America is a mobile society. Friendships between Americans can be close and real, yet disappear soon. They don’t feel hurt. If the same two people meet again, even years later, they pick up the friendship. This can be quite difficult for us Chinese to understand. Friendships between us develop more slowly but may become lifelong feelings, extending（延伸）deeply into both families.

There is another difficult point for us to understand. Although Americans treat friends warmly in their personal everyday lives, they don’t show their politeness to them if it requires a great deal of time. But in China, we are usually generous with our time. We, as hosts, will appear at an airport even in the middle of the night to meet a friend. We may take days off from our work to act as guides to our friends: It is opposite in America, Americans can not manage the time to do a great deal with a visitor outside their daily plans. They will probably expect the visitors to get themselves from the airport to the hotels. And they expect the visitors will phone them from there. Once the visitors arrive at their homes, the welcome will be full, warm and real.

For Americans, it is often considered more friendly to invite a friend to their homes than to restaurants, except for business matters. Americans are ready to receive us foreigners at their homes, share their holidays, and their home life. So accept their hospitality（好客）at home and enjoy your visit in America!

1.The underlined phrase “pick up” in Paragraph 1 may mean “_______”.

A．keep out

B．give up

C．pay no attention to

D．continue

2.Which of the following is the typical way of American hospitality?

A．Treating friends at home.

B．Taking days off to be with friends.

C．Meeting friends at the airport at midnight.

D．Sharing everything they have.

3.Which of the following statements in True according to the passage? 

A．Americans are always generous with their time.

B．Americans don’t feel hurt if their friendships disappear soon.

C．Chinese friendships develop more slowly but will never disappear.

D．Chinese friendships are more sincere than American friendships.

4.This passage is most probably written for         .

A．American students

B．Chinese students

C．Chinese visitors to America

D．American visitors to China

People often say that the earth is like our mother. She gives life to all the living things on the earth and provides us with air, food, water and other essential things we need for living.

Once she was beautiful and rich, but now she becomes dirtier and dirtier, poorer and poorer. It is due to what we have done to her. Please have a good look at her: polluted rivers and lakes, growing deserts, the destruction of the forests and wild life, and the depletion (消耗，用尽) of the ozone layer (臭氧层)...

Can she bear to see her children putting the waste here and there? Can she bear to see her children cutting down the trees and destroying the grassland, to see the acid rain destroying everything? Can we bear to see our mother suffering (受苦) so much? Isn’t it time for us to ask ourselves whether this is the way to treat our mother?

Floods, droughts, acid rain..., these are the punishments (惩罚) from nature. Everyone should know that there is only one earth. If we go on treating her like this, it won’t be fit for us to live in any longer. It’s time for us to love her, take good care of her and cure her. We should save the earth so as to save ourselves.

1. What does the earth look like now?

A. It has clean rivers, lakes and green forests.

B. It is like a beautiful girl.

C. It is more beautiful and richer.

D. It is dirtier and dirtier, poorer and poorer.

2. What is the meaning of the underlined word?

A. Know     B. Stand     C. Imagine     D. Hear

3. What is the best title of the passage?

A. The earth—our mother.

B. Defenders of the Earth (地球卫士).

C. The earth is very beautiful and healthy.

D. The water on the earth is very clean.

Hip hop or rap (说唱） music as it is also called, started on the street and in the clubs of the New York City in the 1970s . But today many countries have their own kind of  hip hop music . This kind of music comes from reggae, disco and funk music . Rapping means speaking to the  rhythm of the music, and it is an important part of the music . People rap to express how they feel about their lives and problems .

Rapping in class.

Would you like to rap in class? Well actually, hip pop music is played in more than 10,000 schools in the USA .Why ? There is a new school program called “ Flocabulary ”in which teachers use texts and hip hop CDs to help teach different school subjects . The words of the songs are just what students are studying . This makes learning easy and fun . Students and teachers are excited about the positive results it has had on exam marks . One teacher said, “ I’ve used hip hop songs in class, and I have never seen my students so crazy about history ! You can't imagine how well they imagine how well they remember what I teach ! We even try to write our own songs . ”

Whose idea was Flocabulary?

Blake Harrison, a high school student, was the first person to come up with the idea of Flocabulary . The word “ Flocabulary ” comes from the word “ flow ” and “ vocabulary ” . “ Flow ” is a rap word for “ style ”,or the way a rapper says the words of a song . “ Vocabulary ” means the words you have to learn in a language . How did he get the idea ? Well, he realized he could remember the words of a hip hop song very easily . So,why not make lessons into songs ? Today together with Alex Rappaport, a song writer, Blake produces hip hop songs for maths, science and literature (文学）. They are now used in schools with great success .

1.Rap music started  _____ in New York city .

A．in the 1970s                           B．In a high school

C．in the 19 th century .                     D．In a music class .

2.From the passage, we can learn “ Flocabulary ” is a program to _____ .

A．Write rap music .                       B．Sing a song by talking

C．Remember the words of a song .            D．help teach some school subjects.

3.The underlined word  positive  in paragraph 2 most probably means _____ 

A．bad              B．good             C．final              D．direct

4.Blake Harrison has produced hip hop songs for school subject EXCEPT _____ .

A．maths            B．science           C．history            D．literature

For thousands of years, people have used plants to make medicines. They used different parts of the plants —the roots, the leaves, the flowers, and the bark (树皮). Today, doctors have rediscovered more medicinal (药用) values of some plants. Let’s look at some examples.

Foxglove is a common plant. People have used it to make the heart slow down. Recently scientists have developed another drug from it. This new drug helps prevent other heart problems.

In some areas, malaria has been a problem. Scientists have learned that the bark of a South American tree, the cinchona, can be made into a drug to prevent malaria. For a long time, the Chinese have known that a special plant, wormwood, can also fight malaria. Scientists have been working with it to develop new drugs against malaria.

In Germany, some scientists studied garlic (大蒜) for four years. They found that it helps prevent the build-up of plaque (血小板) because too much plaque is bad for health. This very common plant continues to be studied.

As we know, there are about 250,000 kinds of flowering plants in the world. Scientists have only studied little more than one percent of plants for their medicinal value. Maybe medicines for AIDS and cancer will be made from the other 99 percent.

1.What can foxglove be used for?

A．Studying plants.

B．Building up the plaque.

C．Treating AIDS and cancer.

D．Preventing heart problems.

2.What does the underlined word “malaria” in Paragraph 3 refer to (指的是)?

A．A drug.                               B．A plant.

C．An illness.                             D．An animal.

3.How many plants are mentioned in the passage?

A．3.               B．4.                C．5.               D．6

4.Which of the following is the best title for the passage?

A．Past and future

B．Plants and medicine

C．Health and illness

D．Scientists and doctors

All the ___ in our school enjoyed themselves on March 8 th because it was their own holiday.

A. women teachers  B. men teachers  C. woman teachers  D. man teachers