1.I talk to strangers for a living and love the challenge of getting their stories published innewspapers.I've been married for years，but until six months ago，I could be a typical absent—minded husband.Often l was just nodding when l was supposed to.When my wife asked，“Did you even hear what I just said?”1 would defensively say，“of course I did!”In January，I began to lose my voice.Doctors told me I needed surgery，or my throat would be permanently damaged.Total silence would be required for the first few weeks of my recovery.Two hours after the surgery，my eyes filled with tears as my two-year-old son looked puzzled because l wouldn’t answer his questions.I wanted to talk but couldn’t.Luckily，I'd recorded myselfreading some of his favorite books.That would come in handy the next couple of weeks.It had never left.I'd just stopped noticing.I found myself understanding her better on topics I'd previously dismissed as “things I just don’t get as a guy”.I also realized my son wasn’t just talking nonstop but that he often had thoughtful things to say.Even while walking my dog in the woods near our home，I began hearing pleasant patterns in birdsongs.Before my surgery，I'd have spent those walks on my phone.After several weeks，I was fully recovered. Conversation in our house is better now，not because I'm talking more.I’m just listening better and becoming less and less surprised that I like what I hear.What does the wife mean by asking “Did you even hear what I just said? ”inParagraph 1 ?

2.

In the last 500 years,nothing about people-not their clothes,ideas or languages-has changed as much as what they eat,The original chocolate drink was made from theseeds of the cocoa tree by South American Indians.The Spanishintroduced it to the rest ofthe world.And although it was very expensive,it quickly became fashionable.In London.shops where chocolate drinks were served became important meeting places.Some still exist today.

The potato is also from the New World.round 1500,the Spanish brought it fromPeru to Europe,where it was soon widely grown.Ireland became so dependent on it thatthousands of Irish people starved when the crop failed during thePotato Famineof 1845－1846,and thousands more were forced to emigrate toAmerica.There are many otherfoods that have traveled from South America to the Old World.But some others went inthe opposite direction.Brazil is now the world's largest grower of coffee,and coffee is animportant crop in Columbia and other South American countries.But it is native to Ethiopia.It was first made into a drink by Arabs during the 1400s.

According to an Arabic legend,coffee was discovered by a goatherd namedKaldi.Henoticed that his goats were attracted to the red berries on a coffee bush,He tried one andexperienced thewide-awakefeeling that one-third of the world's population now startsthe day with.1.According to the passage,_____has changed the most in the last 500 years.（）

3.I did not notice that my dog was missing ____________________ a moment ago.

4.IV. Reading Comprehension ( 60 points)Directions:There are five reading passages in this part. Each passage is followed by four questions. For each question there are four suggested answers marked A, B, C and D.Choose the best answer and blacken the corresponding letter on the Answer Sheet.Passage OneDebate is a valuable way to practise communicating. It can also bring long-lasting rewards,especially for people working with Western businesses. The main activity of debate is presenting one' s opinion and suppmting it with evidence,such as statistics or facts. It is a way of persuasive communication.Charles Lebeau helped create the "Discover Debate" method. He says debate is important to understanding how people communicate in Western business. Successful debaters learn how to give their opinkm,reasans and support. "What we are trying to do is to develop a kind of thinking or approach to discussion and how to interact (交流) with someone else' s opinion, rather than brush their opinion aside. "Debate skills are also important in selling a product, he says. In that situation, the judges are the customem. "So on Monday, for example, one company may come in and present their caseto the customer and they" ll make as strong a ease as they can. On Tuesday, the next day, another company will come in and present their ease to the customer. Usually the party that can present the strongest case wins”Debate also strengthens critical thinking. In other words, it helps students learn to ask questionsand try to understand someone' s reasons and evidence.lift-. Lebeau points out that successful debaters learn to listen carefully to what other people are saying. Then, they look for the weak points in someone else' s opinion or argument. He says debate teaches a systematic way of questioning.

Successful debaters also learn to think from someone else' s point of view. Mr. Lebeau says debate can help broaden the mind. "There' s an expression in English : don' t criticize another person before you have walked in their shoes. I think the wonderful thing about debate is, it puts us in another person' s shoes. "36. According to Paragraph 1 ,what is the purpose of debate?

5.8.My father asked __ to help with his work.

6.He therefore left a lot of money that was to go to those who did a lotfor the peace of __________ Officials at first handed out only five prizes a year.应选( )

7.It's natural that she __ do so.

8.

Many people think that Americans1their cars almost more than anything else.When2people are fourteen years old,they want to have their3cars.They don'task for a car from their4.So many of them work in5time during their last yearof high school to buy a car.Learning to6and getting a driver's license may be one ofthe most exciting things in a young person's life.

Some people almost7go to a doctor when they are ill.But they will8their

cars to a garage as soon as they think there is a9,On Saturdays or Sundays some people may10most of their time washing and repairing their cars.9.（单选）

9.He has___books in his study.

10.Lucy,you clean the blackboard today,

11.We had been to all the schools near where we lived, but the more my father argued,the more _________it became.请选择最佳答案()。

12.There are___students in our school.

13.If I had known you weren’t coming. I ____________ a cake.

14.The world's oceans have warmed 50 percent faster over the last 40 years than previously thought due to climate change, Australian and US climate researchers reported Wednesday．Higher ocean temperatures expand the volume of water, contributing to a rise in sea levels that is covering small island nations and threatening to destroy the low-lying, densely-populated low regions around the globe. 　　The study, published in the British journal Nature, adds to a growing scientific chorus of warnings about the pace and consequences rising oceans．It also serves as a corrective to a massive report issued last year by the Nobel-winning UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), according to the authors. 　　Rising sea levels are driven by two things: the thermal expansion of sea water, and additional water from melting sources of ice．Both processes are caused by global warming．The ice sheet that sits atop Greenland, for example, contains enough water to raise world ocean levels by seven meters, which would bury sea-level cities from Dhaka to Shanghai. 　　Trying to figure out how much each of these factors contributes to rising sea levels is critically important to understanding climate change, and forecasting future temperature rises, scientists say．But up to now, there has been a puzzling gap between the projections of computer-based climate models, and the observations of scientists gathering data from the oceans. 　　The new study, led by Catia Domingues of the Centre for Australian Weather and Climate Research, is the first to reunite the models with observed data．Using new techniques to assess ocean temperatures to a depth of 700 meters from 1961 to 2003, it shows that thermal warming contributed to a 0.53 millimeter-per-year rise in sea levels rather than the 0.32 mm rise reported by the IPCC. [单选题] What happens when the ocean's temperature rises?

15.Many children,_____ parents are away working in big cities, are taken good care of in the village.

16. Among the first to suggest that clocks be moved ahead to extend(延长) daylight hoursduring the spring and summer was Benjamin Franklin. However, it was not until March31，1918, more than a century after Franklin's death, that Congress adopted the practice--during World War I，in order to save electricity. During World War1 daylight saving wasalsoadopted(采取inEngland,Germany,France,and many other countries2.Thefirsttosuggestthatclocksbemovedaheadtoextenddaylighthourswas（）

17.Writing（25 points)你(Li Yuan)刚买了一块表，但你不满意，因为它总有毛病。写一封抱怨信，其内容如下：(1)买表的时间、地点；(2)出现的问题；(3)要求退货。

18.She ______to say that she was not interested in what I was talking about.

19.Passage FourAt the 1893 Columbian Exposition,a World Fair held in Chicago,chocolate-making machinerymade in Germany was displayed.It caught the eye of M.S.Hershey,who saw the potential forchocolate.He installed chocolate machinery in his factory in Lancaster,and produced his firstchocolate bars in 1894.Other Americans began mixing in other materials to make up new candy bars throughout the end of the 1890's and the early 1900's.But it was World War l that really brought attention to the candy bar.The U.S.Army Quartermaster Corps requested various American chocolate manufacturers toprovide 20 to 40 pound blocks of chocolate to be shipped to quartermaster bases.The blocks were cut into smaller pieces and distributed to American soldiers in Europe.Eventually the task of making smaller pieces was turned back to the manufacturers.By the end of the war when the soldiers arrived home,the American candy bar business was assured.Why?Because the returning soldiers had grown fond of chocolate candy and wanted more of the same.As a result,from that time on and through the 1920's,candy bar manufacturers became established throughout the United States,and as many as 40,000 different candy bars appeared on the scene.The original candy bar industry had its start on the eastern coast in such cities as Philadelphia,Boston,and New York.The industry soon spread to the Midwest because shipping and raw materials such as sugar,corn syrup,and milk were easily available.Chicago became the seat of the candy bar industry and is even today an important base.51.What is this passage mainly about?

20.根据以下资料，回答42-45题。 　　England is not a big country: from north to south and from east to west it is only about three hundred miles across．But for a small country it has a surprising range of climate．People who have never visited England or who have visited only one part of it often makes the mistake of thinking that it is a cold and wet country．Except for the summer months of June to September, this is probably true of the north of England and the Midlands．In the south, however, the climate is much more pleasant．One result is that when people retire from the job in the north, they often prefer to move down to the south. 　　Perhaps the warmest part of the country is the southwest, which consists of (is made up of) the counties of Devon and Cornwall, where palm trees, bamboo and many semitropical plants grow well．Flowers and vegetables ripen as much as a month earlier than those elsewhere．Farmers in the areas gain a higher price for their vegetables and flowers because they are ready earlier．In winter there may be several feet of snow in other parts of England but there will probably be no snow at all in the southwest．This may be one of the reasons why the southwest is one of England's most popular holiday areas.43 According to the passage, __.