Passage 1
The slightest whiff of baking bread starts taste buds blossoming. Its siren scent has even driven men to acts of madness. Like a country's flag, bread signals nationality at the world's tables. America's corn bread; Ireland's soda bread; England's traditional cottage loaf and bread appears in as many shapes and sizes as there are nationalities. The French have created long, thin loaves with special flavour-lightly salted, slightly sour, finely textured. In all its marvellous variety, bread is such an essential part of life that it has also entered the language"bread winner", "break bread","bread(for money)", "know which side his bread is buttered","take the bread out of his mouth"are but a few examples.
Bread had its origins in a coarse, flat cake that may have been first baked by Swiss lake dwellers of the Stone Age, who more than 8,000 years ago discovered how to pound grain, mix it with water and bake it on heated stones. Historians trace leavened bread to between 2000 and 3000 BC in Egypt, where wild yeast probably invaded a baker's dough, producing the world's first light bread. The Egyptians subsequently invented the oven and turned breadmaking into an art, creating more than 50 varieties. The Romans further refined bread-making, inventing the domed and thick-walled peel oven. They also developed water-driven mills and the first mechanical dough-mixer, powered by horses and donkeys. Perhaps the most inspired innovation involving bread occurred in London in the eighteenth century, when a dissolute nobleman, John Montagu, asked that meat be served between sheets of bread so that he could eat while remaining at the gaming tables. That crude sandwich changed the eating habits of the world.
Whatever its shape or texture, a golden-crust loaf coming from the oven breathing and swelling goodness stirs perhaps the most ancient of all hungers. Bread has become the very symbol of sustenance, arousing reverence, nostalgia, even passion, like no other food.
1. We can infer from the sentence"bread signals nationality at the world's table" that .
A. bread can be used as a country's flag
B. bread are made differently
C. there are many ways to make bread
D. people like to eat very much
2. Which of the following can be explained as "know where one may have advantages"?
A. Breadwinner.
B. Take the bread out of his mouth.
C. Bread for money
D. Know which side one's bread is buttered.
3. The original form of bread was .
A. a long and thin loaf
B. an animal-shaped cake
C. a common flat cake
D. a twist dough
4. The most inspired innovation concerning bread in the 18th century was .
A. a heated stove
B. the crude sandwich
C. the domed and thick-walled peel oven
D. 50 varieties of bread
5. Which is NOT true according to the passage?
A. Bread is so important in our life that it enters into the language.
B. There are varieties of bread in the world.
C. The sandwich changed the eating habit of the world.
D. Bread was the only food eaten by ancient people.
Passage 2
No one should be forced to wear a uniform under any circumstance. Uniforms are demanding to the human spirit and totally unnecessary in a democratic society. Uniforms tell the world that the person who wears one has no value as an individual but only lives to function as a part of a whole. The individual in a uniform loses all self-worth.
There are those who say that wearing a uniform gives a person a sense of identification with a larger, more important concept. What could be more important than the individual himself? If an organization is so weak that it must rely on cloth and buttons to inspire it's members, that organization has no right to continue its existence. Others say that the practice of making persons wear uniforms, say in a school, eliminates all envy and competition in the matter of dress, such that a poor person who cannot afford good - quality clothing is not to be belittled by a wealthy person who wears expensive quality clothing. Those persons conveniently ignore such critical concepts as freedom of choice, motivation, and individuality. If all persons were to wear the same clothing, why would anyone strive to be better? It is only a short step from forcing everyone to drive the same car, have the same type of foods. When this happens, all incentive to improve one's life is removed. Why would parents bother to work hard so that their children could have a better life than they had when they know that their children are going to be forced to have exactly the same life that they had?
Uniforms also hurt the economy. Right now, billions of dollars are spent on the fashion industry yearly. Thousands of persons are employed in designing, creating and marketing different types of clothing. If everyone were forced to wear uniforms, artistic personnel would be unnecessary. Sales persons would be superfluous as well; why bother to sell the only items that are available? The wearing of uniforms would destroy the fashion industry, which in turn would have a ripple effect on such industries as advertising and promotion. Without advertising, newspapers, magazines, and television would not be able to remain in business. One entire information and entertainment industry would collapse.
6. The author's primary purpose in writing this passage was to .
A. plead for the abolishment of uniforms
B. show that uniforms are not possible in a democratic society
C. advocate stronger governmental controls on the wearing of uniforms
D. convince the reader that uniforms have more disadvantages than advantages
7. Why does the author discuss forcing everyone to buy the same car or eat the same food?
A. To show that freedom of choice is absolute.
B. To show that the government has interfered too much in the lives of individual.
C. To suggest what would happen if uniforms became compulsory.
D. To predict the way the society will be in the next few generations.
8. Which of the following statements is NOT true according to the author?
A. The person who wears a uniform has no self-worth.
B. Wearing a uniform gives a person a sense of identification with a larger concept.
C. Uniforms will hurt one entire information and entertainment industry.
D. Envy and competition are incentive to improve one's life.
9. The word "superfluous" (Para. 3) most probably means "".
A. indispensable
B. available
C. surplus
D. supplementary
10. The next paragraph in this passage might discuss .
A. the positive effects of wearing uniforms
B. more negative effects of wearing uniforms
C. an alternative to wearing uniforms
D. the legal rights of those not wishing to wear uniforms
Passage 3
Icebergs are among nature's most spectacular creations, and yet most people have never seen one. A vague air of mystery envelops them. They come into being-somewhere-in faraway, frigid waters, amid thunderous noise and splashing turbulence, which in most cases no one hears or sees. They exist only a short time and then slowly waste away just as unnoticed.
Objects of sheerest beauty, they have been called. Appearing in an endless variety of shapes, they may be dazzlingly white, or they may be glassy blue, green or purple, tinted faintly or in darker hues. They are graceful, stately, inspiring in calm, sunlit seas.
But they are also called frightening and dangerous, and that they are—in the night, in the fog, and in storms. Even in clear weather one is wise to stay a safe distance away from them. Most of their bulk is hidden below the water, so their underwater parts may extend out far beyond the visible top. Also, they may roll over unexpectedly, churning the waters around them.
Icebergs are parts of glaciers that break off, drift into the water, float about awhile, and finally melt. Icebergs afloat today are made of snowflakes that have fallen over long ages of time. They embody snows that drifted down hundreds, or many thousands, or in some cases maybe a million years ago. The snows fell in polar regions and on cold mountains, where they melted only a little or not at all, and so collected to great depths over the years and centuries.
As each year's snow accumulation lay on the surface, evaporation and melting caused the snowflakes slowly to lose their feathery points and become tiny grains of ice. When new snow fell on top of the old, it too turned to icy grains. So blankets of snow and ice grains mounted layer upon layer and were of such great thickness that the weight of the upper layers compressed the lower ones. With time and pressure from above, the many small ice grains joined and changed to larger crystals, and eventually the deeper crystals merged into a solid mass of ice.
