Mr. Jackson lived in the center of London but he had a hotel near the airport. There a lot of foreigners stayed for night. He didn’t know any other language but English and he found it difficult for him to understand the foreign visitors. Sometimes he had to use the gesture to talk with them, and tried his best to make himself understood. But he was often misunderstood (误解) and it brought him a lot of trouble. A friend of his who taught a few foreign languages in a university would teach him. He was happy and studied hard. At first he learned some, but soon he found it wasn’t very easy to remember the words and expressions. His friend advised him to write down the useful expressions in his notebook so that he could use them when necessary. He did as he was told. He found it helpful for him to do so.
One evening there were plenty of people in the dining-room. They were all busy eating something except a Japanese. He was wandering (徘徊) there and waiting for his wife who was dressing herself up upstairs. Mr. Jackson thought to himself, “ The man wants to eat something but he doesn’t know any English. Let me help him.”
As he knew only a little Japanese, he had to bring out his notebook and showed it to the man, pointing to the sentence “I’m hungry.”
The Japanese had a look at it and gave him two pounds and left.
【小题1】Mr. Jackson knew only English because        .

A．he was an English student

B．he had never been abroad

C．he couldn’t learn by himself

D．he hadn’t studied any foreign languages

【小题2】 Mr. Jackson had to use the gesture because        .

A．he wanted the foreign visitors to understand him

B．he wanted to learn the foreign languages from the visitors

C．he hoped to know the foreign visitors’ custom

D．he hoped more foreign visitors would stay for night in his hotel

【小题3】As not all foreign visitors understand his gesture, sometimes Mr. Jackson         to communicate with them.

A．succeeded

B．lost heart

C．failed

D．gave up

【小题4】      , so he decided to help the man.

A．Mr. Jackson thought the Japanese wanted to stay for night

B．Mr. Jackson thought the Japanese was not hungry

C．Mr. Jackson knew the Japanese was waiting for his wife.

D．Mr. Jackson was sure the Japanese couldn’t speak English

【小题5】 The Japanese thought        , so he gave him two pounds.

A．Mr. Jackson was a beggar.	B．Mr. Jackson was a translator.
C．Mr. Jackson could help him.	D．Mr. Jackson could ring his wife up.

A famous doctor once received a little child who was badly ill. Thanks to his skill and care, his young patient got well and was soon able to get up and run about again.
The child’s mother was very much obliged to the doctor, and she called on him to thank him for what he had done for her child. “Doctor,” she said, “you have saved my little son. I don’t know how to thank you enough. I feel that money alone cannot repay you, so I have made this little purse with my own hands, as a sign of my gratitude. I hope you will accept it.” The doctor stood up and said coldly, “Madam, a little present like that is very nice between friends, but a doctor needs to be paid properly for what he has done.” The lady was so surprised and hurt so much that she could not reply for a moment. Then she said quietly, “Perhaps you will tell me how much your fee is?”“Fifty pounds”, he answered.
The lady opened the little purse and took out four fifty-pound bank notes. She handed one of them to the doctor, and put the other three back into the purse. She put the purse into her handbag and, saying good bye to the doctor, went out of the room.
【小题1】The doctor refused the lady’s purse because he thought ______.

A．the purse should be given between friends

B．the purse was too small

C．the lady was not kind to him

D．the lady just gave him that purse and wouldn’t give him the medical fee

【小题2】What the doctor said ______ the lady.

A．worried

B．interested

C．frightened

D．hurt

【小题3】The money in the purse _______.

A．was only 150 pounds	B．was less than 200 pounds
C．was much more than the medical fee	D．was not enough for the medical fee

Theodor Seuss Geisel was born in Springfield, Massachusetts in 1904. He was famous because of the books he wrote for children. They combine funny words, pictures, and social opinion.
Dr Seuss wrote his first book for children in 1937. It is called And to Think I Saw It on Mulberry Street. A number of publishers refused to publish it. They said it was too different. A friend finally published(出版) it. Soon other successful books followed. Over the years, he wrote more than forty children’s books. They were fun to read. Yet his books sometimes dealt with serious subjects.
By the middle 1940s, Dr Seuss had become one of the best-loved and most successful writers of children’s books. He had a strong desire to help children. In 1954, Life magazine published a report about school children who could not read. The report said many children’s books weren’t interesting. Dr Seuss decided to write books that were interesting and easy to read.
In 1957, Dr Seuss wrote The Cat in the Hat. He used less than 225 words to write the book. This was about the number of words a six-year-old should be able to read.
The story is about a cat who tries to entertain two children on a rainy day while their mother is away from home. The cat is not like normal cats. It talks. The book was an immediate success. It was an interesting story and was easy to read. Children loved it. Their parents loved it, too. Today many adults say it is still one of the stories they like best.
【小题1】What’s the best title for this passage?

A．Some of Dr Seuss’ books for children.

B．What are Dr Seuss’s books mainly about?

C．Dr Seuss — a famous writer of children’s books.

D．Why are Dr Seuss’ books different?

【小题2】What do we know about Dr Seuss’s first book for children?

A．It was Dr Seuss’ worst book.

B．It dealt with a very serious subject.

C．Neither children nor adults like it.

D．Many publishers didn’t take it seriously at first.

【小题3】How did Dr Seuss help children according to Paragraph 3&4?

A．By asking others to help them in magazines.

B．By writing interesting and simple books.

C．By changing his old books into simpler ones.

D．By giving them books for free.

【小题4】 Adults most probably think that Dr Seuss’ The Cat in the Hat is _________

A．interesting

B．serious

C．difficult

D．boring

【小题5】What does the underlined word “combine” mean?

A．like very much	B．fall in love with
C．bring something together	D．pay attention to

Down on the beach of Dover, 56-year-old Channel swimmer Jackie Cobell bravely set off for Calais. The time was 6:40 am. 28 hours and 44 minutes later the exhausted, successful mother from Kent crawled (爬行) to the shore and walked proudly into the record books. After five years in training, Mrs Cobell became the slowest person to cross the Channel under her own steam. The previous record for the slowest crossing, set by Henry Sullivan at 26 hours and 50 minutes, has stood for 87 years before Mrs Cobell started at Dover Saturday morning.
She had struggled through changing tides that swept her first one way, then the other. It turned the 21-mile crossing into a 65-mile one. She declared, “Time and tide wait for no man—and they certainly didn’t wait for me. I was fully expecting it to get dark before I got to Calais but I never imagined I’d also see the dawn again. But I wasn’t going to give up.”
Her feat(壮举) raised more than $2,000 in charity sponsorship for research into Huntingdon’s disease, a sum that was continuing to grow as news of her achievement spread. That was why she did it. “I don’t really know myself,” she said. “ I just kept thinking of all the people I’d be letting down if I stopped.”
Mrs Cobell took to the water so well at school. But after bringing up two daughters, she started to gain weight. Five years ago she took up swimming again and decided to prepare for the Channel challenge to lose weight. She became much fitter. Then came the big swim. “I practiced on Windermere lake,” she said. “it’s about half the distance of the Channel so I just doubled it, added some extra time, and worked out I could probably get to Calais in about 16 hours.”
Her husband David, trainer, official observer and friend sailed alongside her on a boat. She said, “I sang to keep myself going. When they told me I was a record breaker I thought they were just having a joke—until I realized it was the record for the slowest crossing. But maybe next time I might be a bit quicker.”
【小题1】According to Paragraph 1, Mrs Cobell_____________.

A．started to learn swimming five years ago

B．arrived at Calais on late Sunday morning

C．wanted to break the record for the slowest crossing

D．was too exhausted to move after crossing the Channel

【小题2】Why did Mrs Cobell spend so much time crossing the Channel?

A．Because the tides changed her direction.

B．Because she was not in good condition.

C．Because she wasn’t good at swimming.

D．Because the winds kept her from swimming fast.

【小题3】Mrs Cobell crossed the Channel for the main purpose of____________.

A．taking a risk

B．losing more weight

C．raising money for charity

D．becoming famous worldwide

【小题4】 How did Mrs Cobell feel about the record she set?

A．Dissatisfied

B．Excited

C．Annoyed

D．Proud

Miss Gogers taught physics in a New York school. Last month she explained to one of her classes about sound, and she decided to test them to see how successful she had been in her explanation. She said to them, “Now I have a brother in Los Angeles. If I was calling him on the phone and at the same time you were 75 feet away, listening to me from across the street, which of you would hear what I said earlier, my brother or you and for what reason?”
Tom at once answered, “Your brother. Because electricity travels faster than sound waves.” “That’s every good,” Miss Gogers answered; but then one of the girls raised her hand, and Miss Gogers said. “Yes, Kate.”
“I disagree,” Kate said. “Your brother would hear you earlier because when it’s 11 o’clock here it’s only 8 o’clock in Los Angeles.”
【小题1】 Miss Gogers was teaching her class_________.

A．how to telephone	B．about electricity
C．about time zone(时区)	D．about sound

【小题2】Miss Gogers raised this question because she wanted to know whether______.

A．it was easy to phone to Los Angeles	B．her student could hear her from 75 feet away
C．her students had grasped（理解）her lesson .	D．sound waves were slower than electricity

【小题3】Tom thought that electricity was _________.

A．slower than sound waves	B．faster than sound waves
C．not so fast as sound waves	D．as fast as sound waves

【小题4】Kate thought Tom was wrong because _______.

A．clocks in Los Angeles showed a different time from those in New York

B．electricity was slower than sound waves

C．Tom was not good at physics at all

D．Tom’s answer had nothing to do with sound waves

【小题5】Whose answer do you think is correct according to the law of physics?

A．Tom’s

B．Kate’s

C．Bath A and B

D．Neither A nor B

                                              136 Crestview Circle
Dover, Connecticut
January 16, 1995
Gander’s Furniture Store
Stamford, Connecticut, 09876
Dear Sir,
I am writing about your January bill, which I am returning with this letter. I am not going to pay this bill. Last month I bought a table and four chairs for $65.50. They were sent to me on December 18. That night one leg of the table broke while my wife was putting our dinner on it. It fell on one of the chair, and that broke, too. Our $ 2.50 steak(牛排) landed on the floor, and the dog ate it.
I spoke to the salesmen who had sold me the table and the chairs. He told me to write you a letter. I wrote you on December 20, saying that I was not going to pay for the furniture. On December 21 some men came and took it back to the store.
Please do something about your records. I do not want to receive another bill for the furniture which I returned.
Yours truly
Alberts Robbins
【小题1】From the letter we can know that Mr. Robbins had actually paid _____ for the table and the four chairs.

A．$ 65.50

B．$ 68.00

C．$ 2.50

D．no money

【小题2】 Why do you think Mr. Robbins write the letter to the furniture store?

A．He had paid for the furniture but was asked to pay again.

B．He didn’t want to receive a second bill for the furniture he had returned.

C．The furniture he bought was badly made and he wanted to return it.

D．He wanted the manager to scold the salesmen for the bad furniture.

【小题3】Try to guess how Mr. Robins felt when he was writing the letter.

A．He was angry.

B．He was sad.

C．He was anxious.

D．He was friendly.

In Stockholm, the Swedish Academy has chosen the British author Doris Lessing for the 2007 Nobel Prize in Literature.
The selection of Doris Lessing for a Nobel was popular among the hundreds of journalists gathered for the announcement in Stockholm.
Permanent Secretary of the Swedish Academy Horace Engdahl said with skepticism, fire and visionary power Lessing has subjected a divided civilization to scrutiny.
Doris Lessing was born in 1919 in Persia - modern-day Iran - to British parents, moving as a child with her family to southern Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe, where she stayed in school only to the age of 14.
A year after moving to London, she published her first novel in 1950. The Grass is Singing examines unbridgeable racial conflict in colonial Africa through the eyes of a white farmer’s wife and her black servant.
A member of the British Communist Party during the 1950s and a campaigner against nuclear arms and South African apartheid, Lessing was for years banned from that country and from Rhodesia.
Her literary breakthrough came in 1962 with publication of The Golden Notebook, seen by many, though not necessarily Lessing, as a pioneering work of modern feminism. A disjointed study of the mind of the main character, Anna Wulf, the novel explores her thoughts about Africa, politics and communism, relationships with men and sex, and Jungian analysis and dream interpretation.
Lessing’s themes shifted to psychology in her works from the 1960s, and by the 1970s she was fascinated with the Islamic mystic tradition of Sufism. Her turn toward science fiction with the Canopus series in the early 1980s was not warmly received by traditionalist critics, but she has continued to win new readers and numerous literary awards, including the David Cohen British Literary Prize and the Companion of Honour from the Royal Society of Literature, both in 2001.
Following the announcement, the Horace Engdahl told VOA why he was personally so pleased with Lessing’s selection.
"She is one of the truly great writers - of novels, short stories, fiction and non-fiction," Engdahl said. "She is one of the few writers who have had the courage to uphold the principle of equality between the male and female experience, and she has given the impulse to numbers of other women writers. And she is really the mother of a school that is one of the most important in our contemporary literature."
At 87, Doris lessing is the oldest Nobel Literature laureate since the first prizes were awarded in 1901. Each Nobel Prize is this year accompanied by a check for approximately $1.4 million.
【小题1】How old was Doris Lessing when she published her first novel?

A．14

B．26

C．31

D．50

【小题2】Which of the following about The Grass is Singing is true?

A．It is mainly about racial conflict between the whites and the blacks in the US.

B．The main characters are a white farmer’s wife and her black servant.

C．It was published in Africa.

D．It was Doris Lessing’s most famous novel.

【小题3】We can infer from the passage that __________.

A．Journalists are very interested in the election of Doris Lessing’s for Nobel Prize.

B．Doris Lessing regard The Golden Notes as a pioneering work of feminism.

C．Doris Lessing has written about many different subjects.

D．Many writers have the courage to stick to the equality between the male and female experience.

【小题4】The underlined wordschool in the last but one paragraph means________.

A．institution for educating children

B．college or university

C．department of a university

D．group of writers, thinkers

【小题5】 Which of the following can be the best title of this passage?

A．Doris Lessing wins Nobel Prize for literature.

B．The greatest British female writer.

C．The oldest Nobel Prize winner.

D．2007 Nobel Prize announced in Stockholm.