6、THE SHAKESPEARE HOUSES

The five Shakespeare Houses in and around Stratford upon Avon offer you an authentic experience of the Stratford world in which the famous dramatist was born, lived and died. Intimately connected with William Shakespeare or his immediate family, these original houses are now owned and cared for by the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust.

OPENING TIMES

September May   Mon Sat : 10:00 am 4:00 pm   Sunday: 10:30 am 4:00 pm

June August      Mon Sat : 9:00am 5:00 pm    Sunday: 9:30am 5:00 pm

BEST VALUE TICKETS

THE THREE IN TOWN SHAKESPEARE HOUSES

Adult ￡8.50   Child ￡4.20    Family ￡20.00

ALL FIVE SHAKESPEARE HOUSES

Adult ￡12.00   Child ￡6.00    Family ￡29.00

CHILDREN AND STUDENTS TICKETS

Under 5: Free     Between 5&16: Child rate     17 and over: Adult rate

17 and over and in secondary education: Family ticket

GROUP VISITS

Groups of 20 or more visitors qualify for a 10% discount on ticket prices. For more information telephone 01789 201806 or 201836.

SPECIAL VISITS

The Houses are open out of hours by special arrangement. They offer a unique setting for functions, dinners, receptions and other events. For more information telephone 01789 201808.

EDUCATION GROUPS

We welcome visits by organized groups. One member of staff is admitted free with every 10 pupils or students. Additional adults and helpers will be charged at the adult rate. Pupils of primary and secondary schools will be charged at the child rate (valid student ID may be requested). Education groups of 20 or more visitors also qualify for a 10% discount on admissions. For more information telephone 0178 201806 or 201836.

EDUCATION DEPARTMENT

The Education Department at the Trust organizes many special projects, day schools, courses and lectures. If you would like further information telephone 01789 201805.

73．Where can we most probably find this passage?

       A．In a textbook                                       B．In a travel booklet

       C．In a magazine                                      D．In a book on Shakespeare

74．If you are a British travel agent, most probably you will call        to know more about group visits.

       A．201806               B．201805                C．201808               D．201838

75．Which of the following is true according to the passage?

       A．Shakespeare lived in all the five houses.

       B．The Houses are open longer hours in October than in July.

       C．To attend lectures concerning Shakespeare, contact 201808.

       D．You can visit the Houses after 5 pm if you contact the Trust in advance on 01789 201808.

5、We all hate speed cameras, don’t we? They’re not there to slow drivers down and lower the road accidents; they just make money for the government. They trick us, cost us cold hard cash, disturb us from driving properly and are unfair.

Well, here’s a surprising thing: what if there were facts that the boring cameras actually saved lives? It’s a conclusion difficult to ignore when you look at what’s happening in France, a country with a historically poor record of road safety.

There were 16,617 road deaths in 1972 in France, for example, but that dropped to 8412 by 1995 following rules such as compulsory seat belt wearing in 1990 and a lowering of the blood alcohol limit to 0.05 in 1995.

    Last year, the road deaths dropped below 5000 for the first time, or 4.9 percent less than 2004, comparing road deaths to population in 2005, that’s about 817 per million people compared with Australia’s 806.

And guess what? Last year the number of speed cameras on French roads reached 1,000 and the government plans to double that within the next three years.

Okay, you know the arguments regarding increased traffic safety and cameras-for-income, but it seems in France there’s been a major cultural change brought on by radars and other laws. A three-hour, wine-soaked lunch with a quick rush back to the office is no longer on.

Traveling on the highways, it is rare to see anyone breaking the 130km/h speed limits when once few traveled below it. The speed cameras are clearly signed so drivers know when they are coming. There’s even an official web site listing fixed and mobile camera locations and it is updated regularly.

Maybe it is because of such transparency by government, rather than the secrecy too often used by authorities in many other countries that more French can enjoy the joy of living thanks to speed cameras.

69．From the passage we can learn that______.

A．France has a very poor record of road safety

B．we’d better ignore the evidence that speed cameras save lives

C．France had less road deaths than Australia in 2005

D．France does successfully in controlling road accidents

70．Which seems more effective in lowering road deaths in France according to this passage?

    A．Compulsory seat belt.                        B．Lowering blood alcohol limit.

    C．Placing more speed cameras               D．Eating in a shorter time.

71．Now you can seldom see in France         .

       A．people drive at a speed of less than 130 km./h

       B．lunch time lasts long hours with drunk people rushing back to office

       C．drivers drive according to the traffic lights

       D．police conduct traffic in streets

72．What does the underlined word “transparency” in the last paragraph mean?

    A．Secrecy.           B．Openness.        C．Strictness.         D．Harmony

4、    I am a good mother to three children. I have tried never to let my profession stand in the way of being a good parent.

I no longer consider myself the center of the universe. I show up. I listen. I try to laugh. I am a good friend to my husband. I have tried to make marriage vows(誓言) mean what they say. I am a good friend to my friends , and they to me. Without them, there would be nothing to say to you today.

So here’s what I want to tell you today: Get a life. A real life , not a desire of the next promotion, the bigger paycheck , the larger house.

Get a life in which you are not alone .Find people you love, and who love you. And remember that love is not leisure; it is work. Pick up the phone .Send an e-mail .Write a letter. And realize that life is the best thing and that you have no business taking it for granted.

It’s so easy to waste our lives, our days, our hours, and our minutes. It’s so easy to exist instead of to live. I learned to live many years ago. Something really, really bad happened to me, something that changed my life in ways that, if I had choice, it would never have been changed at all. And what I learned from it is what, today, seems to be the hardest lesson of all.

I learned to love the journey, not the destination. I learned to looked at all the good in the world and try to give some of it back because I believed in it, completely and totally. And I tried to do that, in part , by telling others what I had learned.

By telling them this: Read in the backyard with the sun on your face. Learn to be happy. And think of life as a deadly illness, because if you do, you will live it with joy and passion as it ought to be lived.

64．The best title of this passage probably is _____．

       A．Love your friends                           B．Live a real life

       C．Don't waste time                            D．Be a good mother and wife

65．How did the author form her view of life?

       A．Through social experience.                B．By learning from her friends.

       C．Through an unfortunate experience.   D．From her children and husband.

66．By the underlined sentence “It is so easy to exist instead of to live" in the fifth paragraph, the author really means that people tend to _____.

       A．make a living rather than live a real life

       B．work rather than enjoy life

       C．waste a lot in life

       D．forget the most important lessons in life

67．What's the author's attitude toward work?

       A．Do it well to serve others.

       B．Earn enough money to make life better.

       C．Try your best to get higher position and pay.

       D．Don't let it affect your real life.

68．It can be inferred from the passage that＿,

       A．the author is a success in personal life

       B．the author didn't try her best to work well

       C．the author spent all her time caring for her children

       D．the author likes traveling very much

3、    Robinson Diaz lives in a small cottage high in the Andes Mountains of South America. Diaz is a “cable racer”, and every morning he faces the difficult task of taking the local teacher to her school. To do this, he first walks for an hour up to a place the locals call Los Pinos, right at the edge of the 400-foot deep gorge of the Negro valley. Here, one end of a thick metal cable has been fixed to a wooden post. The cable stretches right across the deep valley to the other side, a kilometer away.

A metal hook is fixed to the cable, with leather straps hanging from it. Diaz fastens the straps around his shoulders and waist, does a quick safety check and then, without hesitating, throws himself off the edge of the mountain. Attached to the cable by only the metal hook, he rapidly picks up speed and soon he is racing through the air. Crossing the valley by wire takes him 30 seconds, instead of the two hours it would take him to walk down through the rain forest and climb up the steep muddy slopes on the other side.

As Diaz begins his trip, Diana Rios, a 23-year-old elementary teacher, is waiting on the other side of the gorge for the moment when he will come racing through the mist towards her at 100 mph. She will then return with him, hanging on to him as he goes back along the cable. Diana had no idea when she took the teaching job that just getting to work in the village school would be dangerous. "At first I wanted to cry," she says, clutching her hook as the metal cable starts to rattle  violently at Diaz’s approach. “But I soon got used to it.” She still prefers to go with Diaz, though, rather than making the frightening and dangerous crossing on her own.

For the inhabitants of Los Pinos, the wire cable is a lifeline. For more than 50 years, it has served the community as a form of transport to and from the rest of the world. Everything that comes arrives via the cable----bricks and wood for building, sacks of rice and corn. Pregnant mothers, who must get to the nearest clinic, cross the wire during the darkness of the night, returning with their newborn babies. It is dangerous, but they have no choice.

This time Robinson Diaz makes a perfect landing on Diana’s side of the gorge. For him, the dangers of this daily journey are insignificant. “What I’m really scared of are snakes,” he says. “This is nothing in comparison.” Then Dianna straps herself into her harness and hooks herself up to the wire behind Diaz, holding on to him tightly. He turns, flashes her a smile, releases the brake and kicks away. Within seconds, the teacher and the cable-racer have disappeared back into the mist.

60．Robinson Diaz has a difficult task every morning because he has to________.

       A．climb a long way up a mountain            B．get to the edge of a valley

       C．walk through a dangerous area              D．help someone get to work

61．In the second paragraph, the writer suggests that Diaz is________.

       A．confident about what he is doing           B．unaware of the danger he faces

       C．careless about his own safety                D．uncertain of what he is doing

62．What is Diana's opinion about the journey now?

       A．She enjoys it.                                      B．She no longer finds it a problem.

       C．It makes her feel very frightened.          D．It would be impossible without Diaz.

63．What does Diaz say about using the cable?

       A．He does not find it as frightening as other things.

       B．He does not think there is any risk.

       C．He is happy that he can help the teacher.

       D．He is worried about the danger of snakes

2、      All you need to participate in home exchange is a house! You don’t need to compare values of the houses or search for an exchanging partner in the case of a home similar to yours. It just requires identifying a home where you and your family can stay comfortably in the place you wish to visit. You need to search for a person or a family with whom you would be comfortable to exchange your home，for a short period of time. In home exchange，you would be taking care of other people's home，as well as enjoying the country while they would be doing the same with your home.

People who have traveled a lot would know that the most expensive part of traveling is paying hotel bills. In many cases，vacations cannot last for long mainly because of the high accommodation expenses. Holiday home exchange is one of the most simple and intelligent ways to cut down accommodation expenses. It is an equal trade for both the families and enables both to enjoy the advantages of a home while traveling to another country.

Home exchanges have become very popular in major cities in the United Kingdom as it allows you to benefit from time-share. Mostly, people participating in home exchanges prefer to involve their friends or neighbors to entertain their visitors, by providing the home exchange visitors with information regarding the local sightseeing attractions. Many families with children try to swap houses with families who have children of similar age group. It saves time and energy that is often wasted in carrying around a clot of toys and equipment. The individual traveler often finds house swapping a great way of relaxing in the comforts of a home after a tiring day of sightseeing and can spend more time to get to know the area better.

56．The most suitable title for the passage is

       A．Home Exchange for Your Holiday

       B．How to Find the Best House

       C．Everyone Loves Exchanging Homes

       D．Tips for Your Trip

57．If you take part in home exchanges，you_______.

       A．should find a home that is similar to yours

       B．should compare your partner's home to yours

       C．should take care of other people's home

       D．should prepare food for other families

58．What's the main reason for people exchanging homes during the holiday?

       A．To experience other people's lifestyles.

       B．To get to know new neighbors and make new friends.

       C．To avoid paying expensive hotel bills while traveling

       D．To get more information from locals.

59．We can learn from the last paragraph that________.

       A．more families prefer to exchange homes than individual travelers

       B．families with kids are more likely to exchange homes with families with kids

       C．it is difficult for individual travelers to find partners to exchange their homes

       D．the individual travelers love to introduce their friends and neighbors to the visitors

1、I was deep in thought at my office, preparing a lecture to be given that evening at a college across town, when the phone rang. A woman I had   36  met introduced herself and said that she was the mother of a seven year old boy and that she was   37  . She said that her doctor had advised her that discussing her coming death with her son would be too   38   for him, but somehow that didn’t feel right to her.

39   that I worked with sad children, she asked for my advice. I told her that our heart was often smarter than our brain and that I thought she knew what would be best for her son. I also   40  her to attend the lecture that night since I was speaking about how children deal successfully with   41  . She said she would be there.

I wondered later if I would   42   her at the lecture, but my question was answered when I saw a   43   woman being half carried into the room by two adults. I talked about the fact that children usually   44   the truth long before they are told and that they often wait until they feel adults are   45   to talk about it before sharing their concerns and questions. I said that it is better to tell children the truth about bad things   46   pretend they don’t happen. I said that respecting children meant   47   them in the family sadness, not shutting them out.

She had heard enough. At the break, she hobbled (跛行) to me and   48   tears she said, “I knew it in my heart. I just knew I should tell him.” She said that she   49   tell him that night.

The next morning I received another phone call from her. She could hardly talk, but I managed to   50   the story through her choked voice. She had awakened him when they got home the night before and   51   said, “Derek, I have something to tell you.” He quickly interrupted her, saying, “Oh, Mommy, is it now that you are going to   52   me that you are dying?”

She   53   him close, and they both sobbed while she said, “Yes.”

After a few minutes, the little boy wanted down. He said that he had   54   for her that he had been saving. In the back of one of his drawers was a dirty pencil box. Inside the box was a letter   55   in simple untidy handwriting. It said, “Good bye, Mom. I will always love you.”

How long he had been waiting to hear the truth, I don’t know. I do know that two days later the young mother died. In her coffin was placed a dirty pencil box and a letter.