It was New Year’s night. An aged man was standing at a window. Few more hopeless people than himself now moved towards their certain goal—the tomb. He had already passed sixty of the age leading to it, and he had brought from his journey nothing but errors and regrets.
The days of his youth appeared like dreams before him, and he recalled the serious moment when his father placed him at the entrances of the two roads. One leading to a peaceful, sunny place covered with flowers and fruits; the other leading to a deep dark cave which was endless. He looked towards the sky and cried painfully, “Oh youth, return! Oh, my father, place me once more at the entrance to life.” But both his father and the days of his youth had passed away.
He saw the lights flowing away in the darkness, and these were the days of his wasted life; he saw a star fall from the sky and disappear, and this was the symbol of himself. Then he remembered his friends in his childhood, who entered life together with him. But they had made their way to success and were then honored and happy on that New Year’s night.
The clock in the high church tower struck and the sound made him remember his parents. They had taught him and prayed to God for his good. But he chose the wrong way with shame and grief. He dared no longer to look towards the heaven where his parents lived. He burst out a cry: “Come back, my early days!” And his youth did return, for all this was only a dream on New Year’s night. He was still young though his faults were real. He had not yet entered the deep dark cave, and he was still free to walk on the road which leads to the peaceful and sunny land.
1. Which of the following words can best describe the aged man?| A．Merciful. | B．Foolish. |
| C．Regretful. | D．Fortunate. |
| A．The man wasted his life at one time. |
| B．The man’s friends missed their youth. |
| C．The man’s friends suffered failure finally. |
| D．The man was lonely in his childhood. |
| A．A Hopeless New Year’s Night | B．Two Roads to Take |
| C．Youth Coming Back | D．An Old Man’s Decision |
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When we were growing up in our grandparents’ home, Jack, my grandfather, was always in his room sitting in the chair and listening to the radio. The voices speaking from the metal box day and night, taught us that there was a larger world outside. He would roll the black dial (刻度盘) back and forth until the signal was clear. Then he would listen.
Now he is old and falls ill. When I went to visit him, he said to me, “I dislike the Internet. The problem is that we’re losing primary contact with each other. No more shaking hands. Everyone is so busy. We want too much and in the process of getting it we miss so much." He stopped for a while. “It makes me lonely and sad.” Then he looked at me, “I just want to hear your voices.”
I think of all the voices on the radio he has spent a lifetime listening to. I asked, “How did you become interested in radio?” “I don’t know,” he said. “It was another way to reach people. I was always interested in searching for a better signal, a clearer, more powerful signal that could communicate with someone somewhere.”
“And I’ll tell you another funny thing: you can electronically eliminate all kinds of noise from the signal, but you can’t get rid of natural noise caused by thunder and lightning, rainstorms, or snowstorms.”
He closed his eyes and smiled. “I was just thinking that in spite of all our technologies, maybe we haven’t progressed that far as human beings. We shouldn’t forget we still have the same basic needs.”
1. What did Jack use to do in his room? (No more than 12 words)2. Why did Jack roll the black dial back and forth? (No more than 5 words)
3. How is Jack feeling now? (No more than 8 words)
4. What does the underlined word “eliminate” in Paragraph 4 mean? (1 word)
5. What should you do to solve the problem of losing direct contact with others? (No more than 20 words)
【推荐2】I'd been asked to go to an editor's office with the old program “We have a story we think you'd be perfect for”. Here was the topic: We want you to write about how middle-aged men have no friends. Seeing that,I couldn't help thinking, “Excuse me? I have plenty of friends.” Then the editor told me there were all sorts of evidence out there to show how men, as they age, let their close friendships go, and that the fact can cause all sorts of problems and have a terrible impact on their health.
As I walked back to my desk in the newsroom-a distance of maybe 100 yards-I quickly took stock of my friend list. First of all, there was my friend Mark. Wait, how often do we actually hang out? Maybe four or five times a year? And then there was another best friend from high school, Rory, and…I actually could not remember the last time I'd seen him.
There were all those other good friends who seemed as if they're still in my life because we follow one another via social media, but as I ran down the list of those I considered real, true, lifelong friends, I realized that it had been years since I saw many of them, even decades for a few.
By the time I got back to my desk, I realized that I was indeed perfect for this story, not because I was unusual in any way, but because my story was very, very typical. And as I looked into what that means, I realized that in the long term, I was heading down a path that was very, very dangerous. And I knew I needed a change.
1. What did the author think of the topic at first?| A．He showed an interest in it. |
| B．He felt surprised and doubtful. |
| C．He knew the editor was joking. |
| D．He thought it was perfect for him. |
| A．He had lost some best friends. |
| B．He wasn't popular with others. |
| C．He had close friends in his life. |
| D．He hadn't made any true friends. |
| A．By letters. | B．Through the Internet. |
| C．By phoning each other. | D．By getting together regularly. |
| A．The author was a good writer. |
| B．The author liked making new friends. |
| C．Others had more friends than the author. |
| D．The author would attach importance to friendship. |
【推荐3】There is an old saying that all of us are born with two bags hung on our necks. A small bag in front of our chest is filled with other people's faults(缺点)，while the big one at the back is full of our own faults.
This makes it easy to find other people's faults, but hard to see our own faults behind us.
There was a boy named Tommy. He had four friends: Simon, Jack, Johnny and Harry. Tommy always opened the front bag to check what was in it. He saw other people's faults very quickly.
When Simon was impatient with him, he said to Simon, “It's so easy for you to get angry. It's hard to be friends with you.”
Later that day, Tommy told his mother about Jack's dishonesty. “Jack takes my things without asking. He also forgets to return them.” Tommy himself did not like sharing things with anyone.
When Johnny was too tired to play with him, he said, “You are such a rude person.”
He thought Harry was too proud of his rich family. But Tommy was just as proud of himself because he could not see any of his faults. He could not understand why he did not get on well with others.
If only Tommy would turn the bags around, he would discover his own impatience, dishonesty, bad manners and vanity(虚荣). They were no better than that of Simon, Jack, Johnny and Harry.
1. According to the story, the bag filled with our own faults is hung ________.| A．on our heads | B．in front of our chest |
| C．at the back | D．in our arms |
| A．dishonesty | B．patience |
| C．bad manners | D．vanity |
| A．Harry became angry easily. |
| B．Johnny took Tommy's things without asking. |
| C．Jack's parents were very rich, so he was very proud. |
| D．Tommy's faults were no better than those of his friends. |
| A．We should always point out other people's faults. |
| B．When we point out other's people's faults, you are helping them to be better people. |
| C．It's not easy for us to find our own faults, so we should not care about them. |
| D．We should always “turn our bags around" to see our own faults. |
【推荐1】Kenyon Scudder once told me a story about his friend, Michael. Michael happened to be on a train sitting next to a young man who seemed worried. Finally the young man told the friend that he was a convict (罪犯) returning home from a prison far away. What he did had brought shame on his family, and they had neither visited him nor written to him. He hoped, however, that this was only because they were too poor to travel and too busy to write.
When he was set free he had written to tell them he wanted to go home. To make matters easy for them, however, he had asked them to put up a signal (信号) for him when the train passed their little farm. If the family had forgiven (原谅) him, they were to put up a white ribbon (丝带) in the big apple tree near the railway. If they didn’t want him back, they were to do nothing, and he would stay on the train, and go far away.
As the train neared his hometown his suspense became so great that he was afraid to look out of the window. He asked Michael to watch for the big apple tree. They changed seats. In a minute, Michael put his hand on the young convict’s shoulder. "There it is," he said, his eyes filled with sudden tears. "It’s all right. The whole tree is white with ribbons."
1. The word "suspense" underlined in the last paragraph means ________.| A．interest | B．pain |
| C．happiness | D．worry |
| A．The young man’s seat was far from the window. |
| B．The young man was afraid that he was refused by his family. |
| C．The young man was afraid of seeing the white ribbons in the tree. |
| D．The young man was sure that his family would accept him. |
| A．His family hadn’t visited him for a long time. |
| B．His family would not remember him. |
| C．His family hadn’t written to him frequently. |
| D．His family might not allow him to go home. |
【推荐2】My 83-year-old mother came to live with me a year ago last November. She was very ill and I had to put my life on hold to care for her.
Each morning, I got her up and dressed her and made her breakfast and sat with her. I rushed for a bowl when she felt sick, and lit fires to keep her warm. I cooked and talked her into eating some. It’s a hard job caring for a sick or dying parent, whoever you are. But it was especially hard for me, I feel, because I am a doctor myself. I couldn’t help looking at her in two different ways. The medical professional saw a body and checked it with the cold heart that medicine requires. But the daughter saw the woman who had given birth to me, sent me off to college and had been an important role for a long time in my life for over half a century.
Also, my mother didn’t appreciate how hard it was for me to care for her. I remember an exchange between her and the nurse who came to see her once a week.
“You could get some more help with care.” “Oh, I don’t think I need that,” Mom said.
Mom didn’t understand that the help would have taken some of the hard work off me. None of the treatments her doctors gave her worked, and finally her life became about free of pain. She refused painkillers (止痛药) for a long time, but finally the pain beat her. And when she accepted painkillers she accepted the fact that she would die.
Illness and needs took us across personal boundaries (边界) I’d never considered before. And yet, while living and being and dying with Mom I saw something valuable coming. We became closer. We shared so many stories from our past that it was as if our memories had become one.
In the past our relationship had been difficult. We had often argued. But when the end came, both of us simply accepted that we looked at the world in different ways. We were daughter and mother and we loved each other. That was all that mattered.
1. Why was taking care of her mom especially hard for the writer?| A．She was too busy living her own life. |
| B．She and her mom had a difficult relationship. |
| C．She was too old to look after her mom carefully. |
| D．She regarded her mom both as a patient and a loved one. |
| A．she felt very upset. | B．she was surprised. |
| C．she showed her thanks to the nurse. | D．she thought she needed a more helpful nurse. |
| A．the writer’s mom was a kind and gentle woman. |
| B．it was easier for the writer to take care of her mom as a doctor. |
| C．the writer was getting on better with her mom while taking care of her. |
| D．the writer’s mom had difficulty understanding what the nurse said. |
| A．Love was more important than differences. | B．Being alive was the most important thing. |
| C．We should learn to understand other people. | D．It was better for family members to live their own. |
【推荐3】The Battista family of New York City was on vacation in Ocean City, Maryland when their 2-year-old Boston terrier Fisher went lost on July 4, 2020.
The Battistas immediately blanketed the area with missing posters, barraged (炮击) social media, and even got Fisher face-time on a local floating billboard.
With no leads, the family decided to remain in the area for an extended stay. They hired a tracker and even went so far as consulting with an “animal communicator” in hopes of tapping into Fisher's whereabouts—all to no avail.
The family also set up a findfisher Facebook page, which quickly gathered 8, 000 followers, and launched an online fundraiser to raise awareness and aid them in their efforts to bring their beloved fur baby home.
“Signs have been posted, and we've extended our stay in Ocean City and arranged to bring in a professional dog tracker, in addition to making continuous searching trips in a car, on foot, and on a bike,” Matthew Battista wrote.
Bravely, the Battistas kept the wheels of the Internet grapevine turning, refusing to let the details of Fisher's disappearance be forgotten. As a result, Fisher became something of a media darling in absentia.
On April 20, 2021, 290 days after Fisher made his unauthorized Independence Day exit, Baltimore City resident Wayne Horn was performing maintenance on his motorcycle when he noticed a stray (走失的) dog in the road. When a friend of Horn's posted picture of the found dog to Facebook, the responses of “That's Fisher!” came back faster than a boomerang.
Informed of the news, Elissa Battista recognized Fisher immediately. “From the moment I saw the photos I knew it was him from the markings and his little tongue sticking out,” she posted to Facebook.
The reunion was quickly arranged. The Battistas had some local friends pick him up from the Horns, and then Elissa made the five-hour trip to retrieve Fisher and bring him home. Apart from minor signs of possible frostbite, Fisher was in excellent shape.
1. What was described in detail in the text?| A．Efforts made to search for the lost dog. |
| B．Online responses to the Battistas' request. |
| C．Different comments on the touching story. |
| D．Battistas' regret for losing their loved dog. |
| A．A professional dog tracker brought it back soon. |
| B．One of family members discovered it in the road. |
| C．Wayne Horn sent it back shortly after he found it. |
| D．Online viewers recognized its photos posted online. |
| A．Break down. | B．Get back. |
| C．Pay back. | D．Take apart. |
| A．Never giving up pays off. | B．Loyalty always comes first. |
| C．Gods favors the prepared mind. | D．Misfortune may be an actual blessing. |
