三、完形填空(共15小题;每小题2分，共30分)

阅读下面短文，掌握其大意，然后从31~45各题所给的A、B、C和D项中，选出最佳选项，并在答题卡上将该项涂黑。

Which came first, the chicken or the egg? This is one of life’s __31__ questions and people have been debating about it for thousands of years. Now scientists believe they have solved this __32__. Researchers from Sheffield and Warwick Universities in England discovered the answer __33__. They used a super computer to observe the shell-making process while a new shell was __34__. Then they found one protein called OC17 that is __35__ for forming eggshell. This is only found inside a chicken’s body, which is proof that the __36__ came first. The team was __37__ looking at how animals and birds make eggshells but suddenly made their surprising __38__. The big question now is where chickens came from. The __39__ is from dinosaurs.

The research team said eggshells are one of nature’s most __40__ creations. Professor John Harding from the team told reporters: “Understanding how chickens make eggshells is fascinating in itself, but it can also be __41__ in designing new materials.” Eggshells are very lightweight but incredibly strong. Even the most up-to-date materials __42__ by the world’s top engineers can not produce anything as __43__ as an eggshell. Professor Harding added that __44__ eggshells could help to cure bone diseases and design materials for the construction industry.“Nature has found wonderful ways that __45__ for all kinds of problems in materials science and technology — we can learn a lot from them.” he said.

31. A.strangest B.best  C.oldest    D.longest

32. A.puzzle B.story  C.history   D.idea

33. A. on purpose B. by chance C.without hesitation  D. at work

34. A.breaking B.changing  C.disappearing   D.forming

35. A.necessary B.easy  C.kind   D.impossible

36. A.egg B.eggshell  C.chicken   D.dinosaur

37. A.obviously B.originally  C.thoughtfully   D.surprisingly

38. A.invention B.mistake  C.statement   D.discovery

39. A.answer B.research  C.key   D. egg

40. A.strange B.ridiculous  C.funny   D. amazing

41. A.hopeful B.helpful  C.respectful   D. colorful

42. A.bought B.cut  C.designed   D.carried

43. A.brilliant B.ordinary  C.1ight   D. strong

44. A.finding B.watching  C.studying   D.making

45. A.happen          B.work          C.wait                  D.look

四、阅读(共20题，每题2分，共40分)

第一节：阅读理解(共15题，每题2分，共30分)

A

Britons Learn to Forgive

LEEDS, England ─ A Leeds University psychology (心理学) professor is teaching a course to help dozens of Britons forgive their enemies.

"The hatred we hold within us is a cancer," Professor Ken Hart said, adding that holding in anger can lead to problems such as high blood pressure and heart disease.

More than 70 people have become members in Hart's first 20-week workshop in London ─ a course he says is the first of its kind in the world.

These are people who are sick and tired of living with a memory. They realize their bitterness is a poison they think they can pour out, but they end up drinking it themselves, said Canadian-born Hart.

The students meet in groups of eight to ten for a two-hour workshop with an adviser every fortnight.

The course, ending in July, is expected to get rid of the cancer of hate in these people. "People have lots of negative attitudes towards forgiveness," he said. "People confuse forgiveness with forgetting. Forgiveness means changing from a negative attitude to a positive one."

Hart and his team have created instructions to provide the training needed.

"The main idea is to give you guidelines on how to look at various kinds of angers and how they affect you, and how to change your attitudes towards the person you are angry with," said Norman Claringbull, a senior expert on the forgiveness project.

Hart said he believes forgiveness is a skill that can be taught, as these people "want to get free of the past".

46.From this passage we know that ______.

A. high blood pressure and heart disease are caused by hatred

B. high blood pressure can only be cured by psychology professors

C. without hatred, people will have less trouble connected with blood and heart

D. people who suffer from blood pressure and heart disease must have many enemies

47.If you are angry with somebody, you should ______.

A. try your best to defeat him or her

B. never meet him or her again

C. persuade him or her to have a talk with you

D. try to build up a positive attitude towards the person

48. In Hart's first 20-week workshop, people there can ___.

A. meet their enemies

B. change their minds

C. enjoy the professor's speech

D. learn how to quarrel with others

49. If you are a member in Hart' s workshop, you'll ______.

A. pay much money to Hart

B. go to the workshop every night

C. attend a gathering twice a month

D. pour out everything stored in your mind

50. The author wrote this passage in order to ________.

A. persuade us to go to Hart's workshop

B. tell us the news about Hart's workshop

C. tell us how to run a workshop like Hart's

D. help us to look at various kinds of angers

B

In Stockholm, the Swedish Academy has chosen the British author Doris Lessing for the 2007 Nobel Prize in Literature.

The selection of Doris Lessing for a Nobel was popular among the hundreds of journalists gathered for the announcement in Stockholm.

Permanent Secretary of the Swedish Academy Horace Engdahl said with skepticism, fire and visionary power Lessing has subjected a divided civilization to scrutiny.

Doris Lessing was born in 1919 in Persia - modern-day Iran - to British parents, moving as a child with her family to southern Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe, where she stayed in school only to the age of 14.

A year after moving to London, she published her first novel in 1950. The Grass is Singing examines unbridgeable racial conflict in colonial Africa through the eyes of a white farmer's wife and her black servant.

A member of the British Communist Party during the 1950s and a campaigner against nuclear arms and South African apartheid, Lessing was for years banned from that country and from Rhodesia.

Her literary breakthrough came in 1962 with publication of The Golden Notebook, seen by many, though not necessarily Lessing, as a pioneering work of modern feminism. A disjointed study of the mind of the main character, Anna Wulf, the novel explores her thoughts about Africa, politics and communism, relationships with men and sex, and Jungian analysis and dream interpretation.

Lessing's themes shifted to psychology in her works from the 1960s, and by the 1970s she was fascinated with the Islamic mystic tradition of Sufism. Her turn toward science fiction with the Canopus series in the early 1980s was not warmly received by traditionalist critics, but she has continued to win new readers and numerous literary awards, including the David Cohen British Literary Prize and the Companion of Honour from the Royal Society of Literature, both in 2001.

Following the announcement, the Horace Engdahl told VOA why he was personally so pleased with Lessing's selection.

"She is one of the truly great writers - of novels, short stories, fiction and non-fiction," Engdahl said. "She is one of the few writers who have had the courage to uphold the principle of equality between the male and female experience, and she has given the impulse to numbers of other women writers. And she is really the mother of a school that is one of the most important in our contemporary literature."

At 87, Doris lessing is the oldest Nobel Literature laureate since the first prizes were awarded in 1901. Each Nobel Prize is this year accompanied by a check for approximately $1.4 million.

51. How old was Doris Lessing when she published her first novel?

A. 14            B. 26           C. 31                D. 50