1 . When I was a college student, I did a lot of travelling abroad. That was because a professor
Therefore, I was beginning to feel that actual trips were
However, we should never let it
| A．promised | B．allowed | C．reminded | D．encouraged |
| A．enrich | B．use | C．practise | D．exchange |
| A．agreed with | B．learned from | C．followed | D．obeyed |
| A．car | B．food | C．clothing | D．machine |
| A．life | B．rivers | C．sights | D．houses |
| A．plans | B．bargain | C．progress | D．trips |
| A．information | B．taste | C．cooks | D．feelings |
| A．even more | B．no longer | C．much | D．actually |
| A．people | B．drink | C．atmosphere | D．environment |
| A．shoes | B．dishes | C．customers | D．situations |
| A．friend’s | B．parents’ | C．professor’s | D．boss’s |
| A．produces | B．advertises | C．forms | D．advances |
| A．news | B．pleasures | C．troubles | D．places |
| A．avoid | B．keep | C．ask | D．enjoy |
| A．meeting | B．talking | C．communicating | D．travelling |
| A．stopped | B．met | C．surrounded | D．hurt |
| A．look | B．employ | C．travel | D．meet |
| A．communication | B．study | C．work | D．action |
| A．spare | B．increase | C．reduce | D．make use of |
| A．wisely | B．correctly | C．or less | D．slowly |
2 . Johan Ernst Nilson is an explorer. His 32 expeditions in 100 countries include biking from northern Europe to Africa, hiking across Alaska and climbing the highest mountain on each of the seven continents. This summer, Nilson completed his most challenging journey the Pole to Pole Expedition. He travelled about 21,750 miles through 17 countries, from the North Pole to the South Pole. “I go to remote areas where no person has ever set foot,” Nilson told TFK.
Nilson walked, sailed, skied, biked, and took a dogsled. Known as the “environmental explorer”, Nilson used forms of transportation that are not harmful to the environment. Nilson hopes the expedition, which will be featured in a movie and a book, both due out this winter, will inspire others to protect the planet.
It took Nilson about 18 months to complete the expedition. He faced dangerous situations, just as the early polar explorers did. He travelled through hurricanes. He endured extreme heat and cold. He fell through ice. He suffered cracked ribs and frostbite(冻伤). He was even chased by bears.
Eating properly was a constant challenge. The explorer, who covered about 60 miles a day, ate a variety of foods, such as fruit, meat, fish and vegetables. At one point, Nilson ran out of food. He wrote on his blog: “The North Pole is a different story. On an expedition on the ice, you have to eat anything you can find.”
In spite of the many challenges, Nilson insists that the expedition was well worth it. He was able to visit with groups such as UNICEF and the American Red Cross, to take part in the work that they do to help people all over the world. He is hopeful that his adventure will inspire others to take action to protect the planet.
Nilson says his big expedition days are now over, but he will continue to explore in other ways. “Exploration is reaching for the unknown, learning how to play the piano, learning a new language,” he says. Are you an explorer, too?
1. What does Nilson do besides expeditions?| A．He likes playing the piano. | B．He helps those who need help. |
| C．He likes learning foreign languages. | D．He likes visiting people. |
| A．become famous | B．attract people’s attention |
| C．inspire people to explore | D．protect the environment |
| A．Nilson suffered a lot and was in great danger. | B．Nilson liked travelling through hurricanes. |
| C．Nilson stood extreme heat and cold. | D．Nilson suffered freezing. |
I grew up in an unhappy and abusive home. I always promised myself that I’d get out as soon as possible.
Now, at age 20, I have a good job and a nice house, and I’m really proud of the independence I’ve achieved.
Here’s the problem: several of my friends who still live with their parents wish they had places like mine so much so that they make mine theirs.
It started out with a couple of them spending the weekends with me. But now they seem to take it for granted (认为理所当然) that they can show up any time they like. They bring boyfriends over, talk on the phone and stay out forever.
I enjoy having my friends here sometimes it makes the place feel comfortable and warm but this is my home, not a party house. I am old enough to move out on my own, so why can’t I seem to ask my friends to respect my privacy (隐私)?
Joan
Dear Joan,
If your family didn’t pay attention to your needs when you were a child, you probably have trouble letting others know your needs now.
And if you’ve gathered your friends around you to rebuild a happy family atmosphere, you may fear that saying no will bring back the kind of conflict you grew up with or destroy the nice atmosphere you now enjoy. You need to understand that in true friendship it’s okay to put your own needs first from time to time.
Be clear about the message you want to send. For example, “I really love your company but I also need some privacy. So please call before you come over.”
Edward
1. We can infer from the first letter that .| A．Joan considers her friends more important than her privacy |
| B．Joan’s friends visit her more often than she can accept |
| C．Joan doesn’t like the parties at all |
| D．Joan dislikes the boyfriends her friends bring over |
| A．She is afraid of hurting her friends. | B．She does not understand true friendship. |
| C．Her family experience stops her from doing so. | D．She does not put her needs first. |
| A．dependent life | B．fierce fight | C．bad manners | D．painful feeling |
4 . For high school leavers starting out in the working world, it is very important to learn particular skills and practise how to behave in an interview or how to find all internships(实习). In some countries, schools have programmes to help students onto the path to work. In the United States, however, such programmes are still few and far between.
Research shows that if high schools provide career-related courses, students are likely to get higher earnings in later years.The students are more likely to stay in school, graduate and go on to higher education.
In Germany, students as young as 13 and 14 are expected to do internships. German companies work with schools to make sure that young people get the education they need for future employment.
But in America, education reform programmes focus on how well students do in exams instead of bringing them into contact with the working world. Harvard Education School professor Robert Schwartz has criticised education reformers for trying to place all graduates directly on the four-year college track. Schwartz argued that this approach leaves the country’s most vulnerable(易受影响的)kids with no jobs and no skills.
Schwartz believed that the best career programmes encourage kids to go for higher education while also teaching them valuable practical skills at high school. James Madison High School in New York, for example, encourages students to choose classes on career-based courses. The school then helps them gain on-the-job experience in those fields while they’re still at high school.
However, even for teens whose schools encourage them to connect with work, the job market is daunting. In the US, unemployment rates for 16 to 19-year-olds are above 20 percent for the third summer in a row.
“The risk is that if teenagers miss out on the summer job experience, they become part of this generation of teens who had trouble in landing a job,” said Michael, a researcher in the US.
1. In the author’s opinion, American high school leavers .| A．have enough career-related courses | B．need more career advice from their schools |
| C．perform better in exams than German students | D．can get higher earnings in later years |
| A．there is no need for kids to go for higher education in the US |
| B．students should get contact with the working world at high school |
| C．education reform should focus on students’ performance in exams |
| D．teenagers in the US can’t miss out on the summer job experience |
| A．Unemployment rates for US teenagers remain high at the moment. |
| B．Students with career-based courses never have problems finding a job. |
| C．US companies work with schools to prepare young people for future employment. |
| D．High school leavers with no practical skills can’t find a job absolutely. |
5 . I always felt sorry for the people in wheelchairs. Some people, old and weak, cannot get around by themselves. Others seem perfectly healthy, dressed in business suits. But whenever I saw someone in a wheelchair, I only saw a disability, not a person.Then I fainted (晕倒) at Euro Disney due to low blood pressure.This was the first time I had ever fainted, and my parents said that I must rest for a while after First Aid. I agreed to take it easy but,as I stepped towards the door, I saw my dad pushing a wheelchair in my direction. Feeling the colour burn my cheeks, I asked him to wheel that thing right back to where he found it.
I could not believe this was happening to me. Wheelchairs were fine for other people but not for me, as my father wheeled me out into the main street, people immediately began to treat me differently.Little kids ran in front of me, forcing my father to stop the wheelchair suddenly. Bitterness set in as I was thrown back and forth. “Stupid kids ... they have perfectly good legs. Why can’t they watch where they are going?” I thought. People stared down at me, with pity in their eyes. Then they would look away, maybe because they thought the sooner they forgot me the better.
“I’m just like you!” I wanted to scream. “The only difference is that you’ve got legs and I have wheels.
People in wheelchairs are not stupid. They see every look and hear each word. Looking out at the faces, I finally understood: I was once just like them. I treated people in wheelchairs exactly the way they did not want to be treated. I realised it is some of us with two healthy legs who are truly disabled.
1. Facing the wheelchair for the first time, the author .| A．felt curious about it |
| B．got ready to move around in it right away |
| C．thought it was ready for her father |
| D．refused to accept it right away |
| A．life is the best teacher |
| B．people often eat their bitter fruit |
| C．life is so changeable that nobody can predict |
| D．one should never do to others what he would not like others do to him |
| A．How to Get Used to Wheelchairs |
| B．Wheelchairs Are as Good as Two Legs |
| C．People with Two Legs Are Truly Healthy |
| D．The Difference Between Healthy People and the Disabled |
6 . Sammie Welch was traveling with her three-year-old son Ryan from Birmingham to Plymouth last Thursday. She tried to keep him entertained on the three-and-a-half-hour journey. “He was eating his dinner! We were laughing at the fact that he kept calling his grapes strawberries,” Ms Welch said. “We were playing together and I was trying to keep him quiet. He normally gets quite bored and rowdy on the train. So I was doing my best to entertain him as much as I could.”
After finishing his dinner, the boy tell asleep on the seat next to her mother. When a man boarded the crowded train, the mother pulled her son onto her lap (大腿). So the man could sit down. Ms Welch, an unemployed IT technician, made her son move for another passenger. After a few minutes, an unknown stranger walked past and handed Ms Welch a note and money before getting off the train straight away. In the note, the passenger called himself “Man on the train at table with glasses and hat”.He praised the mother’s behaviour and left her £5 to buy herself a drink.
Ms Welch, 23, who comes from Crewe but now lives in Plymouth, said she didn’t find out the stranger’s name and created a Facebook page to find him. “I never had the chance to thank him as he got off. And I couldn’t move due to my son being asleep on me,” She wrote on the social networking site. “I don’t think what I have done is a big matter. I would love to have the opportunity to thank this man personally. So I hope this message could help me find him.”
1. What was the aim of Ms Welch’s playing with Ryan?| A．Teaching the right name of grapes. | B．Feeding him as much as possible. |
| C．Making him feel fun on the train. | D．Letting him learn something new. |
| A．upset | B．smart |
| C．lucky | D．noisy |
| A．Because he wanted her seat. | B．Because she gave her drink to strangers. |
| C．Because she made room for another passenger. | D．Because she pulled her son on the table. |
7 . Money Doesn’t Buy Happiness
As part of the environmental group on campus, my friends and I recently invited a recent college graduate, Colin Davis, to lecture about his deeds in climate change.
Davis graduated from Trinity College last spring. Despite a tempting (诱人的) internship (实习期) from Goldman Sachs that thousands of people dream about. Davis chose to ride a bike across the US to interview environmental experts.
Davis wasn’t a born environmentalist. To prove his bike ride, he had to find a “trendy (新潮的), sexy and good cause”. The cause was climate change. But Davis became more concerned than ever about this issue after the cross-country bike ride. He read hundreds of books on climate change and environmental consulting. Now, he works for non-profitable organizations and serves as a consultant for energy efficiency.
One of his messages during his talk, “shopping with a moral in mind” occurred in my mind again and again throughout the day.
Facing two similar products in a market, do we stop and read the back before throwing the product into our cart (推车)? We all live in a fast-paced society, but it doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t take a minute to choose a product that’s safer for our bodies and better for the environment. Davis made me know how important it is to be a smart consumer, by supporting organic (有机的) food and green products instead of only looking at the brands.
With little age gap and his unique way of presenting serious messages in a light tone, Davis captured the attention of most non “hardcore (中坚的) environmentalists” students. Davis said. “Working for a good cause makes me feel better than being an investment (投资) banker.”
1. The bike ride across the US ________.| A．realized Davis’s long-time dream of finding out more about climate change |
| B．had Davis regretting refusing the internship from Goldman Sachs |
| C．made Davis all the more fascinated by the issue of climate change |
| D．satisfied Davis because he had made it trendy and profitable |
| A．one should be a smart consumer by calculating the product’s value against price |
| B．we should stop and read the instructions about calories or health ingredients |
| C．we should choose more environment-friendly products |
| D．it’s a good point to buy brand products |
| A．nowadays American young people prefer working for a good cause to a high-paid company |
| B．Davis did a great job in raising environmental awareness |
| C．you have to be rich enough to support organic food |
| D．brand products are not always quality products |
8 . To most of us, school means classes, teachers, schedules, grades and tests. But for the children at Sudbury Valley School, Massachusetts, school is very different.
Firstly, there are no lessons. All the children, aged between 4 and 19, do whatever they want to. There are no teachers —only “staff members”. The idea behind this is that you do not need to make children learn, because children want to learn anyway. “You do not need to say to a three-year-old, ‘Go to explore your environment.’ You can’t stop them!” says Daniel Greenberg, a founder of the school. “But if you make children do what you want all day, they will lose all taste for learning.”
At Sudbury Valley School, you will permit children to talk, read, paint, cook, work on computers, study French, play the piano, climb trees, or just run around. Two boys spent three years just fishing!
The other way that Sudbury Valley School is different is that the children can decide the rules. Every week, there is a school meeting where both children and staff have one vote each—even the four-year-olds. They decide the school rules, how to spend the school budget, and even which staff they want and do not want any more.
When the school first opened in 1968, people said it would never work. But today, the school has 200 students, and 80% of its students go on to college. Even the two boys who went fishing all the time have successful careers today. One of them is a musician and the other is a computer scientist.
1. What is the main topic of the article?| A．An unusual school. | B．Children’s hobbies. |
| C．A school without rules. | D．Education in the US. |
| A．Teachers cannot teach children well. |
| B．Children learn best when they do what they want to do. |
| C．Learning is for adults—children should only play. |
| D．Children should only learn about one thing at a time. |
| A．They love learning. | B．They are very naughty. |
| C．They want to be outside all the time. | D．They are too young to learn anything. |
| A．The older children have more power than the younger children. |
| B．A child has more power than an adult. |
| C．The younger children have more power than the older children. |
| D．Everybody has equal power. |
9 . I travel a lot, and I find out different “styles”(风格) of directions every time I ask “How can I get to the post office?”
Foreign tourists are often confused(困惑) in Japan because most streets there don’t have names; In Japan, people use landmarks(地标) in their directions instead of street names. For example, the Japanese will say to travelers, “Go straight down to the corner. Turn left at the big hotel and go past a fruit market. The post office is across from the bus stop.”
In the countryside of the American Midwest, there are not usually many landmarks. There are no mountains, so the land is very flat; in many places there are no towns or buildings within miles. Instead of landmarks, people will tell you directions and distances. In Kansas or Iowa, for example, people will say, “Go north two miles. Turn east, and then go another mile.”
People in Los Angeles, California, have no idea of distance on the map; they measure distance in time, not miles. “How far away is the post office?” you ask. “Oh,” they answer, “it’s about five minutes from here.” You say, “Yes, but how many miles away is it?” They don’t know.
It’s true that a person doesn’t know the answer to your question sometimes. What happens in such a situation? A New Yorker might say, “Sorry, I have no idea.” But in Yucatan, Mexico, no one answers “I don’t know.” People in Yucatan believe that “I don’t know” is impolite. They usually give an answer, often a wrong one. A tourist can get very, very lost in Yucatan!
1. When a tourist asks the Japanese the way to a certain place, they usually ________.| A．describe the place carefully | B．show him a map of the place |
| C．tell him the names of the streets | D．refer to recognizable buildings and places |
| A．New York. | B．Los Angeles. | C．Kansas. | D．Iowa. |
| A．in order to save time | B．Los Angeles. |
| C．so as to be polite | D．for fun |
| A．It’s important for travelers to understand cultural differences. |
| B．It’s useful for travelers to know how to ask the way properly. |
| C．People have similar understandings of politeness. |
| D．New Yorkers are generally friendly to visitors. |
10 . My mother is 92. Unless I have to be out of town, each week I take my mother to do her
Last week she walked up to the store, but when she went to pay for her groceries, she was
At this store, people
My mother was so
So, whoever you are, thank you for the random act of
| A．exercise | B．housework | C．cooking | D．shopping |
| A．reward | B．medicine | C．company | D．shelter |
| A．return | B．collet | C．order | D．buy |
| A．short | B．cautious | C．wrong | D．concerned |
| A．aim | B．way | C．advice | D．reason |
| A．weight | B．things | C．mask | D．glasses |
| A．raise | B．add | C．bring | D．switch |
| A．show up | B．call in | C．check out | D．sit down |
| A．store | B．select | C．deliver | D．bag |
| A．stranger | B．cashier | C．friend | D．doctor |
| A．looked for | B．talked about | C．threw away | D．put back |
| A．receipt | B．soap | C．cash | D．bottle |
| A．asked | B．waited | C．cared | D．searched |
| A．repay | B．trust | C．recognize | D．help |
| A．luck | B．chance | C．gift | D．turn |
| A．surprised | B．amused | C．touched | D．convinced |
| A．in case | B．even if | C．as though | D．so that |
| A．energy | B．money | C．space | D．time |
| A．faith | B．courage | C．kindness | D．honor |
| A．made her day | B．changed her mind | C．caught her eye | D．met her demand |
