Dear Linda,
I’m glad to hear from you and I would like to be your pen friend. In your letter, you said you wanted to know something about my school life(生活).
I walk to school at 7:30 every morning because the school is near our house. When I get to school at about 7:45, I often do the cleaning with my classmates. After that we do some reading for half an hour. We have four lessons in the morning. I often have my lunch at 12:00 at school. We usually have two lessons in the afternoon. The school is over at about 5:00 and then I go home.
My favorite subject is Chinese. I like all the teachers because they are friendly. I am keen on sports and I enjoy playing football best. I’m a member of our school football team. What about your school life?
Best wishes!
Dick
【小题1】It often takes Dick about _____ to walk to school every morning.

Comets(彗星) are parts of our solar system. Like the planets, they go around the sun.

But comets are not made of solid rocks like planets. A comet is a ball of dust, stones, and ice. Many people call comets dirty snowballs.

The “snowball” may be only a few miles across. But when the sun heats the “snowball,” much of it is changed to gases. The gases spread out and form the comet’s head, which may be thousands of miles across.

A comet moves fast in its trip around the sun. But when we see it, the comet does not seem to move. That’s because it is so far away. The moon moves fast, but when you look at it, you can’t see any motion(运动). That’s because the moon is far away.

Each year astronomers(天文学家) discover new comets. Some of them are seen only once. They make one trip around the sun and then go away out into space. The sun’s gravity cannot hold them.

Other comets, like Halley, keep returning. They have been captured by the sun. Halley’s earliest visit was probably 3,000 years ago. It may keep returning for another 3,000 years.

But every time a comet goes around the sun, the comet loses part of itself. Gases and dust are pulled out of the comet. That’s why Halley is now dimmer（暗淡的） than it used to be. Next time it visits us, in 2062, it may be even dimmer. Each visit it may get dimmer and dimmer, until it finally disappears.

1.What is this passage mostly about?

2.How does the writer help the reader understand what a comet looks like?

3.What is the most likely reason the writer wrote this passage?

Computers are so popular in our country that every pupil knows _____ e-mails.

For the 17 years my life was very happy. Then the first sad thing happened. My mother became very ill. Just before she died, she asked Elizabeth and me to go to her room. She said, “Victor and Elizabeth, I’m very happy because you love each other, and because one day you’ll get married. Everyone in the family loves you, Elizabeth. Will you take my place in the family, my dear? I can die happy if you look after them when I have gone.”
My mother died and we were very sad, because we loved her so much. Elizabeth was brave and helped us; her sweet smile gave us some happiness in the unhappy days after my mother’s death. The time came for me to go to university(大学). I didn’t want to leave my sad family, but we all knew that I should go. It was hard to leave, too, because the parents of my good friend Henry would not let him go to university with me. So I had gone alone.
On my first day at university I met Professor Waldman. He gave a wonderful talk to all the students. He ended his talk by saying, “Some of you will become the greatest scientists of tomorrow. You must study hard and discover everything that you can.”
After the professor’s talk, I thought very carefully. I remembered the storm when I was 15; I remembered how the lightning had destroyed the tree. From then on, I wanted to use electricity to help people, and I wanted to discover the secrets of life. I decided to work on these two things.
I started to work the next day. I worked very hard and soon Professor Waldman and I realized that I could learn to be a very good scientist.
The professor and other important scientists helped me. I was interested in my work and I did not take one day’s holiday during the next two years. After two years, I had discovered many things and I built a scientific machine that was the best in the university. My machine would help me answer the most important question of all. How does life begin? Is it possible to put life into dead things? To answer these questions about life I had to learn first about death. I had to watch bodies from the moment when they died and the warm life left them. In the hospital and in the university, I watched the dying and the dead. Day after day, month after month, I followed death, so it was a dark and terrible time.
I built a tall mast(桅杆)about 150 metres high, which is higher than the tallest building in the city, to catch lightning and send the electricity down to my machine in the lab. I believed I could use that electricity to give life to things that were dead.
Then one day, the answer came to me. Suddenly I was sure that I knew the secret of life.
【小题1】Which of the following is TRUE according to the passage?

There are about fifteen hundred languages in the world. But only a few of them are very important. English is one of them. Many, many people use it, not only in England and the USA, but also in other parts of the world. About 200,000,000 people speak it as their own language. It is difficult to say how many people are learning it as a foreign language. Many millions of people are trying to do so. Is it easy or difficult to learn English? Different people may have different answers. Have you ever noticed ads(广告) of this kind in the newspapers or magazines? “Learn English in six weeks, or give your money back…” “Easy and funny…” “Our records and tapes help you master English in a month”. Of course, it never happened quite like that.

The only language that seems easy to learn is the mother tongue. We should remember that we all learned our own language well when we were children. If we could learn English in the same way, it would not seem so difficult. Think of what a small child does. He listens to what people say. He tries what he hears.

So it is hard to say that learning English is easy. We must do a lot of practice. And practice needs great efforts and takes much time. Good teachers, record, tapes, books, and dictionaries will be helpful, but they cannot do the student’s work for him.

1.How many languages are very important in the world?

2.If we want to learn English well, what shall we do?

3.How does the writer like the ads in the newspapers or magazines?

4.Which language is easy to learn?

5.Which countries use English as the mother tongue?