Passage One

All the housewives who went to the new supermarket had one great ambition: to be the lucky customer who did not have to pay for her shopping. For this was what the notice just inside the entrance promised. It said: “Remember, once a week, one of our customers gets free goods. This May Be Your Lucky Day!”

For several weeks Mrs. Edwards hoped, like many of her friends, to be the lucky customer. Unlike her friends, she never gave up hoping. The cupboards in kitchen were full of things which she did not need. Her husband tried to advise her against buying things but failed. She dreamed of the day when the manager of the supermarket would approach her and say: “Madam, this is Your Lucky Day. Everything in your basket is free.”

One Friday morning, after she had finished her shopping and had taken it to her car, she found that she had forgotten to buy any tea. She dashed back to the supermarket, got the tea and went towards the cash-desk. As she did so, she saw the manager of the supermarket approach her. “Madam,” he said, holding out his hand, “I want to congratulate you! You are our lucky customer and everything you have in your basket is free!”

Passage Two

Deep inside a mountain near Sweetwater in East. Tennessee is a body of water known as the Lost Sea. It is listed by the Guinness Book of Would Records as the world’s largest underground lake. The Lost Sea is part of an extensive and historic cave system called Craighead Caverns.

The caverns have been known and used since the days of the Cherokee Indian nation. The cave expands into a series of huge rooms from a small opening on the side of the mountain. Approximately one mile from the entrance, in a room called “The Council Room,” many Indian artifacts have been found. Some of the items discovered include pottery, arrowheads, weapons, and jewelry.

For many years there were persistent rumors of a large underground lake somewhere in a cave, but it was not discovered until 1905. In that year, a thirteen-year-old boy named Ben Sands crawled through a small opening three hundred feet underground. He found himself in a large cave half filled with water.

Today tourists visit the Lost Sea and ride far out onto it in glass-bottomed boats powered by electric motors. More than thirteen acres of water have been mapped out so far and still no end to the lake has been found. Even though teams of divers have tried to explore the Lost Sea, the full extent of it is still unknown.

Reading－20 minutes
Directions:
There are two reading passages in this part. Each passage is followed by five questions. For each question there are four suggested answers marked A, B, C and D. Choose one best answer.

Passage One
The water we drink and use is running short in the world. We all have to learn how to stop wasting our limited water. One of the steps we should take is to find ways of reusing it. Experiments have already been done in this field.

Today in most large cities, fresh water is used only once, then it runs into waste system. But it is possible to pipe the used water to a purifying factory. There it can be filtered and treated with chemicals so that it can be used again, just as it were fresh from a spring.

But even if every large city purified and reused its water, we still would not have enough. Then we could turn to the oceans. All we’d have to do to make use of the seawater on earth is to get rid of the salt. This process is called desalinization, and it is already in use in many parts of the world.

Passage Two
Some people hate everything that is modern. They cannot imagine how anyone can really like modern music; they find it hard to accept the new fashions in clothing; they think that all modern painting is ugly; and they seldom have a good word for the new buildings that are being built everywhere in the world. Such people look for perfection in everything, and they take their standards of perfection from the past. They are usually impatient with anyone who is brave enough to experiment with new or to express himself or the age in materials original ways. It is, of course, true that many artists do not succeed in their work and instead produce works that can only be considered as failures. If the work of art is a painting, the artist’s failure concerns himself alone, but if it is a building, his failure concerns others too, because it may damage the beauty of the whole place. This does sometimes happen, but it is completely untrue to say, as some people do, that modern architecture is nothing.

We can’t judge every modern building by the standards of the ancient time, even though we admire the ancient buildings. Technologically, the modern buildings are more advanced. The modern architect knows he should learn from the ancient works, but with his greater resources of knowledge and materials, he will never be content to imitate the past. He is too proud to do that.

Passage One
Students enrolled at least half time may borrow up to $3,000 form the government over a two-year period. Repayment of the loan begins six months after the student leaves school. These loans carry on interest until this time. The current interest rate is 5 percent. Students may borrow up to $4,500 annually from a bank, credit union, savings and loan association or other eligible lender. Repayment on these loans usually begins six months after the student leaves school. These loans carry no interest until this time. This current interest rate is 9 percent. Parents may borrow up to $300 annually for each dependent college. Repayment begins forty-five days after receiving the loan, and the interest rate is 12 percent.

Passage Two
Are you aware that you actually possess six senses? The sixth is a muscular sense responsible for directing your muscles intelligently to the exact extent necessary for each action you perform. For example, when you reach for an object, the sensory nerves linking the muscles to the brain stop your hand at the correct spot. This automatic perception of the position of your muscles in relation to the object is your muscular sense in action.

Muscles are stringly bundles of fibers varying from one five-thousandth of an inch to about three inches. They have three unique characteristics, they can become shorter and thicker; they can stretch; and they can retract to their original positions. Under a high-powered microscope, muscle tissue is seen as long, slender cells with a grainy texture like wood.

More than half of a person’s body is composed of muscle fibers, most of which are involuntary—in other words, work without conscious direction. The voluntary muscles, those that we move consciously to perform particular actions, number more than five hundred. Women have only 60 to 70 percent as much muscle as men for their body mass. That is why an average woman can’t lift as much, throw as far, or hit as hard as an average man.

Reading－20 minutes
Directions:
There are two reading passages in this part. Each passage is followed by five questions. For each question there are four suggested answers marked A, B, C and D. Choose one best answer.

Passage One
According to an old story, a farmer once found that a bag of corn had been stolen from his house. He went to the judge and told him about his loss. The judge ordered all the people of the farm to come before him. He took a number of sticks of equal length and gave one stick to each man.

He then said, “Come before me again tomorrow. I shall then know which of you the thief is because the stick given to the thief will be one inch longer than the others.”

The thief was afraid of being found out, and so the cut an inch off his stick. The next day the thief’s stick was found to be one inch shorter than any of the others. In this way the thief was found out, and was at once taken away to prison.

Passage Two
The home computer industry has been growing rapidly in the United States for the last ten years. Computers used to be large, expensive machines that were very difficult to use. But scientists and technicians have been making them smaller and cheaper while at the same time they have been made easier to use. As a result, their popularity has been increasing as more people have been buying computers for their homes and businesses.

Computers have been designed to store information and compute problems that are difficult for human beings to work out. Some have voices that speak with the operators. Stores use computers to keep records of their inventories (库存货物) and to send bills to their customers. Offices use computers to copy letters, record business and keep in touch with other offices. People have been using computers in their homes to keep track of the money they spend.

One important new use for computers is for entertainment. Many new games have been designed to be played on the computers. People of all ages have been playing these games. People also have been buying home computers to play computer games, watch movies and listen to concerts at home. They have become very popular indeed.

Passage One
It is understood that a ballad is a song that tells a story, but a folk song is not so easily defined. A balled is a folk song, but a folk song is not a ballad until it tells a story. Folk song then has included many kinds of music. For example, a sailor’s song of the sea is a folk song. The blues, a type of jazz popular in New Orleans, may be a folk song. In fact, there are folk songs for every job.

“Home on the Range” shows how a popular song may become a folk song. It was first picked up as a folk song in 1910 by John Lomax in San Antonio, Texas. Lomax heard the song from an old man who had been a cook many years before. The song was known all over the Midwest; thought it did not come to national attention until the early 1930s. By 1947 “Home on the Range” was so popular that it became the official state song of Kansas.

Passage Two
We find that bright children are rarely held back by mixed-ability teaching. On the contrary, both their knowledge and experience are enriched. We feel that there are many disadvantages in streaming pupils. It does not take into account the fact that children develop at different rates. It can have a bad effect on both the bright and the not-so-bright child. After all, it can be quite discouraging to be at the bottom of the top grade.

Besides, it is rather unreal to grade people just according to their intellectual ability. This is only one aspect of their total personality. We are concerned to develop the abilities of all our pupils to the full, not just their academic ability. We also value personal qualities and social skills, and we find that mixed-ability teaching contributes to all these aspects of learning.

In our classrooms, we work in various ways. The pupils often work in groups: this gives them the opportunity to learn to co-operate, to share, and to develop leadership skills. They also learn how to cope with personal problems as well as learning how to think, to make decisions, to analyze and evaluate, and to communicate effectively. The pupils learn from each other as well as from the teacher.

Sometimes the pupils work in pairs; sometimes they work on individual tasks and assignments, and they can do this at their own speed. They also have some formal class teaching when this is appropriate. We encourage our pupils to use the library, and we teach them the skills they need in order to do this efficiently. An advanced pupil can do advanced work: it does not matter what age the child is. We expect our pupils to do their best, not their least, and we give them every encouragement to attain this goal.