That summer an army of crickets(蟋蟀) started a war with my father. Dad didn’t care for insects much more than Mamma, but he could tolerate a few living in the basement. Mamma was a city girl and she said a cricket was just too noisy. Then to support her point she wouldn’t go to bed. She drank coffee and smoked my father’s cigarettes and paced between the sofa and the TV. Next morning she threatened to pack up and leave, so Dad drove to the store and hurried back. He sprayed poison from a jug. When he was finished he told us that was the end of it.

  For a couple of weeks we went back to find dead crickets in the laundry. He suggested that we’d all be better off to hide as many as we could from Mamma. I fed a few dozen to the cat who I didn’t like because he scratched for no reason.

  However, soon live crickets started showing up in the kitchen and bathroom. Mamma was upset because she thought they were the dead crickets coming back, but Dad said these were certainly new ones. He fetched his jug of poison and sprayed all over until the whole house smelled of poison, and then he sprayed the basement again.

  A couple of weeks later, when both live and dead crickets kept turning up, Dad emptied the basement of junk. Then he burned a lot of old newspapers and magazines which he said the crickets had turned into nests.

  While we ate supper that evening, the wind lifted some flames onto the wood pile. The only gasoline was in the lawn mower’s(割草机) fuel tank but that was enough to create an explosion big enough to reach the house. Once the roof caught, there wasn’t much anyone could do.

  After the fire trucks left, Mamma took the others to Aunt Gail’s. I helped Dad and Uncle Burt carry things out of the house and pile them by the road. We worked into the night and we didn’t talk much, while all around the noise of crickets broke our silence.

1.What do we know about the author’s mother?

A. She didn’t like insects at all.

 B. She liked insects more than his father.

 C. She cared for insects very much.

 D. She could only tolerate a few insects.

2.The author’s father drove to the store to buy _______.

A. cigarettes for himself                                                   B. some poison

C. more coffee for his wife                                              D. some gasoline

3.The author’s father burned the old newspapers and magazines because he thought ______.

A. they were no longer useful

B. the crickets were afraid of fires

C. they became the home of crickets

D. the dead crickets came back to life

4.We learn from the last paragraph that ________.

A. the author’s family lost their battle against the crickets

B. the author’s parents learned to put up with insects

C. the author’s family didn’t suffer much in the fire

D. the author’s parents got divorced

You never see him, but they're with you every time you fly. They record where you are going, how fast you're traveling and whether everything on your airplane is functioning normally. Their ability to endure almost any disaster makes them seem like something out of a comic book. They're known as the black box.
　When planes fall from the sky, as a Yemeni airliner did on its way to Comoros Islands in the India ocean on June 30, 2009, the black box is the best bet for identifying what went wrong. So when a French submarine (潜水艇) detected the box's homing signal five days later, the discovery marked a huge step toward determining the cause of a tragedy in which 152 passengers were killed.
　In 1958, Australian scientist David Warren developed a flight-memory recorder that would track basic information like altitude and direction. That was the first mode for a black box, which became a requirement on all U.S. commercial flights by 1960. Early models often failed to withstand crashes, however, so in 1965 the box was completely redesigned and moved to the rear of the plane – the area least subject to impact – from its original position in the landing wells (起落架舱). The same year, the Federal Aviation Authority required that the boxes, which were never actually black, be painted orange or yellow to aid visibility.
　Modern airplanes have two black boxes: a voice recorder, which tracks pilots' conversations, and a flight-data recorder, which monitors fuel levels, engine noises and other operating functions that help investigators reconstruct the aircraft's final moments. Placed in an insulated (隔绝的) case and surrounded by a quarter-inch-thick panels of stainless steel, the boxes can stand massive force and temperatures up to 2,000℉. When submerged, they're also able to emit signals from depths of 20,000 ft. Experts believe the boxes from Air France Flight 447, which crashed near Brazil on June 1,2009, are in water nearly that deep, but statistics say they're still likely to turn up. In the approximately 20 deep-sea crashes over the past 30 years, only one plane's black boxes were never recovered.
【小题1】What does the author say about the black box?

After Mom died, l began visiting Dad every morning before I went to work. He was frail and moved slowly, but he always had a glass of freshly squeezed orange juice on the kitchen table for me, along with an unsigned note reading," Drink your juice." Such a gesture, l knew, was as far as Dad had ever been able to go in expressing his love. In fact, l remember, as a kid I had questioned Mom "Why doesn't Dad love me?" Mom frowned, "Who said he doesn’t love you?" "Well, he never tells me, "I complained." He never tells me either," she said, smiling. " But look how hard he works to take care of us, to buy us food and clothes, and to pay for this house. That's how your father tells us he loves us. "

I nodded slowly. I understood in my head, but not in my heart. l still wanted my father to put his arms around me and tell me he loved me. Dad owned and operated a small scrap (片) metal business, and after school I often hung around while he worked. Dad handled scrap steel into a device that chopped it as cleanly as a butcher chops a rack of ribs. The machine looked like a giant pair of scissors, with blades thicker than my father's body. If he didn’t feed those terrifying blades just right, he risked serious injury. "Why don' t you hire someone to do that for you?" Mom asked Dad one night as she bent over him and rubbed his aching shoulders with a strong smelling liniment. "Why don’t you hire a cook?" Dad asked, giving her one of his rare smiles.

Many years later, during my first daily visit, after drinking the juice my father had squeezed for me. l walked over, hugged him and said, "I love you, Dad." From then on I did this every morning. My father never told me how he felt about my hugs, and there was never any expression on his face when I gave them.

1.What would be the best title for the passage?

A．My father never loved me                B．I just couldn't understand my father

C．My hard-working father                  D．Silent fatherly love

2.The author’s father always prepared a glass of freshly squeezed orange juice for him because____.

A．that was the author's favorite

B．that was a gesture of love

C．the author was always complaining

D．he was sure the author would be thirsty

3.The author’s father didn’t hire a helper because________.              .

A．he wanted to save money

B．his job required high skills

C．his job was too dangerous

D．he was not good at communicating with others

4.We may infer from the passage that _______.

A．the author's father lacked a sense of humor

B．the author's-father didn't love him very much

C．the author quite understood his father as time went on

D．the author's father was too strict with him

第三节完形填空(共20小题；每小题1.5分，满分30分)
James’s New Bicycle
James shook his money box again. Nothing! He carefully  26  the coins that lay on the bed. $24.52 was all that he had. The bicycle he wanted was at least $90!  27   on earth was he going to get the  28  of the money?
He knew that his friends all had bicycles. It was  29  to hang around with people when you were the only one without wheels. He thought about what he could do. There was no  30  asking his parents, for he knew they had no money to  31  .
There was only one way to get money, and that was to  32  it. He would have to find a job.  33   who would hire him and what could he do? He decided to ask Mr. Clay for advice, who usually had  34  on most things.
“Well, you can start right here,” said Mr. Clay. “My windows need cleaning and my car needs washing.”
That was the  35  of James’s odd-job(零工) business. For three months he worked every day after finishing his homework. He was amazed by the   36   of jobs that people found for him to do. He took dogs and babies for walks, cleared out cupboards, and mended books. He lost count of the  37  of cars he washed and windows he cleaned, but the   38  increased and he knew that he would soon have   39   for the bicycle he longed for.
The day   40  came when James counted his money and found $94.32. He   41  no time and went down to the shop to pick up the bicycle he wanted. He rode   42  home, hoping to show his new bicycle to his friends. It had been hard   43   for the money, but James knew that he valued his bicycle far more   44   he had bought it with his own money. He had   45  what he thought was impossible, and that was worth even more than the bicycle.
26. A. cleaned    B. covered       C. counted        D. checked
27. A. How        B. Why              C. Who             D. What
28. A. amount     B. part               C. sum               D. rest
29. A. brave       B. hard              C. smart              D. unfair
30. A. point          B. reason            C. result             D. right
31. A. cost          B. spend             C. spare             D. save
32. A. borrow      B. earn               C. raise               D. collect
33. A. Or           B. So                 C. For                D. But
34. A. decisions   B. experience      C. opinions         D. knowledge
35. A. beginning  B. introduction   C. requirement    D. opening
36. A. similarity  B. quality           C. ability            D. variety
37. A. brand       B. number           C. size               D. type
38. A. effort       B. pressure          C. money            D. trouble
39. A. all            B. enough          C. much             D. some
40. A. finally       B. immediately    C. normally         D. regularly
41. A. gave         B. left                       C. took               D. wasted
42. A. patiently    B. proudly          C. silently          D. tiredly
43. A. applying   B. asking            C. looking          D. working
44. A. since         B. if                  C. than               D. though
45. A. deserved    B. arrived           C. achieved         D. learned

As a boy, Sanders was much influenced by books about the sea, but by the age of fifteen he had decided to become a doctor rather than a sailor. His father was a doctor. So he was often with the doctors and got along very well with them. When he was fourteen, he was already hanging around the hospital where he was supposed to be helping to clean the medicine bottles, but was actually trying to listen to the doctors’ conversations with patients in the next room.
During the war Sanders served in the army as a surgeon(外科医生). “That was the happiest time of my life. I was dealing with real sufferers and on the whole making a success of my job.” In Rhodes he taught the country people simple facts about medicine. He saw himself as a life-saver. He had proved his skill to himself and had a firm belief that he could serve those who lived simply, and were dependent upon him. Thus, while in a position to tell them what to do he could feel he was serving them.
After the war, he married and set up a practice deep in the countryside, working under an old doctor who hated the sight of blood. This gave the younger man plenty of opportunities (机会) to go on working as a life-saver.
【小题1】When he was a small boy, books about the sea had made Sanders want to be ___.