In most languages, a greeting is usually followed by "small talk". Small talk means the little things we talk about at the start of a conversation. In English-speaking countries people often make small talk about the weather: "Nice day, isn't it?" "Terrible weather, isn't it?" But there is something special about small talk. It must be about something which both people have the same opinion about. The purpose of small. talk is to let both people agree on something. This makes meeting people easier and more comfortable. People usually agree about the weather, so it is a safe topic for small talk. But people often disagree about religion or politics so these are not suitable topics for small talk in English. The topics for small talk also depend on where the conversation is taking place. At football matches, people make small talk about the game they are watching: "Great game, isn't it?" At bus-stops, people may comment about the transport system: "The bus service is terrible, isn't it?"
Greetings and small talk are an important part of conversation in any language. The way people greet each other and the things they talk about, however, may be different from one language to another. This shows that there is much more to learn when we learn a language than just the vocabulary and the grammar of the language. We also have to learn the social behavior of the people who speak it.
【小题1】The passage suggests that when we learn a language______.

In Britain, the first day of the month of May is known as May Day. May day marks the end of the harsh(严酷的) winter months, welcomes the beginning of Summer, and optimistically looks forward to the bright and productive months.


For their ancestors, largely in rural areas, it was a major annual festival and was celebrated(庆祝) through out the country, especially on the first day of May with music, dancing and games.
How was May Day Celebrated in the past?


May Day began early in the morning. People went out before sunrise in order to gather flowers and plants to make their houses and villages beautiful in the belief that the vegetation spirits(神灵) would bring good luck.
A traditional May Day dance is Maypole Dancing，On May Day, people used to cut down young trees and stick them in the ground in the village to mark the arrival of summer.People danced around the tree poles in celebration of the end of winter and the start of the fine weather that would allow planting to begin. Maypoles are still a part of some
village life and on May Day the villagers dance around it.


May Day celebrations have their origins(起源) in the Roman festival of Flora, goddess(女神) of fruit and flowers, which marked the beginning of summer. So the highlight of the day was the crowning(为…加冕) of the May Queen(女皇), the human replica (模型) of Flora. By tradition she took no part in the games or dancing, but sat like a queen in a flower-decked chair to watch her 'subjects'.
Ever since 1978, for the convenience of the general public, many May Day activities have now been moved to the new May Day holiday on the first Monday of the month. This Monday is a bank holiday, a day off school and work. There are more intereting celebrations on this day.
【小题1】In the old days, most people in Britain made their living by             .
A. fishing                B. farming                 C. working in factories
【小题2】People in Britain celebrate May Day is to express their         
A. pleasure and hope       B. thanks and harvest       C. freedom and new life
【小题3】Britain’s May Day holiday is on          in 2010.
A. May 1^st               B. May 3^rd                 C. May 5^th
【小题4】What is not mentioned in this passage?
A. Special food.          B. Special custom.           C. Special activity.
【小题5】Which of the following statements is TRUE?
A. Only children can take part in the Maypole Dancing.
B. The queen of the UK came to watch her “subjects”.
C. Children needn’t go to school on May Day holiday now.

Dinner customs are different around the world. If you are a guest in Ghana(加纳),  this information will help you a lot.
In Ghana, dinner is usually from four in the afternoon to six in the evening. But there are no strict rules about time. Whenever a guest arrives, a family offers food. When you go to a home, the person who receives guests takes you to the living room first. At this time everyone welcomes you. Then you go to the dinning room. There you wash your hands in a bowl of water. All the food is on the table. In Ghana you usually eat with your fingers. You eat from the same dish as everyone else .But you eat from one side of the dish only. It is not polite to get food from the other side of the dish. After dinner, you wash your hands again in a bowl of water.
Most meals in Ghana have a dish called fufu. People in Ghana make fufu from the powder (粉末)of some plants. Sometimes they cut the fufu with a saw(锯子)because it is very hard. You must chew(咀嚼 )fufu well, or you may get sick. You eat fufu with the fingers of your right hand only.
【小题1】From the passage we know that in Ghana

Travel in New York
Public transport
Traffic is quite convenient in New York. The bus is cheap and the subway is common. What’s more, you can take both the bus and the subway with the same transit card. If you have something urgent to do. You’d better take a taxi because that’s fast.
Hotels
There are a lot of hotels in New York. The Plaza Hotel is the best and the most expensive one. If you want to pay less for your stay, there are many smaller hotels. The YMCA near Central Park is suitable for young people.
Eating out
Restaurants provide good service in New York. You don’t have to eat at McDonald’s every day and you can try different kinds of food from many countries. You can also enjoy tasty Chinese food in Chinatown.
Shopping
Shopping in New York is fun. You can see big shops everywhere in this modern city. Stores are open seven days a week, but be careful when you look at the prices because you have to pay taxes on everything you buy. That means you have to pay an extra fee which in New York city is eight percent of the purchase price.
Places to visits
There are too many places to visit in New York—Times Square, the Empire State Building, and, the Statue of Liberty.
【小题1】If you decide to buy a book ＄10 in New York, you should pay a total of how much after tax?

Every year on April 22, People all over the world celebrate Earth Day. It is a time to work to keep our earth clean. People plan projects to clean up the land, air and water.
U.S. Senator Gaylord Nelson first thought of the idea for Earth Day in 1962 when he saw polluted rivers and cities with smoke. He needed to get support from Americans to clean up the earth. Finally, on April 22, 1970, 20 million Americans celebrated the first Earth Day! Now many countries around the world celebrate it, and you can, too.
How can you celebrate Earth Day? Here are a few ideas:
Join a clean-up project------Clean up your street or a favorite beach.
Save energy------Turn off the lights when you leave a room, and use public transportation.
Use less water.
Reduce(减少)/ Reuse/ Recycle ------ Practice the three Rs: First, reduce how much you use. Then reuse or recycle what you can.
You can make a difference on Earth Day and every day!
【小题1】When was the first Earth Day?

Sports, school are tiring. But there is a great way to unwind after all of those activities. Go to north London, to the coolest part of the city---Camden. There you can find fashion trends (流行，趋向) and famous people.
Sam and I walked down Camden High Street and made our way to a bridge over Regent’s Canal. It is a 9-mile man-made river that goes through London.
We went into a big market and saw crazy signs, fun T-shirts, and things like hand-made earrings for sale. We bought Chinese fried noodles. It tasted very different from the noodles we make at home, and we ate it with a fork instead of chopsticks! 
Camden is famous for the punk（朋克）style that started in the 1970s. Punks walked around with bright pink and green hair, broken clothes with safety pins, metal buttons（纽扣）and pierced ears and lips. Punk music shops played loud, heavy rock music.
But there were also groups of hippies（嬉皮士）with big sweaters. They sat in cafes drinking soymilk, with black clothes, black lipstick and painted white faces.
Besides all these “normal” people, a lot of famous people come to Camden. Actor Orlando Bloom from Pirates of the Caribbean lives there.
Camden is especially known as a home to famous musicians. Lots of top bands played here, including Coldplay, Oasis---and Sam’s favourite band, The Vaccines. I had never heard of them before---But luckily they were playing that night in Camden.
【小题1】The passage is mainly about ________ in Camden.

Hollywood child star Shirley Temple died on Monday Feb 10th 2014, at home in Woodside, California, from natural causes. "She was surrounded by her family and caregivers," a statement said.
With her sweet smile and curly blonde hair, she was one of the most popular stars of the 1930s, in hit movies like Bright Eyes and Stand Up and Cheer.

Her singing, dancing and acting won over fans worldwide. She was given a special Oscar in 1935, when she was just six years old. To this day, she is still the youngest person to receive the award.
After retiring from films at the age of 21, Temple returned to the spotlight as a politician(政客) and diplomat  (外交官)  .
Shirley Temple started her film career at three years old. Between 1934 and 1938 she appeared in more than 20 feature films and was the top US movie star at that time.
As well as being the youngest ever winner of an Oscar (at the age of 6 years and 310 days), Temple was also the youngest person to present one of the statuettes(小雕像). She stood on a chair to give Claudette Colbert the best actress prize for It Happened One Night in 1935.
At the age of 12 Temple's star burnt out -- her parents stopped her from making movies and sent her to a girls' school. Her final film , A Kiss For Corliss, is available to watch online for free. This is star's final ever moment on the big screen. The actress retired from Hollywood in 1950, but she still appeared occasionally on TV.
In 2006, she accepted the Life Achievement Award at the 12th Annual Screen Actors Guild Awards.
【小题1】What did Shirley Temple die of?

If the rose can be said to be a special flower, then the apple can be said to be a special fruit. It is very important in American culture. American stories speak of Johnny Appleseed, who went throughout America collecting apple seeds and planting apple trees. He had a great love for nature and went through fields and farms adding richness and beauty to the country.

One of the first sayings taught to school children is, “An apple a day keeps the doctor away.” This short saying encourages children to eat fresh fruit to keep healthy. If someone always says good words to a person, people will call him an “apple polisher”. This, however, is not a good name. If someone is very dear to us, we say that he or she is the “apple of our eye”.
Most people believe that the fruit which Eve gave to Adam was an apple, even though the Bible(圣经) never says so. The apple, therefore, is a deep part of the language and stories of America.
An apple is also delicious. Apples can be cooked in many ways, used as a dessert, and made into sweet juice.
In many parts of the country during the harvest season, a popular activity is to go into an apple garden to pick apples. Washington, D. C. and New York are both famous for their apples.
Finally, when it’s time to take a vacation to American cities, one can always visit New York, which is “the biggest apple” of all the American cities.
【小题1】What does the underlined phrase “apple polisher” mean?

It has more than 845 million users worldwide. If it were a country, it would have the third largest population in the world, behind China and India. This is Facebook, a popular website from the US. It is similar to Renren in China.
Mark Zuckerber was born on May 14, 1984. As a little kid, he loved creating little fun computer programs. He set up the network in February of 2004. He was then a second-year student at Harvard University. One day, he had the idea of building a website for Harvard students to get to know each other. He set up the Facebook website. Harvard students could share photos and their personal information there. Soon, the website became very famous. Zuckerberg decided to leave Harvard to run Facebook full time. It was the biggest adventure in his life and later brought him great success. Now, the service is popular around the world.
Greetings such as “Have you checked your Facebook page today?” became a part of young people’s everyday language in the US. People can exchange message and get the latest information about their friends on Facebook. Zuckerberg’s dream is to connect people through the Internet. “Facebook is to make the world more open and connected,” he said.
What’s the young man’s secret to success? Zuckerberg believes it’s important to have an open mind and be ready to try new things. “The riskiest thing is to take no risks,” he once said in an open letter. Sometimes the simplest ideas go furthest. We hope Mar Zuckerberg can go much further, maybe even further than Bill Gates.
【小题1】The underlined word “ it “ in the first paragraph refers to _________.

The city of Yangzhou came into being at the Spring and Autumn Period ( about 500 AC ).
As the key transportation link at joint place of the Great Canal（运河）( Beijing-Hangzhou) and Changjiang (Yangtze River), Yangzhou has been from the Sui Dynasty (600 AD.) an economically rich city, and then reached its top in the Tang Dynasty. At that time Yangzhou was a famous port and one of few biggest cities in East Asia.
With the improvement of the local economy and easy transportation way, there happened in the history a special local culture, which has an important place in Chinese culture. Many famous men of letters, poets, artists, scholars(学者), statesmen, scientists and national heroes in the history were born in, lived in or had connection with Yangzhou. Li Bai, one of the greatest Chinese poets visited and stayed in Yangzhou several times in his life and one of his famous poems about Yangzhou has been so popular that Chinese of all ages can sing it and has become a symbol of Yangzhou . Zheng Banqiao, a famous Chinese painting painter in the Qing Dynasty heading a group called “Eight Eccentrics”, had strongly influenced Chinese paintings. Wang Zhong and Yuan Yuan and some other scholars formed school of Yangzhou Scholars and achieved great success in the study of classic Chinese and writing. Zhu Ziqing, one of most famous modern Chinese writers and scholars, had always been proud of himself as a native of Yangzhou and thanked the city for being nourished(养育) by its rich culture. Quite a few other names you may come across frequently in the study of Chinese culture and history have connection with Yangzhou.Yangzhou was so attractive and important that many Chinese emperors in history had come specially to visit or check the city. Emperor Suiyang, who ordered to cut the Great Canal so that he could come more easily and quickly, died on his last trip to the city and buried(埋葬) here. Emperor Qianlong had come all the way from the north and visited the city nine times.
【小题1】Which of following sentences is NOT right according to this passage?