【推荐1】My doctor took me for a walk around the farm where she lives. I was physically and mentally exhausted and discouraged.

The farm was full of life. There were insects, horses, rabbits, and cats. She told me to focus on my body in the environment. When was ill, I intended to escape from the reality. So I expected nothing when meeting the horse named Fira.

As I got closer to Fira, she nuzzled (用鼻子爱抚) her nose into my chest, putting a gentle pressure over my heart. Something happened inside me: I felt as if I had reached a wellspring (源泉) of my fears, hurts and failures. I began to melt emotionally in an uncommon way. I patted Fira’s nose and breathed in her smell. Fira helped me feel loved and safe. After that, I began working with Fira often, learning basic communication and leading methods to work together with her. She connected with me by responding to my emotional state and reflecting it back to me in an open, friendly way.

In my meetings with Fira, I learned to live in the present, to focus on what was happening this day, at this moment, in this place. I learned to forget the past, with all its hurt. I learned to forget the future, which hadn't happened yet. I found deep peace in leading her along the path, by using my own power to judge whether to start, stop, turn left or turn right. I found inner quiet and even joy. My work with this horse was part of a journey out of a very dark night in my soul.

1. What did the author think of Fira at the very beginning?

A．Grateful.	B．Interested.
C．Worried.	D．Unconcerned.

2. What happened when Fira approached the author?

A．She felt afraid and Fira hurt her.

B．She realized how to live in the present.

C．She was touched mentally in a special way.

D．She learned basic communication methods with horses.

3. What might be the biggest gain for the author?

A．Making friends with a little horse.	B．Learning how to live in the future.
C．Spending a good time with the doctor.	D．Finding deep peace and inner quiet.

4. What is the last paragraph mainly about?

A．Animals are the friends of human beings.	B．The author recovers with the help of Fira.
C．It is a good idea to get close to nature.	D．Some animals have magical abilities.

【推荐2】Bees and France have a long history together. In the 1800s, Napoleon Bonaparte chose the bee to stand for France. In the same century, in 1845, the beekeeping school of Luxembourg Gardens in Paris was started. At that time there were around 2, 000 beehives (蜂箱) in the city. After that the numbers went down for some time, but beekeeping has become popular again recently. Now there are over 700 hives in Paris, which are actually on the roofs of famous Parisian buildings and hotels and restaurants.

City bees make three to five times more honey than country bees. This may be because there are no pesticides (杀虫剂) in the parks and gardens in Paris. French beekeepers in the countryside lose up to 40 percent of their hives each year because of disease, pesticides, and other causes. However, beekeepers in the city lose less than five percent.

“That’s interesting,” you might be thinking, “but isn’t there a lot of pollution in Paris?” In fact, pollution does not seem to influence the honey. Parisian honey was tested for 30 kinds of pollution and none were found.

As for the taste, Parisian bees have many kinds of flowers and plants to choose from. In the countryside, however, there is usually only one type of plant. The flowers in Paris give the honey a special taste. But Parisian honey is quite expensive. One pound costs about USD 65.

Beekeepers in Paris face some small problems. For example, if there are too many hives in one area, the bees might not have enough food. So beekeepers must work together and spread out their hives. Another problem is bees in restaurants. One beekeeper had to take his hives away from the roof of a restaurant after his bees started drinking from the flowers indoors. However, technology can be used to check on the hives, with cameras and microphones.

1. What can we know according to paragraph 1?

A．Beekeeping was very popular before 1800.

B．Parisians keep bees on the roofs of buildings.

C．Beekeeping was a subject in all schools.

D．There are over 2000 hives in Paris at present.

2. What does the underlined word “This” in paragraph 2 refer to?

A．Starting the beekeeping school.

B．A decreasing number of beehives.

C．City bees’ producing more honey than country bees.

D．Parisian bees’ suffering more harm than country bees.

3. What is the advantage of Parisian honey mentioned in the passage?

A．It has a unique taste.	B．It has a low price.
C．It has a special color.	D．It has a trademark.

4. What is the purpose of this text?

A．To recommend Parisian honey.	B．To remember Napoleon Bonaparte.
C．To offer some ways of beekeeping.	D．To introduce Parisian beekeeping.

【推荐1】It’s often said of British people that they are very aware of each other’s social rank. Britons can usually work out a fellow countryman’s background from the way they speak or dress, and may even treat them differently based on this. But although this may have been truer in the past than it is today. Visitors to Britain say that they still notice it. The comic play Pygmalion by the Irish man George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950), is a famous exploration of the importance of social rank in British society.

The main story of the play concerns a working class girl, Eliza Doolittle, a flower seller from London. Two upper class gentlemen try to see if they can get Doolittle to appear like an upper class lady after sending her for elocution lessons. Professor Henry Higgins, a language expert, says it can be done; his friend Colonel Pickering says that it’s impossible. Even so, Higgins sets out to teach Eliza how to “speak properly”.

Of course Eliza isn’t a lump of clay; she has her own will. She can see that it’s in her best interest to go along with Higgin’s plan to “improve herself”. She wants to be able to sell flowers in a shop rather than on the street. Still, Eliza’s willfulness means that it’s a bumpy（坎坷的）ride for everyone.

At the beginning of fourth act, the characters are at home after a ball（舞会）, at which Eliza proved that a flower girl can pass herself off as a lady after all. She was a triumph at the ball, and Higgins has won his bet.

But what happens next? Eliza has her future to worry about. She may be able to fool the upper class into thinking she’s one of them, but she isn’t really one of them.

Shaw seems to be telling us that social rank is about more than the someone talks---it’s about wealth and privilege. The whole experiment proves the idea that accents and classes are very superficial. The way one speaks and dresses are only markers of class. The class system itself, however, is something completely different.

1. According to the text, in Britain, the way a person speaks and dresses _____.

A．determines their social rank

B．used to have a strict code

C．is no longer cared about by other people

D．could affect other opinions of them

2. The words “elocution lessons” underlined in paragraph 2 probably mean ______.

A．dance lessons	B．speech lessons
C．sales training	D．dress courses

3. What happens to Eliza Doolittle during the experiment by Professor Henry Higgins?

A．She is forced to give up selling flowers on the street.

B．She is unwilling to participate in the experiment at first.

C．She is thought of as a respectable upper-class lady at the ball.

D．She is afraid that true background will be known by other people.

4. What message did Shaw intend to convey in Pygmalion according to the text?

A．People should try to improve their accents.

B．One can enter the upper class after receiving training.

C．The way someone speaks makes a big difference to their social status.

D．A person’s social rank can’t truly be judged by the way they look and talk.

【推荐3】Does your local high school have a student newspaper? Only 1 in 8 of New York’s public high schools has student newspapers – and many of those are published just a few times a year. A few more are online, which can leave out poorer schools.

Rebecca Dwarka, an 18-year-old senior who works for her student paper said, “Facebook is the new way of finding out what happened. Nobody wants to actually sit down and read a whole article about it. This makes a ‘whole article’ sound a little like a long sentence in lonely places.”

I am not nostalgic about high school student newspapers and never worked for mine. I put out what was then called a personal magazine with a group of friends because we wanted to write about peace, war and rock ’n’ roll without school officials warning us not to make jokes about the local officials.

School newspapers are in decline because students now find out what happened on social networking websites. This is a little discouraging because it proves that for millions of Americans, journalism is becoming a do-it-yourself thing. Every citizen can be a reporter.

When something happens, we look for social media messages. Facebook posts and Tweets have become the means by which citizens and reporters can prove, deny, pass on stories and express opinions without the press’ challenging, researching or slowing the message.

But truly good journalism is a craft, not just a blog post. It requires seeing something carefully and it uses an eye for details to help prove a larger view. And even journalism that conveys an opinion tries to be fair. If school newspapers begin to disappear, I hope there are other ways for students to learn that.

1. What can we infer from Rebecca’s words?

A．Students like reading detailed articles.

B．School newspapers are becoming unpopular.

C．Facebook is the quickest way of spreading news.

D．Long sentences are becoming popular in lonely places.

2. What does the author think of social media messages?

A．They make journalism become a craft.

B．They represent the power of small voices.

C．They are usually discouraging for readers.

D．They are coming without careful research.

3. What should good journalism do according to the author?

A．Ignore some details.

B．Spread a message quickly.

C．Convey an opinion in a fair way.

D．Act as blog posts in modern times.

4. Which might be the most suitable title for the passage?

A．Social media or newspapers?

B．Everyone can become a reporter at present

C．Social networking brings about new journalism

D．High school newspapers – an endangered species.

【推荐2】The word “proactivity” is fairly common in management literature, but you won't find it in the dictionary. It means that as a human being you take responsibility for your own life.

Look at the word responsibility: ability to choose your response, response-ability. Effective people are proactive because they take responsibility. Their behavior is a product of their own decisions, based on values, rather than being a product of their own conditions, based on feelings.

For instance, you are planning a picnic with your family. You're excited. You have all the preparations. You've decided where to go, and then it becomes stormy, killing your plan. Proactive people carry weather within them. They realize what their purpose really was, and they creatively have a picnic elsewhere even if it's in their own basement with some special games, and make the best of that situation. The opposite of being proactive is to be reactive. Reactive people would say, “What's the use?” “We can't do anything,” “Oh this is so upsetting after all of our preparations and arrangements.” They try to persuade the people around them and usually the picnic will be cancelled.

Being proactive is really just being true to your human nature. Your basic nature is to act, and not to be acted upon. That's true, despite widely accepted theories of determinism used to explain human nature. Determinism says that you don't really choose anything and that what you call choices are nothing more than automatic responses to outside conditions.

The language of reactive people is like: “I can't.” “Don't have time.” “I have to.” “I must.” The whole spirit of that language is the transfer of responsibility. They think things are determined by their environment, or by their conditions, or by their conditioning or their genetic makeup. Psychologically, people who believe they are determined will produce the evidence to support the belief, and they increasingly feel victimized and out of control. They're not in charge of their life at all.

On the contrary, a proactive person exercises free will, the freedom to choose the response that best applies to his values. In that way, he gains control over the circumstances, rather than being controlled by them.

1. When a picnic plan is threatened by a sudden storm, reactive people will probably     .

A．have the picnic as planned	B．make the best of the picnic
C．complain and give up the picnic	D．find somewhere else for the picnic

2. According to the passage, a proactive person's behavior can result from      .

A．the environment

B．an inner belief

C．the genetic makeup

D．a temporary feeling

3. People carrying weather within them usually      .

A．manage to improve the weather	B．give in to the weather passively
C．stress the influence of the weather	D．find a solution to the weather problems

4. It can be concluded from the passage that determinists (宿命论者)_______.

A．are in charge of themselves	B．accept things passively
C．are similar to proactive people	D．respond to outside conditions actively

【推荐3】Being a polite airline passenger starts with just a few easy steps.

Help your fellow traveler

While you're loading your carry­on bag into the overhead space, offer to lift a fellow passenger's up there, too. Not only is it kind, but it could make the boarding process more efficient for everyone else.

Keep your personal things well, personal

It's important to be mindful of your personal belongings. Avoid hitting other passengers with your bag, as you walk down the aisles(过道), by keeping it in front of you and close to your body. And once you sit down, you should stay there, and make sure you have everything you will need for the flight once you settle in your seat. Reaching over other passengers to access the overhead storage during the flight is uncomfortable for everyone.

Respect your (limited) space

In the narrow space of an airplane, maintaining your personal space will go a long way towards making a smoother ride for everyone. Let the middle­seat passenger use the armrests (it's the least you can do), and keep your legs within the width of the chair frame.

Be willing to swap seats with a family

Airlines sometimes reserve certain seats for special passengers or charge extra fees for adjacent(毗连的) ones，making it tough for family members to buy seats together. If you're traveling alone, offer to switch seats so that a family can sit beside each other; it's a kind gesture that they won't forget. But be sure to delay swapping until the plane has reached the safe altitude，as switching seats while everyone is boarding can be an inconvenience for those standing in the walkways.

1. To be a polite airline passenger, you need to do the following except________________.

A．lending a helping hand to your travelling companion

B．using the armrests to support your arms if you want

C．avoiding reaching over others to open the overhead storage

D．keeping your bag in front of you while walking down the aisles

2. If a man wants to swap the seat with you, you should__________________.

A．charge extra fees for offering adjacent seats

B．ask him to reserve the seat online in advance

C．offer your seat and stand in the walkways

D．put off swapping unless it is safe enough

3. Where can you most probably find the text?

A．In a daily newspaper.	B．In a literature book.
C．In an airport guidebook.	D．In an official document.