British people have the worst quality of life in Europe, according to a report which highlights （强调) the long hours, bad weather, low life expectancy and high price of many goods.

In a study of ten of the largest European countries, Britain, which was considered a popular country to live in, now comes last followed by Ireland, with France and Spain topping the table.

Though British families enjoy the highest income in Europe, they still have to fight with a high cost of living, with fuel, food and alcohol all costing more than the European average.

With the high price of petrol, the UK is the second most expensive country in Europe. However, diesel (柴油) is more expensive in the UK than anywhere else in Europe.

The report by the website uSwitch analyses 10 European countries against 17 different benchmarks(基准点), from the price of gas, electricity, fuel, food and drink to the money each country spends on education, health to working conditions and the weather.

The top three countries are France, Spain and Denmark, with Sweden, Ireland and Britain coming eighth, ninth and tenth respectively.

The study comes less than a week after the United Nations moved Britain out of the top 20 list of most desirable countries to live in for the first time.

Although France and Germany were at the beginning hit hard by the global financial crisis, both have officially got out of the trouble, while Britain has yet to prove this has happened. Later this week, despite (尽管) signs of recovery in the housing market and rising sales, unemployment is still expected to have climbed to above 2.5 million for the first time since 1994.

1.Which country has the best quality of life in Europe according to the report?

 A. Ireland.        B. France.         C. Sweden.         D. Denmark

2.Which is TRUE according to the passage?

A. British families are suffering from the high cost of living.  

B. The report comes after the website uSwitch analysed 10 Asian countries.

C. The price of petrol is higher in Britain than anywhere else in Europe.

D. The quality of British life is reported to be terrible because of the bad working conditions.

3.The underlined word “desirable” probably means           .

A. terrible      B. attractive         C. expensive       D. different

4. What can we infer from the last paragraph?

A. Britain is still struggling to get out of the global financial crisis.

B. Unemployment in Britain is expected to go down soon.

C. Recovery in the housing market leads to unemployment in Britain.

D. Britain has recovered from the crisis together with France and Germany.

 

The price of coffee beans hits a 12 – year high today. I thought there might
be some kind of coffee – market story, like we saw with cocoa earlier this summer.
But the main driver of coffee prices right now is simpler: Colombia has had
a few years of weak coffee harvests because of too much rain, which has reduced
the global supply. And coffee drinkers keep buying coffee, even as prices rise, in
other words, demand is unchanged.
The higher price of beans – up about 40 percent since March – means higher prices for the coffee you buy by the pound. But it probably won’t affect the coffee you buy by the cup.
Smuckers, which sells Folgers and Millstone coffees, recently said it was raising its prices because of the higher cost of beans. Starbucks, however, said it would absorb the higher cost of beans without raising prices.
“You see it much more in the grocery store because the raw materials are a big factor of cost,” Jose Sette of the International Coffee Organization told me. “In a coffee shop, your big expenses are rent and labor.”
While real – world supply and demand is the big driver of the price of beans, there may be some speculative action in coffee business in the future.
But futures (期货) of the high – grade Arabica beans are traded in the US, where regulations prevent speculators (投机商) from controlling the market, hoping such things won’t happen just as in London summer market. That suggests that prices should fall when supply improves – which may happen next year.
Some experts say that farmers in third world countries won’t actually benefit from higher prices in this case. When the price difference is due to supply and demand, the profit of the seller usually doesn’t go up.
【小题1】Which of the following is the best title for the passage?

A．Why coffee is getting more expensive?

B．How farmer benefits from the high price?

C．Whether the US will control the coffee market?

D．What has caused the reduction of coffee?

【小题2】From the second paragraph we can infer that _______________________.

A．Colombia is the coffee trading center of the world

B．Colombia coffee output contains a final share of the world

C．People need more and more coffee

D．Coffee sales will be getting less and less

【小题3】In this summer’s coffee bean market, ____________________________.

A．the US made more rules about coffee prices

B．speculators once held the coffee bean market in London

C．coffee bean trading was seriously disorganized

D．coffee bean prices were very low in the US

【小题4】Which of the following is TRUE according to the text?

A．The price difference determines the profit of the seller.

B．Smuckers is a famous coffee manufacturer.

C．Real – world supply and demand decides the prices.

D．Coffee prices will become much higher next year.

Coffee experts are willing to pay large sums of money for high-quality coffee beans. The high-end beans, such as Kona or Blue Mountain, are known to cost extraordinary sums of money. Then there is Kopi Lowak (translated as “Civet Coffee”), the world’s most expensive coffee, which sells for as much as US $50 per quarter-pound.
This isn’t particularly surprising, because approximately 500 pounds a year of Kopi Lowak make up the entire world supply. What is surprising is why this particular coffee is so rare. In fact, it’s not the plants that are rare. It’s the civet droppings. That’s right, the civet droppings—the body waste of the palm civet. Coffee beans aren’t Kopi Lowak until they’ve been digested(消化) and come out in the body waste of the palm civet.
Palm civets are tree-dwelling, raccoon-like little animals, native to Southeast Asia and the Indonesian islands. They also have a love for coffee cherries. According to Kopi Lowak suppliers, palm civets eat the fruit whole, but only digest the outer fruit, leaving the beans intact(完好无损). While the beans are not destroyed, they undergo a transformation in the animal’s body. A chemical substance in the digestive system of the palm civet causes some changes to the beans to give them a unique flavor(味道). However, this is not the only explanation why coffee beans retrieved from civet droppings have a special flavor all their own. Another possible reason is that palm civets have an unfailing instinct for picking the coffee cherries at the peak of their ripeness.
Kopi Lowak is reported to have a character in taste unlike any other coffee, complex with caramel undertones and an earthy flavor. Currently, most of the world’s supply of Kopi Lowak is sold in Japan, though a few US markets are also starting to stock up on Kopi Lowak.
【小题1】What does “This” in the second paragraph refer to?

A．Civet Coffee.	B．Blue Mountain coffee.
C．The high price of Kopi Lowak.	D．The unique taste of Kona.

【小题2】Why is Kopi Lowak expensive?

A．There is a very limited supply of the beans.

B．The coffee trees that grow the beans are scarce.

C．It takes a long time for the coffee beans to ripen.

D．Only a few experts know how to produce the beans.

【小题3】What is the main point discussed in the third paragraph?

A．Why palm civets like the coffee beans.

B．Where Kopi Lowak is mainly harvested.

C．What chemicals are found in the civet’s digestive system.

D．How palm civets change coffee fruit to Kopi Lowak beans.

【小题4】Which of the following statements is true, according to the passage?

A．Little palm civets eat only the outer layer of the coffee cherries.

B．Palm civets somehow know the right time when the coffee fruit ripens.

C．Kopi Lowak is most popular in Southeast Asia and the Indonesian islands.

D．Kona and Blue Mountain are the most expensive coffees but only of average quality.

Today’s drivers may feel shocked by the high price of petrol when they drive to the gas station. However, the car industry has the technology to solve the problem. It’s the hybrid car（混合动力汽车）.
What is a hybrid car? Any car that uses two or more sources of power is a hybrid car. Most hybrid cars on the road right now are petrol-electric hybrids. The petrol-electric hybrid car is just what it sounds like — a cross between a petrol-powered car and an electric car.
A gas-powered car has a fuel tank（油箱）, which supplies petrol to the engine. An electric car, on the other hand, has a set of batteries that provides electricity for the car.
To be useful to you or me, a car should be able to run at least 300 miles (483 km) before refueling, be capable of(能够) being refueled quickly and easily and fast enough to keep up with the other traffic on the road.
A petrol car meets these requirements（要求）but produces a large amount of pollution. An electric car, however, produces almost no pollution, but can only go 50 to 100 miles (80 to 161 km) between recharging(充电). And the problem has been that the electric car is very slow and inconvenient to recharge.
A petrol-electric car combines the advantages of the two power sources into one system that uses both gas power and electric power. Some experts believe that the hybrid car is “the next generation of smart cars”. A hybrid car can go up to 50% further than a traditional car can on the same amount of gas! It saves driver’s money on gas and cuts air pollution!
【小题1】What do the underlined words “the problem” in Paragraph 1 refer to?

A．The price of petrol goes up and down.	B．The gas-powered car is sold at a high price.
C．The gas-powered car causes air pollution.	D．The price of petrol keeps going up.

【小题2】How many sources of power do most hybrid cars use?

A．Two.

B．Three.

C．Four.

D．It depends.

【小题3】The author thinks that electric cars _____.

A．are smart vehicles

B．are popular vehicle

C．are not practical

D．are not slow

【小题4】Some experts believe that the hybrid car will have a large market in future because _____.

A．it is just powered by renewable energy	B．it saves money and is eco-friendly
C．it goes further than a traditional car	D．it is safe, cheap and produces no air pollution

1.It didn’t occur on me that you would be against it. ____________________________

2.We could hardly believe the high price marking on the goods          

3.The fact which he had not said anything surprised everybody. ______________________

4.We are discussing whether we should team up other students to hire a car.         

5.Cotton take in water.