【推荐1】Today, I felt terrible. My head was full of problems, burdens and confusion（困惑）. I decided to take a walk even though I didn’t know where I would go.

The most extraordinary thing happened when I was out on this walk. I saw an old man sitting on a chair. He was a seller of second-hand shoes. I thought he looked at least 70 years old. He seemed so tired and nobody bought his shoes. I wanted to give him something but I hadn’t brought anything with me.

Then, a little girl came toward him. I heard the child say, “Grandpa, may I polish(擦亮) your shoes?” That old man took pity on her and he gave her a shoe to polish. The girl said, “I polish the shoe because I need money to buy my little brother a new school uniform.”

I heard this and tears filled my eyes. The old man answered, “Oh, little girl. Just stop doing this. Come with me and I will buy you a uniform.” Then they walked to a market and I followed close behind them. There he bought her a uniform. The girl said, “Thank you so much for doing this. May God bless you.” Then she left, leaving the old man smiling there.

The old man walked away from the market, but I stopped him. I whispered in his ear, “You are a hero! Thank you for your kindness!” As I walked away, I glanced back and I could see him still smiling.

My own sadness had disappeared and was chased away by the light of this kind act. I began realizing that I have a lot to be thankful for. I hope, some day, I can show my appreciation of what I have by following the example of the old man who only had a little, but shared it happily with someone who had nothing.

1. When the author first saw the old shoe seller, he was full of       .

A．pity	B．happy
C．surprise	D．sorrow

2. Why did the girl offer to polish shoes for the old man?

A．She took pity on him.	B．She wanted to take care of him.
C．She meant to be friendly to him.	D．She wanted to earn some money.

3. The underlined part “chased away” most probably means       .

A．got rid of	B．made clear
C．sent out	D．showed around

4. What would be the best title for the passage?

A．A clever little girl	B．A pair of old shoes
C．A kind shoe seller	D．A girl’s new uniform

【推荐2】A group of Dutch high school students with little sailing experience completed a five-week trip across the Atlantic Ocean on Sunday. The students, aged 14 to 17, were joined by 12 experienced crew members and three teachers. They had been taking part in an educational voyage of the Caribbean when the extreme weather forced them to greatly change the way they returned home.

Instead of flying back home from Cuba as they had planned, the crew members and students gathered supplies and warm clothes. Then, they set sail for the Dutch port city of Harlingen, 7,000 kilometers away. Their boat, the Wylde Swan, arrived at Harlingen late Sunday morning. Observers gathered at a sea wall to watch the arrival.

As they arrived, the students hung up a self-made sign on the boat that read “Bucket List”. It showed they had completed activities that included crossing the Atlantic Ocean, mid-ocean swimming and surviving the Bermuda Triangle, an area in the Atlantic where some people declare ships and planes have mysteriously disappeared. The students’ family members were waiting for them at the port.

Masterskip, the company that organized the boat trip, runs five educational voyages for about 150 students each year. Crossing the Atlantic is nothing new for the Wylde Swan, which has made the trip about 20 times. The company’s director, Christophe Meijer, said he was pleased the students had adapted to life on the boat and had kept up their education on the long trip. “They are actually far ahead now of their Dutch school students,” Meijer said, “They have made us very proud.”

1. Why didn’t the group return home as planned?

A．They were inexperienced travelers.

B．They did not have enough supplies.

C．Their flight home had been cancelled.

D．The bad weather changed their plan.

2. How long has Masterskip been organizing educational voyages?

A．For about 4 years.	B．For about 5 years.
C．For about 14 years.	D．For about 20 years.

3. What does Christophe Meijer think of the trip?

A．Adventurous.

B．Tiresome.

C．Worthwhile.

D．Amusing.

4. What does the text mainly talk about?

A．Teenagers survived mysterious Bermuda Triangle.

B．Dutch students completed a trip across the Atlantic Ocean.

C．Masterskip organized educational voyages for students.

D．Dutch students experienced a new way of entertainment.

【推荐3】My father gave me a copy when I was 18, and it's been with me ever since; it's a beautiful book by Alice. In it, there is a dish of mussels. It is simple and delicious. It was probably the first dish I cooked from the book and I still have it on the menu at my restaurant today.

Mussels are really beautiful in the autumn. When you cook seasonally, you use whatever you have at hand, and each time a food material comes back in season, you are so happy to see it. It's like going back to old friends, like going home. I do feel the dish with mussels is so. It is the same with a dish made by my mother. It's my mum's chicken with cherries. When I was a child, cherries would mark the end of the school year. We'd always get a box of each when school was out for the summer. I remember sitting in the garden hanging cherries in pairs on my ears like earrings and spitting out the pips, hoping a tree would grow.

Food should take you somewhere special like that-not in a confusing way, but in a nurturing way, for both your body and your soul. It should take you to a happy place, which is linked to memory. Someone I work with says all my recipes are memory-bound.

No cook has influenced me more than Alice: valuing farmers, pushing for organics and clean soil. She has made me think about food waste, and about how food can contribute to a solution to wider problems. Alice takes me back to that moment when I fell in love with cooking. Thirty-five years on, I still feel the same.

1. What can we learn about the writer's first dish in Paragraph 1?

A．It is difficult to cook.	B．It is especially popular.
C．He is confident about it	D．He got it from his father.

2. Why did the writer mention his mother's dish in Paragraph 2?

A．To express thanks to his mother	B．To let Alice have a comparison at cooking
C．To show how good his mother was at cooking	D．To show a special dish can be a sweet memory.

3. What kind of restaurant does the writer want his restaurant to be?

A．A green one.

B．A special one.

C．A cheap one.

D．A famous one.

4. What's the writer's purpose in writing the passage?

A．To tell about his business experience.	B．To express the memory of his mother.
C．To tell about the dish that changed his life	D．To introduce a cook book written by Alice

【推荐1】When I was growing up, I had an old neighbor named Doctor Gibbs. He didn't look like any doctor I'd ever known. He never yelled at us for playing in his yard, but was always very kind.

When Doctor Gibbs wasn't saving lives, he was planting trees. He had some interesting theories about planting trees. He believed in the principle: "No pains, no gains". He hardly watered his new trees, which flew in the face of conventional wisdom. Once I asked why and he told me that watering plants spoiled them because it made them grow weaker. He said you had to make things tough for the trees so that only the strongest could survive. He talked about how watering trees made them develop shallow roots and how, if they were not watered, trees would grow deep roots in search of water. So, instead of watering his trees every morning, he'd beat them with a rolled-up newspaper. I asked him why he did that, and he said it was to get the tree's attention.

Doctor Gibbs died a couple of years after I left home. Every now and then, I walked by his house and looked at the trees that I'd watched him plant some twenty five years ago. They were all tall and strong.

I planted a couple of trees myself a few years ago. Two years of attending these trees meant they grew up weak. Whenever a cold wind blew, their branches trembled. Adversity(逆境) seemed to benefit Doctor Gibb's trees in ways comfort and ease never could.

Every night before I go to bed, I check on my two sons. I often pray that their lives will be easy. But lately I've been thinking that it's time to change my prayer. I know my children are going to meet with hardship. There's always a cold wind blowing somewhere. What we need to do is to pray for deep roots, so when the rains fall and the winds blow, we won't be torn apart.

1. With the trees planted, Doctor Gibbs often __________.

A．paid little attention to them

B．kept watering them every morning

C．talked to them to get their attention

D．beat them to make them grow deep roots

2. What does the author think of the way Doctor Gibbs planted trees?

A．Strange and harmful.

B．Interesting and funny.

C．Cruel and unacceptable.

D．Original and reasonable.[

3. Which prayer does the author wish for his sons?

A．Meet people like Dr Gibbs in the future.

B．Be able to stand the rain and wind in their lives.

C．Have an easy life, without too much to worry about.

D．Have good luck, encountering less hardship in their life.

4. Which of the following can be the best title of the passage?

A．Prayers for my sons

B．Doctor Gibbs and his trees

C．Growing roots

D．Watering trees

【推荐3】Habits Of Highly Successful Students
Never Over-Study
When you spend too much time studying you will quickly lose focus and the time spent in studying will become ‘junk time’. You think you're studying but you're just sitting there re-reading the same sentence about 100 times and you're not getting anywhere. Instead, take regular breaks.    1    Besides, it will give your mind some time to take in what you have been doing.
    2    
Top students don't just randomly sit down and complete work. They actually plan what they are going to do: They actually plan the time they will study and they set goals for what will be achieved. If you want to be successful, do as successful people do. Set a plan and, set a goal and stick to it, which will create a routine and a routine is the first step towards developing a habit.    3    
Front Up To The Toughest Work First
Many of us like to do the easy things first to build our confidence. That’s fair enough. The only challenge with this approach is that you use up your primary energy at the start of any study period and so if you are dealing with the easy parts with your primary energy your batteries will be low when it comes the time to deal with the hard part. So what happens then?    4    We all do it. We really shouldn't, though. So develop the habit of giving your primary energy to the hard tasks and completing the easy stuff last.
    5    
Do we really have to explain this? Just turn them off for an hour, we promise the world will still be there when you log back in! Don't text your friends, don't chat while doing memory activities，don't make phone calls, just focus on what you're doing. Even if you focus on work' for 15 minutes followed by 5 mins of chatting, it’s better than 30 minutes of work while also chatting! You get that right?

A．Plan Your Study

B．Achieve Your Goal

C．Positive habits decide future success.

D．Taking breaks can make you get everywhere.

E．You get tired and impatient and just give up.

F．Get Off Social Networking Sites And Turn Off The Phone

G．Taking breaks will make you energetic again and refresh your mind.

【推荐2】At first glance Esther Okade seems like a normal 10-year-old. She loves dressing up as Elsa from “Frozen”, playing with Barbie dolls and going to the park or shopping. But what makes the British-Nigerian youngster stand out is the fact that she’s also a university student.

Esther, from Walsall, an industrial town in the UK’s West Midlands region, is one of the country’s youngest college freshmen. The talented 10-year-old enrolled at the Open University in January and is already top of the class, having recently scored 100% in an exam.

“It’s so interesting and super easy,” she laughs. “My mum taught me in a nice way.” She adds: “I want to finish the course in two years. Then I’m going to do my PhD in financial maths when I’m 13. I want to have my own bank by the time I’m 15 because I like numbers and I like people and banking is a great way to help people.”

And in case people think her parents have pushed her into starting university early, Esther disagrees. “I actually wanted to start when I was seven. But my mum didn’t agree.” After three years of begging, Mother Efe finally agreed to explore the idea.

Esther has always jumped ahead of her peers. Her mother noticed her daughter’s gift for figures shortly after she began homeschooling her at the age of three. Initially, Esther’s parents had enrolled her in a private school but after a few short weeks, the usually-energetic youngster refused to go back to that school because the teachers didn’t let her talk in class. In the UK, education is not compulsory until five, so Efe started to do little things at home by teaching basic number skills but Esther was miles ahead. By four, her natural talent for maths had seen the eager student move on to algebra (代数学) and quadratic equations (二次方程式).

And Esther isn’t the only maths miracle in the family. Her younger brother Isaiah, 6, will soon be sitting his first A-level exam in June.

1. Which of the following makes Esther Okade different from her normal peers?

A．She is the youngest college student in the UK.

B．She goes to university at a much earlier age.

C．She often gets full marks in maths exams.

D．She loves acting as a university student.

2. From the passage we can learn that _______.

A．Esther thinks her parents expect too much of her

B．Esther cannot adapt herself well to college life

C．Esther asked to go to university even earlier

D．Esther dislikes being taught at home

3. What might be a main factor that has led to Esther’s being a maths genius?

A．The gene from her family.	B．Her course in the university.
C．The criticism from her teachers.	D．Her mother’s homeschooling.

4. Esther can be described as a girl who _______.

A．is ambitious and has a clear goal	B．is creative and loves exploring the unknown
C．is rebellious but ready to help others	D．is energetic but reluctant to challenge herself

【推荐1】Popular Attractions in San Francisco

San Francisco is a famous city in northern California on America's west coast. There are beautiful landmark sites such as the Golden Gate Bridge and winding Lombard Street.

Golden Gate Bridge

Golden Gate Bridge is the symbol and landmark of San Francisco. The Bridge spans the entire San Francisco Bay and the Golden Gate strait of the Pacific Ocean, making it an important transportation hub linking San Francisco and cities to the north. Many US movies and TV shows have been filmed here.

Fisherman's Wharf

Fisherman s Wharf is a strip extending from Ghirardelli Square all the way to Pier 35 and close to popular destinations such as Chinatown and the Lombard Street. Famous sites such as Alcatraz Island, Golden Gate Bridge, and the Bay Bridge can also be sighted in the distance. This is home to a wealth of shops and restaurants and lively street shows can be seen everywhere.

Lombard Street

Lombard Street is so named for its multiple hairpin turns. The 40 degree inclination here Poses a serious challenge to driving skills. The whole street is paved with bricks and lined on either side with foliage as well as multicolored flowers, offering diverse views all around the year.

Palace of Fine Arts

The San Francisco Palace of Fine Arts was originally built to display works of art for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition in 1915, but was mostly rebuilt in 1965. The lake and surrounding trees are also home to wildlife, such as ducks, birds and raccoons. On top of the dusky red stone pillars stand sculptures of nymphs, which are a favorite subject of many photographers.

1. Where should visitors go if they are movie fans?

A．Palace of Fine Arts.	B．Fisherman's Wharf.
C．Lombard Street.	D．Golden Gate Bridge.

2. What is Lombard Street named for?

A．Multicolored flowers.	B．The bricks.
C．Its sharp turns.	D．Diverse views.

3. What can visitors do at Palace of Fine Arts?

A．Take Pictures of sculptures.	B．Improve their driving skills.
C．Appreciate lively street shows.	D．Enjoy delicious food.

【推荐2】I had a teacher who used to wake up in class by shouting: “The early bird gets the worm!” I say “let him have the worm”. I hate food that doesn’t stay still, and avoid Japanese restaurants for that very reason. Anyway, I stopped eating worms at the age of three, switching to regular breakfasts of cereal(谷物), to which I would add extra sugar.

Recently I was thinking about early birds and the competitive spirit after receiving a letter from a reader in Malaysia: ”My son deliberately throws away marks because he doesn’t like to be top of the class. What shall I do?” Give him a round of “applause” for being smart! Actually many children in Asia tend to be the focus by performing better.

Placed into a very competitive class when I was 11, I quickly learned the ideal position was second to last. The top three performers and the very last person are highlighted; the second-to-last contestant is INVISIBLE. And it’s an easy position to get—just deliberately underperform at every test. I could do that. I once came second to last in eight straight sports day races. No one suspected anything. I was so invisible that I could have robbed a bank in my street and no one would have noticed.

At the London Olympics a few months ago, badminton pairs from three Asian countries deliberately tried to lost matches to draw good lots in later rounds. It was funny to watch, but they were all thrown out for poor sportsmanship. What they really needed were acting lessons, their moves were so unconvincing. “Oops, I hit the ball in entirely the wrong direction.”

The other day, I took the children out and they raced for the car. “I’m first,” said one. The second said: “First is worst, second is best.” Together they sang at the last one: “And third’s the one with a hairy chest.”

It struck me that the organizers of sports matches could use this song when people deliberately lost matches. “I lost,” the delighted loser will say. The judges could still declare them winners, pointing to a new, optional regulation: “First is worst, second is best, third’s the one with a hairy chest.”

1. Why did the author dislike Japanese restaurant?

A．Its food was served raw.	B．Its food contained worms.
C．He was tempted by cereal.	D．He was affected by the saying.

2. How did the author manage to be invisible in a competitive class?

A．He highlighted the top three students.

B．He came to second in sports races.

C．He hid himself in a bank skillfully.

D．He intentionally underperformed.

3. What can be learned from the passage?

A．The judge is encouraged to eliminate the dishonest players.

B．Players disqualified from Olympic doubles for using drugs.

C．Children’s song praises the dramatic acting skills of athletes.

D．players purposefully failed for easier lots in the following rounds.

4. Which saying might the author possibly support?

A．Great minds think alike.	B．God favors those who are prepared.
C．Honesty is the best policy.	D．A bird in hand is worth two in the bush

【推荐3】It's carnival season in Europe, a crazy time for parades, mask, music and dance. No one is sure where the tradition exactly comes from. But while its origin remains a mystery, this does not keep people from joining it.

The Carnival of Binche, the most famous one that is staged in Belgium, has been announced as a masterpiece(杰作) of the Intangible Heritage of Humanity by UNESCO. The event usually takes place during a Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday, with performers known as "Gilles" dressed in clown-like costumes, dancing and marching along the streets. During parade, the Gilles throw oranges to the crowd as an act of well-washing and it is considered rude to throw them back.

Venice is said to be the birthplace of carnivals. In the city, the annual carnival starts 58 days before Easter. It features various brightly-colored and well-made masks. Every year, thousands of visitors go to the city to be part of the festive event.

The Germans, always considered serious-minded, also have their carnivals. The Cologne Carnival is one of the largest, with Rose Monday as the best part. On Rose Monday Parade, lots of gifts are prepared for the people who join it. For this year, 300 tons of candies and more than 300,000 souvenirs were thrown out of the various nicely-decorated floats(花车) to the crowd.

The Nice Carnival in the southern French city of Nice lasts two or three weeks from February to march every year. It features floats, music, dance, performances and entertainment activities. The parade of lights and the final day carnival parade are the most exciting parts of the entire event. Compared to the Rio Carnival in Brazil and the Winter Carnival in Quebec, Canada, the Nice Carnival has a special artistic touch, and it is one of the three major carnivals around the world.

Carnivals were first organized in the Middle Ages. They were supposed to be a time of eating and drinking before the Easter fast(斋戒). Nowadays, they have turned into winter tourism attractions of many European cities.

1. What do we know about the Carnival of Binche?

A．It begins 58 days before Easter.

B．It falls on a Wednesday every year.

C．It is an event that takes place in Belgium.

D．People throw candies to express good wishes.

2. According to the text, the Nice Carnival ________.

A．is held every two years.

B．lasts more than one week.

C．takes place in a German city.

D．is famous for its Monday Parade.

3. Which of the following carnivals provides gifts for people joining it?

A．The Quebec Carnival.

B．The Venice Carnival.

C．The Rio Carnival.

D．The Cologne Carnival.

4. What would be the best title for the text?

A．Carnival in Europe

B．The origin of carnivals

C．Festivals across the world

D．The birthplace of carnivals