1 . I must have always known reading was very important because the first memories I have as a child deal with books. There was not one night that I don’t remember mom reading me a storybook by my bedside. I was extremely inspired by the wonderful way the words sounded.
I always wanted to know what my mom was reading. Hearing mom say, “I can’t believe what’s printed in the newspaper this morning,” made me want to grab it out of her hands and read it myself. I wanted to be like my mom and know all of the things she knew. So I carried around a book, and each night, just to be like her, I would pretend to be reading.
This is how everyone learned to read. We would start off with sentences, then paragraphs, and then stories. It seemed an unending journey, but even as a six-year-old girl I realized that knowing how to read could open many doors. When mom said, “The C-A-N-D-Y is hidden on the top shelf,” I knew where the candy was. My progress in reading raised my curiosity, and I wanted to know everything. I often found myself telling my mom to drive more slowly, so that I could read all of the road signs we passed.
Most of my reading through primary, middle and high school was factual reading. I read for knowledge, and to make A’s on my tests. Sometimes, I would read a novel that was assigned, but I didn’t enjoy this type of reading. I liked facts, things that are concrete. I thought anything abstract left too much room for argument.
Now that I’m growing and the world I once knew as being so simple is becoming more complex, I find myself needing a way to escape. By opening a novel, I can leave behind my burdens and enter into a wonderful and mysterious world where I am now a new character. In these worlds I can become anyone. I don’t have to write down what happened or what technique the author was using when he or she wrote this. I just read to relax.
We’re taught to read because it’s necessary for much of human understanding. Reading is an important part of my life. Reading satisfies my desire to keep learning. And I’ve found that the possibilities that lie within books are limitless.
1. Why did the author want to grab the newspaper out of mom’s hands？| A．She wanted mom to read the news to her. |
| B．She couldn’t wait to tear the newspaper apart. |
| C．She couldn’t help but stop mom from reading. |
| D．She was eager to know what had happened. |
| A．her own way to find herself |
| B．her eagerness to develop her reading ability |
| C．her growing desire to know the world around her |
| D．her effort to remind mom to obey traffic rules |
| A．explore a mysterious land |
| B．develop an interest in learning |
| C．get away from a confusing world |
| D．learn about the adult world |
| A．The Pleasure of Reading | B．Growing Up with Reading |
| C．The Magic of Reading | D．Reading Makes a Full Man |
2 . Whenever I heard strangers singing out loud, whether it was in the supermarket or on the street, I used to think how annoying it was. That was until a few months ago.
Recently, my daughter Zoe started her second year of middle school with a new sense of awareness, asking me to fix the "little girl" pattern on her wheelchair seat. Not wanting her to stand out at school, I spent hours filling in pale yellow stars with a black marker, eager to erase whatever childish signs I could. Shortly after, Zoe got really sick and had to miss 20 days of school. This meant our days were filled with rushing between hospital appointments and meetings with the school, as we tried to make sure she didn't fall behind on her schoolwork.
I felt pulled back to a time when she was little and her sickness was a huge part of her life. Back then, it seemed like Zoe lived in hospitals, as she spent so much time in them. No matter how sick she got, however, she always had a positive attitude. But this was different: Zoe was no longer singing like she normally did. Zoe usually sings all the time, whether she's playing, riding in the car, or just doing her homework. There was no need for a radio in our house； Zoe provided the music for us. Consumed (被折磨)with my motherly worries, it was more concerning to me than her sickness.
One day, however, I heard her beautiful voice as I was cooking dinner. I stopped what I was doing and just smiled. “Pure delight. ’’ I thought to myself. Her voice slowly grew stronger, and soon, both the car and the house were filled with her music once more. How had I not noticed her singing had completely stopped, weeks and weeks ago? Now, thankfully, she's back in school, smiling and singing, and I'm thankful for each and every song she sings.
These days, whenever I hear a stranger singing a song to themselves, I don’t get mad. Instead, I smile, as I know that by singing out loud, they're simply sharing their happiness with the world.
1. When did the author feel bothered?| A．When hearing strangers singing. | B．When her daughter started middle school. |
| C．When fixing stars on the seat. | D．When her daughter became sensitive. |
| A．Considerate and helpful. | B．Competitive and hardworking. |
| C．Optimistic and strong-willed. | D．Self-aware and modest. |
| A．Zoe's love for music. | B．Zoe’s falling behind at school. |
| C．Zoe's silence during her sickness. | D．Zoe's slow recovery from her sickness. |
| A．A way to get rid of stress. | B．A way to express love to others. |
| C．A way to communicate with others. | D．A way to share joy. |
3 . Marian Wright Edelman, an American lawyer, educator and children’s rights activist, was born on June 6, 1939 in South Carolina, one of five children. Her father Arthur Wright was a preacher (牧师) who died when she was only 14 years old. In his last words to her, he advised her not to “let anything get in the way of your education.”
After high school, Edelman went on to study at Spelman College and later traveled to the Soviet Union. When she returned to Spelman in 1959, Edelman became involved in the civil rights movement. This work inspired her to drop her plans to enter the Foreign Service and study law instead. In 1973, Edelman set up the Children’s Defense Fund as a voice for poor and disabled children. She served as a public speaker on behalf of these children.
During a tour, Marian met Peter Edelman, an assistant to Kennedy, and the next year she moved to Washington, D. C. to marry him and to work for social justice in the center of America’s political scene. The couple had three sons: Joshua, Jonah and Ezra. Jonah is the founder of Stand for Children, a group that promotes children’s education, and Ezra is a documentary (记录片) filmmaker who won an Emmy for his film “O.J.: Made in America.”
Edelman is the author of many books for children and adults. Her titles for readers include I’m Your child, God: Prayers for Our Children, Guide My Feet: Prayers and Meditations for Our Children, Lanterns: A Memoir of Mentors, and The Measure of Our Success: A Letter to My Children and Yours, which was a surprising success.
1. What do we know about Edelman’s family?| A．She was the single child. |
| B．Her mother was a preacher. |
| C．They took education seriously. |
| D．The family had a poor life. |
| A．She wanted to study abroad. |
| B．She intended to be a lawyer. |
| C．She had little time for her work. |
| D．She was interested in civil rights. |
| A．In Washington D. C. | B．In the Soviet Union. |
| C．In South Carolina. | D．In Spelman. |
| A．They all worked for social justice. |
| B．They achieved something in career. |
| C．They won many awards in their lives. |
| D．They contributed to their mother’s books. |
The expensive trip to church was a surprise for Richard Albert, who lives right on the Canadian border. Like the other half-dozen people of Township 15, crossing the border is a daily occurrence for Albert. The nearby Quebec village of St. Pamphile is where they shop, eat and go to church.
There are many such situations in these areas along the largely unguarded 5,530-mile border between Canada and the US-which in some cases actually runs down the middle of streets or through buildings.
As a result, Albert says he did not expect any problems three weeks ago when he returned home to the US after attending church in Canada, as usual. The US customs（海关）station in this are is closed on Sundays, so be just drove around the locked gate, as he had done every weekend since the gate appeared last May, following a tightening of border security. Two days later. Albert was told to go to the customs office, where an officer told him be had been caught on camera crossing the border illegally（非法）.
Ottawa has given out special passes to some 300 US citizens in that area so they can enter the country when Canadian customs stations are closed, but the US stopped a similar program last May. That forces the people to a 200-miledetour along hilly roads to get home through another border checkpoint.
Albert has requested that the customs office change their decisions on the fine, but he has not attended a Sunday church since. “I feel like I’m living in a prison,” he said.
1. We learn from the text that Richard Albert is .
| A．an American living in Township 15 |
| B．a Canadian living in a Quebec village |
| C．a Canadian working in a customs station |
| D．an American working in a Canadian church |
| A．failed to obey traffic rules | B．broke the American security rules |
| C．worked in St. Pamphile without a pass | D．damaged the gate of the customs office |
| A．a drive through the town | B．a race across the fields |
| C．a roundabout way of travelling | D．a journey in the mountain area |
| A．A Cross-country Trip | B．A Special Border Pass |
| C．An Unguarded Border | D．An Expensive Church Visit |
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 |
A team of researchers at the University of California studied the effects of early exercise on adult physical activity, body mass and eating. They found that early-age exercise in mice has positive effects on adult levels of voluntary exercise in addition to reducing body mass.
“These results may have an effect on the importance of regular physical education in elementary and middle schools,” said Theodore Garland, a professor of biology, who led the research project. “If kids exercise regularly through their school years, then they may be more likely to exercise as adults, which could have far-reaching positive effects on human health and well-being.”
Although the positive effects of early-life exercise lasted for only one week, it is important to note that one week in the life of a mouse is the same as about nine months for humans. “Our results suggest that any positive effects of early-life exercise on adult exercise will need to be kept up if they are to be long-lasting.”
His team of researchers found, too, that all mice that had access to early exercise were lighter in weight than non-exercised mice.
Garland explained that, in general, exercise will stimulate appetite sooner or later. However, it is possible that certain types of exercise, done for certain periods of time or at certain light levels, might not stimulate appetite much, if at all, at least in some individuals.
“If we could understand what sorts of exercise these might be, then we might be able to tailor exercise recommendations in a way that would bring the benefits of exercise without increase in appetite, leading to a better chance of weight loss,” he said.
1. How long do the positive effects of early-life exercise last for a mouse?
| A．One day | B．One week |
| C．One month | D．Nine months |
| A．More study is needed to better understand the effects of different types of exercise. |
| B．Early-life exercise has life-long positive effects on people |
| C．Kids should be encouraged to do exercise as early as possible to ensure physical health. |
| D．The new study on mice mainly focused on how exercise affects appetite. |
| A．decline | B．improve | C．vary | D．harm |
| A．New ways to fight against being overweight. |
| B．The positive effects of mice. |
| C．The possible risks of doing exercise. |
| D．The positive effects of early- life exercise. |
7 . Passenger pigeons (旅鸽) once flew over much of the United States in unbelievable numbers. Written accounts from the 18th and 19th centuries described flocks(群) so large that they darkened the sky for hours.
It was calculated that when its population reached its highest point, there were more than 3 billion passenger pigeons—a number equal to 24 to 40 percent of the total bird population in the United States, making it perhaps the most abundant bird in the world. Even as late as 1870 when their numbers had already become smaller, a flock believed to be 1 mile wide and 320 miles (about 515 kilometers) long was seen near Cincinnati.
Sadly the abundance of passenger pigeons may have been their undoing. Where the birds were most abundant, people believed there was an ever-lasting supply and killed them by the thousands. Commercial hunters attracted them to small clearings with grain, waited until pigeons had settled to feed, then threw large nets over them, taking hundreds at a time. The birds were shipped to large cities and sold in restaurants.
By the closing decades of the 19th century, the hardwood forests where passenger pigeons nested had been damaged by American’s need for wood, which scattered (驱散) the flocks and forced the birds to go farther north, where cold temperatures and storms contributed to their decline. Soon the great flocks were gone, never to be seen again.
In 1897, the state of Michigan passed a law prohibiting the killing of passenger pigeons but by then, no sizable flocks had been seen in the state for 10 years. The last confirmed wild pigeon in the United States was shot by a boy in Pike County, Ohio, in 1900. For a time, a few birds survived under human care. The last of them, known affectionately as Martha, died at the Cincinnati Zoological Garden on September 1, 1914.
1. In the 18th and early 19th centuries, passenger pigeons ________.| A．were the biggest bird in the world |
| B．lived mainly in the south of America |
| C．did great harm to the natural environment |
D．were the largest bird  population in the US |
| A．escape | B．ruin |
| C．liberation | D．evolution |
| A．To seek pleasure. | B．To save other birds. |
| C．To make money. | D．To protect crops. |
| A．It was ignored by the public. | B．It was declared too late. |
| C．It was unfair. | D．It was strict. |
8 . If a diver surfaces too quickly, he may suffer the bends. Nitrogen(氮) dissolved(溶解) in his blood is suddenly liberated by the reduction of pressure. The consequence, if the bubbles (气泡)accumulate in a joint, is sharp pain and a bent body—thus the name. If the bubbles form in his lungs or his brain, the consequence can be death.
Other air-breathing animals also suffer this decompression(减压) sickness if they surface too fast: whales, for example. And so, long ago, did ichthyosaurs. That these ancient sea animals got the bends can be seen from their bones. If bubbles of nitrogen form inside the bone they can cut off its blood supply. This kills the cells in the bone, and consequently weakens it, sometimes to the point of collapse. Fossil (化石)bones that have caved in on them selves are thus a sign that the animal once had the bends.
Bruce Rothschild of the University of Kansas knew all this when he began a study of ichthyosaur bones to find out how widespread the problem was in the past. What he particularly wanted to investigate was how ichthyosaurs adapted to the problem of decompression over the 150 million years. To this end, he and his colleagues traveled the world’s natural-history museums, looking at hundreds of ichthyosaurs from the Triassic period and from the later Jurassic and Cretaceous periods.
When he started, he assumed that signs of the bends would be rarer in younger fossils, reflecting their gradual evolution of measures to deal with decompression. Instead, he was astonished to discover the opposite. More than 15% of Jurassic and Cretaceous ichthyosaurs had suffered the bends before they died, but not a single Triassic specimen(标本) showed evidence of that sort of injury.
If ichthyosaurs did evolve an anti-decompression means, they clearly did so quickly—and, most strangely, they lost it afterwards. But that is not what Dr Rothschild thinks happened. He suspects it was evolution in other animals that caused the change.
Whales that suffer the bends often do so because they have surfaced to escape a predator (捕食动物) such as a large shark. One of the features of Jurassic oceans was an abundance of large sharks and crocodiles, both of which were fond of ichthyosaur lunches. Triassic oceans, by contrast, were mercifully shark- and crocodile-free. In the Triassic, then, ichthyosaurs were top of the food chain. In the Jurassic and Cretaceous, they were prey(猎物) as well as predator—and often had to make a speedy exit as a result.
1. Which of the following is a typical symptom of the bends?| A．A twisted body. | B．A gradual decrease in blood supply. |
| C．A sudden release of nitrogen in blood. | D．A drop in blood pressure. |
| A．how often ichthyosaurs caught the bends | B．how ichthyosaurs adapted to decompression |
| C．why ichthyosaurs bent their bodies | D．when ichthyosaurs broke their bones |
| A．confirmed his assumption | B．speeded up his research process |
| C．disagreed with his assumption | D．changed his research objectives |
| A．failed to evolve an anti decompression means |
| B．gradually developed measures against the bends |
| C．died out because of large sharks and crocodiles |
| D．evolved an anti decompression means but soon lost it |
