A Writing Fool
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. Then I went to school and failed the test, as always. It was really upsetting.
By the time I got to college I came to know that I couldn’t spell no matter how hard I tried. So I would sign up for extra courses. I’d be in registration lines all day. 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, which was important in those years because I could read my name in the newspaper. 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. When I write my books, I’m seeing everything in my imagination. I write quickly and go like the wind.
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, his mother thought that .| A．he needed a better teacher |
| B．he did not work hard enough |
| C．he was probably too ill to study |
| D．he was not as smart as other children |
| A．choose most interesting courses |
| B．become friends with new classmates |
| C．stay distance from language teachers |
| D．avoid courses that require correct spelling |
| A．Happy and active. |
| B．Shy and unhappy. |
| C．Successful and funny. |
| D．Quiet and unsuccessful. |
| A．not to get out of school |
| B．not to give up so easily |
| C．to learn to spell correctly |
| D．to develop reading skills |
相似题推荐
【推荐1】One part of the oath (誓言) taken by physicians requires us to “remember that there is art to medicine, and that warmth, sympathy and understanding may outweigh the surgeon’s knife or the chemist’s drug.” When I, along with my medical school class, recited that oath at my white coat ceremony a year ago, I admit that I was more focused on the biomedical aspects than the “art”.
Actually, medical professionals can get too easily caught up in treating to remember there is still space for healing. As doctors learn to communicate with patients beyond the restricted language of physical indicators, drug protocols and surgical interventions that may go against healing, they are reaching for new tools — poetry.
One clinical trial studied the effect of music or poetry on the pain, depression, and hope scores of 65 adult patients under cancer treatment. They found that both types of art therapy (疗法) produced similar improvements in pain and depression scores. Only poetry, however, increased hope scores. Researchers assumed that poetry can break the so-called law of silence, according to which talking about one’s perception of illness is taboo. After listening to poetry, one participant said, “I feel calmer when I hear those words. They show me that I’m not alone.”
Insights like these are already making their way into the clinic. Sarah Friebert runs a care center where children are visited by a writer who helps them create poems and stories for publication. Eric Elshtain uses poetry on the wards to teach children the power of self-expression. He’s found that many of his patients write haikus about things like sports or their favorite stuffed animal, rather than their experience in a hospital bed. Poetry, as he said, is a way to both accept the hospital encounter and escape from it.
While a poem a day won’t cure, it might help relieve. I’ve decided that I’ll learn how to meet my patients beyond the chart documents; that I’ll encourage them to write their own stories; that I will heal as well as treat. In other words, I’ll honor each and every word in the oath I took last year.
1. According to the text, the author is probably________.| A．a young poet | B．a clinical expert |
| C．a medical student | D．an experienced physician |
| A．Music works better in reducing depression. |
| B．Poetry makes people open about their illness. |
| C．Patients are likely to lose hope without poems. |
| D．Art therapy is the key to cancer treatment. |
| A．He will change his career path. | B．He will well remember the oath. |
| C．He begins to take his work seriously. | D．He has better understood his job. |
| A．A news report. | B．A research paper. |
| C．A public speech. | D．An application letter. |
【推荐2】My friend Mary and I set a goal many years ago to change our busy city lifestyle to a slower country pace. But every time she asked when we would move, I always said, “I’m not ready yet.” I could hear the hesitation and concern in my voice. Going to the country meant I had to leave the city where I had lived for the last 26 years, and leave friends who had become like family to me.
Mary left the room and came back carrying a bag. “This is for you,” she said and smiled. I opened the bag and found this poem:
Believe in yourself and in your dream,
Though impossible things may seem,
Someday, somehow you’ll get through to the goal you have in view.
Mountains fall and seas divide,
Before the one who in his stride,
Takes a hard road day by day.
Sweeping obstacles away.
Believe in yourself and in your plan,
Say not—I cannot but, I can.
The prizes of life we fail to win,
Because we doubt the power within.
After I read the poem, my concern disappeared. I knew it would be all right. I did have a dream. And although at times it appeared impossible, I set my goal and never lost sight of that goal. Yes, many times as I worked towards that goal I faced difficulties. When I faced those difficulties, I always remembered “Persistence (坚持) wins when all else fails.” I believed I could do it.
I am writing this story on Sunday, and tomorrow, on Monday, the moving truck will arrive. I am leaving Mississauga and moving to the country in New Brunswick.
1. From Para. 1, we can learn that _______.| A．country life is better than city life |
| B．the author lived a comfortable life in the city |
| C．the author was concerned about moving to the country |
| D．the author prepared for a long time before she moved |
| A．encourage the author to move |
| B．show the advantages of country life |
| C．explain why they needed to change their lifestyles |
| D．tell the author about her determination to change |
| A．Failure is the mother of success. |
| B．Friends are really important to us. |
| C．Don’t hesitate to realize our dreams. |
| D．We have to enjoy every day to the fullest. |
【推荐3】A few hours after my first mission, returning to Earth on the space shuttle Endeavour, I completed all of my medical tests after the flight, met with NASA officials, and reunited with my family. Finally, I was alone in my office room in astronaut crew quarters at the Kennedy Space Center. I turned on the TV. The television news started up: Such and such happened, people were shocked, blah blah blah. Sports scores. Silly commercials.
It didn’t take more than a minute before I had to turn it off. It felt like my body was refusing all this input, just as it would refuse an organ donation that had the wrong blood type. All of this noise was just completely foreign to who I was—or, more appropriately, who I had become. A few hours before, I had been orbiting Earth, seeing our planet from space, flying the most amazing machine ever built by human hands, and working with a team that was the absolute success of humans. And now here in my room watching what was being sold as news, and with my newfound perspective, I just could not stomach it. My world view was changed forever in a profound (深刻的) way.
The biggest change by far and the one for which I will always be most grateful is this big-picture perspective. That will stick with me for the rest of my life.
Whenever I feel the pressure of modern life, the stress about work, or worry about the future, I remember my time in the space station. Back to seeing the sun set. Or watching our galaxy rise on the horizon. Or seeing a sea of lightning flash a hundred times a second. Or simply back to floating weightlessly.
When I’m there in my mind and realize how many billions of these beautiful sunsets there have been and will be in the future, the cares of the world just don’t seem that pressing. It goes that, “Do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself.” Living daily life down here on the planet is so much better with this attitude!
1. Which of the following is closest in meaning to the underlined word “stomach” in Para. 2?| A．Accept. | B．Achieve. | C．Afford. | D．Attend. |
| A．He has a broader view of the world. |
| B．He doesn’t like watching TV anymore. |
| C．He’ll always be most grateful for everything. |
| D．He can fly the most amazing machine by hand. |
| A．A caged bird longs for clouds. |
| B．Tomorrow is always the best. |
| C．Live in the present moment. |
| D．Time works great changes. |
【推荐1】As kids, my friends and I spent a lot of time out in the woods. “The woods” was our part-time address, destination, purpose, and excuse. If I went to a friend’s house and found him not at home, his mother might say, “Oh, he’s out in the woods,” with a tone (语气) of airy acceptance. It’s similar to the tone people sometimes use now a days to tell me that someone I’m looking for is on the golf course or at the gym, or even “away from his desk”. For us ten-year-olds, “being out in the woods” was just an excuse to do whatever we feel like for awhile.
We sometimes told ourselves that what we were doing in the woods was exploring (探索). Exploring was a more popular idea back then than it is today. History seemed to be mostly about explorers. Our explorations, though seemed to have less system than the historic kind something usually came up along the way. Say we stayed in the woods, throwing rocks, shooting frogs, picking blackberries, digging in what we were briefly persuaded was an Indian burial mound.
Often we got “lost” and had to climb a tree to find out where we were. If you read a story in which someone does that successfully, be skeptical; the topmost branches are usually too skinny to hold weight, and we could never climb high enough to see anything except other trees. There were four or five trees that we visited regularly-tall beeches easy to climb and comfortable to sit in.
It was in a tree, too, that our days of fooling around in the woods came to an end. By then some of us has reached seventh grade and had begun the rough ride of adolescence (青春期). In March, the month when we usually took to the woods again after winter, two friends and I set out to go exploring. We climbed a tree, and all of a sudden it occurred to all three of us at the same time that we really were rather big to be up in a tree. Soon there would be the spring dances on Friday evenings in the high school cafeteria.
1. The author and his friends were often out in the woods to .| A．spend their free time |
| B．play golf and other sports |
| C．avoid doing their schoolwork |
| D．keep away from their parents |
| A．The activities in the woods were well planned. |
| B．Human history is not the result of exploration. |
| C．Exploration should be a systematic activity. |
| D．The author explored in the woods aimlessly |
| A．calm | B．doubtful |
| C．serious | D．optimistic |
| A．they were tall beeches |
| B．they were easy to climb |
| C．they were not hi to climb |
| D．they were comfortable to sit in |
| A．Happy but short |
| B．Lonely but memorable. |
| C．Boring and meaningless. |
| D．Long and unforgettable. |
【推荐2】Most of us have quite good memories, but our memories are limited. For example, we cannot remember everyone we have ever met or what we did on every single day of our lives. However, there are some people who do have prodigious memories. These people have a rare condition known as savant syndrome（学者症候群）. Savants suffer
from a developmental disorder, but they also exhibit great talents that contrast（显出差异）sharply with their physical and mental disabilities.
Kim Peek (1951-2009) was a savant who lived in Salt Lake City, Utah, in the United States. He was born with damage to parts of his brain, but it seemed that other parts of his brain, particularly those relating to memory, became over-developed.
Peek’s unique abilities appeared at a very early age. When he was just 20 months old, he could already remember every book that was read to him. Peek could read two pages of a book at the same time-one page with the right eye and one with the left-in less than 10 seconds and remember everything he read. By the time he died, Peek had memorized more than 9,000 books. He could remember all the names and numbers in a variety of telephone books. He could remember thousands of facts about history, literature, geography and sports.
Dr. David Treffert, an expert on savant syndrome, once described Peek as “a living Google” because of his astonishing ability to memorize and connect facts. However, at the same time, Peek was unable to carry out simple tasks, such as brushing his hair or getting dressed, and he needed others to help him. In 1989, the movie Rain Man won the Oscar for best Picture. The main character in the movie, played by Dustin Hoffman, was based on Kim Peek's life. He started to appear on television, where he would amaze audiences by correctly answering difficult questions on different topics. Peek-became world famous, and he and his father began touring widely to talk about overcoming disabilities. He inspired a great many people with his words. “Recognizing and respecting differences in others, and treating everyone in the way you want them to treat you, will make our world a better place for everyone.
Everyone is different.”
1. The underlined word “prodigious” in Paragraph 1 probably means ______.| A．happy | B．clear. |
| C．amazing | D．short |
| A．could take care of himself |
| B．was born with a good memory |
| C．was the student of Dr. David Treffert |
| D．became brain-damaged at 20 months old |
| A．By giving facts. | B．By following time order. |
| C．By explaining causes. | D．By making comparisons. |
| A．respect different cultures | B．listen to different opinions |
| C．treat different people differently | D．respect others’ differences |
【推荐3】Maria Rogers
123 Main Street
Fairfax，,Virgnia 22222
(703) 555-5555
Education：
Praha 5 Gymnasium, May 2011-May 2013
J. E. B. Stuart Transitional High School, June 2015 —May 2016
Experience ：
Cashier, McDonald’s, June 2014—May 2015.
Took customer orders, handled customer complaints(投诉),），mopped floors.
Caregiver, McDaniels family, June 2015—May 2018.
Took care of three children, ages 1 to 7, prepared lunch and dinner, drove children to school, organized children’s activities.
Caregiver, Smith family, June 2018—present
Takes care of twins babies, prepares meals and feeds children, cleans and organizes house, takes children to activities like music class.
References：
Jose Mendez, McDonald’s Manager. 703-111-1111.
Jane McDaniels, employer. 571-555-5555.
Nancy Smith, employer. 301-555-5555.
Leona Riley
1234 Red Oak Drive
Flint, MD 64000
Home：404-555-5555
Cell: 404-555-5556
Email：Leona Reiley@ frontfocus. Com
Objective
To obtain a waitress position in the Food and Beverage Industry.
Qualifications Summary
Extensive knowledge of principles and processes for providing customer service, and so on.
Wide knowledge of principles and methods for showing, promoting, and selling products or services.
Education
Maryland Customer Service Academy, Baltimore, MD
Associate's Degree (July 2015) , 404-554-4556
Work Experience
Waitress：:June 2016—Present, Royal Oak Restaurant, Flint, MD
Responsibilities include :Checking customers' identification to ensure that they meet minimum age requirements for consumption of alcoholic beverages, checking with customers to ensure that they are enjoying their meals, and so on.
Waitress:May 2013—May 2016, Chez Fayette, Flint, MD
Responsibilities included:Collecting payments from customers, writing food orders on order slips.
Prepared hot, cold, and mixed drinks for patrons.
Described and recommended wines to customers.
References available upon request.
1. What does Rogers do now?
| A．She’s a teacher. | B．She’s a cashier. |
| C．She’s a waitress. | D．She’s a caregiver. |
| A．In McDonald’s. |
| B．In Chez Fayette, Flint, MD. |
| C．In Royal Oak Restaurant, Flint, MD. |
| D．In Maryland Customer Service Academy. |
| A．571-555-5555. | B．404-555-5556. |
| C．703-111-1111. | D．404-5544556. |
