It would be a shame to raise prices too much because it would drive away the young people who are Stratford’s most attractive clientele. They come entirely for the plays, not the sights. They all seem to look alike (though they come from all over) –lean, pointed, dedicated faces, wearing jeans and sandals, eating their buns and bedding down for the night on the flagstones outside the theatre to buy the 20 seats and 80 standing-room tickets held for the sleepers and sold to them when the box office opens at 10:30 a.m.

26. From the first two paras , we learn that

A. the townsfolk deny the RSC ’ s contribution to the town’s revenue

B. the actors of the RSC imitate Shakespeare on and off stage

C. the two branches of the RSC are not on good terms

D. the townsfolk earn little from tourism

27. It can be inferred from Para 3 that

A. the sightseers cannot visit the Castle and the Palace separately

B. the playgoers spend more money than the sightseers

C. the sightseers do more shopping than the playgoers

D. the playgoers go to no other places in town than the theater

28. By saying “Stratford cries poor traditionally” (Line 2-3, Paragraph 4), the author implies that

A. Stratford cannot afford the expansion projects

B. Stratford has long been in financial difficulties

C. the town is not really short of money

D. the townsfolk used to be poorly paid

29. According to the townsfolk, the RSC deserves no subsidy because

A. ticket prices can be raised to cover the spending

B. the company is financially ill-managed

C. the behavior of the actors is not socially acceptable

D. the theatre attendance is on the rise

30. From the text we can conclude that the author

A. is supportive of both sides

B. favors the townsfolk’s view

C. takes a detached attitude

D. is sympathetic

Text 3

When prehistoric man arrived in new parts of the world, something strong happened to the large animals; they suddenly became extinct. Smaller species survived, the large, slow-growing animals were easy game, and were quickly hunted to extinction.

Now something similar could be happening in the oceans that the seas are being over-fished has been known for years what researchers such as Ransom Myers and Boris Worm have shown is just how fast things are changing. They have looked at half a century of data from fisheries around the world. Their methods de not attempt to estimate the actual biomass (the amount of living biological matter) of fish species in particular parts of the ocean, but rather changes in that biomass over time. According to their latest paper published in Nature, the biomass of large predators (animals that kill and eat other animals) inanes fishery is reduced on average by 80% within 15 years of the start of exploitation. In some long-fished areas, it has halved again since then Dr. Worm acknowledges that these figures are conservative, one reason for this is that fishing technology has improved Today’s vessels can find their prey using satellites and sonar, which were not available 50 years ago that means a higher proportion of what is in the sea is being caught, so the real difference between present and past is likely to be worse than the one recorded by changes in catch sizes. In the early days, too, longlines would have been more saturated with fish. Some individuals would therefore not have been caught, since to baited hooks would have been available to trap them, leading to an underestimate of fish stocks in the past. Furthermore, in the early days of longline fishing, a lot of fish were lost to sharks after they had been hooked. That is no longer a problem, because there are fewer sharks around noise.

Dr. Myers and Dr. worm argue that their work gives a correct baseline, which future management efforts must take into account. They believe the date support an idea current among marine biologists, that of the “shifting baseline”. The notion is that people have failed to detect the massive changes which have happened in the ocean because they have been looking back only a relatively short time into the past. That matters because theory suggests that the maximum sustainable yield that can be cropped form a fishery comes when the biomass of a target species is about 50% of its original levels. Most fisheries are well below that, which is a bad way to de business.

31、The extinction of large prehistoric animals is noted to suggest that

A、 large animal were vulnerable to the changing environment

B、 small species survived as large animals disappeared

C、 large sea animals may face the same threat today.

D、 Slow-growing fish outlive fast-growing ones

32、who can infer form Dr Myers and Dr. Worm’s paper that

A、 the stock of large predators in some old fisheries has reduced by 90%

B、 there are only half as many fisheries are there were 15 years ago

C、 the catch sizes in new fisheries are only 20% of the original amount

D、 the number of larger predators dropped faster in new fisherish than in the old

33、By saying these figures are conservative (line in ,paragragf-3), Dr worm means that

A、 fishing technology has improved rapidly

B、 then catch-sizes are actually smaller then recorded

C、 the marine bio mass has suffered a greater loss

D、 the date collected so far are pit pf date.

34 、Dr Myers and other researchers hold that

A、people should look for a baseline that can’t work for a longer time

B、fisheries should keep the yield below 50% of the biomass

C、the ocean biomass should restored its original level.

D、people should adjust the fishing baseline to changing situation.

35、The author seems to be mainly concerned with most fisheries’

A、 management efficiency

B、 biomass level

C、 catch-size limits

D、 technological application.

Text 4

Many things make people think artists are weird and the weirdest may be this: artists' only job is to explore emotions, and yet they choose to focus on the ones that feel bad.

This wasn't always so. The earliest forms of art, like painting and music, are those best suited for expressing joy. But somewhere in the 19th century, more artists began seeing happiness as insipid, phony or, worst of all, boring as we went from Wordsworth's daffodils to Baudelaire's flowers of evil.

You could argue that art became more skeptical of happiness because modern times have seen such misery. But it's not as if earlier times didn't know perpetual war, disaster and the massacre of innocents. The reason, in fact, may be just the opposite: there is too much damn happiness in the world today.

After all, what is the one modern form of expression almost completely dedicated to depicting happiness? Advertising. The rise of anti-happy art almost exactly tracks the emergence of mass media, and with it, a commercial culture in which happiness is not just an ideal but an ideology.

People in earlier eras were surrounded by reminders of misery. They worked until exhausted, lived with few protections and died young. In the West, before mass communication and literacy, the most powerful mass medium was the church, which reminded worshippers that their souls were in peril and that they would someday be meat for worms. Given all this, they did not exactly need their art to be a bummer too.

Today the messages your average Westerner is bombarded with are not religious but commercial, and forever happy .Fast-food eaters, news anchors, text messengers, all smiling, smiling. Our magazines feature beaming celebrities and happy families in perfect homes. And since these messages have an agenda--to lure us to open our wallets to make the very idea of happiness seem unreliable. "Celebrate!" commanded the ads for the arthritis drug Celebrex, before we found out it could increase the risk of heart attacks.

What we forget--what our economy depends on is forgetting--is that happiness is more than pleasure without pain. The things that bring the greates

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