1 . When I set out to drop my dad at the airport, it was dark and dull. It started to rain on the way. When I left the airport, the visibility wasn’t clear because of the drops of rain. It was before 6 am.
Even though the road conditions were poor, I drove at my normal speed. I was angry with the more cautious drivers ahead of me that were delaying my drive. The exit ramp (坡道) to the highway was a tight spiral (急盘旋). It is a dangerous spot in good weather and totally scary when the weather is miserable or it is dark. But I didn’t want to slow down and arrive home any later than necessary. I drove down the ramp too fast. The road was wet and my car slid, landing face down on the ramp.
I didn’t like to drive by myself at the time and had insisted on taking my husband and son with me on the trip. Thankfully, I was alone in the car. My accident was slight. In fact, I was lucky enough not to have a single scratch. I started to shake when thinking the injuries my son would have suffered had he been in the backseat of that car with no seatbelt when it rolled. After the car rolled three times, I found my mobile phone was lost in a pile of small things that were all lying in the bottom of the car. A lady was kind enough to let me borrow her mobile phone, but without the numbers pre-programmed (预编的), who could I call? I was lucky enough to remember my father’s mobile phone number, and fortunate that he hadn’t yet got on his plane.
You never know when an accident will happen. As a driver, I will keep safety in mind by obeying all traffic laws and have safe-driving habits, especially in bad weather. Insist your children always wear their seatbelts. Life is a journey and everyone should value it and enjoy the ride.
1. What happened to the author’s car?| A．It crashed into another one. |
| B．It lay upside down after the slide |
| C．It slid and stopped in the middle or the highway. |
| D．It was out of control and struck a tree by the side of the ramp. |
| A．The author. | B．The author’s son. |
| C．The author’s husband. | D．The author’s father. |
| A．She knew her father hadn’t got on the plane. |
| B．Her husband was too busy to answer her phone. |
| C．Her husband’s mobile phone was out of service at that time. |
| D．She only brought her father’s phone number back to her mind. |
| A．To summarize her bad driving habits. |
| B．To analyze the cause of the accident. |
| C．To put forward some advice for others. |
| D．To make some comments on traffic laws. |
In a refreshing shift from conventional methods, some post-90 teachers in China are using memes (表情包), cute comments, and personalized feedback in their grading practices,
Gone are the days of impersonal and serious
The use of memes and hand-drawn images in marking papers
As these innovative practices gain
It was reported
4 . Many people who work in London prefer to live outside it, and to go in to their offices and schools every day by train, car or bus, even though this means they have to get up early in the morning and reach home late in the evening.
One advantage of living outside London is that the houses are cheaper. Even a small flat in London without a garden costs quite a lot to rent. With the same money, one can get a little house in the country with a garden of one’s own.
Then, in the country, one can rest from the noise and hurry of the town. Even though one has to get up earlier and spend more time on trains or buses, one can sleep better at night. Besides, during weekends and on summer evenings, one can enjoy the fresh, clean air of the country. If one likes gardens, one can spend one’s free time digging, planting, watering, and doing the hundred and one other jobs which are needed in a garden. Then, when the flowers and vegetables come up, one has the reward of one who has shared the secret of Nature.
Some people, however, take no interest in country things: for them, happiness lies in the town, with its cinemas and theatres, beautiful shops and busy streets, dance-halls and restaurants. Such people would feel that their life was not worth living if they had to live it outside London. An occasional walk in one of the parks and a fortnight’s (two weeks) visit to the sea every summer is all the country they want: the rest they are quite prepared to leave to those who are glad to get away from London every night.
1. Which of the following statements is TRUE according to the passage?| A．Some people who work in the country prefer to live in the city |
| B．Some people who work in the city prefer to live in the country |
| C．Those who live in London wake up early and get home late |
| D．Those who live in London must travel by train, car or bus every day |
| A．a small house with a garden in London |
| B．a large house with a garden in the country |
| C．a small flat with a garden in the country |
| D．a small house with a garden in the country |
| A．one can’t sleep so well as in the city | B．one has to spend more time on transport |
| C．one has to spend a long time in the garden | D．one is likely to be poorer |
| A．spend all of their time in the town | B．feel their life is not worth living |
| C．enjoy cinemas, shops and crowds | D．share the secret of Nature |
| A．the rest of their time | B．the rest of the people |
| C．the rest of the country | D．the rest of the parks and sea |
| A．She fell off her bike. |
| B．She fell down from the stairs. |
| C．She fell over during her basketball practice. |
The endless choice gives birth to anxiety in people’s lives. Buying something as basic as a coffee pot
7 . A new study published in the Journal of Marriage and Family claims that all that time you spend parenting just doesn’t matter. But it’s a claim that, despite the enthusiastic and widespread coverage by the media, does not hold water.
The research suggests that child outcomes (including behavior problems, emotional problems, and academic performance) are barely connected with the time that parents spend with their children. The researchers examined the time diaries of 1,600 children, looking at parenting time and outcomes when the kids were aged 3 to 11 in 1997, and again in 2002, when they were between 8 and 16. (A time diary is a detailed report of all activities you carry out in a day. )
This research largely reflects the failure of the authors to correctly measure parental input. It just looked at time diaries from two particular days-one a weekday and the other a weekend day.
Trying to get a sense of the time you spend parenting from a single day’s diary is a bit like trying to measure your income from a single day. If yesterday was payday, you looked rich, but if it’s not, you would be reported as poor. You get a clearer picture only by looking at your income — or your parenting time—over a more meaningful period.
What you did yesterday should not be taken as representative of what you did last year, This is why most high-quality studies of parenting time focus instead on how often parents read to their children, play with them or help their with homework over a period of a month or longer — long enough to represent their different approaches to parenting.
As an exhausted parent who doesn’t get enough time to work out, and who hasn’t seen a movie for months, I understand why so many of us might seize on studies suggesting that we should take more time for ourselves. Perhaps we should. But I agree with Ariel Kalil, a developmental psychologist, on the suggestion “that when parents spend high-quality time with their children, their children are more likely to succeed.”
1. By saying in Paragraph 1 “ ... it’s a claim that ... does not bold water”, the author means the claim is not ________.| A．reasonable | B．surprising | C．confusing | D．usual |
| A．children’s habits and parents’ influence | B．parenting time and child outcomes |
| C．time diaries and child development | D．daily activities and children’s problems |
| A．By giving descriptions. | B．By analyzing the cause. |
| C．By making a comparison. | D．By offering research findings. |
| A．be completed in one month. | B．adopt some different approaches. |
| C．concentrate mainly on learning time. | D．be based on data of a longer time period. |
| A．He goes to bed early every night. | B．He has little interest in movies. |
| C．He has little time for himself. | D．He leads a very easy life. |
Humankind’s growing need for food is running up against thousands of other species’ need for space. By 2050, humans may need to clear an additional 3.35 million square
9 . As cultural symbols go, the American car is quite young. The Model T Ford was built at the Piquette Plant in Michigan a century ago, with the first rolling off the assembly line (装配线) on September 27, 1908. Only eleven cars were produced the next month. But eventually Henry Ford would build fifteen million of them.
Modern America was born on the road, behind a wheel. The car shaped some of the most lasting aspects of American culture: the roadside diner, the billboard, the motel, even the hamburger. For most of the last century, the car represented what it meant to be American—going forward at high speed to find new worlds. The road novel, the road movie, these are the most typical American ideas, born of abundant petrol, cheap cars and a never-ending interstate highway system, the largest public works project in history.
In 1928 Herbert Hoover imagined an America with “a chicken in every pot and a car in every garage.” Since then, this society has moved onward, never looking back, as the car transformed America from a farm-based society into an industrial
The cars that drove the American Dream have helped to create a global ecological disaster. In America the demand for oil has grown by 22 percent since 1990.
The problems of excessive (过度的) energy consumption, climate change and population growth have been described in a book by the American writer Thomas L. Friedman. He fears the worst, but hopes for the best.
Friedman points out that the green economy (经济) is a chance to keep American strength. “The ability to design, build and export green technologies for producing clean water, clean air and healthy and abundant food is going to be the currency of power in the new century.”
What is Friedman’s attitude towards America’s future?| A．Ambiguous. | B．Doubtful. | C．Hopeful. | D．Tolera |
10 . When I first moved to China in 1998, I thought I would impress my class by using some Chinese in my speech about American weddings (婚礼). I told them everyone brings a gift to the wedding for the couple. As soon as I said this, all of the students looked surprised. I knew I had said something wrong. I realized that instead of telling them that everybody brings gifts to the hun li for the couple, I had said people bring gifts for them at the li hun!
I get laughs from some of my students because I often make mistakes and my Chinese sounds strange at times. But I tell them that sometimes their English is really strange too.
One asks, “What are you like to do in your free time?” And the other answers, “I very like basketball.” I find that even good English speakers make such mistakes. The second is by far the most common mistake I have heard among Chinese English speakers. It is a result of first thinking in Chinese and then translating each word in the sentence into English. This, of course, makes some Chinese people’s English sound strange.
“We should get off the car here,” a student told me. My school had asked two students to show me around the city by taxi. In English countries, we “get off” a bike, bus, or train. However, when we leave a car, we say “get out of the car”. Perhaps the student had learned “get off” means xia in Chinese and he thought the phrase (短语) could be followed by any means of transportation. To avoid such mistakes, you should take collocations (搭配) seriously. Only learning vocabulary and grammar is not enough.
Some of my students sound more like a book or machine than a human. Perhaps they have gotten used to depending on books. You can also read English books out loud or use a CD, but you need the real thing. If you have a chance to hear a native speaker from an Englishspeaking country, practice repeating what you hear. They can teach you how to have a conversation.
1. Why did the students feel surprised?| A．American weddings are difficult to organize. |
| B．The author’s Chinese was as fluent as Chinese. |
| C．The author used a completely wrong Chinese word. |
| D．Everyone must bring a gift to an American wedding. |
| A．Spelling mistakes. | B．Direct translation. |
| C．Cultural difference. | D．Wrong pronunciations. |
| A．He might be poor at vocabulary. |
| B．He might mistake “car” for “taxi”． |
| C．He might know very little about the city. |
| D．He might pay little attention to collocations. |
| A．Common mistakes made by Chinese English learners. |
| B．Differences between Chinese and American culture. |
| C．Suggestions on improving conversational skills. |
| D．His experience of learning English. |
