Henry found work in a bookstore after he finished middle school. He wouldn’t do anything but wanted to get rich. Mr King thought he was too lazy and was going to send him away. Henry was afraid and had to work hard.

    It was a cold morning. It was snowing and there was thin ice on the streets. Few people went to buy the books and the young man had nothing to do. He hated to read, so he watched the traffic. Suddenly he saw a bag fall off a truck and it landed by the other side of the street.

    “It must be full of expensive things, ”Henry said to himself. “I have to get it, or others will take it away. ”

    He went out of the shop and ran across the street. A driver saw him and began to whistle (鸣笛), but he didn’t hear it and went on running. The man drove aside, hit a big tree and was hurt in the accident. Two weeks later Henry was taken to court (法庭). A judge asked if he heard the whistle when he was running across the street. He said that something was wrong with his ears and he could hear nothing.

    “But you’ve heard me this time.”said the judge.

    “Oh, I’m sorry. Now I can hear with one ear.”

    “Cover the ear with your hand and listen to me with your deaf (聋的)one. Well, can you hear me? ”

    “No, I can’t. sir.”

1.What was Mr. King? (   )

 A. a driver                  B. a doctor          C. a policeman                D. a shopkeeper

2. Why did Mr. King want to send Henry away? (   )

A. Because Henry was too lazy.           B. Because Henry hoped to be rich.

C. Because Henry finished middle school.   D. Because Henry sold few books.

3.Why did Henry say that he was deaf? (   )

A. He wanted to have a joke with the judge.    B. He wanted to get the judge’s help

C. He wanted to find another piece of work    D. He didn’t want to pay for the accident.

 

A. Importance of Learning from Failure        B. Quality Shared by Most Innovators        C. Edison’s Innovation        D. Edison’s Comment on Failure        E. Contributions Made by Innovators        F. Successful Innovators

Even Intelligent People Can Fail

_________

The unusual things about the innovators (创新者) who succeeded in making our modern world is how often they failed. Turn on a light, take a photograph, watch TV, search the web, jet across the Pacific Ocean, talk on a cell-phone. The innovators who left us these things had to find the way to success through a maze (错综复杂) of wrong turns.

_________

We have just celebrated the 125th anniversary of American innovator Thomas Edison’s success in heating a thin line to white, hot heat for 14 hours in his lab in New Jersey, US. He did that on October 22, 1879, and followed up a month later by keeping a thread of common cardboard alight (点亮着的) in an airless space for 45 hours. Three years later he went on to light up half a square mile of downtown Manhattan, even though only one of the six power plants in his design worked when he turned it on, on September 4, 1882.

________

“Many of life’s failures,” Edison said, “are because that people did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.” Before that magical moment in October 1879, Edison had worked out no fewer than 3,000 theories about electric light. But in only two cases did his experiments work.

________

No one likes failure, but the smart innovators learn from it. Mark Gumz, the head of a camera maker, attributes some of the company’s successes in technology to understanding failure. His popular phrase is：“You only fail when you quit.”

_________

Over two centuries, the most common quality of the innovators has been persistence (坚忍不拔). That is another way of saying they had the emotional ability to keep on with what they were doing. Walt Disney, the founder of Disneyland, was so penniless after a series of financial failures that he was left shoeless in his office because he could not afford the $1.50 to get his shoes from the repair shop. Pioneering car maker Henry Ford failed with one company and was forced out of another before he developed the Model T Car.

England has been the birthplace of most of the great English-language theater written throughout history. Most of the plays in England that are truly famous have something in common. They usually come from a playwright(剧作家) with several famous plays.

Shakespeare

William Shakespeare is considered the most famous British playwright. Shakespeare has a large catalog(目录) of tragedies, comedies and history plays, and each category is home to some of the most famous plays ever written. Hamlet, Macbeth, Romeo and Juliet, Othello and Julius Caesar are all tragedies and performed in theaters around the world every year. Famous comedies include A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Much Ado About Nothing. In the history category, Richard Ⅲ and Henry Ⅴ are very famous.

Oscar Wilde and George Bernard Shaw

Several hundred years after Shakespeare, English people began to enjoy the works of Oscar Wilde and George Bernard Shaw. Wilde’s plays are still popular now, and The Importance of Being Earnest is both performed and studied extremely frequently. A Woman of No Importance and An Ideal Husband are among his other famous works. Shaw and Wilde were born within a few years of each other, but Shaw was a much more productive writer. His most famous plays include Pygmalion and Candida. Shaw’s plays are loved so much that an entire theater company is devoted to performing his work in Niagara-on-the-Lake in southern Ontario.

Harold Pinter

The plays of Harold Pinter certainly have an international presence. His writing was so widely recognized for its importance that he was awarded the Nobel Prize in literature in 2005. Pinter is especially known for his style of writing. Many of his plays such as Betrayal, The Dumb Waiter and his first play, The Room, are extremely well known.

1.The writer wrote this passage to       .

A．advise us to spend more time enjoying plays

B．explain why England has so many wonderful plays

C．tell us about some famous British playwrights and their works

D．tell us the differences among some British playwrights

2.What do the works in the underlined part in Paragraph 2 have in common?

A．They are all Shakespeare’s early works.

B．They are all tragedies written by Shakespeare.

C．They are all Shakespeare’s famous comedies.

D．They all belong to the history category of Shakespeare’s plays.

3.Which of the following plays were most probably written in the same period of time?

A．The Dumb Waiter and A Woman of No Importance.

B．Richard Ⅲ and A Woman of No Importance.

C．An Ideal Husband and Candida.

D．Candida and Betrayal.

4.Who was mentioned in this passage that he had received the Nobel Prize because of his writing?

A．William Shakespeare.                    B．Oscar Wilde.

C．George Bernard Shaw.                    D．Harold Pinter.

 

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第三部分：阅读理解(共两节，16小题；每小题2分，满分32分)

第一节：阅读下列短文，从每题所给的四个选项（A、B、C和D）中，选出最佳选项。

People enjoy talking about “firsts”. They like to remember their first love or their first car. But not all firsts are happy ones.

One of history’s bad but important firsts was the first car accident. Cars were still young when it happened. The accident took place in New York City in May 1896. A man from Massachusetts was visiting the city in his new car. At that time, bicycle riders were still trying to get used to the new set of wheels on the road. No one was sure who was to blame for it. Anyway, the bike and the car hit each other hard. The man on the bike was injured. The driver of the car had to stay in jail and wait for the hospital report on the bicycle rider. Luckily, the rider was not killed.

Three years later, another car accident took place. It was again in New York City. A man named Henry Bliss stepped off a streetcar(无轨电车). He was hit by a passing car. Once again, no one was sure just how it happened or whose fault it was. The driver of the car was put in prison. Poor Mr. Bliss became the first person to die in a car accident.

46. Which of the following is true?

A. The first driver came from New York City.

B. Both of the two car accidents killed a person.

C. The second car accident didn’t happen in the same city as the first one.

D. No one knew how the two accidents had happened.

47. In both accidents the drivers of the cars_______.

A. could not drive their cars very well

B. had to stay in prison for a while

C. tried to run away after the accidents took place

D. knew it was their fault

48. The word “jail” in this passage means ________.

A. police station      B. prison                C. school       D. office

49. The main idea of the passage is ________.

A. not all firsts are happy ones                           B. two of the first car accidents

C. two unhappy “firsts”                             D. bicycle riders get used to cars