1 . Eartha Mae Kitt was born into a poor family in South Carolina in 1927. When Eartha was eight, her mother married. The husband did not want Eartha to live with them because of her mixed race.

Eartha was sent to New York City to live with an aunt in the African-American neighborhood of Harlem. The relationship was difficult. The aunt helped pay for piano and dance lessons for Eartha. But she also beat the girl. Eartha would run away after beatings.

Earth lived in the streets and worked in a factory as a young teenager. But she kept up her dance lessons. One day she decided to try out for a famous African-American dance company. Soon, Eartha was performing in shows around the world with the Katherine Dunham Dance Troupe.

In Paris, Eartha left the dance company to sing in a nightclub. Her voice was unusual - but very appealing. She learned French quickly and gained French fans. The film director Orson Welles discovered Eartha singing in Paris. He called her “the most exciting woman in the world”. Welles asked her to play a lead part in the play he was directing and starring in.

Eartha returned to New York and appeared in the Broadway show New Faces of 1952. A humorous song she sang about a bored, spoiled woman became famous. She soon signed a recording agreement with the record company. Eartha’s songs were all daring, especially for the 1950s. She even made a sexy Christmas song “Santa Baby”, which became her biggest hit.

Eartha's first role in a film was in the 1957 movie Mark of the Hawk with Nat King Cole. She was very careful about choosing her roles in films. She rejected parts that were not respectful to people of color. She said if her choices were bad, it would not help the black actors who came after her.

Eartha Mae Kitt was at home when she died on December 25, 2008. The cause was colon cancer.

1. What made Eartha leave her parents?

A．Her poor family.	B．Her mixed race.
C．Her cruel aunt.	D．Her dance lessons.

2. Eartha’s aunt can be described as ________ .

A．cruel and mean	B．violent but honest
C．considerate and friendly	D．helpful but unkind

3. What most probably made Welles be interested in Eartha at first?

A．Her dance.	B．Her beauty.
C．Her voice.	D．Her fans.

4. It can be inferred from the passage that _______.

A．Eartha starred in the film directed by Welles

B．Eartha was strongly against treating people of color unfairly

C．American songs in the 1950s were all daring

D．Mark of the Hawk was Eartha’s most successful song

2 . 阅读下面材料，在空白处填入适当的内容（1个单词）或括号内单词的正确形式。

Grammy - winning composer and conductor, Eric Whitacre, is among today's most popular     1     (musician) of his generation. Up to now, his ground-breaking Virtual Choir     2     (unite) worldwide singers through the use of technology.

The Choir began as a simple experiment in social media when a fan of Eric recorded a video of herself singing Sleep and shared it on YouTube.     3     (move) by the video, Eric responded by rounding up his fans to make videos,     4     he then joined together into one performance. Eric was     5     inspired by this experiment that he decided to push the concept to the next level. He filmed     6     (he) when conducting one piece of his music for singers to follow and asked them to record and upload their voice part onto the Internet. Thus Virtual Choir 1: Lux Aurumque     7     (produce). From then on, more and more singers throughout the world joined the VC to sing     8     one voice.

Now, Eric Whitacre's Virtual Choir is a     9     (globe) phenomenon. It helps connect ordinary people together and make the world     10     better place.

3 . It has been more than 500 years since Leonardo da Vinci died. He was so ahead of his time that people are still talking about how smart he was.

The inventor, painter, scientist, mathematician, musician, writer and thinker painted the most famous artworks in the world, including Mona Lisa and The Last Supper. He also invented a robot, a helicopter and a diving suit and thought about catching solar energy, besides, he planned a clean, healthy and modern city and made dozens of important discoveries about the human body.

Leonardo lived from 1452 to 1519. He was Italian, born in a village near Vinci. From the age of 14 he was a trainee to a painter and goldsmith. This studio in Florence, Italy, was a busy place with lots of thinkers, artists and skilled businessmen working around him. Though he spent years doing jobs such as tidying up and mixing paints, he could listen to all the things everyone discussed and start forming his own ideas about drawing.

Leonardo’s earliest surviving drawing is a pen and ink sketch of the nearby Amo River. And though this wasn’t drawn until 1473, when he was about 21, he probably he probably sketched scenes and ideas long before this.

Mona Lisa is one of the world’s most famous paintings. It is regarded as the portrait of Lisa Gherardini, wife of Francesco del Giocondo. People have always been attracted by how Leonardo made his subject’s face so interesting: Is she smiling or smirking; happy or sad? Like humans in real life, no one really knows how she was feeling.

Leonardo had permission from hospitals to study the bodies of people who had recently died. He made more than 240 detailed drawings of the human bodies. He wrote more than 13, 000 words on the subject. Unfortunately, Leonardo didn’t publish this work and took many years for the rest of the world to discover what Leonardo knew.

1. What can we infer about Leonardo da Vinci from Paragraph 2?

A．He caught solar energy.

B．He created a modern city.

C．He was the most famous artist.

D．He was a man with many talents.

2. When did Leonardo start his own idea about drawing?

A．When running his own studio.

B．When working as a trainee

C．After inventing a robot.

D．After discussing with businessmen.

3. What’s the text mainly about?

A．Leonardo da Vinci’s early drawing life.

B．Lisa Gherardini, a mysterious woman.

C．Leonardo da Vinci, a man ahead of his time.

D．Mona Lisa, one of the world’s most famous painting.

4 . 阅读下面短文，在空白处填入1个适当的单词或括号内单词的正确形式。

After participating in the reality TV show Idol Producer, the singer-songwriter, Cai Xukun, rose to fame overnight. Since then, Cai     1     (top) Chinese music charts with multiple singles. On July 26, KUN released his latest single Young,     2     reached a million sales within just 20 seconds.

A reviewer wrote on QQ Music: “When    3     (listen) to the song，I just seemed to go back to youth again.” “My works     4     (be) like my children and I have put my best effort into them，” KUN told the Global Times. “And I always get     5     (inspire) when it’s quiet，deep into     6     night,” he once said. “Sometimes，I can write songs with a melody 1 heard in a dream.”

To nurture his introspection (自省），KUN attends various musical     7     (perform). “I just like to do everything，all for my music，all for my art.” he told i-D.     8     KUN loves performing onstage, when the lights go down, he prefers to fall back into his world. With such talent and devotion     9     music，it seems that KUN will continue to make his mark in the     10     (compete) Chinese music industry.

5 . The exact location from where Vincent van Gogh is likely to have painted his final masterpiece, perhaps just hours before his death, has been determined with the help of a postcard.

The scene in Tree Roots, a painting of trunks (树干）and roots growing on a hillside, was first spotted on a card dating from 1900 to 1910 by Van der Veen, the scientific director of the Institute Van Gogh. Following a comparative study of the painting, the postcard and the current condition of the hillside, researchers concluded that it was highly possible that the place where Van Gogh made his final brushstrokes had been unearthed.

The main trunk in the painting has survived the 130 years since the Dutch master’s death. It has long been believed that Van Gogh had been working on Tree Roots shortly before he took his own life with a shot to the chest. Andries Bonger, the brother-in-law of Van Gough's brother Theo, had described in a letter how the “morning before his death” Van Gogh had “painted a forest scene, full of sun and life” Van der Veen said, t4The sunlight painted by Van Gogh suggests that the last brushstrokes were painted towards the end of the afternoon.”

Teio Meedendorp, a senior researcher at the Van Gogh Museum, said the spot, some 150 meters from the hotel where Van Gogh had stayed the last 70 days of his life, would likely have been passed on a number of occasions by him. “The scene on the postcard shows very clear similarities to the shape of the roots on Van Gogh’s painting,” he said. “He must often have passed by the location when going to the fields behind the castle of Auvers, where he painted several times during the last week of his life and where he would take his own life.”

1. What is Tree Roots?

A．A trunk.

B．A hillside.

C．A drawing.

D．A postcard.

2. What do we know about Van Gogh according to the text?

A．He had a close relationship with his brother.

B．What he drew in his paintings all came from real life.

C．He was working on his artwork shortly before killing himself.

D．He was so sick in his last days that he spent all the time in a hotel.

3. Where did Van Gogh kill himself according to Teio Meedendorp?

A．In the fields.	B．In a local hotel.
C．In the castle of Auvers.	D．In the scene on the postcard.

4. What’s the author’s purpose in writing the text?

A．To remember a famous painter. Van Gogh.

B．To introduce Van Gogh's life and his works.

C．To describe the influence of Van Gogh in art.

D．To tell the place in Van Gogh’s last painting.

6 . 阅读下面材料，在空白处填入适当的内容(1个单词)或括号内单词的正确形式｡

Mozart showed musical gifts at    1    early age, composing at five and performing in public only a year later.    2    (drive) by the thirst for wealth, his father took him on a performance tour around the French and English royal families,     3     he made a deep    4    (impress) on everyone with his     striking skills. During the tour, he also had his first music    5    (publish) and wrote his    6    (early) symphonies. After the family’s returning home late in 1766, he began his bittersweet life    7    a musician. Mozart died when still young. Throughout his short life, he studied, taught, wrote and played music. Even by working hard, he found    8    challenging to make ends meet(使生活收支平衡), borrowing money from his friends at times.    9    , his music made him happy and for more than two hundred years his   music     10    (make)others happy as well.