1 . Two weeks ago, a 5-year-old girl named Sunshine Oelfke emptied out her piggy bank (存钱罐) onto the living room floor and immediately started counting. Her grandmother, Jackie Oelfke, thought she was playing as she carefully lined up the coins, but then she saw the girl put the coins into a plastic bag and place it in her backpack.
“What are you doing with that money?” Jackie asked her granddaughter.
“I’m taking it to school,” Sunshine replied. “I’m going to take it for milk money. My friend Layla doesn’t get milk— her mom doesn’t have milk money and I do.”
Jackie’s heart melted at Sunshine’s words. Choked with strong feelings, Jackie held her sweet granddaughter tightly in her arms.
Last week, Jackie and Sunshine met with her teacher, Rita Hausher, and handed her the $30 the kindergartner had saved. There are 20 kids in Sunshine’s class and about half don’t get milk. It costs $ 0.45 a carton (纸盒). The total adds up to about $180 a month for every child in the class to have milk every day.
After dropping Sunshine off at school, Jackie posted a tearful video on Facebook to explain her granddaughter’s plan. To her surprise, many people offered to donate toward the cause. Within a week, Jackie raised more than $1,000. Now every student in Sunshine’s class can get free milk for the rest of the year.
Jackie said Sunshine doesn’t see her kind act as a big deal. She was just trying to look out for her friends. “She doesn’t understand the effect she’s brought about,” Jackie said. “But now she knows she can do whatever she puts her mind to.”
1. Why did Sunshine empty her piggy bank?| A．She hoped to show off her savings in class. | B．She needed to train her counting skills. |
| C．She wanted to play with the coins. | D．She intended to pay for her friend’s milk. |
| A．Relieved. | B．Touched. | C．Curious. | D．Proud. |
| A．Two heads are better than one. | B．A friend in need is a friend indeed. |
| C．Nothing is impossible to a willing heart. | D．There’s no such thing as a free lunch. |
| A．Small Coins, Big Changes. | B．Jackie’s Piggy Bank. |
| C．Piggy Bank and Carton Milk. | D．A Moved Grandmother. |
2 . Donna Strickland was awarded the 2018 Nobel Prize in Physics jointly with Arthur Ashkin and Gérard Mourou.It’s the first time in 55 years that a woman has won this famous prize, but why has it taken so long? We look at five other pioneering female physicists — past and present — who actually deserve the prize.
Jocelyn Bell Burnell
Perhaps the most famous snub (冷落): the student Bell discovered the first radio pulsars in 1967, when she was a PhD student at Cambridge.The Nobel Prize that recognised this landmark discovery in 1974, however, went to her male supervisor, Antony Hewish.Recently awarded a £2.3 million Breakthrough Prize, which she gave away to help under-represented students, she joked to The Guardian, “I feel I’ve done very well out of not getting a Nobel Prize.”
Lene Hau
Hau is best-known for leading the research team at Harvard University in 1999 that managed to slow a beam of light, before managing to stop it completely in 2001.Often topping Nobel Prize prediction lists, could 2019 be Hau’s year.
Vera Rubin
Rubin discovered dark matter in the 1980s, opening up a new field of astronomy.She died in 2016, without recognition from the committee.
Chien-Shiung Wu
Wu’s “Wu experiment” helped disprove the “law of conservation of parity”.Her experimental work was helpful but never honoured, and instead, her male colleagues won the 1957 Nobel Prize for their theoretical work behind the study.
Lise Meitner
Meitner led groundbreaking work on the discovery of nuclear fission.However, the discovery was acknowledged by the 1944 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, which was won by her male co-lead, Otto Hahn.
1. When was the discovery of radio pulsars recognised by the Nobel?| A．In 1944． | B．In 1967． | C．In 1974． | D．In 1980． |
| A．Donna Strickland. | B．Jocelyn Bell Burnell. |
| C．Lene Hau. | D．Vera Rubin. |
| A．The five female scientists did greatly in chemistry. |
| B．Vera Rubin had opened up a new field in geometry. |
| C．Lise Meitner’s teacher won a Nobel Prize for her work. |
| D．The five female scientists haven’t been awarded Nobel Prize. |
3 . I was walking home from school one day and it happened to be a particularly cold and windy day. It was
All of a sudden, an old lady
I didn’t see her or talk to her for about a month and one night as I
When I got home my mom told me that the old lady
| A．flowing | B．flying | C．blowing | D．freezing |
| A．drove | B．took | C．picked | D．turned |
| A．simple | B．strange | C．warm | D．easy |
| A．that | B．as | C．so | D．such |
| A．repeated | B．regretted | C．remembered | D．forgot |
| A．cookies | B．sweets | C．bread | D．salad |
| A．confused | B．worried | C．nervous | D．disappointed |
| A．hardly | B．usually | C．generally | D．completely |
| A．satisfied | B．fearful | C．puzzled | D．surprised |
| A．drove | B．called | C．visited | D．came |
| A．left | B．laughed | C．cried | D．slept |
| A．forget | B．imagine | C．permit | D．pardon |
| A．puzzle | B．happiness | C．sadness | D．interest |
| A．another | B．other | C．others | D．the other |
| A．easier | B．harder | C．busier | D．brighter |
4 . When my teenaged son became seriously ill, terrible times for my family began. Our oncehappy home became tense and
One evening, my son and I were talking about
“You couldn’t get a sound? What’s so
Seeing his face light up, we felt as if the gloom (黑暗) had lifted and a ray of sunshine was let in. It was the best ten
| A．content | B．depressed | C．puzzled | D．excited |
| A．conversation | B．meal | C．vacation | D．party |
| A．diseases | B．relationships | C．festivals | D．gifts |
| A．moved | B．satisfied | C．disappointed | D．embarrassed |
| A．although | B．if | C．so | D．but |
| A．picked out | B．cut off | C．packed away | D．thrown away |
| A．argument | B．research | C．treatment | D．trouble |
| A．happy | B．useful | C．hard | D．funny |
| A．blew | B．observed | C．cleaned | D．shook |
| A．never | B．only | C．hardly | D．even |
| A．chewed | B．lost | C．rooted | D．trapped |
| A．laughing | B．damaging | C．complaining | D．fighting |
| A．minutes | B．days | C．weeks | D．months |
| A．calm | B．light | C．bad | D．confident |
| A．recommends | B．reminds | C．warms | D．promises |
5 . Christopher Thomas, 27, was a writer by night and a teacher by day when he noticed he was always tired and was losing weight fast. Diagnosed with diabetes(糖尿病), Thomas would need to inject himself with insulin(胰岛素) three times a day for the rest of his life or risk nerve damage, blindness, and even death. And if those weren’t bad enough, he had no health insurance.
After a month of feeling upset, Thomas decided he’d better find a way to fight back. He left Canton, Michigan for New York, got a job to wait tables, nicknamed himself the Diabetic Rockstar, and created diabeticrockstar.com, a free online community for diabetics and their loved ones—a place where over 1,100 people share personal stories, information, and resources.
Jason Swencki’s son Kody, was diagnosed with type diabetes at six. Father and son visit the online children’s forums together most evenings. “Kody gets so excited, writing to kids from all over the world,” says Swencki, one of the site’s volunteers. “They know what he’s going through, so he doesn’t feel alone.”
Kody is anything but alone: Diabetes is now the seventh leading cause of death in the United States, with 24 million diagnosed cases. And more people are being diagnosed at younger ages.
These days, Thomas’ main focus is his charity, Fight It, which provides medicines and supplies to people—225 to date—who can’t afford a diabetic’s huge expenses. Fight It has raised about $23,000—in products and in cash. In May, Thomas will hold the first annual Diabetic Rockstar Festival in the Caribbean.
Even with a staff of 22 volunteers, Thomas often devotes up to 50 hours a week to his cause, while still doing his fulltime job to wait tables. “Of the diabetes charities out there, most are putting money into finding a cure,” says Bentley Gubar, one of Rockstar’s original members. “But Christopher is the only person I know to say people need help now.”
1. From the passage, what do we know about Christopher Thomas?| A．He needs to go to the doctor every day. |
| B．He studies the leading cause of diabetes. |
| C．He has a positive attitude to this disease. |
| D．He encourages diabetics by writing articles. |
| A．To help diabetics communicate with each other. |
| B．To help volunteers find jobs. |
| C．To amuse diabetics. |
| D．To share Rockstar’s resources. |
| A．It helps the diabetics with financial difficulties. |
| B．It organizes parties for volunteers once a year. |
| C．It offers less expensive medicines to diabetics. |
| D．It owns a wellknown medical website. |
| A．He works fulltime in a diabetes charity. |
| B．He employs 22 people for his website. |
| C．He helps diabetics in his own way. |
| D．Thomas tries to find a cure for diabetes. |
6 . Dogs are considered by many to be man’s best friend and with millions of dogs owned by families in the US, it is highly likely that many dogs are in need of some amount of training. Since dogs can hear sounds at much higher frequencies (频率) than humans, there is a wonderful tool for the training of a dog. It is an app (应用程序) called the Dog Whistle. This isn’t your typical whistle in that it produces sounds at a frequency that is unable to be heard by humans. This unique app will allow you to train your dog without the need of a dog whistle.
The Dog Whistle free app was created by an app developer Maoli Wang specifically for dog owners who are looking for a way to communicate with their dogs in order to be able to either train them or alert (使警觉) them when the noise around is too great for them to hear you call them. By simply fixing the app on your iPhone, it will immediately turn itself into a dog whistle.
The app includes a very powerful system that is able to create different tones ranging from 16,000 to 40,000 Hz in order for a dog to be able to hear it. The app also has an on-screen sound meter in order for the user to monitor the sound level being produced. In that way, they can decide on which frequency works best for their dog. What’s more, the app easily produces the requested tones at the frequencies necessary to be used to communicate with your dog by simply tapping the screen of your phone.
The app was designed to be used in place of a dog whistle in order to get your dogs attention when it is too noisy around them. The sound produced through the app is at a level that only dogs are able to hear and they will respond to the sound. If you own a dog and are having behavioral issues with them, you would surely benefit from the Dog Whistle free app available by clicking here.
1. What is the development of the app based on according to the first paragraph?| A．Dogs’ good hearing. | B．People’s love for dogs. |
| C．The use of smart phones. | D．Dog owner’s interest in training. |
| A．It records the ways the dog responds to sounds. |
| B．It produces beautiful sounds that interest the dog. |
| C．It produces whistles at a frequency intended for the dog. |
| D．It suggests a proper way to communicate with the dog. |
| A．In a strange situation. | B．In a noisy situation. |
| C．In an unsafe situation. | D．In a difficult situation. |
| A．magazine | B．newspaper | C．website | D．radio |
7 . Whenever something looks interesting or beautiful, there is a natural desire of us to capture (捕捉) and preserve it — which means, in this day and age, that we are likely to reach for our phones to take a picture.
Though this would seem to be an ideal solution, there are two big problems associated with taking pictures. Firstly, we are likely to be so busy taking pictures that we forget to look at the world whose beauty and interest encourage us to take a photograph in the first place. And secondly, because we feel the pictures are safely stored on our phones, we never get around to looking at them, so sure are we that we’ll get around to them one day.
The first person to notice the problems was the English art critic (评论家), John Ruskin. He was a keen traveler who realized that most tourists make a poor job of noticing or remembering the beautiful things they see. He argued that humans have a natural tendency to respond to beauty and desire to have it, but there are better and worse expressions of this desire. At worse, we get into buying souvenirs or taking photographs. But, in Ruskin’s eyes, there’s just one thing we should do — attempting to draw the interesting things we see, regardless of whether we happen to have any talent for doing so.
Ruskin said, “Drawing can teach us to see: to notice properly rather than gaze absent-mindedly. In the process of recreating with our own hand what lies before our eyes, we naturally move from a position of observing beauty in a loose way to one where we acquire a deep understanding of its parts.”
Ruskin deplored the blindness and hurry of modern tourists, especially those who prided themselves on travelling around the whole Europe in a week by train, “No changing of places at a hundred miles an hour will make us stronger, happier, or wiser. There was always more in the world than men could see, if they ever walked slowly; they will see it no better for going fast. The really precious things are thoughts and sights, not pace.”
1. According to Paragraph 2, when taking pictures, people tend to ___________.| A．forget to appreciate something attractive on the spot |
| B．find it hard to learn skills of taking good pictures |
| C．find a good way to keep things in their minds |
| D．have a chance to meet the challenge of new technology |
| A．To speak it out openly. | B．To photograph it instantly. |
| C．To purchase it directly. | D．To paint it immediately. |
| A．considerate and determined | B．active and adventurous |
| C．creative and thoughtful | D．sensitive and ambitious |
| A．appreciated | B．criticized |
| C．favored | D．ignored |
