句意可知选A。句意：我希望政府能采取有效措施降低房价。毕竟，现在大部分人还不富有。]

15．-So you missed the meeting.

-________.I got there five minutes before it finished.

A．Not at all B．Not exactly

C．Not especially D．Not really

答案　B　[本题是对情景交际用语的考查。"你错过了开会"，而从答语中的

"我在会议结束前五分钟到达会场"，可以看出答话者认为对方讲话不够确

切，毕竟答话者参加了会议，只不过迟到而已。]

Ⅱ.阅读理解

A young emperor penguin won't be getting a free ride all the way back to its Antarctic home，but the bird's human friends in New Zealand will help it to get a little closer.

The penguin is recovering well at Wellington Zoo，where it had a medical procedure on Monday to wash out much of the beach sand it had swallowed apparently mistaking it for snow.

It may need a few months to recover，but wildlife officials have been trying to figure out how the 3­foot­tall bird will get home.Transporting it to Antarctica is near­impossible in the southern winter，and there are fears that the penguin may have acquired infections in the warmer New Zealand environment that could spread to other penguins.

On Wednesday，a group headed by the Department of Conservation decided officials will help the penguin get part of the way home by releasing it into the Southern Ocean，southeast of New Zealand-and letting it swim the rest of the way.

"The reason for not returning the penguin directly to Antarctica is that emperor penguins of this age are usually found north of Antarctica on pack ice and in the open ocean，"the department's spokesman Peter Simpson said.

The bird is estimated to be about two and a half years old，a juvenile(幼雏)in a species that reaches breeding age at around four or five.It will be released on the northern edge of the region where young emperor penguins are known to live.Simpson said he was unsure how far the penguin would have to swim before reaching its final destination.

The logistics for the trip haven't been set and the penguin won't be released until it has recovered，which could be months.Until then，it will remain at the zoo.

The penguin drew intense interest after being spotted on North Island's Peka Peka Beach，about 2,000 miles(3,200 kilometers)from the Antarctic coast.It was the first emperor penguin spotted