【推荐1】One morning while Officer Vogel was on his coffee break in a restaurant, a man ran in a yelled. “Officer! A little kid is driving a car down the street!"

He ran out at once and saw a car going slowly—about 25 miles an hour—but it wasn’t going very straight. He jumped into his police car and followed it. When the car was stopped, Officer Vogel looked inside. The driver was a little boy. His name was Rocco Morabiro and he was 5. In the back seat was his two-year-old sister. Both children were crying.

"I want my mummy!" the boy cried. "But she can't get here. I have the car.” Then he had an idea. "Just a minute." he told Officer Vogel. "I can drive. I'll go to get her.”

“No!" Officer Vogel said. “You stay with me!" Then he drove them to the police station and he called their mother. They had many questions for Rocco. The first question was: "Where did you get the car keys?"

Rocco said. “From the top of the refrigerator." At seven that morning Rocco's father was at work and his mother was sleeping, Rocco saw the keys on top of the refrigerator. He climbed up on a chair, and took the keys.

Rocco got into the car and started the engine. When Rocco's sister heard the engine, she ran to the car and cried. She wanted to go with him.

It was 7 a. m. —rush hour—so there was much traffic. Rocco drove one mile in heavy traffic. Then Officer Vogel stopped him.

Newspapers and TV stations heard about Rocco, and a lot of reporters went to his house. One reporter asked Rocco, “What do you want to be when you grow up?"

“A truck driver," he said, smiling.

1. Why did the officer asked Rocco to stay with him?

A．He would drive them home.

B．Other cars would go much faster.

C．Rocco would not cause any accident.

D．Rocco’s sister would not feel alone.

2. For what purpose were Rocco and his sister taken to the police station?

A．To have a good breakfast.

B．To learn some traffic rules.

C．To answer the policemen’s questions.

D．To wait for their mother and deal with the matter.

3. According to the reporters, Rocco’s driving was ________.

A．unbelievable	B．disappointing
C．reasonable	D．boring

【推荐2】Several years ago, I read in a national advice column about a fundraiser called ＂A Mile of Pennies＂. Placed side by side for a mile, the pennies add up to $844.80. I thought it was an interesting concept and a fun way for kids to raise money, so I mentioned it to my friend and fellow teacher, Kathlee.

We decided to try it with our middle school students, with a competition among homerooms; the money the students raised would be used in some way for children during the holiday season. The winning homeroom would receive a pizza party and movie (paid for by other funds, not the money raised by the students).

Kathlee really liked the idea and got her students into the spirit. They were motivated to bring in pennies, as well as nickels, dimes, quarters, dollars, and checks. Soon, the whole school got involved, and the students raised more than $1000 during a two-week period; the money, donated to a charitable organization, was used to buy coats and toys for children in our community.

Even after my interest faded, Kathlee kept things going. Every November for the next several years, she would type up an announcement, send out envelopes, count and wrap the money or recruit volunteers to do it. She would arrange the reward for the winning homeroom, get the check written, and help decide which charity would distribute the money.

Finally, she would have the principal’s picture taken for the local paper as the check was handed over to the charitable organization. Kathlee clearly cared about the fundraiser and wanted her students to participate in it — and she cared about the people they helped.

The funds usually were donated to the local human services department, but occasionally the money went to a local civic organization. Each time, kids in our community benefited from the effort. One year some of our middle school personnel bought and wrapped the gifts, with one person saying it was the most fun she ever had.

Eventually, the fundraiser became routine. Some staff members grumbled about it, some ignored it, and some got into the spirit again. Kathlee and her students certainly kept that spirit going, though. Remarkably, each year they raised more money than they had the year before.

While I don’t have an exact total, over the years I’m sure the amount collected is more than $20,000. Each year I wonder which of her students has benefited from the Mile of Pennies without being aware of the part Kathlee has played.

Kathlee never asked for praise. But even though the Mile of Pennies was a school-wide effort, none of it would have happened without her persistence, follow-through and, most of all, her caring.

1. What does the author do according to the passage?

A．Volunteer in organization.	B．A social worker.
C．A physician.	D．A middle school teacher.

2. What do we know about the raised money?

A．It is used to cover the expenses of a pizza party and movie.

B．It is devoted to the school committee.

C．It is used to help the homeless.

D．It is devoted to the community children.

3. Which of the following would best describe Kathlee?

A．Honest and beautiful.	B．Caring and persistent.
C．Learned and humorous.	D．Talkative and diligent.

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

A．A Mile of Pennies	B．Wonderful Kathlee
C．An impossible task	D．Love always goes far

【推荐3】My fifteen-year-old son has just returned from abroad with rolls of exposed film and a hundred dollars in uncashed traveler’s checks, and is asleep at the moment. His blue duffel (粗呢) bag lies on the floor where he dropped it. Obviously, he postponed as much sleep as he could, when he walked in and we hugged, his electrical system suddenly switched off, and he headed directly for the bed, where I imagine he beat his old record of sixteen hours.

It was his first trip overseas, so weeks before it, I pressed travel books on him, and a tape cassette of useful French phrases; drew up a list of people to visit; advised him on clothing and other things. At the luggage store where we went to buy him a suitcase, he headed for the duffels, saying that suitcases were more for old people.

During the trip, he called home three times: from London, Paris, and a village named Ullapool. Near Ullapool, he climbed a mountain in a rainstorm that almost blew him off. In the village, a man spoke to him in Gaelic, and, too polite to interrupt, my son listened to him for tenor fifteen minutes, trying to nod in the right places. The French he learned from the cassette didn’t hold water in Paris. The French he talked to shrugged and walked on.

When my son called, I sat down at the kitchen table and leaned forward and hung on every word. His voice came through clearly, though two of the calls were like ship-to-shore communication. When I interrupted him with a “Great!” or a “Really?”, I knocked a little hole in his communication. So I just sat and listened. I have never listened to a telephone so attentively and with so much pleasure. It was wonderful to hear news from him that was so new to me. In my book, he was the first man to land on the moon, and I knew that I had no advice to give him and that what I had a ready given was probably not much help.

The unused checks are certainly evidence of that. Youth travels light .No suitcase, not much luggage and a slim expense account, and yet he went to the scene, and came back safely. I sit here amazed. The night when your child returns with dust on his shoes from a country you’ve never seen is a night you would gladly turn into a week.

1. During the trip, the author’s son ______.

A．ran out of money	B．had inadequate sleep
C．forgot to call his mother	D．failed to take good pictures

2. According to the passage, which of the following could best describe the author’s son?

A．Polite and careless.	B．Creative and stubborn.
C．Considerate and independent.	D．Self-centered and adventurous.

3. What can we infer from the passage?

A．Good parents should protect their children from potential dangers.

B．The world is a book and those who do not travel read only one page.

C．It’s a win-win choice to give a child space to experience and explore.

D．Communication between parents and children is extremely important.

【推荐1】I’m an ironworker in New York City, one of 100 or so ironworkers who are now working on the steel frame (框架) of a new building in Times Square.    1     Many of today's ironworkers are descendants (后代) of the men who built New York’s first high buildings. My great-grandfather helped build the Empire State Building. My father and grandfather were also iron workers.

To me, ironworkers are the kings of construction. We make the frame that the other workers build on.    2     You look at the New York skyline and think “I helped build that.” Also, we work hard, we play hard, and we get on well together.

What’s an average day like?     3     Eight hours a day, from seven in the morning until three in the afternoon. You’re moving all the time.

Next, I’d like to work on something really important like my great-grandfather did.    4     He helped build it and I helped take it away.

If you want to do the same job as mine, you need to be strong, really strong.    5    . It usually takes about a year to get used to it. You can’t work and hold on with one hand at the same time. Many guys try it once, then back off and say, “This is not for me!”

A．You never stop in this job.

B．We have real pride in our work.

C．You also have to be OK with height.

D．You have to move them into place all the time.

E．Ironwork is trade that is still handed down from father to son.

F．Or like my father did, who helped build the World Trade Center.

G．Ironworkers depend on each other for their lives, and the pay is good.

【推荐2】Rick Guidotti put aside his career as a fashion photographer to turn his lens to people living with genetic, physical and behavioral differences.

He says what changed his perception of beauty was a chance encounter with an albino (患白化病的) girl. “I was just tired of people telling me who was beautiful. Every season that face would change but I was always told who was beautiful. As an artist, I don’t see beauty just on covers of magazines. I see it everywhere. So that was my original intention—that opened my eyes a little wider and wider.”

Guidotti has created Positive Exposure, a not-for-profit organization that uses photography and video to transform public perceptions and promote a world where differences are celebrated. Guidotti and Positive Exposure are featured in a new documentary called “On Beauty”.

One of the women featured in the film is Jayne Waithera. “I never thought I was beautiful because nobody said that to me, but meeting him was my profound moment. I remember that particular day he took my picture and I felt so good like l felt there’s somebody who, like, really loves me and sees me for who I am and who sees me more than my condition.”

Guidotti is traveling from city to city to promote “On Beauty”. He says his tour is not about money; it’s about the message. “As I travel from community to community, I’m taking photographs band I’m empowering individuals with a positive sense of who they are. They’re seeing beauty in their reflection but I’m also empowering their families and they in turn are empowering their communities as well. All is based on the philosophy of change—how you see, how you change.”

1. Why did Guidotti change his career?

A．Because he wanted to create his own company.

B．Because the beauty on covers of magazines is not beautiful.

C．Because he couldn’t earn enough money from his former career.

D．Because his comprehension of beauty changed owing to an albino girl.

2. What can we know about Positive Exposure?

A．It makes the public more beautiful.	B．It brings a lot of money for Guidotti.
C．It welcomes differences in the world.	D．It makes photography more popular.

3. What does the author want to tell us by mentioning Jayne in Paragraph 4?

A．Jayne was beautiful Indeed.

B．Jayne’s picture was more beautiful than herself.

C．It was unfair that nobody discovered Jayne’s beauty.

D．Photographs gave Jayne a positive sense of who she was.

4. What does the author mainly intend to tell us in the last paragraph?

A．We should travel frequently.

B．Communities have a great influence on everyone.

C．We should make contributions to our community.

D．The way we view the world matters.

【推荐3】Power often boosts an employee’s creativity because being powerful liberates the individual from restrictions. However, new research shows that employees who are not in positions of power can become more creative when given time to “warm up” to a task by engaging in the creative task more than once.

“This is important because when people with more power are able to express their creative ideas more than those with less power, which leads to a rich-get-richer dynamic that strengthens these power imbalances.” said Brian Lucas, assistant professor in the Cornell University. “Understanding ways to boost the creativity of lower power workers can help them find the right way to deal with this low-power disadvantage,” Lucas said.

Lucas and his colleagues conducted two studies to reach their conclusion. In the first study, they divided the creative idea generation session into two rounds consisting of a one-minute “warm up” followed by a second round in which the participants could take as long as they wanted. Participants were randomly assigned to a high-power condition or a low-power condition, and feelings of power were generated with a role manipulation (操纵) where participants were given a leadership role and control over resources (high power) or an employee role with no control over resources (low power). The study found that high-power individuals were more creative than low-power individuals in the warm-up round. There was no difference, though, in creativity in the second round.

In the second study, the researchers gave them a different creative task and increased the number of rounds from two sessions to five, taking as long as they like to complete the task. Similar to the first study, the study found that high-power individuals were more creative than low-power individuals in the first round. But the creativity of low-power individuals caught up to the creativity of the high-power individuals after the first round.

“The low-power warm-up effect suggests a simple intervention that empowers all employees to tap their creative potential and overcomes power imbalances in the workplace: when pursuing creative work. let employees warm up first,” Lucas said.

1. Why is it important to boost lower-power workers’ creativity according to Lucas?

A．It stimulates power balances.

B．It motivates their ambition to catch up.

C．It encourages a harmonious workplace.

D．It creates a competitive work environment.

2. How did the participants feel the power in the first study?

A．By competing with leaders.

B．By receiving different positions.

C．By working in different working conditions.

D．By finishing a creative task with time limits.

3. How did the second study differ from the first study?

A．It had more rounds.

B．More participants were involved.

C．Participants had a more complicated task.

D．Participants’ creativity gap became wider.

4. What is the main idea of the text?

A．Power tends to encourage creative ideas.

B．Changing tasks boosts all the employees’ creativity.

C．Warm-up time corrects creativity power imbalances.

D．Low-power individuals outperform the high-power ones.