【正文】 take his two kids (aged 10 and 16) to travel in the centre of London with the 7 Day Anytime tickets, he should pay ______. A. B. C. D. 24. A London Travelcard for Zones 1– 4 can Not be used on ______. A. London buses in Zones 1– 6 B. National Rail trains in central London C. the Docklands Light Railway within Zone 4 D. the London Underground to get to the airports. B On the day the tornado hit, there was no indication that severe weather was on its way— the sky was blue and the sun had been out. The first alert my husband, Jimmy, 67, and I, 65, got came around 9 ., from some scrolling text on the TV Jimmy was watching. He ran upstairs to find me in our thirdfloor bedroom, and we changed the channel from the presidential primary debate I had been watching to our local Pensacola, Florida, station. No sooner had we found coverage of the tornado than it was on top of us. It was the loudest thing I have ever heard. The bones of the house shook, and the power went out. The wind began to roar through the house, most likely through blownout windows and the door to our garage. We had three flights of steps to navigate to get to the relative safety of the first floor, because the cupboard down there is underneath a brick staircase. I didn’t know how or if we would make it down the steps. It felt as if there were no floor underneath me as the wind lifted me off my feet. I tried to move forward, but this intense pressure held me in place. As we reached the last flight of steps, our front door blew out. Pieces of glass that looked like crushed ice flew everywhere. Suddenly, a threefootlong tree branch crashed into the door frame. It flew over our heads, missing us by inches. Had we been one step up, it would have hit us. By the time I reached the cupboard, the tornado had been over us for about a minute. Jimmy pushed me down to the cupboard floor, but he couldn’t get inside himself because of the wind. I held Jimmy’s arm and tried to bring Jimmy with it. My knees were full of glass, but at that moment, I felt no pain. If I had let go, Jimmy would have flown right out the back of the house and into the bay. All of a sudden, Jimmy lifted off his feet like people in tornadoes do in the movies. I thought he was gone. And then everything stopped. He landed on his feet. In those first quiet moments, I couldn’t believe it was over. Jimmy said he’d go outside to check. “No,” I said. “Don’t leave me. Don’t leave me.” Our neighbor says the storm lasted four minutes. In that time, four of the twelve town houses in our unit were pletely destroyed. Of the houses left standing, ours suffered the most damage. Amazingly, none of us were severely injured. 25. What does the underlined word coverage mean? A. power B. description C. arrival D. delay 26. Which of the following sentences is NOT true about the passage? A. There was not any symbol of the tornado’s ing. B. A threefootlong tree branch hit the couple. C. Both of the couple couldn’t get into the cupboard floor. D. Jimmy didn’t fly right out the back of the house. 27. Why didn’t the wife feel pain? A. Because she didn’t get any hurt when the storm hit. B. Because she was too scared to feel pain. C. Because she devoted all her strength to holding on to her husband. D. Because she had reached the cupboard and she was safe. 28. The author wrote the passage to _______. A. share with us her experience of surviving a tornado B. warn us of the danger caused by tornados C. show us how to fight against a tornado D. tell us how to protect us from dangerous tornados C A culture’s values can be mirrored by its humor. Humor has been evaluated by many great minds such as Thomas Hobbes, who, in “On Nat ure”, disliked humor, “Laughter is nothing else but sudden glory arising from sudden thought of feeling far better than others.” He thought humor to be a negative quality of human narrowmindedness． However, Mordechai Gordon, PhD of Education, insists, “Humor allows us to view the world from an angle that is amusing rather than serious.” I agree with Gordon. Learning to look at the world through humor is important. In the United States, every four years an election occurs. Without humor as a way to express their feelings, how would Americans be willing to support the election? Television shows like “The Daily Show” have bee important parts of American culture. They are mothering the masses by unconsciously inputting politics into mouths. They make politics fun. Of course, politics is only one type of humor. Social humor helps people through the twists and turns of the human condition. American pop culture promotes an unhealthy self image. On the topic of selfimage, Hari Kondabolu stands out. He has a joke about the popular musical group “The Pussycat Dolls”, describing their hit song “Don’t Cha” as a negative representation of women. He points out an obvious offence in American culture． A study from Loyola University of Maryland has shown that humor is one determining factor for selecting a mating partner. Amongst other things, mates look for an outstanding funny bone in a potential partner. Of course, humor is not always used for good purposes. Humor can be linked to vulgarity (粗俗 ) and racism, but, like everything else, it has potential to unite human beings by allowing us to laugh at ourselves, our failures and our connection with one another. Though 1ife may seem tough and depressing at times, all I have to do is look in the mirror at my increased wrinkles to know that there is a edy out there that even Chaplin wasn’t aware of. With that in mind, remember to laugh with humanity and sometimes at humanity. 29. Hobbes believes that humor_______． A. resulted in narrowmin