Without my glasses, I couldn’t _______ whether that figure on the blackboard was a three or an eight.

--- You must find one exam after another very tiring.

--- __________. In fact, they offered me good chances to apply what I had learned

A few weeks after my first wife, Georgia, was called to heaven, I was cooking dinner for my son and myself. For a   16 , I had decided on frozen peas. As I was cutting open the bag, it   17  from my hand and crashed to the floor. The peas, like marbles,   18  everywhere. I tried to use a broom,   19  with each swipe they just rolled across the kitchen．

For the next week, every time I was in the   20 , I found a pea---in a corner, or behind a table leg. They kept   21 . Eight months later I pulled out the refrigerator to clean behind it, and   22  12 frozen peas hidden underneath．

At the time I found those few remaining   23 , I was in a new relationship with a wonderful   24  I’d met in a support group. After we married, I was reminded 25  those peas under the refrigerator, and realized that my   26  had been like that bag of frozen peas. It had shattered（破碎. My wife had died; I was in a new city with a busy job, and with a son having trouble   27  his new surroundings and the  28  of his mother. I was a bag of spilled frozen peas; my life had come apart and scattered．

When life gets you   29 , when everything you know comes apart, and when you think you’ll never  30 , remember that it’s just a bag of scattered frozen peas. The peas can be  31 , and life will move on. You’ll find all the peas   32 , including the ones that are hardest to find. And when you’ve got them   33  you’ll start to feel whole again．

The life you know can break apart at any time. But you’ll have to   34 , and how fast you collect your peas depends on you. Will you keep scattering them around with a broom,  35  will you pick them up one by one and put your life back together?

Australian Flag Designs by Readers of the Sun-Herald

We received dozens of responses after inviting readers to send in their designs for a new flag. The designs we received include:

James Anthony, Drummoyne

James reduces the Union Jack down in size and changes its shape to become a reminder of the British tradition rather than canceling it altogether. At the same time he suggests enlarging the stars of the Southern Cross. His design attempts to use the best of both worlds in a newly designed flag.

As he says, “the British part of the Australian Flag is too big and the Australian bits are too small. When you make the stars bigger the Australian flag can look impressive.”

Joe Bollen, Turranmurra

Joe’s flag has the main elements of a risen sun, white horizon(地平线), red earth at the base and the Southern Cross. He intends to make the risen sun a special Australian symbol on the flag. He believes it represents life. The Southern Cross shows that we live in the Southern Hemisphere. (半球)

Maria Ieraci, Sydney

Maria deleted the Union Jack but otherwise kept the flag as is with the Southern Cross and Federation Star. She says, ‘There is only one correct way to change the Australian flag” and that is “to drop the Union Jack ---- when Australia becomes a Republic”, which she hopes will be before 2010.

Ron Bennett, Sydney

Ron recommends using the Aboriginal colors but replacing their image of the sun with the map of Australia. He says, “Australia is unique being an island continent with an instantly recognizable outline at that” and “this will leave no doubt as to which country the flag belongs.”

1.Which of the four designs can remind you of the past of the country?

2.The Southern Cross in some of the designs represents _________.

3.What does the Union Jack refer to?

After graduation I returned home to my small town in Indiana. I didn’t have a job yet. Mr. Hobbs, a friend of my father’s, owned a small shirt factory in town. Within the past five years it had grown from twenty to eighty workers. Mr. Hobbs was worried that his plant was getting too big and inefficient, so he asked me to come in on a short-term basis as a consultant.

I went to the plant and spent about a week looking around and making notes. I was really a mazed at what I saw.

Most curious of all, there was no quality control at all. No one inspected the final product of the factory. As a result some of the shirts that were put in boxes for shipment were missing one or two buttons, the collar, and even a sleeve sometimes!

The working conditions were poor. The tables where the workers sat were very high and uncomfortable. Except for a half hour at lunchtime, there were no breaks in the day to relieve the boring work. There was no music. The walls of the workrooms were a dull gray color. I was amazed that the workers hadn’t gone on strike.

Furthermore, the work flow was irregular. There was one especially absent-minded young man in the assembly（组装）line who sewed on buttons. After a while I recognized him as "Big Jim", who used to sit behind me in math class in high school. He was very slow and all the shifts were held up at his position. Workers beyond him in line on his shift had to wait with nothing to do; therefore, a great deal of time and efficiency were lost as Big Jim daydreamed while he worked. All week I wondered why he wasn’t fired.

After I made observations for a week, Mr. Hobbs asked me for an oral report of my findings.

1.The shirts from Mr. Hobbs’ factory can be described as ____.

2.Why did Mr. Hobbs ask the writer to the factory?

3.Which is not likely to happen in the factory?

4.Big Jim may get fired mainly because ____.

More Chinese are seeking out the surgeon’s knife to improve their looks.Yet the tragic death of the former Super Girl Wang Bei has made people aware of the risks of cosmetic surgery, which is becoming increasingly popular.  Wang Bei，24，is said to have gone under the knife in Wuhan，to jump-start her stage-show career. It seems that the ambitious singer has finally achieved the fame and influence after her death.

For years Miss Lu expected a plastic surgery to make her jaw fashionable narrow and her face smaller. She finally decided against it after hearing of the death of Wang Bei. "Wang Bei’s death rang the warning bell for me，"Miss Lu said in her blog." It was frightening and I gave up the plan. "

A common thread of online discussion is why someone considered beautiful was so dissatisfied with her looks. Some netizens said Wang was a victim of society’s impractical standard of beauty：double eyelids，and the pointed chin typical of Western actresses. Others said her death indicated the limits to which people would go to achieve fame and fortune.

Last year 15 billion yuan was spent on cosmetic surgery and the figure is expected to rise  20％ annually. The International Society of Plastic Surgery ranks China first in Asia in terms of the number of cosmetic surgeries in 2009. Worldwide, China is third, after Brazil, while the United States is first.

Nowadays，people are living longer and better. But the effect of aging off their appearance affects their mood and confidence. Many older women want to look young and beautiful. Young people, on the other hand, see cosmetic surgery as the key to wealth and love. "They want to improve their appearance to find better opportunities at work and in marriage，"says a famous plastic surgeon. "We’re living in a highly competitive society. People regard appearance as a weapon in life battle. Those who are young and naturally good-looking tell me，‘I don’t care how much I spend. Just make me look more beautiful.’ "

Advice from a surgeon and psychologist：

1.Choose regular, qualified hospitals with a good reputation.

2.Try to find an expert surgeon who will not suggest several operations over time.

3.Don’t expect too much from changing your appearance. Safety should be the first.

4.Have a realistic understanding of the risks of the surgery (death，injury and failure)and make a balanced decision.

1.What’s the influence of Wang Bei’s death on the public?

2.It is mentioned in the passage that________.

3.What’s the main idea of the 5th paragraph?

4.According to a surgeon and psychologist,it is better to________.

Environmentalists said our planet was doomed to die. Now one man says they are wrong.

"Everyone knows the planet is in bad shape," thundered a magazine article last year. Species are being driven to die out at record rates, and the rivers are so poisonous that fish are floating on the surface, dead.

But there's a growing belief that what everyone takes for granted is wrong: things are actually getting better. A new book is about to overturn our most basic assumptions about the world's environment. Rivers, seas, rain and the atmosphere are all getting cleaner. The total amount of forests in the world is not declining. The Skeptical Environmentalist by Bjorn Lomborg, professor of statistics at the University of Aarhus in Denmark, is an attack on the misleading claims of environmental groups, and the "bad news" culture that makes people believe everything is getting worse.

Now the attacks are increasingly coming from left-wing environmentalists such as Lomborg, a former member of Greenpeace. The accusation is that, although the environment is improving, green groups — with profits of hundreds of mil-lions of pounds a year — are using scare tactics(谋略)to gain donations. Lomborg's book doesn't deny global warming — probably the biggest environmental threat — but destroys almost every other environmental claim with many official statistics.

The Worldwatch Institute claims that "deforestation(沙漠化) has been accelerating over the last 30 years". But Lomborg says that is simply rubbish. Since the dawn of agriculture the world has lost about 20 per cent of its forest cover, but in recent decades the forest area's depleting has come to a stop. According to UN figures, the area of forests has remained almost steady, at about 30 per cent of total land area, since the 1940s. Forests in countries such as the US, the UK and Canada have actually been expanding over the past 40 years. Despite all the warnings the Amazon rainforest has only shrunk by about 15 per cent.

Nor are all our species dying out. Some campaigners claim that 50 per cent of all species will have died out within 50 years. But other studies show only 0.08 per cent of species are dying out each year. Conservation efforts have been successful. Whales are no longer threatened and the bald eagle is off the endangered list.

Environmental groups claim that many of the improvements are the results of the success of their campaigns. Stephen Tindale, director of Greenpeace UK, said, "There are important examples, such as acid rain and ozone, where things aren't as bad as predicted, and that's because behavior has changed."

1.In his book, The Skeptical Environmentalist, what is Lomborg's main argument?

2.What is Lomborg's main accusation of environmentalists?

3.The underlined word "depleting" in Paragraph 5 is closest in meaning to "____".

4.According to the passage, which of the following statements is true?

TUVALU, a tiny country in the Pacific Ocean, has asked for help as it fears it will be swallowed up by the sea.Storms and huge waves are a constant threat and none of Tuvalu’s nine little islands is more than five meters above sea level, Salt water is already entering the country’s drinking water supply, as well as damaging plants that produce fruit and vegetable.__51___

___52___. Venice, a historic city in Italy best known for its canals, has sunk about 24 cm over the past 100 years. Experts say that it will have sunk another 20-50cm by 2050. A century ago, St. Mark’s Square, the lowest point in the city, floodedd about nine times a year, Nowadays, it happens more than 100 times. While Venice is slowly sinking into the mud on which it stands, Tuvalu’s rising sea level is caused by global warming.

The average global temperature has increased by almost 0.5 centigrade degrees over the past century; scientists expect it to rise by extra 1-3 degrees over the next 100 years.

Warmer weather makes glaciersmelt, adding more water to the ocean. The warmer temperatures also make water expand, so it takes up more space, causing the sea level to rise. The sea level has risen about 10－25 cm in the last 100 years.

___53___. Through burning coal, oil and gas, people have been increasing the greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, such as CO₂. This adds to the power of the greenhouse effect, making the planet even warmer.

Many scientists believe that, if the warming is not stopped, there will be huge climate changes.___54____.____55____, the sea will swallow up millions of homes and the world will be flooded with “climate refugees” looking for somewhere to live.

E. The sea level could rise by one meter this century.

F. people face a lot of pollution.

G. much has been done about our planet .

假如英语课上老师要求同桌之间交换修改作文，请你修改你同桌写的以下作文。文中共有10处语言错误，每句中最多有两处。每处错误仅涉及一个单词的增加、删除或修改。

增加：在缺词处加一个漏字符号（^），并在其下面写出该加的词。

删除：把多余的词用斜线（\）划掉。

修改：在错的词下面划一横线，并在该词下面写出改正后的词。

注意：

1．每处错误及其修改均仅限一词；

2．只允许修改10处，多者（从第11处起）不计分。

It has been years since the Chinese get plastic bags from supermarkets for free. China has banned free plastic bags at shops and supermarkets, but people have to pay for them. The Chinese once used about 300 million of plastic shopping bags a day, which has caused environmentally pollution because plastic bags are not easy to break down. So the Chinese is encouraged to take their own bags for shopping. Then what kind of shopping bag is the best to carry? Some student in Chongqing have a extraordinary idea. They use old clothes to make cloth bags, and then to ask their parents and friends to use these cloth bags instead of plastic ones. They do so because they think it is our duty to help protecting the environment.

随着电脑普及率的提高，老师、家长和学生对字迹的重视程度降低了。据一项调查显示，有85.8％的中学生说自己的字迹不好看，而他们又不想改善字迹，其理由有很大差别。请根据下图写一篇100字左右的英文短文，说明该现象并发表自己的看法。