All her life,my mother wanted busy children.It was very important that her house should remain at all times clean and tidy.
You could turn your back for a moment in my mother’s house,leave a half-written letter on the dining room table,a magazine open on the chair,and turn around to find that my mother had “put it back where it belonged,”as she explained.
My wife,one of her first visits to my mother’s house,placed a packet of biscuits on an end table and went to the kitchen to fetch a drink.When she returned,she found the packet had been removed.Confused(疑惑的),she set down her drink and went back to the kitchen for more biscuits,only to return to find that her drink had disappeared.Up to then she had guessed that everyone in my family held onto their drinks,so as not to make water rings on the end tables.Now she knows better.
These disappearances had a confusing effect on our family.We were all inclined to(有……的倾向) forgetfulness,and it was common for one of us,upon returning from the bathroom,to find that every sign of his work in progress had disappeared suddenly.“Do you remember what I was doing?”was a question frequently asked,but rarely answered.
Now my sister has developed a second-hand love of clean windows,and my brother does the cleaning in his house,perhaps to avoid having to be the one to lift his feet.I try not to think about it too much,but I have at this later time started to dust the furniture once a week.
We have all become busy persons.
【小题1】Which of the following is TRUE about my mother?

Most of the 20th century has been a development on the Industrial Revolution taken to an extreme: people now own more products than ever before; there are enough unclear weapons to destroy the earth several times over; there is hardly any forest left and pollution has got to the point where we buy water. Within a few years I predict you will be able to buy air. (There once was a time when you didn’t need to buy food or shelter either.)
Important developments in the last century are the breading down of the class structures left over from the Industrial Revolution stage, bringing with it the empowerment of the “common man ”: the working day is set by law to only 8 hours a day, everyone has the vote, the media has less obvious government control, people have landed on the moon, sent spacecrafts to Mars and so on. Families have also shrunk drastically（强烈地）; the nuclear family came about, and especially in the last half of the 20th century, one-parent families are becoming more common. This shrinking in the size of the family shows the increased independence of people—once upon a time people had to live in large groups to survive.
As humans have “become the gods”, they have realized their individuality and independence and taken their control of the world to an extreme. In many countries the land is almost completely used in the land is almost completely used in the production of food and as living space and they live in small cities which are entirely human constructed, made from materials which are also entirely human constructed(concrete, bricks) with hardly any remains of nature. Weeds are poisoned because they are messy; even parks have trees grown in tidy lines; grass is mowed to keep it short and so on. I think the massive drug “problem” troubling people is a result of too much of this influence, humans needing to escape the stark world they have created by entering fantasy worlds.
Over the last 100 years, the 20th century consciousness has spread throughout the world; most of Asia has been thoroughly “Westernized”, and most of the Third World is being overrun by western ways of doing things and living.
【小题1】What’s the author most concerned about?

My father brought home a sailboat when I was ten, and almost each Sunday in summers we would go sailing. Dad was quite skilled in sailing, but not good at ___36___. As for me, I ___37___ both before twelve because of living close to Lake Ontario.
The last time Dad and I set sail together is really ___ 38___. It was a perfect weekend after I graduated from university. I came home and ___39___Dad to go sailing. Out we set soon on the ___40___lake. Dad hadn’t sailed for years, but everything ___41___well with the tiller（舵柄）in his hands.
When we were in the middle of the lake, a ___ 42___ wind came all of a sudden. The boat was hit ___43___. Dad was always at his best in any___44___, but at this moment he___45___.
"John!___46___!" he shouted in a trembling voice, with the tiller still in his hands.
In my memory he could fix any___ 47___. He was the one I always___48___for strength and security. Before I could respond, a___ 49___ of water got into the boat. I rushed to the tiller ___50___it was too late. Another huge wall of water ___ 51___the boat in a minute. We were thrown into the water, and Dad was struggling aimlessly. At that moment, I felt fiercely ___52___of him.
I swam to Dad ___ 53___and assisted him in climbing onto the hull（船壳）of the boat. Upon sitting on the hull, Dad was a little awkward about his flash of ___ 54___. "It's all right, Dad. We are safe now," I comforted him.
That was the first time Dad had counted on me in a moment of emergency. More importantly, I found it was my turn to start___55___for my father.

As a teacher, my daily activity involves driving to a new school almost every day.
On one particular day during my lunch break, I drove to a nearby square to get a coffee. Upon returning to the 36, I realized I had locked my phone and my 37 inside! I had about 15 minutes to get back to the 38. So I hurried into a McDonald’s in the same square, and asked the man at the counter, who happened to be the 39, to call a taxi for me. After I 40 explained my situation to him, he rushed inside to make the phone while I waited anxiously in the restaurant. I had less than 10 minutes to 41 to my school at this point.
A moment later, the manager returned only to tell me that the line was 42, and that he had not been able to 43 the taxi yet. I think both 44 and fear could be seen in my face.
Without a thought, he grabbed his coat and 45 to drive me to the school. Without hesitation, I followed him into his car and got back to the classroom with two minutes to 46 before the bell rang!
This experience made me 47 that out of every seemingly hopeless situation, there is the opportunity for acts of kindness to happen, which has an unimaginable influence on those who receive them.

D
We can achieve knowledge either actively or passively. We achieve it actively by direct experience, by testing and proving an idea, or by reasoning.
We achieve knowledge passively by being told by someone else. Most of the learning that takes place in the classroom and the kind that happens when we watch TV or read newspapers or magazines is passive. As we are used to passive learning, it’s not surprising that we depend on it in our everyday communication with friends and co-workers.
Unfortunately, passive learning has a serious problem. It makes us tend to accept what we are told even when it is nothing but hearsay and rumor (谣言).
Did you ever play the game Rumor? It begins when one person writes down a message but doesn’t show it to anyone. Then the person whispers it, word for word, to another person. That person, in turn, whispers it to still another, and so on, through all the people playing the game. The last person writes down the message word for word as he or she hears it. Then the two written statements are compared. Typically, the original message has changed.
That’s what happens in daily life. The simple fact that people repeat a story in their own words changes the story. Then, too, most people listen imperfectly. And many enjoy adding their own creative understanding to a story, trying to improve on it, stamping (打上标记) it with their own personal style. Yet those who hear it think they know.
This process is also found among scholars and authors: A statement of opinion by one writer may be re-stated as fact by another, who may in turn be quoted by yet another; and this process may continue, unless it occurs to someone to question the facts on which the original writer based his opinion or to challenge the explanation he placed upon those facts.          
48. According to the passage, passive learning may occur in _______.
A. doing a medical experiment                          B. solving a math problem
C. visiting an exhibition                                D. doing scientific reasoning
49. The author mentions the game Rumor to show that _____.
A. a message may be changed when being passed on
B. a message should be delivered in different ways
C. people may have problems with their sense of hearing
D. people tend not to believe in what they know as rumor
50. What can we infer from the passage?
A. Active learning is less important.
B. Passive learning may not be reliable.
C. Active learning occurs more frequently.
D. Passive learning is not found among scholars.