In the seventh grade I realized I was dyslexic, which made it difficult for me to read and spell. I did really badly in my history course, so my mother said to me, “I’ll work with you for a full week. I’m going to show you what you can do if you put in the right amount of effort.” So we did. We worked on history for a full week, an extra hour every day. But I still failed the test as always.
By the time I got to college, things didn’t get better. I would wait in registration lines all day to sign up for extra courses. Then I would go around the first day of class and ask each professor: “What’s your policy on misspelling?” If he said, “Three misspellings is a fail,” I’d drop it.
Although I was an academic failure, I had a great time. I had many friends and I was always popular. I was a good football player. I never had a day when I would think “People don’t like me.”
In spite of my obvious weaknesses, I became successful in my career, so much so that people say to me, “So you’ve overcome dyslexia.” No. I don’t overcome it. I just learn to compensate for it. Some easy things are hard for me. Most people read 500 words a minute. I only read 200. I try not to dial a phone because I sometimes have to dial three times to get the number right. I owe my successful career to my writing instructor, Ralph Salisbury. He looked past my misspellings and gave me encouragement. So I always feel confident.
The real fear that I have for dyslexic people is not that they have to struggle with their reading skills or that they can’t spell correctly, but that they will quit on themselves before they get out of school.
1. When the author did badly in the course, what did his mother do?| A．She led him to make more efforts. | B．She taught him history in person. |
| C．She blamed his laziness bitterly. | D．She sent him to an extra class. |
| A．The author always dials three times to make a phone call. |
| B．The author cures himself without anyone’s help. |
| C．The author failed in many extra courses. |
| D．The author leads a successful life. |
| A．fight for | B．make up for | C．struggle with | D．put up with |
| A．They should make more efforts to practice reading skills. |
| B．They should turn to a writing instructor for help. |
| C．They should not give up on themselves. |
| D．They should ignore the disease. |
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【推荐1】A 14-year-old killer whale named Wilkie has learned how to “speak” to humans. Wilkie, who lives at a whale aquarium（水族馆）in France, is able to imitate（模仿）a human saying “hello”, “bye-bye” and “one, two” after working with a team of researchers from the UK, Spain, Chile and Germany.
“Killer whales use their blowholes to make noises, almost like speaking out of your nose, so we were not expecting it to be perfect,” Jose Abramson, the lead author, told The Independent. “But we were surprised by how close it was.”
This isn’t the first time animals have learned how to imitate human sounds. Scientists have already made a record of animals like elephants，parrots，dolphins and beluga whales all imitating our words and noises, but it marks a first for killer whales.
Wilkie had already been trained to imitate the actions of a fellow killer whale. Once the scientists made her again learn how to mimic an action; they had her repeat four familiar sounds made by her 2-year-old calf（幼鲸），Moana. Next, they had her make five killer whale sounds she had never heard before, like a noise of opening the door. Then the researchers had Wilkie imitate the sounds made by a human and，finally，words like “ah ha” and her trainer’s name, “Amy”.
Wilkie was quickly able to imitate all the sounds and words, and she was even able to imitate some on the first try. Researchers said they had the first evidence that killer whales might be learning sounds by imitation, but they had no evidence that the killer whales understood what their “hello” stood for.
1. What is the main idea of the text?| A．Killer whales are the first to imitate humans. |
| B．Killer whale Wilkie has been used to test other animals. |
| C．Killer whales are able to imitate the sounds of their children. |
| D．Killer whale Wilkie has learned to imitate some human sounds. |
| A．Wilkie enjoyed human sounds. |
| B．Wilkie lived so close to humans. |
| C．Wilkie made sounds different from human voices. |
| D．Wilkie made sounds quite close to those of humans. |
| A．Change. | B．Copy. |
| C．Arrange. | D．Compare. |
| A．Quick. | B．Kind. |
| C．Honest. | D．Brave. |
| A．whether Wilkie can make human sounds |
| B．whether killer whales can tell voices from noises |
| C．whether Wilkie can understand the words like “hello” |
| D．whether other killer whales can do the same as Wilkie |
【推荐2】No party? No problem. These people found a way to celebrate their special day that was just as fun and even more meaningful than a traditional birthday party.
On the e-vite (电子邀请函) for Mikayla Gounard’s birthday party, she told her friends that she didn’t want presents. “I didn’t really need anything,” she said. “Everything they would have given me was plastic and stuff I really didn’t need.”
Instead, she asked for donations to help the homeless man, David Sean Currey, who found and returned Gounard’s grandmother’s lost wallet. She was super inspired by that story. She wanted to pay forward the kindness the stranger showed her grandmother.
On Dec. 22, her 12th birthday, Gounard raised $479. A GoFundMe raised an additional $55,000,which Gounard gave to David Sean Currey, along with a note saying, “In a dark tunnel, there is always light.” The homeless man started crying. He was able to check into a hotel, and open a bank account.
Across the country, kids and adults are having pay-it-forward parties, skipping traditional birthday celebrations, foregoing gifts, and choosing to spread kindness and help others.
After the devastating Texas snow and ice storm, Texas State Senator Dawn Buckingham spent her birthday on Feb. 2l in Harper. Texas handed out water and food and supplies to people who had no power for 10 days. Buckingham also invited strangers into her home to use her gas stove to cook meals. It was the end of hunting season — and she had a freezer full of venison she shared with strangers. “There’s nothing better than helping those who need help on your birthday,” Buckingham said on her birthday morning.
1. What did Gounard receive on her birthday in the past?| A．Inspiring blessings. | B．Unnecessary presents. |
| C．Her desired presents. | D．Donations from friends. |
| A．Buckingham’s story. | B．Her friends’ requirement. |
| C．A homeless man’s honesty. | D．Her grandma’s influence. |
| A．Moved. | B．Annoyed. | C．Anxious. | D．Frightened. |
| A．Receiving endless wishes. | B．Inviting strangers to her home. |
| C．Holding an amazing party. | D．Giving hands to those in need. |
【推荐3】One of the most pleasing sounds in sports is the rushing sound of a basketball swooshing (嗖嗖) through the net on a perfect shoot. Take away the net and all that’s left is the unsatisfying silence of a ball pushing air around as it sails through the rim (篮筐). Did it even go through? Sometimes it’s hard to tell.
Anibal Amador, a businessman from New York City, knows that basketball is nothing without the net. “Without the nets, it is just not good,” Amador said. “No one prefers to play that way.”
The New York City Parks Department is in charge of 1,800 basketball courts (球场) around the city’s five areas, where some of the best games in history have been played. It isn’t possible to keep nets on all the rims in all the parks, so the city doesn’t even try.
“I understand it,” Amador said, “because there are just so many parks that they would have to be putting up nets all the time. That’s where I come in.” He often digs into his own pocket to buy new nets for playground rims.
So, for the past few years, Amador has been buying basketball nets and tying them at a handful of playgrounds near his home in Midtown Manhattan.
Amador’s small act is one of many little acts of selflessness that are likely to go unnoticed yet help keep the quality of life to some degree in a large crowded city. “I think he works for the city,” a player said. “He is ready to spend his money and time. He is very careful about small details. He brings out a long brush and wipes down the backboards. I’ve never seen that before.”
Many stars have pet names. Amador was asked if he had one. Smiling happily, he replied, “I was thinking maybe. the Net Changer.”
1. What is the first paragraph about?| A．The rules of basketball games. | B．The importance of basketball nets. |
| C．The skill of shooting a clean basket. | D．The way to tell a good basketball shot. |
| A．He did his own bit. | B．He did not care at all. |
| C．He expressed his worry. | D．He talked the city into doing its duty. |
| A．Small Net, Big Heart | B．Amador’s Road to Fame |
| C．Amador’s Basketball Dream | D．Common Man, Unusual Goal |
【推荐1】As a child, I was proud of my southern origin. My own voice reflected my family’s past and present-part northern Mississippi, part Tennessee, all southern. There was no sound I loved more than my grandmother’s accent: thick, sweet, warm.
While growing up, I began to realize outside of our region, southerners were often dismissed as uncultured and ignorant. I was ready to leave behind my tiny town in West Tennessee, starting a new life and jumping at big chances in some far-off cities. In that embarrassing space between “teen” and “adult”, my accent was a symbol of everything I thought I hated about my life in the rural South. I feared it would disqualify me from being a noted magazine writer. I would have to talk less “country”. So I killed a piece of myself. I’m ashamed of it, but I’m more ashamed that I tried to kill that part of someone else-change Emily’s accent.
I met Emily in college. She was determined to work for the student newspaper, which was where I spent most of my waking hours, and we became friends. She, unlike me, accepted her roots. Early in our friendship, her mother asked where I was from, assuming it was somewhere up north. Then I felt my efforts paid off and even wanted to ignore the mistake.
Emily is two years younger and she cared about my opinion. I advised her to be more like me and hide her signature Manchester accent. I stressed that throughout our college years, often by making fun of her vowel (元音) sounds. I told myself I was helping her achieve her dream of working as a reporter. Now, I see that it was actually about justifying my hiding part of myself.
Grandma Carolyn used to tell me, “Girl, don’t forget where you come from.” Now I truly understand that. Many things have faded from memory, but this sticks in my mind with uncomfortable clarity. Now that I am grown and have left the South, it’s important to me.
1. What made the author want to leave her hometown?| A．Appeal of convenience in cities. |
| B．Her dream of becoming a writer. |
| C．Outside prejudice against southerners. |
| D．Her desire for the northern accent. |
| A．Upset. | B．Pleased. | C．Ashamed. | D．Surprised. |
| A．To prove herself right. | B．To help Emily be a reporter. |
| C．To make herself influential. | D．To protect Emily’s self-dignity. |
| A．Stay true to your roots. | B．Never do things by halves. |
| C．Hold on to your dreams. | D．Never judge a person by his accent. |
【推荐2】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 created the term “software engineering”. |
| B．She is the first woman ever hired by MIT. |
| C．She taught Lauren to write software. |
| D．She got her master’s degree from MIT. |
| A．a pet to accompany Lauren | B．a mistake causing data loss |
| C．a software ending prelaunch | D．a mission to land on the moon |
| A．The in-time upload of data. | B．Astronauts’ rich experience. |
| C．Experts’ new attitude. | D．The program change. |
| A．Honesty is the best policy. | B．Two heads are better than one. |
| C．Chances favor the prepared mind. | D．A good beginning is half done. |
【推荐3】I waved goodbye to my senior high school life just six months ago and now I am a college freshman. However, all the details of my senior high school life are still fresh in my memory.
My senior high school is called Yantai No. 1 Middle School of Shandong with a long history , which can date back to 1931. When I recall my memorable senior high school life, I feel happy and impressed.
To be honest, my senior high school life was tiring but I really enjoyed it. I focused myself on studies and studied hard to realize my dream. At that time, I got up at 5: 30 a. m. and went to bed late in order to have more time to review what I had learned in the day. In addition to study, I also took part in some activities such as English speech contests and calligraphy (书法) competitions.
Our class was like a big family. I got along well with my classmates. We always discussed topics of all kinds after class. I made many friends in the family and we still keep in touch with each other after we graduated. Luckily, my teachers were also very enthusiastic and friendly. We were seen as their children. They not only taught us knowledge but told us how to study better.
What's more, my dormitory life is also worth mentioning. Living far away from my home, I was quite independent by the end of the first semester at senior high. My roommates and I worked as a team to do the cleaning every day. We had a good time living as a family together, and my social skills were gradually improved.
This is my senior high school life, busy but fulfilling. I will never forget it.
1. It seemed that the author’s senior high school life was anything but________.| A．Memorable | B．impressive | C．tiring | D．terrible |
| A．The author was unhappy about his high school life. |
| B．The author was a hardworking student when at high school. |
| C．The author had no time for hobbies other than study. |
| D．The author won a lot of prizes in competitions during high school. |
| A．The author couldn’t do things on his own. |
| B．The author’s roommates were all enthusiastic |
| C．The author had trouble getting along with others. |
| D．The author had a better understanding of teamwork. |
| A．A guidebook. | B．An advertisement. |
| C．A fashion magazine. | D．A college composition website. |
