I finished my last evening shift of the week and could hardly wait to get home. I took off my nursing shoes, relaxed and then said goodnight to the rest of the girls and headed out of the door.

It was so cold and I could see the ice crystals in the air. As I approached my car, I saw one of my coworkers standing by the bus stop. I thought it would only take a couple of extra minutes to give her a ride home, and besides, it was too cold to be standing outside on the coldest night in January.

We chatted as I drove and before we knew it, we arrived at her house. As she headed up the steps to her door she turned around. “Do you know how to get to your house from here?” “How hard can it be? I’ll just backtrack the way I came.”

I started driving. Nothing looked familiar, but at first that didn’t bother me since I’d never been to this neighborhood before. I kept driving, and soon I sensed that something was wrong. I recognized nothing, not the neighborhoods, not even the street names. My husband would be worried about me. I looked down at my watch. It was now 2:30. I’d left work at 11:30 pm.

I stopped my car. I thought I’d better take stock of my situation. My gas gauge (汽油量表) was slowly going down. In total defeat I put my head down on the steering wheel and asked for help. I lifted my head. I saw a shadow down the road in front of me. It was a car. What was a car doing in the middle of nowhere at 2:30 in the morning?

Hesitantly, I got out of my car and knocked on the window of the other car. An elderly man slowly rolled his window down.

I said, “I’m lost and don’t know how to get back into town.”

In silence, he started driving. I drove behind him.

Finally I recognized a familiar street. As I turned to head home, I lost sight of my guiding angel. When I pulled into my driveway the warning light for my gas tank turned on.

66. The first paragraph tells us that the writer _______.

A. lived near her workplace                  

B. used to go home by bus

C. worked in a woman’s hospital          

D. had been working at night for a week

67. Why did the writer stop her car?          

A. To consider and judge the situation.                 B. To check whether there was gas.

C. To prevent the car breaking down.                  D. To turn to somebody for help.

68. How did the old man help the writer?

A. He told her the way to the town.                      B. He led her by driving in front.

C. He called the police to help her.                       D. He sent her to her home with his car.

69. When the writer got home, _______.

A. she thanked the old man very much

B. her husband was waiting for her anxiously

C. the oil in her car was just going to run out

D. she was totally frozen on the cold night

70. What might be the suitable title for the passage?

A. Keep up and you will succeed at last.

B. Meeting a friendly old man in trouble.

C. Giving a ride to my coworker at night.

D. Losing my way on a cold winter night.

请认真阅读下列短文，并根据所读内容在文章后表格中的空格里填入一个最恰当的单词。注意：请将答案写在答题卡上相应题号的横线上。每个空格只填一个单词。

We all have goals that we are moving towards and making a great effort to achieve. This is a good thing. Or can it be bad? How many of us never reach our goals and yet we have tried so hard and really thought about nothing else? I believe the mistake most of us make is that we do not focus on our present situation.

Let me explain. Most of us see our present situation as a stepping stone that we use simply as a means of reaching our final destination. We don’t take time to truly appreciate where we are today and all the great things we already have in our lives. We should focus our attention on the journey and not on the destination, or we will miss the beautiful scenery along the way.

Let’s use our job as an example. Now most of us want a promotion. We have plans to become the manager or general manager in our companies. Unfortunately, most of us will never reach the goal, but will watch others achieve our goal instead.

What we should be doing is focusing on the job we are currently in now. Forget where we want to get to and just focus on the present. You see, what we can control is our performance in our current job. We can decide to be the best we possibly can in our current job. Now this may mean further education to have the skills we currently do not have. It may mean working harder to produce better results than our colleagues. It could simply be a change of attitude, such as stopping complaining and becoming a more devoted and supportive employee. By doing our current job to the best of our abilities, we in fact give ourselves the best chance of promotion.

So the best thing for all of us to do to achieve our goals is to just focus on what we have and where we are now. Do the best and be the best we possibly can in our current situations, and we will give ourselves the very best chance of reaching our goals in the future. We have heard the old sayings and they are true: “Rome wasn’t built in a day.”, “Patience is a virtue”, and so on.

Have patience, have appreciation of what we already have, and take time to help ourselves be the very best we can. Do these things and we will all reach our goals, but more importantly, we will enjoy our life every day.

       Is there a magic cutoff period when children become responsible for their own actions? Is there a wonderful moment when parents can become spectators （audiences） in the lives of their children and shrug, “It’s their life,” and feel nothing?

       When I was in my twenties, I stood in a hospital  passage waiting for doctors to put a few stitches（缝线） in my son’s head．I asked, “When do you stop worrying?” The nurse said, “When they get out of the accident stage．” My mother just smiled faintly and said nothing．

      When I was in my thirties, I sat on a little chair in a classroom and heard how one of my children talked continually and disrupted the class．As if to read my mind, a teacher said．“Don’t worry．They all go through this stage and then you can sit back, relax and enjoy them．” My mother just smiled faintly and said nothing．

      When I was in my forties, I spent a lifetime waiting for the phone to ring, the cars to come home, the front door to open．A friend said, “They’re trying to find themselves．Don’t worry; in a few years, you can stop worrying．They’ll be adults．” My mother just smiled faintly and said nothing．

    By the time I was 50, I was sick and tired of being weak．I was still worrying over my children, but there was a new wrinkle．There was nothing I could do about it．My mother just smiled faintly and said nothing．

     I continued to suffer from their failures, and be absorbed in their disappointments．My friends said that when my kids got married I could stop worrying and lead my own life．I wanted to believe that, but I was haunted（萦绕心头） by my mother’s warm smile and her occasional “You look pale．Are you all right? Call me the minute you get home．Are you depressed about something?” Can it be that parents are sentenced to a lifetime of worry?

    One of my children became quite anxious about me recently, saying, “Where were you? I’ve been calling for three days, and no one answered．I was worried．”

     I smiled a warm smile．

The author intends to tell us in the passage that_______．

     A．parents long for a period when they no longer worry about their children

     B．there is no time when parents have no worry about their children

     C．it’s parents’ duty to worry about their children

     D．there should be a period when parents don’t have to worry about their children

We can infer from the underlined sentence “My mother just smiled faintly and said nothing．” that ______．

     A．her mother shared the same idea as the nurse

     B．her mother didn’t agree with the nurse

     C．her mother thought the nurse was lying

     D．her mother wouldn’t express her opinion upon the matter

The author mentioned her ages of twenties, thirties, forties and fifty in order to show_______．

      A．the hard times she experiences in her life

      B．the different stages of her children

      C．the support she received from her mother

      D．she had been worrying about her children in her life

What can we infer from the last sentence?

      A．The mother was happy that her child began to worry about her, too

      B．Finally the mother didn’t have to worry about her children

      C．At last the mother could live her own life without worry．

      D．The mother succeeded in turning her children into adults．

Which of the following should be the best title?

     A．Life             B．Parents   C．Worry          D．Children

I have had just about enough of being treated like a second-class citizen, simply because I happen to be that unfairly treated member of society --- a customer. The more I go into shops and hotels, banks and post offices, railway stations, airports and the like, the more I am convinced the things are being run solely to suit the firm, the system, or the union. There seems to be a deceptive (欺骗的) new motto for so-called “service” organizations --- Staff Before Service.
　　 How often, for example, have you queued for what seems like hours at the Post Office or the supermarket because there were not enough staff on duty to man all the service grilles or checkout counters? Surely in these days of high unemployment it must be possible to hire cashiers and counter staff. Yet supermarkets, hinting darkly at higher prices, claim that uncovering all their cash registers at any one time would increase operating costs. And the Post Office says we cannot expect all their service grilles to be occupied “at times when demand is low”.
　　  It is the same with hotels. Because waiters and kitchen staff must finish when it suits them, dining rooms close earlier or menu choice is cut short. As for us guests, we just have to put up with it. There is also the nonsense of so many friendly hotel night porters having been thrown out of their jobs in the interests of “efficiency” and replaced by coin-eating machines which offer everything from lager to laxatives (从贮藏啤酒到通便剂). Not to mention the tea-making kit in your room: a kettle with a mixed collection of tea bags, plastic milk boxes and lump sugar. Who wants to wake up to a raw teabag? I do not, especially when I am paying for “service”.
　　Can it be stopped, this worsening of service, this growing attitude that the customer is always a bore? I angrily hope so because it is happening, sadly, in all walks of life.
　　Our only hope is to hammer home our anger whenever and wherever we can and, if all else fails, bring back into practice that other, older slogan --- Take Our Deal Elsewhere.
【小题1】The writer feels that nowadays customers __________.