Reading Comprehension(Reading in Depth)(25 minutes)

　　Section A

　　Directions:In this section,there is a passage with ten blanks.You are required to select one word for each blank from a list of choices given in a word bank following the passage.Read the passage through carefully before making your choices.Each choice in the bank is identified by a letter.Please mark the corresponding letter for each item on Answer Sheet 2 with a single line through the centre.You may not use any of the words in the bank more than once.

　　Questions 47 to 56 are based on the following passage.

　　What is it about Americans and food? We love to eat, but we feel

　　47 about it afterward. We say we want only the best, but we strangely enjoy junk food. We’re48 with health and weight loss but face an unprecedented epidemic of obesity(肥胖). Perhaps the49 to this ambivalence(矛盾情結(jié)) lies in our history. The first Europeans came to this continent searching for new spices but went in vain. The first cash crop(經(jīng)濟(jì)作物) wasn’t eaten but smoked. Then there was Prohibition, intended to prohibit drinking but actually encouraging more50 ways of doing it.

　　The immigrant experience, too, has been one of inharmony. Do as Romans do means eating what “real Americans” eat, but our nation’s food has come to be

　　51 by imports—pizza, say, or hot dogs. And some of the country’s most treasured cooking comes from people who arrived here in shackles.

　　Perhaps it should come as no surprise then that food has been a medium for the nation’s defining struggles, whether at the Boston Tea Party or the sit?ins at southern lunch counters. It is integral to our concepts of health and even morality whether one refrains from alcohol for religious reasons or evades meat for political52 .

　　But strong opinions have not brought53 . Americans are ambivalent about what they put in their mouths. We have become54 of our foods, especially as we learn more about what they contain.

　　The55 in food is still prosperous in the American consciousness. It’s no coincidence, then, that the first Thanksgiving holds the American imagination in such bondage(束縛). It’s what we eat—and how we56 it with friends, family, and strangers—that help define America as a community today.

　　Section B

　　Directions:There are 2 passages in this section.Each passage is followed by some questions or unfinished statements.For each of them there are four choices marked A),B),C) and D) .You should decide on the best choice and mark the corresponding letter on Answer Sheet 2 with a single line through the centre.