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1

Robinson Crusoe is an English sailor. After many adventures and dangers, he comes toBrazil, 1. ________ he settles down and becomes a plantation owner. But the call of the sea is still too strong for him and he begins 2. ________ voyage — to West Africa, for the purpose of trading with the natives. During a storm, the ship 3. ________ (destroy) off the coast of an island without people, and he alone manages to swim ashore, 4. ________ all the rest of the crew are drowned. He builds himself a house, and lives first by hunting, then raising livestock and crops. He saves a savage from the hands of cannibals (食人者), gives 5. ________ the name Friday, and makes him into a perfect servant. After some time he rescues three more 6. ________ (prison) from the cannibals. For many years he manages to live on the island.

One day 7. ________ English ship visits the island, its crew intending to leave the captain and his officers ashore. Robinson succeeds 8. ________ helping the captain regain control of the ship.

Robinson, 9. ________ (take) Friday with him, is invited aboard the ship and returns toEngland. After some years he revisits his island colony, 10. ________ is becoming more and more prosperous, but Friday is killed during an attack by the Indians.

2

Joseph Henry was an American scientist.  He served as 1. ________ first Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution. He used to tell a rather strange story about his childhood. His grandmother, 2. ________ raised him, once paid a cobbler (制鞋匠) to make him a pair of shoes.

The man measured 3. ________ feet and told Joseph that he could choose between two styles: a rounded toe (足尖部) 4. ________ a square toe. Little Joseph couldn’t decide. It seemed to be such a huge decision; after all, they 5. ________ (become) his only pair of shoes for a long time.

The cobbler allowed him 6. ________ (take) a couple of days to make 7. ________ his mind. Day after day, Joseph went into the shop, sometimes three or four times a day! Each time he looked over the cobbler’s shoes and tried to decide. The rounded-toed shoes were more 8. ________ (practice), but the square-toed shoes looked much 9. ________ (nice). He continued to hesitate and couldn’t decide!

Finally, one day he went into the shop and the cobbler handed him a small package 10. ________ was wrapped in brown paper. His new shoes! He raced home. He tore off the wrapping and found a beautiful pair of leather shoes — one with a rounded toe and the other with a square toe.

C

A few close friends meant more than the best medical facilities in the world.

       When Harry Truman was pushed into the US presidency after the death 1. ________ Franklin Roosevelt, a colleague and friend — Congressman (国会议员) Sam Rayburn of Bonham, Texas — 2. ________ (give) Truman some fatherly advice.

Rayburn said, “Harry, from here on out, you’re going to have lots of people around you, 3. ________ will try to put a wall around you and cut you off from any ideas but theirs. They’ll tell you what a great man you are, Harry. But you and I 4. ________ know you aren’t.” Friends can say those things to each other.

Later, when Sam Rayburn discovered that he was seriously ill, he told his friends in Congress that he was going home to Bonham for medical tests. “5. ________ there are excellent doctors and medical facilities in Washington, D.C.,” some of them argued. “Why would you want 6. ________ (go) to Bonham?”

“Because,” the congressman replied, “Bonham is a place 7. ________ people know it when you’re sick.”

Rayburn had a need 8. ________ (great) than good medical assistance. He needed friends. Someone to ask what his grandchildren were doing. Someone to sit by him and stop by his home. Someone to care.

Who is such 9. ________ friend to you? That person is more valuable than your greatest 10. ________ (possess).

Have you said “thanks”?

D

Sign language has been used by deaf communities since ancient times. 1. ________ some of these have become standardized to a degree at national level in recent times, each group developed its own set of signs. But the result is 2. ________ there are a lot of different systems around the world. American Sign Language is very different 3. ________ British Sign Language.

For centuries deaf children were dismissed as unteachable but in the early 17th century Juan Pablo Bonet 4. ________ (give) the task of teaching the deaf and dumb children of his 5. ________ (wealth) employer. He developed a system of signing the alphabet, 6. ________ he published in 1620.

Many hearing teachers of the deaf took the view that sign language held deaf children back. 7. ________ favored the “oral system”: teaching deaf children to speak. From the 1880s signing was banned for nearly 8. ________ century in deaf schools and even in families in many parts of the world.

In the 1970s, the pioneering work of Doctor William C. Stokoe proved that sign language possessed enough features 9. ________ (consider) a language in its own right. Since then, signing has regained its respectability around the world. It has been reintroduced into schools, and now appears 10. ________ (increase) on television and at theatre performances.

✎E

The two features of life inEnglandthat possibly give visitors the worst impressions are the English weather and English cooking. 1. ________ former is a natural phenomenon and nobody can do anything about it. But cooking is something 2. ________ can be learned. English food has often been described as 3. ________ (taste). Recently, the situation has changed somewhat because so many people have been spending their holidays abroad and 4. ________ (learn) to appreciate unfamiliar dishes. One of the traditional complaints about English food is the way that vegetables are cooked. The only way that many British housewives know to cook green vegetables is 5. ________ (boil) them for too long in too much salt water and then to throw the water away so that all the vitamins are lost. To make matters 6. ________ (bad), they do not strain the vegetables sufficiently so that 7. ________ appear as a wet mass on the plate.

However, it would be unfair to say that all English food is bad. Indeed not only the raw ingredients are usually 8. ________ very high quality, especially the meat and fish, 9. ________ many traditional British dishes are as good as anything you can get anywhere. A visitor, 10. ________ is invited to an English home might well enjoy steak and kidney pudding or pie, all sorts of smoked fish ...

✎答案

A