Maybe the decline（下降）is caused by the increasing availability of computes games. Maybe the books boom（繁荣）has affected only the top of the educational pile. Either way, Chancellor Cordon Brown plans to change things for the bottom of the class. In his pre-budget report, he announced the national project of Reading Recovery to help the children struggling most.
Reading Recovery is aimed at six year olds, who receive four months of inpidual daily half-hour classes with a specially trained teacher. An evaluation this year reported that children on the school made 20 months' progress in just one year, whereas similarly weak readers without special help made just five months' progress, and so ended the year even further below the level expected for their age.
International research tends to find that when British children leave primary school, they read well, but read text often for fun than those elsewhere. Reading for fun matters because children who are keen on reading can report lifelong pleasure and loving books is an excellent indicator（指示器）of future educational success. According to the OECD, being a regular and enthusiastic reader is of great advantage.
66. Which of the following is TRUE of Paragraph 1?
A. Many children's books have been adapted from films.
B. Many high-quality children's books have been published
C. The sales of classics have led to the popularity of films.
D. The sales of presents for children have increased.
67. Statistics suggested that .
A. the number of top students increased with the use of computers
B. a decreasing number of children showed interest in reading
C. a minority of primary school children read properly
D. a huge percentage of children read regularly
68. What do we know about Reading Recovery?
A. An evaluation of it will be made sometime this year.
B. Weak readers on the project were the most hardworking.
C. It aims to train special teachers to help children with reading.
D. Children on the project showed noticeable progress in reading.
69. Reading for fun is important because book-loving children .
A. take greater advantage of the project
B. show the potential to enjoy a long life
C. are likely to succeed in their education
D. would become excellent future researchers
70. The aim of this text would probably be .
A. to overcome primary school pupils reading difficulty.
B. to encourage the publication of more children's books
C. to remind children of the importance of reading for fun
D. to introduce a way to improve early children reading
D
Do you know that men die earlier than women? The latest research makes it known that the reason could be that men's hearts go into rapid decline when they reach middle age.
The largest study of the effects of ageing（变老）on the heart has found that women's longevity may be linked to the fact that their hearts do not lose their pumping power with age.
"We have found that the power of the male heart falls by 20-25 percent between 18 and 70 years of age," said the head of the study, David Goldspink of Liverpool John Moores University in the UK.
"Within the heart there are millions of cells that enable it to beat. Between the age of 20 and 70, one-third of those cells die and are not replaced in men," said Goldspink "This is part of the aging process."
What surprises scientists is that the female heart sees very little loss of these cells. A healthy 70-year-old woman's heart could perform almost as well as a 20-year-old one's.
"This gender（性别）difference might just explain why women live longer than men," said Goldspink. They studied more than 250 healthy men and women between the ages of 18 and 80, focusing on healthy persons to remove the confusing influence of disease. "The team has yet to find why ageing takes a greater loss on the male heart," said Goldspink.
The good news is that men can improve the health of their heart with regular exercise. Goldspink stressed that women also need regular exercise to prevent their leg muscles becoming
smaller and weaker as they age.
71. The underlined word "longevity" in the second paragraph probably refers to" ".
A. health
B. long life
C. ageing
D. function
72. The text mainly talks about .
A. the benefits of regular exercise
B. women's ageing process
C. the gender difference
D. hearts and long life
73. According to the text, the UK scientists have known that .
A. women have more cells than men when they are born
B. women can replace the cells .that enable the heart to beat
C. the female heart loses few of the cells with age
D. women don't lose their pumping power with age
74. If you want to live longer, you should .
A. enable your heart to beat much faster
B. find out the reason for ageing
C. exercise regularly to keep your heart healthy
D. prevent your cells from being lost
75. We can know from the passage that .
A. the reason why ageing takes a greater loss on the male heart has been found out
B. scientists are on the way to finding out why the male heart loses more of the cells
C. the team has done something to prevent the male from suffering the greater loss
D. women over 70 could lose more heart cells than those at the age of 20
第Ⅱ卷（非选择题满分35分）
第四部分写作（共两节，满分35分）
第一节阅读表达（共5小题；每小题2分，满分10分）
阅读下面短文并回答问题。（请注意问题后的次数要求）。
[1]A researcher who helped make crops grow in dry land areas received the World Food Prize last week. Daniel Hillel was recognized for his work in developing what is called "micro-irrigation" or "drip irrigation（滴灌）." It has made farming possible in places where there is little rainfall or water.
[2]Daniel Hillel's farm near his home in Israel shows his ideas at work. "Each tree row is fed by these plastic tubes that drip water at the base of the tree." Watering plants drop by drop has changed agriculture by reducing the amount of water needed to grow crops.
[3]Farmers now depend on drip irrigation in many areas, including vineyards in Spain, onion fields in Africa, and even farms in the United States. Farmers in California grow about fifty percent
of the fruits and vegetables of the continental United States. And the reason that is possible is because of these drip and micro-irrigation techniques.
[4]Daniel Hillel was born in California. After his father died, his mother moved the family to Palestine, where her parents lived. The area eventually became part of the state of Israel. Daniel Hillel got his start in dry land farming as a settler in Israel's Negev Desert in the 1950s. "The issue was efficient use of water because land is available and extensive（广阔的）while water is limited."
[5]Desert farmers were not able to push water through irrigation canals to their crops the way farmers have since ancient times. So Mr. Hillel and others gave plants just what they needed, just where they needed it. The idea was to apply the water little by little. The method worked so well that soon Mr. Hillel was traveling the world, showing others . 76. Why did Daniel Hillel win the World Food Prize?（no more than 15 words）
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77. How did drip irrigation change agriculture?（no more than 12 words）
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78. Fill in the blank in Paragraph 5 with proper words.（no more than 5 words）
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79. What's the main idea of the text?（no more than 12 words）
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80. What does the underlined word "it"（Line3, Paragraph 1）probably refer to?（no more than 3 words）
