1 . One day, Amanda was diagnosed (诊断) with cancer of an early stage. During this time, she was admitted to a college. She planned to save money to meet the college expense and then seek medical treatment for the cancer.
Her father, Clint and her friends didn’t want her to put off her treatment due to the expense. They took matters into their own hands and started a GoFundMe campaign. A longtime friend of the family was cofounder of a group named Praynksters, known for random acts of kindness. The friend decided to use their own group to help the family. The group came up with the creative idea to spread the word and invite families, friends, and strangers who wanted to help to take part in a donation activity. The event induced the enormous assistance from the local community.
Clint and Amanda were moved as the crowd passed by and the donations poured in. The event brought the family over $13, 000 in donations to go towards her medical treatments. The generous act of kindness gave the family a comforting, and optimistic feeling during a time when all hope seemed lost. Clint said that Amanda struggled with the idea of asking for help. She felt guilty and undeserving compared to others who are also struggling. She is still humbled by it all.
After several months of treatment, life for the family has started getting back to their normal routine. Once Amanda got her strength back, she returned to school and completed her bachelor's degree. The family is now inspired to volunteer in their local neighborhood and contribute to crowdfunding (众筹) efforts. They are grateful for the opportunity to give back and help others as many have helped them.
1. Why did Amanda postpone her treatment of cancer?| A．She didn't care about her disease. |
| B．She had to take care of her family. |
| C．She was in a bad economic situation. |
| D．She couldn’t find an effective treatment. |
| A．Brought about. | B．Made up. |
| C．Gave away. | D．Set about. |
| A．Shameful but caring. |
| B．Kind-hearted and grateful. |
| C．Curious and warm-hearted. |
| D．Hard- working and humorous. |
| A．It's quite easy to cure Amanda’s cancer. |
| B．Praynksters is a nonprofit organization funded by Clint. |
| C．Volunteering is very popular in Amanda's community. |
| D．A GoFundMe campaign is actually a crowdfunding activity. |
2 . My daughter was being thrown out of the sixth grade. The teacher said, “She may not be up to what we’re trying to accomplish.” He was really saying she didn’t have the intelligence. I got mad because I knew she was smart, just as my father had known I was smart when I was failing in school. We had her tested. I decided to get myself tested as well, and found that the troubles she was having were exactly what I had had — dyslexia. By then I was a successful television writer, and had won an Emmy Award for “The Rockford Files.”
If I had known earlier that something beyond my control could explain why I was a low achiever, I may not have worked so hard in my late 20s and early 30s. I was writing and writing. I was working for no other reason than to hear people praise me, because I did badly in all my courses.
I once asked a friend who had always gotten an A, “How long did you study for this?” He said, “I didn’t. I just glanced at it.” So he must be smarter. I began to ask, “What will happen to me when I’m not good at anything?” Despite my doubts, I did become successful, and people now say to me, “So you’ve overcome dyslexia.”
No. You don’t overcome it, you learn to compensate for it. Some easy things are very hard for me. Most people who go through college read twice as fast as I do. I avoid dialing a phone if I can, because I sometimes have to try three times to get the number right.
Despite my weaknesses I view dyslexia as a gift, not a curse (诅咒). Many dyslexics are good at right-brain, abstract thought, and that’s what my kind of creative writing is. And I can write quickly, and can get up to 15 pages a day. Writing is my strength.
The real fear I have for dyslexic children is not they have to struggle in school, but that they will quit on themselves before they get out of school. Parents have to create victories for them, whether it’s music, sports or art. You can make your dyslexic child able to say, “Yeah, reading is hard. But I have other things I can do.”
1. The writer decided to get himself tested as well because he________.| A．wanted to know if they had the same problem |
| B．didn’t believe his daughter had the problem |
| C．had to take a regular medical examination |
| D．accepted that his daughter was not smart |
| A．struggled and got better grades |
| B．didn’t work hard when he was young |
| C．was praised for overcoming dyslexia |
| D．was thankful not knowing of dyslexia earlier |
| A．is less intelligent | B．always fails in school |
| C．reads more slowly than normal people | D．performs worse in left-brain activities |
| A．Clumsy birds have to start flying early. | B．God shuts one door but opens another. |
| C．Never judge a person by his appearance. | D．No one can make a good coat with bad cloth. |
3 . There’s no doubt that one of the greatest human achievements is the exploration of the space. Ever since astronaut Yuri Gagarin became the first person to be sent into the orbit around the moon in 1961, scientists have been pushing the boundaries further and further. But until now the exploration into the unknown has been dominated (主导) by men.
Of course, in the past, women were also included in the space projects and played an active role on the ground and behind the scenes. For example, they worked as seamstresses (女裁缝师), sewing vital spaceflight components. In fact, many of NASA’s key works would never have been possible without them. Recently Hollywood produced a movie called Hidden Figures to focus on a group of American female mathematicians, especially the black women, who helped NASA send the first American into space. But this was not women’s only contribution. Back in 1963, Soviet astronaut Valentina Tereshkova became the first woman to be sent into space. However, after that, space flight programs were slow to employ women. In the USA. NASA didn’t accept applications from women to become astronauts until 1978.
But attitudes have changed and leading officials at NASA say that the first person to set foot on Mars should be a woman. The space agency aims to have a sex-balanced workforce but can only achieve that if equal numbers of men and women are trained for science and technology jobs. As Allison McIntryre told the BBC, “My director is a woman. We have female astronauts. We haven’t put a woman on the moon yet. And I think that perhaps the first person to step on Mars should be a woman.”
1. What did Yuri Gagarin do in 1961?| A．He landed on the moon in success. |
| B．He discovered many new boundaries. |
| C．He led scientists to explore the moon. |
| D．He made the first journey into the space. |
| A．To show women are the true heroes of NASA’s first launch. |
| B．To stress that black people have won equal rights in NASA. |
| C．To prove women can do as well as men in NASA’ projects. |
| D．To present women’s contributions to NASA’s space programs. |
| A．Uncaring. | B．Disapproving. |
| C．Supportive. | D．Disappointed. |
| A．Will the First Person to Step on Mars Be a Woman? |
| B．Great Achievements Have Been Made in Space Exploration? |
| C．Why Men Played an Important Role in Exploring the Unknown? |
| D．Men and Women Have Made Equal Contributions to NASA’s Projects? |
4 . I was in the seventh grade, and we had moved to New Jersey in November. By then, everyone already had had their own friends, and no one wanted to talk to a new girl. To make things worse, they put me in ''Section L''. I found out later that everyone called Section L ''Loserville''. It was sort of an open secret that it was the section for troublemakers and not-so-smart kids. When I found out, I wanted to scream. I had always been a good student and had amazing friends, and now everyone thought I was a loser!
I did text my friends in Illinois almost every night, especially my best friend, Ana. At first my friends wanted to hear all about it. But then some stopped texting back once I said something about how miserable I was. One night when I was texting with Ana, I complained about another friend who had just done that. Anas texts came really fast for the next few minutes and they surprised me. She said that she was tired of hearing about how bad everything was in New Jersey, too. She said she did not want to hurt my feelings but that I needed to stop feeling so sorry for myself all the time, and I had to try to make things better.
The next day, I thought a lot about what Ana had said. She was right!
I wish I could say that everything changed overnight after that, but it didn't, I was still stuck in ''Loserville'', and some people were still mean (苛刻) to me, even though I tried to just stay out of their way.
But what did change was me — I stopped feeling so sorry for myself and did something about making friends. I signed up to make sets for the school play. I met a lot of new people there, and suddenly I had friends to say hi to in the halls!
I still miss Illinois sometimes, but life in New Jersey isn't so hard anymore. Even though I couldn't change my situation, I could change my attitude — and that made all the difference.
1. ''Loserville'' is a section for ________.| A．smart students | B．low achievers |
| C．class leaders | D．new comers |
| A．Ana didn’t text back to her | B．she was a good student |
| C．her friends hurt her feelings | D．she was unfairly treated |
| A．She managed to go back to Illinois. | B．She ended the friendship with Ana. |
| C．She began to make friends with others. | D．She fought back with her classmates. |
| A．Everlasting Friendship | B．Say Goodbye to ''Loserville'' |
| C．An Incident at School | D．Unhappiness in ''Loserville'' |
California condors are North America’s largest birds, with wind-length of up to 3 meters. In the 1980s, electrical lines and lead poisoning(铅中毒) nearly drove them to dying out. Now, electric shock training and medical treatment are helping to rescue these big birds.
In the late 1980s, the last few condors were taken from the wild to be bred(繁殖). Since 1992, there have been multiple reintroductions to the wild, and there are now more than 150 flying over California and nearby Arizona, Utah and Baja in Mexico.
Electrical lines have been killing them off. “As they go in to rest for the night, they just don’t see the power lines,” says Bruce Rideout of San Diego Zoo. Their wings can bridge the gap between lines, resulting in electrocution(电死) if they touch two lines at once.
So scientists have come up with a shocking idea. Tall poles, placed in large training areas, teach the birds to stay clear of electrical lines by giving them a painful but undeadly electric shock. Before the training was introduced, 66% of set-freed birds died of electrocution. This has now dropped to 18%.
Lead poisonous has proved more difficult to deal with. When condors eat dead bodies of other animals containing lead, they absorb large quantities of lead. This affects their nervous systems and ability to produce baby birds, and can lead to kidney(肾) failures and death. So condors with high levels of lead are sent to Los Angeles Zoo, where they are treated with calcium EDTA, a chemical that removes lead from the blood over several days. This work is starting to pay off. The annual death rate for adult condors has dropped from 38% in 2000 to 5.4% in 2011.
Rideout’s team thinks that the California condors’ average survival time in the wild is now just under eight years. “Although these measures are not effective forever, they are vital for now,” he says. “They are truly good birds that are worth every effort we put into recovering them. ”
1. California condors attract researchers’ interest because they _________.
| A．are active at night |
| B．had to be bred in the wild |
| C．are found only in California |
| D．almost died out in the 1980s |
| A．blocking condors’ journey home |
| B．big killers of California condors |
| C．rest places for condors at night |
| D．used to keep condors away |
| A．makes condors too nervous to fly |
| B．has little effect on condors’ kidneys |
| C．can hardly be gotten rid of from condors’ blood |
| D．makes it difficult for condors to produce baby birds |
| A．the average survival time of condors is satisfactory |
| B．Rideout’s research interest lies in electric engineering |
| C．the efforts to protect condors have brought good results |
| D．researchers have found the final answers to the problem |
