【推荐1】My friend’s grandfather came to America from a farm in Thailand. After arriving in New York, he went into a cafeteria(自助餐厅) in Manhattan to get something to eat. He sat down at an empty table and waited for someone to take his order. Of course nobody did. Finally, a woman with a big plate full of food came up to him. She sat down opposite him and told him how a cafeteria worked.
“Start out at that end,” she said, “Just go along the line and choose what you want. At the other end they’ll tell you how much you have to pay.”
“I soon learned that’s how everything works in America,” the grandfather told my friend later, “Life’s a cafeteria here. You can get anything you want as long as you want to pay the price. You can even get success, but you’ll never get it if you wait for someone to bring it to you. You have to get up and get it yourself.”
1. My friend’s grandfather came from ________.

A．Thailand

B．Manhattan

C．New York

D．China

2. The grandfather went into a cafeteria to ________.

A．wait for someone	B．get something to eat
C．meet my friend	D．buy something

3. The woman in the cafeteria might be ________.

A．a waitress	B．a friend of grandpa’s
C．a customer	D．an assistant

4. What should we do to get food in a cafeteria?

A．Wait for the waiter.

B．Ask someone for help.

C．Get it ourselves.

D．sit down at an empty table

5. What can we learn from the grandfather’s words about the life in the US?

A．Get up early and you can succeed.

B．Act and get what you want on your own.

C．Nobody brings you anything unless you pay the price.

D．Waiting is very important.

【推荐2】When I was growing up, I had an old neighbor named Dr. Gibbs. He didn’t look like any doctor I’d ever known. He never yelled at us for playing in his yard. When Dr. Gibbs wasn’t saving lives, he was planting trees. His house sat on ten acres, and his life’s goal was to make it a forest.

The good doctor had some interesting theories about plant care and growth. He never watered his new trees as others did. Once I asked why. He said that watering plants spoiled them and that if you water them each successive tree generation would grow weaker and weaker. So you have to make things tough for them and weed out the weaker trees early on. He talked about how watering trees made for shallow roots, and how trees that weren’t watered had to grow deep roots in search of moisture. I thought he meant that deep roots were to be treasured.

So he never watered his new trees. He planted an oak and, instead of watering it every morning, he beat it with a rolled-up newspaper. Smack! Slap! Pow! I asked him why he did that, and he said it was to get the tree’s attention.

Dr. Gibbs passed away a couple of years after I left home. Every now and again, I walked by his house and looked at the trees that I’d watched him plant some twenty five years ago. They’re extremely tall, big and robust since they have deep roots now. However, the trees in my garden trembled in a cold wind although I had watered them for several years.

It seems that adversity and suffering benefit these trees while comfort and ease never could. I stood there, deep in thought.

Every night before I go to bed, I check on my two sons. I often pray for them. Mostly I pray that their lives will be easy. But I think that it’s time to change my prayers because now I know my children are going to encounter hardship.

1. According to Paragraph 2 and Paragraph 3, we can infer that Dr. Gibbs’ motto may be _________?

A．“Seeing is believing”	B．“Honesty is the best policy”
C．“Practice makes perfect”	D．“No pain, no gain”

2. The underlined word “robust” in Para. 4 probably means _________?

A．strange

B．deep

C．strong

D．old

3. Which of the following statements is TRUE?

A．The writer is twenty-five years old.

B．Dr. Gibbs beat his trees with a rope.

C．Dr. Gibbs thought that watering trees might spoil them.

D．The writer will not pray for her children any more.

4. Which of the following can be the best title of the passage?

A．A Doctor

B．The Deep Roots

C．My Prayer

D．My Childhood Memory

【推荐3】Choice, we are given to believe, is a right. But for a good many people, choice gives birth to anxiety. Interested in the idea “too many choices are dizzy”, I have been conducting an experiment.     1    

When presented with a menu in a restaurant, I’ll only consider the first few options on each page. I know, it sounds crazy.     2     I used to read the menu a long time instead of sitting back and talking to my dining companion. These days I quickly select the best-sounding dishes and then chat and eat. In doing so, I find myself trying new things. The other night, for example, I ordered a smoked chicken salad. If I had permitted myself to glance further down the list, this would never have happened. But guess what? It was delicious. So limiting my choices can sometimes lead me to a wider range of experiences.

    3     I can now access many films and TV series, yet after ten minutes of looking through apps and menus, I will more often than not find myself watching whatever Channel 4 has scheduled at 9 pm. So before I even turn on the TV, I ask myself: what do I want to watch? I think of a program.     4    

This devotion to a simpler set of possibilities came in handy when our summer holiday to America was COVID-canceled. I didn’t go through a million TripAdvisor reviews for the best replacements. I simply went on Airbnb, saw what in England was still available and immediately booked the one I could afford.     5     And now I can actually focus on enjoying our holiday.

A．Then I just watch it.

B．It never proved worth a try.

C．But it’s actually quite liberating.

D．It interprets a lifestyle: less is more.

E．The same applies to home entertainment.

F．By doing so, I saved myself days of travel anxiety.

G．I’ve been expanding the choices I allow myself to have.

【推荐1】There's a lot of losing in sports. Only one team can win at a time, and only one champion escapes the season without tears. But that doesn't stop Americans from spending nearly $56 billion a year on sporting events. Is fandom (运动迷） worth it?

At first glance, the evidence isn't encouraging. Following a loss, fans are more likely than usual to eat unhealthy food, be unproductive at work, and in the case of the Super Bowl - die from heart disease. What about fans of the winning team? Well, they are more likely than other fans to suffer a postgame traffic fatality(死亡）if the score was close.

Rival(竞争的）fans' treatment of one another is hardly more encouraging. A recent study found that fans experienced greater pleasure when watching a rival team fail,as opposed to non-rivals. Fans in another study reported schadenfreude, a feeling of satisfaction, when reading about the injury of a rival team's player, and gluckschmerz or unhappiness when later reading about the player' s unexpectedly speedy recovery.

Yet a great deal of research shows that being a fan can also have positive effects. It can prevent depression and build a sense of belonging and self-worth ----- provided the object of one's devotion is a local team. Much of this is due to social bonds among fans, but not all - sports worship also provides fans with a number of skills at dealing with life's emotional challenges. A landmark 1976 study found that after a win, fans were more likely than usual to wear clothes connected to the winning team, and to claim credit for the team’s success by describing the team as “we” instead of “they ”in conversation.

Along with schadenfreude and gluckschmerz, being a fan seems more than anything else to be a matter of managing responses to things one can't control. Sports fans tend to respond to reminders of death with optimism, and to remember victories much more clearly than defeats.

1. What can be learned about the winning side's fans?

A．They tend to live an unhealthy life.	B．They might have a traffic accident.
C．They might die from heart disease.	D．They can perform their work better.

2. How does the author present the advantages of being a fan?

A．By providing research results.	B．By stating arguments.
C．By explaining statistical data.	D．By giving examples.

3. What did the 1976 study show?

A．Being a fan could test relationships.

B．Being a fan could show great devotion to duty.

C．Being a fan could create a feeling of belonging.

D．Being a fan could develop a spirit of optimism.

4. What is the best title for the text?

A．The importance of being a fan	B．What it' s like to be a fan
C．Being a fan can be good for you	D．A fan's emotional challenges

【推荐2】At your next meeting, wait for a pause in conversation and try to measure how long it lasts.

Among English speakers, chances are that it will be a second or two at most. But while this pattern may be universal, our awareness of silence differs dramatically across cultures.

What one culture considers a confusing or awkward pause may be seen by others as a valuable moment of reflection and a sign of respect for what the last speaker has said. Research in Dutch (荷兰语) and also in English found that when a silence in conversation stretches to four seconds, people start o feel uneasy. In contrast, a separate study of business meetings found that Japanese people are happy with silences of 8.2 seconds-nearly twice as long as in Americans’ meetings.

In Japan, it is recognized that the best communication is when you don’t speak at all. It’s already a failure to understand each other by peaking because you’re repairing that failure by using word.

In the US, it may start from the history of colonial (殖民地的) America as a crossroads of many different races. When you have a complex of difference, it’s hard to develop common understanding unless you talk and there’s understandably a kind of anxiety unless people are verbally devoted to developing a common life. This applies also to some extent to London.

In contrast, when there’s more homogeneity, perhaps it’s easier or some kinds of silence to appear. For example, among your closest friends and family it’s easier to sit in silence than with people you’re less well acquainted with.

1. Which of the following people might have the longest silence in conversation?

A．The Dutch	B．Americans
C．The English.	D．The Japanese

2. What might the Japanese agree with in conversation?

A．Speaking more gives the upper hand

B．Speak out what you have in your mind.

C．Great minds think alike without words

D．The shorter talking silence, the better

3. What can we learn from the text?

A．A four-second silence in conversation is universal

B．It’s hand for Americans to reach n common agreement

C．English speakers are more talkative than Japanese speakers.

D．The closer we and our family are, the easier the silence appears

4. What does the underlined word “homogeneity” in the last paragraph mean?

A．Similarity	B．Difference
C．Diversity.	D．Misunderstanding

【推荐3】Teaching is not an easy career (职业) to go into, yet it’s one of the most important careers in a culture. The future of a country depends on the quality of education that its next generation (代) receives and the character that the children develop. Even though educators are the most important part of our schools, the structure (结构) of the education system in the United States is not set up to fully support them. In fact, it often puts them in difficult situations.

In most careers, salaries (工资) are based on education, experience, and performance. Not so with teaching. In many schools, teachers aren’t paid based on their level of education or experience. Though many go into the career because of their love of teaching and working with children, being fairly rewarded for their work is a problem.

Add to the fact that many teachers have to spend their summers making enough money to support their family, so many teachers are leaving the field. A 2019 study reported that about 8% of teachers gave up the career each year. The result will soon be that there won’t be enough educators.

One of the reasons why teachers are leaving the field is that they don’t get respect in the classroom. Disrespect, in my view, is the biggest problem that our teachers face and it has got worse in recent years.

How to improve this situation? Schools should take care of teachers in them, and our teachers need more of us to support them. They need us to raise our voices for a stronger education system that supports them. They should be offered better salaries and more chances of career improvement. These will encourage more people to be teachers.

1. How does the author like the structure of the American education system?

A．It is unsatisfying.	B．It is full of risks.
C．It fully supports teachers.	D．It puts teachers in good situations.

2. Why do many teachers fail to relax in summer vacations?

A．They need some training in teaching.

B．They have to visit students' parents.

C．They have to look after students.

D．They need to make extra money.

3. What do the teachers need most in the author’s opinion?

A．Enough respect.	B．Increase in salaries.
C．Rights to control students.	D．Teaching methods.

4. What does the author advise in the last paragraph?

A．Requiring kids to work hard at school.

B．Calling for a better education system.

C．Encouraging more people to be teachers.

D．Having a better understanding of books.