He lived his whole life as a poor man He suffered from a mental illness that led him to cut off part of his left ear in 1888 and to shoot himself two years later. But after his death, he achieved the world fame.

　　* And the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, home to the biggest collection of his masterpieces, is marking the anniversary with exhibitions throughout the year.

　　“He is a big fame like Einstein and Beethoven. He is such a great figure. We are always amazed by how popular he is and his popularity seems to be growing.” said Andreas Bluehm, the museum's head of exhibitions.

　　Van Gogh was the son of a pastor. He left school when he was just 15. By the age of 27, he had already tried many jobs including an art gallery salesman and a French teacher. Finally in 1880, he decided to begin his studies in art.

　　“Instead of trying to reproduce exactly what I have before my eyes. I use colour more freely, in order to express myself more forcibly,” he wrote in a letter to his brother, Theo, in 1888.

　　Van Gogh sold only one painting during his short life. But now his works are sold for millions of dollars. His “Portrait of Dr. Gachet” was sold for US 89.5 million in 1990. It is the highest price ever paid for a painting.

1．The second paragraph mainly tells us that ________.

[　　]

A．the Van Gogh Museum is located in Amsterdam

B．the Van Gogh Museum has the biggest collection of Van Gogh'smasterpieces

C．exhibitions will be held in honor of Van Gogh

D．the Van Gogh Museum will hold exhibitions the whole year through for Van Gogh

2．The underlined word “figure” in the third paragraph means “________”.

[　　]

3．The writer cited a part of a letter written by Van Gogh to show Van Gogh's ________.

[　　]

4．Choose the right order of the given events.

a．He worked as a French teacher.

b．He achieved the world fame.

c．He left school. d. He cut off his left ear.

e．He shot himself. f. He began studies in art.

[　　]

　　We often speak of an artist as creating something and of a craftsman(工匠) as making something. The artist has the desire to create or achieve something original(new/ unusual), while the craftsman's aim is to produce something familiar and expected.

　　We may say, then, that originality is what distinguishes(tells) art from craft and is the measure of artistic greatness or importance. Unfortunately, originality is also very hard to define; the usual synonyms－uniqueness, novelty(creation), freshness－do not help us very much, and the dictionaries tell us only that an original work must not be a copy, reproduction, imitation, or translation. What they fail to point out is that originality is always relative, there is no such thing as a completely original work of art. Thus, if we want to rate works of art on an “originality scale”, our problem does not lie in deciding whether or not a given work is original, since the obvious copies and reproductions are for the most part easy enough to eliminate(get rid of), but in establishing just exactly how original it is. To do so is not impossible. However, the difficulties involved in our task are so great that we cannot hope for more than indefinite and incomplete answers.

1．we may conclude from reading the passage that a painting by an artist who has been influenced by other artists ________.

[　　]

A．might be best called an example of craft but not art

B．must be considered an imitation but not an original work

C．might still be considered an original work

D．can not properly be rated on an “originality scale”

2．The author specifically mentions his dissatisfaction with the failure of dictionaries to ________.

[　　]

A．distinguish clearly between art and craft

B．indicate that originality is a matter of degree

C．recognize that a reproduction may be true art

D．mention that a work of art must be original

3．The author suggests that an “originality scale” might be used to ________.

[　　]

A．distinguish an original work from a copy

B．determine the artistic greatness of a work

C．show that originality is always relative

D．explain the difference between art and craft

4．Which of the following statements would the author be least likely to make in talking about a great painting?

[　　]

A．The painter is more than a good craftsman.

B．The painting has considerable artistic significance.

C．The painting has a strange, unusual quality.

D．The painting owes nothing to other artists.

　　Richard DuVoss, one of the co－founders of the Amway Corporation, told how he purposely rose early one morning to thank his garbage man for his services. Mr. DuVoss did so because the man always was so punctual (on time), careful, and quiet. The fellow was so shocked that he drove off without saying a word. Mr. DuVoss rose early to meet the same garbage man for three mornings before he got a response. Finally, the man answered, “In 12 years nobody ever told me they appreciated what I do. You are the first person ever to thank me.”

　　Giving appreciation and sharing ourselves from a loving heart, with no need to get anything back, will always feel wonderful and refreshing to us and to others. Appreciation is a true gift. It comes from the heart and is offered spontaneously(自发地). Don't we all love to be appreciated? Above all kids need a lot of appreciation. A．little time, attention and encouragement from the one we love can lift our spirits and help us cope with life.

　　Appreciating others is a skill that anyone can learn It should be done from our heart and one should have a broad heart to accept appreciation too.

　　A．lawyer had successfully handled a difficult law case for a wealthy friend. Following the happy outcome of the case, the friend called on the lawyer, expressed his appreciation of his work and handed him a handsome Moroccan leather wallet. The lawyer looked at the wallet in astonishment and handed it back with a sharp reminder that a wallet could not possibly compensate him for his services. “My fee for that work,” sharply said the lawyer, “is five hundred dollars.” The friend calmly opened the wallet, removed a one－thousand－dollar bill from it, replaced it with a five－hundred－dollar bill and handed it back to the lawyer with a smile!

1．The garbage man was shocked because ________.

[　　]

A．he was doing an important job

B．what he had done is not worth appreciating

C．he was doing what he should do

D．never before had a man appreciated him for his work

2．According to the second paragraph, we should do the following to children EXCEPT ________.

[　　]

A．sitting with them and spending time with them

B．having fun and giving them full attention

C．being short－tempered with them

D．encouraging and praising them

3．The lawyer was unwilling to accept the wallet because ________.

[　　]

A．he didn't like the design of the wallet

B．he thought there was more money than he wanted in it

C．he thought only a wallet was not at all worth his services

D．he thought it was not good for a lawyer to accept the gift

4．The writer used the example of the lawyer to prove the fact that ________.

[　　]

A．one should have a broad heart to accept appreciation

B．money can't express one's appreciation

C．giving a wallet to others is far from a clever way of expressing appreciation

D．everyone need a lot of appreciation

　　Sydney is one of the world's biggest cities and has something for everyone when it comes to shopping. You will find excellent Australian products alongside the best that the world has to offer. At the bottom of Sydney Tower, you can shop in 160 of Sydney's favorite stores including 16 jewellery stores and many gift and fashion shops. It's all at Westfield Centrepoint.

　　Tel: 9231 9300

　　This prize－winning living museum is where Australia's history comes alive! Visit daily or stay for the night and experience life of the Gold Rush days. A．wonderful nightly sound and light show, “Blood on the Southern Cross” tells the story of the famous Eureka Uprising. Enjoy shopping along with real life character and entertainment. 4－star hotel and breakfast.

　　Tel: 5331 1944

　　Come and enjoy our delicious Cantonese seafood right on the water's edge in the historic fishing port of Williamstown with views of the city centre across Port Philip Bay.

　　Open 7days a week.

　　Lunch: Sunday to Friday

　　11:00 am－2:00 pm

　　Dinner: Monday to Saturday

　　5:00 pm－10:30 pm

　　Tel: 9397 6270 or 9397 7799

　　Built by James and Grace Cook, parents of Captain James Cook, Cook's Cottage stands proud in the Fitzroy Gardens as a reminder of life in the eighteenth century, and as a celebration and commemoration of the life and travels of Captain James Cook.

　　Open 9:00 am－6:00 pm daily, and until 5:30 pm during the summer.

　　Information: 9419 4677

1．Where can you spend the night in a tour?

[　　]

A．Cook's Cottage.

B．Westfield Centrepoint.

C．Sydney Tower.

D．Sovereign Hill.

2．What is the time that Cook's Cottage is open on Saturday in the summer?

[　　]

3．The Anchorage Restaurant is ________.

[　　]

4．If you want to buy the best products in Australia, you may call ________.

[　　]

　　With only about 1,000 pandas left in the world, China is desperately trying to clone(克隆) the animal and save the endangered species(物种). That's a move similar to what a Texas A．& M University researchers have been undertaking for the past five years in a project called “Noah's Ark”.

　　Noah's Ark is aimed at collecting eggs, embryos(胚胎), semen and DNA．of endangered animals and storing them in liquid nitrogen. If certain species should become extinct, Dr. Duane Kraemer, a professor in Texas A．&. M's College of Veterinary Medicine, says there would be enough of the basic building blocks to reintroduce the species in the future.

　　It is estimated that as many as 2,000 species of mammals, birds and reptiles will become extinct in over 100 years. The panda, native only to China, is in danger of becoming extinct in the next 25 years.

　　This week, Chinese scientists said they grew an embryo by introducing cells from a dead female panda into the egg cells of a Japanese white rabbit. They are now trying to implant the embryo into a host animal.

　　The entire procedure could take from three to five years to complete.

　　“The nuclear transfer(核子移植) of one species to another is not easy, and the lack of available(capable of being used) panda eggs could be a major problem.” Kraemer believes. “They will probably have to do several hundred transfers to result in one pregnancy(having a baby). It takes a long time and it's difficult, but this could be groundbreaking science if it works. They are certainly not putting any live pandas at risk, so it is worth the effort,” adds Kraemer, who is one of the leaders of the Project at Texas A．& M, the first－ever attempt at cloning a dog.

　　“They are trying to do something that's never been done, and this is very similar to our work in Noah's Ark. We're both trying to save animals that face extinction. I certainly appreciate their effort and there's a lot we can learn from what they are attempting to do. It's a research that is very much needed.”

1．The aim of “Noah's Ark” project is to ________.

[　　]

A．make efforts to clone the endangered pandas

B．save endangered animals from dying out

C．collect DNA．of endangered animals to study

D．transfer the nuclear of one animal to another

2．According to Professor Kraemer, the major problem in cloning pandas would be the lack of ________.

[　　]

A．available panda eggs

B．host animals

C．qualified researchers

D．enough money

3．The best title for the passage may be ________.

[　　]

A．China's Success in Pandas Cloning

B．The First Cloned Panda in the World

C．Exploring the Possibility to Clone Pandas

D．China－the Native Place of Pandas Forever

4．From the passage we know that ________.

[　　]

A．Kraemer and his team have succeeded in cloning a dog

B．scientists try to implant a panda's egg into a rabbit

C．Kraemer will work with Chinese scientists in clone researches

D．about two thousand of species will probably die out in a century

　　How does a bee tell the others where to find the flowers it has discovered?

　　In the early 1900s, Austrian naturalist Karl von Frisch puzzled over this curious problem. Fascinated with the ways honeybees worked together, Von Frisch began a deep study of their activities when they returned to their home called a hive. Von Frisch discovered that bees express themselves not only by feeling and tasting, but also by dancing. There was a means by which a bee communicated to other bees that it had found food. That was dance!

　　In fact, bees do two kinds of dances to tell other bees of their food discovery. First, there is a circle dance, in which the bee moves in a circle inside the hive. The circle dance is used when the food is not more than ten meters away. The second kind of dance done by the bee is a waggling dance. That is to say, the bee waggles the end of its body as it moves in a straight line, then it turns in a semicircle, runs straight again. The waggling dance is used when the food is more than ten meters away. Meanwhile, in the two dances, other bees gather around and closely follow the dancer. They smell the dancing bee that has found the food. The smell tells them where to find the flower and also what kind of flower to look for. For this really interesting work, Karl von Frisch won a Nobel Prize.

1．Bees communicate by means of the following EXCEPT ________.

[　　]

2．A circle dance is made ________.

[　　]

A．at the place where the bee finds food

B．on the way back home

C．when the bee is back at home

D．outside the hive

3．Which of the following statements may be TRUE?

[　　]

A．Karl von Frisch did the experiment to find out if bees had a language of their own.

B．In their spare time, bees often do two kinds of dances.

C．Bees can communicate to one another as human beings do.

D．In the circle dance, the bee waggles the hind half of its body.

　　The plan; turn Mars into a blue world with streams and green fields, and then fill it with creatures(生物) from the earth. This idea may sound like something from a science fiction(科幻小说), but it is actually being taken seriously by many researchers.

　　This suggested future for the “red planet” will be the main topic for discussion at an international conference hosted by NASA(美国宇航局) this week. Leading researchers as well as science fiction writers will attend the event. It comes as NASA．is preparing a multi－billion－dollar Mars research programme. “Turning Mars into a little earth has long been a topic in science fiction,” said Dr Michael Meyer, NASA's senior scientist for astrobiology(太空生物学). “Now, with scientists exploring the reality, we can ask what are the real possibilities of changing Mars.”

　　Most scientists agree that Mars could be turned into a little earth, although much time and money would be needed to achieve this goal.

　　But many experts are shocked by the idea. “We are destroying our own world at an unbelievable speed and now we are talking about ruining another planet,”said Paul Murdin, of the Institute of Astronomy, Cambridge, UK. Over the past months, scientists have become increasingly confident they will find Martian life forms. Europe and America's robot explorers have found proof that water, mixed with soil, exists in large amounts on the planet.

　　In addition, two different groups of scientists announced on March 28 that they had found signs of methane(甲烷) in the Martian atmosphere(大气). The gas is a waste product of living creatures and could be produced by microbes(微生物) living in the red planet's soil.

　　But scientists such as Dr Lisa Pratt, a biologist at Indiana University, say that these microbes will be put in danger by the little earth project. “Before we have even discovered if there is life on Mars, we are talking about carrying out projects that would destroy all these native lifeforms, all the strange microbes that we hope to find buried in the soil,” said Dr Pratt. This view is shared by Monica Grady, a planetary scientist at the Natural History Museum, London. “We cannot risk starting a global experiment that would wipe out the precious information we are looking for.” she said, “This is just wrong.”

1．The passage is about ________.

[　　]

A．a plan turning Mars into a little earth

B．the necessity of changing Mars

C．Mars supporting life

D．finding water in the Mars

2．Which of the following is NOT the reason why some scientists are against the plan?

[　　]

A．The project would wipe out all the native lifeforms on the Mars.

B．The project will cost too much money and work.

C．We would ruin Mars.

D．We are destroying our own world at an unbelievable speed.

3．We can infer from the passage that ________.

A．water is a crucial factor for life

B．the project will have little effect on the native lifeforms supposed to live on the Mars

C．Monica Grady is in favour of carrying out the little earth project

D．the idea. turning Mars into a little earth is nothing but a science fiction

4．Which of the following supports the conclusion of microbes living in the Mars's soil?

[　　]

A．Scientists found liquid water in the Mars.

B．Scientists found signs of methane in the Martian atmosphere.

C．Scientists found a lot of good soil on the Mars.

D．Scientists found some creatures living on the Mars.

　　In the age of reality television, success isn't the only way to the public eye. Failure can also create fame, just like William Hung, 21, a native of Hong Kong.

　　Hung recently has made an agreement with US－based entertainment firms Koch Records and Fuse Music Network. They will publish a full－length record, titled “The True Idol(偶像)” on April 6.

　　The idol is a civil engineering student at the University of California at Berkeley. He did a version(改写本) of Ricky Martin's “She Bangs” on the television show “American Idol 3”, on January 27. The Fox TV singing contest searches for pop stars among ordinary people. In the case of Hung, however, his act was so bad that the judges cut him off in mid－act.

　　Hung's response? “I already gave my best, so I have no regrets at all.” That's good, because any common person would have plenty to regret: the off－key singing; the blue Hawaiian shirt worn with pants pulled up too high; the terrible dancing; the hips jerking(摇摆) to a beat that did not belong to the song, maybe not even to this planet. It was, by all accounts, bad.

　　But, it was this very bad act that sold well.

　　Marc Juris, president of Fuse, explained it this way: “Everyone of us is happily guilty of singing our favorite songs at the top of our lungs with complete freedom, completely off－key and completely unworried. That's what William did and immediately won the hearts of Americans.”

　　Whatever it is, for the moment it's big. Three websites devoted to Hung have gone up on the Internet in the past few weeks. Versions of his performance have been remixed with hip hop and techno music and have made it to the top 10 request list at a Chicago radio station.

　　So, what does Hung think of this?

　　“There were all these people saying things about me. A．lot were saying I was very courageous and that I was great on the show, but some didn't have much respect for me and some were kind of mean.”

　　Now, he says he's not so sure whether to distance himself from the glamour(魅力) or to accept it. Returning to normal hasn't been easy.

1．What is the main idea of this passage?

[　　]

A．Sometimes an idol behaves quite foolishly.

B．Hung's performance attracted the public eye.

C．How an unsuccessful person became famous.

D．Success sometimes does not require hard work.

2．Hung was popular in America for all the following reasons EXCEPT ________.

[　　]

A．his shirt and pants

B．his off－key singing

C．his hips jerking

D．his excellent version

3．What does the underlined word “it” in paragraph 6 refer to?

[　　]

A．William Hung.

B．Hung's bad act.

C．Hung's website.

D．The public's opinion.

4．Which of the following shows the correct order of what happened to Hung?

a．The entertainment firms made an agreement with Hung.

b．The judges cut Hung off in mid－act in the singing contest.

c．Hung became popular among Americans.

d．Hung gave a terrible performance though he tried his best.

e．Three websites put Hung's funny performance on the Internet.

[　　]

5．Why was Hung able to win the hearts of Americans?

[　　]

A．His success was based on his own hard work.

B．He attracted people's attention in the contest.

C．He was good－looking though he didn't sing well.

D．His character was completely different from other idols'.