1 . To Their Own Beat
When Los Lobos perform in concert today, audiences in the thousands cheer them on. It’s hard to believe that the group started out as just another garage band playing popular rock-and-roll tunes from the radio, In 1974 four high school friends from East Los Angeles formed Los Lobos ( Spanish for “The Wolves” ) .
Like many garage bands, these friends might have simply gone their separate ways after high school. But the members of Los Lobos wanted to keep making music together. They decided to change their musical style and began focusing on traditional Mexican music that showed their tradition.
“We pulled out all those records we used to beg our parents not to play around our friends and found an incredible wealth of music,” says Perez. “These guys (on the records) were doing amazing things with their instruments, and we started trying to pick up on it. ”
The group put aside its electric guitars for the acoustic ones used in traditional Mexican music. For several years Los Lobos played at weddings or parties—any event that needed live music. They also landed a regular engagement (合同) at a Mexican restaurant.
By 1978 Los Lobos had made enough money to record their first album (唱片) , and they sold copies of it wherever they performed. They also returned to their electric guitars to get closer to a Tex-Mex sound, which is a mixture of traditional Mexican music, rock and roll, country music, and the blues. This new, louder sound produced one unexpected result: the group was fired from the restaurant.
But it didn’t matter that Los Lobos had lost their one steady job, because they had found a position that no other group took up. They had combined electric and acoustic instruments and blended (混合) musical styles in their own way. Steve Berlin joined the band in 1983 as the saxophone and keyboard player, adding to the band’s unusual sound.
“We didn’t so much want to recycle the music we’d grown up with as much as find the common links between it and all the other styles and sounds that were all around us,” Perez explains. “It became a mission ... bringing music together to bring people together. ”
In the 1980s Los Lobos gained the attention of several record companies. They were hired to perform on the soundtrack to the film La Bamba, which earned them a Golden Eagle Award. They have since earned many awards, including two Grammys and an MTV Video Music Award. Their many records have been very successful, and they have toured the world.
Even after 30 years of making music together, Los Lobos continues to experiment with their sound. They never moved far away from their Mexican roots, however. They still include traditional music in their live performances, sharing their history—and their culture—with their fans.
1. Los Lobos recorded their first album after they_______.A.lost their job at a restaurant |
B.began playing acoustic guitars |
C.won an award for a film soundtrack |
D.added saxophone and keyboards to their sound |
A.Paragraph 1. | B.Paragraph 4. | C.Paragraph 6. | D.Paragraph 8. |
A.The way they recorded their first album. |
B.Their blending of different types of music. |
C.Their decision to play traditional Mexican music. |
D.The fact that they performed and toured the world. |
A.Music is best when played with traditional instruments. |
B.Music must be recorded to be passed down. |
C.Music should remain the same over time. |
D.Music can show many cultures. |
2 .
Greco-Roman Festival Friday, April 28th!You will be assigned to a group. As a member of the group, you will participate in at least ONE of the following activities. 1 Compete in an Olympic event. Sign up with your English teacher, and remember space is limited for each event, so don’t delay. See the list under “Olympic Events” below. 2 Make Greek or Roman food. Mrs. Jones has a list of actual recipes (配方) from ancient Greece and Rome. You may make American food, but be sure to give it a unique, mythological name. For example, call your chocolate cake “Zeus’s Delight.” This is a great way to practice your skills in the kitchen. (Please bring your food in a disposable container.) 3 Create a work of art for the museum. Be sure your artwork reflects ancient Greek or Roman culture. Artwork may include sculptures, paintings, mosaics, drawings, or models. The museum is a great place to show off your artistic talent. 4 Perform an original skit, song, or dance for the talent show. Rewrite your favorite Greek myth using modern language, or change the lyrics of a popular song to tell a Greek or Roman tale. Gather your creative energy and submit your ideas to your English teacher for approval. To try out, you must perform for a panel of teachers. This audition helps the teachers choose the BEST performance groups for the talent show, so be sure your group has rehearsed. 5 OLYMPIC EVENTS: ● Hercules Throw — Throw a football through a hoop 20 feet away. ● Three-Headed Race — Three people line up with touching legs tied. Then they run the distance of the gym. ● Toga-Barrow Race — This is like a wheelbarrow race while wearing your toga. (Runners grab partners’ feet Thursday, April 27th while partners walk on hands.) 6 Come to the Toga-tying Party Since the ancient Greeks should inspire your apparel for the event, feel free to attend the festival in a toga. Learn to tie your toga. Thursday, April 27th After school in the gym |
A.New recipes must be created. |
B.The best cook will win an award. |
C.Students can learn how to make chocolates. |
D.Greek or Roman names must be used for the food. |
A.Music. | B.Poems. | C.Words. | D.Styles. |
A.show students their choices |
B.find out the students’ talents |
C.train students in different ways |
D.persuade students to join in every activity |
Chinese Paper Cut | |
long history | over 2,000 years |
very popular | in different parts of China, young or old, be fond of, do well in |
different shapes | birds, animals, flowers … |
Where do people put Chinese paper cuts? ... |
You wanted to know about Chinese paper cut. Here I’m glad to tell you something about it.
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Best wishes.
Yours,
Li Ming
4 . What are pillows really stuffed with? Not physically, but symbolically? The question occurred to me with the photos in the news and social media from the 50 cities around the world that staged public celebrations for International Pillow Fight Day. Armed with nothing more than bring-our-own sacrificial cushions, strangers struck heavily each other in playful feather from Amsterdam to Atlanta, Warsaw to Washington DC. But why? Is there anything more to this delightful celebration?
As a cultural sign, the pillow is deceptively soft. Since at least the 16th Century, the humble pillow has been given unexpected meanings. The Chinese playwright Tang Xianzu tells a famous story about a wise man who meets a depressed young scholar at an inn and offers him a magic pillow filled with the most vivid dreams of a seemingly more fulfilling life. When the young man awakens to discover that his happy 50-year dream has in fact come and gone in the short space of an afternoon’s nap, our impression of the pillow’s power shifts from wonder to terror.
Subsequent writers have likewise seized upon the pillow. When the 19th-Century English novelist Charlotte Bronte poetically observed “a ruffled (不平的) mind makes a restless pillow”, she didn’t just change the expected order of the adjectives and nouns, but instead she made unclear the boundaries between mind and matter — the thing resting and the thing rested upon.
It’s a trick perhaps Bronte learned from the Renaissance philosopher Montaigne, who once insisted that “ignorance is the softest pillow on which a man can rest his head”. On Montaigne’s thinking, intelligence and happiness confront each other forever in a pillow fight that only one can win.
With the words of Tang. Bronte, and Montaigne, we can perhaps more easily measure the attraction of the global pillow fight. Like a ritual of release, the annual international pillow fight amounts to a kind of cleansing, a brushing off of daily worries: an emptying of the world’s collective mind. Rather than a launch-pad for weightless rest, the pillow is a symbol of heavy thought: an anchor that drags the world’s soul down — one that must be lightened.
1. The example of Tang Xianzu is used to illustrate that ________.A.pillows give people satisfactory dreams |
B.dreams are always wonderful while the real world is cruel |
C.people’s impression of pillows changes from wonder to terror |
D.pillows symbolically convey the meaning in contrast to their soft appearance |
A.wrote poems about pillows |
B.regarded pillows as reflections of our minds |
C.shared the same viewpoint as Tang Xianzu on pillows |
D.was likely to have been influenced by the thoughts of the Renaissance |
A.pillows give us comfort |
B.pillows make people more intelligent |
C.people with too many thoughts have less inner peace |
D.people can easily fall asleep when they know nothing |
A.Because it is a ritual release. |
B.Because it makes life delightful. |
C.Because it comforts restless minds. |
D.Because it contains a profound meaning of life. |
1. 重视,准备,打扫屋子
2. 贴汉字“福”,剪纸,春联
3. 放烟火,吓跑怪物“年”,吃年夜饭,吃饺子,发红包,看春晚,守夜,家庭团聚
4. 习俗,精神
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The art of paper-cutting in China may date back to the second century, since paper
With
Chinese papercuts are rich in content. The auspicious(吉祥的)designs symbolize good luck and the avoidance of evil. The child, lotus and bat designs suggest a family with
The Dragon Boat Festival falls on the fifth day of the fifth month of the lunar year.It is in early summer,
The tradition of the Dragon Boat Festival started more than 2,000 years ago.In the old days, dragon boat races
There is a special food for the festival.It is called zongzi,
8 . It may seem as if Mother's Day was invented by a company named Hallmark, but people have been taking time on the calendar to give a shout-out to Mom for a long time. The Greeks and Romans had mother goddess festivals — although their celebrations didn't involve the menfolk taking their underappreciated mothers out to dinner. A more recent tradition was Mothering Sunday, which developed in the British Isles during the 16th century. On the fourth Sunday in April, young men and women who were living and working apart from their families were advised to return to their mothers’ houses.
Mother's Day as it is observed in the United States started in the 1850s with Ann Jarvis, a West Virginia woman who held “Mothers' Work Days” to promote health and hygiene(卫生 ) at home and in the workplace. During the Civil War, Jarvis organized women to improve sanitary conditions for soldiers on both sides, and after the war she became a peacemaker, furthering the cause by bringing together mothers of Union and Confederate soldiers and promoting a Mother's Day holiday.
Jarvis's work inspired another 19th-century woman, Julia Ward Howe. In 1870 Howe published her “Mother's Day Proclamation”, which envisioned(设想) the day not as appreciation of mothers by their children but as an opportunity for women to exercise their collective power for peace. Howe started holding annual Mother's Day celebrations in Boston, her hometown, but after about a decade she stopped footing the bill and the tradition faded away.
It was Jarvis's daughter Anna who succeeded in getting Mother’s Day recognized as a national holiday. After her mother died, in May 1905, Anna started holding yearly ceremony on the anniversary and conducting a tireless PR campaign to have the day made a holiday. In 1908 she succeeded in enlisting the support of John Wanamaker, the Philadelphia department store magnate and advertising pioneer, and by 1912 West Virginia and a few other states had adopted Mother's Day. Two years later, President Woodrow Wilson signed a resolution declaring the second Sunday in May a national holiday.
It wasn't long, though, before whatever ideals the day was supposed to celebrate were buried under an amount of greeting cards and candy. By the 1920s Anna Jarvis was campaigning against the holiday she had been instrumental in creating. “I wanted it to be a day of emotionalism, not profit,” she said.
1. It can be inferred from the first paragraph that .A.mothers didn't get enough appreciation in the past |
B.Mother's Day was invented by Hallmark |
C.young people all returned to their mothers' houses |
D.Greeks and Romans were the first to celebrate Mother's Day |
A.Ann Jarvis. | B.Julia Ward Howe. |
C.Woodrow Wilson. | D.Anna Jarvis. |
A.Because it was extremely emotional. |
B.Because the festival was not profitable. |
C.Because the celebrations went against the original spirit. |
D.Because the day was celebrated in the form of exchanging greeting cards and candy. |
A.The Definition of Mother’s Day |
B.The Argument on Celebrating Mother's Day |
C.The Story Behind the Creation of Mother's Day |
D.Different Forms of Celebration on Mother's Day |
增加:在缺词处加一个漏字符号(∧),并在其下面写出该加的词。
删除:把多余的词用斜线(\)划掉。
修改:在错的词下划一横线,并在该词下面写出修改后的词。
注意:1.每处错误及其修改均仅限一词;
2.只允许修改10处,多者(从第11处起)不计分。
Last Thursday, I invited Alan to my house to spend the Mid-Autumn Festival. While we were wait for a big lunch, both Alan and I felt hungry. After having the big lunch, we felt full of energetic. In the afternoon, my mother taught Alan and me to make mooncakes, which made us especially exciting. We listened my mother carefully and made the mooncakes with great patience. At the last, we made some beautiful mooncakes. In the evening, we ate the mooncakes made by themselves and enjoyed my father’s stories about the festival. Late, Alan told me that he would never forget the day where we celebrated the Mid-Autumn Festival together. He hoped that he could spent many other traditional Chinese festival in my house.
On one full-moon night every fall, the river and lakes of Thailand are dotted with twinkling (闪烁的) candles. The Thais are celebrating “Loi Krathong” or “Floating Leaf Cup Day”.
No one knows for sure how this lovely holiday got started. But however it began, it is delightful today. It is simply a time to have fun.
Families always used to make their floats, or little boats, from banana leaves torn into pieces and made into the shape of a bowl. Then they beautifully decorated them with flowers. Now, while many families still make their own floats, others simply buy them. Modern floats may be made of banana leaves or plastic. All of them still hold a lighted candle, a flower, a stick or two of sweet-smelling incense (香), and a coin.
On the holiday evening, families gather at parks near lakes, rivers, or canals for outdoor dinners. Adults sit on mats and visit with their neighbors while children play hide-and-seek. Ion some cities, flaming fireworks and dancers in shining silk clothes entertain the crowd.
Many men and woman sell things. People sell floats to those who have not made them at home. Other people sell balloons in various shapes and colors or clever toys made of bamboo. Food sellers offer noodle soup, dried fish, candy, little cakes, roasted chicken, and bamboo tubes filled with sticky rice cooked in coconut milk. They pour soft drinks into small plastic bags, whirl a rubber band around the top, and stick in a short straw.
Then, when the full moon rises, families light the candles and set their little boats afloat. The waterway soon twinkles like a fairyland with candles moving up and down in their floats and fireworks reflecting in the water.
1. Why do people celebrate the holiday today? (不多于 3 个词)2. What are modern floats made of? (不多于 4 个词)
3. What is the passage about? (不多于 4 个词)