Several recent studies have found that being randomly (随机地) assigned to a roommate of another race can lead to increased tolerance but also to a greater likelihood (可能性) of conflict.

Recent reports found that lodging with a student of a different race may decrease prejudice and force students to engage in more ethnically diverse friendships.

An Ohio State University study also found that black students living with a white roommate saw higher academic success throughout their college careers. Researchers believe this may be caused by social pressure.

In a New York Times article, Sam Boakye – the only black student on his freshman year floor -said that "if you're surrounded by whites, you have something to prove."

Researchers also observed problems resulting from pairing interracial students in residences.

According to two recent studies, randomly assigned roommates of different races are more likely to experience conflicts so strained that one roommate will move out.

An Indiana University study found that interracial roommates were three times as likely as two white roommates to no longer live together by the end of the semester.

Grace Kao, a professor at Penn said she was not surprised by the findings. "This may be the first time that some of these students have interacted, and lived, with someone of a different race," she said.

At Penn, students are not asked to indicate race when applying for housing.

"One of the great things about freshman housing is that, with some exceptions, the process throws you together randomly," said Undergraduate Assembly chairman Alec Webley. "This is the definition of integration."

"I've experienced roommate conflicts between interracial students that have both broken down stereotypes(模式化形象) and strengthened stereotypes," said one Penn resident advisor (RA). The RA of two years added that while some conflicts "provided more multicultural acceptance and melding (融合)," there were also "jarring cultural resistance."

The RA said that these conflicts have also occurred among roommates of the same race.

Kao said she cautions against forming any generalizations based on any one of the studies, noting that more background characteristics of the students need to be studied and explained.

1.What can we learn from some recent studies?

A．Conflicts between students of different races are unavoidable.

B．Interracial lodging may have diverse outcomes.

C．Students of different races are prejudiced against each other.

D．Interracial lodging does more harm than good.

2.What does the Indiana University study show?

A．Few white students like sharing a room with a black peer.

B．Roommates of different races just don't get along.

C．Interracial roommates are more likely to fall out.

D．Assigning students' lodging randomly is not a good policy.

3.What does Alec Webley consider to be the "definition of integration"?

A．The school randomly assigns roommates without regard to race.

B．Students of different races are required to share a room.

C．Interracial lodging is arranged by the school for freshmen.

D．Lodging is assigned to students of different races without exception.

4.What can be inferred from Grace Kao’s saying about interracial lodging?

A．Schools should be cautious when making decisions about student lodging.

B．Students' racial background should be considered before lodging is assigned.

C．Experienced resident advisors should be assigned to handle the problems.

D．It is unscientific to make generalizations about it without further study.

I lost my sight when I was four years old by falling off a box car in a freight yard in City and landing on my head. Now I am thirty two. I can slightly remember the brightness of sunshine and what color red is .It would be wonderful to see again , but a calamity (灾难)can do strange things to people .It occurred to me the other day that I might not have come to love life as I do if I hadn’t been blind . I believe in life now.I am not so sure that I would have believed in it so deeply , otherwise. I don’t mean that would prefer to go without my eyes . I simply mean that Atlantic the loss of them made me appreciate the more what I had left .

Life, I believe, asks a continuous series of adjustments to reality. The more readily a person is able to make these adjustments, the more meaningful his own private world becomes. The adjustment is never easy. I was totally confused and afraid. But I was lucky. My parents and my teachers saw something in me--a potential to live, you might call it--which I didn't see, and they made me want to fight it out with blindness.

The hardest lesson I had to learn was to believe in myself. That was basic. If I hadn't been able to do that, I would have collapsed and become a chair rocker on the front porch for the rest of my life. When I say belief in myself I am not talking about simply the kind of self confidence that helps me down an unfamiliar staircase alone. That is part of it. But I mean something bigger than that: an assurance that I am, despite imperfections, a real, positive person; that somewhere in the sweeping, intricate（错综复杂的） pattern of people there is a special place where I can make myself fit.

It took me years to discover and strengthen this assurance. It had to start with the simplest things. Once a man gave me an indoor baseball. I thought he was making fun of me and I was hurt. "I can't use this." I said. "Take it with you," he urged me, "and roll it around." The words stuck in my head. "Roll it around! "By rolling the ball I could hear where it went. This gave me an idea how to achieve a goal I had thought impossible: playing baseball. At Philadelphia's Overbrook School for the Blind I invented a successful variation of baseball. We called it ground ball.

All my life I have set ahead of me a series of goals and then tried to reach them, one at a time. I had to learn my limitations. It was no good trying for something that I knew at the start was wildly out of reach because that only invited the bitterness of failure. I would fail sometimes anyway but on the average I made progress.

1.We can learn from the beginning of the passage that _______

A. the author lost his sight because of a car crash.

B. the author wouldn't love life if the disaster didn't happen.

C. the disaster made the author appreciate what he had.

D. the disaster strengthened the author's desire to see.

2.What's the most difficult thing for the author?

A. How to adjust himself to reality.

B. Building up assurance that he can find his place in life.

C. Learning to manage his life alone.

D. How to invent a successful variation of baseball.

3.According to the context, “a chair rocker on the front porch” in paragraph 3 means that the author __________

A. would sit in a rocking chair and enjoy his life.

B. would be unable to move and stay in a rocking chair.

C. would lose his will to struggle against difficulties.

D. would sit in a chair and stay at home.

4.According to the passage, the baseball and encouragement offered by the man _____

A. hurt the author's feeling.

B. gave the author a deep impression.

C. directly led to the invention of ground ball.

D. inspired the author.

5.What is the best title for the passage?

A. A Miserable Life

B. Struggle Against Difficulties

C. A Disaster Makes a Strong Person

D. An Unforgettable Experience

第二节完型填空（共20小题；每小题1.5分，满分30分）
阅读下面短文，掌握其大意，然后从36—55各题所给的四个选项（A、B、C和D）中，选出最佳选项
I hadn’t really planned on taking a trip this time of year, and yet I found myself packing rather hurriedly. I knew in   36   that this trip was going to be unpleasant.
I’m talking about my annual Guilt Trip. I got tickers to fly there on WISH – I – HAD’ airlines. I   37   my baggage all the way, which was weighted down with a thousand   38   of ‘what might have been’. No one greeted me at the ‘Regret City’ International Airport.
As I   39   into the Last Resort Hotel, I noticed to miss that great   41   occasion.
Many leading citizens went there. First, there was the ‘Should – Have - Done’ family.   42   came the ‘I – Wish’ family. Of course, the ‘Opportunities’ family, ‘Missed and Lost’, surely made an   43  . They each had a dad story to share. ‘It’s – Their - Fault’ treated us with stories about   44  things had failed in his life, and each story was applauded by ‘Don’t – Blame - Me’ and ‘I – Couldn’t – Help – It.’
To make a long   45   short, I became very depressed at the party   46  .
But as I though about all the stories of failures   47  from the past, it occurred to me that all of this trip and ‘pity party’ could have been cancelled by ME!
I truly realized that I didn’t have to be there to be   48  . One thing kept going through my mind – I can’t change yesterday, but I   49   have the power to make today a wonderful day. Knowing this, I left ‘Regret City’ immediately. Am I sorry for   50  I’ve made in the past? YES! But there is no physical way to undo them.
So, if you’re planning a trip to ‘Regret City’, please cancel all your reservations now.   51  , take a trip to a placed called ‘Starting Again’, which I like so much that I’ve made it my   52   residence. My neighbors, the ‘I – Forgive - Myselfs’ and the ‘New - Starts’ are so very helpful.
By the way, you don’t have to carry   53   heavy baggage, because the load is lifted from your shoulders   54   arrival. Surely you’ll find this great town – it’s in your own heart. Look me up if you’re ready for a (n)   55   changer in your life. I live on ‘I – CAN – DO – IT ’ Street.
36．A．person         B．time         C．advance       D．secret
37．A．grasped       B．held         C．lifted         D．dragged
38．A．inspirations      B．prescriptions    C．memories     D．souvenirs
39．A．checked       B．prepared      C．reserved       D．accessed
40．A．creating       B．hosting        C．introducing      D．participating
41．A．political       B．social              C．historical     D．cultural
42．A．There          B．Thus         C．Finally        D．Then
43．A．achievement     B．appearance       C．appointment     D．announcement
44．A．where          B．whether       C．how         D．which
45．A．story         B．event         C．comedy       D．tragedy
46．A．after all       B．in public      C．ever since     D．as usual
47．A．brought back    B．taken down      C．kept up        D．carried on
48．A．motivated     B．depressed     C．refreshed     D．impressed
49．A．could              B．might          C．did           D．do
50．A．attempts      B．preparations     C．mistakes      D．efforts
51．A．Instead        B．Nevertheless     C．Therefore     D．However
52．A．independent     B．mature         C．permanent     D．dynamic
53．A．away         B．through       C．out           D．around
54．A．beyond        B．upon         C．under              D．above
55．A．total         B．abrupt         C．punctual      D．severe

Mini Book Excerpts（节选）

 Biography

    When Salinger learned that a car park was to be built on the land, the middle-aged writer was shocked and quickly bought the neighboring area to protect it… The townspeople never forgot the rescue and came to help their most famous neighbor.

                         J. D. Salinger：A Life by Kenneth Slawenski（Random House,$27）Mystery（疑案小说）

    “You’re a smart boy. Benny’s death was no accident, and you’re the only who saw it happen. Do you think the murderer should get away with it?”The boy was starting stubbornly at his lap again.

     A thought suddenly occurred to Annika,“Did you …You recognized the man in the car, didn’t you?”

     The boy hesitated, twisting his fingers,“Maybe,”he said quietly.

                                      Red Wolf by Liza Marklund（Atria Books, $25. 99）

Short stories

     She wants to say to him what she has learned, none of it in class. Some women are born stupid, and some women are too smart for their own good. Some women are born to give, and some women only know how to take. Some women learn who they want to be from their mothers, some who they don’t want to be. Some mothers suffer so their daughters won’t. Some mothers love so their daughters won’t.

You Are Free by DAnzy Senna (Riverhead Books, $15)

Humor

    Do your kids like to have fun? Come to Fun Times! Do you like to watch your kids having fun? Bring them to Fun Times! Fun Times! “amusement cycling”is the most fun you can have, legally, in the United States right now. Why spend thousands of dollars flying to Disney World when you can spend less than half to that within a day’s drive lf most cities?

                           Happy and Other Bad Thoughts by Larry Doyle（Ecco,$14. 99）

1.If the readers want to know about the title of Salinger, they should buy the book published by

                    .

A. Ecco                                   B. Atria Books

   C. Riverhead Books                         D. Random House

2.The book Happy and Other Bad Thoughts is intended for                .

   A. young children                             B. Disney World workers

   C. middle school teachers                    D. parents with young children

3.Which book describes women with characters of their own?

A. Happy And Other Bad Thoughts

   B. J. D. Salinger: A Life

   C. You Are Free

   D. Red Wolf

4.After finishing the book Red Wolf, the readers would learn that               .

A. the boy helped arrest the murderer

   B. Benny died of an accident

   C. the murderer got away with the crime

   D. Annika carried out the crime

I arrived at my mother’s home for our Monday family dinner. The smells of food flew over from the kitchen. Mother was pulling out quilt(被子)after quilt from the boxes, proudly showing me their beauties. She was preparing for a quilt show at the Elmhurst Church.

When we began to fold and put them back into the boxes, I noticed something at the

bottom of one box. I pulled it out.“What is this?” I asked.

    “Oh?” Mom said, “That’s Mama’s quilt.”

    I spread the quilt. It looked as if a group of school children had pieced（拼凑） it together; irregular designs, childish pictures, a crooked line on the right.

“Grandmother made this?” I said, surprised. My grandmother was a master at making quilts. This certainly didn’t look like any of the quilts she had made.

“Yes, right before she died. I brought it home with me last year and made some changes,” she said. “I’m still working on it. See, this is what I’ve done so far.”

I looked at it more closely. She had made straight a crooked line. At the center of the quilt, she had stitched(缝) a piece of cloth with these words:  “My mother made many quilts. She didn’t get all lines straight. But I think this is beautiful. I want to see it finished. Her last quilt.”

“Ooh, this is so nice, Mom,” I said. It occurred to me that by completing my grandmother’s quilt, my mother was honoring her own mother. I realized, too, that I held in my hands a family treasure. It started with the loving hands of one woman, and continued with the loving hands of another.

Why did the author go to mother’s home?

  A. To see her mother’s quilts.

  B. To help prepare for a show.

  C. To get together for the family dinner.

  D. To discuss her grandmother’s life.

The author was surprised because ______.

  A. the quilt looked very strange.

  B. her grandmother liked the quilt.

  C. the quilt was the best she had seen.

  D. her mother had made some changes

The italic word “crooked” in the passage most probably means ______.

  A. unfinished    B. broken    C. bent     D. unusual

Which of the following would be the best title for the passage?

  A. A Quilt Show   B. Mother’s Home   C. A Monday Dinner  D. Grandmother’s Quilt