2 . The scent of hot bread drifting from the shops along the Street of Flour was sweeter than any perfume Arya had ever smelled. She took a deep breath and stepped closer to the pigeon. It was a plump one, speckled brown, busily pecking at a crust that had fallen between two cobblestones, but when Arya’s shadow touched it, it took to the air.

Her stick sword whistled out and caught it two feet off the ground, and it went down in a flurry of brown feathers. She was on it in the blink of an eye, grabbing a wing as the pigeon flapped and fluttered. It pecked at her hand. She grabbed its neck and twisted until she felt the bone snap.

Compared with catching cats, pigeons were easy.

She tied the pigeon to her belt and started down the street. A man was pushing a load of tarts by on a two-wheeled cart; the smells sang of blueberries and lemons and apricots. Her stomach made a hollow rumbly noise. “Could I have one?” she heard herself say. “A lemon, or…or any kind.”

The pushcart man looked her up and down. Plainly he did not like what he saw. “Three coppers.”

Arya tapped her wooden sword against the side of her boot. “I’ll trade you a fat pigeon,” she said.

“The Others take your pigeon,” the pushcart man said.

The tarts were still warm from the oven. The smells were making her mouth water, but she did not have three coppers... or one. She gave the pushcart man a look, remembering what Syrio had told her about seeing. He was short, with a little round belly, and when he moved he seemed favor his left leg a little. She was just thinking that if she snatched a tart and ran he would never be able to catch her when he said, “You be keeping your filthy hands off. The gold cloaks know how to deal with thieving little gutter rats, that they do.”

Arya glanced warily behind her. Two of the City Watch were standing at the mouth of an alley. Their cloaks hung almost to the ground, the heavy wool dyed a rich gold; their mail and boots and gloves were black. One wore a long sword at his hip, the other an iron cudgel. With a last wistful glance at the tarts, Arya edged back from the cart and hurried off. The gold cloaks had not been paying her any special attention, but the sight of them tied her stomach in knots. Arya had been staying as far from the castle as she could get, yet even from a distance she could see the heads rotting atop the high red walls. Flocks of crows squabbled noisily over each head, thick as flies. The talk in Flea Bottom was that the gold cloaks had associated themselves with the Lannisters, their commander raised to a lord, with lands on the Trident and a seat on the king’s council.

1. The story is set in a place where ______.

A．people raised pigeons	B．only privileged people lived
C．people sold and bought food	D．the watchmen received training

2. In depicting the inviting smell of the tarts, the writer used ______.

A．metaphor	B．overstatement
C．personification (拟人)	D．rhetoric rhyme

3. What is the key meaning of the underlined word “seeing” in the context?

A．Remembering people’s appearance so that you can recognize them.

B．Perceiving people’s intention so that you can properly talk to them.

C．Understanding people’s living conditions so that you can help them.

D．Knowing people’ strengths and weaknesses so that you can beat them

4. What can we infer from the last paragraph?

A．Arya was more hunger than terrified in the story.

B．The Lannisters was a big enemy of the gold cloaks.

C．The atmosphere of the castle was agreeable and welcome.

D．The authority treated the executed people’s dead bodies in a cruel way.

4 . Thanks to my K-drama obsession (痴迷), I’ve started learning Korean, I have a new favorite actor Lee Dong Wook, and I’ve become increasingly curious about Korean folktales. I was familiar with the Rabbit in the Moon and the Gumiho, but the Snail Bride and the Imugi were new to me. I also did not know about “The Tale of Shim Cheong”, where the beautiful daughter of a blind man throws herself into the sea and is taken to the underwater palace of the Dragon King. Axie Oh’s deliciously lovely novel The Girl Who Fell Beneath the Sea is based on this tale, so I was very excited to learn more.

In this retelling, the perfect Shim Cheong is intended to be the Sea God’s hundredth bride. She will be his final bride, the locals say, bringing peace to both the angry god and the village that has been stuck by violent storms for a century. But as Oh’s story opens, a young man named Joon has lost his heart to Cheong and is about to risk everything to stop the sacrifice. To save the life of her brother, Joon’s 16-year-old sister Mina jumps into the sea at the last minute and gives herself to the Sea God instead.

Throughout the story are woven the timeless topics of faith, hope, responsibility, and loyalty to one’s family. And of course one of my favorite themes in all of literature: fate (命运) versus free will. What is it that determines our fate? If our path is truly one of our own makings, do we trust ourselves enough to make the “right” choices? What if we find our goals changing as we go along?

And if you, like me, have fallen hard in love with the legends woven into fantastic dramas like Hotel Del Luna and Tale of the Nine-Tailed, you’ll want to get your hands on The Girl Who Fell Beneath the Sea immediately and keep it in a special place on your bookshelf, for the express purpose of enjoying Axie Oh’s magical tale again and again!

1. What can we learn about Axie Oh from the text?

A．She’s an actress.	B．She’s a good diver.
C．She’s a great novelist.	D．She’s a language expert.

2. Why did Mina throw herself into the sea?

A．To search for more sea animals.

B．To bring peace to her village.

C．To accompany her friends Cheong.

D．To rescue her beloved brother Joon.

3. How does the author mainly develop paragraph 3?

A．By giving examples.	B．By asking questions.
C．By making comparisons.	D．By listing figures.

4. What does the author suggest readers do in the last paragraph?

A．Write more fantastic dramas.

B．Learn more traditional dramas.

C．Watch The Girl Who Fell Beneath the Sea on TV.

D．Read the book The Girl Who Fell Beneath the Sea.

5 . Reading poems is not exactly an everyday activity for most people. In fact, many people never read a poem once they get out of high school.

It is worth reminding ourselves that this has not always been the case in America. In the nineteenth century, a usual American activity was to sit around the fireside in the evening and read poems aloud. It is true that there was no television at that time, nor movie theatres, nor World Wide Web, to provide diversion. However, poems were a source of pleasure, of self-education, of connection to other people or to the world beyond one’s own community. Reading them was a social act as well as an individual one, and perhaps even more social than individual. Writing poems to share with friends and relations was, like reading poems by the fireside, another way in which poetry has a place in everyday life.

How did things change? Why are most Americans no longer comfortable with poetry, and why do most people today think that a poem has nothing to tell them and that they can do well without poems?

There are, I believe, three factors: poets, teachers, and we ourselves. Of these, the least important is the third: the world surrounding the poem has betrayed us more than we have betrayed the poem. Early in the twentieth century, poetry in English headed into directions unfavourable to the reading of poetry. Readers decided that poems were not for the fireside or the easy chair at night, and that they belonged where other difficult-to-read things belonged.

Poets failed the reader, so did teachers. They want their students to know something about the skills of a poem; they want their students to see that poems mean something. Yet what usually occurs when teachers push these concerns on their high school students is that young people decide poems are unpleasant crossword puzzles.

1. Why is reading poems thought to be a social act in the nineteenth century?

A．Because it built a link among people.

B．Because it helped unite a community.

C．Because it was a source of self-education.

D．Because it was a source of pleasure.

2. What does the underlined word “diversion” in Paragraph 2 mean?

A．Stories.

B．Changes.

C．Amusements.

D．Concentrations.

3. What is the main cause of the great gap between readers and poetry?

A．Students are poorly educated in high school.

B．Poems have become difficult to understand.

C．Students are becoming less interested in poetry.

D．TV and the Internet are more attractive than poetry.

4. What does the author try to tell us by writing the text?

A．The history and changes of poetry.

B．The correct way for teachers to teach poetry.

C．The failure of poetry in people’s life nowadays.

D．The reason why people aren’t keen on poetry today.

7 . 请根据诗歌内容完成摘要。每空不超过三个词。

Creativity Is the Mother of Invention By Sha Azam Siddiqui

The world in which we live in This beautiful place which we belong to It’s so beautiful and so colorful But we always lack to see beauty of it and we continue to live the life which is so regretful This is the one life we have We have to live it to the fullest Not with happenings or desires of others But with the intention which truly inspires us. We have to live this life We have to create this life

This life is ours and only ours We need to realize this first It’s said that creativity is the mother of invention But it depends solely on individual intention If we are clear with our own destination It doesn’t matter then how much we get rejection Live this life as if you were the King Spend the luxuries as if you were the Queen It all starts with the only Intention If we just keep on thinking Then there is no end for this perspiration.

Creativity is the key to a bright future. We live in a     1     world. But we always tend to ignore the beauty of it and thus have many regrets in our lives. We only live     2    , so we have to live a fullest one. This life is ours, so we have to live and     3     it. We need to realize this first. Creativity is the mother of invention that depends on individual intention. If we have     4    , then the rejections we get would not be a problem. Bear this only intention in our mind and keep on thinking, and there will be     5     for this perspiration.

8 . 请阅读下面的篇章, 用以下三种形式中的一种填空: ①根据上下文填空; ②用所给单词的正确形式填空; ③根据单词所给的字母填空, 每空一词。

Science fiction doesn’t always get the respect it deserves. My friend Ryan calls    1     “brain candy”. My sister says science fiction novels are fairy tales for teenagers. I    2     you ask me, I think people should take science fiction     3     (serious) though it’s so much fun to read.

Yes, science fiction is fun, but it’s also “real” literature. After all, some of     4     great masters of literature—Ray Bradbury, Isaac Asimov and Ursula Le Guin—have written science fiction.

Not only     5     science fiction books often examples of great literature, but the predictions made by science fiction writers help spark people’s imagination and lay the groundwork for       6     (invent) of the future.

One accurate example by a science fiction writer is the invention of the automatic sliding door,       7     H.G. Wells wrote about in When the Sleeper Wakes in 1899. The f    8     automatic doors were invented in 1954. I wonder if the inventors got the idea from H.G. Wells?

Okay, so maybe we could survive without automatic doors, but in the short story From the London Times of 1904 (published in 1898), Mark Twain described a m    9     significant invention — the Internet (specifically, video blogging) ! Imagine what the world       10     (will) be like without the Internet. Thank you, Mr. Twain. Thank you, science fiction!

9 . Sir Conan Doyle, whose Sherlock Holmes stories are known all over the world, worked_________ a doctor before he turned to writing. His Sherlock Holmes was a brilliant detective and violinist, living at 221B Baker Street in London,_________there is now a Sherlock Holmes museum. Holmes’ friend Doctor Watson was probably_________ Conan Doyle himself. The best-known Sherlock story is probably The Hound of the Baskervilles, which Conan Doyle wrote in 1902.

1.

A．on

B．as

C．in

D．for

2.

A．which

B．where

C．who

D．what

3.

A．adapted from

B．relied on

C．believed in

D．based on

10 . 假定你是李华，最近阅读了寓言故事《龟兔赛跑》，请根据下面的提示写一篇小品文。
1.乌龟和兔子赛跑，兔子由于自满和大意输给了乌龟；
2.表明你的观点并列举生活中的例子；
3.总结这个故事说明的道理。
注意：1.词数80左右；2.可以适当增加细节，以使行文连贯；
3.开头已给出，不计入总词数。

One day a hare and a tortoise had a race

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