The United States is trying to improve an edueation system that produces millions of citizens who cannot read, write, or add—let alone finding their country on a map.

In his first State of Union message since taking office a year ago, President George Bush promised to wipe out illiteracy(文盲) in the next decade and declared that“by the year 2008, U.S students must be first in the world in math and science achievements. ” They have a long way to go. American students were placed 14th in a recent general science test conducted in 16 countries. In a separate survey of chemistry students, the United States came 12 out of 14. In a mathematics test, they were last. According to Bush, there are 17 million illiterates in this country of 245 million people. Other estimates put the number as high as 23 million. In percentage terms, that ranks the United States alongside Niearague and below Cuba. “This nation,”Bush said in his State of the Union address, “will not accept anything but excellent in education.” Bush, who has declared himself “Education president”, and senior officals of his administration are warning that the United States will be unable to compete in the world without an educated workforce.

How to increase educational standards is a matter of debate in a country whose schools have no uniform national curriculum and are subject to a confusing variety of state and local controls. Most experts think that the problem lies at the elementary and high school'levels rather than with universities-but even their graduates show huge gaps in general knowledge. Among the root causes most frequently mentioned in education debates is the low respect in which U.S. society holds teachers-in contrast to Japan and Germany. In Japan teaching is a profession of high prestige(威望) and high pay. In the United States teachers are near the bottom of the society.

By“the United States came 12 out of 14”(Para. 2), the author means .      

A.the United States ranked 12th not 14th in the chemistry test

B.the United States ranked 12th in the chemistry test conducted by 14 countries

C.the United States progressed from 14th to 12th in the chemistry test

D.the United States ranked 12th in chemistry test and 14th in general science test

The cause of low educational level in America include the following EXCEPT that .      

A.some problems exist in primary and secondary education

B.society keeps teachers in low respect

C.America pays more attention to economy instead of education

D.America has no uniform national courses

Which of the following statements can be inferred from the passage?

A.President Bush carried out his promise made in his first State of Union message.

B.The education in Japan and Germany is in higher level.

C.According to Bush, the number of illiterates accounts for 9% of the total.

D.Teachers in the United States enjoy good treatment and great respect.

Which of the following is the right order of the least-first of the percent of illiterates?

A.Germany, Cuba, Nicaragua.         B.Germany, Nicaragua, Cuba.

C.Nicaragua, Japan, Cuba.            D.Cuba, Japan, Nicaragua.

第二节：信息匹配（共5小题；每小题2分，满分10分）   

请阅读下列旅游景点的信息，并按照要求匹配信息。选出符合各小题要求的最佳选顼，并在答题卡上将该选项涂黑．选项中有一项是多余选项。

Here are some information about several websites.

A．http://www.yoka.com/ Yoka Fashion Network is the first upper-class brand positioning in consumer for high-quality lifestyle, serving the high-income professional fashion website users. To create interactive online fashion community,it runs as a network fashion circle which includes the fashion products manufacturers,fashion critics, fashion magezine publishers, fashion designers, fashion blog writers, fashion brand retailers, advertisers and brands, etd.

B．http://www.szsjg.net/ Do you have a legal matter that you need cleared up? Does your business need to find an experianced lawyer to consult about potentially sticky legal situations? Don't be hesitating;contact a well-practised lawyer, be sure to give you professional advice!

C．http://www.itourchina.com.cn As one of the largest tour operators in China, we offer you sorted, package tours and custom tours made specially for you! Our China tour service ranges from budget group China tour peckages to luxury private tour packages as well as discount hotel reservation in China. Try it out!We endeavor to make your china vacation unique and affordable.

D．http://www.china.travel/

China Travel Net is intended to provide tourists with travel information, destination infonnation,travel products, fashion and cultural information services and products; additionally, as China's tourism international marketing platform, it is to shape the tourism image of China for the international visitors, providing travel information, destination information and tourism products and services, which are both in Chinese and English versions.

E. http://www.trends.com.cn/

Fashion Media Group, the unique community representatives in the field of China Journal, is Chins's largest media group of the high-grade journals, covering a wide range of its business in the books editors, publishing, advertising, printing, distribution, etc, with diversification of the contents of journals: "Fashion COMSOPOLITAN", "Esquire", "Home fashion", "Fashion Tourism", "Ms. Fashion Health", "Men's Fashion Health", "Fashion's Bazaar", "Fashion Men's Bazaar", "Chinese geography", "Fashion Time", "Good Housekeeper", "Fashion Car", "Food and Wine", "Rob Report ", "fashion bride", etc.

F. http://www.chinabook.org/

This website takes advantage of its vast information and quick speed, gathering together thousands of the National Press, providing the latest information and the functions of book sales,new book published subscriptions, second-hand books transctions, e-books online to reader forum, academics, clubs, etc.

根据以下各人的需求，寻找适合的网站。

56. John and his families like taking budget travelling to any place which can show local custom.This time, they want to make a trip to China.As usual, they don't want to join any groups with a fixed tourist guide. Since they have no ides about where to start, they'd like to get some advice about the route meeting their demands.

57. Minnie is a white-coller worker in an international company. Hard as the work is,she enjoys running after the fashion. She usually seeks for some latest information on the lnternet during the break in her office. She likes reacting critics and blogs in particular.

58. Henry is involved in some intractable (难处理的) problems which is related to his company's finance. Owing to not having employed a counselor, he is looking for any lawyer to give him some advice.                                                                

59. Tina takes reading as her hobby. She usually spends a lot of time in reading boojs online at weekends. But sometimes she will buy some books whose topic or content really attract her, no matter whether it is latest or second-hand.

60. Dr. Green and his wife are always pursuing high-quality lifestyle.They are supposed to have a long holiday next month, so they plan to travel around China which is said to be with many excellent places by their friends. In order to make a confirmation and have a better understanding of China, they need to do some research on the Internet.

 

Throughout the history of the arts,the nature of creativity has remained constant to artists.No matter what objects they select,artists are to bring forth new forces and forms that cause change—to find poetry where no one has ever seen or experienced it before.

Landscape(风景) is another unchanging element of art.It can be found from ancient times through the 17th-century Dutch painters to the 19th-century romanticists and impressionists.In the 1970s Alfred Leslie,one of the new American realists,continued this practice.Leslie sought out the same place where Toomas Cole,a romanticist,had produced paintings of the same scene a century and a half before.Unlike Cole who insists on a feeling of loneliness and the idea of finding peace in nature,Lealie paints what he actually sees.In his paintings,there is no particular change in emotion,and he includes ordinary things like the highway in the background.He also takes advantage of the latest developments of color photography(摄影术) to help both the eye and the memory when he improves his painting back in his workroom.

Besides,all art begs the age-old question:What is real?Each generation of artists has shown their understanding of reality in one form or another.The impressionists saw reality in brief emotional effects,the realists in everyday subjects and in forest scenes,and the Cro-Magnon cave people in their naturalistic drawings of the animals in the ancient Forests.To sum up,understanding reality is a necessary struggle for artists of all periods.

Over thousands of years the function of the arts has remained relatively constant.Past or present,Eastern or Western,the arts are a basic part of our immediate experience.Many and different are the faces of art,and together they express the basic need and hope of human beings.

The underlined word “poetry” most probably means ______.

A.an object for artistic creation

B.a collection of poems

C.an unusual quality

D.a natural scene

Leslie’s paintings are extraordinary because ______.

A.they are close in style to works in ancient times

B.they look like works by 19th-century painters

C.they draw attention to common things in life

D.they depend heavily on color photography

What is the author’s opinion of artistic reality?

A.It will not be found in future works of art.

B.It does not have a long-lasting standard.

C.It is expressed in a fixed artistic form.

D.It is lacking in modern words of art.

What does the author suggest about the arts in the last paragraph?

A.They express people’s curiosity about the past.

B.They make people interested in everyday experience.

C.They are considered important for variety in form.

D.They are regarded as a mirror of the human situation.

Which of the following is the main topic of the passage?

A.History of the arts.

B.Basic questions of the arts.

C.New developments in the arts.

D.Use of modern technology in the arts.四、写作(共两节，满分35分)

-_________progress you have made this year!

---Thank you. But I have a long way to go.

A．What a good	B．How rapid
C．What great	D．How big

 

Ideas about polite behavior are different from one culture to another. Some societies, such as America and Australia for example, are mobile and very open. People here change jobs and move house quite often. As a result, they have a lot of relationships that often last only a short time, and they need to get to know people quickly. So it's normal to have friendly conversations with people that they have just met, and you can talk about things that other cultures would regard as personal.

    On the other hand there are more crowded and less mobile societies where long-term relationships are more important. A Malaysian or Mexican business person, for example, will want to get to know you very well before he or she feels happy to start business. But when you do get to know each other, the relationship becomes much deeper than it would in a mobile society.

     To Americans, both Europeans and Asians seem cool and formal at first. On the other hand, as a passenger from a less mobile society puts it, it's no fun spending several hours next to a stranger who wants to tell you all about his or her life and asks you all sorts of questions that you don't want to answer.

     Cross-cultural differences aren't just a problem for travelers, but also for the flights that carry them. All flights want to provide the best service, but ideas about good service are different from place to place. This can be seen most clearly in the way that problems are dealt with.

     Some societies have 'universalist' cultures. These societies strongly respect rules, and they treat every person and situation in basically the same way.

     'Particularist' societies, on the other hand, also have rules, but they are less important than the society's unwrinen ideas about what is right or wrong for a particular situation or a particular person. So the normal rules are changed to fit the needs of the situation or the importance of the person.

     This difference can cause problems. A traveler from a particularist society, India, is checking in for a flight in Germany, a country which has a universalist culture. The Indian traveler has too much luggage, but he explains that he has been away from home for a long time and the suitcases are full of presents for his family. He expects that the check-in official will understand his problem and will change the rules for him. The check-in official explains that if he was allowed to have too much luggage, it wouldn't be fair to the other passengers. But the traveler thinks this is unfair, because the other passengers don't have his problem.

1.Often moving from one place to another makes people like Americarts and Australians

A. like traveling better

B. easy to communicate with

C. difficult 1o make rcal friends

D. have a long-term relationship with their neighbors

2.People like Malaysians prefer to associate with those

A. who will tell them everything of their own

B. who want to do business with them

C. they know quite well

D. who are good at talking

3.A person from a less mobile society will feel it_____ when a stranger keeps talking to him or her, and asking him or her questions.

A. boring       B. friendly        C. normal            D. rough

4.Which of the following is true about "particularist societies"?

A. There is no rule for people to obey.

B. People obey the society's rules completely.

C. No one obeys the society's ruies though they have.

D. The society's rules can be changed with different persons or situations.

5.The writer of the passage thinks that the Indian and the German have different ideas about rules because of different__________.

A. interests        B. habits and customs

C. cultures        D. ways of life