It was a very cold January evening, the end of a day Bill thought would never end. His doctor told him that he might go blind. Bill wasastounded. He couldn’t believe such a terrible thing would happen to him. After all, he thought, how could he—a husband, a father of two beautiful children, a man who had been healthy in his whole life—go blind?

  But Bill was a lucky man. After being totally blind for five months, he regained his vision and was able to see his amazing family again. After he regained his vision, he decided to do something to help others. He wanted to be of service to the less fortunate.

  Having decided to help others, Bill asked himself, “Whom should I help?”. Bill always loved children and that was his first thought. He then decided to focus his energies on helping children with illnesses and disabilities. He wanted to help them make their dreams come true and receive treatment, so Bill started the non-profit (非盈利) foundation—Reachout America, with the duty to send kids with illnesses and disabilities to camps. The camps could help them stay with children who were dealing with some of the same things they were dealing with.

  Since June 2006, Reachout America has not only sent many kids to various camps across America, including awesome（精彩的） horse- riding camps and space camps for children who dream of flying to the moon, but also helped them receive treatment and recover.

  Bill’s personal nightmare（噩梦）changed into a blessing and a dream has come true for hundreds of sick and disabled children across America. You can help, too. Reachout America continues to raise money through various programs and seek volunteers so that many other children can continue to go to camps and receive treatment. Offer your help if you are interested.

第一节:阅读表达

Never go into a supermarket hungry! This is a good piece of advice. If you go shopping for food before lunchtime, you’ll probably buy more than you plan to. Unfortunately, however, just this advice isn’t enough for consumers these days. Modern shoppers need an education in how and how not to buy things at the store. First, you check the weekly newspaper ads. Find out the items that are on sale and decide if you really need these things. In other words, don’t buy anything just because it’s cheaper than usual! “New and Improved!” or “All Nature” on the front of a package influence you. Instead, read the list of contents on the back. Third, compare prices; that is, you should examine the prices of both different brands and different sizes of the same brand.

Another suggestion for consumers is to buy ordinary items instead of famous brands. Ordinary items in supermarkets come in plain packages. These products are cheaper because producers don’t spend much money on packing or advertising. The quality, however, is usually as good as the quality of well-known brands. In the same way, in buying clothes, you can often find high quality and low prices in brands that are not famous. Shopping in clothing stores that are discounting can help you save a lot of money. Although these stores aren’t very attractive, and they usually do not have individual dressing rooms, not only are the prices low, but you can often find the same famous brands that you find in high-priced department stores.

Wise consumers read magazine ads and watch TV commercials, but they do this with one advantage: knowledge of the psychology behind the ads. In other words, well-informed consumers watch for information and check for misinformation. They ask themselves questions: is the advertiser hiding something in small print at the bottom of the page? Is there any real information in the commercial, or is the advertiser simply showing an attractive image? With the answers to these questions, consumers can make a wise choice.

(no more than 10 words)

(2)Please explain the underlined word “plain” in the second paragraph in English?

(no more than 10 words)

(3)How do wise shoppers react to loads of information as is explained in the passage?

 (no more than 25 words)

(4) In what way are not-so-famous stores a better choice for customers than famous ones?

 (no more than 20 words)

(no more than 20 words)

阅读下面的短文,请根据短文后的要求答题（请注意问题后的字数要求）

As you have probably noticed, some students are more successful than others when taking exams, often because they have better test-taking skills. These are abilities that really have nothing to do with their understanding of the subjects. They are strategic skills that make taking tests easier, and lead to better results.

Here are some tips that will make it easier for you to take a test successfully.

Do not insist on completing each question before going to the next. If you spend a lot of time on one question that you don’t understand, you will both lose time and make yourself nervous. If you lose time, you may not get to later questions that you could have answered easily.

Furthermore, if you become nervous, you might lose your concentration. Go through the test a second time with any time you have left at the end to work out the answers to the more difficult questions. You’ll feel more confident by now and you may find that the questions you’ve already answered will help you answer the more difficult ones. Few people are aware that sometimes questions are answered later in a test in a different context. Do keep in mind that to take advantage of this you need to have finished the test and still have some time remaining to return to the questions you have problems with.

If you have a strong feeling about your first answer to a question, don’t go back and change it later. Usually (but not always) a strong first impulse means you know the answer, and don’t have to think about it again. Going back will make you unsure and often lead to an error. This is very common, so be careful!

Every day, in all kinds of weather, a lot of men or women go jogging (慢跑). （1）为什么慢跑如此流行呢? Most people start jogging because they hear it is a very good form of exercise. Jogging makes the heart strong and helps people control their weight or stay slim. If you keep jogging regularly, （2） 你没必要服药or skip meals to lose weight. （3）Jogging can also make you feel better about yourself.

Donald Robbins, who is 42 years old and works in an office, began jogging a few years ago because he was overweight. At first, （4） he could only run about 300 meters, but two years later, he ran a marathon – over 42 kilometers.

Do you jog? If you do, be sure to ask your doctor for advice. （5） Jogging costs you almost nothing. But it is very important to have a pair of good shoes that are made especially for jogging. If not, when you run on hard ground for a long time, it may cause your feet to hurt.

What have we become? A society in which someone can have hundreds of online friends and yet go for days without human contact. We scan; we click; we text people in the next room instead of speaking to them; we even check our library books out by ourselves when once we might have chatted to a friendly person with an ink pad and a date stamp.

Loneliness can be dangerous. Recent research suggests that it may shorten people’s lives and make them more vulnerableto serious illness. It can distort (扭曲) senses of reality and even become an element that drives a few desperate young men to open fire on a cinema audience or a classroom full of children. Electronic voices on various devices can be the only ones some people hear. And what those voices say is not always true.

No man is an island, we are frequently reminded. There are those who choose to lead solitary (孤独的)lives, and live them well, but on the whole we are sociable beings and we suffer if we are on our own too much. Human contact makes us happier, although virtual relationships can be very positive.

So what could lonely people do to make real friends? An answer, among many, is to read more books. Reading begins alone but becomes a shared activity when a reader, for example, joins a book group, attends a literary festival or signs up for a continuing education course on an aspect of literature that interests them. There’s no shame in turning up to any of these alone, and fellowship is guaranteed. Fellow readers may well turn out be like-minded; it’s a basis for new friendships and sustained relationships. Sharing an understanding of a book is a good way of sharing feelings safely. Literary characters can be useful as personas.

But there is another important reason why everyone should read more books, and in particular fiction. The responsibility to fight loneliness lies with those who do not suffer from it. Lonely people often feel that there is no one who understands them or can share their point of view. They need to know that actually there are. That requires everybody else to make the imaginative leap of feeling that connection, and reading fiction helps. It makes people more empathic (移情) — sympathy for fictitious (虚构的)characters can translate into compassion (同情)in real life.

The stories of strangers reach us through many means: news bulletins, interviews, biography and memoir (回忆录), but also drama and fiction. Walking a mile in their shoes might help turn some of those strangers into real friends.

Wealthy Chinese do not have a good reputation(名声), a survey by China Youth Daily and Sina.com has found.

The poll(民意测验), conducted last week, showed about 70 percent of 3,990 interviewees believe the rich are immoral(不道德的) and not worthy of respect. Only 4 percent thought rich people are good, the survey said.

For the rich to become popular they need to do three things, the survey suggested.

First, they need to have a sense of social responsibility. Second, they need to be self disciplined, and third, they need to have a caring heart.

The number of people who make at least $50,000 ayear increases by 15 percent a year and, according to the China Economic Times, the country now has 1.5 million rich people.

The China Youth Daily and Sina.com survey found interviewees questioned how the rich became rich in the first place.

"Some rich people are thought to have gathered their wealth through illegal means, such as bribery(受贿)," said a post-graduate student at the Communication University of China.

Even so, the survey found wealthy people who obey the law, have a sense of social responsibility and a caring heart, are respected.

The poll showed about 60 percent thought these kinds of wealthy people were worthy of respect.

The survey suggested many voters were much better disposed(倾向) toward rich people from Hong Kong, Macao, Taiwan and Western economies - rather than the mainland.

Hong Kong property tycoon(巨头，大亨) Li Ka-shing was most highly regarded, followed by Bill Gates, mainland property tycoon Wang Shi and basketball player Yao Ming.

"Rich people on the mainland invest too little in charity(慈善) and gain too much," a student from Beijing Sports University said.

Yu Guoming, a professor at Renmin University of China, called on the heads of Chinese companies to think and invest in a long-term way. "Corporate social duty is not only about charity, it also connects the company with the government and the public."

Empty nest syndrome(空巢综合症) is a feeling of grief and loneliness parents may experience when their children leave home for the first time, such as to live on their own or to attend a college or university. It is not a clinical condition. However, it can affect the immune system and result in certain psychological barriers, if left untreated.

All parents are sensitive to empty nest syndrome, although some factors can create a tendency to it. Such factors include an unstable or unsatisfactory marriage, or difficulty accepting change in general. Adults who are also dealing with other stressful life events such as the death of a spouse (配偶) or retirement are also more likely to experience the syndrome.

Symptoms of empty nest syndrome can include depression, a sense of loss of purpose, worry, stress and anxiety over the child’s welfare. Many empty nest parents prefer staying indoors, and end up becoming people of few words. Parents who experience empty nest syndrome often question whether they have prepared adequately for their children to live independently.

Empty nest parents often face new challenges, such as establishing a new kind of relationship with their children, having to find other ways to occupy their free time, reconnecting with each other, and a lack of sympathy from people who believe that parents should be happy when their children leave home.

 One of the easiest ways for parents to cure empty nest syndrome is to keep in contact with their children. Technological developments such as cell phones, text messaging, and the Internet all allow for increased communication between parents and their children.

Parents going through empty nest syndrome can ease their stress by pursuing their own hobbies and interests in their increased spare time. Experts have advised that overwhelmed (不知所措的) parents keep a journal, or go back to work if they were full-time parents.

However, prevention is always better than cure. If one child has moved out and you still have others living at home with you, plan in advance for the day when your nest will be empty of all children. Small changes made over time will mean less of a shock when your last child moves out. You may find, with thought and careful planning, that the occasion of your last child leaving home will offer a little happiness too, as you can then implement your plans for an independent life with your spouse.

When many people first heard “active listening”, they often wondered why it was so important. Doing it successfully can often mean the difference between success and failure, particularly when it comes to getting a job.

To be a good active listener, you must focus on the person you are speaking with, making him your center of attention. When you do not put down what you are doing when people are speaking with you, you can make them quite annoyed. The next step towards becoming an active listener is to show people that you are listening to what they are saying.

There are a number of ways you can do this. One of the best ways is to ask the person you are speaking with to explain certain statements that you consider to be ambiguous(有歧义的). You can also use body language to show people you are listening to them. One of the best ways to do this is nodding your head when you agree with something.

However, you do not want to just pretend that you are listening to them by doing these things, since you will get caught if they ask you to explain what they just said.

If you are speaking with someone who dislikes showing emotions, or who has a hard time showing his feelings, you will need to watch for visual clues(视觉线索). By looking for these clues, you may have an idea of the point that he is trying to make. However, you’d better not reveal to him that you are watching his visual responses, since this can cause him to feel uncomfortable. You can also ask questions which may allow you to get an idea of his true feelings.

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Friends in your life are like pillars on your porch. Sometimes they hold you up and sometimes they lean on you. Sometimes itˈs just enough to know theyˈre standing by. Friendship doubles your joy and divides your sorrow. A friendship is priceless and should be developed.

●Remembering the golden rule

Without a doubt, the greatest human relations principle is to treat other people like you want to be treated. When you show respect for your friends and gratitude for their friendship, youˈll be blessed in untold ways.

Whatever the cause of others’ rudeness, you donˈt have to accentuate(突出)the problem. A kind word or a gent le, understanding smile may help the person more than returned rudeness would.

● Considering enemies as friends

A friend looks after your own good. On the other hand, a foe(敌人)is someone who isnˈt interested in your well-being.

Yet some students view their teachers as enemies. However, a studentˈs success in school partly depends on the teacher’s effectiveness in the classroom. Instead of being an enemy, a teacher who corrects you and helps you to achieve can be the best friend you ever had.

So change this kind of thinking and adjust yourself a little, both of you are better off.

● Making friends by being an optimist

Do you enjoy being around a pessimist, someone who is generally described as being able to brighten up a room just by leaving it? The answer is obvious. Most people have a preference for being around people who believe that tomorrow is going to be better than today, rather than people who believe that today is even worse than yesterday.

● Capturing the pleasing personality

How do you develop a pleasing personality? Here are some steps you can take:

Smile when you see someone. You donˈt have to give a wide grin — just a pleasant, friendly smile.

Speak in a pleasant, upbeat tone of voice. Talk to people as if they are good friends, even if they donˈt really fall into that category yet.

Take a course in public speaking. The ability to express yourself attracts favorable attention from many sources.

Develop a sense of humor. Pick up a couple of joke books. This makes you a little more outgoing and friendly.

● Donˈt criticize unjustly

Instead of criticizing others all the time, take the humane(人道的)and sensible approach. Look for the good in others. Encourage them. Build them up.

To conclude, most people seldom think through each situation completely and consider the other personˈs point of view. If you take the time and effort to do this, youˈll end up befriending more people.