Passage One Distance education is enrollment and study with an educational institution that provides lesson materials prepared in a sequential and logical order for study by students on their own. When each lesson is completed, the student mails or transmits the assigned work to the institution for correction, grading, comment, and subject matter guidance by qualified instructors. Corrected assignments are returned promptly to the student. This exchange provides a personalized student-teacher relationship. If a student slows his or her pace or fails to send assignments, the school provides encouragement. Although some institutions provide employment placement information and assistance, no reputable school ever guarantees a job to graduates. Distance education and self-study are different. Self-study materials provide no instructional service. Corrected assignments, examinations, and special help provided by a qualified facility are vital to a good learning situation. However, these are not part of self-study. There are many self-study courses and recordings available, and they may have value, but they clearly are not correspondence or distance education courses. Some institutions offer combination courses that provide training-in-residence for students who complete their distance education lessons. In-service or on-the-job training is required or provided with other courses and is a feature of many vocational distance education programs. Quality distance education institutions screen prospective students to assure that only those who can benefit from the courses are enrolled. While there are educational prerequisites for some academic subjects, interest and aptitude are the primary factors leading to success in most distance education courses. Because they provide alternative educational opportunities, distance education institutions try not to deny a prospective student the opportunity to succeed in a course; interest and experience are good indicators of future success. Distance education courses vary greatly in scope, level, and length. Some have few lessons and require only weeks to complete, while others have a hundred or more assignments requiring three or four years of conscientious study. Also, a wide variety of subjects is offered. Subjects include yacht design, accounting, medical transcription, nutrition, robotics, travel agent training, gun-repair, gem identification, computer programming, catering and cooking, and earning an entire high school diploma, just to name a few. There is an increasing recognition of "distance education" and many colleges offer credit for their distance learning courses or accept some distance education credits of resident students working toward a degree. In fact, many distance education institutions award their own academic degrees. Acceptance of students and awarding of academic credit is the prerogative of the receiving academic institution. Also, the employing organization may set its own credit acceptance policies.
1. Which of the following questions does the passage seek to answer?
A.Why is distance education important to the modern society?
B.What is distance education?
C.How does distance education differ from self-study?
D.How is distance education different from college education?
A B C D
B
[解析] 从文章第一句“Distance education is enrollment and study with an educational institution that provides lesson materials prepared in a sequential and logical order for study by students on their own.”可知，本文开篇就回答了“什么是远程教育”这个问题，接下来文章其他部分进一步阐述了远程教育各方面的问题，因此B项为正确答案。
2. Which of the following is true of distance education?
A.The majority of the students fail to pass its examinations.
B.Personal tutors are assigned to students to offer regular help.
C.Teachers and students communicate through correspondence.
D.The courses are set up to suit the pace of each individual student.
A B C D
C
[解析] 本题的依据句是第一段的“When each lesson is completed...returned promptly to the student.”据此可知，在远程教育中，师生通过通信进行交流，因此C项为正确答案。
3. Distance education is different from self-study in that it ______.
A.provides training-in-residence for students
B.caters to the interest of each individual student
C.is available to vast majority of students
D.offers instructional service to students
A B C D
D
[解析] 本题的依据句是第二段第一、二句话“Distance education and self-study are different. Self-study materials provide no instructional service.”据此可知，远程教育与自学的不同之处在于自学不提供指导性的服务，因此D项为正确答案。
4. In the third paragraph, the word "prospective" probably means ______.
5. It is implied in the passage that students of distance education ______.
A.enjoy greater freedom in choosing the subjects to study
B.do not have to meet any enrolling requirement at all
C.take longer to complete their study than college students
D.can usually enter college to work toward a degree
A B C D
A
[解析] 本题可参照第四段和第五段，据此可以判断A项是正确的。从第三段第一句话“Quality distance education institutions screen prospective students to assure that only those who can benefit from the courses are enrolled.”可以判断B项错误。C、D两项都与文意不符。
Passage Two A recent study examined men's attitudes to women, life goals and gender roles and the findings indicate that the popular image of men as insensitive, macho slobs has almost disappeared. The report found that modem British men have accepted the feminist revolution and have become more feminine in the process. "Men have turned into metrosexuals." Paradoxically, the term "metrosexual", which is now being embraced by marketers, was coined in the mid-90's to mock everything marketers stand for. Mark Simpson used the word to satirize what he saw as consumerism's toll on traditional masculinity. Men didn't go to shopping malls, buy glossy magazines or load up on grooming products, Mr. Simpson argued, so consumer culture promoted the idea of a sensitive guy—who went to malls, bought magazines and spent freely to improve his personal appearance. Within a few years, British advertisers and newspapers picked up the term. In 2001, Britain's Channel Four brought out a show about sensitive guys called "metrosexuality". And in recent years the European media found a metrosexual icon in David Beckham, the English soccer star, who paints his fingernails, braids his hair and poses for gay magazines, all while maintaining a manly profile on the pitch. The challenge of the marketers is still to convince men that it is perfectly normal to groom. What separates the modern-day metrosexual is a care-free attitude toward the inevitable suspicion that a man who dresses well, has good manners, or has opinions on women's fashion is gay. Some metrosexuals may simply be indulging in pursuits they had avoided for fear of being suspected as gay.
1. According to the text, men ______.
A.have rejected the feminist view of themselves
B.accept the need to groom
C.now have new attitudes of themselves and women
D.have adopted many characteristics formerly thought of as women's
D.The background and description of the "metrosexual".
A B C D
D
[解析] 属主旨思想题。文章主要介绍metrosexual这个概念的背景并描述它现在的含义。
Passage Three In some ways, the United States has made spectacular progress. Fires no longer destroy 18,000 buildings as they did in the Great Chicago Fire of 1871, or kill half a town of 2,400 people, as they did the same night in Peshtigo, Wisconsin. Other than the Beverly Hill Supper Club fire in Kentucky, in 1977, it has been four decades since more than 100 Americans died in a fire. But even with such successes, the United States still has one of the worst fire death rates in the world. Safety experts say the problem is neither money nor technology, but the indifference of a country that just will not take fires seriously enough. American fire departments are some of the world's fastest and best equipped. They have to be. The United States has twice Japan's population, and 40 times as many fires. It spends far less on preventing fires than on fighting them. American fire-safety lessons are aimed almost entirely at children, who die in disproportionately large numbers in fires but whom, contrary to popular myth, start very few of them. Experts say the fatal error is an attitude that fires are not really anyone's fault. That is not so in other countries, where both public education and the law treat fires as either a personal failing or a crime. Japan has many wood houses, of the estimated 48 fires in world history, that burned more than 10,000 buildings, Japan has had 27. Penalties for causing a severe fire by negligence can be as high as life imprisonment. In the United States, most education dollars are spent in elementary schools. But the lessons are aimed at too limited an audience, just 9 percent of all fire deaths are caused by children playing with matches. The United States continues to rely more on technology than laws or social pressure. There are smoke detectors in 85 percent of all homes. Some local building codes now require home sprinklers. New heaters and irons shut themselves off if they are tipped.
1. The reason why so many Americans die in fires is that ______.
A.they took no interest in new technology
B.they did not attach great importance to preventing fires
C.they showed indifference to fighting fires
D.they did not spend enough money on fire facilities
A B C D
B
[解析] 答案见第二段的最后一句：but the indifference of a country that just will not take fires seriously enough。文中indifference意为“冷漠，不重视”，而take…seriously则意为“重视”，与选项B中的attach great importance to(重视)同义，故选项B正确。
2. Although the fire death rate has declined, the United States ______.
A.still has the worst fire death rate in the world
B.is still alert to the fire problem
C.is still training a large number of safety experts
D.is still confronted with the serious fire problem
A B C D
D
[解析] 答案见短文的第二段：the United States still has one of the worst fire death rates in the world(美国依然是世界上火灾死亡率最高的国家之一)，因此美国仍面临着(be confronted with)严重的火灾问题，故选项D正确。
3. It can be inferred from the passage that ______.
A.fire safety lessons should be aimed at American adults
B.American children have not received enough education of fire safety lesson
C.Japan is better equipped with fire facilities than the Untied States
D.America's large population accounts for high fire frequency
A B C D
A
[解析] 答案见短文的第五段：most education dollars are spent in elementary schools，然而the lessons are aimed at too limited an audience，just 9 percent of all fire deaths are caused by children playing with matches，这里使用了too limited和just 9 percent，它暗示了成年人也应该受到这方面的教育。故选项A正确。
4. In what aspects should the United States learn from Japan?
A.Architecture and building material.
B.Education and technology.
C.Laws and attitude.
D.All of the above.
A B C D
C
[解析] 答案见第四段和第六段。在第四段段首提到了attitude(态度)，同时还提到了日本对于发生火灾的不同处理方法：在日本Penalties for causing a severe fire by negligence can be as high as life imprisonment。然而美国的做法则全然不同(见第六段)：The United States continues to rely more on technology than laws or social pressure.可见选项C为正确答案。
5. To narrow the gap between the fire death rate in the United States and that in other countries, the author suggests ______.
A.developing new technology
B.counting more on laws and social pressure
C.placing a fire extinguisher in every family
D.reinforcing the safeness of household appliances
Passage Four By education, I mean the influence of the environment upon the individual to produce a permanent change in the habits of behavior, of thought and of attitude. It is in being thus susceptible to the environment that man differs from the animals, and the higher animals from the lower. The lower animals are influenced by the environment but not in the direction of changing their habits. Their instinctive responses are few and fixed by heredity. When transferred to an unnatural situation, such an animal is led astray by its instincts. Thus the "ant-lion" whose instinct implies it to bore into loose sand by pushing backwards with abdomen, goes backwards on a plate of glass as soon as danger threatens，and endeavors, with the utmost exertions to bore into it. It knows no other mode of flight, "or if such a lonely animal is engaged upon a chain of actions and is interrupted, it either goes on vainly with the remaining actions (as useless as cultivating an unsown field) or dies in helpless inactivity". Thus a net-making spider which digs a burrow and rims it with a bastion of gravel and bits of wood, when removed from a half finished home, will not begin again, though it will continue another burrow, even one made with a pencil. Advance in the scale of evolution along such lines as these could only be made by the emergence of creatures with more and more complicated instincts. Such beings we know in the ants and spiders. But another line of advance was destined to open out a much more far-reaching possibility of which we do not see the end perhaps even in man. Habits, instead of being born ready-made (when they are called instincts and not habits at all), were left more and more to the formative influence of the environment, of which the most important factor was the parent who now cared for the young animal during a period of infancy in which vaguer instincts than those of the insects were molded to suit surroundings which might be considerably changed without harm. This means, one might at first imagine, that gradually heredity becomes less and environment more important. But this is hardly the truth and certainly not the whole truth. For although fixed automatic responses like those of the insect-like creatures are no longer inherited, although selection for purification of that sort is no longer going on, yet selection for educability is very definitely still of importance. The ability to acquire habits can be conceivably inherited just as much as can definite responses to narrow situations. Besides, since a mechanism—is now, for the first time, created by which the individual (in contradiction to the species) can be fitted to the environment, the latter becomes, in another sense, less not more important. And finally, less not the higher animals who possess the power of changing their environment by engineering feats and the like, a power possessed to some extent even by the beaver, and preeminently by man. Environment and heredity are in no case exclusive but always-supplementary factors.
1. Which of the following is the most suitable title for the passage?
2. What can be inferred from the example of the ant-lion in the first paragraph?
A.Instincts of animals can lead to unreasonable reactions in strange situations.
B.When it is engaged in a chain actions it cannot be interrupted.
C.Environment and heredity are two supplementary factors in the evolution of insects.
D.Along the lines of evolution heredity becomes less and environment more important.
A B C D
B
[解析] 本题可参照第1段中间一句话：if such a lonely animal is engaged upon a chain of actions and is interrupted, it either goes on vainly with the remaining actions...or dies in helpless inactivity，从中可知，蚁狮会执著地做出本能的反应。因此B项为正确答案。
3. Based on the example provided in the passage, we can tell that when a spider is removed to a new position where half of a net has been made, it will probably ______.
A.begin a completely new net
B.destroy the half-net
C.spin the rest of the net
D.stay away from the net
A B C D
D
[解析] 本题可参照第1段的when removed from a half finished home, will not begin again。因此D项是正确答案。
4. Which of the following is true about habits according to the passage?
A.They are natural endowments to living creatures.
B.They are more important than instincts to all animals.
C.They are subject to the formative influence of the environment.
D.They are destined to open out a much more far-reaching possibility in the evolution of human beings.
A B C D
C
[解析] 本题可参照文章第2段的Habits, instead of being born ready-made...were left more and more to the formative influence ofthe environment，从中可知C项为正确答案。
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