第二部分　阅读理解(共两节，满分40分)

　　第一节(共15小题；每小题2分，满分30分)

　　阅读下列短文，从每题所给的四个选项(A、B、C和D)中，选出最佳选项。

　　A

　　A month after Hurricane Katrina，I returned home in New Orleans. There lay my house，reduced to waist­high ruins，smelly and dirty.

　　Before the trip，I'd had my car fixed. When the office employee of the garage was writing up the bill，she noticed my Louisiana license plate."You from New Orleans？"she asked. I said I was."No charge，"she said，and firmly shook her head when I reached for my wallet. The next day I went for a haircut，and the same thing happened.

　　As my wife was studying in Florida，we decided to move there and tried to find a rental house that we could afford while also paying off a mortgage(抵押贷款)on our ruined house. We looked at many places，but none was satisfactory. We'd begun to accept that we'd have to live in extremely reduced circumstances for a while，when I got a very curious e­mail from a James Kennedy in California. He'd read some pieces I'd written about our sufferings for Slate，the online magazine，and wanted to give us("no conditions attached")a new house across the lake from New Orleans.

　　It sounded too good to be true，but I replied，thanking him for his exceptional generosity，that we had no plans to go back. Then a poet at the University of Florida offered to let his house to me while he went to England on his one­year paid leave. The rent was rather reasonable. I mentioned the poet's offer to James Kennedy，and the next day he sent a check covering our entire rent for eight months.

　　Throughout this painful experience，the kindness of strangers has done much to bring back my faith in humanity. It's almost worth losing your worldly possessions to be reminded that people are really nice when given half a chance.

　　21．The garage employee's attitude toward the author was that of ________.

　　A．unconcern　　　　　B．sympathy

　　C．doubt D．tolerance

　　解析：推理断判断题。由文章的第二段得知当加油站的工作人员得知我来自新奥尔良时免费服务，可知答案为B。

　　答案：B

　　22．What do we know about James Kennedy?

　　A．He was a writer of an online magazine.

　　B．He was a poet at the University of Florida.

　　C．He offered the author a new house free of charge.

　　D．He learned about the author's sufferings via e­mails.

　　解析：细节理解题。由文章的第三段最后一句得出答案。

　　答案：C

　　23．It can be inferred from the text that ________.

　　A．the author's family was in financial difficulty

B．rents were comparatively reasonable despite the disaster