Just as the shiny brochure promised, from the moment I set foot on the Harvard campuslast fall, I was exposed to an exciting andenlightening new world.
I was born and raised 1, 500 miles away, in a small apartment in Jackson, Mississippi. I am the only child, so my mother overpowered me with her love. For someone who sees so much beauty in the world, she worked awfullyhard to protect me from it. Television, rap music, and even basketball with the kids on the block was beyond consideration. It left me a bit bitter as a teenager, but I grew to appreciate her enormous sacrifices(牺牲) — walking me to the library every afternoon, laboring at multiple jobs to keep food on the table, and telling me stories late into the night.
When I announced the summer before my senior year of high school that I had decided to apply to Harvard, I noticed her hesitant look before a warm smile enveloped her face. I pretended not to see, but I was never able to forget it. I tried to explain my reasons for wanting to leave-to prove I was smart enough, fear of taking the path of least resistance, the classic teenage feeling of being trapped — but the words just made me sound shallow and ungrateful.
Nevertheless, I began to work on the college applications-an early one for Harvard and roughly a dozen others standing by. I knew the chance of getting into Harvard was not in my favor. To my joy, I was informed of my acceptance into Harvard three days before my birthday. That night, after all of the celebratory texts and hugs, I sat in my room and began to cry uncontrollably.
Over the course of this year, I have changed in ways I never anticipated. I think I know now why my mother let me go. Harvard has forced me to grow and take a fair look at the world, and at myself. Needless to say, I would not trade the experience for anything.
1. The underlined word in Paragraph 2 most probably means ________.| A．made a difference to | B．made peace with |
| C．took advantage of | D．took control of |
| A．She was worried about it. | B．She laughed at it. |
| C．She approved of it immediately. | D．She turned a deaf ear to it. |
| A．It deserved a big celebration. | B．It served as a late birthday present. |
| C．It was beyond his expectations. | D．It was a favor he owed his mother. |
| A．Lifelong Learning in Harvard |
| B．Reflections on the Road to Harvard |
| C．What Harvard Means to My Mother and Me |
| D．How Harvard Shapes My Teenage Years |
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【推荐1】School was always something I loved because I always enjoyed learning more. I never felt afraid of going to school early in the morning, and I never tried to get out of any work. I stayed after school every chance I got. I did most of the work I could, got the best grades I could, and in the end, I graduated from high school with honors. All my success was because of the teachers I had who helped me, pushed me, and made learning a fun thing to do.
At the beginning of the school year, I had a lot of trouble leaving my mom in the mornings, but Mrs. Trainer always sat with me, talked with me, and helped me feel OK without my mom. She was understanding, kind, and always made the classroom a comfortable place. Mrs. Trainer also sat down and helped me learn; I was, and still am, the worst speller, but she tried her hardest to help me.
The second was my senior high school English teacher, Mr. Stonerock. Mr. Stonerock was able to make English and writing fun, especially when we had eight-page papers to hand in. Some of my favorite high school memories were in his classes. Mr. Stonerock also taught my class APA format (格式) which to me is invaluable. I use it every day in my life. He put up with so many shenanigans (恶作剧) from my classmates and me and always did it with a smile.
My point to all of this is that there are amazing and caring teachers out there whether they teach college level classes, high school level classes, or primary level classes. I have had more influential teachers than I can count. I am still in touch with some of my high school teachers, who give me life advice and guide me. Teachers are invaluable resources and no one can take their place.
1. Which of the following can best describe the author as a student?| A．Creative and proud. | B．Confident and polite. |
| C．Kind-hearted and honest. | D．Hard-working and excellent. |
| A．By teaching him like a mother. |
| B．By helping him to be the best speller. |
| C．By asking him easy questions in class. |
| D．By learning about his habits from his mother. |
| A．How to finish papers quickly. |
| B．How to learn English in a fun way. |
| C．How to use APA format correctly. |
| D．How to get on well with classmates. |
| A．To show how to be a good teacher. |
| B．To stress teachers’ duties and responsibilities. |
| C．To stress teachers’ importance to the author. |
| D．To share the author’s experience as a teacher. |
【推荐2】Ryan Hickman is only seven years old, but he’s already been saving for his college fund with profits he’s making from his recycling business.
When Ryan was three-and-a-half, he went with his dad Lo the local recycling center and made money from a few bags of cans and bottles. When he learned money can be made from that, Ryan decided recycling was his future.
“We had gone to the center with a couple of bags, and he really loved the actual act of putting all the cans and bottles into the machine and getting the money from it, and that kind of act go him hooked,” described Damion Hickman, Ryan’s father.
Ryan told his parents that he wanted to give empty plastic bags to all the neighbors and hoped they would save their recyclables for him. Not only did the neighbors save their cans and bottles for Ryan but so did their co-workers, families, and friends. Soon after, Ryan started his own business, Ryan’s Recycling, and has since recycled over 200,000 cans and bottles. Every week, he and his family sort rough bags of recyclables and they take them to the local recycling center where they are sorted and weighed.
So far, Ryan has saved more than $ 10,000 for college from his profits and he also sells T-shirts on his website and donates the profits to the Pacific Marine Mammal Center in Laguna Beach. “For the sea lions to get food and medicine,” he said.
Ryan has an important message for everyone, “If you already recycle, just keep on recycling. If you don’t recycle, start recycling.” Always a great businessman, Ryan added, “If you want to buy one of these T-shirts, it’s $ 13 on ryansrecycling. com.”
1. When did Ryan think of recycling as his future?| A．When he was taken to the recycling center. |
| B．When he was 3 years old. |
| C．When he got some rewards from recycling. |
| D．When he learned recycled cans and bottles could be sold for money. |
| A．He went to ask his family and neighbors to sell him the used bottles and cans. |
| B．He gave empty plastic bags to all the neighbors to get their used cans and bottles. |
| C．He went to the local recycling center first and sold the cans and bottles. |
| D．He and his family sorted through bags of recyclables of their own. |
| A．Caring and determined. |
| B．Kind and generous. |
| C．Independent and energetic. |
| D．Rich and thoughtful. |
【推荐3】Recently, my husband and three kids were playing in the Mediterranean, swimming and floating in the picture-perfect sea. It was ridiculously beautiful in Majorca, Spain. The way the sun danced across the water and how the blue horizon was dotted with storybook sailboats were such beautiful scenes. I almost couldn’t believe my eyes.
My husband and I always dreamed about taking our kids on a trip around the world. It was something we always wanted to do “one day”. It was one of the things we talked in detail about, when we imagined our life with the children we hoped we would have.
Fourteen years later, we had three boys who were growing up faster by the day. It was time to make good on (兑现，实现) those plans.
We spent dozens of hours discussing, researching and planning.
We had to learn how to “road school” our kids and arrange time off from work. We renewed our passports, and then packed our bags.
We showed our kids the world. It was about experiencing the dozens of flights and trains and taxis together. We showed them how wonderful, how diverse, and how fascinating the world is. We wanted them to learn all that we had learned ourselves, through our own travels as young adults.
But there was something more than that: What we really wanted is to slow down time. We wanted the days to last a bit longer and the weeks to take their time. The years with our children are going too fast. We wanted to put the brakes on our busy lives for a year, and just be with our kids. We wanted a break from the daily morning routine of making lunches, eating breakfast and rushing out the door in time for school. We needed a family time-out (休息时间).
It was a wonderful two months in Europe, full of incredible moments. And when we look back at our lives, I know we’ll be glad we did it. I know we’ll be happy that this is a chapter of the story of our family.
1. What was the author’s attitude toward the trip when planning it?| A．Calm. | B．Expectant. | C．Stressed. | D．Worried. |
| A．Preparing for the vacation. |
| B．Having fun in the picture-perfect Mediterranean. |
| C．Experiencing a different and beautiful world. |
| D．Learning to study during trips as young adults. |
| A．To allow her children to see the world. |
| B．To teach her kids to value life. |
| C．To teach her kids what they can’t learn in school. |
| D．To enjoy a family break away from their usual busy life. |
| A．Exhausted. | B．Satisfied. | C．Disappointed. | D．Proud. |
【推荐1】When Dmitry Ivanovsky was still a student in 1887 he began his work on the Tobacco Mosaic Disease (烟草花叶病). The disease appeared to take hold in tobacco plants early on in their growth cycle, causing green and brown mosaics on the affected leaves. Ivanovsky first repeated and confirmed experiments performed by Adolf Mayer in which he took diseased leaves, extracted their sap ( the liquid in a plant that carries food to all its parts), and injected (注入) the sap into healthy plants. Up to 80% of the healthy plants then became infected in these experiments.
Ivanovsky originally thought the disease was bacterial, and so he designed an experiment in which the diseased sap of a tobacco plant was filtered (过滤) through a Chamberland filter-candle which could filter out bacteria and works much like a modern water purifier. After filtering the sap, Ivanovsky injected it into healthy tobacco leaves. When the healthy plants began to show signs of infection, Ivanovsky proved bacterial filtering of diseased sap did not prevent the disease, and thus the infective creatures had to be unlike any bacteria that they had seen before.
Additionally, Ivanovsky provided evidence that the creature that was infecting tobacco plants was more of a particle (颗粒) than a liquid. He thought that the disease was more likely caused by either a living creature or a large molecule (分子). In his 1902 research paper he concluded: The sap of diseased plants was infectious; when the infected sap is heated, it is no longer infectious ( heat changes the structure and characteristics of RNA and virus proteins, essentially killing them, so this makes sense); infection through bacteria may cause the disease.
It wasn’t until advancements in technology in the early-to-mid 20th century allowed scientists to take the first images of viruses that we were able to identify the Tobacco mosaic virus, and thus separated it from other living creatures such as bacteria and fungi. But it is because of the early work of Ivanovsky and Mayer scientists are able to understand viruses and viral diseases and continue the search for life-saving vaccines for fatal diseases such as COVID-19.
1. What did Adolf Mayer’s experiments prove ?| A．The sap of diseased tobacco plants is infectious. |
| B．The mosaics on infected plants are green or brown. |
| C．The disease affects tobacco plants at an early stage. |
| D．The infective creature threatens most tobacco plants. |
| A．To put much pressure on infected leaves. |
| B．To add some pure water to the infected sap. |
| C．To filter infected food in the tobacco leaves. |
| D．To remove the infective bacteria in the sap. |
| A．Filtering the diseased sap can prevent the disease. |
| B．The infected sap is no longer infectious when heated. |
| C．Some kind of large molecules might cause the disease. |
| D．The unknown creature was more of a liquid than a particle. |
| A．It showed the differences between viruses and bacteria. |
| B．It took the first images of the Tobacco mosaic virus. |
| C．It made later identification of the virus possible. |
| D．It led to an effective life-saving vaccine. |
【推荐2】In 2004, when my daughter Becky was ten, she and my husband, Joe, were united in their desire for a dog. As for me, I shared none of their canine lust.
But why, they pleaded. “Because I don’t have time to take care of a dog.” But we’ll do it. “Really? You’re-going to walk the dog? Feed the dog? Bathe the dog?” Yes, yes and yes. “I don’t believe you.” We will. We promise.
They didn’t. From day two (everyone wanted to walk the cute puppy that first day), neither thought to walk the dog. While I was slow to accept that I would be the one to keep track of her shots, to schedule her vet appointments, to feed and Clean her, Misty knew this on day one. As she looked up at the three new humans in her life (small, medium, and large), she calculated, “The medium one is the sucker in the pack.”
Quickly, she and I developed something very similar to a Vulcan mind meld (心灵融合). She’d look at me with those sad brown eyes of hers, beam her need, and then wait, trusting I would understand 一 which, strangely, I almost always did. In no time, she became my fifth appendage (附肢), snoring on my home-office couch as I worked, cradling against my feet as I read, and splaying across my stomach as I watched television.
Even so, part of me continued to resent walking duty. Joe and Becky had promised. Not fair, I’d balk (不心甘情愿地做) silently as she and I walked. “Not fair,” I’d loudly remind anyone within earshot upon our return home.
Then one day 一 January 1, 2007, to be exact 一 my husband’s doctor uttered an unthinkable word: leukemia (白血病). With that, I spent eight to ten hours a day with Joe in the hospital, doing anything and everything I could to ease his discomfort. During those six months of hospitalizations, Becky, 12 at that time, adjusted to other adults being in the house when she returned from school. My work colleagues adjusted to my taking off at a moment’s notice for medical emergencies. Every part of my life changed; no part of my old routine remained.
Save one: Misty still needed walking. At the beginning, when friends offered to take her through her paces, I declined because I knew they had their own households to deal with.
As the months went by, I began to realize that I actually wanted to walk Misty. The walk in the morning before I headed to the hospital was a quiet, peaceful time to gather my thoughts or to just be before the day’s medical drama unfolded. The evening walk was a time to shake off the day’s upsets and let the worry tracks in my head go to white noise.
When serious illness visits your household, it’s not just your daily routine and your assumptions about the future that are no longer familiar. Pretty much everyone you know acts differently.
After Joe died in 2009, Misty slept on his pillow.
I’m grateful — to a point. The truth is, after years of balking, I’ve come to enjoy my walks with Misty. As I watch her chase a squirrel, throwing her whole being into the here-and-now of an exercise that has never once ended in victory, she reminded me, too, that no matter how harsh the present or unpredictable the future, there’s almost always some measure of joy to be extracted from the moment.
1. Which of the following is the closest in meaning to the underlined part in Paragraph 1?| A．I was afraid of dog. |
| B．I didn’t want to share anything with them. |
| C．I didn’t care their desire. |
| D．I didn’t agree to raise a dog. |
| A．Misty was quite smart | B．Misty could solve math problems |
| C．The writer was a slow learner | D．No one walked Misty the first day |
| A．The author didn’t want to walk the dog because she didn’t like her. |
| B．The dog was naughty and annoying. |
| C．Although loving the dog, she was reluctant to walk her. |
| D．She always shouted at the dog while walking. |
| A．Joe died in 2009 | B．the writer began to walk the dog |
| C．Joe fell ill in 2007 | D．the dog tried to please the writer. |
| A．The walk provided her with spiritual comfort. |
| B．Her friends didn’t offer any help. |
| C．She could unfold the day’s medical drama. |
| D．She didn’t want Misty to be others’ companion. |
| A．One should learn to enjoy hard times. |
| B．A disaster can change everything in life. |
| C．Moments of joy suggest that there is still hope ahead. |
| D．People will change their attitude toward you when you are in difficulty. |
【推荐3】Rene Compean was no stranger to Angeles National Forest. But after venturing along a new path last April, the 45-year-old mechanic was lost.
As the day faded into dusk, following several hours of aimless roaming, his concern turned to fear. With no flashlight, only a liter of water and a power bar in his backpack, and less than ten percent battery remaining on his cell phone, Compean was unprepared for anything more than the two-hour trek he’d planned. Compean climbed to a spot, some 7,000 feet above sea level, where he found at least one bar of signal. “SOS. My phone is going to die. I’m lost.” He texted a friend, attaching a photo showing where he was. All Compean could do then was wait and hope. But he wouldn’t sleep. After spotting two mountain lions and a bear, he spent the night on high alert.
Sixty miles away in Ventura County, The sheriff’s search-and-rescue teams had spent the previous night unsuccessfully looking for Compean, so they released the photo to the public, hoping someone might know the location.
Ben Kuo, then 47, has an unusual hobby to identify where movie scenes or television shows were filmed. When he saw the blurry image of Compean’s legs surrounded by an endless landscape of rocks and vegetation, he instinctively pulled up a satellite map on his laptop. Then he narrowed his search to the surrounding area. The first thing he noticed in Compean’s photo were patches of greenery. After comparing it to the satellite map, Kuo realized something: “He’s got to be on the south side because there’s not really any green valleys on the north side.”
That finding tightened his search, leading him to an area that resembled the landscape in the image. The final step was cross-referencing the original photo with 3-D images of the area from Google Earth. The locations matched!
Soon, a search-and-rescue team helicopter was in the air, hovering above Compean. After spending 27 hours alone in the wildness, Compean cried, “I’m safe.” Compean’s story probably would have ended very differently had a total stranger with strong satellite skills and a sharp eye for detail not taken action.
1. What can we learn about Rene Compean from the second paragraph?| A．Fierce animals attacked him. |
| B．Being alone made him unable to fall asleep. |
| C．His dead cell phone isolated him from the outside. |
| D．Insufficient preparation transformed his worry into fear. |
| A．his photo reading ability. | B．his sense of responsibility. |
| C．his professional experience. | D．his familiarity with the area. |
| A．Timid and smart. | B．Daring and expert. |
| C．Observant and swiftly-acting. | D．Sharp-eyed and widely-interested. |
| A．Screen Saver: No Useless Knowledge. | B．Lost Hiker: Boldness Deserved. |
| C．Nature Lover: Adventure Failed. | D．Hiking Goer: Narrow Escape. |
