1 . The Price of a Dream
I grew up poor. We had little money, but plenty of love and attention. I understood that no matter how poor a person was, they could still afford a dream. My dream was athletics.
By the time I was sixteen, I was good at baseball and football. My high school coach was Ollie Jarvis. He not only believed in me, but taught me the difference between having a dream and showing conviction (信念).
One summer a friend recommended me for a summer job. This meant a chance for money in my pocket — cash for dates with girls, certainly, money for a new bike and new clothes, and the start of savings for a house for my mother.
Then I realized I would have to give up summer baseball to handle the work schedule, and that meant I would have to tell Coach Jarvis I wouldn’t be playing. I was afraid of this, but my mother said, “If you make your bed, you have to lie in it.”
When I told Coach Jarvis, he was as mad as I expected him to be. “Your playing days are limited. You can’t afford to waste them,” he said.
I stood before him with my head hanging, trying to think of the words that would explain to him why I dream of buying my mom a house.
“How much are you going to make at this job, son?” he demanded.
“Three point twenty-five an hour,” I replied.
“Well,” he asked, “is $3. 25 an hour the price of a dream?”
That question exposed the difference between wanting something right now and having a goal. I devoted myself to sports that summer, and within the year I was drafted by the Pittsburgh Pirates to play rookie-league ball, and offered a $20, 000 contract. I signed with the Denver Broncos in 1984 for $1.7 million, and bought my mother my dream house.
1. Why was the writer grateful to Coach Jarvis?| A．Because Coach Jarvis made him set a goal. |
| B．Because Coach Jarvis supplied him with new clothes. |
| C．Because Coach Jarvis gave him financial support. |
| D．Because Coach Jarvis helped him show conviction. |
| A．Balance summer baseball and the work schedule. |
| B．Refuse the job offer for summer baseball. |
| C．Give up summer baseball for the job. |
| D．Ask his coach Jarvis for advice. |
| A．You must eat the bitter fruit of your own making. |
| B．Believe in yourself, but above all be patient. |
| C．You must rely on yourself first, then others. |
| D．A good beginning makes a good ending. |
| A．He failed to buy his mother a house. |
| B．He succeeded as a sportsman. |
| C．He became a successful businessman. |
| D．He made some money in the summer job. |
2 . Physical education, or PE, isn’t required for all high school students. In some schools, it isn’t offered for some different reasons. But should high school students have physical education? The answer is certainly “yes”.
Today many people don’t do sports. But as is known to all. doing sports is very important for an adult. Teaching teens the importance of a healthy lifestyle and making fitness plans now can help teens put exercise in the first place as an adult.
High school isn’t that easy. Many students are under a lot of stress. Stress can be harmful to a student’s studies and life. Doing sports can help them deal with stress better, helping them live a happier life at school.
The American Heart Association says that 10 million kids and teens suffer from obesity (肥胖). Teens should get 60 minutes of physical activity per day to control their weight and to help their bones get stronger. The increase in activities that don’t get teens to move around, such as computer games, means many teens don’t get their required exercise. PE classes act as a public health measure (措施) to encourage physical activities and help teens have healthy weights.
Not doing sports increases teens’ hazard of developing many diseases. An active lifestyle offers a good way of protection from these health problems. As much as 75 percent of health-care spending goes toward treating medical conditions that can be prevented by lifestyle changes, according to the American College of Sports Medicine.
According to the President’s Council on Fitness, Sports and Nutrition (PCFSN), students who performed five hours of physical activities each week improved their academic (学业的) performance. Students from programs with no physical activity, who used the extra time for classroom study, did not perform better on tests than those who gave up some study time in support of physical education.
1. According to Paragraph 2, what does physical education in high school mean?| A．Making teens attach importance to ęxercise later. |
| B．Removing the stress faced by teens at school. |
| C．Getting teens to encourage adults to exercise. |
| D．Helping teens learn to make good plans |
| A．Happiness. | B．Risk. | C．Safety. | D．Sadness. |
| A．means making students choose between sports and studies |
| B．helps students make good use of all their time |
| C．means students adjust to their studies better |
| D．helps students do better in their studies |
| A．Why high school students should receive physical education. |
| B．Why some schools consider physical education important. |
| C．How schools can help students love doing sports. |
| D．How high school students can live a better life. |
1. What does the woman suggest the man do?
| A．Give up soda. | B．Stop eating the sweets. | C．Exercise more. |
| A．Go to the gym. | B．Go out for dinner. | C．Go to the grocery store. |
| A．Losing weight. | B．Healthy meals. | C．A new restaurant. |
| A．Swim. | B．Play soccer. | C．Play basketball. |
1. Where does the conversation take place?
| A．In a stadium. | B．At a gift shop. | C．At a university. |
| A．Tickets. | B．A souvenir. | C．Food and drink. |
6 . There are many ways to travel within a city. We can walk, cycle, or take a bus. But no matter which way we travel, we have to stick to the route(线路) the city planners laid down for us.
Parkour practitioners (跑酷爱好者), however, see the city in a completely different way. To them, there are no fixed routes. There are no walls and no stairs—since they jump, climb, roll and crawl to move across, through, over and under anything that they find in their path. The city is their playground.
The International Gymnastics Federation (FIG) has noticed that this activity is drawing more and more people to it—there are 100,000 people taking part in parkour today in the UK alone, according to the Guardian—and how it is helpful for people to be much stronger: It trains coordination and balance. So the organization is thinking about recognizing parkour as a new sport and adding it to the Olympics by 2024.
But parkour practitioners themselves don’t seem to be happy with the idea. They see parkour as “a lifestyle”, wrote the website NextSportStar. “It’s a competition against the conditions rather than just a sport.”
Indeed, many do parkour just to “escape the daily routine and experience the city in different ways”, wrote reporter Oli Mould on The Conversation. They see parkour as a way to express themselves through relaxing moves and creative routes while freeing themselves from the pressure.
It’s great that the FIG wants to develop new sport and stay close to a new cultural form. But it would be greater if they knew that not everything in life is a competition.
1. How do the parkour practitioners do parkour?| A．They move on as they wish. | B．They plan the way themselves. |
| C．They run faster than others. | D．They stick to certain routes. |
| A．It’s a special way of life. | B．It draws their attention. |
| C．It’s good for people to keep healthy. | D．It needs some rules and instructions. |
| A．It is more formal than other sports. | B．It helps people to be creative. |
| C．It’s worth adding to the sporting event. | D．It calls on people to work as a team. |
| A．A new sports competition | B．Parkour practitioners |
| C．Training in a different way | D．Making the city their own |
1. What does the woman promise to do this Saturday?
| A．Learn cycling. |
| B．Go swimming. |
| C．Teach the man skating. |
| A．She doesn’t have a bike. |
| B．She has homework to do. |
| C．She is expecting her sister. |
| A．At 2:00. | B．At 1:30. | C．At 1:00. |
| A．At a park. | B．By the lake. | C．At the man’s home. |
1. When was the 44th contest held?
| A．In 2016. | B．In 2017. | C．In 2018. |
| A．It provides the prizes. |
| B．It judges the pumpkins. |
| C．It teaches pumpkin growers. |
| A．Being larger than the others. |
| B．Being over 2, 624 pounds. |
| C．Being the prettiest. |
| A．$15,190. |
| B．$19,150. |
| C．$30,000 |
1. 祝贺获奖；
2. 肯定成绩和努力；
3. 约时间在网上交流学习中国古诗的心得。
注意：1. 词数80左右；
2. 可以适当增加细节，以使行文连贯。
参考词汇：中国古诗词朗诵大赛 the Chinese Ancient Poetry Recital Contest
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10 . ''Our most beautiful part is our bridge because we can make wind energy by this bridge and our main transportation is used by this bridge. '' The future city competition puts young teens in charge of building a city that can respond to a challenge. This year's challenge is resilience (重建能力) after a natural disaster like an earthquake. The models must be built with recycled materials for less than 100 dollars.
But behind this is some serious engineering. Each group has to present its city's resilience features to the audience and judges. ''The sea walls are made with concrete and steel to reduce the tidal waves impact on the shoreline. '' And it's about more than just infrastructure(基础设施). Judges want to know that you've thought about your citizens, too. ''If someone wants to design a building that's 50 floors, we make an agreement like maybe 20 of them have to be low-income housing. '' Engineering Outreach Group Discover (EOGD) has run the competition for nearly three decades. Director of programs Thea Sahr says it is an effective teaching tool. She tells of one boy who asked his teacher when they would get back to the real learning. ''You know the kind we were just sitting there reading the books and telling you the answers, '' and she said ''well what do you know about storm water that you didn't know last week. What do you know about scale? And you're having a really good time while you're doing it. '' He says this is learning. '' I want to do more of this. ''
The winners take home 7,500 dollars for their school’s science program, and get a trip to a science focused summer camp. This year's winners from Warwick Middle School in Pennsylvania say they also learned real-world skills like dealing with failure. ''The hardest part was trying not to get frustrated when something didn't work. And I think our team members really contributed to that. Communication is key. '' Listen, when you're building a city, engineering is just part of it.
1. What does ''we'' refer to in the first paragraph?| A．Teen competitors. | B．School boys. |
| C．College students. | D．Engineers |
| A．To increase students' communication skills. |
| B．To allow students to experience the work of engineers. |
| C．To strength the friendship between students. |
| D．To offer students a different way of learning. |
| A．The winners can share the 7,500. |
| B．The winners can take part in all kinds of summer camps. |
| C．The biggest challenge for the team is using the knowledge of engineering. |
| D．The participants can learn a lot besides engineering. |
| A．Building City of the Future: A Way of Out School Learning |
| B．Nature: An Outdoor Classroom |
| C．EOGD: A Middle School Reform |
| D．The City of Future: the Place Full of Imagination |
