My mother is the only living person who has never communicated via email or text. She has never turned on a computer, registered an email account, used data storage media or searched the Internet. Since 1955, she has settled in Silicon Valley, married to an extremely technical specialist in applied physics and engineering, designing photometric systems for NASA. Only when Dad suffered from cancer could we convince her she needed a cell phone. Mom’s being separated from the information age is voluntary and deliberate.

     Mom is still that farm girl, and she takes the most pride in it. She sees her neighbor and her community “real”. She shows no interest in the digital and virtual life. My mother saw Depression, World War II and the beginning of the Cold War before reaching voting age. She enjoyed country music on “The Sons of the Pioneers”, a Canadian broadcast. The battery was so precious a resource that radio was limited to the barn because Grandma thought it helped cows produce milk. In the age when Churchill moved millions for the first time with radio broadcasts, she only experienced live media monthly, if at all.

    In her early twenties, Mom completed nurses’ training and worked in that field before marriage, family and church became her life’s concerns. She never really warmed up to television, though I think she appreciated a few of the series we watched, comedies like All in the Family. Computers, the Internet and mobile apps are simply not part of her experience.

    Mom disagrees with the opinion that technology simplifies life. In her life, she sees online records, email and paperless systems as mysteries in which no written reference can assist her.

    However, I can partly understand: I like such kind of experience and relationship one has with physical books. I am a child of television who only recently switched to online viewing. I’ve written down my awkward, love-hate relationship with my devices. Mom’s technophobia surely played a role here, but it works for her. She’s happiest as she is.

21. The author’s mother began to use mobile phone when           .

A. she found it hard to contact with her husband 

B. she settled in Silicon Valley for fifty years

   C. she got marred to a technical specialist

   D. her husband suffered from cancer

22. What is the author’s mother most proud of according to the passage?

   A. Having so many close neighbors.            B. Experiencing too much all her life.

   C. Living simply and in her own style.          D. Being involved in modern technology.

23. What is the author’s attitude towards his mother’s such kind of experience?

   A. Critical.            B. Positive.           C. Neutral.          D. Negative.

24. It is implied in the underlined sentence that              .

   A. the author should make efforts to learn from his mother

   B. the author prefers watching movies online to watching TV

   C. Mom’s attitude towards technology has an effect on the author

   D. Mom should also set down the relationship with physical books

    The baobab tree grows in West Africa and Australia. It is a very strange-looking tree. Its huge trunk(树干) sometimes measure as much as ten metres in diameter (直径). It is thicker at the bottom than at the top. The branches nearest to the ground are very long; those near the top are very short. Strange-looking it may be, it is very useful. Its leaves are good to eat. Its white flowers turn into cool fruit which tastes rather like cucumber. When a baobab tree gets old, its trunk becomes hollow(空心). An old tree has such a huge, hollow trunk that it can hold many people. When it rains, water collects in the hollow. The tree has such a lot of leaves and branches that the water remains cool and fresh. It is such a useful tree that some people can hardly live without it.

25. The trunk of the biggest baobab tree ________ in girth (周长)。

A. can be nearly 32 metres

B. is more than 10 metres

C. is less than 30 metres

D. is as much as 10 metres

26. Which of the following do you think the baobab tree is like?

27. Which of the following may be true?

A. We can find the baobab tree everywhere in Africa.

B. The baobab tree is too big for anybody to make use of.

C. People in Africa and Australia like a plant baobab trees around their houses.

D. Monkeys like to eat the fruit of the baobab tree very much.

Well, parents, surprise! Lots of us are using Twitter and Facebook to thumb rides, and not just to school. It’s awkward to be refused when you call a friend and ask for a ride. But with Twitter, you just look for other people heading the same way.
      It may sound risky, but many teens stay within their own social circles to find rides, and don’t branch out beyond friends when asking on Twitter just like me, but to some young people, especially those taking longer trips, stranger danger is less of a concern.
     “I think the digital connection of young people is really key, because younger generations grew up sharing things on line, sharing files, photos, music, etc, so they have been very used to sharing,” said Juliet Schor, a sociology professor at Boston College.
      The sharing economy got big during the recession（经济衰退）, allowing people to access more goods, services using technology and even to share cost. And that technology, for me, is what the car was for my mom, a gateway to more freedom, like what my friend Earl says, “The symbol of freedom isn’t the car any more because there’s technology out there connecting you to car.”
     According to the researchers at the University of Michigan, 30 years ago, eight in ten American 18-year-olds had a driver’s license compared to six in ten today. So it’s not that surprising that on my 16th birthday I wasn’t rushing to get a license but an iPhone. 
     “Driving, for young people, does mean they have to disconnect from their technology, and that’s a negative. So if they could sit in the passenger side and still be connected, that’s going to be a plus,” Schor continued.
     To me, another plus is that ridesharing represents something, something much bigger than trying to save money. I see it as evidence that people still depend on each other. My generation shares their cars and apartments the way neighbors used to share cups of sugar. For the system to work, some of us still need our own cars. But until I get my own version of the silver Super Beetle, you can find me on Twitter. 
28. The American teens like me, prefer to possess an iPhone as a birthday gift because ______. 
   A. it is most fashionable and cool    B. they are bored with driving cars 
   C. they are fond of being connected    D. it is much cheaper than a car 
29. We can learn from the text that______.

   A. Twitter is a website for teens to make friends and achieve goals

   B. ridesharing can be seen as a sign that people still count on each other

   C. driving cars fro teens means a plus and connecting with technology

   D. having a car and cost-sharing symbolize more freedom for the author’s mother

30. Professor Juliet would agree that _______. 
A. young people will sit waiting to be contacted by reading a passage 
B. sharing economy is bound to be responsible for the recession 
C. young people tend to share a car with strangers by means of Twitter 
D. being connected via technology comes first for young people 

31. The best title for the passage is probably _______. 
A. Twitter, an Awesome Website        B. Cars or iPhone 
C. Teens Use Twitter to Thumb Rides   D. Cool Teens on the Go 

The extraordinary Eastgate Building in Harare, Zimbabwe’s capital city, is said to be the only one in the world to use the same cooling and heating principles as the termite mound(白蚁堆). 
     Architect Mick Pearce used precisely the same strategy when designing the Eastgate Building, which has no air-conditioning and almost no heating. The building—the country’s largest commercial and shopping complex—uses less than 10% of the energy of a conventional building of its size. The Eastgate’s owners saved $3.5 million on a $36 million building because an air-conditioning plant didn’t have to be imported.
    The mall is actually two buildings linked by bridges across a shady, glass-roofed atrium(天井) open to the air. Fans suck fresh air in from the atrium, blow it upstairs through hollow spaces under the floors and from there into each office through baseboard vents(通风口). As it rises and warms, it is drawn out via ceiling vents and finally exists through forty-eight brick chimneys.
    During summer’s cool nights, big fans blow air through the building seven times an hour to cool the empty floors. By day, smaller fans blow two changes of air an hour through the building, to circulate(流通) the air which has been in contact with the cool floors. For winter days, there are small heaters in the vents. 
    This is all possible only because Harare is 1600 feet above sea level, has cloudless skies, little dampness and rapid temperature swings(摆幅)—days as warm as 31℃ commonly drop to 14℃ at night. “You couldn’t do this in New York, with its fantastically hot summers and fantastically cold winters,” Pearce said. 
    The engineering firm of Ove Arup&Partners monitors daily temperatures. It is found that the temperature of the building has generally stayed between 23℃ and 25℃, with the exception of the annual hot period just before the summer rains in October and three days in November, when a doorkeeper accidentally switched off the fans at night. And the air is fresh—far more so than in air-conditioned building, where up to 30% of the air is recycled.

32. Why was Eastgate cheaper to be built than a traditional building?

   A. It was designed in a smaller size

   B. No air conditioners were fixed in

   C. Its heating system was less advanced

   D. It used rather different building materials.

33. What does “it” refer to in Paragraph 3?

   A. Fresh air from outside     B. Heat in the building

   C. Hollow space     D. Baseboard vent.

34. Why would a building like Eastgate Not work efficiently in New York?

   A. New York has less clear skies as Harare.

   B. Its dampness affects the circulation of air

   C. New York covers a larger area than Harare.

   D. Its temperature changes seasonally rather than daily

35. The data in the last paragraph suggests Eastgate’s temperature control system______.

   A. allows a wide range of temperatures

   B. functions well for most of the year

   C. can recycle up to 30% of the air

   D. works better in hot seasons

What is a dream?

For centuries, people have wondered about the strange places that they seem to visit in their sleep.  36  .

However, they have been valued as necessary to a person’s health and happiness.

Historically people thought dreams contained messages from God. It was only in the twentieth century that people started to study dreams scientifically believing that they tell about a person’s character.  37   He believed that dreams allow a person to express fantasies or fears, which would be socially unacceptable in real life.
    The second theory to become popular was Carl Jung's compensation theory. Jung, a former student of Freud, said that the purpose of a dream is not to hide something, but rather to communicate it to the dreamer.

  __38__ Thus, people who think too highly of themselves may dream about falling; those who think too little of themselves dream of being heroes.
    Using more recent research, William Domhoff from the University of California found that dreaming is a mental skill that needs time to develop in humans.  39  Until they reach age  five, they can not express very well what their dreams are about. Once people become adults, there is little or no change in their dreams. The dreams of men and women differ. For instance, the characters that appear in the dreams of men are often other men, and often involve physical aggression.
    The meaning of dreams continues to be difficult to understand.   40  If you dream that a loved one is going to die, do not panic. The dream may have meaning, but it does not mean that your loved one is going to die.

A．Dreams make up for what is lacking in waking life.

B．However, people should not take their dreams as reality.

C．They have been considered as meaningless nighttime journeys.

D．It gives scientists chances to better understand human mind.

E．Children do not dream as much as adults.
F．They think their mind is trying to tell them something.
G．First, there was Sigmund Freud’s theory.