“If you talk to the plants, they will grow faster and the effect is even better if you’re a woman.” Researchers at Royal Horticultural Society carried out an experient to find that the voice of a woman gardener makes plants grow faster.

The experiment lasted a month and by the end of the study scientists managed to discover that tomato plants grew up two inches taller when women gardeners talked to them instead of male.

Sarah Darwin was the one making the plants registered the best growth. Her voice was the most “inspiring” for plants than those of nine other gardeners when reading a passage from The Origin of Species. The great-great-granddaughter of the famous botanist(植物学家) Charles Darwin found that her plant grew about two inches taller than the plant of the best male gardener.

Colin Crosbie, Garden Superintendent at RHS, said that the finding cannot yet be explained. He assumes that women have a greater range of pitch（音高） and tone（音调） which might have a certain effect on the sound waves that reach the plant. “Sound waves are an environmental effect just like rain or light ,”said Mr Grosbie.

The study began in April at RHS Garden Wisley in Survey. Scientists started with open auditions(听力) for the people who were asked to record passages from John Wyndham's The Day of the Triffids, Shakespeare’s A Midsummer's Night Dream and Darwin's The Origin of Species.

Afterwards researchers selected a number of different voices and played them to 10 tomato plants during a period of a month. Each plant had headphones（耳机） connected to it. Through the headphones the sound waves could hit the plants. It was discovered that plants that “listened” to female voices on average grew taller by an inch in comparison to plants that heard male voices.

Miss Darwin said, “I think it is an honor to have a voice that can make tomatoes grow, and especially fitting because for a number of years I have been studying wild tomatoes from the Galapagos Island at the Natural History Museum in London.”

1.What does the passage talk about?

2.What does the underlined sentence in paragraph 4 mean?

3.Sarah Darwin is most likely a (an)_____.

4.What can we learn from the passage?

The climate of any place is the kind of weather. It usually has over a long period of time. The houses we live in, the clothes we wear, the foods we eat depend on the climate of the place where we live.

Climate is a pattern that is not nearly as simple as we think, and it is affected by many factors. The distance to the North or South Pole（极，极点，） or the equator (赤道) really matters a lot. If you live near either of the poles, you live in a cold climate, for the place where you live does not get as much or as direct sunshine as a place farther away from the poles. In places close to the equator, the climate is very hot, for they are the parts where the sunshines almost straight down.

Whether rain or snow falls makes a great difference to the climate. In hot, dry deserts, little rain falls, but in a hot rainforest, the amount of rainfalls is far larger than that in a desert, for there is a heavy rain almost every day, even several times per day. Though a rainforest and a desert may be the same distance from the equator, their climates are rather different from each other.

How much rain or snow falls are considered by some to be determined by the winds, the surrounding mountains and the currents(水流)in nearby seas and so on . In short, it is a very complex natural phenomenon（现象）.

This passage mainly talks about       .

A. weather             B. different climates     

C. climate and its determining factors   D. the difference between weather and climate

The difference of the climates between a tropical (热带的)desert and a tropical rainforest affected by       .

A. the amount of rainfalls    

B. the winds and the surrounding mountains

C. the currents in near seas

D. how much sunshine the two different places can get

From the context, we can guess that the word “complex” is       and it       .

A. a noun; means a simple thing

B. an adjective; means being easy to understand

C. an adverb; has almost the same meaning of “rather”

D. an adjective; means being difficult to understand

While income worry is a rather common problem of the aged, loneliness is another problem that aged parents may face. Of all the reasons that explain their loneliness, a large geographical distance between parents and their children is the major one. This phenomenon（现象）is commonly known as “Empty Nest Syndrome”（空巢综合症）.

In order to seek better chances outside their countries, many young people have gone abroad, leaving their parents behind with no clear idea of when they will return home. Their parents spend countless lonely days and nights, taking care of themselves, in the hope that someday their children will come back to stay with them. The fact that most of these young people have gone to Europeanized or Americanized societies makes it unlikely that they will hold as tightly to the value of duty as they would have if they had not left their countries. Whatever the case, it has been noted that the values they hold do not necessarily match what they actually do. This geographical and cultural distance also prevents the grown-up children from providing response（回应）in time for their aged parents living by themselves.

The situation in which grown-up children live far away from their aged parents has been described as “distant parent phenomenon”, which is common both in developed countries and in developing countries. Our society has not yet been well prepared for “Empty Nest Syndrome”.

68．According to the passage, the loneliness of aged parents is mainly caused by _________.

      A．their earlier experience of feeling lonely

       B．the unfavorable living conditions in their native countries

       C．the common worry about their income

       D．the geographical distance between parents and children

69．Many young people have gone abroad, leaving their aged parents behind, to _________.

      A．live in the countries with more money

       B．seek a better place for their aged parents

       C．continue their studies abroad

       D．realize their dreams in foreign countries

70．If young people go abroad, _________.

      A．they do not hold to the value of duty at all

       B．they can give some help to their parents back home

       C．they cannot do what they should for their parents

       D．they believe what they actually do is right

71．From the last paragraph, we can infer that ________.

      A．the situations in the developed and developing countries are different

       B． “Empty Nest Syndrome” has arrived unexpectedly in our society

       C．children will become independent as soon as they go abroad

       D．the aged parents are not fully prepared for “Empty Nest Syndrome”

Testing has taken the place of teaching in most public schools. Pretests, drills, tests, and retests. They know that the best way to read a textbook is to look at the questions at the end of the chapter and then read the text quickly for the answers. I believe that my daughter Erica, who gets excellent marks, has never read a chapter of any of her school textbooks all the way through. And teachers are often heard to say proudly and openly that they teach to the test.

Teaching to the test is a curious phenomenon（现象）. Instead of deciding what skills students ought to learn, helping students learn them, and then using some methods of assessment（评价） to discover whether students have mastered the skills, teachers are encouraged to teach the students in the opposite way. First one looks at a test. Then one chooses the skills needed not to master reading, but to do well in the test. Finally, the test skills are taught.

The ability to read or write might suggest the ability to do reasonably well on standardized tests. However, neither reading nor writing develops simply through being taught to take tests. We must be careful to avoid mistaking preparations for a test of a skill with the acquisition（习得）of that skill. Too many discussions of basic skills make this misunderstanding because people are tested rather than concerned with the nature and quality of what is taught.

Recently, many schools have faced what could be called the crisis of comprehension or, in simple words, the phenomenon of students with grammar skills still being unable to understand what they read. These students are quite good at test taking and filling in workbooks. However, they have little or no experience reading or thinking, and talking about what they read. They know the details but can’t see or understand the whole. They are taught to be so concerned with grades that they have no time to think about meaning, and reread things if necessary.

1. The author mentions Erica’s performance in her study in order to show_________.

2.Which of the following is TRUE according to the passage?

3. In the author’s opinion, __________.

4.By “crisis of comprehension” (in Paragraph 4) the author means many students ______.

Scientists around the world have been studying the warming of waters in the Pacific Ocean known as El Nino （厄尔尼诺）. The appearance of El Nino is known to affect the weather around the world. Scientists still do not completely understand it. Yet they now find they can use it to tell about the future in different areas of the world.

One example is the work of two scientists at Columbia University in New York, Mark Cane and Gordon Eshel. A scientist of Zimbabwe（津巴布韦）, Roger Buckland worked with them. They have found that when El Nino appears, Zimbabwe has little or no rain. This means corn crops in Zimbabwe are poor. The last El Nino was in 1991 to 1993. That was when southeastern Africa suffered a serious lack of rain.

The scientists wrote about their recent work in the publication（出版物）Nature. Their computer program can tell when an El Nino will develop up to a year before it does. They suggest that this could provide an effective early warning system for southern Africa, and could prevent many people from starving.

1.El Nino is known as ___.

A. the changing of the weather in southern Africa

B. the warming of waters in the Pacific Ocean

C. the weather which brings drought（旱灾）to Africa

D. the weather phenomenon（现象）that brings heavy rains to Africa

2.Scientists study El Nino in order that ___.

A. they can provide a kind of early warning to the place that will suffer from drought

B. they can tell why Zimbabwe has little or no rain

C. they can do some research work in this field.

D. they can put all this information into their computers.

3.Which of the following is TRUE according to the passage?

A. Scientists come to understand how El Nino appears.

B. Three scientists from the USA work on this subject.

C. Southern Africa suffered a serious drought and many people died from hunger.

D. El Nino has something to do with Zimbabwe’s poor crops.

4.Which of the following is NOT true according to the article?

A. The computer is used in this research work.

B. Scientists know when an El Nino appears by means of the computer program.

C. The scientists published their results of the research work.

D. Nature is the name of the article written recently by the scientists.

5.What’s the best title for this passage?

A. Appearance of El Nino is Predictable（可预测的）

B. Drought in Zimbabwe

C. Early Warning System

D. Weather in Africa