Passage 1Johannesburg, South Africa — some call it desperation， others call it as inspiration. But South Africa is pushing ahead with its latest initiative to combat soaring crime and corruption: a nationwide crusade to build up its citizenrys moral fiber. “Many of our socioeconomic problems result to a large extent from moral degeneration,” Deputy President Jacob Zuma told Parliament last week. “There was a time in our history when people would provide guidance to children they did not even know, when the ruling ethic was “Any child is my child”. We need to revive that spirit. While character and integrity are familiar topics in U.S. politics, the ambition of institutionalizing and popularizing ethical behavior is unprecedented in South Africa. The crusade appears to be recognition that solving the crime problem here will require more fundamental changes than investing in better law enforcement. The aim is to steep all South Africans in the ethics of responsibility, selfreliance, and accountability to create a patriotic environment in which criminal behavior is not tolerated.
In a report released in July, the Regeneration Committee said that laws in South Africa were sufficient, but that they were often either ignored or not implemented — because of government incompetence and ordinary South Africans compromised moral state. The blame for this lies with the countrys former apartheid government, Zuma told Parliament, in his speech kicking off the campaign. “Apartheid created a particular value system designed to deepen and perpetuate a twisted understanding of values and morality,” Zuma said. “It introduced extreme intolerance, and because it had to be maintained through extreme violence, it encouraged violence at every level of society.”
This comes at a time when South Africans are increasingly impatient with a government that appears unable to tame a soaring crime rate, create jobs or stamp out corruption. Figures released last month show that crimes against children and assaults have doubled since the end of apartheids white minority rule, six years ago. Corruption within government is also seen as pervasive.
But rather than reinvigorate public support of government efforts, the campaign seems to have confirmed some citizens suspicious that the government here is ineffectual. Some political observers aGREe, calling the crusade an alarming retreat from the black governments traditional cando approach. “These are vacuous statements, surprising from a party that has never before hesitates to tackle a problem, ” says Tom Lodge, a professor of politics at the University of the Witswatersrand in Johannesburg. Deputy Education Minister Smangaliso Mkhatshwa, who is spearheading the campaign, counters that it was an ambitious effort by the government to battle evil forces that had taken control of South African society. The campaign will include programs in school, efforts by businesses to curb corruption, and support from the entertainment industry, and the local media.
1. According to the passage, the first sentence of the first paragraph implies that
A. Johannesburg is a underdeveloped city, and people there are neither wealthy nor ambitious.
B. Johannesburg, as a capital, is not as prosperous as other countries capitals.
C. South Africa has been facing various social problems for a long time.
D. South Africa lets the rest of the world down.
2. The latest initiative in South Africa
A. aims to resist the incompetent government.
B. is not supported by the citizens.
C. has the same purpose as the political topics in U.S. .
D. intends to improve its citizens moral standard.
3. From the quotation of Jacob Zuma, we know that
A. there were enormous abandoned children in South Africa.
B. the main cause of the social and economic problems is the ruined morality.
C. “that spirit” refers to the ethic that people should not stick together through thick and thin.
D. he s blaming all the social problems on the declining economy.
4. “Particular value system” (in paragraph 2, line 5) refers to the value system which
A. has been enlarging the racial gap.
B. only exists in Johannesburg.
C. has become the main stream of the society.
D. has restrained the terrific social violence, to some extent.
5. Which of the following statements is TRUE?
A. The author believes firmly that the initiative in South Africa is effective and hopeful.
B. The author supposes that the black officials seldom have the ability to govern a country.
C. There is no doubt that the author is a racialist.
D. The tone of the passage is objective.
Passage 2
Almost from the moment of its creation, a volcanic island is foredoomed to destruction. It has in itself the seeds of its own dissolution, for new explosions, or landslides（山崩） of the soft soil, may violently accelerate its disintegration. Whether the destruction of an island comes quickly or only after long ages of geologic time may also depend on external forces: the rains that wear away the loftiest of land mountains, the sea, and even man himself.
South Trinidad, is an example of an island that has been sculptured into bizarre forms through centuries of weathering — an island in which the signs of dissolution are clearly apparent. This group of volcanic peaks lies in the open Atlantic, about a thousand miles northeast of Rio de Janeiro. E.F.Knight wrote in 1907 that Trinidad “is rotten throughout, its substance has been disintegrated by volcanic fires and by the action of water.” During an interval of nine years between Knights visits, a whole mountainside had collapsed in a GREat landslide of broken rocks and volcanic debris.
Sometimes the disintegration takes abrupt and violent form. The GREatest explosion of historic time was the literal evisceration（取出内脏） of the island of Krakatoa. In 1680 there had been a premonitory eruption on this small island in Sunda Strait, between Java and Sumatra in the Netherlands Indies. Two hundred years later there had been a series of earthquakes. In the spring of 1883, smoke and steam began to ascend from fissures in the volcanic cone. The ground became noticeably warm, and warning rumblings and hissings came from the volcano. Then, on 27th August, Krakatoa literally exploded. In an appalling series of eruptions, that lasted two days, the whole northern half of the cone was carried away. The sudden inrush of ocean water added the fury of superheated steam to the cauldron. When the inferno of whilehot lava, molten rock, steam, and smoke had finally subsided, the island that had stood 1,400 feet above the sea had become a cavity a thousand feet below sea level. Only along one edge of the former crater did a remnant of the island remain.
Krakatoa, in its destruction, became known to the entire world. The eruption gave rise to a hundredfoot wave that wiped out villages along the Strait and killed people by tens of thousands. The wave was felt on the shores of the Indian Ocean and at Cape Horn, rounding the Cape into the Atlantic, if sped northward and retained its identity even as far as the English Channel. The sound of the explosions was heard in the Philippine Island, in Australia, and on the Island of Madagascar, nearly 3,000 miles away. And clouds of volcanic dust, the pulverized rock that had been torn from the heart of Krakatoa, ascended into the stratosphere and were carried around the globe to give rise to a series of spectacular sunsets in every country of the world for nearly a year.
1. What is the main idea of the passage?
A. The course of an volcanic islands explosion.
B. The destruction and its influence of the island of Krakatoa.
C. The different forms of the disintegration of islands.
D. The doomed destiny of the volcanic islands.
2. The word “bizarre” (paragraph 2, line 1) is closest in meaning to “”.
A. eccentric B. various C. common D. ugly
3. What can we infer that about the later condition of Trinidad after being rotten by the fire and water?
A. It is everywhere tumbling to pieces.
B. It remains what it used to be.
C. It has totally disappeared.
D. It becomes larger in size by accumulating more sands and stones.
4. What is not the cause of the dissolution of these islands mentioned in this passage?
A. the movement of the continents. B. new explosions.
C. the destructive power of weathering. D. the sea around them.
5. What is not the consequence of the eruption of Krakatoa?
A. It claimed lives of so many people that the villages in the vicinity was cleared out.
B. The wave was felt sped northward and retained its identity as far as English Channel.
C. The sound also arrived in places in distance.
D. The dust had a GREat influence upon the global environment.
Passage 3
If civilizations exist around stars, they are probably beginning to emerge right now; according to Space Telescope Science Institute theorist Mario Livid. He will detail his theory in a paper to be published in the Astrophysical Journal.
Livio emphasizes that his theoretical work doesnt necessarily mean extraterrestrial civilizations really exist — but it shows that they cannot be dismissed.
Some theorists believe that intelligent life form, if they exist at all, appear on planets at some random time in the parent stars lifetime. If this is true, our chances of discovering them — or of being discovered by them — would be slim, making earthlings a lonely, isolated quirk of cosmic evolution.
Instead, Livio makes the case for a possible causal link between the suns lifetime and the appearance of intelligent life on earth. This link should hold true for sunlike stars elsewhere in the universe, he says, offering an equal opportunity for intelligent life to arise somewhere else in space.
The second part of Levees case is based on the possibility that carbon — the fundamental building block of life as we know it — may not have been widely available until the universe reached about half its present age.
Given the added billions of years required for biological evolution to take place, intelligent carbonbased life could not have made an appearance any earlier than roughly three billion years ago.
Livio points out that before the universe could make life that is in any way like us, it had to make carbon atoms. Carbon is created by nuclear fusion in the hearts of early stars, and then ejected when the stars lose their outer gas layers and leave their cores behind as white dwarfs. Though life emerged on earth a few hundred million years after earths formation, it took a vastly longer time — nearly three billion years — for the first multicelled organisms to appear. And then it took almost another billion years before life emerged from the sea onto the land.
The earliest humans appeared less than four million years ago — at about the halfway point in our suns lifetime. If these were purely coincidental, as other theoreticians have argued, then it would take much longer than the life of a star for most civilizations to arise. This would make it unlikely that extraterrestrial civilization could come about at all: we would be alone in the universe — a mere novelty and a cosmic accident.
“Because sunlight provides far more energy for life than chemical processes, biological evolution is intimately linked to the suns behavior,” Livid maintains. The complex evolution of our atmosphere is interrelated with the sun.
Livio says that other civilizations should also emerge not much sooner or later than about halfway through their parent stars life cycle.
Livio cautions that his work does not prove the existence of extraterrestrial civilizations, but only points out that earlier conclusions that they do not exist may be premature. He adds that its risky to think such civilizations would colonize the Galaxy. “This assumes we have are the vaguest understanding of the psychology of extraterrestrial civilizations,” he says.
Livio cautions:“Its impossible to imagine the thinking of a civilization which might have evolved a million of years ahead of humans. We could be about as uninteresting to them as an amoeba is to us. Actual proof will have to await advances in biology and astronomy.”
Meanwhile, Livio tells us that if there are other civilizations out there, now is their time.
1. Mario Livio believes that
A. it is possible for intelligent life to evolve on planets in sunlike star systems.
B. our chances of discovering intelligent life forms — or of being discovered by them — would be slim, making earthlings a lomely, isolated quirk of cosmic evolution.
C. extraterrestrial civilizations really exist and they cannot be dismissed.
D. the other civilizations are beginning to emerge right now.
2． Which of the following is not mentioned in this article?
A. After the universe came to about the halfway point in its lifetime, carbon, the fundamental building block of life, has been probably available.
B. It would take at least three to four billion years for life to emerge on any planet on the universe.
C. Life first emerged on earth a few hundred years after earths formation. But intelligent carbon based life appeared much later.
D. Extraterrestrial civilization could not make an appearance and we would be a cosmic accident.
3. Which of the following statements concerning “carbon” is true?
A. Carbon is created by nuclear fusion before the stars lose their enter gas layers and leave their cores behind as white dwarfs.
B. The complex evolution of our atmosphere is interrelated the sun as well as carbon.
C. Carbon must have been created on earth much earlier than human beings.
D. Carbon is the essential part of any life.
4. According to the paper written by Mario Livio，
A. the Galaxy is blooming with new civilizations, and extraterrestrial civilization exists.
B. if the appearance of human beings is purely coincidental，it will take longer than the life of a star for most civilizations to arise.
C. we could be interested with the civilization just as we are interested with an amoeba.
D. the existence of intelligent life in outer space has not been verified.
5. By “now is their time” (at the end of the passage), Livio means that
A. it is the time for the civilizations to develop quickly.
B. it is the time for the civilizations to dominant the Galaxy.
C. it is the time for the civilizations to begin to appear.
D. it is the time for the civilizations to evolve.
Passage 4
Finally the dirt road in Maine was leading home. The tire touched the first profanity（亵渎） of pavement, and subtly my vacation began slipping away.
By the first tollbooth my state of mind has shifted from neutral to first gear. By the time I had passed all my favorite landmarks — the sign to Biddeford, the bridge labeled Cat Mousam Road — I had slowly and reluctantly begun to relocate my sense of place, my sense of values.
I was going back, to lists and alarm clocks and stockings and school lunches and all the external pressures of the life known as civilization. I was going back to things I had to do.
This time even the skies divided these two halves of my life. Along Route 95, a curtain of almost impenetrable rain separated one world from the other. The day before, this rain on the roof of the house would have been a comforting boundary to the day, a prediction of reading and fires. Now, the rain on the windshield of the car was a hassle, a challenge to overcome.
I turned up the radio, so I could hear the final installment of Jane Eyre over the pelting rain, and thought about these different rhythms that mark my own life, many of our lives. Left behind was a world in which I simply lived according to its patterns. Ahead of me was the world of agendas and problems that I was expected to encounter and resolve.
For two and half weeks in Maine I watched the sky, the cove and a seagull with the gall to steal chicken off our barbecue. I am told that I became an accomplished mud watcher, sitting on the porch, watching the bottom of the cove at low tide for hours. I prided myself on developing a hobby rarely listed in Whos Who: I became a fine stickinthemud.
To me, an urban woman who lives much of her life according to other peoples deadlines and demands, this was a chance to literally vacate the world of schedules and struggles.
I did not, do not, use my vacation to climb mountains, shoot rapids or fulfill itineraries of some travel agent. I preferred to drift along my inclination down through the circle of goals to the mud of acceptance.
I was content with the harmony we call doing nothing. There was a sense of letting go, being at ease with time rather than at odds with it. I enjoyed the understanding that there was nothing that had to be done beyond watching the clothes dry.
But I was also returning. Returning to the energy, the structure, the demands, the pressure. I also chose engagement. There are, I suppose, these two sides to all of us. The side that feels most content in nature, and the other side that feels more energized “on top of the world”.
I was aware of this duality, the urge to watch the mud, the urge to build something out of it. Our peculiar human creativity doesnt come from harmony but from wrestling with chaos as well. Every poem and every building was wrested out of material by people who refused to accept things as they were.
At one time, I thought these worlds were at odds, that we had to choose engagement or disengagement, accepting or accomplishment, watching the mud or building with it. But now traveling this kind of road again and again, I realized that they are just two destinations, points along a path of dirt and pavement. Now it is the tension that intrigues me. It is the search for a balance between comfort and purposefulness, between accepting things and struggling with them.
Driving home, I was reluctant to leave one for the other, reluctant to put on my city clothes of purpose and structure. But I knew that I was lucky to be a commuter.
1. In the first few paragraphs the author
A. reflected on her vacation.B. mentally switched vacation to city life.
C. marveled at what city life could offer.D. reconciled country life with city life.
2. Which of the following best describes the way the author spends her vacation?
A. Hastily.B. Creatively.C. Restlessly.D. Relaxedly.
3. All of the following signify the authors two different world except
A. the final installment of Jane Eyre and the pelting rain.
B. feeling content in nature and feeling more energized “on top of the world.”
C. peculiar human creativity and wrestling with chaos.
D. comfort and purposefulness.
4. We can infer from the passage that.
A. the author often takes vacation.B. the authors hometown is in Maine.
C. the author hates skyscrapers.D. the author hates traveling on a rainy day.
5. What does the author most probably mean when she says she was lucky to be a commuter?
A. She was able to choose engagement or disengagement.
B. She was able to move her home to Maine in the future.
C. She was able to strike a balance between natural life and human life.
D. She was able to choose one life over the other.
