The worker I hired to repair my house had just finished a difficult first day on the job. A broken wheel made him an hour late; his ladder (梯子) fell down when he was painting the roof and now his old truck wouldn' t start. With each problem he shouted angrily, more at himself than at his things. As I drove him home, the man didn't say a word.
I tried talking to the man to kill time. I managed to find out that he had come up from Blue Hills in Victoria with his family six months ago to find a job. This was his first job since moving here. I now knew why his price was lower than any other worker I could find in the local newspaper. He really needed the job. His clothes told me as much.
On arriving, much to my surprise, he invited me in to meet his family. As we walked through his front garden he suddenly stopped at a small tree and placed his hands on it. Then, when he opened the door he completely changed. Instead of his troubled face, there was now a warm smile, hugs for his two children and a kiss for his wife.
The following day, I asked him about the tree.
"That's my trouble tree," he answered. "Work troubles aren't welcome at home with my wife and the children. So I hang them on that tree every night when I come home. Then in the morning I pick them up again. "
"And you know what else?" he said smiling,"The next morning I find that there aren't as many as I remember hanging up the night before. "
【小題1】Which of the following things did NOT happen to the worker?

The sun was just coming up when I headed out to work last May at 6 a.m. Not quite dark but dark enough to need my headlights. I turned onto one of the lonely rural country roads.
Maybe it was because I was listening to the radio, maybe it was because I was already thinking about some projects at work, that I didn’t spot the dark object on the road until I was too late. I ran over it and felt the back left tire pull, and then sink. I stopped and got out of the car.
No mystery here---- my back left tyre was cut like a loaf of bread. Back 50 yards was a piece of sharp iron I had run over. I had never changed a tyre. I looked up the road. Not a car in either direction. The nearest service station was miles away. I threw up my hands. Then I remembered---- my cell phone! I powered it up before realizing, I didn’t know who to call.
Wouldn’t you know it, I spotted a car coming from the opposite direction. The driver slowed as he approached. I guessed he could see I was in trouble. He stopped his car, got out and immediately saw the trouble. “Madam, would you like me to change that tyre for you?” he asked. The man couldn’t have been more friendly. I was frightened out there and he put me completely at ease. “There,” he said, after putting on the spare, “you are all set to go.”
“Good thing for me that you were driving this way,” I told him, as I climbed back into my car.
“Funny you should say that,” he said. “Just like you, I was heading to work, but my job is in the opposite direction. I made a wrong turn at some point. I don’t know what I was thinking.”
【小題1】The writer didn’t notice the object on the road because ______.

Two traveling angels stopped to spend the night in the home of a wealthy family. The family was rude and refused to let the angels stay in the guest room. Instead the angels were given a space in the cold basement. As they made their bed on the hard floor, the older angel saw a hole in the wall and repaired it. When the younger angel asked why, the older angel replied: Things aren’t always what they seem.
The next night the pair came to rest at the house of a very poor, but very hospitable(好客的)farmer and his wife. After sharing what little food they had，the couple let the angels sleep in their bed where they could have a good night’s rest. When the sun came up the next morning，the angels found the farmer and his wife in tears. Their only cow, whose milk had been their only income, lay dead in the field.
The younger angel was very angry and asked the older angel, “How could this happen?” “Why did you not watch out for the cow? The first man had everything, yet you watched over his house,” she accused. “The second family had little but was willing to share everything, and you did not help.”
“Things aren’t always what they seem,” the older angel replied. “When we stayed in the basement，I noticed there was gold stored in that hole in the wall. Since the owner was so greedy and unwilling to share his good fortune，I asked God if I could seal(封口) the wall so he wouldn’t find it. Then last night as we slept in the farmer’s bed，the angel of death(死神) came for his wife. I asked God if the angel could take the cow instead. Things aren’t always what they seem.”
【小題1】The underlined part “the pair” in the second paragraph two refers to　　　 .

When two Bangs meet
SHELDON Cooper is a scientific genius on the popular American TV show, The Big Bang Theory (《生活大爆炸》). He finally met his match last year: Stephen Hawking.
This is not the first time that the scientist has appeared on TV. He has also been on Star Trek (in 1987) and The Simpsons (in 1989). Each time, he played himself.
Hawking, 71, is perhaps the world’s most famous scientist after Albert Einstein. He has spent his whole life studying the beginning and the end of the universe, including the Big Bang (宇宙大爆炸) theory.
The Big Bang theory explains the early development of the universe. According to the theory, about 13.7 billion years ago everything was all squeezed together in a tiny, tight little ball, and then the ball exploded. The results of that explosion are what we call the universe.?
Hawking has always tried to make science more popular with people. His book: A Brief History of Time was published in 1988. In the book he shares his understanding of the universe in simple language. The book tries to explain many subjects about the universe to common readers, including the Big Bang, black holes and light cones (光錐).
Hawking’s achievements are even greater if you think about his disability. When he was 21, Hawking caught a bad illness that slowly stopped him from moving or talking. Now he sits on a wheelchair with a computer by his side. To communicate, he moves two fingers to control the computer’s mouse. He chooses his words from the screen, which are then spoken by a voice synthesizer (合成器).
Hawking also believes that there might be aliens in space. However, he believes they are probably very dangerous, so we should not look for them. “I imagine they might exist in very big ships ... having used up all the resources from their home planet,” Hawking said in a British documentary named Into the Universe with Stephen Hawking. 
【小題1】What does the “two Bangs” in the title refer to?

[1]Although known as an extraordinarily successful businessman, Warren Buffet comes off as a pretty ordinary person.
[2]Looking back on his childhood, one can see how serious he was about making money. Buffet used to go door-to-door and sell soda pop. Later, he also worked at his grandfather’s grocery store. At the ripe age of 11, Buffet bought his first stock(股票). When his family moved to Washington D.C., Buffet became a paperboy for The Washington Post. While still in school, he was making $175 a month, a full-time wage for many young men.
[3]From the beginning, Buffet made his fortune from investing. He started with all the money that he had made from selling pop, delivering papers and so on. Between 1950 and l956, he grew his $9, 800 to $14, 000．From there, he organized investment partnerships with his family and friends, and then gradually drew in more people through very attractive terms.
[4]Buffet applied to Harvard Business School but         , making it to be one of the worst admission decisions in Harvard history. The outcome ended up affecting Buffet’s life deeply, for he ended up attending Columbia Business School, where he studied under Benjamin Graham, the father of securities analysis who provided the foundation for Buffet’s grand success.
[5]Buffet is a person of habit—same house, same office, same city. He doesn’t collect houses or cars or works of art, and he hates companies that waste money on such goods. Instead, he has established the Buffet Foundation, with a detailed plan on how to invest his money more wisely to society.
【小題1】What kind of person is Buffet according to Paragraph 1? (no more than 10 words)
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【小題2】What does the writer intend to tell us in Paragraph 2? (no more than 10 words)
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【小題3】According to Paragraph 3, how did Buffet start his investment? (no more than 10 words)
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【小題4】Fill in the blank in Paragraph 4 with proper words. (no more than 3 words)
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【小題5】Explain the underlined sentence in Paragraph 5.(no more than 10 words)
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When my brother and I were young, my mom would take us on Transportation Days.
It goes like this: You can’t take any means of transportation more than once. We would start from home, walking two blocks to the rail station. We’d take the train into the city center, then a bus, switching to the tram, then maybe a taxi. We always considered taking a horse carriage in the historic district, but we didn’t like the way the horses were treated, so we never did. At the end of the day, we took the subway to our closet station, where Mom’s friend was waiting to give us a ride home——our first car ride of the day.
The good thing about Transportation Days is not only that Mom taught us how to get around. She was born to be multimodal (多方式的). She understood that depending on cars only was a failure of imagination and, above all, a failure of confidence—the product of a childhood not spent exploring subway tunnels.
Once you learn the route map and step with certainty over the gap between the train and the platform, nothing is frightening anymore. New cities are just light-rail lines to be explored. And your personal car, if you have one, becomes just one more tool in the toolbox—and often an inadequate one, limiting both your mobility and your wallet.
On Transportation Days, we might stop for lunch on Chestnut Street or buy a new book or toy, but the transportation was the point. First, it was exciting enough to watch the world speed by from the train window. As I got older, my mom helped me unlock the mysteries that would otherwise have paralyzed my first attempts to do it myself: How do I know where to get off? How do I know how much it costs? How do I know when I need tickets, and where to get them? What track, what line, which direction, where’s the stop, and will I get wet when we go under the river?
I’m writing this right now on an airplane, a means we didn’t try on our Transportation Days and, we now know, the dirtiest and most polluting of them all. My flight routed me through Philadelphia. My multimodal mom met me for dinner in the airport. She took a train to meet me.
【小題1】Which was forbidden by Mom on Transportation Days?

Many people believe Henry Ford invented the automobile (汽車). But Henry Ford did not start to build his first car until 1896. That was eleven years after two Germans developed the world's first automobile. Many people believe Henry Ford invented the production line that moved a car's parts to the worker, instead of making the worker move to the parts. That is not true, either. Many factory owners used methods of this kind before Ford. What Henry Ford did was to use other people's ideas and make them better. And he made the whole factory a moving production line.
In the early days of the automobile, almost every car maker raced his cars. It was the best way of gaining public notice. Henry Ford decided to build a racing car. Ford's most famous race was his first one. It was also the last race in which he drove the car himself.
The race was in 1901, at a field near Detroit. All of the most famous cars had entered, but only two were left: the Winton and Ford's. The Winton was famous for its speed. Most people thought the race was over before it began.
The Winton took an early lead. But halfway through the race, it began to lose power. Ford started to gain. And near the end of the race, he took the lead. Ford won the race and defeated the Winton. His name appeared in newspapers and he became well­known all over the United States.Within weeks of the race, Henry Ford formed a new automobile company. In 1903, a doctor in Detroit bought the first car from the company. That sale was the beginning of Henry Ford's dream. Ford said: “I will build a motor car for a great number of people. It will be large enough for the family, but small enough for one person to operate and care for. It will be built of the best materials. It will be built by the best men to be employed. And it will be built with the simplest plans that modern engineering can produce. It will be so low in price that no man making good money will be unable to own one.”
The Model T was a car of that kind. It only cost $850. It was a simple machine that drivers could depend on. Doctors bought the Model T. So did farmers. Even criminals. They considered it the fastest and surest form of transportation. Americans loved the Model T. They wrote stories and songs about it. Thousands of Model T's were built in the first few years.
【小題1】What do we know about Henry Ford from Paragraph 1 ?

Twenty years ago, I drove a taxi for a living. One night I went to pick up a passenger at 2:30 am. When I arrived to collect, I found the building was dark except for a single light in a ground floor window.
I walked to the door and knocked, “Just a minute,” answered a weak and elderly voice. After a long pause, the door opened. A small woman in her eighties stood before me. By her side was a small suitcase.
I took the suitcase to the car, and then returned to help the woman. She took my arm and we walked slowly towards the car.
She kept thanking me for my kindness. “It's nothing,” I told her. “I just try to treat my passengers the way I would want my mother treated.”
“Oh, you are such a good man.” She said. When we got into the taxi, she gave me an address, and then asked, “Could you drive through downtown?”
“It's not the shortest way,” I answered quickly.
“Oh, I'm in no hurry,” she said. “I'm on my way to a hospice (臨終醫(yī)院). I don't have any family left. The doctor says I don't have very long.”
I quietly reached over and shut off the meter (計價器).
For the next two hours, we drove through the city. She showed me the building where she had once worked, the neighborhood where she had lived, and the furniture shop that had once been a ballroom where she had gone dancing as a girl.
Sometimes she'd ask me to slow down in front of a special building and would sit staring into the darkness, saying nothing.
At dawn, she suddenly said, “I'm tired. Let's go now.”
We drove in silence to the address she had given me.
“How much do I owe you?” she asked.
“Nothing.” I said.
“You have to make a living,” she answered. “Oh, there are other passengers.” I answered.
Almost without thinking, I bent and gave her a hug. She held onto me tightly. Our hug ended with her remark, “You gave an old woman a little moment of joy.”
【小題1】Why did the man help the old woman so much?

William Butler Yeats, a most famous Irish writer, was born in Dublin on June 13, 1865. His childhood lacked the harmony（和睦）that was typical of a happy family. Later, Yeats shocked  his family by saying that he remembered “l(fā)ittle of childhood but its pain”. In fact, he inherited（繼承）excellent taste in art from his family—both his father and his brother were painters. But he finally settled on literature, particularly drama（戲劇）and poetry. 
Yeats had strong faith in the coming of new artistic movements. He set himself the fresh task in founding an Irish national theatre in the late 1890s. His early theatrical experiments, however, were not received favorably at beginning. He didn’t lose heart, and finally enjoyed success in his poetical drama.
Compared with his dramatic works, Yeats’s poems attract much admiring notice. The subject matter includes love, nature, history, time and aging. Though Yeats generally relied on very traditional forms, he brought modern sensibility to them. As his literary life progressed, his poetry grew finer and richer, which led him to worldwide recognition.
He had not enjoyed a major public life since winning the Nobel Price in 1923. Yet, he continued writing almost to the end of his life. Had Yeats stopped writing at age 40, he would probably now be valued as a minor poet, for there is no other example in literary history of a poet who produces his greatest works between the ages of 50 and 75. After Yeats’ death in 1939, W. H. Auden wrote, among others, the following lines:
Earth, receive an honored guest:
William Yeats is laid to rest.
Let the Irish vessel（船）lie
Emptied of its poetry.
【小題1】Which of the following can describe Yeats’s family?

I never got along with Dad. But when he was dying. I set off for Nebraska to be with him and my family. I stopped for the night at a hotel with a pool, hoping it would relax me.
The pool area was empty as I walked into the still water. A man in a bathing suit appeared. He sat on the edge of the pool with his legs moving up and down in the water. He had dark hair and deep brown eyes and smiled. “Where are you going?” he asked. When I told him about my father, he asked how we got along. I tried to change the subject, but then for some reason, I told him everything.
Finally the man said, “Even with all the trouble, remember, your father still loves you.” All at once, warm and clear childhood memories came flooding back: Dad running alongside my wobbling（搖擺的）bicycle, the proud hug he gave me at my high school graduation, his laugh when I caught him off guard with a tickle（撓癢）. “Yes, I know he does, ” I heard myself say. And for the first time in years I believed it. The man left, leaving me alone with my comforting thoughts.
Back in my room, as I went to bed, I decided it was time to forgive my father. Then I wished he’d forgive me too. The phone bell woke me up at 3 am. My sister’s voice sent a shiver（寒戰(zhàn)）through me: Dad had just died. I had wanted to see him and make peace. But as sadness was beginning to surround me, I remembered that the man by the pool had already brought Dad and me together.
【小題1】 From the passage we learn that the author _________