1 . One of the most famous buildings in the United States is Carnegie Hall, the home of classical and popular music concerts in New York. Carnegie Hall is known not just for its beauty and history, but also for its amazing sound. It has been said that the hall itself is an instrument. It takes the music and makes it larger than life.

Carnegie Hall is named after Andrew Carnegie, who paid for its construction. Construction on Carnegie Hall began in 1890 and the official opening night was on May 5, 1891.

The hall was owned by the Carnegie family until 1924 when it was sold to Robert E. Simon. The building became very old and in 1960, the new owner made plans to destroy it and build an office block. Isaac Stem led a group of people who fought to save Carnegie Hall and finally, the city of New York bought it for $5 million. It was then fixed up between 1983 and 1995.

Advertisements and stories in newspapers about how Carnegie Hall needed help to recover its history led people to send in old concert programmes and information from all over the world. Over 12,000 concert programmes were received and with these it was possible to make a proper record of Carnegie Hall’s concert history.

Carnegie Hall is actually made up of several different halls, but the Main Hall, now called the Isaac Stern Hall, is the most famous. The hall itself can hold an audience of 2,804 in five levels of seating.

Because the best and most famous musicians of all time have played at Carnegie Hall, it is the dream of most musicians who want to be great to play there. This has led to a very old joke which is now part of Carnegie Hall’s history. Question: “How do I get to Carnegie Hall?” Answer: “Practise, practise, practise.”

1. It can be inferred that people wanted to save Carnegie Hall mainly because _____.

A．it made a lot of money	B．it was worth visiting
C．many important concerts were held in it	D．it made some musicians become famous

2. How did Carnegie Hall recover its concert history?

A．Through newspaper reports.	B．Through old concert programmes.
C．Through old photographs.	D．Through old joke.

3. How long did it take Carnegie Hall to be fixed up?

A．9 years.

B．10 years.

C．11 years.

D．12 years.

4. Which of the following would be the best title for the text?

A．The History of Carnegie Hall.	B．The Best Musician Having Played in Carnegie Hall.
C．A Joke about Carnegie Hall.	D．The Dream of Most Musicians.

2 . A valuable sketch (素描) from World WarⅠhas turned up in a garage sale in Perth. It’s a sketch of soldiers playing soccer with a tin can during an unofficial truce (停战) between German and Allied soldiers on the Western Front in 1914. The artwork was drawn by an unnamed German soldier during the war on the Western Front.

The artwork was given to Private Jack Shelley, a British soldier, when he was defending the town of Frelinghien, France. The sketch is an important historical document, as it provides evidence that the tales of enemy soldiers socializing together are true. But for Private Shelley’s descendants(后代) it has even greater value, since it was his prized possession. Jessie Shelley, Jack’s great-granddaughter, has fond memories of the old man sharing stories about his experiences in the war when he came to live permanently in Australia in 1930. the family lost track of the artwork after Jack’s possessions were moved during the sale of his house when he died in 1984.

‘Great-grandpa had a tobacco tin with a dozen or so buttons from the uniforms of men from both sides. He told us all the details of every one of those buttons. To Great-grandpa they represented real people he had known, some of whom hadn’t come home from the war. He had at least two buttons from German uniforms that he told us were exchanged between the men involved in the Christmas Day Truce.’

On Christmas Day of 1914, the soldiers came out of their trenches(战壕) into no-man’s-land and shared food, drinks and cigarettes. Some even exchanged small gifts. The men even played football games together. Later, this spirit of cooperation continued in unofficial agreements between the sides to stop shooting at mealtimes and even at times when soldiers were working in the open.

This fascinating image of peace and humanity during the war has continued through the years. The sketch is a symbol of the potential for humanity, hope and kindness to exist in even the most violent circumstances.

1. In what situation was the sketch done?

A．It was done in a garage

B．It was done on the front line.

C．It was done during a formal soccer match.

D．It was done by a soldier fighting in Germany.

2. Why is this sketch an important historical document?

A．It explains the specific reason for the war.

B．It shows the war on the Western Front came to an end.

C．It proves enemy soldiers could live in peace sometimes.

D．It is evidence that soldiers could adapt quickly to society.

3. What did Private Shelly say about the buttons in the tobacco tin?

A．They were from German uniforms.

B．Some of them represented his honor.

C．Some of their owners didn’t survive the war.

D．They were collected during Christmas Day in 1914.

4. What impact did the Christmas Day Truce have?

A．It brought about more truces.

B．It started wide information exchanges.

C．It led to no agreement between the sides.

D．It resulted in more celebrations between the sides.

3 . The printing press has a long history. It was invented in Germany by Joannes Gutenberg around 1440, and brought to England by William Caxton in the 1470s.Yet the basic technology of printing remained the same up to the end of the 18th century, requiring two men to operate a wooden screw press by hand, producing about 200 impressions an hour. The 19th century was the period in which this process was mechanised, automated, and made many times faster.

A key moment in the development of mass newspapers was the development of the steam-powered printing press, adopted by the times in 1814. The new presses were able to print per hour around five times the number produced by the machines. The editor, John Walter, had the machines fixed secretly at night, so that when his printers reported for duty the next morning the majority of them found that they were out of work. The Times went from a circulation of 5,000 a day in 1815 to around 50,000 in the middle of the century. This was not caused by the steam press, but neither could it have happened without it.

Later developments improved this effect: the Applegath machine achieved 5,000 impressions per hour, and the Hoe press, an import from the United States, reached to 20,000 impressions per hour. Increase in the speed of papermaking in this period brought down the cost of printed materials both for the producer and the customer. In 1896, the Daily Mail was sold at the cost of only half a penny, and by 1900 it was selling nearly 1,000,000 copies a day.

If print production was completely changed in those years, then so was its distribution. The appearance of the steam railway meant that for the first time newspapers could be distributed across the country on a daily basis.

1. What can we learn about the basic technology of printing?

A．It was invented first in the middle of the 15th century.

B．It was brought into England by Joannes Gutenberg.

C．It took over 400 years to change after invention.

D．It took two hours to produce about 200 impressions.

2. How many impressions did the new press produce an hour in 1814?

A．About 20,000.	B．About 1,000.
C．About 2,000.	D．About 5,000.

3. Increase in the speed of papermaking led to ____.

A．the invention of steam printing press	B．the development of the steam railway
C．the appearance of the Daily Mail	D．the decline of printing expenses

4. The passage is developed mainly by ____.

A．providing examples	B．making comparisons
C．following the order of time	D．following the order of space

4 . It is sometimes thought that the longing for material goods, the need to buy things, is a relatively modern invention.     1     Trade or shopping is certainly an ancient desire, and existed before our ancestors invented writing, laws, cities or farming, even before they used metal to make tools.

Humans are born to trade.     2     Evidence from hunter-gatherers suggests that the exchange of food and other necessary things comes naturally, as well as the ability to keep a record of the credits involved. And once trade begins, the benefits are hard to resist.

Ancient local coastal people in northern Australia traded fish hooks, along a chain of trading partners, with people living 400 miles inland, who cut and polished local stone to make axes (斧子).     3     Finally, both groups of “producers”, by concentrating on things they could produce and exchanging them for other things they needed, benefited as a result.

Trade in the necessities of life, such as food and simple tools, is not really surprising, considering the link between these basic items and survival. What is surprising, though, is that our taste for unnecessary expensive objects also goes back a long way.

In South Africa, 100,000-year-old decorative dyes (染料) have been found in an area where none were produced.     4     Small round pieces of glass 76,000 years old were also found at the same place. The earliest jewellery known to us were not just random findings — they were grouped together in size and had holes like those used for threading onto a necklace.

Archaeologists argue that trade prepared the way for the complex societies in which we live today.     5     However, their modern equivalents — fast cars and expensive clothes — hold the same attraction for us as “trade goods” did for people 100,000 years ago.

A．And we don’t need shops or money to do it.

B．These are powerful evidence for cash purchase.

C．In fact, its roots go back to the beginning of humanity.

D．However, first trade began from the exchange of objects.

E．Modern-day shoppers may not be impressed by ancient glass pieces.

F．It is thought that these goods were bought at least 30   kilometres   away.

G．Every individual along the chain made a profit, even if he produced neither himself.

5 . When you think of a typical American, who do you picture? A pretty blond white American like Taylor Swift? Or a handsome black American like basketball star Kobe Bryant? In fact, there was a time when the average American looked like neither of these people.

Back in the year 1500, the average American was a brown-skinned hunter-gatherer who probably rode a horse and wore clothing made from animal skins. Today, these people－who usually identify themselves based on their individual tribes such as Iriquois, Apache and Navajo－are broadly referred to as “Native Americans”, “American Indians” or simply “Indians”.

There’s a chance that you’ve never even heard of American Indians. That‟s because there aren’t very many left. When the European settlement of North America began, there were fierce conflicts between the settlers from overseas and these native peoples. After the British government and military were expelled (驱逐) in the Revolutionary War, conflicts with natives continued as the states were created that would later make up the US. In these conflicts, millions of natives were killed.

In 1830, president Andrew Jackson signed the Indian Removal Act. This act required all Indians to migrate to the west of the Mississippi River to allow for the expansion of the US. American Indians were treated as a military “enemy” until 1924, when the few Indians still alive at that point were granted （准予）US citizenship. That was the first time that the US government formally recognized the rights of Indians.

While the story of the American Indians has been a sad one, these peoples’ legacies (遗产) are still felt every day in the US. Many US geographical names come from Indian languages, such as Ohio, Topeka, Kansas, and the Potomac River. At the same time, there are numerous successful academics and other important US leaders who are descended（是……的后裔）from Indians. And nowadays, more and more history classes in US public schools are educating students about how Indians suffered during the settlement of the US.

Although what happened cannot be undone, we can learn at least one thing from the sad history of the Indians: If we want a better future, we must look carefully and honestly at the past.

1. What is the article mainly about?

A．The history of the settement of the US.

B．What a typical American is like.

C．The sad story of American Indians.

D．American Indians‟ economic impact on the US.

2. It can be inferred from the article that in the middle of the 19th century, American Indians______.

A．were driven from the US by the British government

B．were regarded as a military “enemy” of the US

C．were finally granted US citizenship

D．were required to live along the Mississippi River.

3. What can learn about American Indians from the article?

A．There are few influential American Indians in US history.

B．Some of their languages are still used today.

C．The majority of them lived in the states of Ohio and Kansas.

D．American youths are becoming more informed of the suffering of the Indians.

4. What is the author’s attitude toward the history of American Indians?

A．It’s miserable to be reminded of it.

B．It’s important to learn from it.

C．He doesn’t have much interest in it.

D．Every school should teach classes about it.

6 . The first Ferris wheel was built for the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago. The people who planned the fair were looking for an attraction that would bring people to Chicago. The Eiffel Tower had been a great success for the fair in Pairs in 1889, and they wanted something like that.

George Ferris handed in drawings of a giant wheel that people could ride on. At first everyone laughed at his strange idea. But Mr. Ferris didn’t give up, and finally the idea was accepted. The ride opened in June of 1893.

That first wheel had thirty six enclosed cars, each holding sixty passengers. When filled it carried 2,160 people. During that summer in Chicago one and a half million people rode the Ferris wheel, which was named after Ferris. Six platforms were used to pick up and drop off passengers. Each ride was two full turns of the wheel. On the first turn, it made six stops for loading. Then the second turn was a nonstop nine-minute ride. Each car had five large glass windows in front and in back, giving everyone a great view of Chicago and Lake Michigan.

After the fair the ride was moved to a nearby amusement park built especially to show off the wheel. In 1904 it was moved again—this time to St. Louis for the Louisiana Purchase Exposition. After the fair in St. Louis closed, the wheel stood unused. In 1906 it was finally sold to a company for scrap(废弃材料）metal. It took 200 pounds of dynamite to bring it down.

Fortunately a Chicago bridge builder, W. E. Sullivan, figured out how to make a smaller Ferris wheel that could easily be taken apart and put together. In 1906 he started the company that still makes many of the Ferris wheels used today.

But whenever you ride one remember that it all began with George Ferris’ very strange idea.

1. What is the main idea of the passage?

A．Large designs are more successful than small ones.

B．Riding a Ferris wheel is the best way to travel around the world.

C．World fairs attracted millions of visitors to Chicago from all around the world.

D．Ferris’ design was so successful that Ferris wheels are still around today.

2. The first Ferris wheel was mainly built to          .

A．make George Ferris well-known worldwide.

B．attract visitors to an event in Chicago.

C．match the Eiffel Tower in Paris

D．bring fun to people in Chicago

3. What does the author think of George Ferris?

A．He showed great creativity in the Ferris wheel design.

B．His Ferris wheel design was impractical.

C．He was a leader in the amusement industry.

D．He did a lot better than W.

E．Sullivan.

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

A．To persuade the reader to ride a Ferris wheel.

B．To describe the success of the 1893 World’s Fair.

C．To inform the reader about the first Ferris wheel ever built.

D．To entertain the reader with a story about World Fairs in the US.

7 . In most Hollywood movies, the Native American Navajos still fight on horses in the American Southwest. But during World War II, a group of Navajos made their language into weapon to protect the United States. They were the Navajo Code Talkers, and theirs is one of the few unbroken codes (电码）in military history.

Navajo was the perfect choice for a secret language. It is very complex. One vowel (元音）can have up to ten different pronunciations, changing the meaning of any word. In the 1940s, Navajo was unwritten language. No one outside of the reservation could speak it or understand it.

The Navajo Code team had to invent new words to describe military equipment. For example, they named ships after fish: lotso-whale (battleship), calo-shark (destroyer), beshloiron-fish (submarine). When a Code Talker received a message via radio, he heard a series of unrelated Navajo words. He would then translate the words into English and use the first letter of each English word to spell the message. The Navajo words tsah (needle), wol-la-chee (ant), ah-kh-di-glini (victor), and tsah-ah-dzoh (yucca) spelled NAVY.

The Code Talker kept the code a secret. They memorized everything. There were no code books. As a result, no ordinary Navajo soldiers, if captured by the enemy, could understand the code. More than 3,600 Navajos served in World War II, but only 420 were Code Talkers with the US Marines. They coded and decoded battlefield messages better and faster than any machine. They could encode, transmit, and decode a three-line English message in 20 seconds. Machines of the time required 30 minutes to perform the same job.

Even after the war the code remained top secret. When they were asked about their role, Code Talkers just said: “I was a radioman.” War movies and histories came out without mentioning them. The code was never used again and was finally declassified in 1968. Only then did the secret came out.

1. What do we know about the Navajo language?

A．It had complex spoken and written forms.

B．It was created during the Second World War.

C．It was understood only by the Navajos.

D．It consisted of ten vowel letters in total.

2. What did the Navajo Code team do after receiving a message?

A．They put the unrelated Navajo words in order.

B．They recorded the message in Navajo letters.

C．They submitted it to the officer immediately.

D．They turned It into English in a secret way.

3. What does the underlined word “declassified” most probably mean?

A．Replaced.	B．Approved.
C．Made known.	D．Forbidden.

4. What can be inferred from the passage?

A．The Navajo Code Talkers can be found to fight on horses in US movies.

B．The Navajo language contributed a lot to the US army in World War II.

C．War messages were translated into English through Navajo code books.

D．Around 12% Navajo soldiers were taken prisoner during World War II.

8 . On 20th July 1969, millions of people saw Neil Armstrong take his first steps in space on television. Armstrong got out of the spacecraft Apollo 11, touched the ground of the moon and said, “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.”

A conspiracy(阴谋)theory has existed since the night of his lunar handing. Armstrong’s achievements were considered amazing, but people wondered if it really happened. Many people believe that the scene on the moon wasn’t real. Rumours spread throughout coffee shops, street comers, and newspapers, but it soon died down.

But theories resurfaced in 2001 Suspicion began when an American television network aired a program called Conspiracy Theory: Did We Land on the Moon? The show argued that NASA did not have the money for such a voyage, and that the whole scene was probably filmed in a movie studio. Many critics say that there were no stars in the background during the lunar landing, so it must have been a fake. They also point out that the American flag that was posted was waving. How could that be if there is no wind on the moon?

NASA(National Aeronautics and Space Administration)has denied these rumours many times. They explained that now photographers can capture the brightness of the astronauts with the dimness of the stars behind them. Also, they said that the flag was waving because the astronauts were pulling it back and forth trying to get it deeper into the rock. NASA also points out that the television program fails to mention that Armstrong and his team brought back 800 pounds of rock from the moon.

Nell Armstrong is seen as a national icon in the US and his lunar landing is one of the most historic events in the country’s history. But either way, this conspiracy theory still exists today.

1. What didn’t the TV program Did We Land on the Moon? mention?

A．money	B．stars
C．the flag	D．rocks

2. How did NASA react to the rumor?

A．It showed great anger	B．It had to accept the rumor
C．It turned a deaf ear to the rumor	D．It gave explanations against the rumor

3. According to NASA, the American flag was waving because of______.

A．the wind	B．the astronauts’ pulling
C．the gravity	D．the camera’s moving

9 . In 1885, the Republic of France, important friend during the American Revolution, donated the largest statue in the world, Liberty Enlightening the World, to the United States of America. The statue would celebrate its century of independence. To ship it, the statue was broken down into 350 pieces. And now, spread across Bedloe’s Island in New York Harbour, it sat in 214 wooden packing boxes. The problem was that New York had no money to re-assemble it. Six other cities, less affected by the recent economic decline, had the money and bid to build it.

But a Hungarian immigrant, Joseph Pulitzer, the owner of America’s biggest newspaper called the World, wouldn’t let “Liberty” go. When he heard that the Statue of Liberty was about to die from lack of funds, he saw his chance.

Pulitzer set the fund-raising goal of the World at $ 100,000. In its pages he laughed at the rich, thus increasing the paper’s appeal among working-class people, and firmly planted the idea that the statue was a monument not just for New York City but, indeed, for all of America.

Perhaps Pulitzer’s cleverest trick was the promise 10 publish the name of every single contributor in the pages of the World, no matter how small the contribution. The editorial that opened the fund-raising campaign set its tone. He wrote: “The World is the people’s paper and it now appeals to the people to come forward and raise the money for the statue’s base.” The statue, he said was paid for by “the masses of the French people. Let us respond in like manner.” The circulation of the World increased by almost 50,000 copies.

African American newspapers joined in the effort, encouraging their readers to contribute to a monument that would, in part, celebrate the end of slavery. So the money poured in, as single-dollar donations from grandmothers and pennies from the piggybanks of schoolchildren.

On August 11, 1885, the front page of the World announced, “ONE HUNDRED THOUSAND DOLLARS!” The goal had been reached, even slightly beyond, thanks to more than 120,000 contributions.

1. What does the underlined word “re-assemble” (Para. 1) probably mean?

A．Put together.	B．Take apart.
C．Transport.	D．Repair.

2. Which of the following was the greatest move in Joseph Pulitzer’s success?

A．Attacking the rich people.

B．Celebrating the end of slavery.

C．Printing every contributor’s name in the World.

D．Persuading children to donate their pocket money.

3. What did Joseph Pulitzer try to convey to his readers about the Statue of Liberty?

A．It was a symbol of independence.

B．It was a monument for the whole USA.

C．It was a wonder in the building history.

D．It was a favor from the rich French people.

4. What was the main purpose of Joseph Pulitzer’s efforts?

A．To protect the Statue of Liberty.

B．To win working-class readers over.

C．To expand the circulation of his paper.

D．To raise money for the Statue of Liberty.

10 . Foreign attacks on U. S. soil
1812-During the War of 1812, British forces (军队) burned the new capital at Washington, D.C. They also attacked Baltimore and New Orleans and captured (占领) Detroit, which at the time was a remote military outpost (前哨基地).
1846-A brief invasion (入侵) by Mexican troops across the Rio Gande began the U. S. - Mexican War in 1846. But the remaining action in that conflict (冲突) occurred in California, New Mexico and in Mexico. California and New Mexico belonged to Mexico at the time.
1916 - Mexican revolutionaries led by Pancho Villa attacked the town of Columbus, N.M., on March 9, 1916．
1941-Japan attacked Pearl Harbor in Hawaii on Dec. 7, 1941, killing nearly 2,400 people and forcing America into World War II．
1993-Terrorists (恐怖主义者) blew up a truck bomb in the basement of the World Trade Center in February 1993, killing six people and injuring more than 1,000．
2001 - Terrorists hijacked(劫机) several planes on Sep.11, 2001. Two ploughed into (撞入) New York’s World Trade Center (WTC), toppling the two highest buildings in the city; a third seriously damaged the Pentagon (五角大楼). The fourth hijacked plane crashed in Pennsylvania. Several thousand people were killed in the attacks.
1. During the War of 1812, British forces did the following except that _____.

A．they captured Detroit

B．they attacked Baltimore and New Orleans

C．they attacked the town of Columbus, N.M.

D．they burned the new capital at Washington, D.C.

2. During the September 11th terrorist attacks, _____.

A．terrorists hijacked three planes

B．destroyed the Pentagon completely

C．killed six people and injured more than 1,000

D．two planes knocked into New York’s World Trade Center

3. The underlined word “toppling” in the last paragraph means _____．

A．reaching the highest point of	B．causing to fall
C．knocking into	D．building

4. How many foreign attacks mentioned in the passage did the US have?

A．5

B．6

C．7

D．8