Do you know of anyone who uses the truth to deceive(欺騙)? When someone tells you something that is true, but leaves out important information that should be included, he can give you a false picture.
For example, someone might say, “I just won a hundred dollars on the lottery(彩票). It was great. I took that dollar ticket back to the store and turned it in for one hundred dollars!”
This guy is a winner, right? Maybe, maybe not. We then discover that he bought $ 200 worth of tickets, and only one was a winner. He’s really a big loser!
He didn’t say anything that was false, but he left out important information on purpose. That’s called a half-truth. Half truths are not technically lies, but they are just as dishonest.
Some politicians often use this trick. Let’s say that during Governor Smith’s last term, her state lost one million jobs and gained three million jobs. Then she seeks another term. One of her opponents says, “During Governor Smith’s term, the state lost one million jobs!” That’s true. However, an honest statement would have been, “During Governor Smith’s term, the state had a net gain of two million jobs.’’
Advertisers will sometimes use half-truths. It’s against the law to make false statements so they try to mislead you with the truth. An advertisement might say, “Nine out of ten doctors advised their patients to take Yucky Pills to cure toothache.” It fails to mention that they only asked ten doctors and nine of them work for the Yucky Company.
This kind of deception happens too often. It’s a sad fact of life: Lies are lies, and sometimes the truth can lie as well.
【小題1】We may infer that the author believes people should ________.

A tent can be one of the more costly items on your camping equipment shopping list. It is definitely something that you need to consider carefully.
By seeing a tent for real you will be able to get a better impression of its size and construction in the traditional shop. However，the downside is that，unless you are experienced，you may miss out some of the details that the manufacturer’s promotional material makes clear. Cheap tents often look similar to the quality models they are mimicking(模仿)，but you can be sure that they use inferior(次的) materials and probably have lower design standards.
Shop staff are often campers themselves. That means they usually can give lots of advice. If a shop assistant agrees with your own conclusions，that will be great；if they try to change your decision with a clear and reasonable argument，then that will be worth considering；if they just try to bamboozle(欺騙)，or even bully，you then walk away.
The Internet is a wonderful tool，and so long as you know how to make the most of search engines and put in a little effort，you really have the perfect answer waiting to be found. That answer will be different for every camper as each of us has different needs. Don’t be surprised to see your favorite criticized somewhere，but if you see too much criticism，then you had better start thinking again. No problem. You won’t have spent anything yet，so think of it positively as a large expense saved.
Probably the best approach，if you have the time，is to research tents online and make a short list. Then try to inspect those tents at nearby shops. Then you can make a final decision on where to buy your chosen model based purely on total cost.
【小題1】The underlined word “downside” in Paragraph 2 means “________”．

Can you believe everything that you read? It seems as if every day, some new articles come out about a new discovery about this or that. For example, water is bad for you, or good for you. The answer depends on which scientific study has just come out. People cannot decide which food items are healthy, how pyramids were constructed, and why dinosaurs disappeared. When we look for answers we sometimes can believe persuasive researches and scientists. But how trustworthy are they really? Here are two examples of scientific hoaxes (騙局).
As far back as 1726, Johann Beringer was fooled by his fellow scientists into thinking he had made an amazing discovery. The fossils of spiders, lizards, and even birds with the name of God written on them in Hebrew were unlike anything that had been found before. He wrote several papers on them and was famous for those only to have it revealed that they were planted by jealous colleagues to ruin his reputation.
When an early human being was discovered in 1912, scientists at this time were wild with excitement over the meaning it had for the theory of evolution. There were hundreds of papers about this Piltdown man over the next fifty years until it was finally discovered to be a complex hoax. The skull (頭骨) of a man had been mixed with the jawbone of an orangutan (猩猩) to make the ape (猿) man.
The next time you read the exciting new findings of a study of the best scientist, do not automatically assume that it is true. Even qualified people can get it wrong. While we certainly should not ignore scientific research, we do need to take it with a grain of salt. Just because it is accepted as the truth today does not mean it will still be trustworthy tomorrow.
【小題1】What does Paragraph 1 want to say?

Towards the end of Middle English, a sudden change in pronunciation started, with vowels being pronounced shorter and shorter. From the 16th century the British had contact with people from around the world. This means that many new words and phrases entered the language. The invention of printing also meant that there was a common language in print. Books became cheaper and more people learned to read. Spelling and grammar became fixed and the dialect （方言）of London became the standard. In 1604, the first English dictionary was published.
The numbers of words in Early Modern English and Late Modern English differ. Late Modern English has a lot more words because of two main factors: firstly, the Industrial Revolution created a need for new words; secondly, the British Empire covered one quarter of the earth’s surface, and the English language took in foreign words from many countries.
From around 1600, the English colonization(殖民地化)of North America resulted in the creation of American English. Some English pronunciation and words froze when they reached America. In some ways, American English is more like the English of Shakespeare than modern British English. Some expressions that the British call “ Americanisms” are in fact original （原先的）British expressions that were preserved (保存) in the colonies but were lost in Britain. Spanish also had an influence on American English, with words like canyon, ranch, stampede and vigilante being examples of Spanish words that entered English. French words and West African words also influenced American English.
Today, American English is the most influential(有影響力的). But there are many other kinds of English around the world, including Australian English, New Zealand English, Canadian English, South African English , Indian English and Caribbean English. They have differences.
【小題1】What can we know from Paragraph 1?

The young man arrived on the Massachusetts beach early carrying a radio, a shovel(鐵鍬), and a strange set of tools: a brick layer’s trowel, a palette knife, spatulas, spoons, and a spray bottle.
He walked down near the water — the tide(潮水) was out — and switched on the radio to listen to soft rock. Then he shoveled wet sand into a pile nearly four feet high and as many feet across. Then he created a square shape.
After that, he set to work with palette knife, spatulas, and spoons. He shaped a splendid tower, topped walls, fashioned beautiful bay windows, and carved (雕刻)out a big front gate.
The man knew his sand. He smoothly finished some surfaces and carved artistic designs on others. As the shapes began to dry, he gently kept them slightly wet with water from the spray bottle, in case they might break in the wind.
All this took hours. People gathered. At last he stood back, obviously satisfied with a castle worthy of the Austrian countryside or Disneyland.
Then he gathered his tools and radio and moved them up to drier sand. He had known for a while what many in the crowd still ignored: the tide was coming in. Not only had he practiced his art with confidence and style, he also had done so against a powerful, irresistible(不可抵抗的) deadline.
As the crowd looked on, water came at the base of the castle. In minutes it was surrounded. Then the rising flood began to eat into the base, walls fell, the tower fell, and finally the gate fell. More minutes passed, and small waves erased bay windows — soon no more than a small part was left.
Many in the crowd looked terribly sad; some voiced fear and discouragement. But the man remained calm. He had, after all, had a wonderful day, making beauty out of nothing, and watching it return to nothing as time and tide moved on.
【小題1】In this passage, why did the young man start early in the day?

Puppy Food
A puppy (young dog) is a precious addition to any family. The excitement of bringing home a little furry friend will always live in our memories. Like all of us, though, your puppy must have adequate nutrition（營養(yǎng)） right from the start to make certain that it’ll have a long and healthy life.
 【小題1】  You might ask yourself what is the best for your new pet with all of the different varieties on the market in all of their attractive packaging. Some dry food produced specially for puppies is the best for the development of their teeth.   【小題2】 
Contrary to the belief of many first-time puppy owners, it is not always the best idea to purchase food that is too high in calcium (鈣), protein, and vitamin levels.   【小題3】  In addition, a high intake of calcium is associated with bone disease in large-breed dogs. If you have a “small-breed” puppy, you can buy that kind of food.
It is not a good idea to feed the food you eat to your puppy frequently, as your puppy may become selective about food.   【小題4】  Some people think that dog biscuits and other treats are fine, but they should not be a main part of puppy’s diet.
Young puppies should be fed three times a day. Each puppy is unique, however, so feeding them twice a day is acceptable. After ten to twelve weeks of age, feed your puppy twice per day. Allow your puppy to eat as much as he would like in fifteen minutes.   【小題5】  If you let your puppy eat too much or too often by keeping food accessible at all times, he may become overweight and have health problems as an adult. Like humans, your puppy will not enjoy the food any longer if it is there at all times.

Everywhere I look outside my home I see people busy on their high-tech devices, while driving, walking, shopping, even sitting in toilets. When connected electronically, they are away from physical reality.
People have been influenced to become technology addicted. One survey reported that “addicted” was the word most commonly used by people to describe their relationship to iPad and similar devices. One study found that people had a harder time resisting the allure of social media than they did for sleep, cigarettes and alcohol.
The main goal of technology companies is to get people to spend more money and time on their products, not to actually improve our quality of life. They have successfully created a cultural disease. Consumers willingly give up their freedom, money and time to catch up on the latest information, to keep pace with their peers or to appear modern.
I see people trapped in a pathological（病態(tài)的）relationship with time-sucking technology, where they serve technology more than technology serves them. I call this technology servitude. I am referring to a loss of personal freedom and independence because of uncontrolled consumption of many kinds of devices that eat up time and money. 
What is a healthy use of technology devices? That is the vital question. Who is really in charge of my life? That is what people need to ask themselves if we are to have any chance of breaking up false beliefs about their use of technology. When we can live happily without using so much technology for a day or a week, then we can regain control and personal freedom, become the master of technology and discover what there is to enjoy in life free of technology. Mae West is famous for proclaiming the wisdom that “too much of a good thing is wonderful.”  But it’s time to discover that it does not work for technology.
Richard Fernandez, an executive coach at Google acknowledged that “we can be swept away by our technologies.” To break the grand digital connection people must consider how life long ago could be fantastic without today’s overused technology.
【小題1】The underlined word “allure” in Paragraph 2 probably means ______.

請(qǐng)認(rèn)真閱讀下列短文，并根據(jù)所讀內(nèi)容在文章后表格中的空格里填入一個(gè)恰當(dāng)?shù)膯卧~。(答案填在答題紙上)
Becoming a fireman is a challenging and competitive job today. A fireman’s main duty is decided by the fighting and extinguishment(熄滅) of fire which definitely requires being a strong man, both mentally and physically.
The duty of a fireman includes protection of life and property of the public. They are the servicemen who are decisively selected by an organization to deal with situations like fire. Such type of jobs is one of those few jobs where service is provided for innocent people when they need help immediately. This may include rescuing people from a building at fire, providing them with medical facilities, extinguishing fire in a house or in a large commercial building. Serving people is the main purpose of these professionals（職業(yè)）. The satisfaction which a fireman gets from this type of job cannot be compared to any other profession in the world.
Such profession requires top-level commitment and professionalism from those who have chosen it as a career. Fireman should have the highest level of courage and patience to put their lives in danger for the sake of others. They undergo lessons of maintaining patience for long hours and go through complete preparation to become successful and well-organized professional firemen. There are certain tests that are recommended before becoming a fireman.
It’s not that easy to become a fireman nowadays. A fireman is supposed to deal with unexpected situations, and they should be skilled at communicating with others and be self-disciplined at the same time.
In order to be a good fireman, one must undergo（經(jīng)歷、接受） strict local fire department’s training program after passing all the tests. All the fire departments conclude a two-to-four-month course, including classroom training and practical training that cover firefighting techniques, fire avoidance, dangerous materials and urgent situation medical actions. Completing this training, trainees go through the department’s trial period of service that can last from three to six months, depending on the methods of selection.
Firemen usually work both indoors and outdoors. They have to be on duty at all times and mostly work in shifts of at least 8 hours. They are also provided with several benefits which include medical aid plan, pension fund, annual leave and many more.
Title: Fireman

In today’s world, almost everyone knows that air pollution and water pollution are harmful to people’s health. However, not all the persons know that noise is also a kind of pollution, and that is harmful to human health, too.
People who work and live under noisy conditions usually become deaf. Today, however, scientists believe that 10 percent of workers in Britain are being deafened by the noise where they work. Many of the workers who print newspapers and books, and who weave（織） cloth become deaf. Quite a few people living near airports also become deaf. Recently it was discovered that many teenagers in America could hear no better than 65-year-old persons, for these young people like to listen to pop music and most of pop music is a kind of noise. Besides, noise produced by jet planes or machines will make people’s life difficult and unpleasant, or even make people ill or even drive them mad.
It is said that a continuous noise of over 85 decibels（分貝） can cause deafness. Now the governments in many countries have made laws to control noise and make it less than 85 decibels.
In China, the government is trying to solve not only air and water pollution problems but also noise pollution problems.
【小題1】The passage is mainly about ______ .       

Having a great collection of books at home doesn’t really mean that you are a person who has a passion for literature and reading． It can be a family inheritance or it can be just to impress people around you by the fact that you are a person of culture． On the other hand, there are many persons who cannot afford to buy books, because some of them are quite expensive, but who usually go to libraries and spend hours reading something that interests them a lot, or just borrow books to home．
From my point of view, literature is very important in our life． For example, reading is a means of gaining culture and enriching our knowledge in different areas． It can help us have a great imagination and it makes things easier when it comes to make compositions on different themes． It gives you the possibility to speak about science, even if you don’t work in this domain, or you can express your opinion about a political aspect, just because you have read something connected to that．
Secondly, literature offers us the possibility to enter the world of imagination, and to leave the real one for a couple of hours． We come to meet kings and queens many years ago, dream of being in the world of the rich or imagine how life will be in the future． Sometimes, we identify ourselves with the characters in the stories we read and they can give us some clues to solve our problems and how to react in certain circumstances．
In conclusion, I would like to say that literature is the perfect means to enrich our culture, to express ourselves correctly, to have a rich vocabulary, to be able to interfere in conversations in different fields of interest and to really be considered an erudite person．
【小題1】People who are fond of literature are those that ________ ．