When I was seven, my parents gave me a doll, a doll’s house and a book. The Arabian Nights, came wrapped in red paper. I was just ready to read when my mother walked into my room．

“Isn’t your doll just beautiful?” my mother asked. I looked at the doll, with fair hair in a pink dress----I’ll have to call her “she” because I never gave her a name. I folded my lips and raised my eyebrows, not really knowing how to let my mother down easily.

“This doll is different.” My mother explained, trying to talk me into playing with it.

Thinking the doll needed love, I hugged her tightly for a long time. Useless, I said to myself. Finally, I decided to play with the doll’s house. But since rearranging the tiny furniture seemed to be the only active possible, I lost interest. I caught sight again of the third of my gifts The Arabian Nights, and I began to read it. From that moment, the book was my constant companion.

Every day I climbed our garden tree, nestled among its branches, I read the stories in The Arabian Nights to my heart’s content. My mother became concerned as she noticed I wasn’t playing with either the doll or the little house. She insisted that I take the doll up the tree with me.

Trying to read on a branch 15 feet off the ground while holding on to the silly doll was not easy. After nearly falling off twice, I tied one end of a long vine around the doll’s neck and the opposite one around the branch, letting the doll hang in mid air while I read. I always looked out for my mother, though. I sensed that my playing with the doll was of great importance to her. So every time I heard her coming, I lifted the doll up and hugged her. The smile in my mother’s eyes told me my plan worked.

The inevitable(不可避免的) happened one afternoon. Totally absorbed in the reading, I didn’t hear my mother calling me. When I looked down, I saw my mother staring at the hanging doll. Fearing the worst of scolding, I climbed down in a flash, reaching the ground just as my mother was untying the doll. To my surprise, she didn’t scold. She kept on staring at the doll．

The next day, my father came home early and suggested he and I play with the doll’s house. Soon I was bored, but my father seemed to be having so much fun, I didn’t have the heart to tell him. Quietly I slipped out, picking up my book on my way to the yard. So absorbed was he in arranging and rearranging the tiny furniture that he didn’t notice my quick exit.

Almost 20 years passed before I found out why the hanging-doll incident had been so significant for my parents. By then I was a parent myself. After recalling the incident, my mother said all those years she had been afraid whether I would turn out to be a most loving and understanding mother to my son．

My mother often thanks God aloud for making me a good parent, pointing out that with education I might have been a rich dentist instead of a poor poet. I look back on that same childhood incident, recalling my third gift, the book in red-paper, and I take advantage of the experiences that have made me who and what I am. Sometimes I pause to wonder at life’s wonderful ironies （讽刺）.

1.Why didn’t the author give the doll a name?

A. Because the gift was given by her parents.

B. Because the girl didn’t care much for the doll.

C. Because her parents would give the doll a name.

D. Because the doll had little in common with her.

2.The author’s account of a childhood incident shows that, as a young girl, she viewed her parents as people who         .

A. hoped to shape their children’s future  

B. were unconcerned about their behavior

C. ruined their children’s dreams completely

D. might withdraw their love at any moment

3. What can we infer from the last paragraph?

A. The mother is now satisfied with her daughter’s career.

B. The daughter now regrets what she did when she was a girl.

C. The mother thinks the daughter’s achievements are unsatisfactory.

D. The daughter wishes that she had been allowed more freedom as a child.

 

Part B: Vocabulary 9%

A．claim

B．second

C．opposite

D．count E. best

F. negative       G. failures         H. defined          I. mark          J. reliable  

We might be surprised at the progress made in every field of study, but the methods of testing a person’s knowledge and ability remain as primitive as ever they were. It is really extraordinary that after all years, educationists have still failed to devise something more 41 than examinations. For all the 42 that examinations test what you know, it is common knowledge that they more often do the exact 43. They may be a good means of testing memory, or the knack of working rapidly under extreme pressure, but they can tell you nothing about a person’s true ability.

As anxiety-makers, examinations are 44 to none. That is because so much depends on them. They are the 45 of success or failure in our society. Your whole future may be decided in one fateful day. It doesn’t matter that you weren’t feeling very well, or that your mother died. Little things like that don’t 46: the exam goes on. No one can bring out the 47 in him when he is in terror, or after a sleepless night, yet this is precisely what the examination system expects him to do. The moment a child begins school, he enters a world of fierce competition where success and failure are clearly 48 and measured. Can we wonder at the increasing number of “dropouts”: young people who are written off as 49 before they have started a career? Can we be surprised at the suicide rate among students?

 

 

When friends come to visit us in the evening, they spend their time telling us they are in a hurry and looking at their watches. It isn’t that our friends are all very busy; it is just that we haven’t got a television. People think that we are very strange. “But what do you do in the evening?” they are always asking. The answer is very simple. Both my wife and I have hobbies. We certainly don’t spend our evenings staring at the walls. My wife enjoys cooking and painting and often attends evening classes in foreign languages. This is particularly useful as we often go abroad for our holidays. I collect stamps and I’m always busy with my collection. Both of us enjoy listening to the music and playing chess together．

   Sometimes there are power cuts and we have no electricity in the house. This does not worry us; we just light candles and carry on with what we were doing before. Our friends, however, are lost------No television! -------So they don’t know what to do. On such evenings our house is very full; they all come to us. They all have a good time. Instead of sitting in silence in front of the television, everybody talks and plays games．

69. The couple have not got a television, because   ______  ．

A. they are not rich enough         

B. they are strange people

C. they enjoy spending evenings in their own ways

D. they don’t know what to do when there are power cuts

70. At night when there is no electricity, the couple   ____    ．

A. have to look at the walls    B. can do nothing but sit in silence

C. will have many visitors      D. have to go out for candles

71. The best title for this passage is _____________.

A. Why Do We Need a Television?   B. Candle! But No Electricity!

C. Different Friends, Different Hobbies   D. We Go Without Televisions!

 

When friends come to visit us in the evening, they spend their time telling us they are in a hurry and looking at their watches. It isn’t that our friends are all very busy; it is just that we haven’t got a television. People think that we are very strange. “But what do you do in the evening?” they are always asking. The answer is very simple. Both my wife and I have hobbies. We certainly don’t spend our evenings staring at the walls. My wife enjoys cooking and painting and often attends evening classes in foreign languages. This is particularly useful as we often go abroad for our holidays. I collect stamps and I’m always busy with my collection. Both of us enjoy listening to the music and playing chess together．

   Sometimes there are power cuts and we have no electricity in the house. This does not worry us; we just light candles and carry on with what we were doing before. Our friends, however, are lost------No television! -------So they don’t know what to do. On such evenings our house is very full; they all come to us. They all have a good time. Instead of sitting in silence in front of the television, everybody talks and plays games．

69. The couple have not got a television, because   ______  ．

A. they are not rich enough         

B. they are strange people

C. they enjoy spending evenings in their own ways

D. they don’t know what to do when there are power cuts

70. At night when there is no electricity, the couple   ____    ．

A. have to look at the walls B. can do nothing but sit in silence

C. will have many visitors  D. have to go out for candles

71. The best title for this passage is _____________.

A. Why Do We Need a Television?       B. Candle! But No Electricity!

C. Different Friends, Different Hobbies   D. We Go Without Televisions!

 B

About a year ago, I went to stay at a Detroit hotel. I didn’t want to carry too much money with me, so I asked the desk clerk to put a hundred- dollar bill in the safe for me.

 The next morning, however, the clerk said he knew nothing about my money. I didn’t have any proof that I had given the man the money. There was nothing I could do but go to the nearest lawyer.

  The lawyer advised me to return to the hotel with him and give another hundred-dollar bill to the clerk. This I did. An hour later, I went back to the desk and asked for my money. Since I had the lawyer as an eyewitness to the second hundred-dollar bill, the clerk could not say he knew nothing about it.

Another hour later, I put the second part of the lawyer’s plan into action. This time both the lawyer and I went to the hotel. I asked for the hundred-dollar bill once again, and when the clerk insisted he had already given it to me, I denied（否认）it. The lawyer said to him, “I saw this gentleman give you a hundred dollars. If you don’t hand it over immediately, I’ll be forced to call the police.”

 The clerk realized he had been tricked, so he gave me back the first hundred-dollar bill.

 “I don’t know how to thank you enough for getting my money back,” I said to the lawyer. And what you suppose he answered?

  He said, “Oh, don’t thank me. That will be a hundred dollars, please.”

60. The man went to a Detroit hotel one day to___________.

A. get his money back                      B. put a hundred-dollar bill in the safe

C. ask to be a desk clerk             D. stay for the night

61. The hotel clerk at last returned the first hundred-dollar bill to the man because _________.

A. he knew the lawyer’s plan very well  

B. he found the lawyer tricking him

C. he didn’t want to get into trouble with the police  

D. he wanted to give the man a surprise

62. Which of the following statements is true?

A. The man didn’t get his 200 dollars back.

B. The lawyer was happy that the man got both his bills back.

C. The lawyer asked for 100 dollars.

D. The man thanked the lawyer by paying him some money.

63．The man was _______.

A. wise             B. foolish          C. happy           D. sad