For years, Chris Scharoun DeForge had a Valentine's Day routine. She celebrated like clockwork with her husband Paul Scharoun DeForge. On Valentine's Day they would go out to eat, maybe at Red Lobster or Olive Garden. They were celebrating each other.
But this year's Valentine's Day may be the most unusual one yet. That's because it is their 25th as husband and wife, a landmark that would be significant for most couples but it's extraordinary for the Scharoun DeForges. They were both born with Down syndrome and are believed to be the longest married couple with the condition in the country.
At the time of their wedding, some folks believed that people like them didn't have the emotional maturity to be married. Chris, who as a girl used to cut wedding photos from magazines and hang them on her wall knew better. “I looked into his eyes and saw my future,” Chris said about falling in love with Paul when they first met at a dance 30 years ago.
Still, they have had their struggles. And the most recent one may be the most monumental (极大的). This year's Valentine's Day is the first on which they won't be living together. Paul, 54, is coping with early stage dementia, an illness that affects many with his condition at a relatively young age. Several months ago, the state moved him into a community residence (住处) with intensive nursing care while Chris still lives in their cozy apartment in Liverpool.
Of course Chris doesn't want to be without him. Their family worked hard to keep them together. They even found a new apartment that met the state's standards. At first, the state agreed-a huge victory-but Paul's condition continued to deteriorate. By that time he was using a wheelchair and required round-the-clock care. The state decided he needed to move to the facility after all.
The couple is disappointed but not scared. Chris visits Paul regularly and they spend weekends together. Chris’s sister said they had an unconditional and sweet love.
1. Why is this year’s Valentine’s Day special to the Scharoun DeForges?| A．They will go out to eat at Red Lobster. |
| B．Their marriage was believed not to last so long. |
| C．They won’t be living together for the first time. |
| D．It is their 25th as a couple despite their Down syndrome. |
| A．change | B．better | C．worsen | D．switch |
| A．They fell in love with each other at first sight. |
| B．They still can meet each other on a regular basis. |
| C．They had difficulty celebrating Valentine's Day together. |
| D．They moved into a community residence together. |
| A．Struggles against Down syndrome | B．A love without limits |
| C．A Valentine’s Day’s celebration | D．A couple forced to get separated |
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【推荐1】It felt like a disaster when my washing machine broke last winter. Just one week of cleaning the kids’ football kits in the bath left me with an aching back, itchy fingers and a deep mould darkening the boards of the bathroom floor.
But the short-term trials of 21st-century housekeeping are thrown into sharp relief by Beezy Marsh’s absorbing new book about her grandmother, Annie Austin, one of 1,000 women employed in the slum(贫民窟)laundries of London back in 1918.
Although the Fisher Act of 1918 made it compulsory for children to attend school under the age of 14, Annie was just 12 when she began work in the coal-stained streets of Acton.
Her pregnant mother and bossy stepfather already worked there and they had her grandmother and weak-chested younger brother George to support. Before the National Health Service, a doctor’s bills could break a family.
Sweet Lavender, Honeysuckle Villa and Blanchisserie Royal --- the laundries all had picture-postcard names to give their wealthy customers the illusion of clean country air.
But there was no rural scenery behind the wet windows of the sweatshops where little girls scrubbed dirt from collars and sleeve openings from 8 am to 8 pm every weekday, working half-day on Saturdays.
Marsh, a journalist, writes with novelistic talent. She makes you smell the sickening smell of the dirty clothes and feel the pain of soaps in the open wound of Annie’s cracked and swollen fingers. And she also makes you feel the pride that these women took in the honest, hard work that kept their families above the breadlines.
Annie’s mother, Emma, was the laundry’s chief ironer. She lifted ten-pound irons around to press the pleated(有褶的) silk of the finest clothes.
But Emma was keeping secrets behind her clean appearance. She had told Annie her father had been killed in the Great War, but it that was the case, then why was his photo graph hidden at the bottom of her button box?
Her seeking for the truth revealed a tale of gambling, debt, betrayal and murder.
As Marsh discovered, “The choices made by one generation were sometimes considered too shocking for the next generation to bear.”
Annie’s adventures find her visiting the dens(贼窝) of backstreet abortionists, the homes of bullied Eastern European immigrants and the pubs of Covent Garden.
There are also enjoyable details of Annie’s love affairs with the handsome actor who takes her out for champagne at the Café de Paris in a borrowed fox-fur coat and her slower burning romance with Geordie union man, Harry. When Harry kneels beside the Thames and offer her a ring of seed pearls and sapphire(蓝宝石), Annie thinks it is the most beautiful thing she has ever seen.
1. Which of the following can replace the underlined phrase “thrown into sharp relief” in Paragraph 2?| A．made very unbearable | B．made very noticeable |
| C．made very insignificant | D．made very enjoyable |
| A．She began to work after finishing compulsory education. |
| B．Her younger brother had some problems with his heart. |
| C．Her family pulled through thanks to the National Health Service. |
| D．Her father probably got murdered due to his debts from gambling. |
| A．the laundries would send their customers postcards as gifts |
| B．the laundries didn’t have countryside scenery inside |
| C．the laundries were located in rural areas with clean air |
| D．the laundries then pitilessly exploited the little girls |
| A．Tough and brave. | B．Honest and optimistic. |
| C．Proud and patient | D．Romantic and talented. |
| A．describe Beezy Marsh’s grandmother’s life in a laundry |
| B．describe how Beezy Marsh’s grandmother sought for the truth |
| C．describe Beezy Marsh’s remarkable writing skills |
| D．introduce Beezy Marsh’s book about her grandmother |
【推荐2】Looking back on too many years of education, I can identify one truly impossible teacher. She cared about me, and my intellectual life, even when I didn’t. Her expectations were high—impossibly so. She was an English teacher. She was also my mother.
When good students turn in an essay, they dream of their instructor returning it to them in exactly the same condition, save for a single word added in the margin of the final page: “Flawless.” This dream came true for me one afternoon in the ninth course. I had heard that genius could show itself at an early age, so I was only slightly taken aback that I had achieved perfection at the age of 14. Obviously, I did what any professional writer would do; I hurried off to spread the good news. I didn’t get very far. The first person I told was my mother.
My mother is normally incredibly soft-spoken, but when she got angry, she was terrifying. I am not sure if she was more upset by my hubris(得意忘形) or by the fact that my English teacher had let my ego get so out of hand. In any event, my mother and her red pen showed me how deeply flawed a flawless essay could be. At the time, I am sure she thought she was teaching me about transitions (过渡), structure, style and voice. But what I learned was a deeper lesson about the nature of creative criticism.
Creative criticism implies something about who is able to give it, who knows you well enough to show you how your mental life is getting in the way of good writing. They are also the people who care enough to see you through this painful realization. ①
I was lucky enough to find a critic and teacher who was willing to make the journey of writing with me. “It is a thing of no great difficulty,” according to Plutarch, “to raise objections against another man’s speech, it is a very easy matter; but to produce a better in its place is a work extremely troublesome.” Perhaps Plutarch is suggesting something a bit closer to Marcus Cicero’s claim that one should “criticize by creation, not by finding fault.” Genuine criticism creates a precious opening for an author to become better on his own terms—a process that is often extremely painful, but also almost always meaningful.
② My mother said she would help me with my writing, but first I had to help myself. For each assignment, I was to write the best essay I could. Real criticism is not meant to find obvious mistakes, so if she found any—the type I could have found on my own—I had to start from scratch. From scratch. Once the essay was “flawless”, she would take an evening to walk me through my errors. ③
She criticized me when I included little-known references and professional jargon (行话). She had no patience for brilliant but irrelevant figures of speech. Somewhere along the way I set aside my hopes of writing that flawless essay. ④ But perhaps I missed something important in my mother’s lessons about creativity and perfection. Perhaps the point of writing the flawless essay was not to give up, but to never willingly finish. Whitman repeatedly reworked “Song of Myself” between 1855 and 1891. Repeatedly. We do our absolute best with a piece of writing, and come as close as we can to the ideal. And, for the time being, we settle. In critique, however, we are forced to depart, to give up the perfection we thought we had achieved for the chance of being even a little bit better. This is the lesson I took from my mother: If perfection were possible, it would not be motivating.
1. What can we learn from the second paragraph?| A．The author performed perfectly as a professional writer. |
| B．The author didn’t think he was good at writing a flawless essay. |
| C．The author never dreamed of his essay being marked as “flawless”. |
| D．The author was not much surprised at his essay being marked as “flawless”. |
| A．The author’s mother taught him about the structure of a perfect essay. |
| B．The author’s mother pointed out lots of faults in his seemingly perfect essay. |
| C．The author’s mother taught him how to leave a lasting mark on the essay. |
| D．The author’s mother underlined the important style and voice in his essay. |
| A．giving constructive criticism is an easy matter |
| B．criticizing someone is painful and meaningless |
| C．finding fault is better than coming up with a better work |
| D．criticizing someone’s speech is easier than coming up with a better one |
That was when true criticism, the type that changed me as a person, began.
| A．① | B．② | C．③ | D．④ |
| A．generous and strict | B．demanding and caring |
| C．stubborn and loving | D．critical and troublesome |
| A．The Perfect Essay | B．My Dear Mother |
| C．True Criticism | D．The Skills of Writing |
【推荐3】When Dekalb Walcott III was just 8 years old, his father, a Chicago fire chief, let him tag along on a call. Dekalb says a lot of kids idolized basketball player Michael Jordan when he was growing up in Chicago in the 1990s. Not him.
“I wanted to be like Dekalb Walcott Jr.,” he says of his father.
So when his dad asked if he wanted to go on that call with him when he was 8, Dekalb was excited. I’m jumping up and down，saying, “Mom, can I go? Can I go?”
The experience changed Dekalb’s life, he tells his dad on a visit to StoryCorps.“My eyes got big from the moment the alarm went off.” the younger Dekalb says. “This is the life that I want to live someday.”
Now 27, the younger Dekalb is living that life. He became a firefighter at 21 and went to work alongside his dad at the Chicago Fire Department. Before his father retired, the pair even went out on a call together-father supervising (监督) son.
“You know, it’s everything for me to watch you grow,”his father says. But he also recalls worrying about one particular fire that his son faced.
“I received a phone call that night.” And they said, “Well, your son was at this fire.” I said, “OK, which way is this conversation going to go?” Dekalb Walcott Jr. recalls.
And they said, “But he’s OK. And he put it out all by himself. Everybody here was proud of him.”
And the word went around, “Who was out there managing that fire? Oh, that’s Walcott! That’s Walcott up there! So, you know. moments like that, it’s heaven on Earth for a dad.”
Dekalb Walcott Jr. retired in 2009. The younger Dekalb says he’s proud of being a second-generation firefighter. “You know, it makes me look forward to fatherhood as well, because I’m definitely looking forward to passing that torch down to my son.”
1. The underlined phrase tag along in Paragraph 1 is closest in meaning to ______．| A．put out fire |
| B．watch basketball |
| C．follow his father |
| D．ask his mother’s permission |
| A．8 | B．21 | C．27 | D．35 |
| A．Go on with the conversation |
| B．Put it out all by himself |
| C．Supervise his son |
| D．Go to the fire scene |
| A．Dekalb Walcott Jr is proud to be a second-generation firefighter. |
| B．Dekalb Walcott III wants his son to become a firefighter too. |
| C．Dekalb Walcott Jr wants to pass the torch to Dekalb Walcott III. |
| D．Dekalb Walcott III is proud that his son has become an excellent firefighter. |
| A．Passing The Torch: A Firefighter Dad’s Legacy |
| B．Putting Out Fire: A Challenging Job for Father and son |
| C．Dekalb Walcott III: A Second-generation Firefighter |
| D．Dekalb Walcott Jr. : A Chicago Fire Chief |
【推荐1】He is a 62-year-old superior court judge, but they are former addicts and criminals. All of them, however, are part of one team: the Skid Row Running Club in Los Angeles (L.A.).
Twice a week, before the sun comes up, Judge Craig Mitchell runs the mile from his office at the county courthouse to The Midnight Mission, a social services organization centered in Downtown’s Skid Row — the well-known area where the city’s largest homeless population lives.
At the organization, he meets a group of 30 to 40 people and together they run through East L. A. The group includes runners from all walks of life and all levels of athleticism. Some members are homeless or in recovery, and others are lawyers, social workers or students.
Mitchell developed the program in 2012 after a man he’d once sentenced to prison returned to thank him. “He was paroled (假释) to The Midnight Mission and decided to come back and said ‘Thank you, Judge Mitchell, for treating me like a human being.’ The head of the organization at the time asked me if there was something that I could do to contribute to the organization, and I thought of starting a running club. That was the inception,” Mitchell said.
Every year, Mitchell takes his most devoted Skid Row runners on a free trip to participate in an international marathon. “I come back to the courthouse after any run and check off who is there. And so, I know exactly who has been faithful to the running program and who just comes once in a while,” he said.
Mitchell says he’s seen some participants turn their lives around, attending college, securing full-time employment and possessing calmness. “Running is a way for the participants to build relationships,” he said. “You can be an amazing runner and benefit as much as our fast runners, because at the end of the day you’re going to be surrounded by people who really care about you and want to spend time with you.” Everybody is welcome. We believe. We listen. We support.
1. What can we learn about the Skid Row Running Club?| A．It was set up to make a profit. |
| B．It consists of all sorts of members. |
| C．It’s failed to win popularity in L. A. |
| D．It was designed mainly for court judges. |
| A．He provided economic and spiritual support to the prisoner. |
| B．He supported the prisoner by finding him a lawyer. |
| C．He treated the prisoner equally without prejudice. |
| D．He invited the prisoner to join the organization. |
| A．Origin. | B．Standard. |
| C．Contribution. | D．Distribution. |
| A．To check their health. | B．To compare their speed. |
| C．To award devoted runners. | D．To make sure of their presence. |
| A．Running can highly educate criminals. |
| B．We can gain admiration if we work hard. |
| C．We can make a difference when we care. |
| D．Running can help build a charity for the poor. |
【推荐2】“May 17, 2157
Dear diary,
Today, Tommy found a real book!...”
“What’s it about?” Margie asked.
“School.” replied Tommy, turning the yellow pages.
“Why would anyone write about school? I hope they can take my geography teacher away.”
“It’s not our school. This is the old sort that they had centuries ago.”
“Anyway, they had a teacher.” Margie said, reading the book over his shoulder.
“Sure, they had a teacher, but it wasn’t a regular teacher. It was a man.”
“A man? How could a man be a teacher?”
“Well, he just told the boys and girls things and gave them assignments and asked them questions.”
“A man isn’t smart enough.”
“Sure, he is. My father knows as much as my teacher.”
Margie wasn’t prepared to argue about that. She said, “I wouldn’t want a strange man in my house to teach me.”
Tommy laughed. “The teachers didn’t live in the house. They had a special building and all the kids went there.”
“And all the kids learned the same thing?”
“Sure, if they were the same age.”
“But my mother says a teacher has to be adjusted to fit the mind of each boy and girl it teaches and that each kid has to be taught differently.”
“If you don’t like it, you don’t have to read the book.”
“I didn’t say I didn’t like it,” Margie said quickly.
They weren’t even half-finished when Margie’s mother called, “Margie! School!”
“Not yet, Mamma.”
“Now!” said Mrs. Jones.
Margie said to Tommy, “Can I read the book some more with you after school?”
“Maybe,” Tommy said.
Margie went into the schoolroom, right next to her bedroom, and the mechanical teacher was on waiting for her.
The screen was lit up, and it said, “Please insert yesterday’s assignments in the proper slot.”
Margie was still thinking about the old schools they had when her grandfather’s grandfather was a little boy. All the kids from the whole neighborhood came, laughing and shouting in the schoolyard, sitting together in the schoolroom, going home together at the end of the day. They learned the same things, so they could help one another on the assignments and discussed them.
And the teachers were people…
1. Which of the following can be inferred from the passage?| A．Margie doesn’t like her school. |
| B．It’s common to read paper books in 2157. |
| C．Online learning is what Margie wants. |
| D．Tommy feels his father is smarter than his teacher. |
| A．There are only female teachers at school. |
| B．Teachers give no assignments to students. |
| C．A special building is constructed for teachers. |
| D．Students learn different things at their own pace. |
| A．Envelope. | B．Opening. |
| C．Screen. | D．Schoolroom. |
| A．Longing. | B．Objection. |
| C．Suspicion. | D．Tolerance. |
【推荐3】About five years ago I started at a new school when my family moved to Iowa. I was just a little excited, but I worried I would never fit in with (适应) the other sixth graders.
Lucy, a girl in my class, who I thought was not ready for change, didn’t like me from the start. In fact, I was sure she hated me. I could tell she thought I was a fool.
My teacher made us sit by each other for the last term. Lucy was surprised that I didn’t wear makeup (化妆). I didn’t exactly look like the coolest girl. But, I kept smiling at her, though she rolled her eyes, and I kept telling her she looked beautiful, even when she was angry.
Finally, Lucy let me talk to her, even in sight of her “cool” friends. She started telling me how beautiful I looked. I still remember that first time when she smiled at me saying that, and I smiled right back, telling her thanks. Lucy invited me over to her house for a party, and talked to me all the time instead of her other friends.
I may move to Arizona after that, but I will never forget Lucy. She was a great friend. I still smiled at Lucy when she made fun of me. I’m not stupid, I didn’t think she was right in doing those things, but I still put up with (忍受) it. And we became great friends.
About two weeks ago, I read a sentence by Abraham Lincoln: “Am I not destroying my enemies when I make friends of them?” Immediately, I smiled, thinking of Lucy.
1. When the author started at a new school in Iowa, she worried ________.| A．she couldn’t get along well with her classmates |
| B．she looked stupid when asking questions |
| C．she didn’t look like the coolest girl in her class |
| D．she was not ready for change at all |
| A．By wearing makeup. | B．By wearing beautiful clothes. |
| C．By keeping smiling at Lucy. | D．By sitting beside Lucy in class. |
| A．it was a waste of time to make friends with Lucy |
| B．it was right of her to suffer when making friends |
| C．it was foolish of her to smile at Lucy all the time |
| D．it was a shameful thing to put up with what Lucy did |
| A．Making friends means losing enemies. | B．Friendship needs to be cared for. |
| C．Kindness can beat any enemy. | D．Patience is important in making friends. |
