Q: A beautiful and very successful actress   was the star for a new musical show. Her home was in the countryside, but she did not want to go back there every night, so she bought an expensive house in the centre of the city, got some beautiful furniture and got a man to paint the rooms in new colours. It was very difficult to get tickets for her show, because everybody wanted to see it. So she decided to give the painter two of the best seats. She hoped that this would make him work better for her. He took the tickets without saying anything, and she heard no more about them until the end of the month, when she got the painter's bill  . At the bottom of it were these words: " Four hours watching Miss Hall sing and dance : 3 pounds," with this note: " After 5 p.m. I get 15 shillings   an hour instead of 10 shillings." The actress bought a house in the centre of the city because   _  . A) she liked to live in the busiest place. B) she didn't like to live in the country. C) her home was far away from where she worked. D) she didn't want to go back to her hometown any longer.
A: C


Q: Although the New Year is already here, the great moments of the past year are still in the memory. Let's look back at some of them. United States One of the world's largest New Year's Eve parties was held in Times Square, New York. The festival attracted hundreds of thousands of people to watch a brightly-lit ball drop on a landmark building at the stroke (, ) of midnight. A great amount of confetti   was released from the sky at zero o'clock. Britain Painted in shinning colors, blowing whistles, 50,000 party-goers arrived in London's Millennium Dome to dance in the New Year. The Millennium Dome came to life at midnight as 50 DJs started up, competing on five separate dance floors to warm the crowd into the party mood. Russia New Year is the biggest holiday in Russia. It is traditional to put up a tree for celebrations with family and friends. On the very last day of last year, Russians with a taste for a very cold swim braved freezing temperatures to plant traditional, festival trees on the bed of the Northern Ocean and at the bottom of Lake Baikal, the world's deepest lake. Malaysia Brave skydivers threw themselves off the world's tallest building near midnight and floated towards the New Year. The jump from the 452-metre Petronas Twin Tower was called a real leap from one year to the next since the group took off in the last second of the old year and landed a minute later in the New Year. "That was really cool," said Roland Simpson, "over crowds of onlookers to the landing spot." The passage mainly shows that   _  . A) New Year has been the starting point for people to have dreams. B) people in different countries welcomed New Year in different ways. C) people's ways of celebrations are exciting. D) the New Year is better than the old year.
A: B


Q: Linda Evans was my best friend -like the sister I never had ,We did everything to-- gether :piano lessons ,movies, swimming , horseback riding. When I was 13, my family moved away , Linda and I kept in touch through letters ,and we saw each other on special times - like my wedding and Linda's. Soon we were busy with childern and moving to new homes, and we wrote less often , One day a card that I sent came back , stamped "Address Unknown", I had no idea about how to find Linda. Over the years, I missed Linda very much, I wanted to share happiness of my children and then grandchildren , And I needed to share my sadness when my brother and then moth-er died, There was an empty place in my heart that only a friend like Linda could fill. One day, I was reading a newspaper when I noticed a photo of a young woman who looked very much like Linda and whose last name was Wagman --Linda's married name."There must be thousands of Wagmans."I thought, but I still wrote to her. She called as soon as she got my letter, "Mrs , Tobin!"she said excitedly, "Linda Ev-ans Wagman is my mother." Minutes later I heard a voice that I recognized at once, even after 40 years ,We laughed and cried and caught up on each other's lives, Now the empty place in my heart is filled, And there's one thing that Linda and I know for sure; We won't lose each other again! There was an empty place in the writer's heart because she  _  . A) was in trouble B) didn't know Linda's address C) received the card that she sent D) didn't have a friend like Linda
A: D


Q: If you've ever seen a James Bond movie,you'll know that the hero gets around in a smart Aston Martin car. Even if you know full well that you could never afford such an expensive vehicle, you don't forget the name, or the car. Why? You have been affected by product placement. Companies pay a film to place their products in the movie. Product placement took off in the West in the 1980s and is now catching on in China. Two Hunan Satellite TV dramas are recent examples:Ugly Wudi and Let's Go Watch the Meteor Shower (<<>> ). Shampoo, mobile phones, cars and fitness centers-anything can be product-placed. Advertisers value the mass appeal of the movies, knowing that a successful film can showcase their goods to hundreds of thousands of viewers. But when product placement takes over, artistic considerations can take a back seat. Cai Zhiyong has been product-placing for years. The Beijing-based advertiser admits there is a conflict between art and business. He explains the way one ad works. In If You are the One (<<>> ), the actress Shu Qi plays a flight attendant. The movie contains product placement for airline companies.  _ filmmakers often have to give less consideration to the quality of their work because they need money from advertisers. In the original story for Meteor Shower, the heroine's mother owned an ice cream shop. But no ice cream company wanted to sponsor   the film. For this reason, the story was changed. In the film the man drinks 20 cups of milk tea instead of eating ice cream. So you may see the power of business over the movies, since the script   was perhaps written so that a product could be placed-whether it was ice cream or milk tea. Product placement can have a bad effect on the  _   of a movie. A) atmosphere B) mass appeal C) box-office success D) artistic value

A: D