It's not a new phenomenon, but have you noticed how many nouns are being used as verbs? We all use them, often without noticing what we're doing.
I was arranging to meet someone for dinner last week, and I said “I’ll pencil it in my diary”, and my friend said “You can ink it in”, meaning that it was a firm arrangement not a tentative one!
Many of these new verbs are linked to new technology. An obvious example is the word fax. We all got used to sending and receiving faxes, and then soon started talking about faxing something and promising we'd fax it immediately. Then along came email, and we were soon all emailing each other madly. How did we do without it? I can hardly imagine life without my daily emails.
Email reminds me, of course, of my computer and its software, which has produced another couple of new verbs. On my computer I can bookmark those pages from the World Wide Web that I think I'll want to look at again, thus saving all the effort of remembering their addresses and calling them up from scratch. I can do the same thing on my PC, but there I don't bookmark; I favorite—coming from “favorite pages”, so the verb comes from an adjective not a noun. 
Now my children bought me a mobile phone, known simply as a mobile and I had to learn yet more new verbs. I can message someone, that is, I can leave a message for them on their phone. Or I can text them, write a few words suggesting when and where to meet, for example. How long will it be before I can mobile them, that is, phone them using my mobile? I haven’t heard that verb yet, but I’m sure I will soon. Perhaps I’ll start using it myself!
【小题1】“I’ll pencil it in my diary” in the second paragraph probably means         .

Who's in control of your life? Who is pulling your string? For the majority of us, it's other people-society, colleagues, friends, family or our religious community. We learned this way of operating when we were very young, of course. We were brainwashed. We discovered that feeling important and feeling accepted was a nice experience and so we learned to do everything we could to make other people like us. As Oscar Wilde puts it, “Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their lives a mimicry(模仿)，their passions a quotation.”
So when people tell us how wonderful we are, it makes us feel good. We long for this good feeling like a drug－we are addicted to it and seek it out wherever we can. Therefore, we are so eager for the approval of others that we live unhappy and limited lives failing to do the things we really want to. Just as drug addicts and alcoholics live worsened lives to keep getting their fix(一剂毒品)，we worsen our own existence to get our own constant fix of approval.
But just as with any drug, there is a price to pay. The price of the approval drug is freedom－the freedom to be ourselves. The truth is that we cannot-control what other people think. People have their own agenda(日程安排), and they come with their own baggage and, in the end, they're more interested in themselves than in you. Furthermore, if we try to live by the opinions of others, we will build our life on sinking sand. Everyone has a different way of thinking, and people change their opinions all the time. The person who tries to please everyone will only end up getting exhausted and probable pleasing no one in the process.
So how can we take back control? I think there's only one way－make a conscious decision to stop caring what other people think. We should guide ourselves by means of a set of values－not values imposed from the outside by others, but innate values which come from within. If we are driven by these values and not by the changing opinions and value systems of others, we will live a more authentic(真实的), effective, purposeful and happy life.
【小题1】What Oscar Wilde says implies that      .

A．it's important to accept others' opinions.

B．it's better to do what we like.

C．we shouldn't care what others think.

D．we shouldn't change our won opinions.

D
Who takes care of the elderly in the United States today? Many people wrongly believe that when people reach old age, their families place them in nursing homes. They are left there in the hands of strangers for the rest of their lives. Their grown-up children visit them only occasionally, but more often, they do not have any regular visitors. Actually this is not true. In fact, family members provide over 80 percent of the care that elderly people need.
Prof. Samuel Preston, a sociologist at the University of Pennsylvania, studied how the American family is changing. He reported that by the time the average American couple reaches 40 years of age, they have more parents than children. This statistic (统计) shows the change in life-styles and responsibilities of aging Americans. The average middle-aged couple can look forward to caring for elderly parents some time after their own children have grown up. Moreover, because people today live longer after an illness than people did years ago, family members must provide long-term care. These facts also mean that after care-givers provide for their elderly parents, who will eventually die, they will be old and may require care too. When they do, their spouses (配偶, 指夫或妻) will probably take care of them.
Because Americans are living longer than ever, more psychologists and social workers have begun to study care-giving to improve care of the elderly. They have found that all caregivers share a common characteristic: all caregivers believe that they are the best person for the job, for different reasons. One caregiver said that she had always been close to her mother. Another was the oldest child. In other words, they all felt that they could do the job better than anyone else. Social workers interviewed caregivers to find out why they took on the responsibility of caring for an elderly, dependent relative. They discovered three basic reasons. Many caregivers believed that they had the responsibility to help their relatives. Some stated that helping others made them feel more useful. Others hoped that by helping someone now, they would deserve care when they became old and dependent.
（  ）68. It can be inferred that a middle-aged couple in the US _______.
A. spend more time with their children than with their parents
B. depend on their children’s assistance in caring for the elderly
C. don’t pay more attention to their children than to their parents
D. spend more time taking care of their parents than before
（  ）69. The most common characteristic of caregivers is ______.
A. they all have professional qualifications in care-giving
B. they all believe themselves to be the best caregiver
C. they are the eldest child in the family
D. they are close to their parents
（  ）70. Which of the following is NOT a basic reason for care-giving?
A. Respect from other members of the family.
B. Prepayment for the care they will get in old age.
C. A feeling of being needed and helpful.
D. A strong sense of duty to the elderly.
（  ）71. What is the main idea of this passage?
A. Most old people in the US are living a happy life.
B. Most old people in the US live longer today after an illness than people did years ago.
C. Most elderly people in the US are taken care of by their families, who often find the experience satisfying.
D. Most elderly people in the US prefer living with their families to living nursing houses.

As you are probably aware, the latest job markets news isn’t good: Unemployment is still more than 9 percent, and new job growth has fallen close to zero. That’s bad for the economy, of course. And it may be especially discouraging if you happen to be looking for a job or hoping to change careers right now. But it actually shouldn’t matter to you nearly as much as you think.
That’s because job growth numbers don’t matter to job hunters as much as job turnover(人员更替) data. After all, existing jobs open up every day due to promotions, resignations, terminations(解雇), and retirements. (Yes, people are retiring even in this economy.) In both good times and bad, turnover creates more openings than economic growth does. Even in June of 2007, when the economy was still moving ahead, job growth was only 132,000, while turnover was 4.7 million!
And as it turns out, even today — with job growth near zero — over 4 million job hunters are being hired every month.
I don’t mean to imply that overall job growth doesn’t have an impact on one’s ability to land a job. It’s true that if total employment were higher, it would mean more jobs for all of us to choose from (and compete for). And it’s true that there are currently more people applying for each available job opening, regardless of whether it’s a new one or not.
But what often distinguishes those who land jobs from those who don’t is their ability to stay motivated. They’re willing to do the hard work of identifying their valuable skills; be creative about where and how to look; learn how to present themselves to potential employers; and keep going, even after repeated rejections. The Bureau of Labor Statistics data shows that 2.7 million people who wanted and were available for work hadn’t looked within the last four weeks and were no longer even classified as unemployed.
So don’t let the headlines fool you into giving up. Four million people get hired every month in the U.S. You can be one of them.
【小题1】The author tends to believe that high unemployment rate ______.

第二部分阅读理解（共25小题。每一节每小题2分，第二节每小题1分；满分45分）
阅读下列短文，从每题所给的四个选项（A、B、C和D）中，选出最佳选项，并在答题卡上将该项涂黑
Mary and Peter were having a picnic with some friends near a river when Mary noticed an object overhead. "Look!" she shouted to her friends. "That's a spaceship up there and it's going to land here."
Frightened by the strange silver-colored spaceship, most of the young people got in their cars and drove away quickly. Peter was fond of Mary and always stayed close to her. They, more curious than frightened, watched the spaceship land and saw a door open. When nobody came out, they went to the spaceship and entered inside. Peter followed Mary into the spaceship and did not hear the door closed behind him. The temperature fell rapidly and the two young people lost consciousness.
When they woke up, they were surprised to see that they were back by the river again. The spaceship had gone. Their car was nearby.
"What happened?" asked Mary.
Peter scratched (抓) his head, saying slowly, "Don't ask me. Perhaps we had a dream. Did you...Did you see a spaceship?"
"Yes," said Mary. "And we both went into it. Then..." she looked at her wrist. "That's funny. My watch has stopped. Oh, well, come on. It's time to go home."
Driving about fifty meters, they found their way blocked by a thick wall made of something like glass. They got out of the car and tried to find their way round the wall but discovered that they were inside a circular wall. It was like a mirror and prevented them from seeing through it.
On the other side of the wall, strange creatures walked past slowly. A few stopped to stare through the wall and read a new notice which, translated into English, said: "New arrivals at the zoo: a pair of Earthlings in their natural surroundings with their mobile house."
1. When the spaceship arrived, why didn't Peter drive away?
A. He did not like leaving Mary.  
B. He knew that the spaceship was harmless.
C. He was too frightened to drive.
D. There was a wall blocking the road.
2. Why did Peter enter the spaceship?
A. He saw the food and was hungry.
B. Mary told him to enter it.
C. He just followed Mary.
D. He wanted to study it.
3. Peter scratched his head so we know that _____.
A. he had lost consciousness
B. he was puzzled and did not know what to say to Mary
C. he had lost his memory
D. he was still half asleep
4. What do the words "strange creatures" mean to tell us?
A. They were wild animals in a zoo.
B. They were robbers.
C. They had landed on Earth in a spaceship and lived there.
D. The young couple were on another planet.