Read the article and select the best answer. Article: Down on the beach of Dover,56-year-old Channel swimmer Jackie Cobell bravely set off for Calais.The time was 6:40 am.28 hours and 44 minutes later the exhausted,successful mother from Kent crawled to the shore and walked proudly into the record books.After five years in training,Mrs.Cobell became the slowest person to cross the Channel under her own steam.The previous record for the slowest crossing,set by Henry Sullivan at 26 hours and 50 minutes,has stood for 87 years before Mrs.Cobell started at Dover Saturday morning. She had struggled through changing tides that swept her first one way,then the other.It turned the 21-mile crossing into a 65-mile one.She declared,"Time and tide wait for no man--and they certainly didn't wait for me.I was fully expecting it to get dark before I got to Calais but I never imagined I'd also see the dawn again.But I wasn't going to give up." Her feat raised more than $2,000 in charity sponsorship for research into Huntingdon's disease,a sum that was continuing to grow as news of her achievement spread.That was why she did it."I don't really know myself," she said."I just kept thinking of all the people I'd be letting down if I stopped." Mrs.Cobell took to the water so well at school.But after bringing up two daughters,she started to gain weight.Five years ago she took up swimming again and decided to prepare for the Channel challenge to lose weight.She became much fitter.Then came the big swim."I practiced on Windermere Lake," she said."it's about half the distance of the Channel so I just doubled it,added some extra time,and worked out I could probably get to Calais in about 16 hours." Her husband David,trainer,official observer and friend sailed alongside her on a boat.She said,"I sang to keep myself going.When they told me I was a record breaker I thought they were just having a joke--until I realized it was the record for the slowest crossing.But maybe next time I might be a bit quicker." Question: How did Mrs.Cobell feel about the record she set? Options: A: Dissatisfied B: Excited C: Annoyed D: Proud
A

Read the article and select the best answer. Article: Suppose we built a robot to explore the planet Mars. We provide the robot with seeing detectors to keep it away from danger. It is powered entirely by the sun. Should we program the robot to be equally active at all times? No, the robot would be using up energy at a time when it was not receiving any. So we would probably program it to stop its activity at night and to wake up at dawn the next morning. According to evolutionary theory of sleep, evolution equipped us with a regular pattern of sleeping and waking for the same reason. The theory does not deny that sleep provides some important restorative functions. It merely says that evolution has programmed us to perform those functions at a time when activity would be inefficient and possibly dangerous. However, sleep protects us only from the sort of trouble we might walk into; it does not protect us from trouble that comes looking for us. So we sleep well when we are in a familiar, safe place, but we sleep lightly, if at all, when we fear that bears will nose into the tent. The evolutionary theory explain the differences in sleep among creatures. Why do cats, for instance, sleep so much, while horses sleep so little? Surely cats do not need five times as much repair and restoration as horses do. But cats can afford to have long periods of inactivity because they spend little time eating and are unlikely to be attacked while they sleep. Horses must spend almost all their waking hours eating, because what they eat is very low in energy value. Moreover, they cannot afford to sleep too long or too deeply, because their survival depends on their ability to run away from attackers. Question: The author uses the example of the robot in space exploration to tell us _ . Options: A: the differences between robots and men B: the reason why men need to sleep C: about the need for robots to save power D: about the danger of men working at night
B

Read the article and select the best answer. Article: Watching TV is a very popular pastime in the prefix = st1 /UKbut what kind of programmes do British people like to watch? Well, the most-watched TV programmes every week are very popular dramas that are usually on at least four times every week. They are dramas based in one neighbourhood that try to describe ordinary life in theUK--- we call these dramas 'soap operas' or 'soaps'. In the early days of TV, there were often dramas on during the day. Back in those days, it was traditional for the husband to go out to work and for the wife to stay at home and look after the house and the children. Most of these daytime dramas were aimed at entertaining the housewives who would traditionally be at home, probably doing the washing. Companies selling washing powder would advertise their products at times when these dramas were on, and sometimes those companies would even sponsor the drama. Hence the word 'soap'. So what about the word opera? Well, that's because these dramas are often an exaggeration of real life. They are supposed to represent ordinary life but to make them entertaining, lots of dramatic events like murders, divorces, affairs etc. all happen probably much more regularly than they would in a normal neighbourhood. Most soap operas these days are shown in the evening. Each show will have several different storylines happening at once that continue over several shows. The same _ will appear in every show too. There are lots of different soaps on in theUKon different channels but there are three main popular ones. 'Coronation Street' has been on since 1960. It is set in a suburb of Manchester and it's supposed to represent working class life in the north ofEngland. Then there's 'Eastenders' which started in 1985, set in the East End of London and 'Emmerdale', which is set on a farm in Yorkshire, in the north of England. Question: The text is mainly about _ . Options: A: some popular soap operas B: how people spend their spare time in theUK C: why soap opera is so called D: how companies sell soaps
C