Jack London, one of America's famous writers, was born in California in 1876. During his life, London worked at many jobs. His broad life experiences would become the background for his writing.
London loved to read. As a teenager, he spent many hours educating himself at the Oakland, California, public library. He studied in the University of California at Berkeley, but he stayed for only six months. He thought Berkeley was "not lively enough" and wanted to do something more exciting.
London wrote stories about working people and the hard times they had making a living. He worked as a sailor, farmer, factory employee, railroad worker, and gold prospector, to name just a few of his many jobs.
London grew up near the waterfront in Oakland. He loved the water. When he was fifteen years old, he bought a small sailboat. Later he sailed to Japan. Like many people of the time, London caught the Klondike Gold Rush. In 1897, he headed for Alaska. He didn't find gold, but he discovered something even more valuable. He discovered that people enjoyed listening to the stories he made up with his imagination. London made the miners laugh with story after story. Later, using his experiences during the Gold Rush, he created many more colorful stories.
London decided to live a full, exciting life. He once said, "I would rather be a superb meteor(流星) than a sleepy and permanent(永恒的) planet.”Each day, he pushed himself. Once London decided that he was going to be a writer, nothing could stop him. His goal was to write at least one thousand words every day. He refused to stop even when he was sick. In eighteen years, the writer published fifty-one books and hundreds of articles. He was the best-selling and highest-paid author of his day. Many people also considered him to be the best writer. White Fang and The Call of the Wild are his most famous stories and are about surviving in the Alaskan wilderness. Readers can enjoy Jack London's energy and his talent for telling wonderful stories each time they open one of his novels.
1. Why was Jack London able to write on many topics?| A．He pushed himself to reach goals. |
| B．He had a great number of experiences and jobs. |
| C．He was drawn to the Klondike Gold Rush. |
| D．He was the best-selling and highest-paid author. |
| A．That he sailed to Japan. |
| B．That he traveled to Alaska in 1897. |
| C．That he spent much of his time writing. |
| D．That he was not interested in college life enough. |
| A．was expert at the stars | B．aimed high and wanted to succeed |
| C．was interested in life | D．faced a choice between life and death |
| A．To tell London was the "best writer". |
| B．To describe life during the Klondike Gold Rush. |
| C．To provide information on Jack's life. |
| D．To introduce books written by Jack London. |
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【推荐1】One year before, at age 18, Leszyeski had aged out of foster care (寄养中心), having been in the system since she was four when her single mother was no longer able to care for her. Leszyeski was now enrolled in college hoping to become a doctor. And the only furniture she had in her apartment was an air mattress with a hole in it.
Then she learned about an organization Chairity. The organization provides furniture and household goods for young adults who have left foster care. Leszyeski reached out to Charity, a nonprofit formed by 23-year-old Maria Paparella.
Paparella first became aware of foster care in elementary school when her parents were considering adopting a child. The plan didn't work out, but Paparella often found herself thinking about that child. “I'm really close with my family, and I just couldn't imagine being completely on my own at 18,” she says.
At 16, Paparella visited Summit County Children Services, with a list of questions, trying to understand what aging out looked like. One of her questions was “What's not being met for these young people?” Near the top of the list was furniture. “That struck home,” says Paparella. The idea of “moving into an apartment without a bed to sleep on or a sofa to sit on” pulled at her heartstrings.
Paparella contacted her parents' friends, asking if they had spare furniture to donate. A local furniture store offered free ware-house space and its delivery truck. Watching the recipients' faces when they received a bed, a couch — whatever — was amazing. Paparella remembers delivering a gold lamp to a woman and watching her polish it lovingly, getting rid of dirt and fingerprints.
Today, Chairity has given furniture to nearly 200 young adults in homes across six Ohio counties. Paparella is convinced these contributions give the recipients hope and confidence. Leszyeski agrees.“It makes me feel like I'm not different from other people. My whole life, I've felt abnormal,”she says,“Now, I feel normal.”
1. Which can best describe Leszyeski's life after leaving foster care?| A．Tough but hopeful. | B．Poor and aimless. |
| C．Wealthy but boring. | D．Independent and carefree. |
| A．To get some financial benefits from it. | B．To help those aging out of foster care. |
| C．To aid the needy couple adopt a child. | D．To ask people to donate some couches. |
| A．Living without parents. | B．Moving into a new house. |
| C．Getting free truck delivery. | D．Visiting a foster care center. |
| A．It changes young adults' whole life. | B．It brings confidence to the recipients. |
| C．It has helped lots of homeless people. | D．It makes people different from others. |
【推荐2】I had often dreamt of the possibility of spending a year away from my hometown of Leeds in England, living in a foreign country. When I was old enough, however, I thought that my language was going to hold me back.
However, luckily for me, University of Leeds, where I was studying at the time, made it possible for any student, even people like me speaking only one language, to study abroad. Before I knew it I was boarding a plane for Salzburg, Austria. I wasn’t quite sure what to expect of the experience ahead of me but I was prepared to accept the challenge.
The university was quite small but the classes were large. Also, Austrian students usually take five years to complete their courses, so studying there was somewhat more relaxing than at home. Austrian students go home quite often, too. Therefore, the foreign students had to socialise with each other quite a lot, which didn’t help with our language skills.
Salzburg itself is a picture-postcard Austrian city. It is also famous for being the birthplace of Mozart and the setting for The Sound of Music. As a result, it is usually very busy with tourists. I also found that it doesn’t have a lot of entertainment for young people, in comparison with Leeds.
There are, however, many advantages of living in Salzburg. For example, get on a train and you can be in Prague, Rome or Krakow within a matter of hours. By the end of my year in Salzburg, I had visited eight other countries in Europe.
After spending a year overseas, I went back to my courses in Leeds and I was much more focused on what I wanted to get out of my last year and more appreciative of the opportunity the university provided. The year in Salzburg really showed me that you get a lot more out of a place when you live there compared to when you are just traveling through. I’d recommend all students to spend a year studying abroad if they can.
1. Compared with University of Leeds, the university in Salzburg ________.| A．provides more social events | B．has longer university years |
| C．has more foreign students | D．offers more small classes |
| A．it’s convenient for people to travel | B．it has a high-speed rail network |
| C．it’s the hometown of Mozart | D．it’s full of foreign tourists |
| A．He benefited a lot from it. | B．He thought it made no difference to him. |
| C．I was far from what he had expected. | D．It badly affected his studies at home. |
| A．His not being old enough. | B．His fearing the culture shock. |
| C．His becoming homesick easily. | D．His not knowing a foreign language. |
【推荐3】Some scientists were studying sea turtles in Costa Rica in Central America. Suddenly they found one turtle had something sticking out of its nose. It could not breathe. At first, the scientists thought it was a worm. But when they pulled the object out, it was a plastic straw(吸管）.
After the scientists made sure the turtle was healthy, they helped it back into the water. They posted a video of the rescue on the Internet. When people saw it, they were shocked.
The video motivated Diana Lofflin to start StrawFree.org. The group is in California. Its goal is to make people aware of (意识到)the harm plastic straws cause to the environment. Lofflin hopes people will find alternatives(可选择的事物）to plastic straws.
Sipping from a straw is fun. But think twice. Giving up that plastic straw can help protect the environment. Saying no to a plastic straw is a way to make a difference in the world.
A movement to ban（禁止）plastic straws is growing. In California, it is illegal for food servers to give straws to customers who don’t ask for them. Seattle, Washington, has banned all plastic utensils(器具).
Plastic straws are put out for the taking in many restaurants. But some states no longer allow it.
Starbucks is banning plastic straws. The company says it will stop handing out plastic straws in all its stores by 2020. With 28,000 stores, that’s about 1 billion fewer straws a year. How will you sip your drink? The company has made a new lid for its cups, like those used by little kids. Unlike straws, the new lid can be recycled.
Nancy Wallace works for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, in Washington, D.C. She says schools should reduce the amount of plastic they use. Kids must do their part, too. Plastic litter gets into rivers, lakes, and oceans. If fish and other animals eat it ,they will be killed. Wallace says : “We’re pinning our hopes on the next generation to help solve this problem.”
1. Why did the scientists post a video of rescuing the turtle on the Internet?| A．To make a big difference all over the world. |
| B．To make the people shocked while seeing it. |
| C．To ban plastic straws in California and other states. |
| D．To arouse people’s awareness of environmental protection. |
| A．Helped. | B．Allowed. |
| C．Asked. | D．Encouraged. |
| A．The new lid. | B．Hopes on children. |
| C．The last Straw | D．Actions on pollution. |
【推荐1】Even if you don't know much about Russian author Maxim Gorky (1868-1936), you may be familiar with his famous poem The Song of the Stormy Petrel since its ending note “Let it break in all its fury!" has been encouraging generations of people for years now.
Gorky was a highly influential author. More than any other writer, he laid the foundations for the famous literary style known as socialist realism. In this kind of writing, the author uses literary techniques to create the impression of reality in his or her writings.
March 16 this year marked the 152th anniversary of Gorky's birth.
He was born into an ordinary life but soon became an orphan, before being raised by his grandmother in poverty. As he grew older, he would take a job and then quickly move on to another. He tried many jobs, but the one that he seemed to love the most was being a journalist.
It was in this job that he gained a particular impression of the world — that it was horriblyinequitablein its treatment of the poor. It was a world, therefore, that had to go. Gorky was naturally attracted to the political movement of Marxian social democracy.He knew many revolutionaries including the most important one of all, Vladimir Lenin(1870-1924). The two became friends in 1903 and The Song of the Stormy Petrel was one of Lenin's favorite works by Gorky.
Asa writer, Gorky naturally valued literature. But lie also valued life experience, of which he had plenty. The key to being a modern person, he thought, was to acquire a critical attitude: “Keep reading books, but remember that a book's only a book, and you should learn to think for yourself,” he once said.
1. What can we learn about Gorky's childhood?| A．He lived an extraordinary life. | B．He tried few jobs. |
| C．He led a hard life. | D．He grew up by himself |
| A．Unconditional. | B．Unfair. |
| C．Unreal. | D．Unfriendly. |
| A．He valued critical thinking. | B．He was of little influence. |
| C．He was easy to bow before difficulties. | D．He discounted life experience. |
| A．Gorky and his family. | B．The hardship Gorky experienced. |
| C．Gorky's famous works. | D．Gorky's influence in literature and his life. |
【推荐2】Cartoons suit the way we like information to be presented these days: vividly and in small amounts. We are used to cartoons and comic series that take a biting look at modern life or provide a bit of escapism. But recently we have seen an increase in the number of comic books: book-length comics with a single, continuous narrative. Historically, comic books were not popular outside France, Belgium, Japan, and the US. The exception is the worldwide popularity of a young reporter-detective from Belgium, Tintin.
The creation of the Belgian cartoonist Herge, The Adventures of Tintin first appeared in a Belgian newspaper in 1929. Each story appeared as a cartoon series week by week, but soon after was republished in book form. One of the main attractions for readers was that they were taken to parts of the world they had never seen and probably never would: Russia, Congo, America. Herge himself only traveled outside Belgium later in life, but his passion was educating his readers about other cultures and places.
Two things set Herge apart as a comic novelist. The first was his technical drawing skills: with just a few simple lines he could communicate a particular facial expression or movement. The second was the careful research he put into his stories. In The Crab with the Golden Claws, Tintin follows an opium-smuggling (鸦片走私) ring to North Africa; in King Ottakar’s Scepter, he makes an attempt at a military coup (政变) in a central European country. While telling these stories, Herge also made a fine balance between serious topics and humor.
Tintin had more than his fair share of adventures, but perhaps the greatest is his journey to the Moon, told in Destination Moon and Explorers on the Moon. Written in 1953, sixteen years before the first Moon landing, the stories show a remarkable eye for technical detail and feeling for the nature of space travel. In the early 1950s, few could imagine what it was like to be looking down at our planet from outer space. And that is Herge’s true gift: to understand what a place was like without ever having been there.
1. What can be learned about comic books from the passage?| A．They mostly involve detective stories. |
| B．They present information in small amounts. |
| C．They are taking a positive look at modern life. |
| D．They were popular outside Belgium historically. |
| A．The stories were the first comic novel published in book form. |
| B．The stories used to be cartoon series that appeared week by week. |
| C．The stories had a good balance between serious topics and humor. |
| D．The stories enabled them to learn about places they had never been to. |
| A．To show Herge had a good sense of humor. |
| B．To show Herge liked touching on serious topics. |
| C．To illustrate Herge based stories on research results. |
| D．To illustrate Herge was expert at technical drawing skills. |
| A．Creative. | B．Devoted. |
| C．Serious. | D．Humorous. |
Little Lady Starts Big War
Harriet Beecher Stowe had poured her heart into her anti-slavery book "Uncle Tom's Cabin."
But when the first 5,000 copies were printed in 1852. They sold out in two days. In a year the book had sold 300,000 copies in the United States and150,000 in England.
Harriet did have strong religious views against slavery (When asked how she came to write the book, she replied: "God wrote it."), and she tried to convince people slavery was wrong, so perhaps the book could be considered propaganda.
Though she was born in Connecticut in 1832, as a young woman she moved to Cincinnati, Ohio, when her father accepted the presidency of newly founded Lane Theological Seminary (神学院). Ohio was a free state, but just across the Ohio River in Kentucky, Harriet saw slavery in action.
Its vast influence strengthened the anti-slavery movement and angered defenders of the slave system.
In fact, when Abraham Lincoln met Harriet at the White House during the Civil War, he said, "So, this is the little lady who started this big war."
| A．She had read a lot about the slavery system. |
| B．Today some historians think that it helped bring on the American Civil War. |
| C．But if so, it was true propaganda, because it accurately described the evils of slavery. |
D．For a while  it outsold every book in the world, except the Bible. |
| E．But neither she nor her first publisher thought it would be a big success. |
| F．She lived 18 years in Cincinnati, marrying Calvin Stowe, professor of a college. |
| G．She began her replies. |
