1 . I LOVE FOOTBALL. I started playing when I was nine years old, and football got me through difficult periods. It helps make me who I am today. And even though I did not reach the National Football League, I sometimes think I got more from achieving that dream, without realizing it.
My romance with football started when my dad drove me, kicking and screaming, to join a league. I didn’t want to be there at first. I was naturally weak and small. Fear turned to awe (敬畏) when I met my coach, Jim Graham, a huge and strong guy. And he was really strict and old-school.
Coach Graham used to drive me hard. I remember one practice in particular. “You’re doing it all wrong, Pausch. Go back! Do it again!” I tried to do what he wanted. But it wasn’t enough. “You owe(欠) me, Pausch! You’re doing push-ups after practice.
When the practice was over, one of the assistant coaches came up to me. “Coach Graham drove you pretty hard, didn’t he?” he said.
“Yeah.”
“That’s a good thing,” the assistant told me. “When you’re doing badly and nobody says anything to you anymore, that means they’ve given up on you.”
That conversation has been with me closely my whole life. When you see yourself doing something badly and nobody’s willing to tell you anymore, that’s a bad place to be. You may not want to hear it, but those who always push you hard in your life are often the ones telling you they still love you and care about you, and want to make you better.
There’s a lot of talk these days about giving children self-respect. It’s not something you can give; it’s something they have to build. Coach Graham knew there was really only one way to teach kids how to make it stronger: You give them something they can’t do; they work hard until they find they can do it, and you just keep repeating.
When Coach Graham first got hold of me, I was a weak kid with no skills and no physical strength. But he made me realize that if I work hard enough, there will be things I can do tomorrow that I can’t do today. I really felt thankful to Coach Graham for what he had done to me, though it surely didn’t feel good at that time to do so many push-ups after practice.
根据上文内容判断正(T)误(F)1. In the writer’s eyes, Coach Graham was strict and wise.
2. The writer believes that those who are quite strict with you actually think ill of you.
3. The writer was thankful to Graham because the coach encouraged him to do better.
4. From the passage, we can learn “Never offer to teach fish to swim”
5. Coach Graham knew the method to teach kids how to build self-respect.
2 . Roald Dahl was one of the most successful writers of children’s books. He sold millions of books all over the world. Many of his books have been made into films and videos. He is so famous that there is even a Roald Dahl Museum you can visit.
Roald Dahl was born in 1916 in Wales, Britain. His father was rich but he died when Roald was very young. Roald and his mother lived a hard life. He had to leave school and went to Africa where he worked for an oil company.
In 1939, Roald became a pilot, but he had a bad accident. It made him limp(瘸的) for the rest of his life. After this, Roald went to America where he wrote a story about his experience as a pilot. It was so good that it was put in a magazine.
Roald married an American film star. They bought a house in England and had five children. From 1960 to 1965, : Theo, one of his children, was hit by a taxi and was seriously hurt. Oliva, one of Roald’s daughters, died of a strange illness. Soon after this, his wife also had a serious illness. It took her years to get completely better.
Gradually Roald became more and more successful. He always did his writing in an old shed(棚) at the back of his house. He always sat in the same old armchair with a wooden board on his lap.
“One of the nice things about being a writer,” he once said, “is that all you need is what you’ve got in your head and a pencil and a bit of paper.”
In 1983 Roald won a big prize for his book The BFG. During his life, Roald wrote many famous books, such as Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Matilda, Fantastic Mr. Fox.
After he died in 1990, Roald left money to help people with serious illnesses and those with problems with reading and writing.
1. Roald Dahl was famous as a(n) .| A．pilot | B．teacher | C．actor | D．writer |
| A．lost his parents in a plane accident |
| B．wrote a story about his pilot experience |
| C．got married with an English film star |
| D．won a big prize for his book Matilda |
| A．they lived a happy life | B．three terrible things happened |
| C．he went on writing books | D．he created some unlucky characters |
| A．being a writer was a popular job at that time |
| B．one needs to practice a lot if he wants to be a writer. |
| C．Roald loved writing very much and was talented in it |
| D．though he was successful, Roald lived a simple life |
| A．Roald Dahl was British. |
| B．Roald Dahl’s wife died of a serious illness in 1965. |
| C．The BFG made Roald Dahl win a big prize. |
| D．Roald Dahl died in 1990 when he was about 74 years old. |
