B
“It was all his own idea, ” says Pat Peters, the 38-year-old wife of Palo Alto, California high school football coach Bob Peters, 39. Bob had just drawn up a “motherhood contract” --a document stating that for 70 days this summer he would take over the care and feeding of the couple’s four children, plus all household chores. Although he didn’t even know how to make coffee when he signed, he was quite confident.(He thought the experience would make a nice book.)
After 40 of the 70 days, he was ready to give up. “I was beaten down, completely humbled（挫败的）,”  admits Peters. Three weeks later he spoke to the local press, stating, “Not only is motherhood a difficult task, not only is it never-ending, it is an impossible job for any normal human being.”
Bob and Pat were high school sweethearts. After they were married in 1960, she worked as a secretary to help put him through university. Since then Bob has been the football and wrestling coach at Palo Alto’s Cubberley High while Pat raised the kids. Then two years ago Pat went back to work as a secretary at Cubberley. “I had been around children so much,” she sighs, “I couldn’t talk to a grown-up.” She continued to run the household, however----until Bob signed the contract, therefore, she decided to relax and enjoy it. 
Although Peters had consulted(咨询) with his school’s home economics teachers and the head of the cafeteria, his meals were sometimes a disaster. “I tried to slip the butter I’d forgotten under the eggs after they were frying, ” he says. For the last three weeks, the family ate out a lot—sometimes having Macdonald’s hamburgers for lunch and dinner.
As for housekeeping, a home economics teacher had told Bob that a room always looks clean if the bed is made. “I found an easier way-I shut the doors, ” he says. Soon the kids were wearing the same clothes for a week. “I made them wear their shirts inside out, and when we went to pick up Pat at work they turned them right side out so they would look clean.”
Now that Bob has publicly admitted he was wrong, he is routinely sharing the child-raising and household tasks with Pat. The tentative（暂时的） title of his book about the summer is taken from something he shouted at the kids one day.
45. The couple signed the contract because _______.
A. Pat complained a lot about her doing the housework all by herself
B. Bob loved taking care of children and wanted his wife to have a good rest
C. they agreed that husband and wife should share household tasks
D. Bob thought it easy to take care of the family and wanted the experience for a book
46. It was agreed that if Bob failed to keep to the contract, he would have to _______.
A. pay a certain amount of money
B.  admit publicly he was wrong about motherhood 
C. say sorry to his wife         D. do all the housework for years
47. What can we learn about Pat Peters?
A. She was hard-working and selfless.   B. She was pretty and kind-hearted.
C. She was tired of the child-raising and household tasks.
D. She did not love Bob any longer.
48. Which of the following can best end the news story?
A. “Wait till your mother gets home!”    B. “My experience of being a mother.”
C. “I’m proud of you all, my dear!”     D. “Motherhood: an impossible job for anyone.”

Sam, a dog, was left behind in Colorado while his owners, Mr. And Mrs. Green moved to Southern California. They did not give the dog up. They found him a very nice home before they moved. They would have let Sam accompany them, but they were afraid the dog’s presence would make it difficult for them to rent a house when they reached their destination.
The Green family lived in Colorado for less than a year. Before that, they had lived in the same neighborhood in California to which they returned. So Sam had been there before, but only for a short time when he was young.
Several months after the Greens left Colorado, after they were comfortably settled back in California, they heard a scratch at the door. They couldn’t imagine who might be there. It never occurred to them that it might be Sam, because they were sure he was happily set up with his new family back in Colorado. When they opened the door, the Greens saw a dirty, tired dog with very hurting feet. The animal looked a little bit like Sam, but no one could believe that Sam could have walked 840 miles on his own. The tired dog spent the night under the family car. The next day, when he was more rested, he performed some of his old tricks. The Greens knew they had their own dog back.
【小题1】The story suggests that _______ .

The professor’s house, big and untidy, stood alone at one end of a huge garden. The place was totally uncared for, quite __36__ and overgrown with all sorts of useless things. I __37__ my way through bushes and tall weeds to the front door and rang the bell.
I was glad that I found him. In twenty minutes he put me right on all the __38__ that had puzzled me. I was on the __39__ of leaving when I looked out of his study window and said, “You’re very fond of gardening, I see”
“No, I’m not,” he said. “__40__, I love this garden, though. It’s __41__ I always wanted it to be. I never touch it __42__ all.”
“It could be made lovely. It seems a pity to let all this ground go to __43__. But perhaps you don’t _ 44__ that way?” said I.
“I don’t. I lived here when I was a child, and I had   45  of gardening then. It was my father’s hobby, you see. Unfortunately, he wasn’t   46  _ enough to do it himself. My brother and I did all of it between us year after year. There was one right way and many wrong ways. Each blade (叶片) of grass was an enemy to be _ _47__ out by hand, not just cut off. I’ve spent a good part of life at work here.”
“I see. You took a dislike to it, and now you’re getting even！”
“I dislike it. Then, of course, I didn’t understand the effect it had. It used to __48__ me. It appeared in my __49__ ——— a mistake here, something not quite straight here, the enemy showing its head in a place I was __50__ to have cleaned. The work was too much. It seemed endless. The size of the place was itself a fight to a boy.”
“And now it’s yours, you’re just letting it go to ...”
“__51__?” he said. “No, I don’t agree with that. This garden and I are now the best friends. I like  _52__ it grow in its own way. I make no __53__ on it. I never disturb it, and it never disturbs me. It has _ 54__ at last, and so have I.”
“But the path is over grown. It’s __55__ for you, isn’t it?”
“That’s part of my pleasure，” he laughed. “You can go out the back way. The weeds are shorter there because they don’t get the sun.”                             

There are about fifteen hundred languages in the world. But  21  a few of them are very  22 . English is one of these. Many, many people use it, not only in England and the U.S.A., but in other parts of the world. About 200,000,000 speak it as their own language. It is difficult to say how many people are learning it as a   23  language. Many millions are   24  to do so.
Is it easy or difficult to learn English? Different people may have different   25  . Have you ever   26  ads of this kind in the newspapers or magazines? “Learn English in six weeks, or your   27 back.”.“Easy and funny! Our records and tapes   28   you master(掌握) your English in a month.  29  the first day your   30  will be excellent. Just send us ... ” Of course, it never  31  quite like this.
The only language that seems easy to learn is the mother tongue. We should   32  that we all learned our own language well when we were  33 . If we could learn English in the same way, it would not seem so difficult.   34   what a small child does. He listens to what people say. He tries what he hears. When he is using the language, talking in it,  35  in it all the time. Just imagine how much  36  that gets!
So it is  37  to say that learning English is easy, because a good command of English  38   upon a lot of practice. And practice needs great effort and   39   much time. Good teachers, records, tapes, books, and dictionaries will   40 . But they cannot do the student's work for him.

On Sunday while I was having my own Father’s Day celebration, I thought about my dad a lot. By the time I called to tell him that I loved him, he had already gone to bed. So I wrote the following to show what my dad means to me.
About 28 years ago, my dad was a used car salesman. Every Thursday night, he would head off to Shreveport, LA for the auction（拍卖会）. Most of the time, I drove a car over there for him so he could sell it there.
One day, I was riding with my dad to Shreveport for the auction when he found a hitchhiker（搭车者）with a backpack. As soon as dad saw him, he pulled the car over and offered him a ride. Dad asked him his name and continued to talk to him about all sorts of things. I can’t recall why but he told dad a lot of terrible things that had occurred to him. I sat in the back seat and watched the scene with amazement. I could see that the hitchhiker changed his attitude as he could tell someone who was really listening to him.
We drove another forty-five minutes before we had to exit the interstate（州际公路）. We pulled over and dad told him to keep his head up and things would start looking up for him soon. He reached into his pocket and handed the hitchhiker a twenty-dollar bill and then a the-dollar bill.
We drove on and my dad did not say a single thing. I was still completely amazed by what I just witnessed. I was always told everyone to never pick up a hitchhiker and yet my dad did it every single time he saw one. I’m sure that it made that poor man’s day, probably a month to follow.
While reflecting upon that story, I learned a lot about my dad and life. I learned that if you come from a place of service or compassion, you can change people’s lives. Just one single kind act can change someone’s life. It never occurred to my dad about not stopping to help him.
This is the type of person my dad is. Thank you for setting such high standards for me to follow.
Dad, I love you. Happy Father’s Day!
【小题1】The author and his dad met a hitchhiker（搭车者）_______.