C. He had a strong passion for words. D.He got well educated at school.

16. A. 25. B. 27. C. 28. D. 37.

17. A. He was considerably influenced by his mother.

B. Farm work turned out to be quite easy for him.

C. He had already become famous before his father passed away.

D. people in Scotland regarded him as a successful farmer singer.

Questions 18 through 20 are based on the following conversation.

18. A. Harbin is her favorite city. B. She doesn't like places in the south.

C. Russia is a beautiful country. D. She can't stand the heat in summer.

19. A. Driving a car by themselves in the local country.

B. Getting a group of ten people traveling together.

C. Flying at the weekend with special fare tickets.

D. Inviting more friends to share the happiness.

20. A. Not knowing any local people. B. Unable to find a fellow traveller.

C. unable to speak Russian. D. Not having any interpreter .

II. Grammar and Vocabulary

Section A

Directions: After reading the passage below, fill in the blanks to make the passage coherent and grammatically correct. For the blanks with a given word, fill in each blank with the proper form of the given word; for the other blanks, use one word that best fits each blank.

Is sport always fun ?

One afternoon in the last week of term, I saw three children form my son’s school in tears being comforted by teachers. That morning, my 11-year -old had stomach pains and (21) ______(throw ) up several times when I noticed his sickness. Talking to other mothers, I heard about other children with stomachache or difficulty sleeping the night before.

What caused so much suffering ? Sports day ---- not sports day at a highly competitive independent school, but at a large village primary. (22) ______ it causes no problem to the children who can fly (23) _____ the wind, for those who are poorly coordinated (动作协调), overweight or just not good at sport, it is terrible. Even for those who enjoy (24) ______(run ) but who fall halfway down the track in front of the entire school and their parents, it can prove a disaster.

As for the reason (25) ______ we put our children through this annual suffering, some May say that competition is character-buliding or it is a tradition of school life; some may assume (26) ______ really matters is taking part not winning. I just felt pity for those children in tears or in pain.

Team games at the end of the “sport” were fun (27) ______ (watch) because they produced some close races, enormous enthusiasm and lots of shouting. More importantly , (28) ______(hide ) a little form everyone’s gaze, the children who were not so fast or so quick at passing the ball had the excitement of being on the winning side.

Section B

Directions: Fill in each blank with a proper word chosen from the box. Each word can be used only once. Note that there is one word more than yoneed.

A. attached B. commercially C. expectations D. managed E. obstacles F. personal

G. positive H. relatively I. samples J. sensitive K. shelved

This invention, commonly used in offices and households throughout the world, came about as a result of a series of accidents. In 1968 Spencer Silver, who was working for a company called 3M at the time, was trying to produce super-strong adhesive, a substance making things sticky together, to be used in the building of planes. This, however, wasn’t successful and instead he succeeded in creating an extremely weak adhesive that was 31 to pressure. This new adhesive had two advantages: it could be removed from surfaces quite easily and it could be reused. In spite of these two 32 features, nobody could see any practical use for it. In the end, the invention was 33 .

A few years later, Art Fry, a product development engineer working for 3M, decided to use this adhesive for 34 use. He stuck strips of paper in a book as page marker and a whole new concept was born. However, the idea still wasn’t without 35 . The challenge was to make the glue stay on the sticky note itself, rather than peeling off and staying on the surface it was 36 to. Two more 3M employees were brought in and set the task of producing a coating for the adhesive so that it wouldn’t come off and they 37 just that. Unfortunately, 3M bosses still believed that this invention wasn’t going to be 38 successful and people would continue to use crap paper(小纸条) for their notes rather than sticky notes. This is why sticky notes were only tested within the company, where they became extremely popular. It wasn’t until many years later that 3M bosses finally decided to give out a vast amount of free 39 to other companies to see if anyone would be interested in buying them. To their surprise, 90 per cent of the companies approached went on to order more sticky notes. This went beyond anybody’s 40 . Nowadays, sticky notes come in a variety of shapes and colours and are sold in more than 100 countries.

III. Reading Comprehension

Section A

Directions: For each blank in the following passage there are four words or phrases marked A, B, C and D. Fill in each blank with the word or phrase that best fits the context.

About five years ago, when the first generation of wearable fitness trackers became popular, they were announced as the dawn of a revolution. Health experts and busniesspeople alike said that giving people access to real-time calorie (卡路里)- burning and step-count data would inspire them to lose weight, eat better and -most important- ____41____ more. But even as the U.S. market for ___42____ devices hits $7 billion this year, there’s evidence that their promise isn’t quite paying off.

The U.S. has an exercise problem, with 28% of Americans ages 50 and over considered wholly ___43____. That means 31 million adults move no more than is necessary to perform the most basic functions of daily life. Wearables, experts ___44___, were going to change that.

But limited academic research has been done to figure out whether wearables ____45____ people’s behavior in the long term. The little research that does exist isn’t ____46____. For a recent study in the Journal of the American Medical Association, researchers wanted to see whether activity trackers would help overweight people lose more weight over two years than if they just did a weight-loss intervention(干预) alone. They didn’t. “We found that just giving people a device doesn’t mean it’s going to ____47____ something yothink it’s going to lead to,” says John Jakicic, the author of the study, from the University of Pittsburgh. “These activity trackers don’t engage people in strategies that make a ___48___ in terms of long-term change”

Another new study highlighted a different challenge: user ____49___. By the end of a yearlong study of 800 people, just 10% of participants were still wearing the trackers, according to, Eric Finkelstein, a professor at the Duke- NUS Medical School in Singapore. “We didn’t find that Fitbits really have much of an effect,” he says. This may well be because people expect trackers to do something they’re not designed to do-- ____50____, force them to change their behavior. “There’s ____51____ among people about their function, a measurement tool and an intervention,” Finkelstein says. A scale counts pounds, ____52____, but won’t teach yohow to eat less. “When people put these devices on, they might interact with the app(应用程序) for the first few weeks, maybe the first few months, but there comes a point where that starts to fall off,” says Finkelstein.

To be ____53___, some of the costlier add higher-tech wearables have features baked into them that encourage users to move more, says Shelten Yuen, Fitbit’s vice president of research. Among them: shaking sensors, movement reminders and social- media combination, all designed to ____54____ users to make better health choices every day. But more research will be needed to determine whether or not these ____55____ -- or others like them--measurably improve people’s health and fitness levels.

41. A. learn B. purchase C. exercise D. perform

42. A. wearable B. electronic C. hi-tech D. built-in

43. A. misunderstood B. inactive C. discourage D. unchangeable