How I Turned to Be Optimistic

I began to grow up that winter night when my parents and I were returning from my aunt’s house, and my mother said that we might soon be leaving for America. We were on the bus then. I was crying, and some people on the bus were turning around to look at me. I remember that I could not bear the thought of never hearing again the radio program for school children to which I listened every morning.

I do not remember myself crying for this reason again. In fact, I think I cried very little when I was saying goodbye to my friends and relatives. When we were leaving I thought about all the places I was going to see—the strange and magical places I had known only from books and pictures. The country I was leaving never to come back was hardly in my head then.

The four years that followed taught me the importance of optimism, but the idea did not come to me at once. For the first two years in New York I was really lost—having to study in three schools as a result of family moves. I did not quite know what I was or what I should be. Mother remarried, and things became even more complex for me. Some time passed before my stepfather and I got used to each other. I was often sad, and saw no end to “the hard times.”

My responsibilities in the family increased a lot since I knew English better than everyone else at home. I wrote letters, filled out forms, translated at interviews with Immigration (移民) officers, took my grandparents to the doctor and translated there, and even discussed telephone bills with company representatives.

From my experiences I have learned one important rule: almost all common troubles eventually go away! Something good is certain to happen in the end when you do not give up, and just wait a little! I believe that my life will turn out all right, even though it will not be that easy.

How did the author know about America before she got there?

A. From her relatives.                                     B. From her mother.

   C. From books and pictures.               D. From radio programs.

67. Upon leaving for America the author felt _______.

   A. confused                  B. excited         C. worried                   D. amazed

68. For the first two years in New York, the author _________.

   A. often lost her way                                 B. did not think about her future

   C. studied in three different schools             D. got on well with her stepfather

69. What can we learn about the author from Paragraph 4?

   A. She worked as a translator.              B. She attended a lot of job interviews. 

   C. She paid telephone bills for her family.    D. She helped her family with her English.

70. The author believes that ________.

   A. her future will be free from troubles       B. it is difficult to learn to become patient 

   C. there are more good things than bad things  D. good things will happen if one keeps trying

After a lot of weightlifting and 25 exhausting days training, a 52-year-old woman recently became the first female “gripman” on San Francisco’s historic cable cars.

   Fannie Barnes passed her written test and completed a final run under the watchful eye of a supervisor, Municipal Railway spokesman Alan Siegel said.

   Deep calluses(繭) are already forming at the base of her fingers and there is a hole in her glove. Two other women quit after a single day with injured muscles. “Now they’re going to have to change the word from gripman to grip person, just because of me,” Barnes said earlier, “I’m so excited.”

After almost a year of serious workouts, Barns can pull more than 61 kilos, only 23 kilos less than her body weight. And she’ll need the muscle, for this is no modern, push-button technology. Every time a car starts up again after making a stop, the gripman must haul back on a lever controlling a device that grips the cable, which runs continuously at 14 kilometers per hour. If the grip slips, so does the car. A second person operates the brakes.

In addition to having to throw her weight around on the job, she’s got to throw out some attitude to men who were hard to convince. The city employs 76 men in the job.

“A lot of men said mean things to me and didn’t want to help train me. But I would like to thank the guys who were against me because they gave me even more inspiration to do it.” she said.

Not all the men were against her. Many of the male colleagues yelled out support as she did her training runs. One of her biggest tests was drizzly December morning. She first went down the Hyde Street Hill, considered the most dangerous incline on the cable car routes. “I had to have the will and I had to believe I could do it,” she said. “It was scary, but as I started going down full grip and felt that I was in control, I knew I was on my way,” Barnes already is a pioneer of sorts. She started working as a cable car conductor six years ago, collecting fares and assisting on the back brake. She is one of only three women to have that job. But she said she always wanted the job up front on the car. (400)

60. What is unusual about Fannie Barnes getting a job as a gripman?

 A. She is the oldest one to work as a grpman.

 B. She is the first women to work as a gripman.

 C. She is the fattest women to work as a gripman.

 D. She is the most suitable one to work as a gripman.

61. What did the 52-year-old woman do when she first began working on the city’s cable car?

 A. As a gripman.    B. As a conductor.    C. As a brakeman.  D. As a supervisor.

62. It can be inferred from the passage that Fannie Barnes is ________.

 A. strong and easy-going            B. strong-willed and self-confident

 C. popular and humorous            D. considerate and quick-tempered

This is a true story about two friends.

One day a young man said to his good friend, "I can see that some day you will become great and rich." His friend laughed, "Ridiculous! How can you know that?" The first said, "Yes, I can see it from your forehead." The second one said, "Ok, if I become great and rich, I will give you 10,000 rupees." The first friend asked. "Really? If so, then write it down."

The second one really wrote it down. The first man kept the note, but he never took his friend seriously. The agreement was made as a joke. 10 or 12 years later, the friend did become rich and great, while the other remained poor. By that time both friends had separated and were leading their own lives. Even so, the poor friend still preserved the note, although he felt that since it was a joke, he would never receive the money.

Quite unexpectedly, the poor man fell seriously ill. Just before he died, he took out the agreement and called his son, who was only seven years old, "My son, there is something very precious that I have kept for you. After I die…you go to this man and show him what he has written."

Soon the man died. Their friendship had faded so much that the rich man did not even come to see him before he left this world. But after three or four weeks' time the son took the note to the rich man. The boy gave the rich man the note. The rich man read it and asked, "Did I write this?"

The boy said, “I do not know. My father asked me to give it to you before he died." The rich man summoned one of his secretaries and explained, "I promised this boy's father many years ago that I would give him 10,000 rupees if I became rich and great. I have been rich for seven years; please calculate how much interest I have to give him in addition to the 10,000 rupees."

The secretary told him, "An additional 7,000 rupees, which makes it 17,000 altogether."

The rich man immediately issued a check for 17,000 rupees and gave it to the little boy, saying, "Take this directly to your mother.”

This is how a sincere man kept his promise.

56. Which of the following is NOT true according to the passage?

A. The first friend can know others’ future from his or her forehead.

B. The second friend couldn’t believe his friend’s words at first.

C. The first friend wished his friend to help his son after he died.

D. The second didn’t come to see his dying friend because of different life.

57. What do you think of the man who became rich later?

A. He had a bad memory.

B. He is very selfish and unwilling to help others.

C. He is mean with his money.

D. He is a man who keeps his promise.

58. What can be inferred from the passage?

A. The poor friend preserved the note because he knew he would get the money sooner or later.

B. The man became rich 3 or 5 years later after he signed the agreement.

C. The rich man gave the boy 17,000 rupees altogether.

D. The little boy knew something about his father’s story.

There was a time in my life when beauty meant something special to me. I guess that would have been when I was about six or seven years old, just several weeks or maybe a month before the orphanage turned me into an old man.

I would get up every morning at the orphanage, make my bed just like the little soldier that I had become and then I would get into one of the two straight lines and march to breakfast with the other twenty or thirty boys who also lived in my dormitory.

After breakfast one Saturday morning I returned to the dormitory and saw the house parent chasing the beautiful monarch butterflies who lived by the hundreds in the azalea (杜鵑花) bushes strewn around the orphanage.

I carefully watched as he caught these beautiful creatures, one after the other, and then took them from the net and then stuck straight pins through their head and wings, pinning them onto a heavy cardboard sheet.

How cruel it was to kill something of such beauty. I had walked many times out into the bushes, all by myself, just so the butterflies could land on my head, face and hands so I could look at them up close.

Every year when the butterflies would return to the orphanage and try to land on me I would try and shoo (用"噓"聲趕走,嚇走)them away because they did not know that the orphanage was a bad place to live and a very bad place to die.

68. How did the people go to their meals?

A. By car.              B. On foot.            C. Queuing in two ways.              D. Any way they wanted.

69. What can we infer from the first two paragraphs?

A. I love beauty when I was about six or seven years old.

B. I became old very soon in the orphanage.

C. I had a very pleasant time in the orphanage.

D. I was tired with the life way I lived in the orphanage.

70. Which of the following statements is TRUE, according to the passage?

A. I love everything of beauty when I was old.

B. The people in the orphanage stand in line doing everything.

C. The house parent was kind and lovable.

D. I shooed the butterflies away because I didn’t want them to be killed.

My aunt Edith was a widow of 50, working as a secretary, when doctors discovered what was then thought to be a very serious heart disease.

Aunt Edith doesn’t accept defeat easily .She began studying medical reports in the library and found an article in a magazine about a well-known heart surgeon, Dr. Michael DeBekey, of Houston, Texas.He had saved the life of someone with the same illness .The article said Dr. DeBekey’s fees were very high; Aunt Edith couldn’t possibly pay them .But could he tell her of someone whose fee she could pay?

So Aunt Edith wrote to him .She simply listed her reasons for wanting to live: her three children, who would be on their own in three or four more years, her little - girl dreamt of traveling and seeing the world .There wasn’t a word of self-pity-only warmth and humor and the joy of living .She mailed the letter, not really expecting an answer.

A few days later, my doorbell rang .Aunt Edith didn’t want to come in; she stood in the hall and read aloud. “Your beautiful letter moved me very deeply .If you can come to Houston, there will be no charge for either the hospital or the operation. Signed Michael DeBekey.”

That was seven years ago. Since then, Aunt Edith has been around the world .Her three children are happily married. For her age, she is one of the youngest, most alive people I know – all because of an open heart surgeon who knew how to honor his profession, and how to open his own heart.

56．Aunt Edith wrote a letter to Dr. Debakey to         .

       A．a(chǎn)sk for his advice    B．beg him to operate on her

       C．a(chǎn)sk him to introduce another doctor       D．a(chǎn)sk for his sympathy

57．The underlined phrase “open heart” in the last paragraph means          .

       A．open – minded B．kind – hearted  C．patient      D．skillful

58．What can we conclude from the passage?

       A．Dr. DeBakey is willing to operate on anyone free of charge.

       B．Dr. DeBakey is expert in getting along with his patients.     

       C．My aunt Edith is very poor and mean.

       D．My aunt Edith is optimistic and strong – minded.

There are numerous similarities between Muhammad Ali and his 23-year-old daughter Laila. She is the only one of his nine sons and daughters to have those genes that led to the ring(拳擊場). Her father’s great status had nothing to do with Laila’s decision to pursue a boxing career. She has always been proud of his achievements, but he was never a great man to her—just dad.

What attracted her to take up boxing was the unusual sight of two women in the ring on the television screen when she was about to watch a Mike Tyson fight five years ago. She was very excited and said to herself, “I can do that. ”

Laila’s father would prefer her not to take up the dangerous sport. Johnny McClain, her husband and manager (former boxer himself) feels the same way. Even though both the men in her life worry about her, they’re 100 percent supportive. “They don’t want me to get hurt, ” she says.

Long before entering the ring, Laila was a fighter. Being the daughter of an outstanding boxer made her an easy target for high school kids to see how tough she was. They, not she, failed in the test. For the public, her biggest test took place last summer in the New York State when she took on Jacqui Frazier Lyde, the daughter of Joe Frazier, her father’s most famous opponent (對(duì)手) during the 1970s.

That fight provided the biggest shot in the arm that women’s boxing has received. News reporters poured in. Some called it “Ali/Frazier－GenerationⅡ”. No match involving women had ever attracted so much attention. Laila had a narrow victory in the fight.

Like it or not, she accepts the fact that she is the face of female boxing. And she hopes that her name and fame will help get the public to take it more seriously.

The name Ali has and always will bring her attention. But she is determined to make her own mark on opponents’ faces as well as in boxing history books. She says, “I want women’s boxing to get its due respect. ”

64. Laila took up boxing because of ________.

A. her father’s great status                   B. a Mike Tyson fight   

C. her admiration for her father          D. her interest in boxing

65. From the passage we can know ________.

   A. Laila’s husband is still a boxer now

B. Laila wants to make contributions to the sport of boxing

C. Laila’s husband doesn’t think boxing is a dangerous sport

   D. when Laila was in high school, she often failed in the fight with other kids

66. Which of the following is the best title for the passsage?

A. A female boxer—Laila Ali                     B. The best-known fight

C. Ali/Frazie－GenerationⅡ               D. Muhammad Ali and his daughter

Nick petrels is a doctor in Montreal. He works 60 hours a week. He takes care of 159 patients a week in the hospital and at his office. He’s been a doctor for ten years.

Dr. Petrels gives his patients good medical advice. But he doesn’t just tell his patients what to do. He also sings to them on television, and Dr. Petrels has his own TV show. The show is in Italian, English and French. The doctor starts the show with a song and then gives medical advice. He explains a medical problem or disease in simple language. After that, he sings another song.

Dr. Petrels produces and performs in his own show every week. The program is very popular with his patients and with people who enjoy his singing. His dream is to perform in Las Vegas. His favorite songs are love songs, and he has a compact disk of love songs that he wrote. Dr. Petrels says, “I love to sing. All my problems are gone when I sing.” But when Dr. Petrels was young, his father didn’t want him to be a singer, so he went to medical school.

Some people tell Dr. Petrels he can help people more as a doctor. But Dr. Petrels say he helps people when he sings too. “I like to make people smile. Sometimes it’s difficult to make a sick person smile. Medical and entertainment both try to do the same thing. They try to make people feel good.”
56. Dr. Petrels ______, so he is called a singing doctor.

A. has been a doctor for ten years B. loves to write songs

C. is popular with his patients       D. sings to his patients on TV

57. In his TV show, Dr. Petrels ______.

A. sings and gives medical advice

B. sings about different diseases

C. starts to explain a disease with a song

D. sings love songs he wrote

58. Dr. Petrels’ show is popular ______.

A. in Las Vegas             B. at medical schools

C. with his patients and with people who like his singing

D. with patients in Montreal

59. Dr. Petrels cures the patients in this way, because he wants to ______.

A. help people sing B. make patients feel better

C. do the same thing      D. sing on TV

I was 9 years old when I found out my father was ill. It was 1994, but I can remember my mother’s words as if it were yesterday: “Kernel, I don’t want you to take food from your father, because he has AIDS. Be very careful when you are around him.”

AIDS wasn’t something we talked about in my country when I was growing up. From then on, I knew that this would be a family secret. My parents were not together anymore, and my dad lived alone. For a while, he could take care of himself. But when I was 12, his condition worsened. My father’s other children lived far away, so it fell to me to took after him.

We couldn’t afford all the necessary medicine for him, and because Dad was unable to work, I had no money for school supplies and often couldn’t even buy food for dinner. I would sit in class feeling completely lost, the teacher’s words muffled as I tried to figure out how I was going to manage.

I did not share my burden with anyone. I had seen people reacted to AIDS. Kids laughed at classmates who had parents with the disease. And even adults could be cruel. When my father was moved to the hospital, the nurses would leave his food on the bedside even though he was too weak to feed himself.

I had known that he was going to die, but after so many years of keeping his condition a secret, I was completely unprepared when he reached his final days. Sad and hopeless, I called a woman at the nonprofit National AIDS Support. That day, she kept me on the phone for hours. I was so lucky to find someone who cared. She saved my life.

I was 15 when my father died. He took his secret away with him, having never spoken about AIDS to anyone, even me. He didn’t want to call attention to AIDS. I do.

68. What does Kernel tell us about her father?

He had stayed in the hospital since he fell ill

He depended on the nurses in his final days.

He worked hard to pay for his medication.

He told no one about his disease.

69. What can we learn from the underlined sentence in Para. 3?

A.Kernel couldn’t understand her teacher.

B.Kernel had special difficulty in hearing.

C.Kernel was too troubled to focus on the lesson.

D.Kernel was too tired to hear her teacher’s words.

70. Why did Kernel keep her father’s disease a secret?

A.She was afraid of being looked down upon.

B.She thought it was not shameful to have AIDS.

C.She found no one willing to listen to her.

D.She wanted to obey her mother.

A year ago, August, Dave Fuss lost his job driving a truck for a small company in west Michigan. His wife, Gerrie, was still working in the local school cafeteria, but it was hard for Dave to find work, and the price of everything was rising. The Fusses were at risk of joining the millions of Americans who have lost their homes in recent years. Then Dave and Gerrie received a timely gift—$7,000, a legacy(遺產(chǎn)) from their neighbors Ish and Arlene Hatch, who died in an accident. “It really made a difference when we were meeting difficulty .”says Dave.

But the Fusses weren’t the only folks in Alto and the neighboring town of Lowell to receive unexpected legacy from the Hatches. Dozens of other families were touched by what the Hatches had done. In some cases, it was a few thousand dollars; in others, it was more than $100,000.

It surprised nearly everyone that the Hatches had so much money, more than $3 million—they were an elderly couple who lived in an old house on what was left of the family farm.

Children of the Great Depression, Ish and Arlene were known for their habit of saving. They preferred comparison shopping and would go from store to store, checking prices before making a new purchase.

Through the years, the Hatches paid for local children to attend summer camps when their parents couldn’t afford it. “Ish and Arlene never asked if you needed anything,” says their friend Sandy Van Weelden, “They could see things they could do to make you happier, and they would do them.”

Even more extraordinary was that the Hatches gave away their farmland. It was the Hatches’ wish that their legacy—a legacy of kindness as much as one of dollars and cents—should enrich the whole community and last for generations to come.

Neighbors helping neighbors—that was Ish and Arlene Hatch’s story.

63. According to the text, the Fusses __________.

   A. were employed by a truck company     B. led a difficult life

   C. worked in a school cafeteria             D. lost their home

64. What can we learn about the Hatches?

   A. They had their children during the Great Depression.

   B. They left the old house to live on their family farm.

   C. They gave away their possessions（財(cái)產(chǎn)）to their neighbors.

   D. They helped their neighbors to find jobs.

65. Why would the Hatches go from store to store?

   A. They decided to open a store.          B. They wanted to save money.

   C. They couldn’t afford expensive things.    D. They wanted to buy gifts for local kids.

66. What Sandy Van Weelden said mainly tells us that the Hatches were __________.

   A. understanding           B. kind                  C. childlike               D. wealthy

My life as a ‘runner’ began by running in a playground near my home in order to lose weight about 2 years ago. As time went by, I found myself so good at running that sometimes, I even forgot how many rounds I ran around the playground.

     Thanks to all this practice, I was able to win the 5^th place in short course marathon game at ‘BASF Yeosu Site Athletic Competition’ held in October 2002. This event inspired（鼓舞）me to take part in public short-course marathon games such as 10km, 20km and half-course competitions. Finally, in May 2003, I was able to complete a full course （路線） marathon for the first time of my life. My next challenge was the Boston Marathon race, which is the world's oldest and most famous marathon races. To qualify for the Boston Marathon, one should meet the designated time standard of their age group at a certified marathon. So I took part in ChunCheon Marathon in Korea. I had to finish the full coursewithin 3 hours and 30 minutes to meet the time standard for my age group (45 to 49 years old). But to my pleasant surprise, I recorded 3 hours 22 minutes, which is 25 minute faster than my previous best record!

In April 2004, I was finally able to go to Boston. I was very pleased and proud because I could play a role to promote BASF all across the world through this sport. And it really happened! When I ran in the Boston Marathon wearing BASF logo（標(biāo)記）, people along the streets rooted for me shouting ‘BASF! BASF!’. I was very touched and so proud of my company. Of course I completed the full course successfully. After the game, I was interviewed by Korean local newspapers and had an opportunity to appear on several TV shows, which helped me to promote BASF in the community.

67. The author first began running in order to ______.

   A. build up his strength                               B. prepare for a marathon race

   C. lose weight                                             D. train for a sport meet

68. From the passage we can learn that BASF is ______.

   A. a company                                             B. a book

   C. a piece of sports equipment                      D. a city

69. We learn from the passage that the author is NOW______.

   A. in his thirties                                                 B. in his late forties

   C. in his twenties                                        D. in his fifties

70. According to the passage, the author first took part in a full course marathon in ______.

   A. 2002                         B. 2003                 C. 2004                 D. 2005