III. 阅读理解
阅读下列短文，从每题所给的A、B、C、D选项中，选出最佳选项。
I’ve written 14 movies. My characters smoke in many of them, and they look cool and glamorous doing it. Smoking was an integral（必需的） part of many of my screenplays because I was a heavy smoker. It was part of a bad-boy image I’d cultivated for a long time— smoking, drinking, partying, rock ’n’ roll.
Smoking, I once believed, was every person’s right. The second-hand smoke was non-existent problem invented by professional do-gooders. I put all these views into my plays.
Remembering all this, I find it hard to forgive myself. I have been an accomplice (帮凶) to the murders of untold numbers of human beings. I am admitting this only because I have made a deal with God. Spare me, I said, and I will try to stop others from committing the same crimes I did.
Eighteen months ago I was diagnosed with throat cancer, the result of a lifetime of smoking. I am alive but disabled. Much of my larynx (喉) is gone. I have some difficulty speaking; others have some difficulty understanding me.
I haven’t smoked or drunk for 18 months now, though I still take it day by day and pray for help. I believe in prayer and exercise. I have walked five miles a day for a year, without missing even one day. Quitting smoking and drinking has taught me the hardest lesson I’ve ever learned about my own weakness; it has also given me the greatest affection and empathy(同感) for those still addicted.
I don’t think smoking is every person’s right anymore. I think smoking should be as illegal as heroin. I’m no longer such a bad boy. I go to church on Sunday. I’m desperate to see my four boys grow up. I want to do everything I can to undo the damage I have done with my own big-screen words and images.
Screen writers know, too, that some movie stars are more likely to play a part if they can smoke —because they are so addicted to smoking that they have difficulty stopping even during the shooting of a scene.
My hands are bloody; so are Hollywood’s. My cancer has caused me to attempt to cleanse me. I don’t wish my fate upon anyone in Hollywood, but I beg that Hollywood should stop putting it upon millions of others.
1. The main idea of this passage probably is _________.
A. the writer is ashamed of the bad effects his screenplays have had on human beings
B. the writer’s smoking experience nearly killed himself
C. the bad effects that Hollywood screenplay have brought to children
D. the determination of the writer to overcome his illness
2. How do you think the writer has realized his mistake?
A. So many people have found the habit of smoking due to his plays.
B. His plays have brought great harm to teenagers.
C. He himself suffered greatly from smoking.
D. His screenplays have been doing more and more harm to human beings.
3. What is the writer determined to do in future?
A. He has made up his mind to give up smoking forever.
B. He will try his best to prevent others from writing screen plays encouraging smoking.
C. He will try his best to bring up his four children.
D. He has decided to write his screenplays without smoking scenes.
4. It can be inferred from the passage that _______.
A. the writer will soon be recovered from his illness thanks to his exercise
B. the writer will soon die because of his deadly disease
C. smoking will be got rid of in all Hollywood films
D. smoking in Hollywood films is still doing great harm to human beings

Here are some of the world’s most impressive subways

    I must have been about fourteen then, and I put away the incident from my mind with the
easy carelessness of  youth. But the words, Carl Walter spoke that day, came back to me years
later, and ever since have been of great value to me.
Carl Walter was my piano teacher. During one of my lessons he asked how much practicing I was doing. I said three or four hours a day.
"Do you practice in long stretches, an hour at a time?"
"I try to."
"Well, don't," he exclaimed. "When you grow up, time won't come in long stretches.    Practice in minutes, whenever you can find them five or ten before school, after lunch, between household tasks. Spread the practice through the day, and piano-playing will become a part of your life."
When I was teaching at Columbia, I wanted to write, but class periods, theme-reading, and committee meetings filled my days and evenings. For two years I got practically nothing down on paper, and my excuse was that I had no time. Then I remembered what Carl Walter had said. During the next week I conducted an experiment. Whenever I had five minutes unoccupied, I sat down and wrote a hundred words or so. To my astonishment, at the end of the week I had a rather large manuscript ready for revision, later on I wrote novels by the same piecemeal method. Though my teaching schedule had become heavier than ever, in every day there were idle moments which could be caught and put to use. I even took up piano--playing again, finding that the small intervals of the day provided sufficient time for both writing and piano practice.
There is an important trick in this time--using formula: you must get into your work quickly. If you have but five minutes for writing, you can't afford to waste four chewing your pencil. You must make your mental preparations beforehand, and concentrate on your task almost instantly when the time comes. Fortunately, rapid concentration is easier than most of us realize.
I admit I have never learnt how to let go easily at the end of the five or ten minutes. But life can be counted on to supply interruptions. Carl Walter has had a tremendous influence on my life. To him I owe the discovery that even very short periods of time add up to all useful hours I need, if I plunge（投入）in without delay.
56．The meaning of “stretch” in the underlined part is the same as that in sentence “       ”.
A．The forests in the north of the province stretch for hundreds of miles.
B．Bob worked as a government official for a stretch of over twenty years.
C．My family wasn’t wealthy by any stretch of the imagination.
D．During his senior year his earnings far enough to buy an old car.
57．Which of the following statements is true?
　　A．The writer didn’t completely take the teacher’s words to heart at first.
　　B．Carl Walter has had a great influence on the writer's life since he became a student.
　　C．The writer owes great thanks to his teacher for teaching him to work in long stretches.
　　D．Rapid concentration is actually more difficult than most people imagine.
58．We can infer that the writer             . 
A．has new books published each year however busy his teaching is
B．is always tired of interruptions in life because his teaching schedule is always heavy
C．has formed a bad habit of chewing a pencil while writing his novels
D．can find sufficient time for mental preparations beforehand, so he's devoted to work   instantly
59．What is the best title of this passage?
A．Concentrate on Your Work           B．A Little at a Time
C．How I Became a Writer                 D．Good AdviceIs Most Valuable

Personal computers and the Internet give people new choices about how to spend their time.
Some may use this freedom to share less time with certain friends or family members, but new technology will also let them stay in closer touch with those they care most about. I know this from personal experience.
E-mail makes it easy to work at home, which is where I now spend most weekends and evenings. My working hours aren’t necessarily much shorter than they once were but I spend fewer of them at the office. This lets me share more time with my young daughter than I might have if she’d been born before electronic mail became such a practical tool.
The Internet also makes it easy to share thoughts with a group of friends. Say you do something fun -see a great movie perhaps-and there are four or five friends who might want to hear about it. If you call each one, you may tire of telling the story.
With E-mail, you just write one note about your experience, at your convenience, and address it to all the friends you think might be interested. They can read your message when they have time, and read only as much as they want to. They can reply at their convenience, and you can read what they have to say at your convenience.
E-mail is also an inexpensive way stay in close touch with people who live far away. More than a few parents use E-mail to keep in touch, even daily touch, with their children off at college.
We just have to keep in mind that computers and the Internet offer another way of staying in touch. They don’t take the place of any of the old ways.
64. The purpose of this passage is to ________.
A. explain how to use the Internet
B. describe the writer’s joy of keeping up with the latest technology
C. tell the merits(价值) and usefulness of the Internet
D. introduce the reader to basic knowledge about personal computers and the Internet
65. According to the writer, E-mail has an obvious advantage over the telephone because the former（前者） helps one _________.
A. reach a group of people at a time conveniently
B. keep one’s communication as personal as possible
C. pass on much more information than the later
D. get in touch with one’s friends faster than the later
66. The best title for this passage is ________.
A. Computer: New Technological Advances
B. Internet: New Tool to Maintain Good Friendship
C. Computers Have Made Life Easier
D. Internet: a Convenient Tool for Communication

In the kitchen of my mother's houses there has always been a wooden stand with a small notepad and a hole for a pencil.
I'm looking for paper on which to note down the name of a book I am recommending to my mother. Over forty years since my earliest memories of the kitchen pad and pencil, five houses later, the current paper and pencil look the same as they always did. Surely it can't be the same pencil. The pad is more modern, but the wooden stand is definitely the original one.
"I'm just amazed you still have the same stand for holding the pad and pencil after all these years." I say to her, walking back into the living-room with a sheet of paper and the pencil. "You still use a pencil. Can't you afford a pen?"
My mother replies a little sharply. "It works perfectly well; I've always kept the stand in the kitchen. I never knew when I might want to note down an idea, and I was always in the kitchen in these days. "
Immediately I can picture her, hair wild, blue housecoat covered in flour, a wooden spoon in one hand, the pencil in the other, her mouth moving silently. My mother smiles and says, "One day I was cooking and watching baby Pauline, and I had a brilliant thought, but the stand was empty. One of the children must have taken the paper. So I just picked up the breadboard and wrote it all down on the back. It turned out to be a real breakthrough for solving the mathematical problem I was working on."
This story, which happened before I was born, reminds me how extraordinary my mother was, and is also a gifted mathematician. I feel embarrassed that I complain about not having enough child-free time to work. Later, when my mother is in the bathroom, I go into her kitchen and turn over the breadboards. Sure enough, on the back of the smallest one, are some penciled marks I recognize as mathematics. Those symbols have traveled unaffected through fifty years, rooted in the soil of a cheap wooden breadboard, invisible exhibits at every meal.
【小题1】Why has the author's mother always kept the notepad and pencil in the kitchen?