【推荐1】When I woke up on Aug.4, 2016, there was only one thing on my mind: what to wear. A billion thoughts raced through my brain in the closet. I didn't want to come off as trying too hard, but I also didn't want to be seen as a lazy and untidy person. Not only was it my first day of high school, but it was my first day of school in a new state. First impressions are everything, and it was important for me to impress the people who I would spend the next four years with.

This was my third time being a new kid. But this time was different because my dad promised that I would start and finish high school in the same place. This time mattered, and that made me nervous.

After meticulously searching my closet, I proudly came out in a dress from Target. The soft cotton was comfortable, and the ruffled shoulders added a bit of fun. Yes, this outfit was the one. An hour later, I felt powerful as I headed toward Room 1136. But as I entered, my jaw dropped to the floor.

Sitting at her desk was Mrs. Hutfilz, my English teacher, wearing exactly the same dress as me. I kept my head down and tiptoed to my seat. I made it through my minute introduction speech until she stood up, jokingly adding that she liked my style. Although this was the moment I had been afraid of from the moment I walked in, all my anxiety surprisingly melted away, and the students paid attention as I shared my story. My smile grew as I laughed with the students. After class, I stayed behind and talked to Mrs. Hutfilz, relieved to make a humorous and real connection.

Looking back four years later, the ten minutes I spent afraid of giving my speech were really not worth it. My first period of high school certainly made the day unforgettable in the best way and taught me that Mrs. Hutfilz had an awesome sense of style!

1. Why did the author care about her clothes on her first high school day?

A．She was picky about clothes

B．She followed her father's advice.

C．She wanted to leave a good impression.

D．She cared too much about her appearance.

2. The underlined word "meticulously" in Paragraph 3 probably means "

A．Carefully

B．gradually

C．regularly

D．suddenly

3. How did the author feel after noticing her teacher's dress?

A．Calm.

B．Uneasy.

C．Proud

D．Powerful.

4. Why did the author write the article?

A．To explore the tips on dressing.

B．To show her good taste in clothes.

C．To share a memorable experience.

D．To introduce her stylish English teacher

【推荐2】It all started with a simple question: “Can I paint your portrait?”

One day in the summer of 2015, Peterson was relaxing in his living room, reading the book Love Does, about the power of love in action, when his quiet was disturbed by a homeless man outside his apartment. Inspired by the book’s compassionate message, Peterson made a decision; He was going to go outside and introduce himself.

In that first conversation, Peterson learned that the man’s name was Matt Faris. He’d moved to Southern California from Kentucky to pursue a career in music, but he soon fell on hard times and ended up living on the street for more than a decade. “I saw beauty on the face of a man who hadn’t shaved in probably a year, because his story, the life inside of him, inspired me,” Peterson recalled. Therefore, Peterson asked if he could paint Faris’s portrait. Faris agreed.

Peterson’s connection with Faris led him to form Faces of Santa Ana, a nonprofit organization focused on befriending and painting portraits of members of the community who are unhoused. Peterson sells the paintings for money, splitting the proceeds and putting half into a “love account” for his model. He then helps people use the money to get back on their feet.

Many of Peterson’s new friends use the donations to secure immediate necessities — medical care, hotel rooms, food. Faris used the funds from his portrait to record an album, fulfilling his musical dreams. Another subject, Kimberly Sondoval, had never been able to financially support her daughter. She asked, “Can I use the money to pay my daughter’s rent?” When the check was delivered, “They both wept in my arms,” Peterson recalls.

Peterson has painted 41 of these portraits himself. But there’s more to the finished products than the money they bring to someone who’s down and out. He’s discovered that the buyers tend to connect to the story of the person in the painting, finding similarities and often friendship with someone they might have otherwise overlooked or stereotyped.

“People often tell me, ‘I was the one that would cross the street, but I see homeless people differently now,’” Peterson says. “I didn’t know that would happen.”

1. What made Peterson start a conversation?

A．The curiosity about strangers.	B．The touching story of Matt Faris.
C．The disturbance by a homeless man.	D．The sympathetic message in Love Does.

2. What do we know about Faces of Santa Ana?

A．It pays the homeless salaries.

B．It is an official nonprofit organization.

C．It tries to restore the lives of Peterson’s models.

D．It spends all the money on helping the unhoused.

3. After buying a portrait, a buyer might view the homeless as ________.

A．lazy and poor	B．odd but inspiring
C．disturbing and untidy	D．pitiful but respectable

4. Which of the following is the best title of this text?

A．Art with Purpose: Love Account Matters

B．Hope in Paintings: Help Knows No Race

C．Faces of Compassion: Painting a New Perspective

D．Encounter with Strangers: Embracing New Friends

【推荐2】Rainforests are home to a rich variety of medicinal plants, food, birds and animals. Can you believe that a single bush(灌木丛)in the Amazon may have more species of ants than the whole of Britain! About 480 varieties of trees may be found in just one hectare of rainforest.

Rainforests are the lungs of the planet-storing vast quantities of carbon dioxide and producing a significant amount of the world’s oxygen. Rainforests have their own perfect system for ensuring their own survival; the tall trees make a canopy(树冠层)of branches and leaves which protect themselves, smaller plants, and the forest animals from heavy rain, intense dry heat from the sun and strong winds.

Amazingly, the trees grow in such a way that their leaves and branches, although close together, never actually touch those of another tree. Scientists think this is the plants’ way to prevent the spread of any tree diseases and make life more difficult for leaf-eating insects like caterpillars. To survive in the forest, animals must climb, jump or fly across the gaps. The ground floor of the forest is not all tangled leaves and bushes, like in films, but is actually fairly clear. It is where dead leaves turn into food for the trees and other forest life.

They are not called rainforests for nothing! Rainforests can generate 75%of their own rain. At least 80 inches of rain a year is normal-and in some areas there may be as much as 430 inches of rain annually. This is real rain-your umbrella may protect you in a shower, but it won’t keep you dry if there is a full rainstorm. In just two hours, streams can rise ten to twenty feet. The humidity(湿气)of large rainforests contributes to the formation of rainclouds that may travel to other countries in need of rain.

1. What can we learn about rainforests from the first paragraph?

A．They produce oxygen.	B．They cover a vast area.
C．They are well managed.	D．They are rich in wildlife.

2. Which of the following contributes most to the survival of rainforests?

A．Heavy rains	B．Big trees.
C．Small plants.	D．Forest animals.

3. What can be a suitable title for the text?

A．Life-Giving Rainforests	B．The Law of the Jungle
C．Animals in the Amazon	D．Weather in Rainforests

【推荐2】A little boy selling magazines for school walked up to a house that people rarely visited. The house was very old and the owner hardly ever came out. When he did, he would not say hello to neighbors or passers-by, but simply glare at them.
The boy knocked on the door and waited, sweating from fear of the old man.
As he was ready to walk away, the door slowly opened. “What do you want?” the old man said.
“Uh, sir, I uh am selling these magazines and, uh, I was wondering if you would like to buy one.”
The old man just stared at the boy. The boy could see inside the old man’s house and saw that he had dog figurines (小雕像) on the fireplace. “Do you collect dogs?” the little boy asked.
“Yes, I have many collectibles in my house. They are my family here. They are all I have.”
The boy then felt sorry for the man, as it seemed that he was a very lonely soul. “Well, I do have a magazine here for collectors. It is perfect for you. I also have one about dogs since you like dogs so much.”
The old man was ready to close the door and said: “No, boy, I don’t need any magazines of any kind, now goodbye.”
The little boy was sad for the old man because he was alone in the big house. Then he thought of a little dog figurine that he had got some years earlier from an aunt. The boy headed back down to the old man’s house with it. He knocked on the door again and this time the old man came right to the door. “Boy, I thought I told you no magazines.”
“No, sir. I know that. I wanted to bring you a gift.” The boy handed him the figurine and the old man’s face lit up.
The old man was surprised and said: “Boy, you have a big heart. Why are you doing this?”
The boy smiled at the man and said: “Because you like dogs.”
From that day on, the old man started coming out of the house and greeting people. He and the boy became friends.
This simple nice act changed both of their lives forever.
1. How did the boy feel when he first knocked on the old man’s door?

A．Excited.	B．Sad.
C．Frightened.	D．Silly.

2. What can we learn from the article about the old man?

A．He preferred dog figurines to real dogs.

B．He longed for (渴望) friendship with others.

C．He found his neighbors unfriendly.

D．He was sad because he felt alone.

3. When the boy knocked on the door again, ________.

A．the old man was impatient with him

B．the old man refused to open the door

C．he didn’t think the old man would open it

D．he wanted to sell a magazine to the old man

4. With the story, the author tries to show us that _______.

A．smiling is the best way to make others feel comfortable

B．we should help strangers if they are angry

C．being kind to others can have a positive effect on our lives

D．you need to do something special if you want to make friends

【推荐3】John H. Johnson was born in a black family in Arkansas City in 1918. His father died in an accident when John was six. He was reaching high school age, but his hometown offered no high school for blacks.

Fortunately he had a strong-willed, caring mother. John remembers that his mother told him many times, “Son, you can be anything you really want to be if you just believe.” She told him not to be dependent on others, including his mother. “You have to earn success,” said she. “All the people who work hard don’t succeed, but the only people who do succeed are those who work hard.”

These words came from a woman less than a third grade education. She also knew that believing and hard work don’t mean everything. So she worked hard as a cook for two years to save enough to take her son — then 15 — to Chicago.

Chicago in 1933 was not the promised land that black southerners were looking for, John’s mother and stepfather could not find work. But there John could go to school, and there he learned the power of words — as editor of the newspaper and yearbook of Du Stable High School. His wish was to publish a magazine for blacks.

While others discouraged him, John’s mother offered him more words to live by: “Nothing beats a failure but a try.” She also let him pawn (典当) her furniture to get the $500 he needed to start the Negro magazine.

It is natural the difficulties and failures followed John closely until he became very successful. He always keeps his mother’s words in mind. “Son, failure is not in your vocabulary.”

Now John H. Johnson is one of the 400 richest people in America — worth $150 million.

1. Why did John’s mother decide to move to Chicago? Because ________.

A．John’s father died in his hometown when he was very young

B．life was too hard for them to stay on in their hometown, while life in Chicago would be better for blacks

C．there were no schools for blacks in their hometown

D．John needed more education and he could go to school there

2. Which of the following is TRUE?

A．Chicago was the promised land for black southerners in 1933.

B．John’s mother worked hard as a cook to make their life better.

C．With the help of his mother, John got the money to start the Negro magazine.

D．Now John is the richest man in America.

3. What kind of woman was John’s mother? She was a ________.

A．strong woman with much knowledge

B．woman who would do anything for her son

C．woman with little school education but knew a lot about life

D．loving mother with different kinds of experience in life

4. The underlined sentence in the fifth paragraph means ________.

A．if you try, you will succeed in the end

B．a failure is difficult to beat, even if you try

C．a try is always followed by a failure

D．nothing but a try can help you out of failure

5. What’s the main idea of the passage?

A．How John H. Johnson became somebody.

B．The mental support John’s mother gave him.

C．The importance of a good education.

D．The key to success for blacks.

【推荐1】On the first Friday of every month the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics releases what’s known as the jobs report. It’s closely watched by economists, business leaders, investors and politicians because the report gives a sense of how the U.S. economy is doing.

The government says the U.S. economy added 250,000 jobs, better than what analysts and economists expected. Most of the new jobs were in the fields of healthcare, manufacturing, construction, as well as transportation and warehousing. The unemployment rate is a percentage of the U.S. workforce that doesn’t have a job. The report says it stayed the same in October 2018 as it did in September at 3.7 percent. That’s the lowest it’s been in 49 years, which is good news for workers and the economy. The report also finds that average wages increased. That’s significant because while the number of jobs has been growing for years now, wages have been a sticking point because they haven’t kept pace.

In October, though, the Labor Department says wages grew by 3.1 percent. That’s their fastest pace in nine years. With the U.S. midterm elections set for Tuesday, President Donald Trump, a Republican, called the jobs report incredible and said Americans should keep it going by voting for Republicans. Senator Chuck Schumer, a Democrat, said “numbers will mean little when average Americans see their healthcare costs go up because of Republican actions”. So he wants people to vote for Democrats. Regardless of where folks stand politically, one interesting side effect of strong job growth is the challenge it creates for companies to get people to work for them. Consider what retailers(零售商) are doing to attract seasonal or temporary workers with Christmas less than two months away.

1. The jobs report is highly concerned in the U.S. because ________.

A．it interests politicians a lot

B．investors want to get more profits

C．economists expect to analyze the data

D．it mirrors the economic condition of the country

2. The underlined phrase “a sticking point” in paragraph 2 probably means ________.

A．a goal easy to stick to	B．a task important to perform
C．a situation hard to adapt to	D．a problem difficult to solve

3. What’s the attitude of Donald Trump towards the wage growth?

A．Disappointed.	B．Delighted.
C．Indifferent.	D．Reserved.

4. What can be inferred from the passage?

A．The jobs report is made use of for political purposes.

B．Chuck Schumer thought much of the wage growth.

C．Retailers are pessimistic about the sales during Christmas.

D．Temporary workers find it hard to find a job before Christmas.

【推荐2】I love snakes. My mom definitely does not. When she was a kid, snakes used to hide in warm spots under the furniture. So she grew up afraid she’d step on a snake. I grew up hoping I’d see one... outside! Lots of people who are afraid of snakes have never even seen one. So where does our fear come from?

Scientists wonder about this too. Their experiments with adults, kids, and even babies show that it’s complicated. People may not be born afraid of snakes, but we are born able to see them quickly. In tests with pictures, people picked out snakes faster than they could find flowers, frogs, and caterpillars. It wasn’t just snakes, though. People also found spiders and angry faces faster than “safe” things like flowers. It seems like we find things that might be dangerous to us faster than things that aren’t

People also learn to fear snakes faster than we learn to fear many other things. We take our hints from other people’s scared voices and faces. Some scientists think we’ve evolved this way—faster to see snakes and faster to learn to fear them. After all, if we had to be bitten by a snake to learn that it’s dangerous, we might learn our lesson too late.

So why does it matter if we’re afraid of snakes? It may not matter much to us, but it matters to snakes. People protect animals they like, not animals they fear. Snakes may not be as cute as dolphins, but they’re just as important to the environment. Snakes eat insects that are pests to humans. Snakes are also food for other animals, so when we kill snakes, we’re hurting other creatures too.

How do we get past our fears to give snakes a chance? Scientists did a study recently where students of your age went on a field trip, Guides helped them find and capture snakes in the forest. Everyone could safely touch and hold a snake. It turns out that snakes aren’t so bad when you get to know them. Most people who were afraid of snakes before the field trip weren’t afraid afterward. In fact, snakes even became some students’ favorite animal. Hmm, maybe I should take my mom on the next field trip.

Remember：Always respect snakes, whether you’re afraid of them or not.

1. We learn from Paragraph 1 that her mom’s fear of snakes is______.

A．unreasonable

B．questionable

C．acceptable

D．incredible

2. According to Paragraph 3, people’s fear comes from______.

A．school education	B．others’ influence
C．self-experience	D．scientific researches

3. Which paragraph shows people how to overcome their fear of snakes?

A．Paragraph 2.	B．Paragraph 3.
C．Paragraph 4.	D．Paragraph 5.

4. Which of the following will the author agree with?

A．Snakes are not dangerous at all.

B．People’s fear matters little to snakes.

C．Snakes are well protected by humans.

D．People should make peace with snakes.

【推荐3】“My wife of 24 years, Marie Roberts, was raised in New York City, worked in the fashion industry, and never got her hands dirty,” said Keith Roberts. “Then, nine years ago, I wanted to move to Florida and reconnect to my country life, but how would I inspire(激发) the same feeling in, well, a city woman? I brought her a two-month-old potbellied pig.”

At first sight, Marie, then 46, was smitten. So soon she took in another abandoned(遗弃) pig. And thus began Sugarloaf Mountain Farm, her animal shelter in central Florida. With the couple’s two children grown up, these animals would now be Marie’s babies.

The Farm now has 300 rescues, from alpacas to donkeys, each with its own story. “A gentleman had a litter of eight pigs, and all but one died,” says Marie. “She weighed one pound and suffered great pain. For three weeks straight, I fed that baby every hour, day and night, seldom sleeping.” Till now, Marie still gets five to ten requests a day to save animals and has to turn most down. “If she can’t rescue the animal, she works with that person to find a solution,” Keith says. “She’s not only saving animals; above all, she’s giving their owners peace of mind.”

“A woman called from her nursing home,” Marie remembers. “Her pigs would be abandoned if she couldn’t find a suitable home. ‘I only have a few months, and I need to know that they’ll be safe,’ she said.” So Marie drove three hours and got them. Soon after, Marie received a note from the woman’s daughter. “Dear Marie,” she wrote. “My mom went peacefully, as she went knowing that they are forever loved. Thank you for being Mom’s angel.”

“She is a ball of energy,” Keith adds. “A few times she’s gone so far in some situations, like when she locked herself in the chicken coop(鸡舍). I found her sitting in it with ten chicks nestled in her lap.” That is exactly what you’d expect from a true mother hen.

1. Why did Keith give Marie a little pig?

A．To help her get used to her new job.	B．To help her grow fond of animals.
C．To help   her get away from loneliness.	D．To help her connected with country life.

2. The underlined word “smitten” in Paragraph 2 can be replaced by ________.

A．attracted	B．puzzled
C．disturbed	D．frightened

3. Marie accepted the dying woman’s request because ________.

A．she felt sorry for the woman

B．she wished to bring peace to the woman

C．she never refused to help others

D．she wanted to have more pets on her farm