--Can you and Alice come to dinner tonight?-- No, Alice has ______ much work to do that sh
A.such
B.so
C.of
D.very
A.such
B.so
C.of
D.very
All three girls are motherless. Fiercely political Alice discovers that her parents are her grandparents, who thereupon shrivel: "Lie had kept them young whereas the truth had accelerated them practically into oldness". Both parents of the sorrowful Corvus drowned while driving on a flooded interstate off-ramp. The mother of the more conventional Annabel ("one of those people who would say, we'll get in touch soonest' when they never wanted to see you again") slammed her car drunkenly into a fish restaurant. Later, Annabel's father observes to his wife's ghost. "You didn't want to order what I ordered, darling". The sharp-tongued ghost snaps back: "That's because you always ordered badly and wanted me to experience your miserable mistake".
Against a roundly apocalyptic world view, the great pleasures of this book are line-by-line. Ms. Williams can break setting and character alike in a few slashes: "it was one of those rugged American places, a remote, sad-ass, but courageous downwind town whose citizens were flawed and brave". Alice's acerbity spits little wisdoms: putting lost teeth under a pillow for money is "a classic capitalistic consumer trick, designed to wean you away at an early age from healthy horror' and sensible dismay to greedy, deluded, sunny expectancy".
Whether or not the novel, like Alice, expressly advocates animal rights, an animal motif crops up in every scene, as flesh-and-blood "critters" (usually dead) or plain decoration on crockery. If Ms. Williams does not intend to induce human horror at a pending cruel Armageddon, she at least invokes a future of earthly loneliness, where animals appear only as ceramic-hen butter dishes and extinct-species Elastoplasts. One caution: when flimsy narrative superstructure begins to sag, anarchic wackiness can grow wearing. While The Quick and the Dead is sharp from its first page, the trouble with starting at the edge is there is nowhere to go. Nevertheless, Ms. Williams is original, energetic and viscously funny: Carl Hiaasen with a conscience.
The girls in the novel______.
A.did nothing substantive except criticizing the reality
B.protected animals successfully
C.were cruel to the animals
D.murdered their neighbor's dog
—Alice, you feed the bird today, ______?—But I fed it yesterday.
A.do you
B.will you
C.didn't you
D.don't you
—Hurry up! Alice and Sue are waiting for you at the school gate.
—Oh! I thought they ______ without me.
A.went B.are going C.have gone D.had gone
It can be inferred from the passage that Alice Walker was 22 years old when ______.
A.she moved to Jackson, Mississippi
B.she moved to New York
C.she first met Langston Hughes
D.Langston Hughes died
A.talking with his friends
B.reading his autobiography
C.studying his poetry
D.meeting him
Ⅴ. Daily Conversation (15 points)
Directions: Pick out the appropriate expressions from the eight choices below and complete the following dialogues by blackening the corresponding letter on the Answer Sheet.
A. I've never been there.
B. I'm too tired.
C. Jim gave it to me.
D. I'll try. my best to get you there.
E. Very well.
F. Everybody knows.
G. Good idea.
H. It has been broken.
56. Bob: The boss won't be here today. Let's have a party.
Alice: ______.
Part A
Directions: Read the following four texts. Answer the questions below each text by choosing A, B, C or D. (40 points)
A cramped public-school test kitchen might seem an unlikely outpost for a food revolution. But Collazo, executive chef for the New York City public schools, and scores of others across the country—celebrity chefs and lunch ladies, district superintendents and politicians—say they're determined to improve what kids eat in school. Nearly everyone agrees something must be done. Most school cafeterias are staffed by poorly trained, badly equipped workers who churn out 4.8 billion hot lunches a year. Often the meals, produced for about $1 each, consist of breaded meat patties, French fries and overcooked vegetables. So the kids buy muffins, cookies and ice cream instead—or they feast on fast food from McDonald's, Pizza Hut and Taco Bell, which is available in more than half the schools in the nation. Vending machines packed with sodas and candy line the hall ways. "We're killing our kids" with the food we serve, says Texas Education Commissioner Susan Combs.
As rates of childhood obesity and diabetes skyrocket, public-health officials say schools need to change the way kids eat. It won't be easy. Some kids and their parents don't know better. Home cooking is becoming a forgotten art. And fast-food companies now spend $3 billion a year on television ads aimed at children. Along with reading and writing, schools need to teach kids what to eat to stay healthy, says culinary innovator Alice Waters, who is introducing gardening and fresh produce to 16 schools in California. It's a golden opportunity, she says, "to affect the way children eat for the rest of their lives." Last year star English chef Jamie Oliver took over a school cafeteria in a working-class suburb of London. A documentary about his work shamed the British government into spending $500 million to revamp the nation's school-food program. Oliver says it's the United States' turn now. "If you can put a man on the moon," he says, "you can give kids the food they need to make them lighter, fitter and live longer."
Changing school food will take money. Many schools administrators are hooked on the easy cash up to $75,000 annually—that soda and candy vending machines can bring in. Three years ago Gary Hirshberg of Concord, N.H., was appalled when his 13-year-old son described his daytime meal—pizza, chocolate milk and a package of Skittles. "I wasn't aware Skittles was a food group," says Hirshberg, CEO of Stonyfield Farm, a yogurt company. So he devised a vending machine that stocks healthy snacks: yogurt smoothies, fruit leathers and whole-wheat pretzels. So far 41 schools in California, Illinois and Washington are using his machines—and a thousand more have requested them. Hirshberg says, "schools have to make good food a priority."
Some states are trying. California, New York and Texas have passed new laws that limit junk food sold on school grounds. Districts in California, New Mexico and Washington have begun buying produce from local farms. The soda and candy in the vending machines have been replaced by juice and beef jerky. "It's not perfect," says Jannison. But it's a cause worth fighting for, Even if she has to battle one chip at a time.
From paragraph 1, we learn that
A.most American school cafeterias are well functional.
B.more than half the schools have McDonald chains.
C.to change school food has been agreed by nearly everyone.
D.fast food restaurants are beneficial supplements to school cafeterias.
You can speak______in front of George, but you can * t eat______in his restaurant.
A.freely, free
B.free, freely
C.free, free
D.freely, freely