1 . What happens when you want to go from one place to another, but there's water in the way？That's the problem people faced for hundreds of years in the area that is now New York City. In the city, there is a natural canal called the Narrows, separating Brooklyn on one side from Staten Island on the other.

But the Narrows isn't really so narrow. The water is almost a mile wide, and it's more than 100 feet deep.     1     When they wanted to talk to each other, they climbed into their boats and sailed across.

By the late 1800s, circumstances had changed dramatically. Population growth meant there were now many people needing to travel between Staten Island and Brooklyn for work.     2    

Between 1888 and 1920 there were two major efforts to build a train tunnel to connect the areas.     3     Proposals to build a connecting bridge made during the 1910s also ended in failure due to opposition from the US Navy.

Finally, after World War II, there were so many people living in New York City that leaders decided Brooklyn and Staten Island needed a direct connection. Since tunnels were too expensive, they decided to build a bridge. The design selected had two separate roadways stacked on top of each other.     4     Construction, which took five years, was completed in 1964 and cost $320 million. Today about 190,000 cars and trucks cross the bridge every day.

    5     But in the case of the Narrows, figuring out a good solution took hundreds of years.

A．Sometimes getting from one place to another is easy.

B．Both were quickly abandoned however due to the high costs involved.

C．Neither road was large enough to satisfy the existing transport demands.

D．It was anticipated that the new train system would help the areas grow even faster.

E．Taking a boat every time was very slow, expensive and, in bad weather, unreliable.

F．Both would hang in the air from thick steel cables, supported by two giant steel towers.

G．For a long time that wasn't a problem, because only a few people lived in Brooklyn and Staten Island.

2 . When the cathedral of Notre Dame de Paris (巴黎圣母院) was on fire, it seemed as if the nation had lost a piece of its soul. A similar tragedy took place in 19th century Russia. And the rebuilding effort of the Russians might offer some inspiration for the French.

Standing in the heart of the Russian capital, with 60,000 square meters of floor space and 1,500 rooms, the Winter Palace was among the world’s grandest building. On Dec. 17, 1837, a fire broke out at the Winter Palace. By the morning of Dec.19, only the structure’s framework remained.

For the czar (沙皇) , the fire presented a political challenge. Fearing that Russia's enemies would cast the fire as a blow to the czarist orders, the czar’s supporters quickly worked together to shape the description of the fire in Russia and abroad. They wanted the country to appear united. And they certainly didn't want despair to become the story.

The first full account of the fire was written in French by the poet Petr Viazemskii. A Russian translation appeared two months later. That text and others painted a highly idealized picture of the response to the tragedy. The accounts noted that the czar forcefully directed the fire’s containment. Soldiers were selfless to save the palace. The Russian people felt the loss just as deeply as the czar.

To erase the shame of the fire, the czar set a nearly impossible goal: rebuild the palace within 15 months, and he ordered that rebuilt palace look exactly as it had before.Thousands of workers labored on the construction site. They made rapid progress. On Match 25, 1839, the czar celebrated the rebirth of the Winter Palace.

Outwardly identical to the old version, the new palace featured more iron and brick in its structures---and less wood. It was far less fire-prone than the original.

Notre Dame hasn’t experienced the same level of destruction as the Winter Palace, if the Russian phoenix of 1839 is any indication, there is hope that a renewed Notre Dame will once again grace the banks of the Seine.

1. What do we know about the fire in the Winter Palace?

A．It burnt down 60,000 rooms

B．It lasted more than 24 hours

C．It was set by Russia’s enemies

D．It completely destroyed the palace

2. Why did the czar decide to rebuild the palace in a short time?

A．To secure his power

B．To challenge his enemies

C．To unite French people

D．To celebrate his birthday

3. What did Viazemskii and others stress in their accounts?

A．The scene of the fire

B．The selflessness of the czar

C．The Russians’ joint effort to fight the fire

D．The ideal result achieved by the Russians.

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

A．To describe a fire at the Winter Palace

B．To praise the renewal of the Winter Palace

C．We express sympathy for the Notre Dame

D．To inspire confidence in rebuilding the Notre Dame.

3 . Directions: After reading the passage below, fill in the blanks to make the passage coherent and grammatically correct. For the blanks with a given word, fill in each blank with the proper form of the given word; for the other blanks, use one word that best fits each blank.

The biggest house of cards, the longest tongue, and of course, the tallest man: these are among the thousands of records logged in the famous Guinness Book of Records. Created in 1955 after a debate     1     (concern) Europe's fastest game bird,     2     began as a marketing tool sold to pub landlords     3     (promote) Guinness, an Irish drink, became the bestselling copyright title of all time (a category that excludes books such as the Bible and the Koran). In time, the book would sell 120 million copies in over 100 countries— quite a leap from its humble beginnings.

In its early years, the book set its sights on     4     (satisfy) man's inborn curiosity about the natural world around him. Its two principal fact finders, twins Norris and Ross McWhirter, moved wildly around the globe to collect facts. It was their task to find and document aspects of life that can be sensed or observed, things that can be quantified or measured. But not just any things. They were only interested in superlatives: the biggest and the best. It was during this period     5     some of the remarkable Guinness Records were documented, answering such questions as "What is the brightest star?" and "What is the biggest spider?"

Once aware of the public's thirst for such knowledge, the book's authors began to branch out to cover increasingly doubtful, little-known facts. They started documenting human achievements as well. A forerunner for reality television, the Guinness Book gave people     6     chance to become famous for accomplishing odd, often pointless tasks. Records were set in 1955 for consuming 24 raw eggs in 14 minutes and in 1981 for the fastest solving of a Rubik's Cube (which took a mere 38 seconds). In 1979 a man yodeled(用真假嗓音交替唱) non-stop for ten and a quarter hours.

In its latest appearance, the book has found a new home on the internet. No longer     7     (restrict) to the limits of physical paper, the Guinness World Records website contains seemingly innumerable facts concerning such topics as the most powerful combustion(燃烧) engine, or the world's longest train. What is striking, however, is that such facts are found sharing a page with the record of the heaviest train to be pulled     8     a beard.

Originating as a simple bar book, the Guinness Book of Records     9     (evolve) over decades to provide insight into the full range of modern life. And although one may be     10     (likely) now to learn about the widest human mouth than the highest number of casualties in a single battle of the Civil War, the Guinness World Records website offers a telling glimpse into the future of fact-finding and record-recording.

4 . Last year marked the 100th anniversary of the end of World War I. There were events around the world in memory of those who died in the conflict. We have picked out three of them in European countries. Let's take a look.

Belgium

In a park, the famous Belgian artist Koen Vanmechelen had an exhibition called Coming World, Remember Me. The work consisted of 600,000 individual(个别的) clay sculptures, one for each person killed during the World War. In the center of the exhibition was a big egg made of clay, symbolizing a new world.

UK

In a small town called Aldridge, almost 100 houses in one street were covered with 24,000 poppies and statues of soldiers. They stood for the men from the area who had been killed in the war. The flowers were chosen because of a poem written by the Canadian doctor John McCrea in 1915. They made people think of fields of blood.

France

The British artist Guy Denning arrived in La Feuille, a small town in the northwest of France, to stick life-size drawings of soldiers who never came back home. Armed with glue and a brush, Denning stuck his drawings carefully on walls. Before long 112 men, mainly young adults, were brought back to mind, if not to life.

1. What do we know about Coming World, Remember Me?

A．It's the name of an exhibition.	B．It's a film about World War I.
C．It's a work standing for peace.	D．It's a sculpture made of clay.

2. Why were poppies chosen to symbolize the dead soldiers?

A．The British people preferred them.	B．They showed the cruelty of war.
C．A Canadian doctor suggested them.	D．The fields were filled with them.

3. How was the end of World War I marked in France?

A．A memorial to the dead soldiers was built.

B．112 wounded soldiers in the war were helped.

C．Drawings of some dead soldiers were put up.

D．Young adults were encouraged to join the army.

5 . How does the woman know about the Second World War?

A．She experienced it.

B．She saw a film about it.

C．She played a game about it.

6 . 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。

The Amber Room, an    1       (amaze) treasure, which was decorated with gold and jewels, was made of several tons of    2     (select) amber. It first    3     (belong) to the King of Prussia and was given to Peter the Great as a gift. The Czar sent Frederick William a troop of his best soldiers    4     return. Later it was moved to a palace outside St Petersburg    5     Catherine Π spent her summers.

During the Second World War, when Germany and Russia were at war, The Nazis stole the room    6     (secret). In less than two days 100,000peices were put into twenty-seven    7    (wood) boxes and put on a train for Künisberg. After that, what happened to the Amber Room    8     (remain)   a mystery and the room is now missing. Recently, the Russians and Germans have built a new Amber Room,    9     looks like the old one,    10     (celebrate) the 300^th birthday of the city of St Petersburg.

7 . 语法填空

Cholera was a deadly disease of its day. Neither its cause nor its cure     1     (understand). So thousands of     2     (terrify) people died when there was an outbreak. John Snow wanted to solve     3     problem. He knew that cholera would not be controlled     4     its cause was found.

He became interested in two theories     5     possibly explained how cholera killed people. The first suggested that cholera     6     (multiply) in the air. The second suggested that people absorbed this disease     7     their bodies with their meals.

John Snow suspected that the second theory was correct but he needed evidence. So when another outbreak hit London in 1854, he was ready    8     (begin) his enquiry. With all the evidence he gathered, John Snow was able to announce with     9     (certain) that polluted water carried the virus.     10     (final) “King Cholera” was defeated.

8 . The Battle of Chancellorsville, one of the most famous battles of the Civil War, took place in Virginia in the spring of 1863. For months, the two armies had been staying on opposite banks of a narrow river. The Confederate(南方联盟) troops were led by perhaps     1     (honored) military tactician(战略家) in American history, General Robert E. Lee. The Union (北方联盟)soldiers were led by “Fighting” Joe Hooker.

In appearance, personality, and lifestyle, these men were nearly perfect opposites. Lee, an older man in poor health with a gray beard, had a solemn, measured character. Hooker was a blond, broad-shouldered young man     2     pride over his appearance was but one aspect of his self-centeredness. Whereas Lee was loyal and principled, Hooker was known for his rollicking enjoyment of both women and whiskey.

Despite the fact that the Confederacy     3     (win) the last four major battles and the Union soldiers were starving,     4     (exhaust), and demoralized, Hooker proclaimed, “My plans are perfect. And when I start to carry them out,     5     God have mercy on Bobby Lee, for I shall have none.” Why was Hooker so confident?

Hooker had used spies, analysts, and even hot air balloons to compile a vast amount of intelligence about Lee’s army. He had already been aware, for example,     6     Lee had only 61,000 men to Hooker’s own 134,000. Supported by his superior numbers, Hooker secretly moved 70,000 of his men fifteen miles up and across the river, and then ordered them to sneak back down to position themselves     7     Lee’s army. In effect, Hooker had cut off the Confederate soldiers in front and behind. They were trapped. Satisfied with his advantage, Hooker became convinced that Lee’s only option was to retreat to Richmond, thus     8     (assure) a Union victory.

Yet Lee, despite his disadvantages of both numbers and position, did not retreat. Instead, he moved his troops into position to attack. Union soldiers who tried to warn Hooker that Lee was on the offensive     9     (dismiss) as cowards. Having become convinced that Lee had no choice but     10     (retreat), Hooker began to ignore reality. When Lee’s army attacked the Union soldiers at 5:00 p.m., they were eating supper, completely unprepared for battle. They abandoned their rifles and fled as Lee’s troops came shrieking out of the brush, bayonets drawn. Against all odds, Lee won the Battle of Chancellorsville, and Hooker’s forces withdrew in defeat.

9 . Early in the Iliad, Homer's epic poem（史诗）about the legendary, Trojan War, there occurs a famous anecdote known as the catalogue of ships, which names all the Greek leaders and contingents(小分队) who came to fight at Troy. Before unfolding this impressive muster roll (花名册)，Homer makes a special, public appeal to the Muses to ensure he gets the facts right:

Tell me now, Muses, who have your homes on Olympus-- for you are goddesses, and ever-present, and know all things, and we hear only rumour: nor do we know anything

These lines reflect a central claim of epic poetry—that through the inspiration of the Muses, daughters of Memory, it can preserve the knowledge of people and the events of the past —a formidable power in the non-literate, oral cultures in which the Iliad evolved. The Iliad was composed around 750-700 BC, but its origins lie at least some five centuries earlier, deep in the Mycenaean Bronze Age---the world the Iliad poetically evokes.

The Iliad is keenly aware of its role as the keeper of memory, and credibility is central to its storytelling. The epic is a work of fiction, and relates the events of a few weeks in the tenth and final year of the Trojan War fought between Greeks and Trojans over beautiful Helen, the Greek queen who deserted her husband to elope with a Trojan prince. Its cast of characters includes not only warriors and their captives and families, but the immortal Olympian gods, who perform many supernatural acts in the course of their eager participation in the action around Troy.

The Iliad has the reputation for being an exclusively(专门地) male epic, weak on female characters, but to choose only one example—Homer's delicate characterization of Helen as a woman driven by reluctant remorseful(悔恨的) passion is as hauntingly（萦绕心头地）credible as any Anna Karenina.

Longinus, a scholar in the 1^st Century AD wrote that in recording as he does the wounding of the gods, their quarrels, vengeance, tears, imprisonment and all their passions Homer has done his best to make the men in the Iliad gods and gods men. The scene between Achilles and Priam displays this inversion and crystallises what the Iliad poets had learned in the course of the epic’s Journey. That the gods we worship might not answer, and on occasion humanity must rise to fill their place. That glory is closely associated with painful loss. That the victor shares the humanity of the most vulnerable of the vanquished（战败者）; that there is no such thing as pure victory in war.

1. The Iliad about the legendary Trojan War, might date back to _______.

A．the third century BC	B．the seventh century BC
C．the eighth century BC	D．the thirteenth century BC

2. According to the passage,______________________________.

A．being reliable is essential to the storytelling of the Iliad

B．Trojan War between Greeks and Trojans lasted over a decade

C．Trojan War ended owning to the Olympian gods’ absence

D．beautiful Helen is a woman worth respecting in the Iliad

3. Why does the Iliad have the reputation for being an exclusively male epic?

A．Because it focuses only on men and war.

B．Because too few females were well depicted.

C．Because its cast of characters includes only males.

D．Because Helen was described as a passionate woman.

4. Which of the following statements doesn’t agree with the author’s idea?

A．Pure victory in war does not exist at all.

B．Glory is naturally accompanied with saddening loss.

C．The victor gains everything without any emotional loss.

D．Both the victor and the vanquished share the same humanity.

10 . 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。

Woodblock printing first appeared in the early Tang period. During the Song dynasty, the technique of block printing was very advanced. Books were     1    (beautiful) printed. Even today the books     2    (print) at the time are valuable and treasured by libraries and book collectors.

However, block printing     3    (be) not very convenient. Every two pages of a book had to be carved on a woodblock, and a big book would require many blocks. Besides, there had to be large places for storing the books.     4     (overcome) these shortcomings, Bi Sheng invented the movable type during the years between 1041 and 1048. One word was carved on one piece of clay,     5     was hardened with fire. Then clay characters were set on     6     iron plate according to the text of a book. Then ink was applied to them and     7    (sheet) of paper spread over them, and the printing was done. Bi Sheng’s invention made printing faster and     8    (easy) than before. Later, movable type of metal and wood was made and widely used.

The technique of printing was gradually known to other Asian countries and Europe. The great influence printing had     9    the advance of civilization is too clear to need any     10    (explain).