The financial crisis is reminding Americans of a lesson they first learned in childhood: Share and share alike. They are sharing or swapping tools and books, cars and handbags, time and talent.
The renewed desire to share shows up in a variety of examples: A car-sharing service has had a 70 percent membership increase since the crisis occurred. Some companies encouraged his employees to take vanpooling. Governments are putting bikes on the street for public use. How-to-swap Web sites are increasing quickly.
The economy reflects the way Americans have cut back, especially on daily items: Department store sales dropped 1.3 percent in June. People are not buying cars, and as a result, auto sales dropped 27.7 percent last month. They are not paying others to do what they can do themselves — Home Depot reports increased attendance at in-store do-it-yourself clinics. And although paint sales are down in general, according to Sherwin-Williams, individual consumers are still buying.
When Tom Burdett needed to cut some tiles at his home outside Annapolis, he refused to buy expensive tools. So he asked his neighbors and friends for help. Sure enough, someone had just what he needed. And when that friend needed help fixing a satellite dish, Burdett volunteered to help.
The sharing mind-set is not new to the American culture, but many Americans give it up when the nation changed from an agricultural society to an industrial one, said Rosemary Hornak, a psychology professor at Meredith College in Raleigh, N.C. They moved farther from their families and did not have time to connect with new neighbors because they worked so much, she said.
Neighborhood conversations tell more of the story as the movement grows organically (持续地) in communities across the Washington region and the nation. On one street in Arlington, for example, neighbors are collecting their separate money for mulch (覆盖料) and dividing it among themselves.
1.What is the text mainly about?
A. Introducing a new way of life.
B. Sharing in the financial crisis.
C. How to reduce the living expense.
D. How to handle the financial crisis.
2.Why do people in modern times give up the sharing mind-set?
A. Because they don’t need it at all.
B. Because they aren’t interested in it.
C. Because they are busy with work.
D. Because they hate being disturbed.
3.The underlined phrase “cut back” in Para. 3 probably means ________.
A. shared B. helped
C. abandoned D. reduced
4.It can be inferred from the passage that _________________________.
A. more and more Americans solve problems in their daily life by helping each other .
B. if the prices of service goes down, individual consumers won’t do something themselves.
C. the sharing-mind set is a strange to many Americans.
D. when the crisis ends, Americans will abandon the sharing-mind set.
Some people like modern art, while others say that is rubbish. But a cleaner who works in the Tate Gallery in London isn’t able to tell the difference. The woman, whose name isn’t known, mistook a work of art by the German painter Gustav Metzger for a bag of rubbish, and threw it out with other bags. The plastic bad, which contained pieces of paper and cardboard, was later recovered outside the gallery, but the artist thought that it was too damaged to be put on show again. 78-year-old Mr Metzger explained that the exhibit, which he said was a copy of a similar work he had created in 1960, was meant to show that all art is temporary and “finite”(有限的).
Embarrassed officials at the museum said that they had had to call a meeting with cleaners to explain which things should not be touched. They would not say whether Mr Metzger would be paid any compensation for the incident. However, to make absolutely sure the same thing would not happen again, they decided to cover Mr Metzger’s work every evening with a colored cloth. In this way the cleaners arriving after the gallery had closed to the general public would realize they should not touch it.
This is not the first time that museum cleaners have had trouble distinguishing exhibits from rubbish. In 2001, in another London gallery, a cleaner threw away a work by the well-known British artist Damien Hirst. It was an arrangement of empty beer bottles, coffee cups, and overflowing ashtrays, which were meant to indicate the chaos in the life of an artist.
However, cleaners don’t always throw things away—sometimes they clean them! This was the case with a dirty asking what the bath was doing in the gallery, the cleaners simply scrubbed it clean.
1.What’s the best title of the passage?
A. Cleaners mistake modern art for rubbish
B. Modern art shouldn’t be cleaned
C. What makes a great work of art
D. Cleaners don’t always throw things away
2.Which of the following is not true?
A. People have different opinions on modern art
B. Mr Metzger would be paid much compensation
C. A work of Damien Hirst was thrown away by a cleaner in 2001
D. Some modern work is about artists’ chaos of their life
3.The last paragraph is written to show that____________.
A. cleaners often make exhibits as clean as possible
B. cleaners can’t always differ exhibits from rubbish
C. exhibits are usually difficult to clean
D. exhibits are not always so beautiful
If you want to know how crazy people can be about their pets, you might remember that Helmsley left $12 million to her little Maltese dog when she died last year.
The dog's name is Trouble. And apparently Trouble is still alive. Of course, I would hang on, too, if someone left me $12 million. Look! Top-shelf dog food, soft pillows everywhere, drivers walking me in nice leafy parks. I would live to be 110 in dog years.
The dog's story is still fresh in my mind the other night when I leave a steak house after a superb meal. Then I notice a woman carrying a small bag out of the door behind me.
Once outside, she walks over to where a man is holding a tiny dog and it's a baby. The dog looks like a Maltese, too, barking and annoying, with a cute haircut,
And now I am treated to an absolute astonishing sight. Because now the woman reaches into the bag and begins pulling out little pieces of meat, which she puts on a plastic spoon and feeds to the dog.
This is no cheap steak house. It's actually, way out of my league --I'm there only because it's a special occasion. I can tell you this: if I walked out of the place with any leftover steak, it sure wouldn't go to a dog. Not at those prices.
So now the woman is Spoon-feeding the dog and the man is just standing there, holding this dog and looking as if this is the most normal thing in the world. And the dog is calmly chewing these pieces of steak as if he's a little king. And this dog is in no hurry. He's having a great time.
A few minutes go by, and now the dog finishes all of his steak. At this point, I hear the woman say to the man "Think he's still hungry?" And she glances behind her at the restaurant, as if she might go back in there to get more steak for the dog.
Watching all this, I'm afraid I'm going to shout, "Are you out of your mind? Feeding all that pricey steak to that little dog? Did you see what our American life is like today? We're all going to be eating dog food if this keeps up!"
1.Why would the author live to be 110 in dog years?
A. Because he is always in poor health and falls ill.
B. Because a Maltese dog lives longer than a human being.
C. Because his grandparents left him a large sum of money.
D. Because he thinks the dog is treated extremely well.
2.What is the story mainly about?
A. An American family's happy life.
B. A Maltese dog getting $12 million from its owner.
C. A New Yorker spending $ 8 billion for a few banks.
D. A pet dog being fed with expensive food.
3.The underlined sentence "It's actually way out of my league. " (in Para. 6) means __
A. the restaurant is too expensive for the author
B. the author hates the dog being taken there
C. the superb restaurant is about to be out of service
D. the dog doesn't belong to the author's group
4.Seeing the dog is being treated to expensive steak, the author becomes extremely ____
A. indifferent B. annoyed
C. concerned D. envious
书面表达（满分25分）
为了向全世界展示绿色中国，学生会倡议每位同学围绕“如何进行低碳生活”与“低碳生活”的意义（节约能源，有利减少污染，改善环境），写一篇英语文章介绍自己如何从身边小事做起，尝试进行低碳生活。
要求：1．表达清楚，语法正确，上下文连贯；
2．短文必须包括提示的所有要点，并作适当发挥；
3．词数：100左右（文章开头已给，不计入总词数）；
提示：低碳生活的措施（添加至少1条个人观点）
（1）外出时，最好步行或骑自行车代替乘公交或地铁
（2）每张纸都双面打印，
（3）用环保袋代替塑料袋
（4）多种树
（5）离开教室前，应该关电灯、电视机和电脑
（6）请少用纸巾，多用手帕
How to Live a Low-Carbon Life
As we all know, having a low-carbon life will be very important to us.
短文改错（共10小题；每小题1分，满分10分）
假定英语课上老师要求同桌之间交换修改作文，请你修改你同桌写的以下作文。文中共有10处错误，每句中最多有两处。错误涉及一个单词的增加、删除或修改。
增加：在缺词处加一个漏词符号（∧），并在其下面写出该加的词。
删除：把多余的词用斜线（\）划掉。
修改：在错的词下画一横线，并在该词下面写出修改后的词。
注意：1. 每处错误及其修改均仅限一词；
2. 只允许修改10处，多者（从第11处起）不计分。
Rowena and Billy Wrangler are model high school students and do extreme well in achievement tests. And next year, Rowena will attend Harvard University. Billy, her younger brother, hope to go to Cornell. That makes Rowena and Billy different from most students are that they don’t go to school . In fact, they've never been school . Since a kindergarten, they have studied at home. Neither Rowena or Billy feels as if they have missed out on nothing by being taught at home. As many of the more than one million people who receive home schooling in the United States, they feel that we have gotten a good education.
阅读下面材料，在空白处填入适当的内容（不多于3个单词）或括号内单词的正确形式。
One day, an old monk named Wisdom, followed by two young monks, was walking from one town to another__1.__ they caught sight of a lake. Tired and thirsty, they stopped to have a rest. __2.__old monk, pointing to the lake, asked the __3.__ (young) one to get him some water.
When the little monk reached the lake, a cart__4.__ (draw) by an ox started crossing the lake, ___5.___made the water very muddy. The little monk thought, “How can I give this muddy water to my master to drink!” So he came back__6.___ any water, saying, “The water is very muddy. I don’t think__7.__is suitable to drink.”
After a while, the same monk __8.___(ask)to get water again. When he went back to the lake, he found that the mud _9. (settle) down already, so he collected back a pot of water. Wisdom looked at the water happily and then up at the monk, “To make the water clean, __10.__you need to do is just to let it be and the mud would settle down on its own.”
It is also the same with your mind. When it is disturbed, just let it be. Give it a little time and it will settle down itself.
