Do you know what really troubles me? For some reason, words with silent letters have always bothered me. For example, consider these words: know, design, island, school, wrist, naughty, and salmon. All of these words have at least one letter that is not typically pronounced, and these words are just a very small part of words with silent letters in them.
Some words are even worse, consider this word: colonel. Not only are some letters not pronounced, but letters that are not even there are pronounced.
Even foreign languages, especially French, are guilty of this needless complexity and confusion. I know there must be some main historical reasons why the words are spelled and pronounced the way they are, but that does not mean bad traditions must continue to survive. Especially if they are no longer logical.[来源:Z_xx_k.Com]
Unfortunately, there is very little that anyone can do for it, because there’s no group of people who can change or have the right to change the English language for everyone. However, the only thing we can do is make changes in the way we talk and write in hopes that it catches on. For example, I pronounce the letter “l” in salmon on purpose to make people annoyed and to sound more different or complicated. I even pronounce colonel the correct or French way.
I can only hope these two minor changes to the English language make sense to you, and you will help to keep up these minor changes forever in your everyday life.
【小题1】We can learn from the passage ________.

In our life, we face situations where we are either asked to choose between trust and disbelief. Many of us would say we have to choose trust over disbelief. Actually we are given intellectual(智力的) power to choose what we want, and what we choose certainly need not be the one that sounds pleasing. That is, we can choose both trust and disbelief, but we have to know when to choose between these two.
We should all realize that we are living in a world which is unfortunately mixed with people of various types. We have been given the power of judging who we are working with and who we are partnering with. We cannot give an excuse for believing a scheming(诡计多端的)person, just because he looked or sounded nice, unless we consider ourselves mentally unskillful.
This world was there before us and it does not owe us a single thing. We are asked to take care of ourselves and our belongings. Trust, too, has to be saved for the deserving(值得的) people. When we give trust universally to all, we end up troubled by the undeserving common cheat. People say trust is life. True! But only wisely exercised trust is life.
When we start a conversation with someone, the first things that we usually notice would be their dress, behavior, style and their language. What sometimes we all forget to look at is the person’s intention. Now how to look at a person’s intention is a lesson everybody has to learn for themselves in their own way -- there is no single standard for it. But it is certainly possible to discover the purpose if we seek a little bit more.
Certainly a false offer of friendship or guidance cannot stand undiscovered for long; we are therefore called to exercise disbelief over trust at least momentarily till we find out that we certainly are in agreement with a mutual(相互的)good-willed person.
The world teaches you lots of lessons and if we are willing, we can learn all that we want.
【小题1】In the first paragraph, the author ________.

阅读下列应用文及相关信息，并按照要求匹配信息。

A. Beijing Highlights

    Luxury : 4 Days       $269 Up

    Standard : 4 Days      $249 Up

    Super Deluxe : 4 Days   $519 Up

    Budget : 5 Days        $189 Up

    Beijing boasting a history of over a thousand years is rich in cultural relics. Our four-day itinerary will take you to the most popular sites around the city. You will see the magnificent Great Wall; sacred Tiananmmen Square; majestic Forbidden City as well as the verdant gardens of the Summer Palace.

B. Beijing Hutong Tour

    Luxury & Standard : 5 Days  $299 Up

    Super Deluxe : 5 Days      $669 Up

    Budget : 6 Days           $239 Up

    Beijing, one of the six ancient capital cities of China still has a rich history, and a diverse and colorful culture. Take a special rickshaw ride through an old Hutong neighborhood to experience the different life styles of Beijing residents. A visit to the Lama Temple will expose you to the local people’s religious beliefs.

C. Short Beijing Travel

    Luxury & Standard : 3 Days   $159 Up

    Are you annoyed by your tight time schedule but interested in visiting Beijing? Here we provide an elaborately（精心地） designed 3-day Beijing tour itinerary taking you to explore the highlights of Beijing. Hence, you can make full use of your time to visit the most aspects of Beijing.

D. Beijing Group Tour

    Luxury : 5 Days    $279 Up

    Explore the highlights of Beijing on a tight budget, why not join our Beijing group tour with only 6-18 people to each group, you will not only make new friends from different countries but also experience all of the comfort and flexibility at a lower price.

E. Beijing Essence Tour

    Luxury : 2 Days    $75 Up

    To guide you to catch all the highlight sites of Beijing in short time schedule, we carefully design these two 2-day refined Beijing tours. Take the tour and make full use of your precious time to see as much as possible of Beijing.

F. Beijing One-Day Tours - 17 options here for you!

    Luxury : 1 Day   $29 Up

    Beijing is such a large city with numerous places of interest to visit.

One-day package tours offered here are all made up of the essence of Beijing. You can choose any of your preferred according to your interest.

1.Dick is a newcomer to Beijing where he is going to stay for 5 days. Since he has to attend a very important conference on the third day, he has very limited time to spare. But he wishes to spend two days visiting a few of the scenic spots in Beijing so that he could have some basic idea of what Beijing is like.

2.Coming from Los Angeles, as an exchange student, John is eager to know about Beijing which he believes is a great city with a lot of things to explore. So he plans to go around on Sundays. Since he is not familiar with the city, he decides to join one of the local tour agencies. But he prefers things to be different every week.

3.Mary is a mother with a 9-year-old daughter. She wants to travel around Beijing this summer holiday with her daughter. She would like her daughter to make some friends while opening her eyes during the trip.

4.Li Xue has a very long holiday this year. She wants to go on a guided tour round the most popular sites of Beijing. She does not believe in those so called “cheap and good” offer, so she does not care much about money. So long as the tour is comfortable and enjoyable, she will not hesitate to join in.

5.Professor Zhou is interested more in culture and the way of life of the local people than simply taking a city sightseeing tour. Instead of going to museums and popular sites, he likes to explore how the local people lived in the old times.

B
Among all the fast growing science and technology, the research of human genes, or biological engineering as people call it, is drawing more and more attention now. Sometimes it’s a hot topic discussed by people.
The greatest thing that gene technology can do is to cure serious diseases that doctors at present can almost do nothing with, such as cancer and heart disease. Every year, millions of people are murdered by these two killers. And to date, doctors have not found an effective way to cure them. But if the gene technology is applied, not only these two diseases can be cured completely, bringing happiness and more living days to the patients, but also the great amount of money people spend on curing their diseases can be saved, therefore it benefits the economy as well. In addition, human life span(寿命)can be prolonged.
Gene technology can help people to give birth to more healthy and clever children. Some families, with the English imperial(皇帝的)family being a good example, have hereditary(遗传的)diseases. This means their children will for sure have the family disease, which is a great trouble for these families. In the past, doctors could do nothing about hereditary diseases. But gene technology can solve this problem perfectly. Scientists just need to find the wrong gene and correct it, and a healthy child will be born.
Some people are worrying that the gene research can be used to manufacture(生产)human beings in large quantities. In the past few years, scientists have succeeded in cloning a sheep; therefore these people predict that human babies would soon be cloned. But I believe cloned babies will not come out in large quantities, for most couples in the world can have babies in very normal way. Of course, the governments must take care to control gene technology.
60. What does "these two killers" in the second paragraph refer to?
A. Gene technology and another treatment of the two diseases.
B. The two murderers who killed the cloned baby.
C. The two diseases of cancer and heart disease.
D. Hereditary diseases and cancer.
61. What’s the main idea of the third paragraph?
A. Gene technology can help people to give birth to a baby.
B. Gene technology can be used to clone human babies.
C. How gene technology can be used to treat hereditary diseases.
D. Gene technology can solve all the problems of the English imperial family.
62. In what way can gene technology help to treat hereditary diseases?
A. Gene technology helps people with hereditary diseases to live longer.
B. Using gene technology, scientists find the wrong gene and correct it.
C. Using gene technology, human babies can be cloned.
D. Doctors can cure cancer and heart disease with the help of gene technology.
63. What is the main purpose of writing this passage?
A. Expressing the writer's idea that gene technology will benefit people.
B. Telling people the advantages and disadvantages of gene technology.
C. Telling the readers that gene technology will not benefit people.
D. Explaining that gene technology will also do harm to the humanity.

第三部分      阅读（共两节；满分30分）
阅读理解（共15小题；每小题2分，满分30分）
阅读下列短文，从每题所给的四个选项（A、B、C和D）中，选出最佳选项，
并在答题卡上将该项涂黑。
（A）
Australia, the last continent, was discovered by ships belonging to some European nations in the seventeenth century. These nations were less interested in changing it into a colony than in exploring it. As in the early history of the United States, it was the English who set up the settlements in Australia. This history and the geography of these two British colonies have some other things in common as well.
Australia and the United States are about the same in size, and their western lands are both not rich in soil. It was on the eastern coast of Australia and America that the English first settled, and both colonies soon began to develop towards the west. However, this westward movement took place more because the English were searching for better land than because the population was increasing. Settlements of the west part of both countries developed quickly after gold was discovered in America in 1849 and in Australia two years later.
Although the development of these two countries has a lot in common, there are some striking differences as well. The United States gained its independence from England by revolution while Australia won its independence without having to go to war. Australia, unlike the United States, was firstly turned into a colony by English prisoners and its economic development was in wheat growing and sheep raising. By 1922, for example, Australia had fifteen times more sheep than it had people or almost half as many sheep as there are people today in the United States. Australia and the United States have more in common with each other than either one has with most of the rest of the world.
41. Who turned Australia into a colony?
A. Britain.                                                B. Several European countries.
C. The United States of America.         D. None of the above.
42. In the early history of America and Australia, both colonies developed towards the west. The reason for it is that ________________________.
A. the population was increasing rapidly in the east
B. the English thought there might be richer land there
C. gold was discovered there
D. fewer people lived there
43. In the early 1920s, ________________________.
A. Australia had one fifteenth as many people as sheep
B. there were more sheep in Australia than in the United States
C. the population in Australia was greater than that of the United States
D. the United States had twice as many sheep as people
44. Australia, unlike the United States, ________________.
A. won its independence by peaceful means
B. did not discover gold until the late 1840s
C. was the last and biggest continent to be discovered
D. was not rich in gold in its western part
45. The last sentence of the passage “Australia and the United States have more in common with each other than either one has with most of the rest of the world” means “_________________________.”
A. The United States and Australia do not have main differences
B. The United States and Australia have much more in common than they have with other countries
C. The United States and Australia have nothing in common with the rest of the world
D. In common with the rest of the world, the United States and Australia have a lot of differences