【推荐1】If it were up to me, I’d write this piece next week or even later. Let the dust settle a bit. But I have my father’s insistent voice in my head: the story is now, so you write it now. No one wants to read last week’s news.

My father Michael was a journalist. He started at age 16 on his local paper, the Luton News, and after nine years there, he went on to a six-decade career that saw him write more than 40 biographies of Hollywood stars and spend a quarter-century presenting a weekly radio show.

From him I learned about deadlines and accuracy, and absorbed his rule about professional clothing, one he had been taught by his first boss. Even when he was working at home, my father would follow that rule: shirt and tie, every day.

There were other less obvious lessons. The first is about being manly. Driven and competitive, he wasn’t present for the birth of any of his three children, but he was the very model of being loving and faithful. My father never took me to the football or taught me to change a tyre. In a pub, he might manage some drinks, but his main focus would usually be the food menu. He was a model of a different kind of maleness.

But perhaps the biggest lesson I learned from him was about resilience (恢复). He got deep blows, losing both his wife and firstborn child, my sister Fiona, within two years of each other. And yet, somehow, he got back up again. He taught himself to cook and continued to dress neatly, picking out a bright jacket that ensured he stood out in a room. He would meet editors and write stories with the same hunger he had 65 years earlier. Younger colleagues keep using the same word about him: appealing.

I hope I learned his resilience, the way I learned about being a journalist. People keep telling me that my father was proud of me; and the truth is I was proud of him. Raised in a hard-up corner of wartime England, he went off to see the world—and he never stopped looking forward and upward, staring at the stars.

1. What has made the author write down the text so soon?

A．His father’s words motivated him to do so.

B．He wanted to settle down after the writing.

C．He wanted to write it before he forgot it.

D．It was the story he insisted on writing.

2. What was the author’s impression of his father?

A．He always managed to dress up following the fashion.

B．He sometimes had a hard time meeting the work deadline.

C．He trained the author to be manly and do the basic things.

D．He was competitive at work and remained a loving Dad.

3. What was the best lesson the author learned from his father?

A．The necessity of keeping good shape.

B．Quick recovery from suffering or blow.

C．The ability to get a content career.

D．The pride one takes in his/her parents.

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

A．Dad Left a Deep Impression on Me for His Work

B．Dad Proved Faithful and Loving for the Family

C．My Dad Showed How to Be a Journalist and a Man

D．I Learned to Recover Quickly after a Suffering

【推荐2】"We're counting on you and your raised hands to bid for the street art selected by the M.B.A. students and go home victoriously!'' said Arnaud   Oliveux at the French auction（拍卖）house Artcurial.

Mr. Oliveux walked across the stage and officially opened the second edition of the charity auction Street for Kids. The event is organized by 33 students who major in art management, with a focus on the international art market, at the Icart School of Arts.

Over the past six months, as their final project, the fifth-year students planned their first public auction. They persuaded famous street artists and galleries to donate pieces; they drafted the communication strategy; they designed and built the exhibition space.

Julien Garcia-Toudic, 22, was among the students charged with collecting the donated street art. He said, "It was for charity and it would be financing children's access to art."

Their goal was to raise money for the Musee en Herbe, whose mission is to bring art to children.

Founded more than 40 years ago, the 6,400-square-fbot space provides exhibit-related activities for those ''between the ages of 3 and 103".

"We're a little alien in the world of art,” said Sylvie Girardet, the museum's director. She was a graduate in art history and archaeology when she created the museum with two friends. At the time, she had been shocked to   learn that the majority of the French population did not visit museums.

"Childhood is when a lot of core（核心）values are formed," said Ms Girardet. "If we introduced children into the world of art, then as future adults they wouldn't have this mental block?”

"Young parents who came to visit the museum when they were little now come back with their children," Ms Girardet said. "It means they remember and they keep fond memories of their time here?"

1. What was Amaud Oliveux doing at the beginning of the text?

A．Giving a lecture.	B．Selling artworks.
C．Performing a play.	D．Organizing an exhibition.

2. What can we learn about the organizers of the event?

A．They are students from an art school.

B．They donated artworks to the auction.

C．They have planned several public auctions.

D．They have prepared for the event for a year.

3. What is the Musee en Herbe trying to do?

A．Protect street art.	B．Gain support from art schools.
C．Bring art to children.	D．Provide art courses for students.

4. How might Ms Girardet feel when talking about the museum?

A．Cautious.	B．Anxious.
C．Curious.	D．Proud.

【推荐3】Taylor Alison Swift is an American country pop singer-songwriter, musician and actress.

Swift was born on December 13, 1989, in Reading, Pennsylvania, and raised in Wyomissing. Pennsylvania. She is the daughter of Andrea Gardner, a housewife who previously worked in finance, and Scott Kingsley Swift, a stockbroker. Her grandmother, Marjorie Finlay, was an opera singer. Swift has a younger brother, Austin. She grew up on a Christmas-tree farm.

When Swift was in fourth grade, she won a national poetry contest with a three-page poem, “Monster in My Closet”. At the age of ten, a computer repairman showed her how to play three chords (和弦) on a guitar, arousing her interest in learning the instrument. Afterwards, Swift wrote her first song, “Lucky You”. When Swift was 12, she devoted an entire summer to writing a 350-page novel, which remains unpublished. She began writing songs regularly and used it as a way to help her with her pain from not fitting in at school. Swift was a victim of bullying (欺凌), and spent her time writing songs to express her emotions. She also started performing at local karaoke contests, festivals, and fair.

Swift began to regularly visit Nashville, Tennessee, and work with local songwriters. When she was 14, her family moved to Nashville. Her first major show was a well-received performance at the Bloomsburg Fair. In Tennessee, Swift attended Hendersonville High School, but was then homeschooled for her junior and senior years. In 2008, she earned her high school diploma.

Swift’s greatest musical influence is Shania Twain. Her other influences include Leann Rimes, Tina Turner, Dolly Parton, and Swifts grandmother. Although her grandmother was a professional opera singer, Swifts tastes always leaned more toward country music. In her younger years, she developed a love for Patsy Cline and Dolly Parton. She also credits her love for music in her teens to the influence of the Dixie Chicks.

1. What can we know about Swift from the passage?

A．Her first novel came out in 2001.

B．She showed her music talent in her teens.

C．Her first major show was in Hendersonville High School.

D．Her mother influenced her a lot in her later music career.

2. Which word can best describe Swift’s school life?

A．Colorful.	B．Busy.
C．Successful.	D．Unhappy.

3. We can infer that Shania Twain in the last paragraph is a famous ________.

A．film star	B．novelist
C．opera singer	D．country music star

4. The passage is mainly about the ________ of Taylor Alison Swift.

A．family life	B．achievements
C．early life	D．contributions

【推荐2】阅读下面的短文，根据短文内容回答问题

I got the idea to start Amazon 16 years ago. I came across the fact that the Internet usage was growing at 2300 percent per year. I’d never seen or heard of anything that grew that fast, and the idea of building an online bookstore with millions of titles was very exciting to me. I had just turned 30, and I’d been married for a year. I told my wife that I wanted to quit my job and go to do this crazy thing that probably wouldn’t work since most start-ups don’t and I wasn’t sure what to expect. She told me I should go for it. As a young boy, I had been a garage inventor. I had always wanted to be an inventor, and she wanted me to follow my passion.

I was working at a financial firm in New York City with a bunch of very smart people and a brilliant boss that I much admired. I went to my boss and told him that I wanted to start a company selling books on the Internet. He took me on a long walk in Central Park, listened carefully to me and finally said, “That sounds like a really good idea, but it would be an even better idea for someone who didn’t already have a good job.” That logic made some sense to me, and he convinced me to think about it for 48 hours before making a final decision. Seen in that light, it really was a difficult choice, but ultimately, I decided I had to give it a shot. I didn’t think I would regret trying and failing. And I suspected that I would always be haunted by a decision to not try at all.

After much consideration, I took the less secure path to follow my passion, and I’m proud of that choice. For all of us, in the end, we are our choices.

1. What inspired the author to start Amazon 16 years ago?
2. How did the author’s wife react to his idea of starting a company online?
3. Please decide which part is false in the following statement, then underline it and explain why.
When the author wanted to start a company online, his boss thought it a good idea and suitable for him.
4. Please introduce one of your experiences where passion(强烈的爱好，热爱) has played an important role. (about 40 words)

【推荐3】I got married just after I graduated from college and found a job to support our family at the nearby Massachusettes Institute of Technology (MIT). It was in the laboratory of Prof. Edward Lorenz that I learned what a computer was and how to develop software.

One day my husband saw a newspaper advertisement. The MIT Instrumentation Laboratory was looking for people to develop software to “send man to the moon”. Deeply attracted both by the idea and the fact that it had never been done before, I became the first programmer to join and the first woman the lab hired.

At the beginning, nobody thought software was such a big deal. But then they began to realize how much they were relying on it. Our software needed to be very reliable and able to detect an error and recover from it at any time during the mission.

My daughter, Lauren, liked to intimate me—playing astronaut. One day, she was with me when I was doing a simulation (模拟) of a mission to the moon. She started hitting keys and all of a sudden, she selected a program which was supposed to be run before launch. The computer had so little space that it wiped the navigation data taking her to the moon. I thought: my God—this could happen by accident in a real mission. I suggested a program change to prevent a prelaunch program being selected during flight. But the higher-ups at MIT and NASA said the astronauts were too well trained to make such a mistake.

On the very next mission , Apollo 8, one of the astronauts on board accidentally did exactly what Lauren had done. The Lauren bug! It created destruction and required the mission to be rearranged. After that, they let me put the program change in. It was the program change that had a crucial influence on the success of the mission of Apollo 11.

During the early days of Apollo, software was not taken as seriously as other engineering disciplines (学科).It was out of desperation I came up with the term “software engineering”. Then one day in a meeting, one of the most respected hardware experts explained to everyone that he agreed with me that the process of building software should also be considered an engineering discipline, just like with hardware. It was a memorable moment.

1. What do we know about the author?

A．She taught Lauren to write software.

B．She got her master's degree from MIT.

C．She is the first woman ever hired by MIT.

D．She created the term “software engineering”.

2. “The Lauren bug” in Para.5 refers to ______.

A．a pet to accompany Lauren	B．a mission to land on the moon
C．a mistake causing data loss	D．a software ending prelaunch

3. What greatly contributed to Apollo 11's success according to the passage?

A．The in-time upload of data.	B．The program change.
C．Astronauts' rich experience.	D．Experts' new attitude.

4. What can we learn from Margaret's story?

A．Honesty is the best policy.	B．A good beginning is half done.
C．Two heads are better than one.	D．Chances favor the prepared mind.

【推荐1】A little before nine o'clock on Tuesday night, Antonio Gutierrez found himself facing a welcome dilemma. Might he, a waitress asked, have room for a second helping of pudding?

By day, the Robin Hood restaurant, which sits on a side street near the centre of Madrid, is a typical Spanish bar. But at night, it transforms itself into a pioneering place where homeless people, such as Antonio Gutiérrez, can dine, free of charge, at tables set with flowers and proper glasses.

The restaurant is the latest plan from the charity Mensajeros de la Paz, meaning messengers of peace, which was founded 54 years ago by Father Angel(安吉神父)García Rodriguez. “The inspiration came from Pope (教皇)Francis, who’s spoken again and again about the importance of giving people dignity, whether it’s through bread or through work,” said Father Angel. “So we thought, why not open a restaurant? People with nothing can come and eat here and get the same treatment as everyone else.”

Like many Spanish charities, Mensajeros de la Paz is still dealing with the human consequences of the country’s financial crisis, which has left the overall unemployment rate close to 20% and youth unemployment among Europe’s highest at 42%.

Each day, Father Angel’s nearby church provides 200 homeless people with breakfast and lunch. In the evening, the new restaurant feeds 100 homeless people. If the restaurant proves successful, the charity plans to extend the scheme and hopes it will attract famous chefs who will come to cook in the kitchen occasionally.

“The food here is tasty,” said Gutiérrez. “I’d give it lots of stars and I’ll be back tomorrow.” Gutiérrez had not eaten in such a restaurant for five years, except when Father Angel had taken him out.

1. Which of the following can best describe Father Angel?

A．Old and successful

B．Kind and respectable

C．Creative and gifted

D．Brave and determined

2. What can we know about the restaurant?

A．It was set up by Father Angel

B．It is in the center of Madrid

C．Its dishes are mainly cooked by famous chefs

D．It provides 100 homeless people with dinners every day

3. What does Gutiérrez think of the food in the restaurant?

A．Disgusting	B．Cheap
C．Delicious	D．Smelly

4. What’s the best title for the text?

A．A homeless person’s special experience

B．A pioneering Robin Hood restaurant for the homeless

C．A plan to reduce unemployment rate

D．Father Angel and his charity

【推荐2】A city child's summer is spent in the street in front of his home’, and all through the long summer vacations I sat on the edge of the street and watched enviously the other boys on the block play baseball. I was never asked to take part even when one team had a member missing—not out of special cruelty, but because they took it for granted, I would be no good at it. They were right, of course.
I would never forget the wonderful evening when something changed. The baseball ended about eight or eight thirty when it grew dark. Then it was the custom of the boys to retire to a little stoop(门廊) that stuck out from the candy store on the corner and that somehow had become theirs. No grownup ever sat there or attempted to. There the boys would sit，mostly talking about the games played during the day and of the game to be played tomorrow. Then long silences would fall and the boys would wander off one by one. It was just after one of those long silences that my life as an outsider changed. I can no longer remember which boy it was that summer evening who broke the silence with a question；but whoever he was, I nod to him gratefully now. “What's in those books you're always reading?” he asked casually. “Stories,” I answered. “What kind?” asked somebody else without much interest.
Nor do I know what drove me to behave as I did, for usually I just sat there in silence, glad enough to be allowed to remain among them; but instead of answering his question, I told them for two hours the story I was reading at the moment. The book was Sister Carrie. They listened bug­eyed and breathless. I must have told it well, but I think there was another and deeper reason that made them so keen an audience. Listening to a tale being told in the dark is one of the most ancient of man's entertainments, but I was offering them as well, without being aware of doing it, a new and exciting experience.
The books they themselves read were the Rover Boys or Tom Swift or G．A. Henry. I had read them too, but at thirteen I had long since left them behind. Since I was much alone I had become an enthusiastic reader and I had gone through the books­for­boys series. In those days there was no reading material between children's and grownups' books，or I could find none. I had gone right from Tom Swift and His Flying Machine to Theodore Dreiser and Sister Carrie. Dreiser had hit my young mind，and they listened to me tell the story with some of the wonder that I had in reading it.
The next night and many nights thereafter，a kind of unspoken ritual(仪式) took place. As it grew dark, I would take my place in the centre of the stoop and begin the evening's tale. Some nights, in order to taste my victory more completely, I cheated. I would stop at the most exciting part of a story by Jack London or Bret Harte, and without warning tell them that was as far as I had gone in the book and it would have to be continued the following evening. It was not true, of course; but I had to make certain of my new­found power and position. I enjoyed the long summer evenings until school began in the fall. Other words of mine have been listened to by larger and more fashionable audiences, but for that tough and athletic one that sat close on the stoop outside the candy store, I have an unreasoning love that will last forever.
1. Watching the boys playing baseball, the writer must have felt ________.

A．bitter and lonely	B．special and different
C．pleased and excited	D．disturbed and annoyed

2. The writer feels grateful even now to the boy who asked the question because the boy ________.

A．invited him to join in their game

B．liked the book that he was reading

C．broke the long silence of that summer evening

D．offered him an opportunity that changed his life

3. According to Paragraph 3, story­telling was popular among the boys basically because ________.

A．the story was from a children's book

B．listening to tales was an age­old practice

C．the boys had few entertainments after dark

D．the boys didn't read books by themselves

4. Sometimes the writer stopped at the most exciting part of a story to ________.

A．play a mean trick on the boys

B．add his own imagination to the story

C．experience more joy of achievement

D．help the boys understand the story better

5. What is the message conveyed in the story?

A．One can find his position in life in his own way.

B．Friendship is built upon respect for each other.

C．Reading is more important than playing games.

D．Adult habits are developed from childhood.