【推荐2】At times my mom has been uncomfortable seeing these qualities in me. For example，when I was 12，I went to Puerto Rico all by myself to stay with my grandmother for the summer. My mom was extremely nervous about it. She kept telling me how things were different in Puerto Rico，to always put on sunscreen，not to wander away from my grandmother，and other warnings. She helped me pack and did not leave the airport until she saw my plane take off.
But despite her worries，she let me go on my own. As I moved into my teens，she continued to give me space to grow and learn，even when it might have been difficult for her. When I reached my senior year，I decided to move away for college. Once again I found that I differed from my peers：While many of them wanted to stay close to home，I couldn’t wait to be out in the world on my own. While my mom may not have been happy at the thought of my going away，she was supportive and excited for me.
One big thing I realized during my senior year，as my mom granted me more freedom，was that she actually believes in me and trusts me. That means a lot. Most of my life，and especially when I was little，the main person I tried to impress in my schoolwork or other things was my mother. I knew she expected nothing but the best from me. Sometimes it was hard to live up to her standards；getting a single B on my report card would make me feel bad because I knew she wanted me to have all A’s.
I know that her high standards have helped me stay focused on what’s important，like education，and made me who I am. I am thankful for her support and involvement in my life .Most of all I respect her. She is the strongest woman I know and that’s why I have turned out so strong and independent.
1. When the author decided to go to Puerto Rico，his mother________.

A．wanted to go with him

B．worried about his safety

C．didn’t allow him to do so

D．asked his grandmother for advice

2. The author decided to move away for college to________.

A．be different from his peers

B．keep away from his mother

C．be independent in the outside world

D．make his mother unhappy

3. We can learn from the third paragraph that the author’s mother________.

A．had a high expectation of him

B．was too strict with him

C．used to expect nothing from him

D．cared little about his learning

4. In the passage，the author mainly wants to tell us________.

A．his long way to becoming independent

B．his good relationship with his mother

C．the importance of a mother’s trust and support

D．his mother’s deep love for him

【推荐3】When my daughter Sara was in the fifth grade, she came to me with a problem. “Marcy hates me!” she cried. “Because Kathy is my friend, too. She wants me to be her friend and nobody else’s. You talk to Marcy. You tell her that I want to be her friend, but I can have other friends, too!”

Oh! I looked at her for a few moments, wondering how I got into this mess (困境), when suddenly an idea came to me.

Picking up two baskets from the living room, I explained, “When everyone is born, he or she has a little basket. This little one here is yours. The big one is mine. As you grow, so does the basket. You can see your little basket is inside mine because when you were born, there were too many things you couldn’t do for yourself. I did everything you couldn’t do on your own.”

She nodded.

“Well, as you grew older and began to do some things on your own, I began placing a few more things in your basket. When you learned to tie your shoes, that went in your basket.”

She said softly, “I can tie my own shoes.”

“Right. As you grow older, there will be more and more things you must do on your own.” As I spoke, I gradually took her basket out of mine and handed it to her. “You will finally carry your own basket with things only you can do.”

She looked up at me and said, “I understand. There are some things that I have to do for myself because they are in my basket.”

1. What was Sara’s problem?

A．She didn’t have a basket.	B．She didn’t want her own basket.
C．She couldn’t deal with her friendship.	D．Her mother was too hard on her.

2. What did the author feel when she heard her daughter’s problem?

A．Angry.	B．Crazy.
C．Proud.	D．Helpless.

3. We can infer that Sara ________.

A．would talk to Marcy herself	B．wouldn’t make friends with Kathy
C．was too young to deal with anything	D．managed to persuade her mother to help her

4. The baskets mentioned in the passage refer to ________.

A．gifts given by God when everyone is born

B．something that people use to keep vegetables

C．growing abilities as you grow up

D．friendship that needs repairing

【推荐1】I stand outside waving at the car pulling slowly out of our driveway. I force a smile, hoping it will cover up my tearing eyes, but I know it’s not working. I run into the house, slam the door behind me, and begin crying. It’s just occurred to me that I can’t see my elder sister, Monsura, in the next four months.

I ask myself why it is that I’m crying when I know she's doing something good for herself. I feel selfish for thinking about it but I’d be lying if I said I was happy for her choosing to study in a university in Boston. When my brother, Shafat, left for college, it was different. I still had one sibling at home to call me the stupidest person on a daily basis.

I am reminded of the things we did together as kids. In our old two-bed-room apartment, our parents gave in to our constant begging and traded rooms with us for one night. It was like being part of the amusement park, using our parents’ big bed as a trampoline (蹦床).It was during the first night that I witnessed a full moon. My sister and I believed my brother. He said that the moon was yellow because it was made from cheese. We made plans to visit the moon so we could melt a part of it and make cheese dip. But now I laugh at myself for being so innocent.

Sitting in front of my computer, I listen to songs that remind me of my two best friends. I come to terms with the fact that there's no longer anyone here to laugh uncontrollably with me or to turn to at night when I have a nightmare.

I’m shaken into reality by the sound of my cell phone ringing. Shafat is calling. I pick up and he immediately says “Thank you for such a great childhood.'' Those few words mean the world to me. We three-way call Monsura and spend the next hour reliving memory after memory, and by the end, I forget that I’m alone at home.

1. Why does the writer feel very sad?

A．She isn't admitted to a university.

B．She has no one to accompany her at home.

C．Monsura thinks she is stupid.

D．Monsura and Shafat didn’t go to the same college.

2. The kids traded rooms with their parents because .

A．they hoped to sleep in one room

B．they expected to see a fall moon

C．they could play together on their parents’ bed

D．they wanted to make plans to visit the moon

3. What is the turning point of the story?

A．That the writer’s brother left home for college.

B．That the writer cried hard on the day when Monsura left.

C．That the writer listened to songs that remind her of something.

D．That the writer talked with her sister and brother on the phone,

4. What might be the best title for the passage?

A．My childhood	B．A very sad day
C．A hard-won family union	D．The most precious family love

【推荐2】Keys to a Good Family Life

In posters and ads we often see pictures of happy families, but family life is not all smiles and laughter. All families are different and have problems, but you can make your family life better with hard work and determination.     1       

Spend time together as a family. Some people are too busy for family time. You have to set aside time xue to plan and spend special times together.     2     Make the conversation around ke the table pleasant and caring; maybe ask each person how their day was or what is happening wang in their school or work life. Doing household chores together also helps.

    3     Allow members of your family to express their own feelings and ideas. Maintain eye contact and don’t interrupt when someone is talking. Listen carefully to what they are saying, before you judge or disagree. Hearing someone else, and being heard by that person, is the foundation of a good relationship.     4     Try not to be angry at someone’s opinions. Even if you think that they are wrong, listen with an open mind to show that you care - and remember that no one is perfect.

Meet each other’s needs. Give time to each and every one of your family members. Know what is going on in their lives and what they need help with.     5     If they need help with something, set aside time to do so. To be aware of your family members’ emotional and physical needs, you need to communicate.

A．Listen to their problems.

B．Try applying the following steps.

C．Allow each person to be an individual.

D．So these steps will help you all get on well.

E．Respect your family members’ feelings and ideas.

F．Every day it should be eating at least one meal together.

G．Each family member has his or her own opinions or suggestions.

【推荐3】After living in the city for nearly ten years, my family decided to be more self-sufficient (自给自足). Then we moved into a house in the country, where we met real challenges.

There was no electricity available in the area. The energy is generated by the wind and sun and stored in batteries. When we first moved in, we lost power almost daily. After this happened a few times, we came to realize how often we wasted electricity. Lights, fans and computers were left on when they were not in use. The refrigerator door was left open too long. The cell phone chargers were plugged in all the time. All of this used unnecessary power. We steadily increased our awareness of conversing (节约) power.

No water line is connected to the house. We have two large water tanks. Every weekend after we came here, we carried two smaller tanks to the nearby town and filled them with water, which we carried back and pumped into our big tanks. It didn’t take us long to understand that we had to use less water. We started taking quicker showers, turning off the water while brushing our teeth and collecting the water every time it rained.

In addition, we are also trying to make other changes, including reducing the amount of waste we produce, growing our own organic vegetables, and reusing things that we would normally throw away. These changes not only make sense financially but also give my kids a feeling of satisfaction in doing something good for the planet.

While living far away from civilization has been a big adjustment, there are many benefits. One of the greatest is teaching my kids the importance of conservation. We used to take water, power and gas for granted. Now we have learned to conserve. I hope that once my kids move out of the house, they will keep the habits that they have formed by living here.

1. Why did the family move to the country?

A．To reduce their expenses.

B．To change their way of life.

C．To get away from the noisy city.

D．To teach the kids to be independent.

2. The family started taking quicker showers in order to ________.

A．save time

B．carry less water

C．protect the tanks

D．save water

3. What kind of benefit does the writer seem to value most?

A．Children’s awareness of conservation.

B．The good habits of protecting the planet.

C．The determination to take up challenges.

D．The ability to adjust to new environments.

【推荐1】She turned up at the doorstep of my house in Cornwall. No way could I have sent her away. No way, not me anyway. Maybe someone had kicked her out of their car the night before. "We're moving house.'; "No space for her any more with the baby coming." "We never really wanted her, but what could we have done? She was a present." People find all sorts of excuses for abandoning(放弃) an animal. And she was one of the most beautiful dogs I had ever seen.
I called her Goldie. If I had known what was going to happen，I would have given her a more creative name. She was so unsettled during those first few days. She hardly ate anything and had such an air of sadness about her. There was nothing I could do to make her happy, it seemed. Heaven knows what had happened to her at her previous owner's. But eventually at the end of the first week she calmed down. Always by my side, whether we were out on one of our long walks or sitting by the fire.
That's why it was such a shock when she pulled away from me one day when we were out for a walk. We were a long way from home, when she started barking and getting very restless. Eventually I couldn't hold her any longer and she raced off down the road towards a farmhouse in the distance as fast as she could.
By the time I reached the farm I was very tired and upset with Goldie. But when I saw her licking (舔) the four puppies (幼犬) I started to feel sympathy towards them. "We didn't know what had happened to her," said the woman at the door. "I took her for a walk one day, soon after the puppies were born, and she just disappeared." "She must have tried to come back to them and got lost," added a boy from behind her. '
I must admit I do miss Goldie, but I've got Nugget now, and she looks just like her mother. And I've learnt a good lesson: not to judge people.
1. In her first few days at the author's house, Goldie        .

A．felt worried	B．was angry
C．ate a little	D．sat by the fire

2. Goldie rushed off to a farmhouse one day because she       .

A．saw her puppies

B．heard familiar barking

C．wanted to leave the author

D．found her way to her old home

3. The passage is organized in order of ­       .

A．time	B．effect
C．importance	D．Complexity

【推荐2】Fred Rogers was a curious man, six feet tall and without pretense (虚伪). He liked to pray, to play the piano, to swim, and to write, and he somehow lived in a different world than I did. We became friends for some 20 years, and I made lifelong friends with his wife, Joanne. I remember thinking that it seemed as if Fred had access to another realm (领域) like the way pigeons have some special magnetic compass that helps them find home.

Fred died in 2003, somewhat quickly, of stomach cancer. He was 74. “Just don’t make Fred into a saint (圣人),”   That has become Joanne’s refrain (叠句). 91 now, still full of energy, she lives alone in the same roomy apartment, in the university section of Pittsburgh, that she and Fred moved into after they raised their two boys. Throughout her 50-year marriage to Fred, she wasn’t the type to hang out on the set or attend production meetings. That was Fred’s thing. He had his career, and she had hers as a concert pianist. For decades she toured the country with her college classmate, Jeannine Morrison, as a piano duo; they didn’t retire the performance until 2008.

“If you make him out to be a saint, people might not know how hard he worked,” Joanne said. Disciplined, focused; a perfectionist — an artist. That was the Fred she and the cast and crew knew. “I think people think of Fred as a child-development expert,” David Newell, the actor who played Mr. “Speedy Delivery” McFeely, told me recently. “As a moral example maybe. But as an artist? I don’t think they think of that.” that was the Fred I came to know. Creating, the creative impulse (冲动), and the creative process were our common interests. He wrote or co-wrote all the scripts for the program — all 33 years of it. He wrote the melodies. He wrote the lyrics. He structured a week of programming around a single theme, many of them difficult topics, like war, divorce, or death.

I don’t know that he cared whether people saw him as an artist. He seemed more intent (急切的) that people not see him at all. The focus was always on you. Or children. Or the tiny things. It was hard to see Fred.

I like you just the way you are. One day he told me where that core message came from. His grandfather, Fred Brooks McFeely, who like the rest of the Rogers family lived in Latrobe, Pennsylvania, about 40 miles east of Pittsburgh. “He was a character,” he said. “Oh, a lot of me came from him.”

His grandfather represented a life of risk and adventure, the very things Fred’s boyhood lacked. He was a lonely kid, an only child until he was 11, when his sister came. He was bullied. Here comes Fat Freddie! He was sickly. He had asthma. He was not allowed to play outside by himself. He spent much of his childhood in his bedroom.

He had music, and he had puppets to keep himself amused. He didn’t need much. He was expected to fill his father’s shoes, become his business partner at the brick company. “My dad was pretty much Mr. Latrobe,” he told me. “He worked hard to accomplish all that he did, and I’ve always felt that that was way beyond me. And yet I’m so grateful that he didn’t push me to do the kinds of things that he did or to become a miniature (缩小的) version of him. It certainly would have been miniature.”

Fred wanted to be like his grandfather. “He taught me all kinds of really neat stuff!” he told me. “I remember one day my grandmother and my mother were telling me to get down, or not to climb, and my grandfather said: ‘Let the kid climb on the wall! He’s got to learn to do things for himself!’ I heard that. I will never forget that. What a support that was. He had a lot of stone walls on his place.” “I think it was when I was leaving one time to go home after our time together,” Fred told me, “that my grandfather said to me: ‘You know, you made this day a really special day. Just by being yourself. There’s only one person in the world like you. And I happen to like you just the way you are.”

1. What is the author’s impression of Fred?

A．Fred had many lifelong friends.

B．Fred lived in a strange world.

C．Fred could always find way home.

D．Fred was an amazing person.

2. Why does Joanne try to persuade people not to make Fred into a saint?

A．To show the great success the couple achieved.

B．To underline the great pains Fred spared at work.

C．To remind people of the contributions she made.

D．To keep the weaknesses of Fred’s character hidden.

3. Who may think Fred a moral example?

A．David Newell.

B．The author.

C．Common people.

D．Joanne.

4. What did Fred prefer to do according to the author?

A．Write scripts and music on his own.

B．Act as the man behind the curtain.

C．Focus more on difficult topics.

D．Present himself as an artist.

5. Which of following might have the greatest influence on Fred’s growth?

A．His poor health condition.	B．His father’s expectation.
C．His unhappy childhood.	D．His grandfather’s attitude.

6. What is mainly talked about in the passage?

A．The making of Fred Rogers.

B．The importance of a good wife.

C．The influence of a moral example.

D．The achievements of Fred and his wife.

【推荐3】Pop singers, actors and sports stars are not the only ones today’s teenagers seek to imitate. It turns out that the legendary American poet Emily Dickinson (1830—1886) has a sincere following among many young people.

She may seem a curious choice for teenage devotion. Many might think of Emily Dickinson as someone locked away from the world, a spinster (未婚女性) living and writing in her bedroom as if she were in a self-made prison. In a way, though, many teens are just like this. Uncertain and a little afraid of the approaching world of adulthood, it seems safer to many to keep to oneself.

It turns out that Emily Dickinson wasn’t quite like this. A new exhibition at the Morgan Library in New York is encouraging a different perspective on the poet. The designer of the show, Carolyn Vega, told the BBC that while it is true that Dickinson liked to keep herself to herself, she also took a great interest in life beyond the front door of her father’s house in Amherst, Massachusetts.

According to Vega, Dickinson was deeply connected to her world through family, friendships, and literary mentors and editors. She also read many books and was aware of the political realities that were going on around her, including the American Civil War.

The title of the New York exhibition, “I’m nobody! Who are you?”，from one of her poems, tells us a little about Dickinson’s approach to life and writing. She seemed to have thought, “The less I am to myself, the more interesting the world will become.” And when reading a large number of the 1,800 poems she wrote, the world seems just like that a place we thought we knew, but which Dickinson represents to us in a brand new way.

1. What does the underlined word “this” in Paragraph 3 refer to?

A．Dickinson’s isolated life.

B．Dickinson’s high self-esteem.

C．Dickinson’s positive attitude.

D．Dickinson’s wide interest.

2. What is the purpose of the exhibition in New York?

A．To present a fresh view about Dickinson.

B．To sell poems written by Dickinson.

C．To encourage more people to read classic poems.

D．To attract more young people to read poems.

3. What can we infer from the last paragraph?

A．Dickinson didn’t want to be famous.

B．Dickinson is not a productive poet.

C．Dickinson’s world is more colorful than we thought.

D．We know nothing about the world.