2 . Is it possible to learn too much? With so much information that’s available and accessible with just a click of a button, it’s impossible for any person to know everything there is to know. While this is true, there is still such a thing as learning too much, to the point where you get paralyzed in terms of taking action.
Have you ever wanted to achieve a goal and ended up doing tons of research on how to achieve the goal? As you learned more and more, it felt like you knew less and less because when you learned a new concept or strategy, you found that there was a lot more to know about those things.
Often times, people will get stuck in this trap of needing to gather more and more information. There’s nothing wrong with learning a lot, but when you let learning get in the way of doing, you will never get going. When you never get going, you still never start having the things you want in life.
A better way to go about achieving a goal is to gather some information and immediately start taking action on what information you have gathered. I realize that many times you will feel unprepared, and that’s okay. The best way to learn besides having someone who’s done what you want to do show you how to do it is to take action and learn from the results you get from those actions.
If a baby wanted to learn how to walk, it will never be able to do it by sitting there and analyzing how to walk. The best way for a baby to walk is to actually get up off its behind and start walking. Sure it may fall, but with every fall, it will learn what is working and what is not and adjust to it. By doing this over and over, it will eventually learn to walk. This is the approach you want to take when you want to achieve your goals as well. It works.
1. The underlined word “paralyzed” in Paragraph 1 is closest in meaning to ________.| A．unable to do anything | B．unhappy about the situation |
| C．satisfied with what you have | D．discouraged with what you face |
| A．The confusion caused by the information. | B．The new concept or strategy. |
| C．The desire to learn more. | D．The trap of research. |
| A．the failure before achieving the goal |
| B．the awareness of challenges |
| C．gathering information |
| D．taking actions |
| A．Analyze Before Learning to Walk |
| B．Action Speaks Louder Than Information |
| C．Problems in Information Age |
| D．Approaches to Learning to Walk |
I insisted on dropping out of college after my first semester in order to try and join the Merchant Marine (商船队). Using an article from Life as my guide, I decided to hitchhike (搭便车) down to New Orleans and see the world.
My family is relatively poor and my youth was in the workers’ section of a large New England mill town. My father and I have spent a difficult time since my mother passed away. It often seems as if we were more like roommates rather than father and son. He thought I was foolish to drop out of school; I didn’t inform him of my plans.
One day in February, I left a note on the kitchen table, telling him I was going to New Orleans for a few days and would be back soon. I walked to a highway near where I lived, stuck out my thumb, and was “on the road.”
My trip to New Orleans was a mistake. The Merchant Marine wasn’t taking on (让...上客) any people for a while. I decided to wait in New Orleans until it did. I lasted over a week, living in a dirty hotel until my money started to run out. I had to sleep in the park for a few days. Life seemed to become a continuous adventure. I wrote embarrassingly terrible poetry to express my bitterness.
From New Orleans I went to New York and stayed with a friend for a few weeks, then Martha’s Vineyard, living on the beach in April. After that, a deserted house and, finally, an extended stop in Boston. There was still no word from the Merchant Marine. I felt so desperate. My close friend Jimmy called me one day and asked me how everything was going. I had to tell him the truth and he soon persuaded me to go back.
注意：1. 续写词数应为 150 左右；
2. 每段开头语已写出。
Paragraph 1:
I had been gone for over two months when I came back to my father’s.
Paragraph 2:
Finally, he put his paper down and looked at me.
4 . Olga Bannova doesn’t carry a business card that reads “Space Architect”, though she admits that would be pretty cool. Instead, Bannova’s title is director of the Sasakawa International Center for Space Architecture( SICSA) in the University of Houston’s Cullen College of Engineering.
SICSA is home to the world’s only space architecture graduate program. It’s not a huge program yet, accepting only a few graduates every year. But for those who believe our very existence relies on someday moving to a different galactic (银河的) neighborhood, space architecture has us covered. “You can’t stay in your house and think that somehow everyhing else will be the saine. Everything is changing, including our Earth, including us, including the solar system. It’s all changing and moving,” Bannova says. “That’s why it’s important. Space architecture will consider all that we need in space.”
Space architects design buildings and houses and offices and a whole bunch of other stuff that humans need to survive—both here and in space plus design ways to get between them. They deal with problems that Earthbound architects don’t even dream about. For example, a lack of oxygen or atmosphere. A lack of sunlight. Too much sunlight. Microgravity. A lack of material to build what you need. Or no way to ship material that you need to where you need it.
It’s not hard to imagine the problems that space architects will face, now and in the future. It’s not hard to imagine either that we can’t even begin to imagine some of the challenges they’ll be up against. Carving out a space in space for our species to continue is a huge undertaking, perhaps the most daring ever for mankind. But we’ve taken the first step, haven’t we?
1. What is special about SICSA?| A．It is the only space research center. |
| B．It trains graduates to become spacemen. |
| C．It accepts lots of graduates every year. |
| D．It has a unique program in the world. |
| A．reports the latest news | B．hides something important |
| C．provides what’s needed | D．informs us of the development |
| A．Their duties. | B．Their challenges. |
| C．Their dreams. | D．Their achievements. |
| A．Tiring. | B．Admirable. | C．Problematic. | D．Fruitful. |
| A．fall out | B．fall away | C．fall apart | D．fall off |
6 . Accepting a job offer can be exciting.
I have felt the sting (刺痛) of settling many times in my life. Years ago, I took a freelance (自由职业的) role that at first, second, and third glance led to feelings of depression. What was once an expanding universe of potential in my career suddenly contracted.
We will all take roles at various times in our careers that do not tick all our goal boxes. We have a good reason for accepting the job offer, such as the need for a job in a certain location to keep family members together.
We alone get to decide how to perceive an opportunity. A job is not a destiny. It is simply a step toward a destination. We must be aware of how individual roles, even the most boring, are still useful, relevant, and beneficial.
| A．I need the money, so I settle. |
| B．Oh, how I hungered for more! |
| C．But what if the job doesn’t tick all our boxes? |
| D．And when we make this mental move, we feel stronger. |
| E．Yet we may feel that it presents too many new challenges. |
| F．The freelance role that I settled on years ago won’t be my last. |
| G．But we may also have a sense of unease that we are giving up the ability to dream. |
Not until recently have I known that a little pet can be such a helpful assistant (助手) to a helpless mom. This is all due to what our new family member, a little kitten named Thula, has done. She seems to understand exactly what Iris needs at any given time.
Within a year of my daughter’s birth in 2015, I already suspected that something was wrong. Even by babies’ standards, Iris was a frighteningly bad sleeper. She also appeared unmistakably distant. Besides, after saying “dada” at eight months, she stopped talking. Finally, aged two, she was diagnosed as autistic(自闭的).
In fact, after a long process of trial and error, I found activities that obviously did help her, including music and riding on the back of her dad’s bike. Above all, Iris showed a remarkable talent for art: producing large multi-layered Impressionist-style paintings that took her several days and that once led to the Leicester Mercury headline, “Top artist aged 3.”
Iris did make progress, but by no means steadily, with promising developments often followed by periods of regression (退步).
One night, Iris refused to sleep. As her frustrations(沮丧，懊丧) mounted, she started to cry, and her sobs filled the quiet room. I felt so hopeless as I held her close. Nothing seemed to comfort her apart from her favorite book and I longed for some help, but she pushed away all who tried except me, making me on the edge of breaking down.
Downstairs, my husband looked at Thula in surprise who had suddenly got up off his lap. Her eyes focused towards the door and she had one foot raised, perfectly poised(悬在) in the air. Something had grabbed her attention – the crying of Iris. Then her legs were moving fast. Zooming round the corner, she flew up the stairs into Iris’s bedroom and jumped onto the bed. She curled（蜷缩） up next to Iris, ignored the crying and started grooming(梳毛) herself, licking her paws (舔爪子) and rubbing them over her ears.
Paragraph 1:
Almost immediately, Iris’s mood changed.
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Paragraph 2:
I was curious about the silence, then returned to the door of Iris’s room and looked in.
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Last week, schools
| A．when | B．how | C．where | D．why |
| A．that | B．which | C．whom | D．whose |
