In my hometown, Oklahoma, the dirt goes everywhere. When my sister, Faye, and I walk to school, we cover our mouths so we don’t breathe in the dirt. Mama says all the dust is due to the drought(干旱).
Last Sunday, there was no dirt in the air, only bright spring sunshine and a clear blue sky. After church, Papa went to the field to check on the cattle while Mama started dinner. Faye and I played in the yard. Then the temperature suddenly dropped, and Mama shouted from the house, “Iris, you and Faye get inside, real quick now!”
I looked to the west and saw a huge black cloud of dust. “Faye, go with Mama!” I shouted. “I will warn Papa.” Covering my face with one hand, I struggled my way toward our family car and got in. The storm hit so fast that the day turned into night in an instant. Papa was still out there! I needed to help him find the car. I turned on the front lights, but would Papa see them in the thick darkness? I pushed the horn (喇叭) again and again, hoping Papa would hear it.
Suddenly, to my great surprise and relief, Papa’s face appeared at the window. He opened the door and climbed onto the seat next to me. After Papa shut off the car’s lights, we huddled together in the darkness for hours. I worried the dirt would bury us.
Finally, the wind subsided and the dust began to settle. We got out and reached the front porch just as Mama and Faye came out from the house.
“I’m safe thanks to Iris,” Papa said. “The car’s horn led me to shelter.”
“I’m so proud of you,” Mama said to me.
Tears of joy streamed down my dirty checks because our family had survived the horrible storm.
1. When the storm came, Iris went to the car to_____.| A．help her papa stay away from the storm | B．turn to her papa for help |
| C．send the car for her papa to drive | D．tell her papa about her safety |
| A．Surprised. | B．Happy. | C．Worried. | D．Proud. |
| A．got up | B．came along | C．went on | D．died down |
| A．Love for Papa | B．Drought in Oklahoma |
| C．Rescue on black Sunday | D．Papa trapped in the storm |
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President Barack Obama had a big pat on the back for his young daughters on Tuesday, saying they have got used to life in the White House.
After more than a year at the US presidential mansion, Malia Obama, 11, and Sasha Obama, 8, have made their dad proud with their ability to balance their private life with life in the public eye, he told NBC television.
“The happiest thing about the past year and a half has been the girls’ adjustment (适应). They have just been great. They’re doing well in school,” Obama said.
“They’re not as constrained. They can wander around. Their Secret Service protection is a lot more low key (低调),” he explained. “So they've got soccer, they’ve got basketball, they go sleep over at their friend’s houses.”
“Sometimes I’ve got 12 little girls screaming on the third floor of the White House. And they made a great adjustment.”
The president also admitted he was concerned about how his daughters would deal with his public life as they get a bit older.
“Now I get a little worried about them when they’re teenagers because I think that’s the time when you’re already feeling uncomfortable about your parents, and then imagine if your dad’s in the newspaper every day and people are calling him a fool. I feel a little worried about that.”
“But on the other hand, Malia and Sasha have just turned out to be unbelievably well adjusted kids,” Obama said.
“The thing that’s most important to me is that they are so respectful of everybody and haven’t gotten on any airs (摆架子). It’s all because of Michelle as she wouldn’t put up with (容忍) any of that stuff.”
1. Why is President Obama so happy according to the passage?| A．His daughters have been great in the public eye. |
| B．His daughters can balance their life with their study. |
| C．His daughters have got used to life in the White House. |
| D．His daughters have been in the White House for over a year. |
| A．devoted | B．forced | C．puzzled | D．concerned |
| A．what his daughters’ life will be like in the future |
| B．how his daughters will get on with him when they’re a little older |
| C．how his daughters will make friends with people around in the future |
| D．how his daughters will deal with his public life when they’re teenagers |
| A．Michelle is proud of being Obama’s wife. |
| B．Michelle allows her daughters to get on airs. |
| C．President Obama appreciates what Michelle has done. |
| D．Obama’s daughters are respected by everyone in the USA. |
【推荐2】For several months, Cara has been working up the courage to approach her mom about what she saw on Instagram. Not long ago, the 11-year-old girl discovered that her mom had been posting her photos for much of her life. “I’ve wanted to bring it up. It’s strange to see myself up there, and sometimes there are pictures I don’t like of myself,” she said.
Like most other modern kids, Cara grew up under the influence of social media. Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube were all founded before she was born. Instagram has been around since she was a toddler. While many kids may not yet have accounts themselves, their parents, schools, sports teams have been organizing an online presence for them since birth. It is a shock to know that details about their lives have been shared online without their permission or knowledge. And this has become a common、experience for many teenagers.
Recently a parenting blogger said that despite her 14-year-old daughter’s horror at discovering that her mother had shared years of highly personal stories and information about her online, she simply could not stop doing it.
But it’s not just crazy mommy bloggers who share their children’s information on social media. Plenty of average parents do the same. There’s even a special word for it: sharenting (晒娃).Almost a quarter of children begin their digital lives when parents upload their prenatal sonogram scans (产前超声波扫描) to the Internet to a study conducted by the Internet-security firm AVG. The study also found that 92 percent of kids under the age of 2 already have their own unique digital identity.
1. What does the underlined word “toddler” in the second paragraph probably mean?| A．Teenage girl. | B．School student. |
| C．Daughter. | D．Very young child. |
| A．AVG is the name of an Internet company. |
| B．25% of children begin their digital lives before they are born. |
| C．Fathers don’t like to share their kids’ information on social media. |
| D．The word “sharenting” has been appearing on the Internet recently. |
| A．Growing up on the Internet | B．A New Term Born |
| C．Parents Addicted to Blogging | D．The Children’s Horror |
【推荐3】It wasn't until I was much older that I would find something that I would consider as evidence of my father's love.
When the Commodore 64 personal computer came onto the market, I convinced myself that I had to have it even though its price was out of my mother's range. So I decided to earn the money myself. I mowed（割草）every yard I could find that summer for few dollars each, yet it still wasn't enough. So my dad agreed to help me raise the rest of the money by driving me to one of the watermelon farms south of town, loading up his truck with wholesale melons and driving me around to sell them.
He came for me before daybreak. We made small talk, but it didn't matter. The fact he was talking to me was all that mattered. I was a teenager by then, but this was the first time that I had ever spent time alone with him. He laughed and repeatedly introduced me as "my boy", a phrase he relayed with a sense of pride. It was one of the best days of my life.
Although he had never told me that he loved me, I would consider that day as the greatest evidence of that fact. He had never intended me any wrong. He just didn't know how to love me right. He wasn't a mean man. So I took these random episodes and clung to them like a thing most precious, storing them away for the long periods of coldness when a warm memory would prove most useful.
It just goes to show that no matter how distant the father, no matter how deep the damage, no matter how broken the relationship, there is still time, still space, still a need for even the smallest bit of evidence of a father's love.
1. The author finally managed to get the Commodore 64 ________.| A．with the money he asked his mother for | B．by getting well paid from mowing yards |
| C．with his hard work and his father's help | D．by selling watermelons in the neighborhood |
| A．his father didn't know how to love him | B．his father didn't live with him |
| C．they didn't get along well at first | D．his father was always busy with work |
| A．He never told me. | B．He loved me. |
| C．He never intended me wrong. | D．He didn't know how to love me. |
| A．The Best Days of My Life | B．The Story of My Father |
| C．Evidence of Love | D．Father and Son |
| A．Narration | B．Argumentation | C．Description | D．Exposition（说明文） |
【推荐1】In high school, I used to envy(羡慕)the students who sat at the front of the class, raising their hands for every question, and getting good grades on their work. The voice in my head asked, “Why am I not as good as them?” This’ phenomenon(现象)is called the “comparison trap. ”From my point, I only saw their best moments, the fruits of their labor, without considering the sacrifices(牺牲)they made to achieve it .
What’s a student to do? This is where organization, prioritizing, and asking for help all comes together. I always set aside enough time to study, write down any questions I had while studying, and wait until the lecture to see if my instructor covers them. If any of my questions wasn’t answered or remained unclear I knew I could ask my professor for clarification. Instead of envying the star student and comparing myself to him/her, I found a way to compare my past behaviors to the student I am today. Over the past two and a half years, I have improved this method and found that it has been the driving force in my success. It required me to do two things:
1. Recognize my opportunity cost, that is: sacrifice some of my free time now in pursuit of a more successful future.
2. Find others around me(like professors, tutors, students, and colleagues)that I could approach and ask for help or clarification.
I understand how difficult some of my recommendations might be for some to carry out, but try . Getting help, being prepared, and evaluating(评估)your personal progress as a student can be a clear path to success. I hope these tips will help guide you in pursuit of your academic goals.
1. According to the writer, what’s the phenomenon of “comparison trap”?| A．Comparing one’s past behavior to the present. |
| B．Envying star students and comparing oneself to them. |
| C．Envying the students sitting at the front of the class. |
| D．Admiring the students always raising their hands. |
| A．Getting help if necessary. | B．Being prepared at any time. |
| C．Evaluating your progress. | D．Leaving some difficult questions aside. |
| A．Envious and negative. | B．Envious but hard-working. |
| C．Hard-working and well-organized. | D．Negative but helpful. |
| A．To tell us how to ask for help. |
| B．To describe a common phenomenon. |
| C．To introduce how to find the driving force. |
| D．To offer some tips on how to succeed in study. |
【推荐2】I never knew anyone who’d grown up in Jackson without being afraid of Mrs. Calloway our librarian. She ran Jackson’s Carnegie Library absolutely by herself. SILENCE in big black letters was on signs hung everywhere. If she thought you were dressed improperly, she sent you straight back home to change your clothes. I was willing；I would do anything to read.
My mother was not afraid of Mrs. Calloway. She wished me to have my own library card to check out books for myself, She took me in to introduce me. “Eudora is nine years old and has my permission to read any book she wants from the shelves, children or adults,” Mother said.
Mrs. Calloway made her own rules about books. You could not take back a book to the library on the same day you`d taken it out；it made no difference to her that you’d read every word in it and needed another to start. You could take out two books at a time and two only. So two by two, I read library books as fast as I could go, rushing them home in the basket of my bicycle. From the minute I reached our house, I started to read. I knew this was extreme happiness, knew it at the time.
My mother shared this feeling of mine. Now, I think of her as reading so much of the time while doing something else. I remember her reading a magazine while taking the part of the Wolf in a game of "Little Red Riding Hood" with my brother's two daughters. She'd just look up at the right time, long enough to answer– in character –"The better to eat you with, my dear," and go back to her place in the magazine article.
1. Which of the following best described Mrs. Calloway?| A．diet. | B．Strict. | C．Humorous. | D．Considerate. |
| A．Desire to read. | B．Love for Mrs. Calloway. |
| C．Interest in games. | D．Fear of the library rules. |
| A．guidebook. | B．an autobiography. | C．a news report. | D．book review. |
There is at least one good reason for the desire to be attractive：beauty is power. Studies suggest that good-looking people make more money, get called on more often in class, and are regarded as friendlier.
But what exactly is beauty? It's difficult to describe it clearly, and yet we know it when we see it. And our awareness of it may start at a very early age. In one set of studies, six-month-old babies were shown a series of photographs. The faces on the pictures had been rated for attractiveness by a group of college students. In the studies, the babies spent more time looking at the attractive faces than the unattractive ones.
The idea that even babies can judge appearance makes perfect sense to many researchers. In studies by psychologists, men consistently showed a preference for women with larger eyes, fuller lips, and a smaller nose and chin while women prefer men with large shoulders and a narrow waist. According to scientists, the mind unconsciously tells men and women that these traits —the full lips, clear skin , strong shoulders —equal health and genetic well-being.
Not everyone thinks the same way, however. “Our hardwiredness can be changed by all sorts of expectations —mostly cultural,” says C. Loring Brace, an anthropologist at the University of Michigan. What is considered attractive in one culture might not be in another. Look at most Western fashion magazines: the women on the pages are thin, but is this "perfect" body type for women worldwide? Scientists' answer is no; what is considered beautiful is subjective and varies around the world. They found native peoples in southeast Peru preferred shapes regarded overweight in Western cultures.
For better or worse, beauty plays a role in our lives. But it is extremely difficult to describe exactly what makes one person attractive to another. Although there do seem to be certain physical traits considered universally appealing, it is also true that beauty does not always keep to a single, uniform standard. Beauty really is, as the saying goes, in the eye of the beholder.
1. People's ideas about beauty __________.
| A．have existed since ancient times |
| B．can be easily described |
| C．have little influence on a person's success |
| D．are based upon strict criteria |
| A．were rated for their appearance |
| B．were entered in a beauty contest |
| C．were shown photos of a group of college students |
| D．were able to tell attractive faces from unattractive ones |
| A．qualities | B．measurements |
| C．judgments | D．standards |
| A．the ideas of beauty vary as people grow up |
| B．the search for beauty is rooted in lack of confidence |
| C．the standards for beauty are based on scientific researches |
| D．the understanding of beauty depends on cultural backgrounds |
| A．The History of Beauty |
| B．The Standards for Beauty |
| C．The Mystery of Beauty |
| D．The Attitudes toward Beauty |
We were in Sri Lanka when the tsunami hit on Boxing Day 200 I was 15 and my brother was 17 at the time. Sadly, we lost our parents in that disaster.
Three years before the tsunami, our parents said we were to be removed from our structured school system in England and enrolled in what they believed to be the best education form: the university of life. As a family, we traveled the world, jumping from county to county and doing volunteer work along the way.
In the years after the tsunami, my brother and I were still both zealous travelers and often set off separately on our own adventures. It was our travels that inspired us to help others. We’d seen various products people wanted when they were on the move and we knew that if we created them, the profits from our business could go towards supporting those in need, especially kids.
So in 2012, we founded Gandys. From our bedroom in Brixton, we designed a range of clothing and accessories (配饰), with a part of the profits from each sale going towards helping children around the world by building Kids’ campuses and offering support including education, medication and healthy food. The first campus we built was in Sri Lanka,and then the next one was built.
The stand-out moment for Gandys came in October 2019. To mark the 15th anniversary of the tsunami, we opened our third campus in Nepal, a country that has seen its fair share of terrible events.
Help is still needed long after the event itself, but people often lose interest after a year or so and move on to other things. That’s why we feel it’s important to build lasting projects which support communities for the years ahead.
1. Why were the author and his brother removed from their structured school system in England? (no more than 10 words)2. What does the underlined part in Paragraph 3 mean? (no more than 10 words)
3. What did the two brothers do with a part of the profits from Gandys? (no more than 15 words).
4. What do the two brothers most probably consider important? ( no more than 10 words).
5. How do you like the two brothers? Please give your reason(s). ( no more than 20 words)
【推荐2】Winters are long and unforgiving in North Dakota. The winter of 1996 was especially brutal. It was a hard time in my own life too, A neck injury had kept me flat in bed for nearly a year. “Just in time for Easter,” my husband, Dick, said. But how could I feel the joy when the snow was four feet deep and I had months of painful physical treatment ahead?
I was doing the dishes one day, feeling hopeless when there was a tap against the glass. It was a branch of the troublesome cottonwood (棉白杨). Back in the fall of 1979, it was a new subdivision (分支) then, an eight-foot stick. The people who’d briefly occupied the house before us had placed the pipe from the pump next to it. The earth was so wet that the poor thing had fallen down, most of its bare root system pointing skyward, and blowing hopelessly back and forth in the cold wind. Dick decided to pull it out one day, but I disapproved of it.
“Look at how hard it’s trying!” I said, pointing to the way it strongly kept hold of the earth. “It deserves a chance.”
Dick borrowed some tools. We packed dry soil around the tree and put up some stakes (桩) into the ground, making it stand upright. That winter was still terrible. Surprisingly, in the spring my “rescue stick” put forth a few leaves, then with lots of branches. The year after that, we were able to remove the stakes. By the 1990s that little stick was a giant, towering over the house.
Now the tapping at the window continued, louder as the wind picked up, almost as though to tell me to look up. At last, I did. I caught ray breath. In the window against the icy blue sky, thousands and thousands of fresh red buds were waving in the wind.
The tree was bursting with life and I had a wonderful Easter.
1. What is the meaning of the underlined word “brutal” in Paragraph 1 probably mean?| A．busy. | B．hard. |
| C．long. | D．warm. |
| A．By supporting the stick firmly. |
| B．By watering the stick regularly. |
| C．By distributing chemical fertilizer. |
| D．By gathering sticks day and night. |
| A．To inform us of the current condition of her cottonwood. |
| B．To imply that she’d spent the hardest time and felt hopeful. |
| C．To tell us that the tree had survived from the awful winter |
| D．To suggest what she was going to do for the coming festival. |
| A．A friend in need is a friend indeed, |
| B．There is no garden without its weeds. |
| C．Success is the accumulation of sweat, |
| D．Where there is life, there is hope. |
【推荐3】The memory of one particular summer evening is still burned in my brain as if it were yesterday. There was nothing but wide-open fields for miles and miles around our rural Minnesota home. We never saw strangers not ever and here on this hot evening was a real live one walking up our driveway.
A young man, a slightly-built hitchhiker (搭便车的人) approached our door. He knew there was a storm coming, and he desperately needed shelter. Not wanting to intrude on our home and family, he asked my dad if he could sleep in our basement for the night for protection from the rain. Instead of saying yes, my dad loaded us all up in the 1959 Chevrolet: five kids, my mum, and the man.
Our family consisted of three older children whose father had died young and three more children from the union of my mother and father. Our older brother Jerry was in the Navy, on a ship somewhere overseas. Our mum and dad worried about him.
We drove him 10 miles to the next town, where Dad bought the man a room for the night along with a hot evening meal. In the car after we dropped off the stranger, I heard my dad say to my mum, “I just hope that if Jerry ever needs anything, this kindness will be returned to him.”
Weeks later, Dad told my uncle about the young man. My uncle suggested that perhaps my dad shouldn’t have taken the risk of having a stranger in our car. My dad replied, “You are absolutely right. I should have invited him into our home.”
1. What does the underlined phrase “intrude on” in paragraph 2 mean?| A．Disturb. | B．Scare. | C．Embarrass. | D．Upset. |
| A．By providing a bed for him in the basement. |
| B．By letting him stay for the night in the car. |
| C．By taking him to a hotel in another town. |
| D．By cooking a hot evening meal for him. |
| A．The family had five children in total. |
| B．Jerry was serving in the army in the USA. |
| C．They had no spare room for the hitchhiker. |
| D．Dad wished his elder son to be treated kindly. |
| A．Worthwhile. | B．Inappropriate. | C．Inspiring. | D．Unbelievable. |
