2 . Alexis, 17, sat quietly in the passenger seat of her dad’s car. She let her eyes lazily scan the field for wildlife. Then a deer came into sight about 200 yards in front of them. “Dad, there’s a deer there!” Alexis said. It was a male deer with sharp antlers (鹿角) on each side of its head.

As the car moved closer, Alexis saw that the deer’s head was bent toward the ground. Then she heard a scream and saw an arm fly up near the deer’s head. Alexis realized the deer was attacking a woman. Sue, a 44-year-old mother, had been out for her morning run. The deer followed her and edged closer. “I knew I was in trouble,” Sue says. She went to pick up a stone for self-protection, and the deer attacked. It lifted her with its antlers and threw her into the air. Sue could feel blood flew down her leg. Within seconds, the deer had pushed her off the road.

When Alexis and her father pulled up, the deer was throwing Sue like a doll. Alexis looked into the woman’s frightened eyes, and before her father had even stopped the car, the teenager jumped quickly out of the car and ran toward the deer. “I was kicking it to get its attention,” she says. Then her father, who had followed his daughter, pushed the deer away from the woman. Alexis helped Sue into the car, and then applied a piece of cloth to Sue’s injured leg. “We’re going to take you to a hospital,” Alexis said. Then she heard her father shout loudly. He had been knocked to the ground. Alexis took hold of a hammer from the car and ran to where her father lay on his back. She beat the deer’s head and neck, but it didn’t scare it away. “I was losing faith,” she says. “More strikes, Alexis,” said her father. “You can do it.” Turning the hammer around, Alexis closed her eyes and beat the deer’s neck with all her strength. When she opened her eyes, the deer was running away. Alexis got in the driver’s seat and sped toward the nearest hospital.

After Sue was treated, she tearfully thanked the teenager and her father. “You expect a teenage girl to get on the phone and call for help,” she says, “not to beat up a deer.”

1. What was Sue doing when she was attacked by the deer?

A．She was driving home.

B．She was resting on the road.

C．She was taking exercise.

D．She was feeding wild animals.

2. The underlined word “edged” in Paragraph 2 probably means “          ”.

A．changed

B．cut

C．attacked

D．moved

3. What did Alexis do to save Sue?

A．She pushed the deer away.

B．She hit the deer with her feet.

C．She drove the car to hit the deer.

D．She beat the deer with a hammer.

4. Which of the following statements is TRUE according to Paragraph 3?

A．Alexis scared the dear away the first time she tried.

B．Alexis beat the dear’s head with all her strength and killed it.

C．Alexis’s father gave her encouragement in the process.

D．Sue was seriously injured in her arm and had been knocked to the ground.

5. Which of the following words can best describe Alexis?

A．Strong and powerful.	B．Well-educated but impatient.
C．Energetic but aggressive.	D．Warmhearted and brave.

4 . Those with closed minds refused to consider any contradictory facts, and they proceed with their planned course of action, full speed ahead, with their “minds made up” and tightly shut. As an illustration, consider the situation in 1986, prior to the space shuttle Challenger’s disatrous launch that killed all seven astronauts aboard, there was a heated telephone debate between two engineers from the company that produced the shuttle booster rockets and the top officials of NASA (the federal government’s space agency). The engineers insisted that the flight was too risky because of freezing temperature at the Florida launch site. They explained that some of the seals on the fuel tanks were not designed to withstand such low temperatures and might leak under pressure, thus endangering the craft and crew.

Despite the pleas to stop the flight, officials at NASA overruled the engineers, who were best qualified to make judgments about the complex technical problems of space flight. What caused the officials to ignore the engineers? Several flights had already been postponed, and it would not look good to postpone another. It would be bad public relations to disappoint the crowds of people and news reporters waiting for the launch. Top government officials were ready to appear on the national television and take the credit for another safe flight. As a result, with their minds absolutely closed to the facts presented by the engineers, NASA officials ordered the Challenger to take off. Seventy-three seconds later, the spacecraft was enveloped in flame.

Incredibly, seventeen years later, the lesson of the Challenger disaster was repeated. In 2003, the space shuttle Columbia broke apart while re-entering the earth’s atmosphere, killing another crew of seven. During the shuttle’s liftoff, a piece of foam insulation(泡沫隔热材料) had broken off, hitting the shuttle's wing at five hundred miles per hour. Lower-level engineers at NASA begged for photographs of the Columbia in orbit, which might have shown the extent of the damage, but their closed-minded superiors ignored their requests. It was the damage caused by the 1.7 pound chunk of insulation that doomed the Columbia.

There is no virtue in ignoring contradictory facts and “sticking to your guns” when the course taken shows all the signs of being the wrong one. Closed minds are especially noticeable in political campaigns and debates. Many people line up to support one candidate or another and won’t listen to any facts presented by the opposing candidate.

All those with an open mind say is this: “I don’t know everything, so I’d better keep my mind, eyes, and ears open to any new facts that may come along.” The world would be a much better and safer place if everyone had this attitude.

1. Which of the following brought about the disastrous launch of the Challenger?

A．Its crew	B．The engineers
C．The fuel tanks’ seals	D．The size of its rocket

2. When the engineers appealed to stop the launch of the Challenger, the government officials ___________.

A．postponed the flight at once.

B．made judgments about the complex technical problems.

C．announced the news on national television.

D．ordered to launch the Challenger as scheduled.

3. What could be inferred from Paragraph 3?

A．The Columbia disaster was impossible to foresee.

B．Engineers were to blame for the Columbia’s explosion.

C．The Columbia disaster could have been avoided.

D．The Columbia was deliberately damaged.

4. What does the underlined phrase “sticking to your guns” in Paragraph 4 mean?

A．Holding firm to your own opinion.

B．Remaining and firing your gun at enemies.

C．Strengthening your status.

D．Keeping an open mind.

5. What is the main purpose of the passage?

A．To inform readers about what an open mind is.

B．To entertain readers with two stories of tragedies in space.

C．To persuade readers to keep an open mind.

D．To criticize what NASA officials had done in aerospace history.

6. How does the author support the argument of the passage?

A．By stating arguments.	B．By giving examples.
C．By explaining statistical data.	D．By providing research result.

5 . Mr. Peter Johnson, aged twenty-three, battled for half an hour to escape from his trapped car yesterday when it landed upside down in three feet of water. Mr. Johnson took the only escape route—through the boot(行李箱).

Mr. Johnson’s car had finished up in a ditch(沟渠) at Romney Marsin, Kent after skidding on ice and hitting a bank. “Fortunately, the water began to come in only slowly,” Mr. Johnson said. “I couldn’t force the doors because they were jammed against the walls of the ditch and dared not open the windows because I knew water would come flooding in.”

Mr. Johnson, a sweet salesman of Sitting Home, Kent, first tried to attract the attention of other motorists by sounding the horn and hammering on the roof and boot. Then he began his struggle to escape.

Later he said, “It was really a half penny that saved my life. It was the only coin I had in my pocket and I used it to unscrew the back seat to get into the boot. I hammered desperately with a hammer trying to make someone hear, but no help came.”

It took ten minutes to unscrew the seat, and a further five minutes to clear the sweet samples from the boot. Then Mr. Johnson found a wrench and began to work on the boot lock. Fifteen minutes passed by. “It was the only chance I had. Finally it gave, but as soon as I moved the boot lid, the water and mud poured in. I forced the lid down into the mud and scrambled clear as the car filled up.”

His hands and arms cut and bruised(擦伤), Mr. Johnson got to Beckett Farm nearby, where he was looked after by the farmer’s wife, Mrs. Lucy Bates. Huddled in a blanket, he said, “That thirty minutes seemed like hours.” Only the tips of the car wheels were visible, police said last night. The vehicle had sunk into two feet of mud at the bottom of the ditch.

1. What is the best title for this newspaper article?

A．The Story of Mr. Johnson, A Sweet Salesman

B．Car Boot Can Serve As The Best Escape Route

C．Driver Escapes Through Car Boot

D．The Driver Survived A Terrible Car Accident

2. Which of the following objects is the most important to Mr. Johnson?

A．The hammer.

B．The coin.

C．The screw.

D．The horn.

3. Which statement is true according to the passage?

A．Mr. Johnson’s car stood on its boot as it fell down.

B．Mr. Johnson could not escape from the door because it was full of sweet jam.

C．Mr. Johnson’s car accident was partly due to the slippery road.

D．Mr. Johnson struggled in the pouring mud as he unscrewed the back seat.

4. “Finally it gave” (Paragraph 5) means that _______.

A．Luckily the door was torn away in the end	B．At last the wrench went broken
C．The lock came open after all his efforts	D．The chance was lost at the last minute

5. It may be inferred from the passage that _______.

A．the ditch was along a quiet country road	B．the accident happened on a clear warm day
C．the police helped Mr. Johnson get out of the ditch	D．Mr. Johnson had a tender wife and was well attended