1 . When I was 7 and Stevie was 6, our parents taught us how to play chess and other games. Playing games was our life back then. Stevie and I were very competitive in everything.
We got older and better so our games were more intense, but also more exciting. The strange thing is that I enjoyed the games vastly and was happy for my brother when he won. But afterwards, I felt my well-being threatened, and then my confidence suffered.
When I was 10 years old I wanted to be successful at my talents. One day, a light came on in my head. I had to find something Stevie couldn’t do. It would have to be unique in every way. Before long, I got Jimmy Nelson’s record on “How to Become a Ventriloquist (腹语师)” and I practiced faithfully every day. After summer vacation, I did my first show for my class. The response was favorable. I performed for family get-togethers and did shows on a number of occasions to practice my new skill.
It isn’t easy learning ventriloquism. The difficult part was developing the voice, because at first, it was soft and hard to hear. I memorized the routines and performed more. With time, I got better responses. The loud laughter was nonstop, in addition to the applause.
Four years later, my mother purchased professional ventriloquial figure, which I named Freddie O’Sullivan. He was lifelike, with moving eyes, moving eyebrows, and could stick out his tongue. Treating Freddie like a real person enhanced my performance.
In college, Freddie was well known. He would tell people that he was the only guy that could sleep in the girl’s dormitory. Over the years, I won many talent awards.
One time, an elderly man looked at Freddie attentively and asked him where he got his trousers. The audience nearby had tears in their eyes. I didn’t know what was going on until I was told later the gentleman hadn’t spoken for 20 years.
Thanks to my brother, I created a lifetime with Freddie.
1. How did the author feel at first when Stevie won a game?A.Delighted. | B.Confused. |
C.Depressed. | D.Surprised, |
A.To gain her parents’ favor in family get-togethers. |
B.To record her intense and competitive childhood. |
C.To have a special talent better than her brother. |
D.To bring joyous laughter to people around her. |
A.Freddie trained the author professionally. |
B.Freddie inspired an old man to restart to talk. |
C.Freddie took the place of the author’s brother. |
D.Freddie disturbed others in the girl’s dormitory. |
A.Generous and grateful. | B.Modest and responsible. |
C.Patient and honest. | D.Sensitive and determined. |
2 . My mother used to take me to my grandparents’ in Belgium during the school holidays. While I would play chess with my grandfather, he would tell me stories about growing up, falling in love, and travelling around the world.
I didn’t realize the importance of preserving memories until my grandfather passed away, which ultimately changed my outlook on remembering our loved ones and the stories we share. I thought about solutions to help other people record the precious memories for those they love—before it’s too late. So I began matching ghostwriters (代笔人) to clients to help them write a book as smoothly and beautifully as possible, and Story Terrace was born.
Since then, we have explored the power of stories and their ability to connect us with our past and make sense of the present. It has been documented that increased family connection is significantly linked to less loneliness. Learning more about one’s family history, however, has been linked to boosting emotional health, increasing compassion and providing a deeper sense of cultures and traditions.
What we have found through our own research is that so many of us have missed out on the opportunity to explore our origins. 56 percent of Brits agreed that much of their family history is lost because they are no longer able to speak with the person who knows the most about it. A further 51 percent expressed regret as they wished they could tell their younger self to document their family’s life story, feeling that most of it had been forgotten. But when it comes to telling these stories, many don’t know where to begin.
We have seen numerous times when people come to us with random journal entries and notes from over the years, and these can be developed into a wonderful work of art that can be passed down for generations to come.
Half of the projects we see at StoryTerrace are heritage stories, with family occupying a dominant theme for most stories. Alongside this, common themes we see are of course love, overcoming challenges, settling in new surroundings and so on. However, family is a thread that always ties these together.
1. What does Story Terrace do?A.It boosts the mood of your family members. |
B.It gives treatment to people with mental illness. |
C.It links people from different cultures together. |
D.It helps turn your beloved one’s stories into a book. |
A.Why StoryTerrace matters. |
B.How StoryTerrace functions. |
C.What StoryTerrace focuses on. |
D.Where StoryTerrace beings your story. |
A.It is part of the national heritage. |
B.Its stories are mostly about family. |
C.It dominates half of the market. |
D.Its stories gain much popularity. |
A.Family Stories Worth Telling |
B.Create Your Own Story Books |
C.Documents of Family History |
D.Preserve Memories with StoryTerrace |
3 . Chase Poust is a 7-year-old boy. He and his dad Steven, as well as his 4-year-old sister, Abigail were out for a family boating trip on Florida’s St. Johns River near Mandarin Point. Chase and Abigail were swimming at the back end of the anchored (停泊的) boat while Steven was on deck fishing.
It was a pleasant outing—until a strong wave came. It was too strong for Abigail to hold onto the boat. Instantly realizing his sister would be swept away, Chase let go of the boat as well to try and reach her.
Steven jumped into the water but after realizing he couldn’t keep up with both kids, he was faced with a hard decision, “I told them loved them because I wasn’t sure what’s going to happen,” Steven told News-4 JAX. “I tried to stick with both of them. I wore myself out. She drifted away from me.”
Directing Chase lo swim to shore for help, Steven stayed behind, keeping as close as he could to Abigail as the life-vest that was keeping her above the waves floated further and further from his reach.
It was a tough go for the 7-year-old but rather than attempting to swim all out, Chase wisely paced himself. Stopping to float or dog paddle when he was tired, he’d rest and then set off again. It took Chase an hour to reach the shore. Once on solid ground, he ran to the nearest house and called for help.
Rescuers arrived soon to search for Steven and Abigail. Miraculously, the two were found and rescued about an hour later—more than a mild away from the family’s abandoned boat.
1. What happened during the family boating trip?A.Chase went out fishing one. | B.The boat ran into an anchored boat. |
C.Steven fell off the boat by accident. | D.Abigail was washed away by a wave. |
A.He couldn’t stay close to both kids. | B.He didn’t know how to swim. |
C.He couldn’t find rescuers nearby. | D.He wasn’t sure what might happen. |
A.To hold Abigail tightly. | B.To look for helpers. |
C.To wait calmly in the water. | D.To give the life-vest to Abigail. |
A.Brave and clever. | B.Innocent and kind. |
C.Proud and patient. | D.Honest and helpful. |
4 . Growing up, I understood one thing about my dad: He knew everything. I asked him questions and he told me the answers. In my teen years, he taught me things I’d need to know to survive in the real world. How to drive a stick shift. How to check your car tire’s pressure. When I moved out on my own, I called him at least once a week, usually when something broke in my apartment and I needed to know how to fix it.
But then, eventually, I needed him less. I got married, and my husband had most of the knowledge I lacked. For everything else, we had Google. I don’t know when it happened, but our conversations devolved into six words.
Me: “Hi, Dad.” Him: “Hi, sweets. Here’s Mom.”
I loved my dad, but I wondered at times if maybe he had already shared everything I needed to know. Maybe I’d heard all his stories.
Then, this past summer, my husband, our four kids, and I moved in with my parents for three weeks while our house was being renovated (翻新). Dad asked me to help him rebuild the bulkhead (舱壁) at their dock. I didn’t hesitate, but I was dreading it. It was hard, manual labor. We got wet and sand. But as we put the new bulkhead together piece by piece, my dad knowing exactly what went where, I looked at him.
“How do you know how to build a bulkhead?”
“I spent a summer in college building them on the Jersey Shore.”
I thought I knew everything about my dad. But I never knew this. I realized that maybe it’s not that there’s nothing left to say. Maybe it’s just that I’ve spent my life asking him the wrong questions.
Weeks later, after my family and I moved back into our renovated house, I called my parents. Dad answered. “Hi, sweets,” he said. “Here’s Mom.” “Wait, Dad,” I said. “How are you?” We ended up talking about the consulting he was working on.
To anyone else, it would sound like a normal conversation between a dad and his daughter. But to me, it was novel. Now I talk to him because I want to.
1. After marriage, who did the author turn to for help when she meet problems?A.The neighbours | B.Her mother | C.Her father | D.Her husband |
A.Interest | B.Fear | C.Thrill | D.Satisfy |
A.The author asked her father silly questions. |
B.The author thought her father knew nothing. |
C.The author didn’t care enough about her father’s life. |
D.The author fully know her father. |
A.The method of fixing a refrigerator. |
B.My father’s college experience. |
C.Something interesting about my father’s current job. |
D.The furniture of my renovated home. |
5 . How to Teach Your Child to Be a Good Friend
Your child who struggles with making friends and maintaining friendships may exhibit some behavioral issues. Physical aggression and name-calling often arise. A quiet character and social anxiety can also lead to difficulty making friends
Instill self-esteem(灌输自尊思想). The first step in teaching your child to be a good friend is to teach them to take pride in themselves.
Teach social skills.
Find teachable moments. As a parent, you may run into situations where your child doesn’t act like the best friend they could be. Your child may have moments of conflict, drama and fights with their friends. Try to turn these moments into teachable moments.
A.Read books about friendship to your child. |
B.Encourage your child to share their favorite books. |
C.Fortunately, it’s not difficult for you to be a good friend. |
D.Appropriate social behavior isn’t what a person is born with. |
E.Ask them how a good friend would have acted in the situations. |
F.However,there are many ways to help your child develop friendship skills. |
G.When a child has a strong sense of self, they won’t join in mean behaviors to fit in. |
6 . When reading, my mother likes to slice a paragraph or a sentence out and attach it to the wall of her kitchen. She picks boring sentences that puzzle me. But I prefer copying favorite bright lines into a journal in soft, gray No. 2 pencil, word by word.
She doesn’t know any of this. There's nothing shocking: for our chatting. we seldom begin certain conversations though we talk on the phone weekly, sometimes making each other laugh so hard that I choke and she cries. But what we don't say could fill up rooms. Fights with my father. Small failures in school. Anything that really upsets us.
My mother has never told me “I love you, Lisa.”—as if the four-word absence explains who I am—so I carry it with me, like a label on me. The last time she almost spoke the words was two years ago, when she called to tell me a friend had been in hospital. I said, “I love you, Mom.” She stopped for a while and then said, “Thank you.” I haven't said it since, but I've wondered why my mother doesn't until I've found a poem that supplies words for the blank spaces I try to understand in our conversations:
Don’t fill up on bread. I say absent-mindedly. The servings here are huge.
My son, middle-aged, says: Did you really just say that to me?
What he doesn’t know is that when we’re walking together, I desire to reach for his hand.
It's humble, yet heartbreaking. After copying it down in my journal, I emailed it to mom, adding “This poem makes me think of you.” My mother doesn’t read poetry—or at least, she doesn’t tell me, and I felt nervous clicking “Send”.
She never mentioned the poem. But the next time I went home for vacation, I noticed something new in the kitchen fixed to an antique board: the poem. The board hung above the heater, the warmest spot in the kitchen. The poem still hangs there. Neither my mother nor I have ever spoken about it.
1. What's the function of paragraph 1?A.To stress the theme. | B.To establish the setting. |
C.To represent the characters. | D.To create the atmosphere. |
A.Shaky. | B.Distant. | C.Reserved. | D.Intense. |
A.It reminded her of mom's love. |
B.She wanted to apologize to mom. |
C.It suited mom's taste of literature. |
D.She needed an interpretation from mom. |
A.A memory of golden days. |
B.Daughter’s gratefulness to her. |
C.A decoration in the plain kitchen. |
D.Daughter's understanding of her. |
7 . I have happy memories of trips to Europe, but my trip to Romania was unique. When I was there, it was like being in a “James Bond” movie. My husband was born there, but his family sent him to study in Italy. Before he left, his mother told him, “As long as I write in pencil, you don’t come back. When I write to you in pen, it’s safe to return.” She never wrote in pen.
So, like the boy in Vittorio De Sica’s film The Bicycle Thief, he lived a poor life in Italy. He applied to go to America, but was rejected. He was accepted by Canada, though, and he then took a train to San Francisco and stayed there illegally. He became a US citizen until we married.
Seven years later, he felt it was safe to visit Romania. He hadn’t seen his mother, two sisters, and two brothers since he was 16. When we reached Bucharest, his family were waiting outside his sister’s house to greet us. After lengthy hugging, kissing, and crying, his family also hugged me, the American wife with two kids.
Romania didn’t have many dry cleaners. Most homes had old-fashioned washing machines but no dryers, and it was a hot summer. My husband’s relatives didn’t want to risk dirtying their clothes. Their solution was simply startling: the women dined in only their underclothes. The men were shirtless. I, of course, having just met them, ate fully clothed. I washed my clothes by hand and hung them outdoors to dry.
On the last night of our three-week stay, we had a large family dinner. I was tired of washing my clothes. So I pulled my dress over my head and placed it on the chair behind me. The table broke out in applause. Even with my poor Romanian, I understood that they were saying, “She’s part of our family now.”
1. Why did the author’s mother-in-law never write in pen?A.She could not read or write properly. |
B.The Romanians lacked pens at that time. |
C.She intended her son to study hard abroad. |
D.It was unsafe for her son to return to Romania. |
A.Surprising. | B.Annoying. | C.Encouraging. | D.Disappointing. |
A.She still dined fully clothed. | B.She dined in only her underclothes too. |
C.She finally gave up washing her clothes. | D.She was resisted by her husband’s family at last. |
A.East and West, Home is the Best | B.An Unforgettable Trip to Romania |
C.When in Romania, do as the Romanians do | D.The Problem with Clothes Washing in Romania |
8 . Yesterday, after arriving in Madrid, I knocked on a stranger’s door. “I searched on the website. Will you give me lessons?” I asked. This was the reason I’d come to Spain. Because I once believed I was meant to be a female flamenco (弗拉门戈) guitarist.
Forty-five years ago, when I was two, my father also came to Madrid and knocked on strangers’ doors. A well-known classical guitarist, he admired flamenco a lot, and in Spain he learnt from anyone willing to teach him. He approached performers in bars, made friends with street musicians and managed to study with Paco de Lucia, the greatest flamenco guitarist of our time.
I started playing classical guitar when I was five. My father’s hands exploded across the strings like fireworks. I practised while he instructed and criticized. I played till I had sharp pain in my fingertips. By age seven, I was called a child genius.
Then, at 11, I quit. Heartbroken, my father distanced himself. Guiltily, I followed suit. Soon we spoke only when necessary. Our relationship didn’t rebound until, in my early 20s, I found myself pulled back to guitar.
When I was in my early 30s, he got sick. Before he died a few years later, my father told me there were almost no female flamenco guitarists in the world. If I kept practising, I could be one of the first. I promised, and he left me his guitar. But after he died, I couldn’t bear to play it. He’d spent so much time with his arms around that instrument, and it seemed an extension of his own body. Holding it gave my grief an unbearable tangibility (可触知). So for 13 years it sat mostly untouched, coming out only when my son Ellis begged to see it. He was careful with his grandfather’s instrument in a way that made me want to pass it down to him — both the guitar and the music. Problem was, I couldn’t really play anymore.
Now, Antonia is sitting with me in her living room, teaching me patiently. I have been here for only two days, and already my fingers hurt. It’s a sharp pain, like when a fallen-asleep limb (肢体) returns to life. The feeling delights me. It means I’m doing something right.
1. Which can best describe the father when he was learning flamenco?A.Cautious. | B.Hopeless. | C.Depressed. | D.Devoted. |
A.Improve. | B.Break. | C.Suffer. | D.Blossom. |
A.She intended to pass it down to her son. |
B.It reminded her of her unpleasant past. |
C.Deep sorrow drowned her at the sight of it. |
D.Carrying it made her feel a sense of burden. |
A.Guitar Lessons From Strangers |
B.Love for Father on the String Again |
C.Adventures for Music Lovers in Spain |
D.Journey to Success as a Flamenco Guitarist |
9 . For my 56th birthday, my daughter, Beth, bought me two beautifully carved wooden butterflies. I hung them in prominent (显眼的) places on my walls so that I can see them often during the day. Each time I do so, they give me a wonderful reminder of love.
My daughter and my love of butterflies goes back many years. After a long battle against cancer, my mom passed away when I was only 25 years old. Beth was only a baby at the time and never got to have any memories of her grandma. I tried to make up for it by telling her stories of my mom but each time I did, I could see that there was a little sadness in Beth’s eyes. One day when she was only seven or so we were outside at the playground. Beth suddenly said how much she saddened not having her grandma around. Well, sometimes I comforted her and this time I told her how much her grandma loved her and that Grandma still remained positive in the last weeks of her life. I said she was watching over her from Heaven and that maybe she was even hitching (搭乘) a ride on the back of a butterfly to come down and get a closer look. At that very moment, a butterfly appeared flying around Beth’s face and then flew away. We both laughed with our hearts full of love and joy.
Since that moment all of those years ago, both Beth and I seem to attract butterflies like flowers. Whenever we are outside, they seem to fly down, circle around us, take a good look, and then fly away. And every time, we are reminded of my mom’s love watching over us. The only time this doesn’t happen is during the coldest months of the year when there are no insects of any kind. But now during those times I can take a look at the two beautiful wooden butterflies my daughter bought me and still be reminded of that love.
1. Why did Beth buy wooden butterflies?A.To celebrate the new year. |
B.To decorate her bedroom. |
C.To celebrate her mother’s birthday. |
D.To remind her childhood. |
A.Tough and optimistic. |
B.Enthusiastic and helpful. |
C.Independent and reliable. |
D.Knowledgeable and respectable. |
A.Terrified. | B.Confused. | C.Joyful. | D.Nervous. |
A.Wooden butterflies are of great artistic value. |
B.We all need reminders that we are loved in our life. |
C.It is difficult to maintain family ties during difficult times. |
D.The presence of parents is important to children’s development. |
10 . Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy recently declared children’s mental health is a national crisis.
In December 2021,Dr.Murthy issued a report to highlight the additional pressures the COVID- 19 pandemic(流行病)had put on the country’s youth, and the urgent need to address this. The impact of this crisis is far-reaching, and new research shows that it’s affecting parents’well-being, plus their ability to succeed at work and provide for their families.
“On Our Sleeves, a national movement that aims to break shame around children’s mental health, surveyed more than 3,000 working parents across the US and found that eight in 10 parents are very concerned about their child’s mental health and development or behavior in the past two years. Children’s mental health concerns have been hiding in plain sight for many years, surrounded by confusion and shame,”says Marti Bledsoe Post, the director of On Our Sleeves.
The survey found that 53% of working parents have missed work at least once per month to deal with their children’s mental health. And 71% of parents said issues with their child’s mental or emotional well-being made the stresses of work much more difficult to cope with.
“Employers need to know that many of their employees are struggling and it impinging their work as a result,”says Bledsoe Post.“Our mission with On Our Sleeves is to provide every family in America access to free, evidence-based educational resources. We see this study as incredibly important in starting the conversation and providing solutions for working families.”
As Morin points out, for some parents, taking a child to weekly treating appointments, attending and meetings at school consumes a lot of time. These parents should be helped, but how?
1. What do most parents care about at present?A.Pandemic’s effect on children. | B.Too much pressure on children. |
C.Children’s further education. | D.Children’s mental health problem. |
A.It is a main social problem. | B.It makes doctors confused. |
C.It affects their parents’work. | D.Parents are easy to handle it. |
A.Selecting. | B.Judging. | C.Affecting. | D.Doubting. |
A.Challenges to treat children with mental problems. |
B.Difficulties to settle the parents with mental problems. |
C.Benefits to help the parents fight with mental problems. |
D.Ways to help the parents having kids with mental problems. |