I am anything but adventurous. So, when I actually ____ the courage to learn driving and, even more ____, passed the test, I fancied being a free spirit at last.
I mistakenly thought I would ____new roads and drive to the farthest horizons. But, gathering the courage to try new highways was next to ____ for me. The time I tried, I got hopelessly ____ and found myself going around in circles. When I eventually found the way home, I ____ this was the end of the adventurous life. I _____ the known routes. When a friend ____ me to make the most of weekend when the traffic was ____ to make new discoveries, I ___ at her with horror. Was I going to ____ a perfectly good weekend to raise my blood pressure or was I going to spend it doing as little as possible? _____, I chose the latter option.
After some years of battling the Sharjah-Dubai ___ , I told myself it wasn’t worth ____ my peace of mind. Now I had the Metro, buses and ____ to choose from. Taking taxi was one of the best ____ I have made from a traffic point of view. There was an unbelievable sense of lightness _____ I jumped into a taxi, taken to my destination without being worried.
All one has to do is give directions. I am good at that. Giving directions, I mean. And I am very _____ when I issue these, with no effect on the part of the person driving. As soon as I sit inside, I start the description of the _____ to be taken in great detail so as to _____ the possibility of being taken for a ride.
1.A. set up B. broke up C. pick
ed up D. put up
2.A. enthusiastically B. surprisingly C. importantly D. dramatically
3.A. discover B. get C. invent D. purchase
4.A. invisible B. useful C. practical D. impossible
5.A. lost B. amazed C. puzzled D. moved
6.A. refused B. hoped C. replied D. vowed
7.A. added to B. stuck to C. got to D. referred to
8.A. suggested B. ordered C. advised D. persuaded
9.A. light B. heavy C. slow D. safe
10.A. glared B. stared C. glanced D. peered
11.A. use B. spare C. waste D. devote
12.A. Of course B. In short C. In case D. Of all
13.A. system B. atmosphere C. society D. traffic
14.A. weighing B. disturbing C. reserving D. restoring
15.A. cars B. trains C. trucks D. cabs
16.A. dreams B. discoveries C. choices D. challenges
17.A. while B. when C. until D. before
18.A. considerate B. ignorant C. stubborn D. accurate
19.A. route B. map C. design D. course
20.A. increase B. extend C. minimize D. expand
How to stop sleeping in Class?
Sleeping in class prevents you from paying attention to the teacher as well as stops you from learning abo
ut the material that is being taught. It can also 
get you in trouble with your teachers. It is important to determine why you are falling asleep in class ant try to change the situation so that you are able to stay awake and pass all of your classes. __1.__
__2.__ It is reported that teenagers may need more sleep than adults. Go to bed earlier and ,make sure you get as many hours of sleep as your body needs. This is a key to staying awake in class. If you are not tired, you are unlikely to fall asleep.
Eat a healthy breakfast full of nutritious foods. _3.__ If you get hungry or tired in the middle of the day, try eating a healthy snack like a piece of fruit or some biscuits.
Get involved during class. __4.__ Taking notes, asking questions and otherwise getting involved in classroom activities and discussions will make you far less likely to doze off.
__5.__ If you have a medical condition that is causing you to fall asleep in class, it will need to be treated by a professional. Prescription drugs may also cause sleepiness as a side effect, so discuss any medicine you are taking with your doctor.
A. Early to bed and early to rise.
B. Enough sleep helps a lot in your studies.
C. Get a full night’s sleep on school nights.
D. It can provide you with enough protein to fuel your body.
E. There are a number of different tricks you can use to try to stay awake.
F. Contact your doctor in order to rule out medical conditions that can cause you to fall asleep.
G. If you are actively engaged in the information the teacher is pressing, you are less likely to doze off.
Its well known that our human memory can fail us. People can be forgetful, and they can sometimes also remember things incorrectly, with damaging consequences in the classroom, courtroom, and other areas of life. Now, researchers show for the first time that bumblebees(大黄蜂) can be unreliable witnesses too.
Bumblebees are rather clever animals, which explains why Chittka has been studying learning and memory in the insects for the last 20 years.
Most times when people have studied memory in animals, errors in performance have been taken to mean that the animals failed to learn the task or perhaps learned it and then forgot. But what if animals can experience a more interesting type of memory failure?
To find out, Chittka first trained bumblebees to expect a reward when visiting a yellow artificial flower followed by one with black-and-white rings. During subsequent tests, bees were given a choice between three types of flowers. Two were the types they’d seen in the training before. The third had yellow-and-white rings, representing a mixed-up version of the other two. Minutes after the training, the bees showed a clear preference for the flower that recently rewarded them.
One or three days later, however, something very different happened when the bumblebees’ memory was put to the test. At first, the bees showed the same preference displayed in the earlier tests, but as the time went on, they began selecting the flower with yellow rings, even though they’d never actually seen that one in training before.
Chittka says that insects make similar errors in the conjunction (结合) of long-term memories as humans do. The ability to extract (提取) common features between different events in the environment might come at the expense of remembering every detail correctly. In bees, with their limited brain capacity (容量), the pressure to store main features of several objects rather than each individual object might be much greater, compared with humans.
1.Which of the following might be the best title of the passage?
A. Human memory can fail sometimes.
B. Bumblebees make false memories too.
C. Humans are not as clever as bumblebees.
D. Bumblebees have extraordinary memory.
2.Which of the following is the closest in meaning to the underlined word subsequent?
A. scientific B. accurate
C. following D. exceptional
3.What does the test mentioned in Paragraph 4 tell us?
A. Short-term memories serve the bees well.
B. The yellow artificial flower appeals to the bees.
C. Bumblebees like the flowers with yellow-and-white rings.
D. Bees have remarkable abilities to distinguish colors.
4. We can infer from the passage that ______.
A. Chittka thinks that bumblebees failed to remember the color of the flowers
B. Researchers have learned that bumblebees are unreliable animals
C. There exist no similarities between the memory errors in humans and bees.
D. It is less challenging for humans than bees to store main features of several objects.
Alibaba started taking the lead in China by connecting big Chinese manufacturers(制造商) with big buyers across the world. Its business-to-business site, Alibaba.com allowed business to buy almost everything. Alibabas advantage wasnt hard to judge: size. Alibaba is just big, even by Chinese standards. Its market attracts 231 million active buyers, 8 million sellers, 11.3 billion orders a year — and Alibaba is just the middleman. It encourages people to use its markets — not charging small sellers a percentage of the sale.
If you want a quick look into the influence of Alibaba on daily Chinese life, take my experience. I moved to Beijing a year ago and quickly got tired of visiting small stores across the crowded, polluted city of 20 million people in search of new electronics, bathroom furnishings, and anything else my wife wanted. “You’re looking for what exactly? Why not try it? ” my Chinese teacher asked me one day. With that, my wonderful new relationship with Alibaba began.
Alibaba’s original business-to-business model now is second to consumer buying. Chinese retail(零售) buying makes up 80% of Alibaba’s profit, and leading that group is Taobao, with 800 million items(物品) for sale and the most unbelievable selection of things you’ll ever find. TMall.com is Alibaba’s other big site, where you can find brand name goods from Nike and Unilever near the lowest prices.
What I have a hard time explaining to friends and family back in the U.S. is how China has gone beyond traditional shopping — big-box retailers especially —in favor of online purchases on Taobao and a few other sites. In smaller towns than Beiji
ng, where big retailers have not yet traveled, shopping online is shopping, and shopping is Taobao.
I have a list of some of my recent purchases on Taobao for a sense of how wide the marketplace is. Almost everything arrived a day or two after ordering with free shipping. I’m not even a big buyer, because I need friends to help me search the Chinese-language site. When I was searching my purchase history on my Chinese teacher’s iPad, which helps me buy goods, I looked through with great difficulty about 10 of her purchases for every one of mine.
1. Alibabas advantage mainly lies in .
A. its low price
B. its big size
C. its not charging small sellers
D. its business-to-business service
2.What can we learn from the underlined sentence in the passage?
A. Alibaba will continue to develop.
B. Alibaba stands out as the best online site.
C. Alibaba acts as a bridge between the buyers and sellers.
D. Alibaba is of middle size among all the online sites.
3.What can be inferred from the passage?
A. TMall.com provides more profit than Taobao.
B.The authors Chinese teacher is also an online purchase lover.
C. Taobao has no obvious advantage over other similar online sites.
D. Alibabas business-to-business service earns more money than retail.
4. What is the passage mainly about?
A. Shopping online in China is TaoBao.
B. How the author purchases online in China.
C. Shopping online goes beyond traditional shopping.
D. Alibaba influences peoples daily purchase in China.
As a leading Chinese language school and a cultural exchange institute in China, Global Exchange Education Center has been providing Mandarin (or Putonghua) language courses and cultural exchange programs for over a decade.
How to apply for our programs
■In order to apply for all of our programs, you must be
at least 18 years old.
in good health,
a senior high school graduate.
■Application Procedure for Chinese Language Programs
Step 1. Send us a completed application form by email or fax.
Step 2. Send us $ 60 application fee after receiving our email confirmation.
Step 3. Arrange the payment transfer.
Step 4. Plan the trip to Beijing.
■Application Procedure for Chinese Business Internship (实习）Program
Step 1. Send us a completed application form with your CV and personal statement for the program by email or fax.
Step 2. Send us $ 310, including $60 application fee and $ 250 internship placement deposit, after receiving our letter of acceptance for the program.
Step 3. Arrange final payment transfer after receiving our second confirmation.
Step 4. Plan the trip to Beijing.
■Personal Statement for applicants for Chinese Business Internship Program
You should state why you want to take this program and what your expectations of the program are. How you will make use of this program in your future career.
■ APPLICATION DEADLINES
The applications for most programs are reviewed on a rolling basis. You are encouraged to submit your application ahead of the application deadlines.
■Confirmation
Having received your application, Global Exchange Education Center usually sends out an email confirmation for the booking within 2-5 working days.
1.The text is probably written for ______.
A. junior high graduates B. international students
C. job seekers D. language trainers
2. If you apply for both of the programs, the total application fees will be ______.
A. $120 B. $310 C. $250 D. $ 370
3.Which of the following is not necessarily included i
n applicants personal statement?
A. Their purposes of taking the program.
B. Their expectations of the program.
C. Their future practice of the program.
D. Their feedbacks on the program.
The world’s richest man might seem to have it all，but Bill Gates has one regret．The self-made billionaire said he felt stupid for not knowing any foreign languages．
Speaking in his third Ask Me Anything question-and-answer session for online forum Reddit(红迪网)，the Microsoft founder said that he wished he spoke French，Arabic or Chinese．
He said：“I took Latin and Greek in high school and got A's and I guess it helps my vocabulary．I keep hoping to get time to study one of these—probably French because it is the easiest．I did Duolingo for a while but didn’t keep it up．”
Gates，who is worth $79．3 billion，praised Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg for surprising an audience in Beijing when he spoke fluent Chinese，“Mark Zuckerberg amazingly learned Chinese and did a Q&A with Chinese students—unbelievable，isn’t it?”he said．
This isn’t the first time for Gates to admit his regret over language．He also showed his habits at home and personal insights．
L
ast February, Gates said he likes to do the dishes himself—to his own special standards every night and also told the interviewer that his wife，Melinda，would likely want Samuel L．Jackson to play her husband in a biopic(传记片)．
He also admitted that he would pick up a $100 bill if he found it on the street．
As he took the top spot on Forbes(福布斯)28th Annual Billionaires list last year for the fourth time，he said he is pretty basic when it comes to so ending on clothes and food，but that he enjoys investing in shoes and racquets(球拍)when he plays tennis．
When asked a life lesson he had to learn the hard way，the billionaire said staying up too late is a habit he is still trying to break．‘‘Don’t stay up too late even if the book is really exciting．You will regret it in the morning．Pam still working on this problem，”he said．
1.Which of the following can be the best title for the passage?
A. Bill Gates’Regret
B. The Richest Billionaire
C. An Interview with Bill Gates
D. How Bill Gates Succeeded
2.The underlined part in Paragraph 8 may actually mean that_____．
A. it is important to lay a good foundation of life
B. he never cares about buying food and clothing
C. food and clothing are basic needs for people’s life
D. he doesn’t spend much money on food and clothes
3.What advice did Bill Gates give?
A. Avoid staying up too late．
B. Be a good language learner．
C. Do the dishes yourself at home．
D. Pick up the $100 bills in the streets．
4.Which of the following is true according to the passage?
A. Bill Gates is also the founder of Facebook
B. Bill Gates topped the list of Forbes 28 times．
C. Bill Gates was good at learning languages in high schoo1．
D. Bill Gates’wife wants Samuel to play a game with Gates．
