To take the apple as a forbidden fruit is the most unlikely story the Christians (基督教徒) ever cooked up. For them, the forbidden fruit from Eden is evil. So when Colu brought the tomato back from South America, a land mistakenly considered to be Eden, everyone jumped to the obvious conclusion. Wrongly taken as the apple of Eden, the tomato was shut out of the door of Europeans.
What made it particularly terrifying was its similarity to the mandrake, a plant that was thought to have come from Hell. What earned the plant its awful reputation was its roots which looked like a dried-up human body occupied by evil spirits. Though the tomato and the man were quite different except that both had bright red or yellow fruit, the general population considered them one and the same, too terrible to touch.
Cautious Europeans long ignored the tomato, and until the early 1700s most of the Western people continued to drag their feet. In the 1880s, the daughter of a well-known plant expert wrote that the most interesting part of an afternoon tea at her father's house had been the "introduction of this wonderful new fruit -- or is it a vegetable?" As late as the twentieth century some writers still classed tomatoes with mandrakes as an "evil fruit".
But in the end tomatoes carried the day. The hero of the tomato was an American named Robert Johnson, and when he was publicly going to eat the tomato in 1820, people journeyed for hundreds of miles to watch him drop dead. "What are you afraid of?" he shouted. "I'll show you fools these things are good to eat!" Then he bit into the tomato. Some people fainted. But he survived and, according to a local story, set up a tomato-canning factory.
【小题1】The tomato was shut out of the door of early Europeans mainly because _______.

C
I entered high school having read hundreds of books. But I was not a good reader.Merely bookish, I lacked a point of view when I read. Rather, I read in order to get a point of view. I searched books for good expressions and sayings, pieces of information, ideas, themes-anything to enrich my thought and make me feel educated. When one of my teachers suggested to his sleepy tenth-grade English class that a person could not have a "complicated idea" until he had read at least two thousand books, I heard the words without recognizing either its irony (嘲讽) or its very complicated truth. I merely determined to make a list of all the books I had ever
read. Strict with myself, I included only once a title I might have read several times.(How, after all, could one read a book more than once?) And I included only those books over a hundred pages in length. (Could anything shorter be a book?)
There was yet another high school list I made. One day I came across a newspaper article about an English professor at a nearby state college. The article had
a list of the "hundred most important books of Western Civilization." "More than
anything else in my life," the professor told the reporter with finality, "these books have made me all that I am." That was the kind of words I couldn't ignore. I kept the list for the several months it took me to read all of the titles. Most books, of course, I hardly understood. While reading Plato's The Republic, for example, I needed to keep looking at the introduction of the book to remind myself what the text was about.However, with the special patience and superstition (迷信) of a schoolboy, I looked at every word of the text. And by the time I reached the last word, pleased, I persuaded myself that I had read The Republic,and seriously crossed Plato off my list.
51.On heating the teacher's suggestion of reading, the writer thought______.
A. one must read as many books as possible.
B. a student should not have a complicated idea.
C. it was impossible for one to read two thousand books.
D. students ought to make a list of the books they had read
52. While at high school, the writer_________.
A. had plans for reading                B. learned to educate himself
C. only read books over 100 pages       D. read only one book several times
53. The underlined phrase "with finality" in the second paragraph probably means_________.
A. firmly         B. clearly        C. proudly        D. pleasantly
54. The writer's purpose in mentioning "The Republic" is to________.
A. explain why it was included in the list.
B. describe why he seriously crossed it offthe list.
C. show that he read the books blindly though they were hard to understand
D. prove that he understood most of it because he had looked at every word
55. The writer provides two book lists to________.
A. show how he developed his point of view.
B. tell his reading experience at high school.
C. introduce the two persons' reading methods.
D. explain that he read many books at high school.

CANYOUIMAGINEHOWHARDITWOULDBETOREADSENTENCESLIKETHIS? The ancient Greeks wrote this way. The lack of punctuation marks(标点符号) probably didn’t bother good readers, though. As they read, they just put pauses where they fit best. Also at this time, sentences switched directions. A sentence read from left to right. The next one read right to left, and then left to right again, etc.

The ancient Romans sometimes punctuated like this: They·put·a·point·between·each·word·in·a·sentence. The word punctuation actually comes from this idea and the Latin word punctum, which means a prick(刺).

       When the 5^th century arrived, there were just two punctuation marks: spaces and points. The space separated words and while the points showed pauses in reading. Then in the 13^th century, a printer named Aldus Manutius tried to standardize punctuation. He always used a period for a complete stop at the end of a sentence. He used a slash (/) to indicate a short pause. Over time, that slash was shortened and curled, and it became the modern comma.

       Since that time, other marks have enlarged the punctuation family. The exclamation mark comes form the Latin word xt. It was originally formed by putting an upper-case(大写字母) I on the lower-case xt. The Latin word xt means “exclamation of joy.” The question mark originally started out as the Latin word question, meaning question. Eventually, scholars put it at the end of a sentence to show a question. Over time, it became a symbol formed by putting a lower-case q on an o.

         Punctuation is still changing today. New marks are coming into existence, and old punctuation marks are used in new ways. Take for example, the “interrobang.” This 1962 invention combines the question mark and exclamation mark for times when writers want both. For example, “She did what??” or “How much did you pay for that dress??” Obviously, the interrobang is not widely used or recognized – yet. But its invention shows that English is not yet finished with its punctuation.

Which of the following is a comma?

A. ,                             B. :                       C.   ;                    D. !

What’s the first paragraph mainly about?

A. The history of punctuation.

B. The introduction of punctuation.

C. The very beginning of punctuation.

D. The ancient Greek way of writing without punctuation.

Please put the following events in the order they happened.

a. The exclamation mark and question mark came into the punctuation family.

b. Comma came into existence.

c. Romans put a dot between words to separate words.

d. A period was used to end a sentence.

e. The “interrobang” was invented.

A. cbdae                B. dcbae                C. dbcea                D. cdbae

What is the most possible situation for “She did what??”?

A. You are told she gave her baby boy a good beat.

B. You are wondering what she did to save the poor boy.

C. You want to know what she did for a living after fleeing to a foreign country.

D. You demand someone else tell you what in the world happened to her.

According to the article, we learn ________.

A. punctuation didn’t come into being until the 5^th century.

B. no one can really tell what new marks we may have in the future.

C. the invention of “interrobang” is a failure since it is not widely used.

D. both the exclamation mark and the question mark come from Greek words.

In this century the traditional American family is constantly faced with the threat of breakdown. Some sociologists suggest that one little-noticed cause may be the introduction of the TV dinner.

     Before the appearance of television sets, the American dinner was a big event for the family. In many homes, dinner time may be the only time when everyone got together. A typical dinner was usually in three stages. In the preparation stage, the children and Father frequently helped with setting while Mother put the last touches on the roast. In the eating stage, family members shared the day's experiences and more than food was eaten. In this stage families got to know one another and made joint decisions around the dinner table, and thus the family unit was strengthened. In the cleaning-up stage, children or Father again gave their hands, so that their importance to the home community was clear. Unfortunately, all of these have been removed by a product---the television set.

     By the beginning of the 1980s, the typical American family dinner was just twenty minutes long. The speed-up of the once-leisurely experiences is clearly connected to the pace of modern life and maybe a model of the modern life is the TV dinners --- meals designed to be eaten from the beginning to the end of a half-hour program. The once family affair has now become nothing more than the use of a fork and knife.

64. The underlined word in the second paragraph can be replaced by ____.

A. big       B. important                 C. combined         D. separate

65. In the past, Americans tended to ____.

A. spend more time eating their food at dinner table

B. eat more food than they have today

C. spend more time talking about their day's experiences at dinner table

D. talk so much that they forgot to eat

66. The shortening of the dinner time in America is related to ____.

A. the TV programs                      B. the pace of modern life

C. the wide use of electrical equipment    D. the popularity of fast food

67. The best title for this passage might be ____.

  A. Talk at Dinner Table                        B. TV Dinner

  C. Pace of Modern Life                      D. Problems Caused by TV

Boxing is a fist fighting sport between two matched combatants (对手) wearing padded gloves. A boxer’s primary aim is to land as many blows as possible to the head and torso (躯干) of the opponent, using strength and speed to dominate the contest. One of the oldest sports still practiced, boxing dates back to thousands of years ago. Today the sport is popular in many parts of the world and encompasses (包括) both amateur and professional matches.
For most of the 20th century boxing attracted huge fan and media attention in the United States. Some boxing champions became legendary, larger-than-life figures, such as Jack Dempsey, Joe Louis, and Muhammad Ali. Criticized to varying degrees throughout its history for its violent nature and high injury rate, boxing has somehow always managed to survive——and even thrive——as a sport.
Modern boxing regulations are based upon the 12 rules set out by British boxing officials in the mid-19th century. These rules became known as the Marquess of Queensberry Rules, named after the 8th Marquess of Queensberry, John Sholto Douglas, who sponsored and published them. In addition to in-the-ring rules, modern boxing also has specific regulations regarding eligibility for the fighters themselves.
The modern rules for professional and amateur boxing differ, but both types of contests are divided into time periods called rounds. In professional boxing, each round lasts three minutes; in amateur boxing, two minutes. A one-minute rest period between rounds is standard. Amateur contests consist of three rounds; professional contests may consist of up to 12 rounds. A bell is usually sounded by a timekeeper to begin and end each round.
A key step in making boxing safer and more respectable was the introduction of gloves, ending brutal bare-knuckle competition. Boxing gloves are heavily padded to soften the impact of the blow and to protect the hands of the boxer. As an added protection, the hands are taped before being placed in the gloves, which are essentially huge mittens. Professional gloves usually weigh between 170 and 226g; amateur gloves average 226 to 340g.
【小题1】Which of the following is true according to the information in the passage?