1 . When I first moved to China in 1998, I thought I would impress my class by using some Chinese in my speech about American weddings (婚礼). I told them everyone brings a gift to the wedding for the couple. As soon as I said this, all of the students looked surprised. I knew I had said something wrong. I realized that instead of telling them that everybody brings gifts to the hun li for the couple, I had said people bring gifts for them at the li hun!

I get laughs from some of my students because I often make mistakes and my Chinese sounds strange at times. But I tell them that sometimes their English is really strange too.

One asks, “What are you like to do in your free time?” And the other answers, “I very like basketball.” I find that even good English speakers make such mistakes. The second is by far the most common mistake I have heard among Chinese English speakers. It is a result of first thinking in Chinese and then translating each word in the sentence into English. This, of course, makes some Chinese people’s English sound strange.

“We should get off the car here,” a student told me. My school had asked two students to show me around the city by taxi. In English countries, we “get off” a bike, bus, or train. However, when we leave a car, we say “get out of the car”. Perhaps the student had learned “get off” means xia in Chinese and he thought the phrase (短语) could be followed by any means of transportation. To avoid such mistakes, you should take collocations (搭配) seriously. Only learning vocabulary and grammar is not enough.

Some of my students sound more like a book or machine than a human. Perhaps they have gotten used to depending on books. You can also read English books out loud or use a CD, but you need the real thing. If you have a chance to hear a native speaker from an English­speaking country, practice repeating what you hear. They can teach you how to have a conversation.

1. Why did the students feel surprised?

A．American weddings are difficult to organize.

B．The author’s Chinese was as fluent as Chinese.

C．The author used a completely wrong Chinese word.

D．Everyone must bring a gift to an American wedding.

2. What can cause strange English in China according to the author?

A．Spelling mistakes.	B．Direct translation.
C．Cultural difference.	D．Wrong pronunciations.

3. What can we infer about the student who said “We should...here”?

A．He might be poor at vocabulary.

B．He might mistake “car” for “taxi”．

C．He might know very little about the city.

D．He might pay little attention to collocations.

4. What does the author want to share in the last paragraph?

A．Common mistakes made by Chinese English learners.

B．Differences between Chinese and American culture.

C．Suggestions on improving conversational skills.

D．His experience of learning English.

2 . 听下面一段独白，回答以下小题。
1. What does the man do?

A．An animal keeper.

B．A zoo manager.

C．A park cleaner.

2. What happened that evening?

A．A lion escaped into the zoo.

B．A lion escaped from the zoo.

C．A hurricane blew a lion away.

3. Where was the lion that afternoon?

A．In the zoo.

B．In the police station.

C．In a lady’s garden.

4. What was the lion doing when the keepers saw it?

A．Eating in the bushes.

B．Sleeping in the garden.

C．Playing in the park.

3 . 听下面一段较长对话，回答以下小题。
1. How many people spend their holiday at home now?

A．40%.

B．50%.

C．90%.

2. Where do people like to spend their holiday?

A．In big cities.

B．On the beach.

C．In a foreign country.

3. What do the speakers mainly talk about?

A．Great pleasure of travel.

B．Changes in spending vacation.

C．Costs of different travels.

5 . 听下面一段较长对话，回答以下小题
1. Where did the truck come up?

A．York Road.

B．Union Street.

C．The bank building.

2. How fast was the car moving according to the man?

A．About 10 miles an hour.

B．About 30 miles an hour.

C．About 45 miles an hour.

3. What are the speakers talking about?

A．A film.

B．A race.

C．An accident.

8 . 规则是社会文明的标志，人人都应该遵守。请根据下面的提纲，用英语写一篇短文向英语报English Times投稿，简要叙述上周一下午你在学校阅览室做作业时看到的不遵守规则的现象，并谈谈你的看法。
·When and why were you in the reading-room?
·What did you notice there? (eg. students talking loudly, …)
·What is your opinion?
注意：(1) 短文须包括上述全部要点，应适当增加细节，以使行文连贯；
(2) 词数：100左右。短文开头已给出（不计词数）。

Rules are important in our daily life. Following rules actually starts with very small acts, in the school reading room for example.

___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

9 . Lily, Emily, James and David are talking about computer games. Choose from the four views on computer games (A, B, C and D) and match with the four opinions.
    1     Lily: Computer games have influenced the students’ reading achievements.
    2     Emily: Even play-for-free computer games may cost a lot of money.
    3     James: Some computer gamers may buy games illegally (非法地).
    4     David: The nature of games could benefit society.

A Some students are just crazy about computer games. People have to accept the fact that these machines are having a terrible effect on students’ reading ability. Students are no longer interested in reading these days. Instead, they just stare at the computer screen, pushing those buttons. They don’t have to use their brains or their memory. Obviously, these machines are the cause of so much underachievement in today’s society.

B Game developers worry about how to prevent people copying the games illegally. Some companies have been trying to make sure that everyone who plays the game is a legal user. For example, you might have to have an internet connection to play. This is a problem for some people if their internet connection isn’t reliable. So they would rather buy pirated versions (盗版) which don’t have these limits.

C I realize that a lot of these play-for-free games are designed to make money. You play for free, but once you’ve devoted time and effort to your game, you start paying real money to progress further into the game. With people spending lots of money on virtual (虚拟的) items, I can see why governments might want to make rules for games like these.

D A lot of games are attractive because the virtual world is fairer than the real world. Your success isn’t determined by your age, social position or education. Besides, the sense of being together in the gaming world is really strong. Therefore, people should stop blaming these games and start thinking about how we can bring the good things of gaming into our real lives.