57. The room ____(充当) as a small reception hall for all the applicants.

56. Amber has a beautiful yellow-brown colou and it easily melts when ____(加热).

55. what should be done is to be done ____(适当)

54. I remembered the beatings and the ____ (残酷)of the guards when I was in prison.

53. He received a letter saying that his _____________(申请)had been rejected.

52. The football match will be held in the Peking Workers’ ________ (体育场)

51. Why he went there is a _________(谜)to me

C

Throughout the history of the arts, the nature of creativity has remained constant to artists. No matter what objects they select, artists are to bring forth new forces and forms that cause change-to find poetry where no one has ever seen or experienced it before.

Landscape(风景) is another unchanging element of art. It can be found from ancient times through the 17th-century Dutch painters to the 19th-century romanticists and impressionists. In the 1970s Alfred Leslie, one of the new American realists, continued this practice. Leslie sought out the same place where Thomas Cole, a romanticist, had produced paintings of the same scene a century and a half before. Unlike Cole who insists on a feeling of loneliness and the idea of finding peace in nature, Leslie paints what he actually sees. In his paintings, there is no particular change in emotion, and he includes ordinary things like the highway in the background. He also takes advantage of the latest developments of color photography(摄影术) to help both the eye and the memory when he improves his painting back in his workroom.

Besides, all art begs the age-old question: What is real? Each generation of artists has shown their understanding of reality in one form or another. The impressionists saw reality in brief emotional effects, the realists in everyday subjects and in forest scenes, and the Cro-Magnon cave people in their naturalistic drawings of the animals in the ancient forests. To sum up, understanding reality is a necessary struggle for artists of all periods.

Over thousands of years the function of the arts has remained relatively constant. Past or present, Eastern or Western, the arts are a basic part of our immediate experience. Many and different are the faces of art, and together they express the basic need and hope of human beings.

46. The underlined word “poetry” most probably means __________.

A. an object for artistic creation 　　　　　　　　　　　 B. a　collection of poems

C. an unusual quality 　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　 D. a natural scene

47. Leslie's paintings are extraordinary because _________.

A. they are close in style to works in ancient times

B. they look like works by 19th-century painters

C. they draw attention to common things in life

D. they depend heavily on color photography

48. What is the author's opinion of artistic reality?

A. It will not be found in future works of art.

B. It does not have a long-lasting standard.

C. It is expressed in a fixed artistic form.

D. It is lacking in modern works of art.

49. What does the author suggest about the arts in the last paragraph?

A. They express people's curiosity about the past.

B. They make people interested in everyday experience.

C. They are considered important for variety in form.

D. They are regarded as a mirror of the human situation.

50. Which of the following is the main topic of the passage?

A. History of the arts. 　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　 B. Basic questions of the arts.

C. New developments in the arts. 　　　　　　　　　　 D. Use of modern technology in the arts.

B

After the Summer Olympics are over, when all the athletes and viewers have gone home and the television audience has switched off, another group of athletes and fans will arrive at the host city, and another competition will begin. These are the Paralympics, the games for athletes with a disability. But in Beijing in 2008, for the first time, one of the greatest paralympians will not be taking part.

She is a British athlete by the name of Tanni Grey-Thompson. Born with spina bifida (脊椎裂) which left her paralysed(瘫痪的) from the waist down, Tanni used a wheelchair from the age of 7. At first, she was not keen on sport, apart from horse-riding, which gave her a sense of freedom. But in her teens, she started taking sports more seriously. She tried swimming, basketball and tennis. Eventually she found athletics, and never looked back.

Indeed, Tanni's athletic career took off. In 1984, when she was 15, she pulled off a surprise victory in the 100 meters at the Junior National Wheelchair Games.

In 1988, Tanni went to her first Paralympic Games in Seoul. She won bronze in the 400 meters. Even greater success followed at the 1992 Barcelona Paralympics. Tanni won gold in the100, 200, 400 and 800 meters relay, setting two world records in the process. In the same year she achieved the first of her six London Wheelchair Marathon victories.

Tanni's enduring success has been part motivation, part preparation. “The training I do that enables me to be a good sprinter (短跑运动员) enables me to be good at a marathon too. I train 50 weeks of the year and that keep me prepared for whatever distance I want to race... I am still competing at a very high level, but as 1 get older things get harder and 1 want to retire before 1

fall apart."

Indeed Tanni retired finally after the Visa Paralympic World Cup in 2007. Her wish is to coach young athletes for Beijing 2008 Olympic Games.

In spite of ups and downs, she never takes her fate lying down. In her splendid life, she has won an amazing eleven gold medals, four silvers and one bronze in a series of Paralympics- a top level athletic career covering two decades. She has won the London Wheelchair Marathon six times, more than any other competitor, and she has set over thirty world records.

What advice does she have for young athletes? "Work hard at your studies, and then train, train and train again."

41. Which of the following sports did Tanni like before thirteen?

A. Basketball.　　　 B. Swimming.　　　　 C. Tennis.　　　　 D. Horse-riding.

42. When did Tanni win her first Olympic gold medal?

A. In 1984.　　　　 B. In 1988.　　　　　 C. In 1992.　　　　 D. In 2007.

43. The underlined word "that" in the 5th paragraph refers to____.

A. fifty weeks' training　　　　　　　　　　 B. being a good sprinter

C. training almost every day　　　　　　　　 D. part motivation and part preparation

44. What's the right order of the events related to Tanni?

a. She works as a coach.

b. She took up athletics.

c. She won four gold medals in Barcelona.

d. She competed in her first Paralympic Games.

e. She achieved a victory in her first London Wheelchair Marathon.

A. b, d, c, e, a　　　 B. a, d, b, c, e　　　　　 C. a, d, c, e, b　　　　　 D. b, d, a, e, c

45. What can we learn from Tanni's success?

A. Union is strength.　　　　　　　　　　　 B. Never too late to learn.

C. Well begun is half done.　　　　　　　　 D. No pains, no gains.

A

　　　 Mathematical ability and musical ability may not seem on the surface to be connected, but people who have researched the subject -- and studied the brain-say that they are. Three quarters of the bright but speech-delayed children in the group I studied had a close relative who was an engineer, mathematician or scientist, and four fifths had a close relative who played a musical instrument. The children themselves usually took readily to math and other analytical subjects and to music.

　　　 Black, white and Asian children in this group show the same patterns. However, it is clear that blacks have been greatly overrepresented in the development of American popular music and greatly underrepresented in such fields as mathematics, science and engineering.

　　　 If the abilities required in analytical fields and in music are so closely related, how can there be this great discrepancy? One reason is that the development of mathematical and other such abilities requires years of formal schooling, while certain musical talents can be developed with little or no formal training, as has happened with a number of well-known black musicians.

　　　 It is precisely in those kinds of music where one can acquire great skill without formal training that blacks have excelled popular music rather than classical music, piano rather than violin, blues rather than opera. This is readily understandable, given that most blacks, for most of American history, have not had either the money or the leisure for long years of formal study in music.

　　　 Blacks have not merely held their own in American popular music. They have played a large role in the development of jazz, both traditional and modern. A long string of names comes to mind-W.C. Handy, Louis Armstrong, Charlie Parker…and so on.

　　　 None of this presupposes(假设，意味着) any special innate(先天的)ability of blacks in music. On the contrary, it is perfectly consistent with blacks having no more such inborn ability than anyone else, but being limited to being able to express such ability in narrower channels than others who have had the money, the time and the formal education to spread out over a wider range of music, as well as into mathematics, science and engineering.

(　 ) 36. what is the main idea of the first paragraph?

A.　　　 Mathematical ability and musical ability are connected.

B.　　　 Mathematical ability has more to do with the brain than musical ability.

C.　　　 More people are good at music than math.

D.　　 More research should be done into the relationship between mathematical ability and math ability.

(　 ) 37. The word “discrepancy” (Para. 3) most probably means ____.

　　　 A. difference　 B. excellence　 C. inborn ability　　　 D. inability

(　 ) 38. What can be inferred about opera?

A.　　　 It requires formal training.

B.　　　 It is often enjoyed by those with strong analytical ability.

C.　　　 It is disliked by blacks.

D.　　 It is more difficult to learn than classical music.

(　 )39. Which of the following statements is true according to the last paragraph?

A.　　　 Blacks have special innate ability in music.

B.　　　 Unlike others, blacks do not have innate ability in music.

C.　　　 Jazz is one of the narrow channels through which blacks express their ability in music.

D.　　 Those who have money and time choose mathematics over music.

()40. which of the following questions does the passage mainly concern?

A.　　　 Are musical ability and mathematical ability connected?

B.　　　 Why have blacks been greatly over represented in the development of American popular misic?

C.　　　 What kinds of music require formal training?

D.　　 What are the contributions made by black musicians?