I had planted different hot peppers in my garden. A Mexican fellow called Sam worked for me. He_36_ hot peppers, too. It was late summer and a beautiful sunny day. My son, Marcus, eight, and my daughter, Ellen, ten, picked several 37 hot peppers and entered our workroom, with their             38 ．They wanted to see if Sam could   39  more hot peppers than I.  After a little joking with them we agreed to the contest but they had to   40 ，too. That was not  41 terms for them so they left the room.

They  42  about an hour later with a new proposal and new hot peppers they had just picked．  43 they had reasoned that when a pepper was  44 in color it was the hottest kind. Marcus and Ellen would eat the green colored peppers   45 Sam and I would eat the red colored peppers. Giving Sam a wink（使眼色），we  46 . Showing good sportsmanship（体育精神），I had the kids  47 the peppers that Sam and I would eat.  They picked the largest two red peppers.  Then they picked a  48  green one for themselves. Knowing what was going to  49 ，I told them I would make it  50  for them.  I cut one pepper in half and removed the  51  to reduce the heat a little. The contest was one of speed rather than  52 ．Each child had pepper in hand and was  53 to start .

Looking at my  54  I said, OK, on three. One, Two, THREE. So much happened all at once. Tears, screams and spitting running around, the children  55  their mouth with fast waving hands.  A short time later, Sam and I agreed that the red tasted better than the green.

During the week days,  they are luckily busy office people; but on weekends, they are just a brood of（一窝）stay-home animals. A recent survey shows that office workers in China prefer quiet and easy ways to spend their weekends.

In the survey, conducted by job seeking and offering website Zhaopin.com, 32.8 percent of the 6,000 respondents choose to stay home at weekends and have a good rest, the Beijing Morning Post reported.

Twenty percent use their days-off to do housework. And only 19.3 percent are willing to have fun during the break time from work. Their first choice of fun is shopping.

Other choices, though practiced by few, include meeting friends, accompanying the children, trips to the suburbs, and lessons for more skills.

When they. go shopping, 54.5 percent of the white-collars actually shop in supermarkets, while 27.9. percent attend other stores, especially when discounts are offered.

These activities don't seem to cost much, as 60 percent spend average less than 200 yuan (US$26) during weekends, and 30 percent no more than 500 yuan.

When asked whom they would spend the weekends with, about 40 percent mention their partners, and 30 percent prefer a weekend all by themselves. Less than 20 percent hang out with friends.

Only 5.8 percent would kill the time with their colleagues. This is because we tend to avoid too many personal contacts with our co-workers when we don't have to work with them, according to some experts.

1. How many of the office workers who are the respondents do the housework at weekends?

2.Why will less than ten percent of office workers kill the time with their colleagues at weekends?

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

4. What is the best title of the passage?

With winter fast approaching, flu season is here. People can easily catch the flu bug and they try to fight it with western medicine, traditional Chinese medicine or some homemade secret recipes. Yet some of these strategies are ineffective or even harmful, the best way to counter the flu is to protect us from contracting（感染）it. So here are some good habits to protect people from contracting flu from the very beginning.

●During the day, keep the bedroom window open to let fresh air in．

●Wash your face with cold water in the morning and wash your feet with hot water in the evening. This practice can help boost blood circulation and improve the body's resistance.

●Do some exercises in the morning. such as jogging or shadowboxing（太极拳)for 10 minutes.

●Rinse(漱) your mouth with salt water or tea every morning and every evening. This can help kill flu bacteria, clear phlegm(痰）and keep the mouth fresh.

●Wear more clothes when it's cold and take some off when it's warm

●Get a bottle of vinegar or Chinese white wine at hand and smell it now and then. Their pungent smell can help people get refreshed and improve their body's resistance.

● Drink two kinds of beverages（饮料）before going to bed, which can help people stay away from the flu: soup made of radish（萝卜）and vinegar, and tea made of fresh ginger（生姜）．

●Close the doors and windows and put a pot of boiling vinegar in the room Vinegar steam is a good way to kill flu bacteria in the air.

1. Some people like washing their face with cold water in the morning and washing their feet with hot water in the evening perhaps because______．

2.According to the passage, we can know that the best way to fight the flu is to ______.

3. What would be the best title for this passage?

Time magazine named Russian President Vladimir Putin its  "Person of the Year" for 2007 on Wednesday, saying he had returned his country from chaos（混乱）to "the table of world power" though at a cost of democratic principles.

He doesn't care about civil liberties; he doesn't care about free speech; he cares about stability. But Putin, 55, is enormously popular in Russia, presiding over a resurgent economy based on income from oil and natural gas. On the other hand, stability is what Russia needed and that's why Russians adore（爱戴）him.

Time magazine said on its Web site that Putin, the son of a factory worker had led Russia with persistence, a sharp vision and a sense that he showed the spirit of "Mother Russia".

The selection came days after Putin announced a plan to hold onto power after his term ends next year. Putin said on Monday that if his close ally(盟友），Dmitry Medvedev, won the presidency, he would serve as Medvedev’s prime minister. "Putin has put his country back on the map.  And he intends to redraw it himself,"Time said. "He will continue to lead his country as its prime minister and attempt to transform it into a new kind of nation, beholden to neither East nor West."

Time said the person of the year distinction, which it has awarded since 1927, is not an endorsement（支持）or a popularity prize but a recognition of the individuals and forces that shape the world. "At significant cost of, the principles and ideas that free nations prize, (Putin) has performed an extraordinary feat of leadership in placing stability on a nation that has rarely known it and brought Russia back to the table of world power. For that reason, Vladimir Putin is Time's 2007 Person of the Year," the magazine said.

Time had earlier selected four other Kremlin leaders for the distinction:  Stalin, who was chosen twice, Nikita Khrushchev, Yuri Andropov and Mikhail Gorbachev.

1.What does the underlined word "feat" in Para 5 probably mean?

2.What's the major reason why Putin becomes popular in Russia?

3.What may be the best title of the passage?

4.What can we inter from the passage?

"Yes, but what did we use to do before there was television?" How often we hear statements like this! Television hasn't been with us all that long, but we are already beginning to forget what the world was like without it. Before we admit the one-eyed monster into our homes,  we never found it difficult to occupy our spare time. We used to enjoy civilized pleasures. For instance, we used to have hobbies, we used to entertain our friends and be entertained by them, we used to go outside for our amusements to theaters, cinemas, restaurants and sporting events. We even used to read books and listen to music and broadcast talk occasionally. All that belongs to the past. Now all our free time is regulated by the "goggle-box". We rush home or gulp down（吞咽）our meals to be in time for this or that program. We have even given up sitting at table and having a leisurely evening meal, exchanging the news of the day. A sandwich and a glass of beer will do-anything providing it doesn't interfere with the program. The monster demands and obtains absolute silence and attention. If any member of the family dares to open his mouth during a program, he is quickly silenced.

The whole generations are growing up addicted to the telly (television). Food is left uneaten, homework undone and sleep is lost. The telly is universal pacifier（抚慰者）．It is now standard practice for mother to keep the children quiet by putting them in the living-room and turning on the set.It doesn’t matter that the children will watch rubbishy commercials or violence－so long as they are quiet.

There is little limit to the amount of creative talent available in the world. Television consumes vast quantities of creative work. That is why most of programs are bad:  it is impossible to keep pace with the demand and maintain high standards as well. When millions watch the same programs,  the whole world becomes a village, and society is reduced to the conditions which obtain in preliterate（无文字的）communities. We become completely dependent on the two most primitive media of communication: pictures and the spoken word.

Television encourages passive enjoyment. We become content with secondhand experiences. It is so easy to sit in our armchairs watching others working. Little by little, television cuts us off from the real world. We got so lazy; we choose to spend a fine day in semi-darkness, glued to our sets, rather than go out into the world itself. Television may be a splendid medium of communication, but it prevents us from communicating with each other. We only become aware how totally irrelevant television is to real living when we spend a holiday by the sea or in the mountain, far away from civilization. In quiet, natural surroundings, we quickly discover how little we miss the repetitive oppression of King Telly.

1.According to this passage, which of the following statements is NOT true?

2. The main idea of the second paragraph is to show that_____.

3.Which is the best title for this passage?

4.This passage is an article of_____.

Nations plan next steps to end global warming

On December 3，more than 10,000 scientists, environmental activists and government officials from 187 countries met in Bali, Indonesia, which is the largest global warming conference ever held.

One of the main goals of the two-week meeting is to develop a replacement for the international treaty called the Kyoto Protocol, which has been signed by 174, countries, calling for limits on the emission of greenhouse gases.

Under the Kyoto Protocol, nations were legally bound to reduce greenhouse gases, but since it was signed in 2005, they have continued to increase worldwide. Of the largest greenhouse gas emitters, only Russia and Japan have agreed to follow me rules. China and India－second and sixth on the list－are making efforts to make cuts.

The U.S signed the treaty in 1997 but has not yet agreed to follow the strict rules, which require that greenhouse gas release be reduced by 10% by 2012. U.S. officials are opposed to these mandatory（强制性的），or required, cuts in emissions. "We’re worrying that it would be too costly and would hurt the U.S. economy. But we're not here to be a roadblock," said Harlan L. Watson, a top U.S. climate official.

Even if greenhouse gases are reduced, scientists say it will take decades or longer to stop the global warming that is already underway. To help poor countries deal with rising temperatures and climate changes, the UN has developed the "Adaptation Fund" to help them improve farming techniques and water systems.

But so far, it has only raised $67 million.

"The money should come from the countries most responsible and most capable," said Kate Raworth, a senior research official from the Oxfam International aid group. She listed the U.S., European Union, Japan, Australia and Canada.

1. The underlined word "they" in Paragraph 3 refers to“_____”.

2. By saying "But we’re not here to be a roadblock", Harlan L. Watson wants to say that_____．

3.According to Kate Raworth, the "Adaptation Fund" should come from all the following EXCEPT______．

4.Why did U.S officials not agree to make effort to reduce greenhouse gases?

5.We can learn from the passage that_____.

阅读下面短文，根据以下要求：1)汉语提示；2)首字母提示；3）语境提示，在每个空格内填入一个英语单词，并将该词完整地写在右边相对应的横线上。所填单词要求意义准确、拼写正确。

Some people take it for granted that some lucky numbers can bring them good

luck. For instance, the so-called lucky numbers like 6 or 8 are  w _____（广泛地）1._______

used because they have the similar pronunciation _______ the Chinese characters2.______

which mean “good luck”. So some young couples choose a date in __________3._______

there is a 6 or an 8 to h _______ their wedding; many shops choose such dates t4.______

_______________（庆祝）their opening. Yet many others don’t think so. They5._______

think that numbers have _______ to do with luck. They regard numbers simply 6._______

as a mathematic symbol for counting. W ____ our own contribution, good luck 7._______

won’t fall on us automatically. I’m in f______________ of the latter opinion. I     8._______

think our society is very modern now. Whether we can have good luck d_____      9.______

on _____________（我们自己）. If we work hard, good luck will come to us.     10._______

假设你叫周阳，你收到你的澳洲朋友Frank的来信，他说他最近迷上了打网球，并建议你也开始练习这项运动。请用英语给Frank写一封回信。你的回信应包括下列内容：

1. Your appreciation of his letter and his suggestion;

2. Why it is impossible for you;

3. Your way of exercise;

4.…

注意：

1.回信要求包括上述内容并说明理由；

2.词数：120左右；

3.回信的开头和结尾已经为你写好，不计入总词数。

Dear Frank,

Hi! Thank you very much for_______________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________________

Talk to you soon.

Yours truly,

Zhou Yang

During ______ afternoon, the rain became smaller, but towards__________ evening, there was a sudden landslide that buried the village.

A. /; the           B. the; /               C. the; the          D. an; the

It is reported that the ______ in Libya is hotting up.

A. strength         B. violence            C. power           D. activity