【推荐2】Dear God,

Now that I am no longer young. I have friends whose mothers have passed away. I have heard these sons and daughters say they never fully thanked their mothers until it was too late to tell them.

I am blessed with the dear mother who is still alive. I appreciate her devotion more each day. My mother does not change, but I do. As I grow older and wiser, I realize what an extraordinary person the is. It’s sad that I am unable to say these words in her presence, but they flow easily from my pen.

How does a daughter begin to thank her mother for life itself? For the love, patience and just plain hard work that go into raising a child? For running after a toddler, for understanding a moody teenager, and for tolerating a college student who knows everything? For wailing for the day when the daughter realizes what her mother really is?

How does a grown woman thank a mother for continuing to be a mother? For being ready with advice when asked or remaining silent when it is needed? For not saying “I told you so.” when she could have voiced these words dozens of times? For being essentially herself — loving, thoughtful, patient and forgiving?

I don’t know how to thank her, dear God, except to bless her and live up to the example she has set. I pray that I will look as good in the eyes of my children as my mother looks in mine.

1. We can infer from the passage that the author is          .

A．reserved and romantic	B．cold and practical
C．stubborn but responsible	D．talkative and realistic

2. Compared with her friends, the author feels lucky because          .

A．she has her own lovely sons and daughters

B．she is excellent in bringing up her own children

C．it is too late to say thanks to her mother in her presence

D．she still has the chance to express her appreciation to her mother

3. We can know from Paragraph 4 that          .

A．mothers should offer advice rather than blame

B．the sentence “I told you so.” can be repealed if necessary

C．the author is very thankful to her mother for her education

D．mothers can instruct their children whenever they want to

4. The authors mother has all the following fine qualities except          .

A．devotion	B．forgiveness
C．consideration	D．self-preservation

【推荐3】It is that time of year when people need to lock their cars. It’ s not because there are a lot of criminals running around stealing cars. Rather, it’ s because of the good-hearted neighbors who want to share their harvest. Especially with this year’s large crop, leaving a car unlocked in my neighborhood is an invitation for someone to stuff it full of zucchini(西葫芦).

My sister-in-law, Sharon, recently had a good year for tomatoes. She and her family had eaten and canned so many that they began to feel their skin turn slightly red. That ’ s when she decided it was time to share her blessings. She started calling everyone she knew. When that failed, she began to ask everyone in the neighborhood like a politician, eventually finding a neighbor delighted to have the tomatoes. “ Feel free to take whatever you want,” Sharon told her. She felt happy that she could help someone and that the food didn’t go to waste.

A few days later, Sharon answered the door. There was the neighbor, holding some bread. The neighbor smiled pleasantly, “I want to thank you for all of the tomatoes, and I have to admit that I took a few other things and hope you wouldn’t mind.”

Sharon couldn’t think of anything else in her garden that had been worth harvesting and said so. “Oh, but you did,” the neighbor said.   “You had some   of the prettiest zucchini I’ve ever seen.”

Sharon was confused. Zucchini in her garden? They hadn’ t even planted any zucchini. But her neighbor insisted that there really were bright-green zucchini in her garden. The two of them walked together into the backyard. When the neighbor pointed at the long green vegetables, Sharon smiled, “ Well, actually, those are cucumbers that we never harvested, because they got too big, soft and bitter for eating or canning.”

The neighbor looked at Sharon, shock written all over her face. Then she smiled, and held out the bread that she had shared all over the neighborhood, “I brought you a loaf of cucumber bread. I hope you like it.”

1. Why does the author suggest that people in the neighborhood should lock their cars?

A．They might be stolen by thieves.

B．They might be moved away by the police.

C．Their neighbors might fill them with their harvest.

D．Their neighbors might throw rubbish in them.

2. What does the underlined word “blessings” in the second paragraph mean?

A．Tomatoes.	B．God’s protection.
C．Helpful things.	D．Best wishes.

3. What did the neighbor do in Sharon’s garden?

A．She harvested tomatoes only.

B．She harvested zucchini by accident.

C．She took some cucumbers mistakenly.

D．She stole something without Sharon’s permission.

4. We can infer from the article that the neighbor’s bread would taste________.

A．bitter but tasty	B．strange and bitter
C．hard and sour	D．soft and sweet

【推荐2】David Brown is known as the world’s fastest completely blind runner. He was diagnosed with Kawasaki disease at 15 months old, which led him to completely lose his sight by age 13.

Brown says he was living in fear for a number of years until he discovered his passion for running. After winning an essay contest, he earned the ticket for the Olympic Games in Beijing in 2008. It was at that time that he knew he wanted to compete himself.

Paralympic runners train and compete alongside sighted guides. At the Rio Games in 2016, Brown and his partner Jerome Avery ran 10. 99 in the men’s 100-meter dash to take home the gold. Brown made his way to running from another sport. He explains that he lost his left eye when he was 3, and lost vision in his right eye over time. He played basketball as a kid, but was increasingly getting injured because he couldn’t see the ball coming. “I took the opportunity to run on the playground, and realized I had some speed there,” he says.

He pursued his passion at the Missouri School for the Blind. Brown started at the school when he was 11, and it was there that he really started running track.

He got to his first Paralympic games by writing about running. Brown was one of the 25 winners of an essay contest that got to attend the event in Beijing. He says he wrote about how he used sports to overcome obstacles, noting that a he grew up he struggled with depression. It’s important to be in sync with your running partner. His new partner Steward says he doesn’t have to slow down when running with Brown, because he’s fast. A 10- or 11-second race doesn’t require much speaking, Steward says. “It’s also an honor,”Brown says. He notes that Paralympic runners can’t do what they do without guides like Steward, who could theoretically run solo but chose not to. He calls it “a great honor”.

1. What made David Brown decide to take part in the competition himself?

A．Winning an essay contest.

B．Winning an Olympic medal.

C．Attending the 2008 Olympics.

D．Attending the Missouri School.

2. What made David Brown change from basketball to running?

A．His change in personal interest.

B．The decline and loss of his vision.

C．The diagnosis with Kawasaki disease.

D．His participation in his first Paralympic games.

3. What can we know about David Brown’s essay?

A．It was depressing.

B．It was interesting.

C．It was pessimistic.

D．It was inspiring.

4. Which proverb best describes David Brown’s story?

A．Fact speaks louder than words.

B．The early bird catches the worm.

C．Where there is a will, there is a way.

D．Hope for the best, prepare for the Worst.