Part IV Reading comprehension (reading in depth) (25 minutes)

Section A

Directions: In this section, there is a passage with ten blanks. You are required to select one word for each blank from a list of choices given in a word bank following the passage. Read the passage through carefully before making your choices. Each choice in bank is identified by a letter. Please mark the corresponding letter for each item on Answer Sheet 2 with a single line through the centre. You may not use any of the words in the bank more than once.

Questions 47 to 56 are based on the following passage.

The song “Happy birthday to you” is sung all over the world just before the birthday boy or girl blows out the candles on the cake.

It is so simple that children as young as three can sing it without ___47___. The song, with its ___48___ title “Good Morning to You”, was written in 1893 by the two sisters, Mildred and Patty Smith Hill. They were the daughters of a ___49___ Kentucky couple, who believed in female education at a time---the mid-nineteenth century--- when it was still a ___50___ idea and who trained their two daughters to be schoolteachers. They were long involved in elementary education.

A birthday cake with ___51___ candles is also indispensable at one's birthday party. It may derive, ___52___, from the ancient Greek practice of offering to Artemis, goddess of the moon, a round honey cake into which a candle was stuck. After German bakers ___53___ the modern birthday cake in the Middle Ages, a similar ___54___ was adopted for happiness at birthdays.

The candle-blowing-out custom may be associated with double meaning at birthdays. Some people believe that each birthday is another step toward the end, and what we ___55___ at birthday gatherings is not only our growth, but our transience. Thus, candles at birthdays are ___56___ of life and death, hopes and fears, increase and loss, and so on.

注意：此部分试题请在答题卡2上作答。

A) invented I) original

B) accelerate J) novel

C) old K) apparently

D) symbols L) burning

E) hesitation M) prevented

F) progressive N) custom

G) celebrate O) substitute

H) distantly

Section B

Directions: There are 2 passages in this section. Each passage is followed by some questions or unfinished statements. For each of them there are four choices marked A), B), C) and D). You should decide on the best choice and mark the corresponding letter on Answer Sheet 2 with a single line through the centre.

Passage One

Questions 57 to 61 are based on the following passage.

Electric cars are dirty. In fact, not only are they dirty, they might even be more dirty than their gasoline-powered cousins.

People in California love to talk about “zero-emissions vehicles,” but people in California seem to be clueless about where electricity comes from. Power plants most all use fire to make it. Aside from the few folks who have their roofs covered with solar cells, we get our electricity from generators. Generators are fueled by something — usually coal, oil, but also by heat generated in nuclear power plants. There are a few wind farms and geothermal plants as well, but by far we get electricity mainly by burning something.