Part III Reading Comprehension Directions：This part is to test your reading ability.There are 4 tasks for you to fulfill.You should read the materials carefully and do the tasks as you are instructed.Task 1 Directions：After reading the following passage, you will find 5 questions or unfinished sentences numbered 36 to 40.For each question or statement there are 4 choices marked A, B, C, and D.You should make the correct choice and mark the corresponding letter on the Answer Sheet with a single line through the center. Who takes care of the elderly in the United States today ？ The fact is that family members provide over 80%of the care that elderly people need, In most cases the elderly live in their own homes.A very small percentage of America’s elderly live in nursing homes. Samuel Preston, a sociologist at the University of Pennsylvania, studied how the American family is changing.He reported that by the time the average American couple reaches 40 years of age, their parents are usually still alive.The statistics show the change in lifestyles and responsibilities of aging（老龄化） Americans.The average middle-aged couple can look forward to caring for elderly parents sometimes after their own children have grown up.Moreover, because people today live longer after an illness than people did years ago, family must provide long-term care.These facts also mean that after caregivers provide for their elderly parents, who will eventually die, they will be old and may require care too.When they do, their spouses（配偶）will probably take care of them because they have had fewer children than their parents did. Because Americans are living longer than ever, more social workers have begun to study ways of caregiving to improve the care of the elderly.They have found that all caregivers share a common char-acteristic：They believe that they are the best people for the job.The social workers have also discovered three basic reasons why the caregivers take on the responsibility of caring for an elderly, dependent relative.Many caregivers believe they had an obligation（职责）to help their relatives.Some think that helping others makes them feel more useful.Others hope that by helping someone now, they will deserve care when they become old and dependent. 36.Samuel Preston’s study shows that_.
Takes 2 Directions：This task is the same as Task 1.The five questions or unfinished statements are numbered 41 to 45I once knew a young man, nineteen years of absolute youthabsolute of about confidence and self-possession for a number of years before I discovered that he could not read or write.His various methods of trick, which were also skills of self-protection, were so skillful and so desperate（绝望）that neither I nor any of his other adult friends were aware of his entire helplessness in face of written words until we went to dinner one night at a local restaurant-and suddenly discovered that he could not read. Even here, it was not the first time we went out to eat the that Peter’s desperation shocked me.The first time, he was clever enough to cover the truth.He studied the menu for a moment, then looked up to the waitress and asked he could have“just a coke and a hamburger.”He told me later that he had done the same thing many times before and that he had learned to act as if he were examining the menu： “Then I ask for a coke and ahamburger...Sometimes they give me a hamburger on a plate with salad and potatoes...Then I ask them for a roll and make my own hamburger.” As we began to go out to eat more frequently, Peter would ask to go to Howard Johnson’s.I soon discovered the reason for his choice, attached in cellophane（玻璃纸）containers to each of the standard items on the menu, could help him not to struggle with the shape of words at all.Howard Johnson’s, whether intentionally of not, had provided the perfect escape for he endangered pride of an adult who was illiterate（文盲）.41.When he went to a restaurant, Peter would_.
66.The Duanwu Festival, also called the Dragon Boat Festival, is to commemorate the patriotic poet Qu Yuan.Qu Yuan was a loyal and highly esteemed minister, who brought peace and prosperity to the state but ended up drowning himself in a river as a result of being vilified.People got to the spot by boat and cast glutinous rice dumplings into the water, hoping that the fishes ate the dumplings instead of Qu Yuan’s body. For thousands of years, the festival has been marked by glutinous rice dumplings and dragon boat races,especially in the southern provinces where there are many rivers and lakes.
