第二部分：阅读理解（共两节，满分40分 ）

（共15小题；每小题2分，满分30分）

阅读下列短文，从每题所给的四个选项（A、B、C和D）中，选出最佳选项，并在答题卡上将该项涂黑。

A

My three-year-old granddaughter, Tegan, went with her parents to a family gathering at the home of her other grandparents. Everyone was having a wonderful time visiting and catching up on all the latest family news.

Like most children, Tegan was having a good time playing with all the toys that were different from her own and that were kept for children to play with at her grandparents’ house. In particular, Tegan had found a little tea set and had begun pretending that she was having a tea party. She set up all the place settings and arranged her table with the great care and elegance that only a three-year-old can create. Meanwhile, her Daddy was engrossed in conversation, and as he continued to chat with his family, Tegan would hand him a cup of "tea". Her Daddy, who always tries to participate in her games, would pause for a few seconds from his conversation, and say all the proper words and gestures for her tea party which would thrill Tegan. He would request two lumps of sugar. He would tell her how wonderful her tea tasted, and then he would continue his adult conversation with his family.

After going through this routine several times, her Daddy suddenly awoke to reality as he had a flash of concern in his mind: "She is only three years old, where is she getting this ‘tea’ that I've been dutifully drinking?" He quietly followed her, without her knowing, and his fears were growing stronger as he saw her turn and go through the bathroom door. Sure enough, there she was stretching up on her tippy toes reaching up to get her ‘tea’ water -- out of the container of water that grandpa used to soak his false teeth!

21．At the family gathering, the adults __________.

A．watched their favorite TV programs

B．talked about what happened at home

C．drank tea while chatting

D．arranged tables for children’s games

22．Which of the following phrases can replace the underlined phrase “was engrossed in” in Paragraph 2 ?

A．got tired of B．got annoyed by

C．was absorbed in D．was puzzled at

23．What can be learned from the text ?

A．Tegan was unhappy to be left alone at the gathering.

B．Tegan’s father often played with her in games.

C．Tegan refused to apologize for what she had done.

D．Tegan’s father cared nothing about what she was doing.

24．Tegan’s Dad followed her secretly to find out __________.

A．whether there was any tea left

B．how she made tea so wonderful

C．where she got the sugar for tea

D．what kind of tea he had drunk

B

Are you a saver or a spender?

"A penny saved is a penny earned." This old saying calls attention to the wisdom of saving money. "________________" is another way to talk about saving for the future.

People who hate to spend money are known as "tightwads," while those who like to get the most value for their money are called "thrifty." A thrifty person is different from a "spendthrift." A spendthrift is someone who spends wastefully. People like that are often said to spend money "like a drunken sailor" or "like there's no tomorrow."

In the United States, people who want to start a savings account have different choices of where to put their money. These include banks and credit unions. Credit unions are cooperatives for people who have some kind of connection. For example, the members might work for a university or a government agency. Most credit unions are nonprofit organizations.

Credit unions, banks and other financial institutions pay interest on savings accounts. But the interest rates are low. Certificates of deposit（存款证） pay higher returns. With a certificate of deposit, or CD, a person agrees not to withdraw the money for a certain period of time. This term could be anywhere from a few months to several years. Longer terms, and larger amounts, pay higher interest. People can withdraw their money early but they have to pay a fine.

In a number of countries, people have been saving less over the years. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development is a group of thirty-four countries. The OECD says in 1990, Americans had a household savings rate of seven percent. This year, that rate is expected to be a little more than?four percent and many European countries have higher rates like the UK and France , but Americans save more than families in countries like Japan and South Korea.

25．Which of the following proverbs can be filled in the blank in Paragraph 2?

A．Health is wealth.

B．Money is a good servant but a bad master

C．Put money away for a rainy day.

D．Money doesn’t grow on trees.

26．If you have $10,000, which of the following may help you get higher interest ?

A．Choose certificates of deposit for one year.

B．Put the money in banks for one year.

C．Put the money in credit unions for one year.

D．Choose certificates of deposit for one year but withdraw the money ahead of time.

27．What does the passage mainly talk about ?

A．Different choices of putting money away in the US.

B．The importance of saving money.

C．How to put money into banks.

D．The household savings rate in the US.

C

In today’s congratulatory phone call to the team behind NASA's Mars Curiosity rover（火星车）, President Barack Obama made sure that if the mission discovers Martians, he'll be one of the first to know.

"If in fact you do make contact with Martians, please let me know right away," Obama said during the call, "I've got a lot of things on my plate, but I expect that that will go to the top of the list. Even if they're just microbes(微生物), it will be pretty exciting."

Obama also said he was impressed by the attention that's been paid to flight director Bobak Ferdowsi, the "Mohawk Guy" whose star-spangled haircut and warmhearted behavior during Curiosity's Aug. 5 landing won him Internet fame.

"I, in the past, thought about getting a Mohawk myself," Obama joked. "But my team keeps on discouraging me. And now that he's received marriage proposals and thousands of new Twitter followers, I think I'm going to go back to my team and see if it makes sense."

The congratulatory phone call is a tradition for the White House. But it was clear that Obama particularly enjoyed congratulating the scientists and engineers behind the amazingly successful landing of NASA's newest Mars exploration.

He also said the achievement reflected the American spirit, and he gave his personal promise to protect these critical investments in science and technology.

"This is the kind of thing that inspires kids across the country," he said. "They’re telling their moms and dads they want to be part of a Mars mission, maybe even the first person to walk on Mars. And that kind of inspiration is the byproduct of work of the sort that you guys have done."

The Curiosity rover's $2.5 billion mission focuses on studying billions of years' worth of geology on Mars and determining whether the planet was ever potentially suitable for people to live in. The mission is not specifically designed to explore life, even on the range of microbes, but it could point the way for future life-exploration experiments.

28．Obama phoned the team behind NASA's Mars Curiosity rover in order to _______.

A．congratulate them on finding Martians

B．praise the flight director

C．congratulate on the rover’s landing

D．encourage them to contact with Martians

29．What is the main idea of Paragraph 2 ?

A．Obama is very busy now.

B．Obama longs for the finding of life on Mars.

C．Obama is interested in biology.

D．Obama wants to contact Martians.

30．Which of the following about the Curiosity rover is TRUE ?

A．It costs billions of dollars.

B．It mainly aims to find life on Mars.

C．It carries the first person to Mars.

D．It proves Mars fit to live on.

31．What can we learn from the passage ?

A．Bobak Ferdowsi got a Mohawk haircut to win great Internet fame.

B．Obama called on the government and companies to invest in science.

C．America’s president seldom congratulates on scientific achievements.

D．Children showed special interest in the landing of Curiosity.

D

Janelle was running late for work, so she just had time for a quick look at herself in the?mirror as she was going out. What she saw there made her stop dead in her tracks.

Being a busy college student just one year removed from her teenage years, she wasn’t exactly obsessive-compulsive(有强迫观念和行为的) about the neatness of her clothes. But her boss at the restaurant where she works saw things a little differently. He had recently lectured the entire staff on the importance of appearance, and had specifically mentioned the need for servers to wear clean, unwrinkled blouses. As an assistant manager, Janelle felt it was important to set an example for the other employees. But if she stopped to iron the blouse normally, she would be late —and work without delay was an area of even greater concern to her boss.

So she grabbed her iron and plugged it in and set it for low heat. Carefully holding her blouse away from her body, she continued to iron it while she was wearing it. It seemed like a logical answer to an urgent problem.

And it seemed to be working until Janelle tried to iron the collar and accidentally ironed her neck by mistake. Then it suddenly seemed like a really stupid idea and a really painful one as well. It took more time to treat her burn than it would have taken to iron her shirt properly. And she spent a miserable shift dealing with the pain of the burn.

We’ve all been there, haven’t we? For me it was cutting my own hair. For a former roommate it was trying to pull his own wisdom teeth. For another college acquaintance, it was trying to change the oil in his car while the motor was still running.

“There’s a right way and a wrong way of doing things,” Dad used to tell me whenever I’d spoil the look of our yard by trying out a faster, easier and more creative way of pulling weeds or edging the lawn. “If a