A Festival for the Dead is held once a year in Japan. This festival is a cheerful occasion, for on this day, the dead are said to return to their homes and they are welcomed by the living. As they are expected to be hungry after their long journey, food is laid out for them. Speciallymade lanterns(灯笼) are hung outside each house to help the dead to find their way. All night long, people dance and sing. In the early morning, the food that had been laid out for the dead is thrown into a river or into the sea as it is considered unlucky for anyone living to eat it. In towns that are near the sea, the tiny lanterns which had been hung in the streets the night before, are placed into the water when the festival is over. Thousands of lanterns slowly drift out to sea guiding the dead on their return journey to the other world. This is a moving spectacle(景象，场面), for crowds of people stand on the shore watching the lanterns drifting away until they can be seen no more.
1.The festival is a cheerful one，because________.
A．people specially make some lanterns
B．all night long, people dance and sing
C．people make much delicious food
D．the dead are said to return to their homes and are welcomed by the living
2.Speciallymade lanterns(灯笼) are hung outside each house to________.
A．help the dead to find their way
B．add the cheerful atmosphere
C．welcome the dead to go home
D．help the dead to find the food
3.What happens to the lanterns at the end of the festival?
A．The lanterns are put away to be used next year.
B．They are thrown away.
C．They are placed into the water.
D．They are hung outside all the way.
Saturday, October 7th, was a marathon of sad tasks for Anna Politkovskaya. Two weeks earlier, her father, a retired official in the department of foreign affairs, had died of a heart attack as he emerged from the Moscow Metro while on his way to visit Politkovskaya's mother, Raisa Mazepa, in the hospital. She had just been diagnosed(诊断) with cancer and was too weak even to attend her husband's funeral. “Your father will forgive me, because he knows that I have always loved him，” she told Anna and her sister, Elena Kudimova, the day he was buried. A week later, she had an operation and since then Anna and Elena had been taking turns helping her deal with her grief.
Politkovskaya was supposed to spend the day at the hospital, but her twentysixyearold daughter, who was pregnant, had just moved into Politkovskaya's apartment, on Lesnaya Street, while her own place was being prepared for the baby. “Anna had so much on her mind，” Elena Kudimova told me when we met in London, before Christmas. “And she was trying to finish her article.” Politkovskaya was a special reporter for the small newspaper Novaya Gazeta, and, like most of her work, the piece focused on the terror that can be seen all over the southern republic of Chechnya. This time, she had been trying to report repeated cruel acts done by people faithful to the Prime Minister, Ramzan Kadyrov, who are in favour of Russia. In the past seven years, Politkovskaya had written dozens of accounts of life during wartime; many had been collected in her book “A Small Corner of Hell: reports from Chechnya.” Politkovskaya was far more likely to spend time in a hospital than on a battlefield, and her writing bore frequent witness to robbery, and the uncontrolled cruelty of life in a place that few other Russiansand almost no other reporterscared to think about.
1.Politkovskaya's father died of ________.
A．tiredness B．a heart disease
C．an attack D．an accident
2.From the text we know that Raisa Mazepa ________.
A. didn't love her husband
B. didn't attend her husband's funeral
C. was having an operation the day her husband was buried
D. was too sad to attend her husband's funeral
3.The underlined word “emerged” most likely means ________.
A．came out B．went into
C．disappeared D．left for
4.How many family members of Anna are mentioned in the passage?
A．Three. B．Four. C．Five. D．Six.
For more than two days in September 1974, the people of Honduras shut their windows, locked their doors and covered in their homes. Fifi was outside, and they were frightened.
By the time Fifi had left, 8,000 people were dead, Fifi wasn't a pet dog as the name suggests. It was a hurricane, one of the most destructive natural phenomena in the world.
Why do we give human names to storms and hurricanes?
We didn't always. Two hundred years ago, many hurricanes in the Caribbean were named after the saint's(基督徒的)day on which the storm occurred. Later, storms were known by the name of the city where they came ashore.
Meteorologists (气象学家) then tried naming storms after the latitude (纬度) and longitude (经度) where they occurred.
Finally, in 1953, hurricanes started getting people's names —specifically, female names. Male names were added in 1979.
There are six sets of names for what the experts call “Atlantic tropical cyclones”( 热带风暴)．
Each list is used every six years and consists of 21 names, starting with every letter but Q, U, X, Y ，Z. the names alternate (交替)between male and female.
A storm won't get a name until its winds reach 39 mph or about 62.4 kph, at which point it becomes a tropical storm. At 74 mph or 118.4 kph it's declared a hurricane.
The 126 names on the list are used only for storms that form off the Atlantic coast of the US. There are separate lists for the Pacific.
So what happens if a hurricane should cross from the Atlantic to the Pacific? It's happened before. The storm just gets a new name and sometimes a new sex.
Max Mayfield is the director of the National Hurricane Centre, headquartered in Miami, Florida. He is in charge of picking new names for storms off the Atlantic coast.
He doesn't do it alone, though. His counterparts in two dozen other countries in the Caribbean, Central America and North America vote on what names will replace retired names.
1.From the first paragraph we can find that ________.
A．Honduras is a country which was destroyed by Fifi
B．Honduras is a country which has no mountains
C．Honduras is a country which faces the ocean
D．Honduras is a country which lies at high latitude
2.Which of the following is true according to the passage?
A．There were no hurricanes two centuries ago.
B．The Caribbean is a state of the United States.
C．The Caribbean is a place where hurricanes occur often.
D．Fifi was formed off the Pacific.
3.The names for storms and hurricanes, as this passage shows，________.
A．are set for use.
B．are all from American English
C．are difficult to spell
D．are easy to fix
4.The underlined word “counterparts” in the last paragraph means ________.
A．citizens holding the same opinion
B．people with a similar position or function
C．passengers traveling by sea
D．assistants working abroad
A person may have an idea about himself that will prevent him from doing good work. He may have the belief that he is not capable (有能力的) of it. A child may think he is ___ because he doesn't understand how to make the ____ of his mental faculties (才能). Older people may be mistaken that they are incapable of learning new things because of their ____.
A person who believes that he is incapable will not make a real ____ because he feels that it would be useless. He won't go at a job with the confidence necessary for ___， and he won't work his hardest way, even though he may think he is doing so. He is ____ likely to fail, and the failure will ____ his belief in his incompetence (无能)．
Alfred Alder, a famous doctor, had ____ like this. When he was a small boy, he had a poor ___ in maths. His teacher told his parents he had no ability in maths in order that they would not ____ too much of him. In his way, they two ____ the idea. He accepted ____ mistaken thinking of his ability, felt that it was useless ____ and was very poor at maths, ____ as they expected.
One day he worked at a problem which ____ of the other students had been able to solve.
Alder ___ in solving the problem. This gave him confidence. He now ___ with interest, determination and purpose, and he soon became especially good at maths. He not only ____ that he could learn maths well, but luckily he learnt ____ in his life from his own experience that if a person goes at a job with determination and purpose, he may ____himself as well as others by his ability.
1.A.clever B．shy C．useless D．stupid
2.A.biggest B．most C．highest D．deepest
3.A.ability B．age C．brain D．knowledge
4.A.decision B．success C．effort D．trouble
5.A.work B．study C．improvement D．success
6.A.truly B．really C．however D．therefore
7.A.lead to B．strengthen C．increase D．add to
8.A.an experience B．an example C．a thought D．a story
9.A.state B．mind C．start D．ending
10.．A.blame B．expect C．get D．win
11.A.developed B．organized C．discovered D. found
12.A.his B．her C．its D．their
13.A.managing B．succeeding C．trying D．acting
14.A.only B．almost C．just D．then
15.A.none B．no C．no one D．nobody
16.A.gave B．succeeded C．failed D．believed
17.A. lived B．worked C．played D．graduated
18.A.made B．took C．expected D．proved
19.A.early B．deeply C．late D．simple
20.A.encourage B．love C．astonish D．disappoint
— I'm sorry I've lost your software. Let me buy a new one.
—________.
A. Thank you just the same
B. Never mind. I've got another one
C. Of course. You may
D. I don't need it
There used to be a temple in your village，________？
A．used there B．usedn't there
C．did there D．didn't it
