I understand the grammar and the readings in my class and I think my writing is good, but I’m very nervous when I speak English. I don’t want to make any mistakes because I’m afraid people will think that I’m stupid. Also, my pronunciation isn’t good. When I speak, people often say, “What? Say that again.”
I am Yoshi. I have been in the United States for one year. I’m studying hard and I know grammar well, but the vocabulary is very difficult. When I listen, I don’t understand many of the words. When I try to read, there are three or four new words in every sentence. I feel discouraged.
1. Who may say, “I go to bed late last night”?| A．Yoshi. | B．Maria Luisa. | C．Pablo. | D．Li Ping. |
| A．Try to have a wide vocabulary. | B．Develop a good knowledge of grammar. |
| C．Read as many English books as possible. | D．Make friends with English-speaking people. |
| A．She speaks at a very fast speed. | B．Her voice is very low. |
| C．Her grammar is terrible. | D．She can’t pronounce words in English correctly. |
| A．He has a very small vocabulary. | B．He was born in the United States. |
| C．He has learned English for years. | D．He is very good at listening. |
5 . Learning Chinese could be one of the most important decisions you ever made. Chinese is becoming the language to learn in the 21st century. With the world’s largest population and a rapidly growing middle class, China stands to become the engine of the world’s economy in the coming years. This will make learning Chinese very important to people in many industries, or to those of us who wish to visit China or learn about its culture and history.
There is an ongoing effort to modernize the writing system and standardize(使标准化) the language. An increasing number of people learning Chinese are learning Mandarin, so unless you absolutely need to learn another dialect (such as Cantonese), be sure to study Mandarin.
For native English speakers Chinese is one of the most difficult and most different languages to learn. The vocabulary is wholly unfamiliar and unlike anything we know. In addition, in the Chinese tone system, words are said in rising or falling tones, which helps to distinguish them. Furthermore, there is the Chinese writing system—a collection of thousands of individual ideograms (表意文字), or symbols, which represent a word or an idea. These ideograms have no phonetic value—that is to say, we can’t tell how the word is pronounced by how it is written. There is a way to present written Chinese in a phonetic script called pinyin. If you are learning Chinese, you'll be working with this pinyin system, but the beauty of the traditional writing system shouldn’t be passed up(放弃). All these factors make learning Chinese difficult for us. Yet, for a determined learner, there’s always a way to overcome them.
1. Why is learning Chinese becoming more and more important?| A．Chinese engines are very welcome. |
| B．China has the world’s largest population. |
| C．There are more and more rich people in China. |
| D．China has become important to the world economy. |
| A．The author thinks Chinese is as difficult as English. |
| B．The author is interested in the Chinese language and culture. |
| C．Foreign languages can play a great role in industrial development. |
| D．As long as the pinyin system is learned well, one can learn Chinese well. |
| A．The difficulties of learning Chinese. |
| B．The advantages of learning Chinese. |
| C．The Chinese tone system. |
| D．The Chinese writing system. |
| A．The sources of Chinese characters. |
| B．The importance of learning Chinese. |
| C．The advice on how to learn Chinese. |
| D．The difficulties of learning other languages. |
6 . If it had not been for Fan Jinshi and her team, the world cultural heritage of Dunhuang Mogao Caves in a remote Chinese desert might have long been destroyed by sand, weather or humans.
Born in Beijing and raised in Shanghai, Fan has spent half a century fighting an uphill battle to preserve the ancient Buddhist wall paintings at Dunhuang, in Northwest China’s Gansu Province. The 1,653-year-old Dunhuang Mogao Caves are a huge collection of Buddhist art—more than 2,000 buddha figures and 45,000 square metres of paintings spread among 735 caves. It is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Archaeologist Fan was sent to Dunhuang after graduating from Peking University in 1963. While in Dunhuang, a remote village in the desert then, Fan lived in an abandoned temple. At first, she did not even dare to go out to the toilet at night. To protect the treasures from sand and dampness, Fan and other workers put doors on the caves, planted trees and started monitoring temperature and humidity in the caves. They also controlled the number of visitors.
In the late 1990s, with tourism booming nationwide since national holidays were extended, the local government planned to go public with Dunhuang Mogao Caves, but found Fan firmly in_their_way. “The heritage would have been destroyed if it had been listed，” she said.
Dunhuang Academy has now photographed and cataloged online all the sculptures and paintings. “Despite our efforts to minimise damage, we can’t completely stop them from being eroded. But the digital database will last.”
Fan was grateful when her husband joined her in Dunhuang in 1986 after 19 years of separation. Her two sons grew up seldom with her accompany. “I have not been a good mother or wife. With regard to my family, I’m full of guilt，” she said. Fan, 81, retired four years ago as the director of Dunhuang Academy but continues her efforts as a national political adviser.
1. When was Fan separated from her husband?| A．In 1963. | B．In 1967. |
| C．In 1986. | D．In the late 1990s. |
| A．Go to a place. |
| B．Be in favour of something. |
| C．Reject something. |
| D．Give in to something. |
| A．The history of Dunhuang Mogao Caves. |
| B．The attractions of Dunhuang Mogao Caves. |
| C．Fan’s devotion to preserving Dunhuang Mogao Caves. |
| D．The appeal for the protection of Dunhuang Mogao Caves. |
| A．Considerate. | B．Kind. |
| C．Humorous. | D．Devoted. |
7 . Suppose you have everything: a good job, good health,good relationships and a lot of money to spend. But still there is something missing from your life. Guess what? The love. It is not something that you should ignore. Life without love is just like body without soul.
Love gives meaning to life as without love life is meaningless. Lucky is the person who gets love and keeps the flames of love burning forever. It is not a matter of days or months. Love is for life and life is for love.
It is easy to fall in love but difficult to keep the flames of love burning. Before having a serious long-term love relationship, be sure that the person you love is also sincere with you. A selfish person can make your life terrible. If this is the case with you,then try to get rid of that person as soon as possible.
Most people do not give importance to their love life as they give importance to their professional life. This is a bad choice which ruins the whole life.A balance between the two is necessary in order to enjoy life in its entirety.Do not lose the love you need.
In order to make your life more exciting and enjoyable, you need a loving and caring person with whom you can share your values, dreams, joys and jokes. In difficult times of failure, pain, or loss of dear ones, this person should stand firmly beside you and comfort you in every possible manner.
Love your life and love the person who is in your life. Keep the flames of love burning to live a great, great life.
1. What’s the meaning of the underlined sentence in the second paragraph?| A．Love is only for life. |
| B．Life is designed only for love. |
| C．Life can’t be separated from love. |
| D．When you have a good life,you can own a real love. |
| A．try to get rid of your bad manners as soon as possible |
| B．make certain that the person you love is also sincere |
| C．try to find out whether the person you love really loves you |
| D．make sure that you treat the person sincerely |
| A．to value everything one has |
| B．to be sincere with the people around |
| C．to live a life full of love all one’s life |
| D．to avoid being a selfish person |
8 . Take a look inside a high school classroom. You will most likely find a teacher at the front of the class and students sitting at their desks. Yet, look closer, and you might notice a familiar scene: many of these students are not paying attention. Instead, they are dozing off (打盹) or even completely asleep.
Today, the majority of high school students are not getting enough sleep. This is a serious problem, especially as students are doing more than ever with their time. They come to school early, spend hours listening to teachers and taking tests, then run off to practices and meetings, and come home to be faced with even more work. And the homework load these days is not light; teachers give hours’ worth of homework each night.
Most kids need at least nine hours of sleep per night in order to function properly. Yet the period of this nine hours shifts as a child gets older. After puberty (青春期), the body’s internal clock changes so that it is difficult for teens to fall asleep before 11 p.m. So even if a student falls asleep at eleven, they would need to sleep until at least 8 am, to get a full night’s sleep. Considering the time at which most high schools in this country begin, those nine hours are clearly being shortened. Few high schools start after 8 a.m.
However, there are schools that have paid attention to this research and pushed backward the start of their school day. In schools where the start time is after 8:30 in the morning, the teachers believe that there has been a real change in their students. They note that the students miss class less, pay more attention in class, perform better in class, and report lower levels of depression. The researchers of these studies say that the results are quite important and that more schools should consider pushing backward their start time of their school day.
1. Which of the following would the author agree with?| A．High school students must go to bed before 10 p.m. |
| B．High schools should begin their school day at a later time. |
| C．Most schools should push forward the start of their school day. |
| D．Kids should shorten their sleep time gradually as they grow older. |
| A．why high school students should get more sleep |
| B．what’s life like for college students at present |
| C．why high school students feel sleepy in the classroom |
| D．how to lighten high school students’ homework load |
| A．arrives | B．reduces | C．increases | D．changes |
| A．Disappointed. | B．Satisfied. | C．Puzzled. | D．Surprised. |
9 . It can be really hard to learn a new language. I had always enjoyed learning languages in school. Only recently did I start learning German. I found that I could understand and learn individual words easily, but when it came to literature, I really struggled. That happened when my tutor at university suggested reading some children's books printed in the target language.
At first, I felt a bit silly going on a hunt for a book designed for someone half my age, but then I realized that everyone has to start somewhere. As children, we are given these basic texts to familiarize our brains with certain vocabularies and writing structures, and from there, we can learn and develop. I started with books which are taught to us as children in the UK. I managed to find Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens and James and the Giant Peach by Roald Dahl.The beauty of reading books that were introduced to you as a child is that you are already familiar with the plot. Therefore, you can work out some words with your knowledge of the story. At first, I used to read with the book in one hand and a dictionary in the other, but this did not work well. The method I would recommend is to read a chapter first and at the end of that chapter, highlight the new words and then look up the definitions. If you can wait a bit before using a dictionary, you may be surprised at what you can understand merely from the context. Additionally, a lot of children's books have pictures which may give you a clue as to what or whom the passage is referring to.
If you can find translations of the books you have read as a child, I would strongly advise you to read those if you are a complete beginner. However, if you feel a bit more confident of reading in English, I would personally recommend the series of Harry Potter by J.K. Rowling or any of the Roald Dahl's children's books.
1. Why did the author find it hard to learn German?
| A．The author had a poor memory. |
| B．The author had no interest in it. |
| C．The author had no one to ask for help. |
| D．The author couldn't read German books fluently. |
| A．Interesting. | B．Stupid. | C．Helpful. | D．Boring. |
| A．How to deal with new words while reading. |
| B．Why it is helpful to read children's books at first. |
| C．How to choose a proper book to match your level. |
| D．How to form the habit of reading in the target language. |
| A．To give tips on how to learn a new language. |
| B．To persuade readers to learn a new language. |
| C．To stress the importance of reading in language learning. |
| D．To share stories of learning a new language. |
10 . “I see you've got a bit of water on your coat, ” said the man at the petrol station. “Is it raining out there?”“No, it's pretty nice，”I replied，checking my sleeve. “Oh，right. A pony（马驹） bite me earlier. ”
As it happened, the bite was virtually painless: more the kind of small bite you might get from a naughty child. The pony responsible was queuing up for some ice cream in the car park near Haytor, and perhaps thought I'd jumped in ahead of him.
The reason why the ponies here are naughty is that Haytor is a tourist-heavy area and tourists are constantly feeding the ponies foods, despite signs asking them not to. By feeding the ponies, tourists increase the risk of them getting hit by a car, and make them harder to gather during the area's annual pony drift（迁移）.
The purpose of a pony drift is to gather them up so their health can be checked, the baby ones can be stopped from feeding on their mother's milk, and those who've gone beyond their limited area can be returned to their correct area. Some of them are also later sold, in order to limit the number of ponies according to the rules set by Natural England.
Three weeks ago, I witnessed a small near-disaster a few miles west of here. While walking, I noticed a pony roll over on his back “Hello!” I said to him, assuming he was just rolling for fun, but he was very still and, as I got closer, I saw him kicking his legs in the air and breathing heavily. I began to properly worry about him. Fortunately, I managed to get in touch with a Dartmoor's Livestock Protection officer and send her a photo. The officer immediately sent a local farmer out to check on the pony. The pony had actually been trapped between two rocks. The farmer freed him, and he began to run happily around again.
Dartmoor has 1, 000 or so ponies, who play a critical role in creating the diversity of species in this area. Many people are working hard to preserve these ponies, and trying to come up with plans to find a sustainable（可持续的）future for one of Dartmoor's most financially-troubled elements.
1. Why are tourists asked not to feed the ponies?| A．To protect the tourists from being bitten. |
| B．To keep the ponies off the petrol station. |
| C．To avoid putting the ponies in danger. |
| D．To prevent the ponies from fighting. |
| A．to feed baby ponies on milk | B．to control the number of ponies |
| C．to expand the habitat for ponies | D．to sell the ponies at a good price |
| A．It lacks people's involvement. | B．It costs a large amount of money. |
| C．It will affect tourism in Dartmoor. | D．It has caused an imbalance of species. |
