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TEXT A In the United States, the fourth Thursday in November is called Thanksgiving Day. On this day, Americans give thanks for the blessing they have enjoyed during the year. Thanksgiving is usually a family day celebrated with big dinners and happy reunion. The first American Thanksgiving was held in Plymouth, Massachusetts in 1621. It was in September of 1620 that the Puritans, or Pilgrims as they called themselves, left England aboard the Mayflower in search of religious freedom. After 65 days at sea, they landed in Province town Harbor, inside the tip of Cape Cod, Massachusetts. For about a month, the Pilgrims lived aboard ship and then sailed to Plymouth Harbor. The Pilgrims were not trained and equipped to cope with life in the wilderness. During their first winter, they suffered tremendously. Hard work, diseases, bitterly cold weather, and insufficient food killed about half of them. By the end of this terrible first winter, only about 50 Plymouth colonists remained alive. In spring 1621, the Indians of Massasoil’s tribe taught the Pilgrims how to hunt, fish, and grow food. They taught the Pilgrims to use fish for fertilizer when growing corn, pumpkins, and beans. Because of this help from the Indians, the Pilgrims had a good harvest. William Bradford, the governor chosen by the Pilgrims, was following an ancient tradition when, in the fall of 1621, he established a day of Thanksgiving to God. He invited Chief Massasoil and his men to share the Thanksgiving feast. The Indians gladly accepted and sent deer meat for the feast. The Pilgrim men went hunting and returned with turkey and other wild animals. The women of Plymouth prepared delicious dishes from corn, berries, squash and pumpkins. The first Thanksgiving dinner was cooked and served out-of- doors. Although it was late autumn, huge fires kept the hosts and guests warm. Many of the traditions of the modern American Thanksgiving come from that first Thanksgiving celebration. Today’s Thanks giving turkey is much like the ones that were hunted in the forests around Plymouth. Squash and corn, which were also harvested by the early Pilgrims, appear on the Thanksgiving table. Pumpkin pie is a traditional Thanksgiving dessert. Every year, about 500,000 Americans take a journey into early American history by visiting Plymouth, a modern city that respects its past. In Plymouth Harbor, sightseers tour Mayflower Ⅱ, a recently built ship similar to the original Mayflower. Then they spend a few hours walking through a reproduction of the original Pilgrim village. Modern Americans take great pride in these courageous ancestors who had so little by today’s standards, but who were thankful for receiving the things they valued most--a good harvest and the freedom to live and worship as they pleased. The Americans celebrate Thanksgiving Day to show their gratitude to ______.

A. themselves
B. God
C. the Indians
D. good weather

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Questions 27 to 28 are based on the following news. At the end of the news item, you will be given 10 seconds to answer the questions. Now listen to the news. Who have launched a campaign to defend the right of wearing hi jab

A. European women.
B. Muslim women.
C. Muslim activists in Europe.
D. Muslim activists from the world.

Fried foods have long been frowned upon. Nevertheless, the skillet(平底煎锅) is about our handiest and most useful piece of kitchen equipment. Sturdy lumberjacks(伐木工) and others engaged in active labor requiring 4,000 calories per day or more will take approximately one-third of their rations prepared in this fashion. Meat, eggs, and French toast cooked in this way are served in millions of homes daily. Apparently the consumers are not beset with more signs of indigestion than afflict those who insist upon broiling, roasting, or boiling. Some years ago one of our most eminent physiologists investigated the digestibility of fried potatoes. He found that the pan variety was more easily broken down for assimilation than when deep fat was employed. The latter, however, dissolved within the alimentary tract more readily than the boiled type. Furthermore, he learned, by watching the progress of the contents of the rate of digestion. Now all this is quite in contrast with "authority." Volumes have been written on nutrition, and everywhere the dictum has been accepted--no fried edibles of any sort for children. A few will go so far as to forbid this style of cooking wholly. Now and then an expert will be bold enough to admit that he uses them himself, the absence of discomfort being explained on the ground that he posses a powerful gastric apparatus. We can of course sizzle perfectly good articles to death so that they will be leathery and tough. But thorough heating, in the presence of shortening, is not the awful crime that it has been labeled. Such dishes stimulate rather than retard contractions of the gall bladder. Thus it is that bile mixes with the nutriment shortly after it leaves the stomach. We don’t need to allow our foodstuffs to become oil soaked, but other than that, there seems to be no basis for the widely heralded prohibition against this method. But notions become fixed. The first condemnation probably arose because an "oracle" suffered from dyspepsia(消化不良) which he ascribed to some fried item on the menu. The theory spread. Others agreed with him, and after a time the doctrine became incorporated in our textbooks. The belief is now tradition rather than proved fact. It should have been refuted long since, as experience has demonstrated its falsity. The author’s main idea is that ______.

A. fried foods have long been frowned upon
B. contrary to popular opinion, fried foods are more easily assimilated than boiled foods
C. fried foods are more easily digested than boiled or broiled foods though many authorities believe the opposite to be true
D. despite the traditional condemnation of fried foods, they are as easily digested as foods cooked in other ways

TEXT B Last summer, some twenty-eight thousand homeless people were offered shelter by the city of New York. Of this number, twelve thousand were children and six thousand were parents living together in families. The average child was six years old, the average parent twenty-seven. A typical homeless family included a mother with two or three children, but in about one-fifth of these families two parents were present. Roughly ten thousand single persons, then, made up the remainder of the population of the city’s shelter. These proportions vary somewhat from one area of the nation to another. In all areas, however, families are the fastest-growing sector of the homeless population, and in the Northeast they are by far the largest sector already. In Massachusetts, three-fourths of the homeless now are families with children; in certain parts of Massachusetts--Attleboro and Northhampton, for example--the proportion reaches 90 percent. Two-thirds of the homeless children studied recently in Boston were less than five years old. Of the estimated two to three million homeless people nationwide, about 500,000 are dependent children, according to Robert Hayes, counsel to the National Coalition for the Homeless. Including their parents, at least 750, 000 homeless people in America are family members. What is to be made, then, of the supposition that the homeless are primarily the former residents of mental hospitals, persons who were carelessly released during the 1970s Many of them are, to be sure. Among the older men and women in the streets and shelters, as many as one-third (some believe as many as one-half) may be chronically disturbed, and a number of these people left mental hospitals during the 1970s. But in a city like New York, where nearly half the homeless are small children with an average of six, to operate on the basis of such a supposition makes no sense. Their parents, with an average age of twenty-seven, are not likely to have been hospitalized in the 1970s, either. Which of the following statements is true

A. Robert Hayes thought more homeless people are family members.
B. There is a trend that more and more homeless people live in families.
C. The proportion of homeless families remains the same in the country.
D. Most of the children had the opportunity to study in Boston.

Questions 29 to 30 are based on the following news. At the end of the news item, you will be given 10 seconds to answer the questions. Now listen to the news. What is President Chirac’s attitude toward bilateral trade deals

A. Supportive.
B. Critical.
Concerned.
D. Indifferent.

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