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animals without a backbone has ever been of much importance. They are wonderfully made but differ so widely that it is really impossible to arrange them in a simple order. However, those who study the different kinds of backboned animals find they can all be arranged in a simple way. More importantly, it is possible to show which class evolved first, which last, and so on.

The five great classes of backboned animals are: fishes, amphibian, reptiles, birds and mammals. A common amphibian is the frog which is able to live in water and on land. A mammal feeds its young by giving milk. There are very great differences between a fish, a frog, a horse, a bird and a man; yet they all have a backbone.

A great step was taken when some creatures swam ashore. Perhaps it all began when the frog developed. Even today, a baby frog, the tadpole, begins as a fish, having gills (鳃), but then becomes a frog with lungs. The frog even develops feet and hands similar to ours in bone structure. Ages ago the first frog laid down the plan of the kind of limbs(肢) which all backboned animals, including humans, have bad, though some of them, like the bird, do not keep this kind of five-fingered limb all their lives.

When the frog has grown from a tadpole to a backboned animal with four limbs, breathing air by means of lungs, it is very like certain of the next class of backboned animals-- the reptiles. The larger reptiles living on earth for many year ago were dinosaurs. Some of the smaller ones grew stretches of skin between their outspread fingers to form wings. We do know, from fossilized (化

石的) remains, that the first birds were flying reptiles with sharp teeth. What a strange world it must have been during these times!

59. The author believes that animals without backbones ________ . A. had no brain so they did not survive B. were difficult to classify C. have been important creatures ` D. are easily placed in order of arrival

60. From the article we can know________.

A. animals had a backbone but no brain B. insects came from worms C. animals came from insects D. the time order of species 61. According to the passage, which of the following statements is true? A. The first bird developed from a flying fish. B. The horse belongs to the amphibian family. C. The hand of a frog has four fingers and a thumb. D. All the animals have got backbones inside their body.

62. Which of the following would be the best title for the passage? A. How Backboned Animals Evolved B. How to Classify All Living Things C. The Life Cycle of a Frog D. How the First Bird Flew

C

Until 1964 most forms of gambling were illegal in the United States. Since then, however, more and more stales have legalized gambling in order to raise income. The U. S. gambling industry has gone from an attitude of ―prohibition‖ to one of ―promotion‖, as all but five states have now legalized gambling as a solution to their depressed economies.

Most states in the United States now depend on incomes from state lotteries (博彩) and use

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them for good causes, such as improving public education, maintaining slate parks, and developing environmental programs.

State governments maintain that the voluntary contribution of funds through state lotteries is preferable to increase state sales or income taxes, and the residents of states using the lottery system tend to support this. The gaming industry has also benefited some of the nation's poorest citizens: Native Americans. The U. S. government ruled in 1988 that slates could not tax the revenues earned by gambling on Native American reservations. Having taken advantage of this ruling an open casinos (赌场) on their reservations, many Native Americans moved from a life of poverty to a life of wealth. Although there are many advantages to legalized gambling, there has also been a good deal of criticism of state-supported gambling. As states increase their support of state lotteries, they seem to encourage commercial gambling in all its forms. About 50 percent of the U. S. population plays the lottery, according to a study by the University of Chicago. This trend has led to an increase in habitual gambling. More than 5 million Americans suffer from gambling addiction. Those most at risk of becoming addicted include the poor, young people between twelve and eighteen years old, and women over the age of fifty, who are looking for some entertainment. As a result, many of them will end up in prison or even homeless. The promise of winning big fortune has created big problems. Perhaps the most important concern is the moral issue of legalized gambling. The lottery is the only form of gambling that is essentially a government control. Critics ask whether gambling is a proper function of government. Should the government be the spokesman for the expansion of gambling? Critics say state advertising of lotto emphasizes luck over hard work, instant happiness over careful planning and entertainment over savings. The traditional work ethic (道德准则) is being devalued by the pipedream of striking it rich, and this is sending confusing messages to young people. In 1996, Congress created a commission to conduct a legal study of the social and economic impacts of gambling in the United States. After two years of study, the Commission recommended an end to the expansion of legalized gambling and a ban on Internet gambling. Some feel this will severely hurt the gambling industry. Others fear that it is not enough and are asking the government to take a tough stand against gambling. 63. According to the passage, we know that ________ . A. any forms of gambling were banned before 1964 in the USA B. the economical problems led to the rise of gambling industry in the USA C. all American stales have legalized gambling since 1964 D. only five states have now legalized gambling because of the depressed economies 64. Which of the following is NOT mentioned in the passage? A. State lottery system helps to raise money to improve people's public welfare. B. Gambling industry helps to change the American way of life. C. Gambling industry helps to improve the life of some poor Native Americans. D. State lottery system helps to increase state sales or income taxes. 65. What is the author most concerned about? A. The expanding of the gambling industry. B. The suffering of the gambling-addicted people. C. The moral problems brought about by the legalized gambling.

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D. The disadvantage of Internet gambling.

66. In Paragraph 5, the word ―pipedream\ A. wonderful idea B. creative idea C. unworkable plan D. practical plan

Section C

Directions: Read the passage carefully. Fill in each blank with a proper sentence given in the box. Each sentence can be used only once. Note that there are two more sentences than you need. A. When children today play Angry Birds, they won't wonder why the birds are so ill-tempered. B. Hollywood is actually such a power featuring its creativity, imagination and efficiency in giving rise to its entertainment products. C. It led the way for a number of other equally silly, equally addictive games to invade cell phones everywhere. D. Lego, by putting forward education solutions, is now striving to help kids to stand up to a problem and solve it. E. Never mind that these games made absolutely no sense from a narrative viewpoint. F. In its efforts to feed the audience‘s curiosity, Hollywood may in fact be killing it. A few years ago, a Finnish app took the mobile gaming world by storm. Its set-up was simple and its idea illogical: Angry Birds was little more than a shooting game, with birds instead of bullets and green pigs in place of targets. 67 Shortly after Angry Birds took off, audiences found a new distraction in Fruit Ninja, a game where the object was to chop falling produce. Then there was Candy Crush, where players could save a candy kingdom by matching like-colored bonbons. 68 That was their charm, after all: They were knowingly ridiculous or illogical, an attack into mindless amusement. In games like Angry Birds, players found an escape from reality. All they had to do is resign themselves to the logic of the game, a world of simple cause-and-effect: Slingshot a bird, kill a pig, score points. Fast forward to 2016, and there's now an Angry Birds movie, here to fill you in on all the details you never wished to know. The birds have been given personalities, motives and back-stories, and so have the evil green pigs. Meanwhile, the game's nonsense had to be made sense of due to a necessary plot for a movie. Logic replaced illogic. Angry Birds is not alone in having its gray areas sketched in for the big screen. Hollywood has made an industry of answering the questions no one ever thought to ask; to the point of even giving a brand of toy blocks its own story in 2014‘s The Lego Movie. Countless secondary characters have also been pulled from the sidelines and given their own opportunities to show on the screen. That includes the forgetful blue fish Dory from 2003‘s Finding Nemo. 69 Viewers no longer have the luxury of imagining back-stories for their favorite characters, or debating the open-ended questions in a film‘s source materials: An endless flow of prequels (前传), sequels (续传) and spin-offs (衍生产品) fill in those blanks for them. 70 They'll know. Everything will be determined for them: According to the movie, the main bird Red gets picked on for his bushy eyebrows, and that leaves him feeling isolated and, well, angry. In some ways, Hollywood has taken on the role of fan fiction writers, by expanding

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and exploring every corner of its fictional universes. But when these universes expand too widely, what will be left to imagine?

IV. Summary Writing

Directions: Read the following passage. Summarize the main idea and the main point(s) of the passage in no more than 60 words. Use your own words as far as possible.

Are we born with a preference for certain kinds of faces? Or is it just something that people learn, without realizing it? To find out, psychologist Judith Langlois and her team at the University of Texas in Austin worked with young children and babies. The researchers showed each baby photos of two faces. One face was more attractive than the other. The scientists then recorded how long the infants looked at each face. Babies spent longer viewing the attractive faces than the unattractive ones. That meant they preferred the pretty faces. These findings suggest that people prefer pretty faces very early in life. However, it‘s still possible that we learn that preference. After all, Schein, who worked with Judith, points out, ―By the time we test infants, they already have experience with faces.‖ That experience can make a difference. Research conducted at the University of Delaware found that babies‘ brains are better at processing faces from their own race. So infants quickly come to prefer these faces, Schein says. It‘s well-known in psychology that familiar things are more attractive, says Coren Apicella. She is a psychologist at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. ―Perhaps average faces are more attractive because they seem more familiar.‖ Indeed, her research backs this up. Apicella and Little worked with two groups of young adults: British and Hadza. The Hadza are hunter-gatherers in Tanzania, a nation in East Africa. Apicella chose them for her experiment because they had not been exposed to Western culture and standards of beauty. She showed people from both groups two images and asked which was more attractive. One image was an average of five British faces or five Hadza faces. The other was an average of 20 British faces or 20 Hadza faces. People of both cultures preferred the face that was more average — that is, compiled from 20 faces instead of five. The British participants found both Hadza and British faces beautiful. The Hadza, in contrast, preferred only Hadza faces. ―The Hadza have little experience with European faces and probably do not know what an average European face looks like,‖ Apicella concludes. ―If they don't know what it looks like, how can they prefer it?‖ Her findings show how biology and the environment work together to shape our values. ―The preference for average itself is biologically based,‖ Apicella says. But people must first experience other faces to learn what an average face should look like.

V. Translation

Directions: Translate the following sentences into English, using the words given in the brackets. 72. 我以为你会和我一起乘高铁去北京。(think)

73. 每月她都会留出一部分钱以备不时之需。(incase)

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