Agnes Miller was one of the earliest leaders of the Women’s Liberation Movement in the United States. She was born on a farm in Missouri in 1892. Strangely enough she had a very happy life as a child. She was the only daughter and the youngest child of five. Her parents and her brothers always treated her as their favorite.

In 1896 the family moved to Chicago. Three years later they moved back to St. Louis where Agnes spent the rest of her childhood. She enjoyed her years in school and was an excellent student of mathematics. She also was quite skillful as a painter.

It was when Agnes went off to college that she first learned that women were not treated as equals. She didn’t like being treated unequally but she tried not to notice it. After graduating from college she tried to get a job in her major field—physics. She soon found it was almost impossible for a woman.

Agnes spent a full year looking for a job. Finally she gave up in anger. She began writing letters of anger to various newspapers. An editor in New York liked her ideas very much. He specially liked her style. He asked her to do a series of stories on the difficulties that women had in finding a job. And there she began her great fight for equal rights for women.

1.Where did Agnes spend her childhood?

2.At school, Agnes was good at      .

3.What happened in Agnes’s life when she was in college?

When he took office, George W. Bush, son of former president George Herbert Walker Bush, became the first son to follow his father into the White House since John Quiney Adams followed John Adams in the early 19th century.

    Bush was born on July 6, 1946, in New Haven, Connecticut, the first child of George Herbert Walker Bush and Barbara Pierce Bush. Although George Herbert Walker Bush began his career in the oil industry, he finally served as a congressman(国会议员), and vice(副) president and president of the United States.

    At the age of two,Bush moved with his parents from Connecticut to Odessa, Texas, where his father took up the oil business. After a year in Texas, the family moved to California for business reasons. A year later, the family returned to Texas and settled in Midland, where Bush lived from 1950 to 1959.

    In 1959, again for business reasons, the family moved to Houston, Texas. In 1961 Bush left Texas and went to Andover, Massachusetts, to attend Phillips Academy, aboarding school(寄宿学校) that his father had also attended.

    At Phillips, Bush played basketball, baseball, and football. He was best known for being head cheerleader. In 1964 he enrolled at Yale University in Connecticut.His father and grandfather had also attended Yale. At Yale, Bush was considered an average student, but he was popular with his classmates.

    Bush graduated from Yale with a bachelor’s degree in history in 1968. Then he joined the Air National Guard and remained in the Guard until 1973. After earning his MBA from Harvard in 1975, Bush returned to Midland. Like his father, he first entered the oil industry as a “landsman(新手)”. However, Bush’s oil companies never enjoyed great success. He took more interest in politics. He helped his father to become president and in 1994 he himself was elected governor of Texas.

    In the summer of 1999, Bush began to run for the president of the USA and on January 20, 2001, George W. Bush, hand raised, took the oath(宣誓) of office to become the 43rd president of the US.

1.What does the writer intend to tell us in the first paragraph?

    A. George W. Bush is the first son in American history to follow his father into the White House.

    B. George W. Bush is the first son of former president George Herbert Walker Bush.

    C. John Quincy Adams and his father were both former American presidents.

    D. George W. Bush is the second one in American history to follow his father into the White House.

2.We may learn from the text that young Bush ______.

A. got on very well at the universities

B. was very good at basketball, baseball and football

C. did everything as his father had done   

D. was a very successful politician like his father

3.Which of the following is NOT true about George W. Bush?

A. Young Bush lived with his family in Texas from 1948 to 1961.

B. He once studied at a university that his father and grandfather had also attended.

C. He once ruled over an American state before he entered the White House.

D. He once served at the Air National Guard for about five years.

When it comes to intelligence, human beings are the top dogs of the animal kingdom. But in recent years, scientists have been documenting surprising intelligence and emotional depth in animals ranging from honeybees to elephants. Here are some amazing examples.
Artistic Monkey Business
Jannet Schmid, director of the Little River Zoo in Norman, Oklahoma, learned a lot about the intelligence of capuchin monkeys. She and her busband adopted a young male, named Bailey. The capuchin particularly liked taking car rides, insisting that he insert the key and ride in the front passenger’s seat.
Now Bailey has become a devoted painter. He uses brushes to create colorful, abstract paintings, and prefers not to be disturbed.
Prairie Dog Sound
Through a variety of birdlike sounds, prairie dogs warn each other of approaching creatures. They demonstrated a surprisingly complex communication system. In his 25 years of study, Slobodchikoff, a professor of biology, has recorded them pronouncing ten nouns including hawk, deer and coyote, a number of adjectives to identify color, size and shape, and even some verbs to indicate speed.
In an ongoing study, Slobodchikoff learns that their brain contains a very extensive vocabulary. He once used his best prairie dog sound to say coyote, and they just looked at him in anger as if he had said a bad word.
Ivy League Parrot
One African grey parrot Alex is said to have the cognitive abilities of a five-year-old child. Alex can identify 50 different objects, seven colors, five shapes, quantities up to six, and the concepts of bigger, smaller, same and different.
Also Alex is considered to make reasoned decisions. During an experiment, researchers gave Alex different-colored blocks in sets of two, three and six. When asked which color group had five blocks, Alex replied, “None.” And he answered the same in repeated tests. Obviously, he interpreted the concept of “none” as an absence of quantity all on his own. That’s a lot like a high school student answering questions on a quiz show.
56.Which of the following is true?
A. Bailey is as clever as a child of five.
B. The prairie dog loves taking car rides.
C. The capuchin monkey is fond of painting.
D. Alex develops a communication system.
57.The underlined word “coyote” in Paragraph 4 refers to ________.
A. a verb                     B. an animal              C. a warning                       D. an adjective
58.The African grey parrot Alex can ________.
A. answer questions on a quiz show
B. understand the figure “7”
C. identify five colors and seven shapes
D. apply the concept of “none” correctly
59.What is the passage mainly about?
A. Animal communication                           B. Animal research
C. Animal intelligence                                  D. Animal information

Play is the basic business of childhood, and in recent years more and more research has shown the great importance of play in the development of a human being. From earliest  infancy （婴儿）, every child needs opportunity and the right material for play, and the main tools of play are toys. The main function of toys is to suggest, encourage and assist play. To succeed in this, they must be good toys, which children will play with often and will come back to again and again. Therefore, it is important to choose suitable toys for different stages of a child’s development.

In recent years research on infant development has shown that the standard a child is likely to reach, within the range of his inherited(遗传的) abilities, is largely determined in the first three years of his life. So a baby's ability to benefit from the right play materials should not be underestimated. A baby who is encouraged, talked to and shown things and played with, has the best chance of growing up successfully.

The next stage, from three to five years old, curiosity knows no bounds. Every type of suitable toy should be made available to the child, for trying out, experimenting and learning, for discovering his own particular ability. Bricks and jigsaws and construction toys; painting, scribbling(乱涂) and making things; sand and water play; toys for imaginative and pretending play; the first social games for learning to play and get on with others．

By the third stage of play development—from five to seven or eight years old— the child is at school. But for a few more years play is still the best way of learning, at home or at school. It is easier to see which type of toys the child most enjoys.

Until the age of seven or eight, play and work mean much the same to a child. But once reading has been mastered, then books and school become the main source of learning. Toys are still interesting and valuable, which lead up to new hobbies, but their significance has changed —to a child of nine or ten years old, toys and games mean, as to adults, relaxation and fun.

1.The writer wants us to understand that a child_______.

A．cannot grow up without toys               B．matures（使成熟） through play

C．uses toys as friends                      D．has to be taught how to play

2.According to the passage, the abilities a child has inherited from his parents ________.

A．determine his character

B．will not change after the age of three

C．partly determine the standard he is likely to reach

D．to a large extent determine the choice of toys

3.The passage tells us that children are the most curious when they are about______.

A．two years old      B．one year old       C．six years old       D．four years old

4.The article is about_______.

A．the importance of play

B．the importance of books

C．the relationship between play and work

D．children’s speech development

Most people know that Marie Curie was the first woman to win the Nobel Prize, and the first person to win it twice. However, few people know that she was also the mother of a Nobel Prize winner.

Born in September, 1987, Irene Curie was the first of the Curies’ two daughters. Along with nine other children whose parents were also famous scholars, Irene studied in their own school, and her mother was one of the teachers. She finished her high school education at the College of Sévigné in Paris.

Irene entered the University of Paris in 1914 to prepare for a degree in mathematics and physics. When World War I began, Irene went to help her mother, who was using X-ray facilities（设备） to help save the lives of wounded soldiers. Irene continued the work by developing X-ray facilities in military hospitals in France and Belgrum. Her services were recognised in the form of a Military’s Medal by the French government.

In 1918, Irene became her mother’s assistant at the Curie Institute. In December 1924, Frederic Joliot joined the Institute, and Irene taught him the techniques required for his work. They soon fell in love and were married in 1926. Their daughter Helene was born in 1927 and their son Pierre five years later.

Like her mother, Irene combined family and career. Like her mother, Irene was awarded a Nobel Prize, along with her husband, in 1935. Unfortunately, also like her mother, she developed leukemia because of her work with radioactivity（辐射能）. Irene Joliot-Curie died from leukemia on March 17, 1956.

1.Why was Irene Curie awarded a Military Medal?

2.Where did Irene Curie meet her husband Frederio joliot?

3.When was the second child of Irene Curie and Frederic Joliot born?

4.In which of the following aspects was Irene Cuire different from her mother?