【推荐1】When White met the pit bull puppy in 2018, Darby was young, playful, strong as an ox. Then, in the summer of 2019, came Darby’s date with destiny.

White was fishing in Northern Caledonia’s Bodega Bay. He left Darby, then a year old and 100 pounds, in the parked car with windows down, while he cast his line a few yards away. The fish weren’t biting, White recall, until, suddenly, they were.

At first, White thought he had hooked a stingray. But as he reeled (绕线) it in, he realized it was a sevengill shark, about 6 feet long. Not uncommon but still dangerous He brought it close and carefully unhooked it, expecting it to swim away. It didn’t. The shark bit his ankle.

“All of a sudden there was blood everywhere,” says White. He yelled for help, hoping the fishermen down the beach could hear. But they didn’t seem to know what was going on. Fortunately, Darby did. He jumped out of the car and ran toward the water. He ran right up to the shark and sank his teeth into its gills (鱼鳃).

“That just made the shark bite down harder,” White says. Darby backed off, then regrouped and attacked the shark’s tail. The shark released its grip (紧抓), and White managed to push it into shallow water, where it swam off. “The whole thing took less than a minute,” White says, “but it left plenty of damage.” White was able to stop the bleeding and get to a hospital, where he learned that the wound was very severe.

That would’ve been the end of it, had Darby’s story not gone viral. White was contacted by NBC News and CNN. That’s when the countless cash offers started to come in. But the big dog was not for sale.

1. What do the underlined words “date with destiny” mean?

A．A day for celebration	B．An important meeting
C．Important time in life	D．An appointment with White

2. What can we learn from the story?

A．White hooked a rare and dangerous shark.

B．Darby succeed in the fight against the shark at his first attempt.

C．White was not seriously injured thanks to Darby’s help.

D．Many people wanted to buy the dog.

3. Which of the following can best describe Darby according to the story?

A．Young and cute	B．Brave and devoted
C．Friendly and smart	D．Playful and naughty

4. What’s the text mainly about?

A．How a dog saved its owner	B．How to fight against a shark
C．How a shark attacked people	D．How to go shark fishing with a dog

【推荐2】Since the age of three, Chelsie Hill had dreamed of becoming a dancer. That dream nearly ended one night in 2010. Hill was in a car accident that put her in hospital for 51 days and left her paralyzed (瘫痪的). For most people, that would have destroyed any hope of a dancing career. For Hill, it was the beginning. Far from being a barrier (障碍), her wheelchair emboldened her. “I wanted to prove to my community — and to myself — that I was still ‘normal’,” she told Teen Vogue.

“Normal” for her meant dancing. With half of her body taken away, Hill had to move it with hands. It took a lot of learning and patience, but she still made it in her wheelchair with her non-disabled high school dance team.

After graduation from high school in California, Hill wanted to expand (扩展) her dance network to include women like her. She met online the women who had suffered various back injuries but shared the same determination with her.

Hoping to reach more people in a larger city and break down the false belief of wheelchair users, Hill moved to Los Angeles in 2014, formed a team of dancers with disabilities and named it the Rollettes. As she always believes, dancing on wheels can be just as good as foot-based dance.

In disabled dance competitions, all dancers from her team gave great performances and they were having fun.

Hill has achieved what many of us never will: her childhood dream. Every year she holds a dance camp for wheelchair users of all ages and abilities with an eye to helping them find their confidence.But the Rollettes has helped her find something else just as satisfying. In 2019,over 173 women from ten countries attended the Rolettes Experience. For most of these women, it was the first time they had felt they belonged .Edna Serrano told a reporter that being part of the Rollettes team challenged her to be more independent. “It even gives me the courage to take up driving.” she said.

1. What does the underlined word “emboldened” in paragraph I probably mean?

A．Encouraged.

B．Destroyed.

C．Prevented.

D．Deserved.

2. Why does Hill hold the Rollettes Experience every year?

A．To realize her childhood dream.

B．To encourage the disabled to drive.

C．To become the heroine of wheelchair dancers.

D．To build confidence in more wheelchair users.

3. What is the best title for the text?

A．Dancing for the Disabled	B．An Amazing Experience
C．Dancing in Wheelchairs	D．The History of the Rollettes

【推荐3】In the mid-1950s, I was a somewhat bored early-adolescent male student who believed that doing any more than necessary was wasted effort. One day, this approach threw me into embarrassment.

In Mrs. Totten’s eighth-grade math class at Central Avenue School in Anderson, Indiana, we were learning to add and subtract decimals (小数).

Our teacher typically assigned daily homework, which would be recited in class the following day. On most days, our grades were based on our oral answer to homework questions.

Mrs. Totten usually walked up and down the rows of desks requesting answers from student after student in the order the questions had appeared on our homework sheets. She would start either at the front or the back of the classroom and work toward the other end.

Since I was seated near the middle of about 35 students, it was easy to figure out which questions I might have to answer. This particular time, I had completed my usual two or three problems according to my calculations.

What I failed to expect was that several students were absent, which threw off my estimate. As Mrs. Totten made her way from the beginning of the class, I desperately tried to determine which math problem I would get. I tried to work it out before she got to me, but I had brain freeze and couldn’t function.

When Mrs. Totten reached my desk, she asked what answer I’d got for problem No. 14. “I…I didn’t get anything,” I answered, and my face felt warm.

“Correct,” she said.

It turned out that the correct answer was zero.

What did I learn that day? First, always do all your homework. Second, in real life it isn’t always what you say but how you say it that matters. Third, I would never make it as a mathematician.

If I could choose one school day that taught me the most, it would be that one.

1. Usually, Mrs. Totten asked her students to ________.

A．recite their homework together

B．grade their homework themselves

C．answer their homework questions orally

D．check the answers to their homework questions

2. The author could work out which questions to answer since the teacher always ________.

A．asked questions in a regular way

B．walked up and down when asking questions

C．chose two or three questions for the students

D．requested her students to finish their usual questions

3. The author failed to get the questions he had expected because ________.

A．the class didn’t begin as usual

B．several students didn’t come to school

C．he didn’t try hard to make his estimate

D．Mrs. Totten didn’t start from the back of the class

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

A．An Unforgettable Teacher	B．A Future Mathematician
C．An Effective Approach	D．A Valuable Lesson

【推荐2】Growing up, I understood one thing about my dad: He knew everything. In my teen years, he taught me things I’d need to know to survive in the real world: how to drive a stick shift, how to check the car tyre’s (轮胎) pressure, and the correct knife to use to cut a cantaloupe.

When I moved out on my own, I called him at least once a week, usually when something broke in my apartment and I needed to know how to fix it: the toilet, the air-conditioning, the wall, once, when I threw a shoe at a terrifying spider.

But then, eventually, I needed him less. I got married, and my husband had most of the knowledge I lacked about gutter (排水沟) cleaning and water heaters and nondestructive insect removal. For everything else, we had Google. I didn’t know when it happened, but our conversations turned into six words when I called. Me: “Hi, Dad.” Him: “Hi, sweet. Here’s Mom.”

I loved my dad, of course, but I wondered at times if maybe he had already shared everything I needed to know. Maybe I’d heard all his stories. Maybe, after knowing a man for 40 years, there’s nothing left to say. Then, two summers ago, my husband, our four kids and I moved in with my parents for three weeks while our house was being painted. They owned a lake house, and my dad asked me to help him rebuild the bulkhead (舱壁). It was a hard and manual job. We got wet and sandy. But as we put the new bulkhead together piece by piece, my dad knew exactly what went where. I looked at him, “How do you know how to build a bulkhead?” “I spent a summer in college building it on the Jersey Shore.”

“You did?” I thought I knew everything about my dad, but I never knew this. I realized that maybe it’s not that there’s nothing left to say. Maybe it’s just that I’ve spent my life asking him the wrong questions. That day, my dad talked about what he had learned and what he could do excitedly. We chatted and chatted for a long time.

A few weeks later, after my family and I moved back into our painted house, I called my parents. “Hi, sweets,” he said. “Here’s Mom.” “Wait, Dad,” I said. “How are you?” We ended up talking about everything he was working on. To anyone else, it would sound like a normal conversation between a dad and his daughter. But to me, it was novel and a new beginning. I spent the first part of my life needing to talk to my dad. Now I talk to him because I want to.

1. Why did the author feel that she needed to call her dad before she got married?

A．She called to make sure he was pleased.	B．She wanted to talk to him for knowledge.
C．She knew her parents missed her so much.	D．She was asked to call him once a week.

2. Why hadn’t the author got something to talk with her father before she moved back to be with him?

A．Her father was old and he didn’t keep up with the world.

B．Her father always thought he was right in everything.

C．She didn’t have more to learn from him than she thought.

D．She spent her younger ages asking him too many questions.

3. What does the father’s answer “Hi, sweet. Here’s Mom.” mean?

A．The author’s mother is answering the phone.	B．The author’s mother knows what has happened.
C．He will give the phone to the author’s mother.	D．He finds the author’s mother sweet and kind.

4. Which of the following words best describe the father?

A．Creative and faithful.	B．Selfless and brave.
C．Inspiring and generous.	D．Loving and experienced.

【推荐3】When I was a girl of five, my mother sold flowers at People’s Market in Shanghai, China. She couldn’t leave me at home on my own, so I had to go to the market with her. As I grew older, I began to help my mother and I really enjoyed it.

Things changed when I was 14. My grandma gave me a book for Christmas, which was all about making candles. I loved it so much that I spent all my free time making candles of all shapes and sizes. I made hundreds of them.

One day, my mother was ill so I had to go to the market on my own. I decided to take some candles with me and see if I could sell them. To my surprise, they were sold out in 20 minutes! The next week, my mother gave me some money to buy some wax(蜡) to make more candles. They were sold out really quickly, too.

Nine months later, we decided to stop selling flowers. My mother and I couldn’t make enough candles during the week, so some of my classmates started to help us. I paid them one pound for every candle, and we used to sell them for three or four times more expensive than that. It was interesting and my classmates worked with me in the market.

When I was 22, my uncle lent me some money and I opened my first shop on Zhonghua Road. Since then, I’ve never looked back, even in difficult times. At the first store, we only sold candles, but now we sell everything from famous furniture to paintings.

1. The writer felt ________ when helping her mother sell flowers.

A．surprised

B．enjoyable

C．difficult

D．bored

2. We can learn from the passage that________.

A．people liked the candles the writer made very much

B．the writer helped her mother since she was five

C．the writer made candles in order to sell at first

D．the writer paid four pounds for every candle made by her classmates

3. What do we know about the writer’s first store?

A．It was easy to run the first store.

B．It was opened with her mother’s help.

C．It only sold candles and flowers at first.

D．It was opened when she was 22.

4. What is the main idea of the passage?

A．How to set up real goals.

B．How the writer got her family’s support.

C．How to develop our interests.

D．How the writer succeeded in her business.

【推荐1】I remember doing the household chores to help my mother when I was nine. I hated changing the vacuum cleaner(真空吸尘器) bag and picking up things the machine did not suck up. Twenty years later. in 1978, with this lifelong dislike of the way the machine worked, I decided to make a bagless one.

Easier said than done, of course. I didn’t realize that I would spend the next five years perfecting my design, a process (过程) that resulted in 5,127 different prototypes (样机).By the time I made my 15th prototype, my third child was born. By 2,627， my wife and I were really counting our pennies. By 3,727, my wife was giving art lessons for some extra cash, and we were getting further and further into debt. These were tough times, but each failure brought me closer to solving the problem.

In the early 1980s, I started trying to get licensing agreements for my technology. The reality was very different, however. The major vacuum makers had built a business model with bags. No one would license my idea, not because it was a bad one, but because it was bad for business. But soon after, the companies that I had talked with started making machines like mine. I had to fight legal battles on both sides of the Atlantic to protect the patents (专利权) on my vacuum cleaner.

I was still in financial difficulties until 1993,when my bank manager personally persuaded Lloyds Bank to lend me $1 million. Then I was able to go into production. Within two years, the Dyson vacuum cleaner became a best-seller in Britain.

Today, I still accept risk and the potential for failure as part of the process. Nothing beats the excitement of invention.

1. What made the author design a bagless vacuum cleaner?

A．His willingness to help Mom.	B．His curiosity about machines.
C．His boredom of doing endless homework.	D．His discontent with the cleaners of that age.

2. What is paragraph 2 mainly about?

A．The help from the author’s wife.

B．The educational problems of the family.

C．The steps of making a bagless cleaner.

D．The difficult process of the new invention.

3. Why did the companies refuse to license the author’s technology?

A．They thought they might suffer loss.

B．They considered it not good enough

C．They faced legal problems themselves.

D．They had begun making such machines.

4. What lesson can we learn from the author’s experience?

A．Think twice before acting.

B．Failure is the mother of success.

C．Actions speak louder than words.

D．A good beginning makes a good ending.

【推荐1】American Mark Hough lives near Los Angeles, California. He was just about to start his weekend with an alcoholic drink called a margarita and a dip in his hot tub when he heard sticks breaking and leaves moving in his backyard. At first, he thought the sounds were coming from his neighbor. But then, the noise grew louder. “So I got up, looked over in the bushes and there was a bear climbing up over my fence,” Hough said.

After seeing the bear, Hough decided to go back into his home for safety reasons. When Hough looked outside a short time later, the bear had made himself at home in Hough's backyard. The bear had entered Hough's unheated hot tub.

“He was playing, having a grand old time,” Hough said. He found his phone and began recording video of the bear's activities.

After a few minutes of pool time, the bear got out and walked slowly around the yard. Then it made its way over to Hough's margarita. The bear pushed the drink over and drank it off the ground.

Later in the day, Hough was talking to a neighbor when some tree leaves fell to the ground. Hough looked up to see the bear sleeping in the tree. “So he had his margarita, and now he's ready for an hour nap,” Hough said.

Hough's video of the bear's relaxing afternoon has been a hit on social media. One Twitter user said the bear is “clearly having a better summer than you”. Other users called the bear a “summer hero”. One called it her “spirit animal”. And one local news station in Iowa suggested the bear's activities would be a great way to celebrate America's Independence Day.

1. Why did Mark Hough decide to return to his home?

A．To avoid being attacked.	B．To record a video.
C．To have a drink.	D．To call the local news station.

2. Who recorded the video of the bear's activities?

A．Mark Hough himself.	B．Hough's neighbor.
C．One Twitter user.	D．A reporter in a local news station.

3. Where was the bear found finally that day?

A．In the pool.	B．Near the fence.
C．In a big tree.	D．In his neighbor's backyard.

4. How did the Twitter users feel about the bear's activities?

A．Unpleasant.

B．Surprised.

C．Horrible.

D．Impossible.

【推荐2】Working out can help teenagers boost their grades, a new study suggests. Adolescents who routinely engaged in moderate to vigorous（剧烈的）exercise showed long-term improvements in their academic performance, the British Journal of Sports Medicine study reported.

“Our study suggests that the effect of physical activity may be quite large,” John Reilly, a professor at the University of Strathclyde said. The researchers looked at a sample of about 5000 children who were involved in a long-term study that tracks children born in the U.K. between 1991 and 1992. When children reached 11 years old, their daily physical activity levels were measured using an accelerometer（加速器）for three to seven days. The device, similar to a pedometer（计步器）tracking the number of steps taken, recorded the average time children exercised, which was 29 minutes a day for boys and 18 for girls.

“The actual levels of daily physical activity at age 11 were quite low,” Mr. Reilly noted. The children had their academic performance tested at ages 11 and 13 with compulsory national tests for students, and also at 15 or 16 with the General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE) exam. The tests assessed the children’s abilities in English, math and science subjects. The results showed that the more children participated in moderate to vigorous physical activity, the higher their test scores were at age 11 in all three subjects. For girls, science scores were most strongly linked to exercise.

When children were tested again at age 13, their academic scores were still linked to how much they had exercised when they were 11 years old. By the time the youngsters took the GCSE exam, each 17-minute-per‑day increase in physical activity for the boys was linked to an improvement in their scores. Every additional 12-minute increase a day in exercise for the girls was also linked to an increased score, especially in the science category.

The researchers have called for more studies to look at the possible academic benefits that could be derived if students exercised the recommended 60 minutes or more a day.

1. What’s the study about?

A．The influence of exercise on students’ scores.

B．The secrets of students’ ranking high in class.

C．The causes of students’ participating in sports.

D．The ways of improving students’ physical conditions.

2. What do the study’s results show?

A．Students at age 11 do more exercise than at other ages.

B．Boys at age 13 get more benefits by doing more exercise.

C．Girls’ science scores are more closely related to exercise.

D．More and more students do exercise to improve their scores.

3. What does the underlined word “derived” probably mean in the last paragraph?

A．Maintained.

B．Obtained.

C．Concluded.

D．Reduced.

4. Where does the text most probably appear?

A．In a storybook.

B．In a fashion magazine.

C．In an exercise guide.

D．In a research report.

【推荐3】Food Parts You Should Never Throw Away in the Garbage

Pineapple Core

When you carve out the core of a pineapple, don't throw it in the garbage. You can use the pineapple core for all kinds of recipes, and there are tons of vitamins and minerals hiding within. To use the pineapple core: chop it and add it to fruit salad, blend it into smoothies, cut it into cubes and freeze for later use, or simply add it to water or even tea to improve flavor.

Kiwi Skin

If you never thought you could eat kiwi in the way you eat a peach, think again. That skin really is good for you and contains a lot of vitamin C, and in fact, it's also higher in fiber than the rest of the fruit. Of course, that rough, ugly skin isn't for everyone, so if you don't like it, try adding a whole kiwi to a smoothie to hide the taste of the skin.

Banana Peel

Most of us eat the banana without giving the soft peel a second thought. Here's why that's a mistake: banana peel contains tryptophan(色氨酸), which increases "the happiness hormone" to help with mood regulation and nerve system. There are a few creative ways to use the peel. Cook or boil for at least 10 minutes to soften. You can add it to smoothies, stir-fries, or soups. And, for a treat, simply slice and bake a banana with the skin on.

Watermelon Skin and Seed

The delicious, red inside makes for a refreshing snack or juice, but you're able to get some powerful nutrients in the skin and seeds as well. Cut out the white part under the green outside and use it in your cooking. It has vitamin C and B6, to keep you healthy. As for the seeds, you can roast them in the oven. Then add them to salads or to nut snacks.

1. Which of the following has a larger amount of fiber than its other parts?

A．Pineapple cores.

B．Kiwi skin.

C．Banana peel.

D．Watermelon skin and seeds.

2. Which of the following statements is TRUE?

A．All the food above can be added to smoothies.

B．Kiwi skin can be roasted in the oven.

C．Banana peel can help lift people's moods.

D．The green part of watermelon has vitamin C and B6.

3. Where can we most probably read this text?

A．In a botany instruction.

B．In a medicine brochure.

C．In a fruitarian's recipe.

D．In a nutrition report.