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 . Have you ever noticed that the stars sometimes appear brighter in December, January and February? There's a link between cold air and the night lights. "Part of it is that it tends to be drier in the winter," said Diane Tumshek, an astronomer at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Even though it's invisible, moisture can change the way light moves through the air. And in the summer, moisture can make stars appear more dull.
Air temperature is also what puts the twinkle twinkle in the little stars. "Even on very clear nights, some of the atmosphere is cooler, and some of the atmosphere is warmer,” said Tumshek, who also works with the Allegheny Observatory. And when the light from a star passes through those bubbles of varying temperatures, "it bends and shifts the light, so that we are seeing stars appear to dance or twinkle,” she said.
For star lovers in the United States, there's another factor that comes into play for bright winter stars, although this is a matter of coincidence. During Earth's journey around the sun, “there are just simply more bright stars visible from the Northern Hemisphere in the winter sky," Tumshek said. If you really want to see a shiny star, just try to find a burning ball of gas called Sirius near the horizon. At 8.6 light-years away, Sirius is relatively close to Earth and the brightest star visible in the night sky. It is also large — nearly twice as big as our sun and 20 times as bright. So this winter, when the world turns cold and it seems like we should be spending more time indoors, consider asking an adult to go exploring outside. With a warm coat and a clear sky, any night can be turned into a treasure hunt. All you have to do is look up.
1. What does the underlined word "dull" in Paragraph 1 probably mean?| A．not shiny | B．not exciting | C．not severe | D．not smart |
| A．By changing the bubbles around them. | B．By putting the twinkle twinkle in them. |
| C．By varying the direction of the light from them. | D．By making the stars dance and twinkle in the sky. |
| A．It can be found at any night. | B．It is 20 times as bright as the sun. |
| C．It is a burning and shiny ball. | D．It is closer to Earth than other stars, |
| A．To advocate stargazing in winter, | B．To call on people to focus on stars. |
| C．To present new research results about stars. | D．To explain why stars are more visible in winter. |
3 . 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'' |
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 |
5 . 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. |
