1 . The elephant was lying heavily on its side, fast asleep. A few dogs started barking at it. The elephant woke up in a terrible anger: it chased the dogs into the village where they ran for safety. That didn't stop the elephant. It destroyed a dozen houses and injured several people. The villagers were scared and angry. Then someone suggested calling Parbati,the elephant princess.

Parbati Barua's father was a hunter of tigers and an elephant tamer. He taught Parbati to ride an elephant before she could even walk. He also taught her the dangerous art of the elephant roundup—how to catch wild elephants.

Parbati hasn't always lived in the jungle. After a happy childhood hunting with her father, she was sent to a boarding school in the city. But Parbati never got used to being there and many years later she went back to her old life. "Life in the city is too dull. Catching elephants is an adventure and the excitement lasts for days after the chase," she says.

But Parbati doesn't catch elephants just for fun."My work," she says,"is to rescue man from the elephants, and to keep the elephants safe from man." And this is exactly what Parbati has been doing for many years. Increasingly, the Indian elephant is angry: for many years, illegal hunters have attacked it and its home in the jungle has been reduced to small pieces of land. It is now fighting back. Whenever wild elephants enter a tea garden or a village, Parbati is called to guide the animals back to the jungle before they can kill.

The work of an elephant tamer also involves love and devotion. A good elephant tamer will spend hours a day singing love songs to a newly captured elephant. "Eventually they grow to love their tamers and never forget them. They are also more loyal than humans," she said, as she climbed up one of her elephants and sat on the giant, happy animal. An elephant princess indeed!

1. For Parbati, catching elephants is mainly to ________.

A．get long lasting excitement

B．make the angry elephants tame

C．send them back to the jungle

D．keep both man and elephants safe

2. Before Parbati studied in a boarding school, ________.

A．she had already been called an elephant princess

B．she learned how to sing love songs

C．she spent her time hunting with her father

D．she was taught how to hunt tigers

3. Indian elephants are getting increasingly angry and they revenge because ________.

A．they are caught and sent for heavy work

B．they are attacked and their land gets limited

C．illegal hunters capture them and kill them

D．dogs often bark at them and chase them

2 . Color is fundamental in home design—something you’ll always have in every room. A grasp of how to manage color in your spaces is one of the first steps to creating rooms you’ll love to live in. Do you want a room that’s full of life? Professional? Or are you just looking for a place to relax after a long day?     1    , color is the key to making a room feel the way you want it to feel.

Over the years, there have been a number of different techniques to help designers approach this important point.     2    , they can get a little complex. But good news is that there’re really only three kinds of decisions you need to make about color in your home: the small ones, the medium ones, and the large ones.

    3    . They’re the little spots of color like throw pillows, mirrors and baskets that most of us use to add visual interest to our rooms. Less tiring than painting your walls and less expensive than buying a colorful sofa, small color choices bring with them the significant benefit of being easily changeable.

Medium color choices are generally furniture pieces such as sofas, dinner tables or bookshelves.     4    . They require a bigger commitment than smaller ones, and they have a more powerful effect on the feeling of a space.

The large color decisions in your rooms concern the walls, ceilings, and floors. Whether you’re looking at wallpaper or paint, the time, effort and relative expense put into it are significant.     5    .

A．While all of them are useful

B．Whatever you’re looking for

C．If you’re experimenting with a color

D．Small color choices are the ones we’re most familiar with

E．It’s not really a good idea to use too many small color pieces

F．So it pays to be sure, because you want to get it right the first time

G．Color choices in this range are a step up from the small ones in two major ways

3 . Give yourself a test. Which way is the wind blowing? How many kinds of wildflowers can be seen from your front door? If your awareness is as sharp as it could be, you’ll have no trouble answering these questions.

Most of us observed much more as children than we do as adults. A child’s day is filled with fascination, newness and wonder. Curiosity gave us all a natural awareness. But distinctions that were sharp to us as children become unclear; we are numb(麻木的）to new stimulation(刺激), new ideas. Relearning the art of seeing the world around us is quite simple, although it takes practice and requires breaking some bad habits.

The first step in awakening senses is to stop predicting what we are going to see and feel before it occurs. This blocks awareness. One chilly night when I was hiking in the Rocky Mountains with some students, I mentioned that we were going to cross a mountain stream. The students began complaining about how cold it would be. We reached the stream, and they unwillingly walked ahead. They were almost knee-deep when they realized it was a hot spring. Later they all admitted they’d felt cold water at first.

Another block to awareness is the obsession(痴迷) many of us have with naming things. I saw bird watchers who spotted a bird, immediately looked it up in field guides, and said, a "ruby-crowned kinglet" and checked it off. They no longer paid attention to the bird and never learned what it was doing.

The pressures of "time" and "destination" are further blocks to awareness. I encountered many hikers who were headed to a distant camp-ground with just enough time to get there before dark. It seldom occurred to them to wander a bit, to take a moment to see what’s around them. I asked them what they’d seen. "Oh, a few birds," they said. They seemed bent on their destinations.

Nature seems to unfold to people who watch and wait. Next time you take a walk, no matter where it is, take in all the sights, sounds and sensations. Wander in this frame of mind and you will open a new dimension to your life.z.xxk

1. According to Paragraph 2, compared with adults, children are more ____________.

A．anxious to do wonders

B．sensitive to others’ feelings

C．likely to develop unpleasant habits

D．eager to explore the world around them

2. What idea does the author convey in Paragraph 3?

A．To avoid jumping to conclusions.

B．To stop complaining all the time.

C．To follow the teacher’s advice.

D．To admit mistakes honestly.

3. The bird watchers’ behavior shows that they __________.

A．are very patient in their observation

B．are really fascinated by nature

C．care only about the names of birds

D．question the accuracy of the field guides

4. Why do the hikers take no notice of the surroundings during the journey?

A．The natural beauty isn’t attractive to them.

B．They focus on arriving at the camp in time.

C．The forest in the dark is dangerous for them.

D．They are keen to see rare birds at the destination.

5. In the passage, the author intends to tell us we should __________.

A．fill our senses to feel the wonders of the world

B．get rid of some bad habits in our daily life

C．open our mind to new things and ideas

D．try our best to protect nature

4 . How northern Europeans beat the winter blues

Ask a child from northern Europe to draw two pictures—one on a rainy day and a second in the sunshine—and this is what you will get: in the first, as raindrops fall from the top of the page, the man behind the window has an unhappy expression. When a yellow sun sends out some light from the corner, the man is smiling.

Northern Europeans associate rain with sadness and sunshine with happiness. They think this is true because they are so aware of how their environment affects them.     1     In October 2008, a group of researchers examined the influence of different daily weather factors, including temperature,wind and sunlight, on 1,200 participants. The conclusion was that good or bad weather had little effect on people’s feelings.     2     A person who is upset on dark or cold days suffers from a negative mood, and he will be likely to experience a sad winter. This is the basis of an illness called Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD).     3     .

AniKalayjian, professor of psychology at Fordham University, advises that we should take steps to strengthen the brain’s system against weather-driven mood changes. Research on SAD has been focused on the brain’s response to darkness and light. When our eyes detect darkness, the brain gives off melatonin, which starts sleep cycles.     4     It takes over to help us wake up and feel better when we detect light.“We can encourage people to take charge of their feelings,” says Kalayjian.“We tell them to leave the computers and the indoor games and get out there in the sun.     5    ”

A day of rain can potentially destroy your plan and affect your mood. But as the Scottish comedian Billy Connolly once said:“There is no such thing as bad weather, only the wrong clothing.”

A．Another chemical called serotonin, however, can make people happy.

B．It affects about10% of the population of northern Europe each year.

C．That’s when people can recharge their serotonin and get a better mood.

D．Yet that link has no scientific basis.

E．Most studies prove that a negative feeling is associated with bad weather.

F．They determined that people actually differ in their sensitivity to weather changes.

G．It is seriously doubted among the people who suffer from SAD.

5 . I work with Volunteers for Wildlife, a rescue and education organization at Bailey Arboretum in Locust Valley. Trying to help injured, displaced or sick creatures can be heartbreaking; survival is never certain. However, when it works, it is simply beautiful.

I got a rescue call from a woman in Muttontown. She had found a young owl(猫头鹰) on the ground. When I arrived, I saw a 2-to 3-week-old owl. It had already been placed in a carrier for safety.

I examined the chick(雏鸟) and it seemed fine. If I could locate the nest, I might have been able to put it back, but no luck. My next work was to construct a nest and anchor it in a tree.

The homeowner was very helpful. A wire basket was found. I put some pine branches into the basket to make this nest safe and comfortable. I placed the chick in the nest, and it quickly calmed down.

Now all that was needed were the parents, but they were absent. I gave the homeowner a recording of the hunger screams of owl chicks. These advertise the presence of chicks to adults; they might also encourage our chick to start calling as well. I gave the owner as much information as possible and headed home to see what news the night might bring.

A nervous night to be sure, but sometimes the spirits of nature smile on us all! The homeowner called to say that the parents had responded to the recordings. I drove over and saw the chick in the nest looking healthy and active. And it was accompanied in the nest by the greatest sight of all — LUNCH! The parents had done their duty and would probably continue to do so.

1. What is unavoidable in the author’s rescue work according to paragraph 1?

A．Efforts made in vain.

B．Getting injured in his work.

C．Feeling uncertain about his future.

D．Creatures forced out of their homes.

2. Why was the author called to Muttontown?

A．To rescue a woman.

B．To take care of a woman.

C．To look at a baby owl.

D．To cure a young owl.

3. What made the chick calm down?

A．A new nest.

B．Some food.

C．A recording.

D．Its parents.

4. How would the author feel about the outcome of the event?

A．It’s unexpected.

B．It’s beautiful.

C．It’s humorous.

D．It’s discouraging.

6 . Do you know Australia? Australia is the largest island in the world. It is a little smaller than China. It is in the south of the earth.     1    The population of Australia is nearly as large as that of Shanghai. The cities in Australia have got little air or water pollution.     2     You can clearly see fish swimming in the rivers. Plants grow very well.

Last month we visited Perth, the biggest city in Western Australia, and went to a wild flowers’ exhibition. There we saw a large number of wild flowers we had never seen before. We had a wonderful time.     3     In spring every year Perth has the wild flowers’ exhibition.

After visiting Perth, we spent the day in the countryside. We sat down and had a rest near a path at the foot of a hill.      4     Suddenly we heard bells ringing at the top of the hill. What we saw made us pick up all our things and run back to the car as quickly as we could. There were about three hundred sheep coming towards us down the path.       5     After a short drive from any town, you will find yourself in the middle of white sheep. Sheep, sheep, everywhere are sheep.

A．The people of Australia are very hard-working.

B．Australia is the sixth largest country in the world.

C．Australia is famous for its sheep and kangaroos.

D．Australia is big, but its population is not large.

E．Perth is famous for its beautiful wild flowers.

F．The sky is blue and the water is clean.

G．It was quiet and we enjoyed ourselves.

7 . Passenger pigeons (旅鸽) once flew over much of the United States in unbelievable numbers. Written accounts from the 18th and 19th centuries described flocks(群) so large that they darkened the sky for hours.

It was calculated that when its population reached its highest point, there were more than 3 billion passenger pigeons—a number equal to 24 to 40 percent of the total bird population in the United States, making it perhaps the most abundant bird in the world. Even as late as 1870 when their numbers had already become smaller, a flock believed to be 1 mile wide and 320 miles (about 515 kilometers) long was seen near Cincinnati.

Sadly the abundance of passenger pigeons may have been their undoing. Where the birds were most abundant, people believed there was an ever-lasting supply and killed them by the thousands. Commercial hunters attracted them to small clearings with grain, waited until pigeons had settled to feed, then threw large nets over them, taking hundreds at a time. The birds were shipped to large cities and sold in restaurants.

By the closing decades of the 19th century, the hardwood forests where passenger pigeons nested had been damaged by American’s need for wood, which scattered (驱散) the flocks and forced the birds to go farther north, where cold temperatures and storms contributed to their decline. Soon the great flocks were gone, never to be seen again.

In 1897, the state of Michigan passed a law prohibiting the killing of passenger pigeons but by then, no sizable flocks had been seen in the state for 10 years. The last confirmed wild pigeon in the United States was shot by a boy in Pike County, Ohio, in 1900. For a time, a few birds survived under human care. The last of them, known affectionately as Martha, died at the Cincinnati Zoological Garden on September 1, 1914.

1. In the 18th and early 19th centuries, passenger pigeons ________.

A．were the biggest bird in the world

B．lived mainly in the south of America

C．did great harm to the natural environment

D．were the largest bird population in the US

2. The underlined word “undoing” probably refers to the pigeons’ ____.

A．escape	B．ruin
C．liberation	D．evolution

3. What was the main reason for people to kill passenger pigeons?

A．To seek pleasure.	B．To save other birds.
C．To make money.	D．To protect crops.

4. What can we infer about the law passed in Michigan?

A．It was ignored by the public.	B．It was declared too late.
C．It was unfair.	D．It was strict.