As any younger brother will tell you, having a big brother involves a lot of walking in someone else’s shadow, especially when you have a brother who is a typical example of “cool”. For years I wanted to do everything my elder brother Tyson did, but no matter how hard I tried, I was always the neglected (被忽略的) one. My legs just weren’t made to run like his. I could never play football or basketball well.
I probably would have continued trying to keep up with him for the rest of my high school career, but when my family moved, everything changed. Tyson left for college, so I had to start at a new school all by myself. This new start gave me an opportunity to redefine myself and discover an entirely new version of “cool”.
I don’t know what made me decide to try some new activities at the new school, but one day I chanced to show up for an after-school meeting of the Science Olympiad team. I had always been fascinated with chemistry, biology, and math, but since those interests hadn’t fit Tyson’s definition of “cool”, I had never pursued them. On this day, for some reason, I did.
As we organized teams, prepared resources and practiced answering questions, I felt more connected than I ever had to any sports team. I didn’t feel as though I needed to keep up with anybody else; I was finally with peers who understood me. It was so good to feel accepted for what I’m good at. For the first time in my life, I actually felt cool. Now I know who I am! I’m Tyson’s little brother, but that’s only part of my identity. I’m a cool guy in my own way, too. I’m relieved to know that “cool” has a much broader definition than what I used to think.
1. How do you understand the underlined part in Paragraph 1? (no more than 8 words)2. What changes offered a new start to the author after his family moved? (no more than 15 words)
3. According to Paragraph 3, what marked the turning point in the author’s growth? (no more than 7 words)
4. What does Paragraph 4 mainly talk about? (no more than 10 words)
5. What is your example of “cool”? Please explain why. (no more than 20 words)
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【推荐1】There are people who leave a lasting mark upon our hearts. My husband’s mother was such a person, Joyce’s faith was unshakable. It saddened us when we found out she had cancer. Certainly the god she loved wouldn’t let this happen. But Joyce didn’t share our concern. “God is good,” she said, quoting (引用) from her favorite prayer.
After Joyce’s death I took home the Bible she’d left to me. Taped inside was a yellowed paper with that favorite prayer she’d typed so long ago. “God is good,” it began. I put the Bible safely into by bookcase where I reached for it often.
Ten years later, while we were away on vacation, our house burned down. As bad as we expected things to be, we were shocked when we returned. Nothing was left. Not a stick of wood. Nothing had survived. I reached for my husband’s hand, “How could God let this happen to us?”
Something fluttered (飘动) in the wind – a piece of faded paper. An old grocery list? Notes I’d made while packing for our vacation? The paper settled by my feet. Whatever it was, to me it was precious – the one thing that had survived the fire disaster.
I picked it up. “God is good,” I read. Joyce’s faith calmed my heart. I knew God would surely bring us a brighter tomorrow.
“God can do anything” has been planted in my heart in recent months and helps me to hold on when I think there is no hope. With God, there is always hope.
1. What can be learned about Joyce from the first paragraph?| A．She hurt the author and her husband deeply. |
| B．She was worried about her health very much. |
| C．She had a positive influence on the author. |
| D．She didn’t enjoy sharing the author’s trouble. |
| A．angry | B．afraid | C．puzzled | D．thankful |
| A．God had played a joke on the author |
| B．the author would live a happier life after the fire disaster |
| C．the author didn’t believe in God before at all |
| D．Joyce’s faith gave the author courage to hold on |
| A．An unexpected fire | B．Joyce’s favorite prayer |
| C．God’s careless mistake | D．A piece of paper |
【推荐2】My mother didn't set out to be a civil rights activist. In fact， she had no intention of becoming a pioneer of any sort. But because of the kind of person she was， and the times she lived through， she turned out to be both. She gave a whole group of black Alabama girls opportunities they otherwise wouldn't have had， and became a role model for all of us.
In 1941 she bought an old Victorian house to operate as a preschool. The huge， sunny rooms and breezy porches also served as a meeting place for my mother's first Girl Scout troop.
Though this may seem a small thing now， at the time it was a watershed (分水岭) event. Racism was a fact of life in the 1940s， and African American girls were barred from joining white troops. My mother， who was only five feet tall but could beat you on a fast﹣paced hike， decided it was time for a change. Her troop was the first for African Americans in Alabama. When Mama saw a need， she filled it.
In 1950， the Girl Scouts sent a group of women﹣all of them white﹣from headquarters in New York to help my mother with an overnight training camp. The women met in a wilderness area outside Birmingham where， unknown to them， the Ku Klux Klan(3 K党) was active. It never occurred to the women， black and white， that they were violating the rules of segregation (种族隔离) by camping together. That night， my mother awoke to the sound of men's voices. She stole out of her tent and saw them， dressed in their horrible uniforms. They offered what must have been a terrifying warning: Be gone by sunrise.
She never shared this story with me； people protected their children from some of the uglier sides of racism. But I over﹣heard my parents talking about it later that night and I realized there was something remarkable about Mama. I felt an obligation to give back， to seek solutions and create opportunities as she did.
"It's not something you choose to do； it's just something you do，" she would say. And what I've found is this: In giving to others， you get as much as you give.
1. What made the author's mother an advocate for civil rights？| A．Her passion and educational background. |
| B．Her race and financial condition. |
| C．Her personality and social background. |
| D．Her occupation and religious belief. |
| A．To indicate her deeply﹣rooted sympathy for her mother. |
| B．To emphasize her mother's surprising strength. |
| C．To illustrate what a role model should look like. |
| D．To show her mother differs from average black women. |
| A．It proves to be dangerous and unworthy. |
| B．It reveals the danger of racism. |
| C．It violates the rules of segregation. |
| D．It inspires her to be brave and caring. |
Kindertransport, meaning “children transport” in German, was then born. Children from Germany, Austria, Czechoslovakia, Poland and other Nazi-occupied regions were transported to the United Kingdom. There they were either placed with other families or in hostels. Later, it was found that many of these children were the only survivors of their families. Nicholas Winton was among those people who helped to save Jewish children. He managed to rescue 669 children from Czechoslovakia and bring them safely to England. In 1938 around Christmas, 29-year-old Nicky was about to leave for a skiing holiday. Suddenly, Martin Blake, one of his good friends, contacted(联络) him from Czechoslovakia, asking him to travel there to help political refugees on the run from the Nazis. And Nicholas agreed.
Nicky spent his entire holiday of 3 weeks in the capital city of Prague where he saw the situation first-hand. Once back in England, he immediately started organizing the evacuation(撤离) of children from the Czech region. From advertising for the necessary permits, Nicky worked tirelessly. By August 1939, 669 children had been helped by Nicky and his friends. Haplessly, the last group of children due to leave Prague in the beginning of September could not do so— World War Ⅱ broke out, and swallowed them up.
Nicky did not discuss his particular task with his wife, Grete. It was only when she found a scrapbook in 1988, with names of the rescued children, their (lost) parents and the foster families that had taken them in, that his heroism came to light. Nicky has received several awards in Britain and the Czech Republic.
1. Kindertransport aimed to_____.
| A．help the homeless |
| B．transfer the affected |
| C．stop German attacks |
| D．save Jewish children |
| A．knew nothing about what happened in Prague |
| B．did a lot to help Jewish children out of danger |
| C．always told his wife what he was doing |
| D．saved 669 children and their parents |
| A．Unfortunately | B．Hopefully |
| C．Strangely | D．Importantly |
| A．Strict but caring |
| B．Proud but patient |
| C．Warm-hearted and cautious |
| D．Hard-working and humorous |
【推荐1】Parents' love for their children can make them do crazy things, like driving 40 miles to deliver a single soccer cleat (护腿板). But one of the weirdest thing parents do is love their children more than their partners.
Before you call child services, let me be clear: Of course you have to love your kids. Of course you have to put their needs first. But doing so is also a no-brainer. Children, with their urgent and often tricky-to-understand needs, easily attract devotion. Partners don't need to be fed and dressed or have their tears dried. Loving your kids is like going to school-you don't really have a choice, Loving your partner is like going to college—it's up to you to show up and participate.
So why do the harder work for the less adorable, more capable being in your life?
One reason, actually, is for the kids. Research strongly suggests that children whose parents love each other are much happier and more secure than those raised in a loveless environment. They have a model of not just what a relationship looks like but also of how people should treat each other.
Diary studies, in which parents log their day's activities each evening, have shown that mishandled tensions between a couple are likely to turn into parent’ bad interactions with their kids, especially for fathers. Children, whose parents are often quarrelling with each other, blame themselves for the fighting and do worse at school, another research has found. In fact, a 2014 survey of 40,00 U.K. households showed that teenagers were happiest overall when their mothers were happy with their relationships with their male partners. And this is for parents who say together; the outcomes for kids of divorce are generally darker. One of the best things you can do for your kids is to love your partner as much as you can.
1. Why does the author mention the example of “a soccer cleat” in paragraph 1?| A．To attract reader' attention to the topic. |
| B．To provide background information for the research. |
| C．To stress the need for parents’ participation in kids’ education. |
| D．To give parents suggestions on how to take care of their children. |
| A．By giving examples. |
| B．By using statistics. |
| C．By making comparisons. |
| D．By quoting from famous people. |
| A．Kids are generally happier if their parents love each other. |
| B．Fathers are more likely to have bad interactions with their kids. |
| C．It is strange that parents love their children more than their partners. |
| D．Children blame parents' quarrels on their bad performances at school. |
| A．Happiness, a Family Must Seek |
| B．Love, Your Kids Need Most |
| C．An Example, the Best You Can be for Your Kids |
| D．Kids, the Center of a Family |
【推荐2】When I learned that my 71-year-old mother was playing Scrabble—a word game—against herself, I knew I had to do something. My husband suggested we give her a computer to play against.
I wasn’t sure my mother was ready for it. After all, it had taken 15 years to persuade her to buy an electric cooker. Even so, we packed up our old computer and delivered it to my parents’ home. And so began my mother’s adventure in the world of computers.
It also marked the beginning of an unusual teaching task for me. I’d taught people of all ages, but I never thought I would be teaching my mother how to do anything. She had been the one teaching me all my life: to cook and sew, to enjoy the good times and put up with the bad. Now it was my turn to give something back.
It wasn’t easy at the beginning. There was so much to explain and to introduce. Slowly but surely, my mother caught on, making notes in a little notebook. After a few months of Scrabble and other games, I decided it was time to introduce her to word processing. This proved to be a bigger challenge to her, so I gave her some homework. I asked her to write me a letter, using different letter types, colors and spaces.
“Are you this demanding with your kindergarten pupils?” she asked.
“No, of course not,” I said. “They already know how to use a computer.”
My mother isn’t the only one experiencing a fast personal growth period. Thanks to the computer, my father has finally got over his phone allergy. For as long as I can remember, any time I called, my mother would answer. Dad and I have had more phone conversations in the last two months than we’ve had in the past 20 years.
1. Why did the author decide to give her mother a computer?| A．To help her through the bad times. |
| B．To make her life more enjoyable. |
| C．To support her in doing her homework. |
| D．To let her have more chances to write letters. |
| A．She is a teacher. | B．She is a cook. |
| C．She is a housewife. | D．She is a computer engineer. |
| A．To keep in touch with her mother. |
| B．To free her mother from heavy housework. |
| C．To practice what her mother had learned. |
| D．To prevent her mother from using the telephone. |
| A．He played even more games. | B．He became skilled at it. |
| C．He lost interest in cooking. | D．He took more phone calls. |
【推荐3】When she moved the covering cloth to look upon his tiny face, she was shocked. The doctor turned quickly and looked out the tall hospital window. The baby had been born without ears.
Time proved that the baby’s hearing was perfect. When he rushed home from school one day and threw himself into his mother’s arms, she sighed, knowing that his life was to be full of heart-breaks for his imperfect appearance.
He grew up, handsome for his misfortune and popular with his fellow students. He might have been class monitor, but for that. He developed a gift, a talent for literature and music.
Two years went by. One day, his father said to the son, “You’re going to the hospital, son. Mother and I have someone who will donate the ears you need. But it’s a secret.” The operation was a brilliant success, and a new person turned up. His talents blossomed into genius, and his school and college became a series of success. Later he married and entered the diplomatic service.
One day, he urged his father, “Who gave so much for me? I must know! I could never do enough for him.”“I do not believe you could, ” said the father, “but the agreement was that you are not to know... not yet.”
The years kept their secret, but the day did come—one of the darkest days that a son must endure. He stood with his father over his mother’s casket (棺材). Slowly, tenderly, the father reached out a hand and raised the thick, reddish-brown hair to show that the mother had no outer ears.
“Mother said she was glad she never let her hair be cut,” he whispered gently, “and nobody ever thought Mother less beautiful, did they?”
Real beauty lies not in the physical appearance, but in the heart. Real treasure lies not in what can be seen, but in what cannot be seen. Real love lies not in what is done and known, but in what is done and not known.
1. The mother was shocked at the first sight of her baby because __________ .| A．her baby was born without hair | B．her baby had a tiny face |
| C．her baby was born imperfect | D．the doctor turned to look out of the window |
| A．The son attempted to repay the donator’s kindness. |
| B．The son didn’t know the truth until his mother died. |
| C．With donated ears, the son’s life developed smoothly. |
| D．The boy couldn’t hear clearly without ears at first. |
| A．Because her hair added to her beauty. | B．Because her hair helped to keep a secret. |
| C．Because her long hair was her pride. | D．Because she liked her thick and brown hair. |
| A．A Misfortunate Boy | B．Mother’s Hair |
| C．Mother’s Secret Love | D．A Successful Ear Operation |
