1 . I was born in a poor community on the north side of Boston, US, raised by a single mother who didn’t finish 3rd grade, lived each day on food stamps and attended what the media called “the most dysfunctional (功能失调的) public school district”. Not many people expected much of me, so I had to expect.
On my 13th birthday, I bought a poster of Harvard to hang in my room. Being at Harvard became what I dreamt about. Even if my electricity was cut off, I still woke up at 5:30, because I knew that my poster of Harvard was still hanging only two feet away from me.
Reminding myself of my goal each day made it easy to say no to the same choices I saw my peers making, because those paths wouldn’t have had me closer to my goal. Being poor could not take away my power to decide what I choose to do with my day. The poster gave me the courage to send emails to about 50 Harvard students to ask for feedback on my application essays; it gave me the energy to study just one more hour on my SATs when my friends were asleep; and it gave me the determination to submit just one more scholarship application when 180 others had already turned me down.
Every day, I could feel myself getting closer and closer to my goal as my writing got better, my SAT score increased, and my scholarship checks started coming in. Finally, an email arrived from Harvard. The first word was “Congratulations!” A month later, Harvard flew me up to visit the campus where for the first time I stepped onto my dreaming land.
Who you are today is the result of the decisions you made yesterday, and who you will be tomorrow will be the result of the choices you make today. Who do you want to be tomorrow?
1. What can we learn about the author from the first two paragraphs?| A．All people expected too much of him. |
| B．He grew up in a happy family. |
| C．He accepted the greatest education. |
| D．He had high expectation of himself. |
| A．He spent more time preparing for the exams. |
| B．He learnt from his peers from time to time. |
| C．He often wrote feedbacks on others’ essays. |
| D．He turned to his teacher when facing problems. |
| A．Intelligent and humorous. | B．Generous and selfless. |
| C．Determined and hardworking. | D．Courageous and friendly. |
| A．Failure is the mother of success. |
| B．Perseverance can help realize your dream. |
| C．Easier said than done. |
| D．It’s never too late to study. |
2 . Housing officials say that lately they are noticing something different: students seem to lack the will, and the skill, to deal with ordinary conflicts. “We have students who are mad at each other and they text each other in the same room,” says a teacher. “So many of our conflicts are because kids don’t know how to solve a problem by formal discussion.”
And as any pop psychologist will tell you, bottled emotions lead to silent discontent (不满) that can boil over into frustration and anger. At the University of Florida, emotional conflicts occur about once a week, the university’s director of housing education says, “Over the past five years, roommate conflicts have increased. The students don’t have the person-to-person discussions and they don’t know how to handle them.” The problem is most dramatic among freshmen; housing professionals say they see improvement as students move toward graduation, but some never seem to improve, and they worry about how such students will deal with conflicts after college.
Administrators guess that reliance on cell phones and the Internet may have made it easier for young people to avoid uncomfortable encounters. Why express anger in person when you can vent (发泄) in a text? “Things are posted on someone’s wall on Facebook like: Oh, my roommate kept me up all night studying,” says Dana Pysz, an assistant director at the University of California, Los Angeles. “It’s a different way to express their conflict to each other, consequently creating even more conflicts as complaints go public.” In recent focus groups at North Carolina State University, dorm residents said they would not even deal with noisy neighbors on their floor.
Administrators point to parents who have fixed their children’s problems in their entire lives. Now in college, the children lack the skills to attend to even modest conflicts. Some parents continue to interfere (干涉) on campus.
1. What is the main reason for many roommate conflicts?| A．Students are not good at reaching an agreement about the problems. |
| B．Students are not satisfied with each other. |
| C．Housing directors are not responsible for them. |
| D．Students are not strong-willed. |
| A．Students, especially freshmen, should bottle up their dissatisfaction. |
| B．Students in Florida sit down and have a person-to-person talk once a week. |
| C．Not all students are able to handle conflicts by the time they graduate. |
| D．The number of conflicts among roommates has decreased in the past five years. |
| A．Disapproving. | B．Indifferent. | C．Supportive. | D．Unclear. |
| A．They should be involved in their children’s life on campus. |
| B．They should deal with their children’s problems in their whole lives. |
| C．They should constantly contact the administrators of the college. |
| D．They should teach their children the skills to tackle the conflicts. |
3 . For some time, psychologists have been studying how personality traits affect health and health-related choices. Not surprisingly, they have found that people blessed with innate conscientiousness, meaning that they are organized and predictable, usually eat better and live longer than people who are disorderly. They also tend to have immaculate offices.
What has been less clear is whether neat environments can produce good habits even in those who aren’t necessarily innately conscientious. To find out, Dr. Vohs and her colleagues at the University of Minnesota conducted two experiments. In the first experiment, a group of college-age students were placed in a messy or a neat office and asked to dream up new uses for Ping-Pong balls. Surprisingly, those in messy spaces generated ideas that were significantly more creative, according to two independent judges, than those in offices where stacks of papers and other objects were neatly arranged.
The result was something of a surprise, says Dr. Vohs, the leader of the study. Few previous studies found much virtue(美德) in disorder. The broken window theory, proposed decades ago, holds that even slight disorder and neglect can encourage indifference and poor discipline.
But in the study by Dr. Vohs, disordered offices encouraged originality and a search for novelty. In the second experiment, students were given the choice of adding a health “boost” to their lunchtime juice that was labeled either “new” or “classic”. The students in the messy space were far more likely to choose the new one; those in the tidy office generally chose the classic version. “Disorderly environments seem to inspire breaking free of tradition,” Dr. Vohs and her co-authors conclude in the study, “which can produce fresh insights.”
The implications of these findings are also practical. “My advice would be, if you need to think outside the box for a future project,” Dr. Vohs says, “then let the chaos (杂乱) rise and free your imagination. But if your primary goal is to eat well or to go to the gym, pick up around your office first. By doing this, the naturally messy can acquire some of the discipline of the conscientious.”
1. The underlined word “immaculate” in paragraph 1 probably means ______| A．messy | B．tidy | C．terrible | D．comfortable |
| A．Chaos causes chaos. | B．Misfortune may be an actual blessing. |
| C．Bad news has wings. | D．When a door shuts, a window opens. |
| A．More virtue exists in organized people. |
| B．Creativity results from tidiness and discipline. |
| C．Disorderly surroundings help to create new ideas. |
| D．Workers’ good habits guarantee the success of a project. |
| A．The naturally neat people tend to be very creative. |
| B．A messy office will cause quite low working efficiency. |
| C．Environments can affect people’s way of thinking and behavior. |
| D．People’s personalities are determined by their working environments. |
4 . Endangered polar bears are breeding (繁殖) with grizzly bears (灰熊), creating “pizzly” bears, which is being driven by climate change, scientists say.
As the world warms and Arctic sea ice thins, starving polar bears are being forced ever further south, where they meet grizzlies, whose ranges are expanding northwards. And with that growing contact between the two come increasing hybrids (杂交种).
With characteristics that could give the hybrids an advantage in warming northern habitats, some scientists guess that they could be here to stay. “Usually, hybrids aren’t better suited to their environments than their parents, but these hybrids are able to search for a broader range of food sources,” Larisa DeSantis, an associate professor of biological sciences at Vanderbilt University, told Live Science.
The rise of “pizzly” bears appears with polar bears’ decline: their numbers are estimated to decrease by more than 30% in the next 30 years. This sudden fall is linked partly to “pizzly” bears taking up polar bears’ ranges, where they outcompete them, but also to polar bears’ highly specialized diets.
“Polar bears mainly consumed soft foods even during the Medieval Warm Period, a previous period of rapid warming,” DeSantis said, referring to fat meals such as seals. “Although all of these starving polar bears are trying to find alternative food sources, like seabird eggs, it could be a tipping point for their survival.” Actually, the calories they gain from these sources do not balance out those they burn from searching for them. This could result in a habitat ready for the hybrids to move in and take over, leading to a loss in biodiversity if polar bears are replaced.
“We’re having massive impacts with climate change on species,” DeSantis said. “The polar bear is telling us how bad things are. In some sense, “pizzly” bears could be a sad but necessary compromise given current warming trends.”
1. Why do polar bears move further south?| A．To create hybrids. | B．To expand territory. |
| C．To relieve hunger. | D．To contact grizzlies. |
| A．Broader habitats. | B．More food options. |
| C．Climate preference. | D．Improved breeding ability. |
| A．A rare chance. | B．A critical stage. |
| C．A positive factor. | D．A constant change. |
| A．Polar bears are changing diets for climate change. |
| B．Polar bears have already adjusted to climate change. |
| C．“Pizzly” bears are on the rise because of global warming. |
| D．“Pizzly”bears have replaced polar bears for global warming. |
5 . Little boys don’t like reading any more and even little girls don’t enjoy it as much as they once did. This is the accepted wisdom inside the book industry —and in many British families, too. Parents and booksellers tend to blame the growing appeal of online entertainment and handheld games, but research from the US is challenging these assumptions.
Michael Norris, an American publishing expert, will release findings in the monthly Book Publishing Report which show that, despite the best intentions, it is well-meaning mothers and fathers who often stop their sons and daughters from picking up the reading habit.
“Parents have too much of a role in deciding which books their children are going to read,” said Norris. “It is turning children off.”
The results of a number of surveys Norris has carried out with hundreds of American book-sellers over the past year have provided the basis for a series of tips for parents designed to help children find enjoyment in books.
One of his tips is to make sure children talk directly to a librarian or a bookseller, while parents stand well back. Parents should allow children to choose their own reading material. “Even if a mother or father is just standing with the child when the bookseller asks them what they like to read, we have found that the child will give an answer they think their parent wants to hear. It will not be the same answer they would give alone,” said Norris.
Norris’s another tip for parents is that they do not attempt to limit books to one age range. ”What we have found is that parents should not worry whether a title looks too young or too old for a child. If a book has caught their attention, then let them take it.“ Children, added Norris, often enjoy reading books that are easy for them to understand. “My father made me read The Hunt for Red October by Tom Clancy when I was much too young and I have never read another Clancy since,” said Norris.
1. What did Norris think prevents children from enjoying reading?| A．Children’s interest in handheld games. | B．The declining market of the book industry. |
| C．Parents influence on children’s book selection. | D．The growing popularity of online entertainment. |
| A．It’s published to improve book sales. | B．It mainly focuses on British families. |
| C．It involves many years’ efforts. | D．It was conducted by Norris. |
| A．Introduce new books regularly. | B．Let them talk with booksellers alone. |
| C．Discuss popular books with children. | D．Often seek expert advice from booksellers. |
| A．It was totally wrong. | B．It was quite necessary. |
| C．It aroused his interest in reading. | D．It showed parents’ worries about kids. |
6 . Is language, like food, a basic human need without which a child at a critical period of life can be starved and damaged? Judging from the drastic (极端的) experiment of Fredrick in the thirteenth century, it may be. Hoping to discover what language a child would speak if he heard no mother tongue, he told the nurses to keep silent. All the infants (婴儿) died before the first year. But clearly there was more than a lack of language here. What was also missing was good mothering, in the first year of life especially, the capacity to survive is seriously influenced.
Today no such serious lack exists as that ordered by Frederick. However, some children are still backward in speaking. Most often the reason for this is that the mother is insensitive to the signals of the infant, whose brain is programmed to learn language rapidly. If these sensitive periods are neglected, the ideal time for acquiring skills passes and they might never be learned so easily again.
Experts suggest that speech stages are reached in a fixed sequence (顺序) and at a constant age, but there are cases where speech has started late in a child who eventually turns out to be of high IQ. At twelve weeks a baby smiles and utters vowel-like sounds; at twelve months he can speak simple words and understand simple conmmands; at eighteen months he has a vocabulary of three to fifty words. At three he knows about 1,000 words which he can put into sentences, and at four his language differs from his parents’in style rather than grammar.
Recent evidence suggests that an infant is born with the capacity to speak. What is special about man’s brain, compared with the brain of the monkey, is the complex system which enables a child to connect the sight and feel of, say, a teddy-bear with the sound pattern “teddy-bear”, and even more incredible is the young brain’s ability to pick out an order in language for the mixture of sound around him, to analyze, to combine and recombine the parts of a language in new ways.
But speech has to be induced and this depends on interaction between the mother and the child, where the mother recognizes the signals in the child’s babbling (含糊不清地说) and smiling, and is sensitive to them. Insensitivity of the mother to these signals dulls the interaction because the child gets discouraged and sends out only the obvious signals. Sensitivity to the child’s non-verbal signals is essential to the growth and development of language.
1. As for Frederick’s experiment, we may know that _____.| A．the infants in it lived only over a year |
| B．there was absolutely no difference between food and language for the infants |
| C．the infants in it died because there was not any sound |
| D．the death of the infants was not merely due to an absence of language |
| A．they are not able to learn language rapidly |
| B．they are exposed to too much language at once |
| C．their mothers respond inadequately to their attempts to speak |
| D．their mothers are not intelligent enough to help them |
| A．be encouraged | B．be forced | C．be banned | D．be monitored |
| A．The ability of speech is inborn in man. |
| B．A child starting to speak later than others may not necessarily be backward. |
| C．Most children learn their language in definite stages. |
| D．Children may dull their mother through interaction. |
7 . Which are the better pets, cats or dogs? Staff from New Horizon network team have carried out a study which lasted a fortnight and they published their conclusion on their home page last Friday — dogs are better pets than cats by a whisker.
Staff from New Horizon first listed the areas where cats fared better. These included having bigger brains compared to their body size, which is said to make them do better in complex functions such as memory and attention than dogs. Cats’second point was given for being more popular, with 204 million living in the top ten cat-owning nations compared to 173 million dogs in the ten countries where dogs are favored. Cats also get more attention from humans, with purrs (呼噜声) and miaows easily to be noticed. Although dogs can vary their barks, they cannot match the attention-seeking of cats. Additionally, cats can see in lower light than dogs and have a far wider hearing range and a sharper sense of smell. They are also said to be “greener” pets because their smaller appetites mean less area of land required to farm the food.
But in the other six categories examined — many of which related to getting on with humans — dogs had the edge.
Dogs have a longer shared history with humans, maybe as long as 135,000 years. Cats are relative newcomers to our homes. Similarly, dogs have a greater ability to bond with the 订masters. Even four-month-old puppies choose a human companion over another dog. Dogs scored a third point for their better powers of understanding and following human gestures. One study found that a dog called Rico had mastered the meaning of more than 200 words. The ab 山 ty to perform roles such as being a guide dog for the blind meant dogs were rated better than cats when it came to their problem-solving abilities. And they are easier to train.
With the scores tied at five-all, the deciding point fell on usefulness — with dogs coming out on top.
Dogs, studies show, help cut human stress, while taking them for walks keeps their owners fit and helps them meet new people. New Horizon says: “Dogs can hunt and guard. They can sniff out drugs and bombs; they guide blind and deaf people, find someone buried in ruins, and possibly even predict earthquakes.”
The study conducted by the staff and their conclusion went viral the moment it was released and has caused a heated discussion among pet owners. Some frowned at it, arguing that it had only involved character, intelligence and usefulness.
1. Which of the following is cats’advantage?| A．They are better at grasping their owners’ instructions. |
| B．They have larger brains than dogs. |
| C．They have a sharper sense of taste. |
| D．They affect the environment less. |
| A．considerably | B．in some aspects |
| C．a little bit | D．exactly the same |
| A．the study lasted a week |
| B．four-month-old puppies are more capable of picking a human companion |
| C．all the pet owners didn’t agree with the conclusion |
| D．people pet dogs to predict earthquakes |
| A．Cats beat dogs | B．Fight like cat and dog |
| C．Befriend with cats and dogs | D．Cats versus dogs |
8 . At the age of 9, my father passed away. I often helped mum with the housework and changing the vacuum cleaner (真空吸尘器) bag and picking up things the machine did not suck up always drove me crazy. One day 20 years later, in 1978, I was doing chores at home alongside my wife. The vacuum cleaner was screaming, and worse still, I had to empty the bag several times. But for my wife’s comfort, I would have lost it just as I did many years ago. It was at that time that I decided to make a bagless vacuum cleaner. And I even imagined myself using it for the next weekend cleaning.
Easier said than done, of course. I didn’t realize that I would spend the next five years perfecting my design, a process that resulted in 5,127 different prototypes (设计原型). 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 with my family, I pulled through and each failure brought me closer to solving the problem.
I just had a passion for the vacuum cleaner as a product, but I never thought of going into a business with it. In the early 1980s, I started trying to get licensing agreements (许可协议) for my technology. The reality was very different, however. The major vacuum makers had built a business model based on the profits from bags and filters (滤网). No one would license my idea, not because it was a bad one, but because it was bad for business.
That gave me the courage to keep going, 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 on my vacuum cleaner. However, I was still in financial difficulties until 1993, when my bank manager personally persuaded Lloyds Bank to lend me $1 million. Then my bagless vacuum cleaner was produced in large numbers. Within two years, the Dyson vacuum cleaner became a best-seller in Britain.
Today, I still embrace risk and the potential for failure as part of my life. “Go out and brainstorm new ideas.” I often tell myself.
1. From the first paragraph, we know that _____.| A．Dyson resolved to make a vacuum cleaner in memory of his father. |
| B．Dyson decided to develop an innovative vacuum cleaner for his wife while in his thirties. |
| C．Dyson was not a little annoyed when the vacuum cleaner went wrong. |
| D．Dyson didn’t lose the vacuum cleaner he used because his wife comforted him. |
| A．In the early 1980s. |
| B．After his bank manager agreed to lend him $1 million. |
| C．After he was given a $1 million loan. |
| D．Before he obtained a patent on the product. |
| A．Dyson dreamed of making a fortune when he began his invention |
| B．Dyson might owe his success to his family |
| C．Dyson had no confidence in his vacuum cleaner initially |
| D．Dyson’s vacuum cleaner was not licensed in the early 1980’s for its poor quality |
| A．More haste, less speed. |
| B．Silence is gold. |
| C．Without adventure, one can not know himself. |
| D．He who never failed might never succeed. |
9 . During the teenage years, hormonal (荷尔蒙的) changes lead to physical changes like rapid muscle growth, burst in height, and weight gain in both boys and girls. Take a look at the information and height and weight charts for teens presented in this article if the question “How much should I weigh for my age and height” is bothering you.
Average Height and weight Charts for TeensFaster growth in kids usually can be noticed at age 8. Genetic factors also determine the physical growth of a child. So, it is perfectly normal for two kids of the same age to have different weights and heights. The following figures should be used as guidelines only.
Ideal Body Fat Percentage
Fit men have 14% -17% body fat. Fit women have 21% - 24% body fat.
Male athletes have 6% - 13% body fat. Female athletes have 14% - 20% body fat.
The ideal body fat percentage varies mainly according to age, sex and the physical activity of the individual. But it is a fact that some female athletes have body fat as low as 10% and some male athletes had lower than 4% body fat. So, it can be observed that other than the above mentioned factors, genetic factors also influence the body-fat ratio (比率)．
Body Mass Index (BMI)
You may use the following formula to calculate our BMI:
As per SI Units (国际单位)
BMI= mass (kg)/[height(meters)]2
Following conclusions can be derived from (得到) calculating the BMI:
1. All the factors (that determine the physical growth of a child) are mentioned in the passage EXCEPT _______.
| A．nutrition | B．gene | C．sex | D．age |
| A．girls keep on growing taller during the teenage years |
| B．girls grow faster at the end of teenager years than boys |
| C．girls grow faster at the beginning of teenager years than boys |
| D．boys’average weight is always heavier than girls’during the teenage years |
| A．normal | B．obese | C．extremely obese | D．underweight |
10 . Elements of Latin have made their way into many western countries. Data varies, but as much as 70% of words in English have a Latin or Greek root. By learning more about these roots and how they combine (结合) to create words, you will have an advantage in understanding new words, even if you’ve never seen them before.
The great thing is that you’re not learning the whole language with its grammar. You just need to memorize some parts of the vocabulary that you often see in English. So how do word roots work?
Every word has a root. This part contains the key to a word’s meaning. Take the word “happy”, for example. This word only contains the root, which means full of joy. Some words, however, have extra parts. We call these affixes (词缀), including prefixes, the part attached before the root, and suffixes, the part attached behind the root. Based on the additional meaning of the prefixes and suffixes, the meaning of the final word will be shaped to mean something new.
Take the word “autobiography” for example. The root is “bio”, meaning life. You may have noticed that many words with “bio” have something to do with life or living beings—biology, biography, and so on. When the suffixes “graph”, meaning to write, is added to it, it means a story about someone’s or something’s life. “Auto” means by oneself. Altogether, an “autobiography” is a story about a person’s life, written by the person himself or herself.
In a word, a better grasp of word roots can make you understand the English language better, and will help you with your vocabulary recognition and memory skills.
1. What’s needed to understand new words with roots?| A．A good understanding of Latin or Greek. | B．A full understanding of grammar. |
| C．The ability to recognize different parts of words. | D．The ability to speak various Western languages. |
| A．It can’t form a word by itself. | B．It is a necessary part of a word. |
| C．It is more important than affixes. | D．It has a relatively simple meaning. |
| A．The science that is related to living things. |
| B．A person who does research about chemistry. |
| C．A person who does research about living things. |
| D．The study of chemical reactions occurring in living things. |
| A．Secret of understanding new words. | B．Latin’s way into Western language. |
| C．Amazing power of affixes. | D．Tips on language exams. |
