76. Betty runs a bed and breakfast somewhere in the picturesque countryside. She’s planning to purchase an eco-friendly dish soap with the natural fragrance of aloe. If the producer cares about nature conservation, she will put more trust in this brand.

77. Anne is a full-time housewife who always manages to live within her means. For example, she prefers to choose the dish soap that holds out for very long. Besides, the soap with the fragrance of flowers or fruit is much more to her taste.

78. Marilyn works as a regional representative of a major company. Occupied with her business as she is, she often spares some time after work to prepare some desserts. She is keen on trying something new; she is allergic to certain flower and fruit fragrant scents. She needs a dish soap with no harm to her skin.

79. Margaret has just moved in a fully furnished apartment. But the cupboard in the kitchen is relatively smaller. Thus, she will have no other alternative but to purchase smaller dining items, such as dish soap in a smaller bottle. Furthermore, she is an environmental activist.

80. Kitty serves as a kitchen steward of a fancy restaurant, in charge of cleaning large quantities of oily dishes every day. She suggests the owner select a dish soap worth the money. It is, by all means, an ideal choice for her if it features super cleaning power and meanwhile can keep the hands soft, but not dry.

A. Life Tree Dish Soap

A few drops of Life Tree Dish Soap will do a nice job on dishes. It comes in a smaller bottle than other dish soaps, which makes it more convenient for users. Life Tree does not use animal ingredients and is without a smell. So if you’re looking for a really environmentally friendly dish soap, look at Life Tree.

B. Method Dish Soap

Method Dish Soap works safely when used to wash dishes. It is concentrated, so a little goes a long way. You just need to lift and squeeze it to get a small amount of the soap from the bottle. The soap comes in various fruit fragrances (香味), such as orange and green apple.

C. Bio Pac Dish Soap

Bio Pac Dish Soap , with aloe (蘆薈) and tea tree oil, has a fresh smell. It contributes a lot to green cleaning, for it is made of natural ingredients. What’s more, the company gives 10 percent of its profits to wilderness protection.

D. Seventh Generation Dish Soap

Seventh Generation Dish Soap cleans as well as any other soap. Also, it’s very environmentally friendly. The product is gentle on your hands. For those who are sensitive to certain fragrances, like flowers and fruit, Seventh Generation is a great choice.

E. Citrus Fresh Dish Soap

   Pleasantly fresh and cheap, the wonderful formula (配方) of the soap delivers extraordinary cleaning power to handle even the most difficult jobs. But with extras of aloe, calendula and other natural skin softeners, it actually helps prevent skin dryness and trouble while you do the dishes.

F. Dish Soap—Mint Sage, 16 oz

   An all-natural dishwashing soap that has long-lasting suds (泡沫) cleans without the harsh ingredients in it that can irritate (刺激) sensitive skin. This unique dish soap contains natural borax and the fragrance of flowers that work together to make things clean.

What if those new jeans you’ve just bought start tweeting(吱吱地叫) about your location as you cross London Bridge? 

It sounds far-fetched, but it’s possible — if one of your coats is equipped with a tiny radio-frequency identification device (RFID), your location could be revealed without you knowing about it. 

RFIDs are chips that use radio waves to send data to a reader — which in turn can be connected to the web. 

This technology is just one of the current ways of allowing physical objects to go online — a concept called the “Internet of things”, which industry insiders have shortened to IoT. 

This is when not only your PC, tablet and smartphone can connect to the web, but also your car, your home, your baseball cap and even the sheep and cows on a farm. 

Smart buildings and intelligent cars with assigned IP addresses are already making cities smarter — and soon enough, the entire planet may follow. 

“A typical city of the future in a full IoT situation could be a place with smart cameras everywhere, neurosensors (神經(jīng)監(jiān)測(cè)系統(tǒng)) scanning your brain for over-activity in every street,” says Rob van Kranenburg, a member of the European Commission’s IoT expert group. 

This vision might still be years off, but one by one, “smarter” cities are beginning to crop up around our landscape.

IoT advocates claim that overall interconnectivity would allow us to locate and monitor everything, everywhere and at any time. 

“Imagine a smart building where a manager can know how many people are inside just by which rooms are reflecting motion — for instance, via motion-sensitive lights,” says Constantine Valhouli from the Hammersmith Group, a strategy consulting firm. 

“This could help save lives in an emergency.”

But as more objects go into the digital world, the fine line that separates the benefits of increasingly smart technology and possible privacy concerns becomes really blurred. 

“The IoT challenge is likely to grow both in scale and complexity as seven billion humans are expected to coexist with 70 billion machines and perhaps 70,000 billion ‘smart things’, with numbers invading the last fences of personal life,” says Gerald Santucci, head of the networked enterprise and RFID unit at the European Commission. 

“In such a new context, the worries increase: to what extent can monitoring of people be accepted? Which principles should govern the deployment of the IoT?”   

72. The first paragraph is used to ________.

   A. introduce a new kind of jeans to readers

   B. arouse readers’ interest in the RFID

   C. draw readers’ attention to the new jeans

   D. set an example of using the RFID

73. The underlined phrase “crop up” in Para. 8 can be replaced by “__________”.

   A. appear         B. cooperate                 C. develop             D. change

74. What can we know about IoT?

   A. A typical city in a full IoT situation has come into reality.

   B. The application of IoT may invade people’s privacy.

   C. The technology of IoT has saved lives in an emergency.

   D. IoT has been largely used in many cities.

75. If this text continues, what would be discussed next?

   A. Solutions of defending people’s privacy.

   B. The development of the IoT.

   C. The control on monitoring.

   D. Smart technology’s disadvantages.

Before Nicolas Sarkozy became French president, he was asked if he thought about presidency when he looked in the mirror while shaving. “Not just when I’ m shaving,” he answered.

When Francois Hollande, now president-elect (總統(tǒng)當(dāng)選人) of France, was asked the same question, he replied: “Do I see myself as president? No, I am a presidential candidate. A candidate must not think himself president; he must give hope that he becomes president.”  

Hollande has promised to be a “normal president” – something Sarkozy certainly was not. Sarkozy celebrated his election in 2007 at a world-class Parisian restaurant. He took holidays on the yachts (游艇) of wealthy businesspeople. Hollande, by contrast, was still going around Paris on his three-wheeled motorbike at the start of this year. One member of his party said he looked “more like a pizza delivery man” than the next president.

“That is the key to Hollande’s success because the election is turning into a sort of referendum (公民投票) for or against Nicolas Sarkozy,” Eric Dupin, a journalist and political observer told Global Post. “Francois Hollande is the one who appears not only as his main opponent politically, but also as his complete opposite psychologically.”

When he was the Socialist party leader, Hollande was nicknamed “the marshmallow (軟糖)” because he hated fights. Sarkozy, by contrast, is known to be loud and aggressive.

When faced with Sarkozy’s verbal attacks during the election, Hollande stayed calm. This sometimes annoyed even his own supporters. “I wish he would just let go and savage (用暴力對(duì)付) Sarko,” one Hollande voter said to the Guardian.

But Hollande still knows how to fight. Stéphane Le Foll, a Socialist MEP who has been one of Hollande’s closest advisors for 17 years and is co-directing his campaign, said Hollande had quietly planned his presidential bid for 10 years. “I think we all underestimated this guy,” Alain Minc, one of Sarkozy’s closest friends and advisers, told Reuters.

Hollande was born in 1954 into a middle-class family. He lived through the 1968 protests that nearly overthrew the French government. “They shocked him, but also politicized him, he said in a recent interview, making him understand that change was possible,” reported the New York Times. When Hollande was 15, he told friends he expected to become president.

“I didn’t come to the first rank either by chance or by obsession (執(zhí)迷),” Hollande said in an interview with Reuters. “I got there because I put myself in this situation, and because I deserved it.”

68. By citing Hollande and Sarkozy’s replies to the same question, the author intends to show ________.

A. Sarkozy is more confident than Hollande

B. Hollande is more modest than Sarkozy

C. Hollande is less ambitious than Sarkozy

D. Sarkozy is more humorous than Hollande

69. What is the key to Hollande’s success in the presidential election according to Eric Dupin?

A. His dislike of fights.

B. His careful plan for the presidential bid.

C. How different he is from Sarkozy.

D. The gentle way in which he ran his campaign.

70. What did Hollande think he owed his success to, according to the article?

A. His good luck.                          B. His devotion and efforts.

C. His obsession with politics.        D. His personality and experience.

71. What is the purpose of the article?

A. To show what kind of a person Hollande is.

B. To compare the differences between Hollande and Sarkozy.

C. To show what French people think of Hollande.

D. To explain why Sarkozy lost the election.

Is it true that cats have nine lives? One 4-year-old American cat named Sugar definitely seems to have more than one. Sugar fell from the 19th floor of her owner’s home in Boston last month and was only hurt a little on her chest.

“This story isn’t much of a surprise,” said Jake Socha, a scientist at Virginia Tech University, US, in an interview with the BBC. “There have been lots of records of these cats surviving.”

Back in 1987, scientists studied 132 cats. All of them had been brought to a vet’s clinic in New York after falling from tall buildings. Around 90 percent of these cats were alive after their fall and only 37 percent had been seriously injured.

“Being able to survive falls is a critical thing for animals that live in trees, and cats are one of them,” said Socha.

Cats have developed special body structures to survive accidental falls. Their legs are muscular. This can protect their bones from breaking, Professor Andrew Biewener from Harvard University told the BBC. Cats can also spread out their legs like a parachute to reduce their falling speed, he said.

The strange part, according to scientists, is that cats have a better chance of survival if they fall from higher than seven stories. This is because cats have a good sense of which way is down. They can twist their bodies as they fall to make sure they land on their feet. A higher fall means more time for the cat to change its body position.

However, you should not throw your cat out of the window to see how this works. Most pet cats are overweight nowadays. They are not fit enough to change their position in midair, warned Steve Dale, an American cat behavior scientist.

“This cat (Sugar) was lucky,” Dale said. In fact, most cats would suffer serious lung damage, a broken leg or a broken jaw or teeth damage, he said.

64. What can we learn from Paragraph 3?

A. Cats really do have nine lives.

B. Many cats can survive falls.

C. Cats are the softest animals in the world.

D. More than half of the cats that fall from high places end up badly injured.

65. What does the underlined word “critical” mean in the context?

A. Important.           B. Easy.         C. Challenging.             D. Serious.

66. Why can cats survive falls according to the article?

a. They have a hidden parachute in their bodies.

b. Their legs have developed in a way that protects their bones from breaking.

c. They can land on their feet.

d. They can twist their bodies to reduce the speed at which they are falling.

A. a, b             B. b, c            C. c, d           D. b, d

67. Which of the following statements is TRUE?

A. A pet cat that falls out of a tall building is not really at risk.

B. Sugar was lucky that she was only injured in the leg.

C. Cats are confused as to which way is down when they are in midair.

D. A cat that falls from the fourth story of a building is more likely to die than one that falls from the 10th story.

I have this old clock that belonged to my mom. My dad gave it to me years ago after mom passed away.

I have mixed feelings about having the clock. I love it because it was my mom’s, but it also holds some bad memories.

You see, it chimes. It counts out the hour and rings once on the half hour. Or at least it used to. Now you never know what number it will ring.

When my mother was at home dying from cancer, she asked for the clock to be unplugged. Hearing the hours count down really angered and frightened her.

Mom passed away. I decided I wanted to get the clock fixed so I could remember the good hours we had with her.

I took it to a local clock shop the other day.

“I know this has no particular value as a clock, but it was my mom’s and I need to get it fixed,” I said to the shop owner.

I went on to describe the problem.

“We get a lot of these in,” he told me. “Here’s what I do. We remove the clock works (機(jī)件) and replace it with a battery-operated movement (機(jī)芯) that chimes electronically,” he told me.

“You can’t fix this?”

“No, we don’t have the time nor the parts.”

I thanked him and went home. I called a few other places and was told the same thing.

“How incredibly sad,” I told the last one disappointedly.

How incredibly sad that we have become a society that replaces craftsmanship with convenience and easy fixes. We copy the original instead of creating something new. We duplicate (復(fù)制); we don’t originate (發(fā)明).

Sadly, the same goes for our attitude to life itself.

Each of us is an original, one of a kind. But we find it so much easier to copy another style than to develop our own.

We are wannabes (崇拜別人的人) rather than hey-world-look-at-mes.

We fail to see the real value in who we are, so we spend our lives trying to be someone else.

61. Why did the author decide to get the clock fixed?

A. Because it was a really old and valuable clock.

B. Because it was the only thing that her mother had left her.

C. Because it brought her memories of being with her mother.

D. Because it left the author with mixed feelings.

62. What did the clock shop owners tell the author?

A. The parts that the clock needed were electronic.

B. It would cost a lot to repair the clock.

C. They had never repaired a clock like this before.

D. They could only make the clock electronic.

63. The author intends to ________.

A. criticize the irresponsible clock shop owners

B. criticize people who do not value things with a history

C. criticize people who do not have a creative attitude toward life

D. criticize people’s ignorance of traditional craftsmanship

I ran into a stranger as he passed by. “Oh, excuse me please” was my __41 . He said: “Please excuse me too; I wasn’t watching for you.” We were very 　42 , this stranger and I. We went on our way and we said goodbye. But at home a 　43 story is told.

Later that day, when I was cooking the evening meal, my daughter stood beside me very 　44 . When I 　45 , I nearly knocked her down. “Move out of the 　46 ,” I said with a frown. She walked away, her little heart broken. I didn’t 　47 how harshly (嚴(yán)厲地) I’d spoken.

While I lay awake in bed that evening, my husband said to me, “While 　48 a stranger, you are polite, but with the girl you love, you are 　49 . Go look on the kitchen floor; you’ll find some flowers by the door. Those are the flowers she brought for 　50 . She picked them herself: pink, yellow and blue. She stood quietly not to 　51 the surprise, and you 　52 saw the tears in her eyes.”

__53 , my tears began to fall. I quietly went and knelt down by her bed. “Wake up, little girl,” I said. “Are these flowers you picked for me?” She smiled: “I found them out by the tree. I picked them 　54 they’re pretty like you. I knew you’d like them, especially the blue.”

I said: “Daughter, I’m sorry for the way I 　55 today. I 　56 have yelled at you that way.”

She said: “Oh Mom, that’s okay. I love you anyway.”

I said: “Daughter, I love you too. And I do like the flowers, especially the blue.”

I had got the world 　57 again. I’d 　58 to be polite to people in the street – good 　59 make society work. But a stranger is someone we bump into once and then never see again – and 　60 is for life.

41. A. answer　　　　　　　 B. words　　　　　　　 C. response　　　　　 D. speech

42. A. careful　　　　　　　 B. polite　　　　　　　　 C. serious　　　　　　 D. unhappy

43. A. interesting　　　　　 B. meaningful　　　　 C. similar　　　　　　　 D. different

44. A. still　　　　　　　　　　 B. noisy　　　　　　　　 C. upset　　　　　　　 D. excited

45. A. called　　　　　　　　 B. turned　　　　　　　 C. returned　　　　　 D. removed

46. A. house　　　　　　　　 B. space　　　　　　　 C. way　　　　　　　　 D. area

47. A. realize　　　　　　　　 B. care　　　　　　　　 C. prove 　　　　　　　　　　 D. understand

48. A. referring to　　　　 B. listening to　　　　 C. dealing with 　　 D. picking up

49. A. anxious　　　　　　　 B. patient　　　　　　　 C. disappointed 　　 D. unkind

50. A. us　　　　　　　　　　 B. you　　　　　　　　　 C. the family　　　　 D. her friends

51. A. ruin　　　　　　　　　 B. expect　　　　　　　 C. announce　　　　 D. handle

52. A. seldom　　　　　　　 B. simply　　　　　　　 C. even　　　　　　　　 D. never

53. A. By this time　　　　 B. At one time　　　 C. For a time　　　　 D. At the same time

54. A. while　　　　　　　　 B. so　　　　　　　　　　 C. unless　　　　　　　 D. because

55. A. considered　　　　 B. acted　　　　　　　　 C. developed　　　　 D. performed

56. A. shouldn’t　　　　　 B. couldn’t　　　　　 C. wouldn’t　　　　　 D. mustn’t

57. A. clear　　　　　　　　　 B. right　　　　　　　　 C. beautiful　　　　　 D. meaningful

58. A. begin　　　　　　　　 B. learn　　　　　　　　 C. continue　　　　　 D. change

59. A. manners　　　　　　 B. habits　　　　　　　 C. lifestyles　　　　　 D. behaviors

60. A. lover　　　　　　　　 B. companion　　　　 C. family　　　　　　　 D. friend

 The time he has devoted ________ the disabled is now considered ________ of great value.

A. to help; being              B. to helping; to be    

C. to help; to be                     D. helping; being

– Why do you look so worried?

– My computer broke down last week and my essay has been left ________ since.

A. finished　　　　　　　 B. finishing　　　　　 C. finish　　　　　　　 D. unfinished

 Don’t you think our suggestion reasonable that they ________ go there together to face the challenge?

A. may                    B. must                 C. should               D. can

 So fast ________ that I could not catch up with them.

A. did they run         B. they had run             C. they ran            D. had they run