SECTION B (18%)   Directions: For each blank in the following passage there are four words or phrases marked A. B. C. and D. Fill in each blank with the word or phrase that best fits the context.
Michelle Obama celebrates her forty-fifth birthday Saturday, just 3 days before she becomes America’s First Lady. She has had many   36   in her life. She graduated with honors from Chicago public schools, Princeton University and Harvard University Law School. She  37    a top law firm in Chicago    38     she met her future husband. She was also outstanding in a public service organization and on the University of Chicago.
Michelle Obama says her daughters are the source of her greatest pride. She says raising Malia, age ten, and Sasha, age seven will continue to be her most important job.  39   , the next First Lady has called her White House position, “Mom-in-chief.”
Malia and Sasha will be taken good care of by another person at their new Washington home. Last week, the Obamas   40   that Marian Robinson would move into the White House with the Obamas and help take care of the girls.
Malia and Sasha started their new school, Sidwell Friend School, on January 5, 2009. Chelsea Clinton also attended this private school   41   her father was president. Malia attends the middle school in Washington. Sasha is in elementary school in nearby Bethesda, Maryland.
There is one future  42  of the Obama family we have not yet talked about. This one has four legs and fur. Maybe you  43   Barack Obama’s victory speech on election night, November 4. He said his daughters had “   44    the new puppy that’s coming with us to the White House.” This week , the Obamas said that they has narrowed their dogs   45   to two kinds. They are working with animals shelters to find  46   a Portuguese water dog or a Labradoodle.
47    breeds (品种) generally have less fur to fall off than some other kinds of dogs. They are better dogs for people who suffer from allergies (过敏), like Malia Obama.
36. A. experiences      B. adventure              C. successes                      D. methods
37. A. found out       B. worked out         C. set up                         D. worked for
38. A. where           B. that                   C. what                        D. until
39. A. Otherwise       B. On the country     C. In fact               D. At last
40. A. announced      B. reminded           C. advertised                 D. presented
41. A. before           B. though                     C. unless                         D. when
42. A. plan               B. member                    C. guest                          D. visitor
43. A. forget           B. have                 C. remember                 D. appreciate
44. A. abandoned      B. bought                        C. found                        D. earned
45. A. search          B. interest               C. market                       D. adviser
46. A. neither         B. either                 C. whether                    D. not
47. A. All               B. Many                C. Both                          D. Some

As I write this, I have half an eye on an old James Bond film that is showing on my computer. But this is a story about how I stopped watching TV and began reading again for pleasure, after ten years in which I hardly turned a page.

I suppose I was an enthusiastic reader of "literature" between the ages of nine and fourteen. I had enough time to be White Fang, Robinson Crusoe, and Bilbo Baggins and Jeeves. Of course there was room in the schoolboy's imagination for some real historical figures: Scott of the Antarctic, all of the Vikings, and Benjamin Franklin were good friends of mine.

Then, in adolescence, I began a long search for strange and radical (激进的) ideas. I wanted to challenge my elders and betters, and shock my fellow students with amazing points of view. Of course, the only place to look was in books. I hunted out the longest titles and the authors with the funniest names; I searched the library for completely unread books. Then I found one which became my bible for the whole of 1982, it had a title composed of eleven long words and an author whose name I didn't know how to pronounce. It was really thick and looked dead serious. Even better, it put forward a whole world-view that would take days to explain. Perfect. I took it out of the library three times, proud to see the date-stamps lined up on the empty library insert.

Later, I went to university. Expecting to spend long evenings in learned discussion with clever people, I started reading philosophy. For some reason I never found the deep-thinking intellectuals I hoped to meet. Anyway, I was ready to impress with my profound (深奥的) knowledge of post-structuralism, existentialism and situationism. These things are usually explained in rather short books, but they take a long time to get through. They were the end of my youthful reading.

Working life was hard to get used to after so much theory. It was the end of books for me. There didn't seem to be much in books that would actually get things done. To do things you had to answer the telephone and work a computer. You had to travel about and speak to people who weren't at all interested in philosophy. I didn't stop reading, you can't avoid that. I read all day. But no books came my way, only manuals (操作手册) and contracts and documents. Maybe most people satisfy their need for stories and ideas with TV and, to tell the truth, it was all I needed for ten years. In those days I only had a book "on the go" for the duration of aeroplane flights. At first I would come home and watch TV over dinner. Then, I moved the TV so I could watch it from bed. I even got a switch so I could turn it off without getting out of bed. Then, one fateful day, my TV broke and my landlady took it away.

My new TV is an extra circuit board (电路板) inside my computer. It's on a desk in front of a working chair and I can't see it from the bed. I still use it for the weather forecasts and it's nice to have it on while I'm typing this… but what to do last thing at night? Well, have another go with books.

Now, I just like books. I have a pile of nice ones by my bed and I'm reading about six at the same time. I don't want to be any of the characters. I don't care if a thousand people have already read them. I don't have to search through libraries. There are books everywhere and all of them have something to read in them. I have the strange feeling that they've been there all along, waiting for me to pick them up.

1.The writer enjoyed reading “literature” between the ages of nine and fourteen because ________.

A．he thought it was important for a schoolboy to do so

B．he was still too young to understand other books

C．he believed all the real historical figures were his friends

D．he could imagine himself being the characters in the books

2.“Existentialism” (in paragraph 4) is probably ________.

A．a library intended for teenagers            B．a kind of books on traditions

C．a philosophy theory                     D．a kind of reading skill

3.The main reason the writer stopped reading books was that ________.

A．he found watching TV was more interesting

B．he became too busy to read any books

C．he found books were of little use to his work

D．he had to read a lot of manuals, contracts and documents

4.Now the writer starts to read books again ________.

A．to find back his youth in books             B．for the pure pleasure of reading

C．so as to help kill his spare time             D．for only business purposes

5.Which of the following is the best title of the passage?

A．The Years with Books                     B．Books and TV Programs

C．Don’t Judge a Book by Its Cover           D．Reading Makes One Excellent

Here are five letters from readers listed in 1-5. All the greetings and signatures are left out. Suppose you are a secretary of the magazine CR (Crazy English Reader), for each one find a suitable reply from A-F. Mark the correct letter (A-F) on your answer sheet. There is one extra reply which you don’t need to use.

   1. I am a reader of CR. Recently I found students translate some articles of CR. I appreciate your offering an opportunity to us beginners to practise using English. So I want to ask how they can obtain these articles and translated them for you, and what qualities you require. Thank you.

   2. I love your Crazy English Reader magazine! It provides valuable data for work in our English teaching. My wife and I are teaching Conversational English so I’ve been giving you a bit of a plug at our middle school. I told the students to “get a copy!” It’s good stuff! Fantastic!

     3. I’m one of Yao’s fans from Guangzhou. I have read the Yao Ming articles in No.7 Crazy English Reader. I want to know his correspondence address and the official website. Could you please tell me? Thank you very much indeed.  

     4. First of all, I must say thank you very much to all the CE Reader editors who gave us a really good English magazine. Secondly, I want to give you a piece of advice. In each passage, you gave us some new words with their Chinese translation. However, as far as my knowledge, I think you should give us not only the Chinese meaning but also the English meaning so as to know the words more accurately. Thank you!

     5. I am an editor of the English Monthly of our school. I have a question that is how to say the position of the paper e.g., 总编 责任编辑 and so on. I hope you can help me to tell me the word in English. The more the better. Thank you so much! I love the book very much. Now, I do this work, I need study more information about this work, if you have time, please email me. Thank you.

Thank you for your suggestion. We may try that in some future issues of CR. I think the best way to improve your reading vocabulary is to be able to guess the meaning of the word from the other words around it. Also, if you have an English dictionary, it’s good to look up the words and then mark them down in a notebook and review them later on. Then if you really want to learn how to use the words, try using them in conversation or in writing. Hope this helps.

The best way for you to learn the different positions in a newspaper or magazine is to get a copy of an all-English magazine or newspaper and then copy down the different positions. There are also titles such as Managing Editor, reporter, Copy Editor, Photo Editor and Layout Editor. I hope this helps. If you have some more specific questions, you can send them to me and I’ll try to answer.

C．The best way to reach Yao directly is through his home team, the Shanghai Sharks. You can write him at 2570 Xietu Road, Shanghai. For more information on Yao, you can look at the sports section in sina. com. I hope this helps. Another idea is that you can try to write Yao while he’s living and playing in Houston. You can try to reach Yao in the US at:   Yao Ming   Compaq Centre 10  Houston, TX 77046

Thank you for being such a careful reader of CR. Yes, you’re right we made a mistake in the writing of that Chinese word. Each issue we try to read very carefully each article and its translation to make sure there are no mistakes, but unfortunately a few mistakes always get by. But you encourage us to keep improving, so thank you.

Yes, we do have several students who help us translate some of the articles in our magazine. We contact these translators directly after interviewing their translation work. Afterwards we assign the articles to them for translation. If you are interested in being one of our translators you can send us some information about yourself and a sample of your translation work.

Thank you for helping us to promote CR. We’re glad it’s helpful to your students. We always try to include articles that reflect real life. It’s our hope that CR will not only improve student’s English but also open up a different worldview.

阅读理解

　　PALOALTO, California--Turning off the television may help prevent children from getting fatter, even if they do not change their diet or increase the amount of their exercise.”US researchers said last week.

　　A study of 192 third and fourth graders, generally aged eight and nine, found that children who cut the number of hours spent watching television gained nearly two pounds, or 0.91 kilogram less over a one-year period than those who did not change their television diet.

　　“The findings are important because they show that weight loss can only be the result of the reducing of watching TV and not any other activity,”said Thomas Robinson, a pediatrician (儿科专家)at Stanford University.

　　“American children spend an average of more than four hours per day watching television and videos and playing video games, and rates of childhood being fat have doubled over the past 20 years,”Robinson said.

　　In the study, presented this week to the Pediatric Academic Societies annual meeting in San Francisco, the researchers persuaded about 100 of the students to reduce their television viewing by one-quarter to one-third.

　　Children watching fewer hours of television showed a smaller increase in waist size and had less body fat than other students who continued their normal television viewing, even though neither group ate a special diet nor took part in any extra exercise.

　　“One explanation for the weight loss could be the children unattracted to the television may simply have been moving around more and burning off calories.”said Robinson.

　　“Another reason might be due to eating fewer meals than in front of the television. Some studies have suggested that eating in front of the TV encourages people to eat more,”Robinson said.

1．In the first two paragraphs the writer tells us that ________.

[　　]

A．children will get fatter if they spend more time watching TV

B．children will get fatter if they spend less time watching TV

C．children will get fatter if they eat too much

D．children will get thinner only if they take extra exercises

2．According to the passage, the time American children usually spend watching TV ________.

[　　]

A．is more than four hours a day

B．is more than on any other activities

C．is less than four hours a day

D．doubled in the last twenty years

3．It is suggested that the time children spend watching every day should be about ________.

[　　]

4．Why can watching TV increase kids' weight according to the passage?

[　　]

A．They usually burn off fewer calories though they eat less.

B．They usually eat more when they are watching television.

C．They change their diet while watching TV.

D．They have been moving around.

As I write this, I have half an eye on an old James Bond film that is showing on my computer. But this is a story about how I stopped watching TV and began reading again for pleasure, after ten years in which I hardly turned a page.
I suppose I was an enthusiastic reader of "literature" between the ages of nine and fourteen. I had enough time to be White Fang, Robinson Crusoe, and Bilbo Baggins and Jeeves. Of course there was room in the schoolboy's imagination for some real historical figures: Scott of the Antarctic, all of the Vikings, and Benjamin Franklin were good friends of mine.
Then, in adolescence, I began a long search for strange and radical (激进的) ideas. I wanted to challenge my elders and betters, and shock my fellow students with amazing points of view. Of course, the only place to look was in books. I hunted out the longest titles and the authors with the funniest names; I searched the library for completely unread books. Then I found one which became my bible for the whole of 1982, it had a title composed of eleven long words and an author whose name I didn't know how to pronounce. It was really thick and looked dead serious. Even better, it put forward a whole world-view that would take days to explain. Perfect. I took it out of the library three times, proud to see the date-stamps lined up on the empty library insert.
Later, I went to university. Expecting to spend long evenings in learned discussion with clever people, I started reading philosophy. For some reason I never found the deep-thinking intellectuals I hoped to meet. Anyway, I was ready to impress with my profound (深奥的) knowledge of post-structuralism, existentialism and situationism. These things are usually explained in rather short books, but they take a long time to get through. They were the end of my youthful reading.
Working life was hard to get used to after so much theory. It was the end of books for me. There didn't seem to be much in books that would actually get things done. To do things you had to answer the telephone and work a computer. You had to travel about and speak to people who weren't at all interested in philosophy. I didn't stop reading, you can't avoid that. I read all day. But no books came my way, only manuals (操作手册) and contracts and documents. Maybe most people satisfy their need for stories and ideas with TV and, to tell the truth, it was all I needed for ten years. In those days I only had a book "on the go" for the duration of aeroplane flights. At first I would come home and watch TV over dinner. Then, I moved the TV so I could watch it from bed. I even got a switch so I could turn it off without getting out of bed. Then, one fateful day, my TV broke and my landlady took it away.
My new TV is an extra circuit board (电路板) inside my computer. It's on a desk in front of a working chair and I can't see it from the bed. I still use it for the weather forecasts and it's nice to have it on while I'm typing this… but what to do last thing at night? Well, have another go with books.
Now, I just like books. I have a pile of nice ones by my bed and I'm reading about six at the same time. I don't want to be any of the characters. I don't care if a thousand people have already read them. I don't have to search through libraries. There are books everywhere and all of them have something to read in them. I have the strange feeling that they've been there all along, waiting for me to pick them up.
【小题1】The writer enjoyed reading “literature” between the ages of nine and fourteen because ________.