The new year is just ().

and for two weeks, they are full of people looking for bargains. My husband and I do not normally go to the sales as we don't like crowds and in any case we are short of money as we have to buy lots of Christmas presents.

Last year, however, I took my husband with me to the sales at the large shop in the center of London. We both needed some new clothes and were hoping to find a television set. When we got to Oxford Street, it was so crowded that we decided to split up and meet again at the underground station. So I left my husband and started looking around the shops. Unfortunately all the clothes were in very large sizes and so they were not suitable for me. But I did buy a television at a very cheap price, so I felt quite pleased with myself.

When I arrived at the station, my husband was not there. So I sat down in a nearby cafe to have a cup of tea. I quickly finished my tea when I saw my husband and went out to meet him. He looked very happy. Then I saw he was carrying a large and heavy cardboard box. "Oh, dear!" I thought. Yes, we had no new clothes but two televisions. We shall not be going to the sales again.

In January

A．lots of people go shopping for discount

B．people have a lot of money to spend after Christmas

C．all the shops close for a two-week Christmas holiday

D．people don't have enough money to go looking for bargains

annually in the late 1990s to what analysts project will be a 15% to 20% rise in 2002, and no more than that in 2003. To some extent, numerous surveys have found, slower growth in demand reflects consumer disillusionment with just about every aspect of cell-phone service—its reliability, quality, and notorious customer service.

The cooling off in demand threatens to cascade through the industry: The big six U.S. cell-phone carriers—Verizon Wireless, Cingular Wireless, AT＆T Wireless, Sprint PCS, Voice Stream, and Nextel Communications—are engaged in a fierce price war that imperils their timetables for becoming profitable, not to mention their efforts to whittle down their mountains of debt. As the carriers have begun to cut costs wireless equipment makers—companies such as Lucent, Nokia, and Ericsson have been left with a market that's bound to be smaller than they had anticipated. Handset makers have been insulated so far, but they, too face a nagging uncertainty. They'll soon introduce advanced phones to the U.S. market that will run on the new networks the carriers are starting up over the next year or two. But the question then will be: Will Americans embrace these snazzy data features and their higher costs—with the wild enthusiasm that Europeans and Asians have？

Long before the outcome in clear, the industry will have to adopt a new mind-set. "In the old days, it was all about connectivity." says Andrew Cole, an analyst with wireless consultancy Adventist. Build the network, and customers will come. From now on, the stakes will be higher. The new mantra: Please customers, or you may not survive.

To work their way out of this box, the carriers are spending huge sums to address the problem. Much of Sprint PCS's $3.4 billion in capital outlays this year will be for new stations. And in fact, the new high-speed, high-capacity nationwide networks due to roll out later this year should help ease the calling capacity crunch that has caused many consumer complaints. In the meantime, some companies are using better training and organization to keep customers happy. The nation's largest rural operator, Alltel (AT), recently reorganized its call centers so that a customer's query goes to the first operator who's available anywhere in the country, instead of the first one available in the customer's home area. That should cut waiting time to one minute from three to five minutes previously.

What is the text mainly about？

A．The bad service in the U.S. cell-phone industry.

B．The crisis in the U.S. cell phone industry.

C．The conflicts among cell-phone companies in the U.S.

D．The price of the U.S. cell-phone industry.

and for two weeks, they are full of people looking for bargains. My husband and I do not normally go to the sales as we don't like crowds and in any case are short of money as we have to buy lots of Christmas presents.

Last year, however, I took my husband with me to the sales at the large shop in the center of London, We both needed some new clothes and were hoping to find a television set. When we got to Oxford Street, it was so crowded that we decided to split up and meet again at the underground station, so I left my husband and started looking around the shops. Unfortunately all the clothes were in very large sizes and so were not suitable for me. But I did buy a television at a very cheap price, so I felt quite pleased with myself.

When I arrived at the station, my husband was not there. So I sat down in a nearby cafe to have a cup of tea. I quickly finished my tea when I saw my husband and went out to meet him. He looked very happy. Then I saw he was carrying a large and heavy cardboard box. "Oh, dear! "I thought. Yes, we had no new clothes but two televisions. We shall not be going to the sales again.

In January ______.

A．lots of people go shopping for discount

B．people have a lot of money to spend after Christmas

C．all the shops close for a two-week Christmas holiday

D．people don't have enough money to go looking for bargains

Passage Three

People enjoy talking about "firsts." They like to remember their first love or their first car. But not all firsts

are happy ones. Few people enjoy recalling the firsts that are bad.

One of history's bad but important firsts was the first car accident. Autos were still young when it happened. The crash took place in New York City. The year was 1896. The month was May. A man from Massachusetts was visiting the city in his new car. At the time, bicycle riders were still trying to get used to the new set of wheels on the road. No one is sure who was at fault. In any case, the bike and the car collided. The man on the bike was injured. The driver of the car had to stay in jail and wait for the hospital report on the bicycle rider. Luckily, the rider was not killed.

Three years later, another automobile first took place. The scene was again New York City, a real estate broker named Henry Bliss stepped off a streetcar. He was hit by a passing car. Once again, no one is sure just how it happened or whose fault it was. The driver of the car was put in jail. Poor Mr. Bliss became the first person to die in a car accident.

44. In each accident the driver was ______.

A. found guilty

B. set free

C. laughed at

D. put in jail for a while

l, the Anglo-Dutch energy giant that ranks third among the top five Western oil companies. But Wall Street isn't celebrating. Instead, analysts are worried that buried beneath the record profit figures are worrying signs of a business in decline.

That's because Shell hasn't been able to find nearly as much oil and gas as it's now pumping out of the ground. In fact, it hasn't even come close—replacing only 60% to 70% of what it produced in 2005 and only 19% in 2004. Shell has had reserve problems for years—a controversy over improperly booked assets forced it to reduce estimated reserves by roughly 30% and led to the resignation of its CEO, Phil Watts, in 2004. But what's troubling now is that Shell is falling way behind rivals like Exxon and BP despite spending billions more each year on exploring and drilling new wells. Last year Exxon replaced 112% of production; BP came up with 95%. "I have never seen anything like this," says Fadel Gheit, a veteran energy analyst with Oppenheimer & Co. "Shell used to represent the gold standard in this industry, but lately they can't get their act together."

To be sure, Shell still has huge assets—nearly 12 billion barrels. But in the oil and gas industry, reserve replacement is the best guide to whether a company will be able to maintain-or grow-production in the future. So not replacing what you pump, says longtime industry observer Matthew Simmons, "is like eating your seed corn. If you're not finding new oil, you're just liquidating what you've got." Indeed, Shell's daily production figures have been weak lately, falling 6.7 % in 2005, to 3.52 million barrels a day.

Privately, Shell execs say the company's decision to cut spending for exploration when oil prices bottomed out in the late 1990s is partly to blame for the anemic numbers now. Shell CEO Jeroen Vander Veer insists that projects like those on Sakhalin Island off Siberia and in Nigeria and the Gulf of Mexico will enable the company to start catching up with peers in the years ahead. It won't be easy. "If you're not adding to reserves, you have a problem," says Sanford Bernstein analyst Oswald Clint. "Shell will have to run twice as hard just to stay in place."

According to the passage, the decline of Shell

A．is a hidden process.

B．is caused by the profit last year.

C．is the estimation of Wall Street.

D．is the fault of the CEO.

ce the first day of kindergarten, spent the weekend with me. Since I moved to a new town several years ago, we have both always looked forward to the new times a year when we can see each other.

Over the weekend, we spent hours and hours, staying up late into the night, talking about the people she was hanging around with. She started telling me stories about her new boy friend, about how he experimented with drugs and was into other self-destructive behavior. I was blown away! She told me how she had been lying to her parents about where she was going and even stealing out to see this guy because they didn't want her around him. No matter how hard I tried to tell her that she deserved better, she didn't believe me. Her self-respect seemed to have disappeared.

I tried to convince her that she was ruining her future and heading for big trouble. I felt like I was getting nowhere. I just couldn't believe that she really thought it was acceptable to hang with a bunch of losers, especially her boy friend.

By the time she left, I was really worried about her and exhausted by the experience. It had been so frustrating that I had come close to telling her several times during the weekend that maybe we had just grown too far apart to continue our friendship, but I didn't.I put the power of friendship to the ultimate test. We'd been friends for far too long. I had to hope that she valued me enough to know that I was trying to save her from hurting herself. I wanted to believe that our friendship could conquer anything.

A few days later, she called to say that she had thought long and hard about our conversation, and then she told me that she had broken up with her boy friend. I just listened on the other end of the phone with tears of joy running down my face. It was one of the truly rewarding moments in my life. Never had I been so proud of a friend.

What word best sums up Jennie's boy friend？

A．A drug user.

B．A loser.

C．A trouble maker.

D．A criminal.

lowers were his main joy in life. He grew flowers of every color under the sun. He grew these flowers in order to enter them for competition. His greatest hope in life was to grow a rose of an entirely new color that would win him the silver cup for the Rose of the Year.

Mr. Flowers' glasshouse was close to a public path, which was always used by children walking to and from school. Boys were often attracted to throw a stone or two at his glasshouse. So Mr. Flowers did his best to be in or close by his glasshouse at the beginning and end of the school day.

However, it was not convenient or possible to be on guard all the time. Mr. Flowers had tried in many ways to prevent harm to his glass; but nothing that he had done had been successful.

Then, just as he was giving up hope of ever winning the battle, and of growing the Rose of the Year, he had a truly wonderful idea. He put up a large notice made of good, strong wood, some metres away from the glasshouse, where it could be' clearly seen from the path. He had painted on the board the words: DO NOT THROW STONES AT THIS NOTICE. After this, Mr. Flowers had no further trouble. The boys were much more attracted to throw stones at the notice than at the glasshouse.

Mr. Flowers' great hope is ______.

A．to grow beautiful flowers

B．to grow the Rose of the Year and win a prize

C．to grow all kinds of flowers in the world

D．to take part in the competition

easy oil is over. What we all do next will (1)_____ how well we meet the energy needs of the entire world in this century and (2)_____.

Demand is (3)_____ like never before. As populations grow and economies take (4)_____ millions in the developing world are enjoying the (5)_____ of a lifestyle. that requires increasing amounts of energy. (6)_____, some say that in 20 years the world will (7)_____ 40% more oil and gas fields are maturing. And new energy (8)_____ are mainly occurring in places where resources are difficult to (9)_____, physically, economically and even politically. When growing demand meets tighter supplies, the result is more (10)_____ for the same resources.

We can wait (11)_____ a crisis forces us to do something. Or we can (12)_____ to working together, and start by asking the tough questions: How do we meet the energy needs of the developing world and those of (13)_____ nations？ What role will renewables and (14)_____ energies play？ What is the best way to protect our environment？ How do we accelerate our conservation efforts？ (15)_____ actions we take, we must look not just to next year, (16)_____ to the next 50 years.

We believe that innovation, collaboration and conservation are the cornerstones (17)_____ which to build this new world. We cannot do this (18)_____. Corporations, governments and every citizen of this planet must be part of the solution (19)_____ surely as they are part of the problem. We call upon scientists and educators, politicians and policy-makers, environmentalists, leaders of industry and each one of you to be part of (20)_____ the next era of energy.

A．decline

B．determine

C．declaim

D．decide

47-year-old manicurist isn't cutting, filling or polishing as many nails as she'd like to, either. Most of her clients spend $12 to $50 weekly, but last month two longtime customers suddenly stopped showing up. Spero blames the softening economy. "I'm a good economic indicator," she says. "I provide a service that people can do without when they're concerned about saving some dollars. " So Spero is downscaling, shopping at middle-brow Dillard's department store near her suburban Cleveland home, instead of Neiman Marcus. "I don't know if other clients are going to abandon me, too" she says.

Even before Alan Greenspan's admission that America's red-hot economy is cooling, lots of working folks had already seen signs of the slowdown themselves. From car dealerships to Gap outlets, sales have been lagging for months as shoppers temper their spending. For retailers, who last year took in 24 percent of their revenue between Thanksgiving and Christmas, the cautious approach is coming at a crucial time. Already, experts say, holiday sales are off 7 percent from last year's pace. But don't sound any alarms just yet. Consumers seem only mildly concerned, not panicked, and many say they remain optimistic about the economy's long-term prospects, even as they do some modest belt-tightening.

Consumers say they're not in despair because, despite the dreadful headlines, their own fortunes still feel pretty good. Home prices are holding steady in most regions. In Manhattan, "there's a new gold rush happening in the $4 million to $10 million range, predominantly fed by Wall Street bonuses," says broker Barbara Corcoran. In San Francisco, prices are still rising even as frenzied overbidding quiets. "Instead of 20 to 30 offers, now maybe you only get two or three," says John Tealdi, a Bay Area real-estate broker. And most folks still feel pretty comfortable about their ability to find and keep a job.

Many folks see silver linings to this slowdown. Potential home buyers would cheer for lower interest rates. Employers wouldn't mind a little fewer bubbles in the job market. Many consumers seem to have been influenced by stock-market swings, which investors now view as a necessary ingredient to a sustained boom. Diners might see an upside, too. Getting a table at Manhattan's hot new Alain Ducasse restaurant used to be impossible. Not anymore. For that, Greenspan ＆ Co. may still be worth toasting.

By "Ellen Spero isn't biting her nails just yet" (Line 1, Paragraph 1), the author means______.

A．Spero can hardly maintain her business

B．Spero is too much engaged in her work

C．Spero has grown out of her bad habit

D．Spero is not in a desperate situation

In 1826, a Frenchman named Niepce needed pictures for his business. So he invented a very simple camera. He put it in a window of his house and took a picture of his garden. That was the first photo.

The next important date in the history of photography (摄影术) was in 1837. That year, Daguere, another Frenchman, took a picture of his reading room. He used a new kind of camera in a different way. In his picture you could see everything very clearly, even the smallest thing. This kind of photo was called a Daguerreotype.

In about 1840, photography was developed. Then photographers could take pictures of people and moving things. That was not simple. The photographers had to carry a lot of film and other machines. But this did not stop them, for example, some in the United States worked so hard.

Mathew Brady was a famous American photographer. He took many pictures of great people. The pictures were unusual' because they were very lifelike.

Photographs also became one kind of art by the end of the 19th century. Some photos were not just copies of the real world. They showed feelings like other kinds of art.

The first photo taken by Niepce was a picture of______.

A．his business

B．his house

C．his garden

D．his window