1 . Maybe you’ve heard about the saying, “A bird with a broken wing will never fly as high.” I'm sure that T. J. Ware was made to feel this way almost every day in school.
By high school, T. J. was the most famous troublemaker in his town. He got into lots of fights. He failed almost every exam but was passed on each year to a higher grade level. Teachers didn’t want to have him again the following year.
When I showed up to lead the first training for a leadership retreat, a program designed to have students become more involved in their communities. The community leaders told me about T. J. Ware-the boy with the longest arrest record(警察局笔录) in the history of town. Somehow, I knew that I wasn’t the first to hear about T. J.’s darker side as the first words of introduction.
At the start of the retreat, T. J. didn’t readily join the discussion groups and didn’t seem to have much to say. But when his group started a discussion about positive and negative things that had happened at school that year, he joined in and had clear thoughts on those situations and the other students in his group welcomed his comments. Suddenly, T. J. felt like a part of the group and soon he was treated like a leader. He was saying things that made a lot of sense and everyone was listening. By the end of the retreat he had joined the Homeless Project team. He knew something about poverty, hunger and hopelessness. The other students on the team were impressed (打动) with his ideas and love for the homeless. They elected T. J. vice-chairman of the team.
Two weeks later, the Homeless Project team organized a communitywide service project—a giant food drive. Seventy students led by T. J. collected a school record: 2.854 cans of food in just two hours - enough to take care of poor families in the area for 75 days. The local newspaper covered the event with a full-page article the next day. T. J.'s picture was up there for doing something great.
T. J. reminds us that a bird with a broken wing only needs mending. But once it has healed, it can fly higher than the rest.
1. Which is the best title for the passage?A.Love Leads to Success | B.Love Changes Everything |
C.A Broken Wing Mended | D.A Bird with Broken Wing. |
A.He didn't have a good teacher. | B.He was feeling hurt every day. |
C.He would graduate the next year. | D.He was not welcome in the school. |
A.The leadership retreat. | B.The group discussion. |
C.The communitywide service project. | D.The school record in the food drive. |
A.he joined the leadership retreat | B.he was part of the group |
C.his words was meaningful | D.his deeds were famous at school |
2 . You have probably heard the saying, “When life gives you lemons, make lemonade (柠檬水).” Since lemons are considered bitter and lemonade is considered sweet, the saying tells you to make the best out of a bad situation.
Unluckily, when something bad happens, it’s not uncommon for most people to talk about it to anyone who’ll listen, and complain about life. “Why me?” That’s like getting a bag of lemons and thinking, “Lemons taste bad! I’d rather have chocolate!” If you don’t make anything with the lemons, they will go bad. But what if you did something with them? What if you made lemonade? Isn’t it possible to do something similar with a bad situation?
Here’s an example. You’re about to go to the cinema when you discover you have a flat tire (瘪胎). You consider this a terrible thing for you are really looking forward to enjoying the movie. Now you’re very upset, hating the tire, the car, and your life. But what if you called AAA (美国汽车协会) and got your tire fixed? What if you did some reading, or had coffee with a friend instead? A bad experience can be turned into something positive. Almost anything can work itself out into something better. You can’t change what has happened, so make the best of it. I’m not saying it will be easy. The easy thing to do is complain about your bad situation and not consider what it could be turned into.
Next time when something unfortunate happens, stop and think, “How can I turn this around? How can I make it a positive experience?”
1. What do we know about the saying in the first paragraph?A.It is encouraging. | B.It is funny. |
C.It is boring. | D.It is unreasonable. |
A.Accept it. | B.Complain about it. |
C.Find out the reasons. | D.Ask others for help. |
A.there is a flat tire happening sometimes | B.it doesn’t matter to make mistakes |
C.how to turn something bad into good | D.turning to others for help is necessary |
A.Trying hard to solve it. | B.Laughing your way through it. |
C.Thinking more about its goods. | D.Turning it into a positive experience. |
3 . The Happy Man
The happy man lives objectively, and has free love and wide interests, through which he secures his happiness. To be the receivers of love is a vital cause of happiness, but the man who demands love is not the man to whom it is given.
What then can a man do who is unhappy because he is enclosed in self? If he is to get out of the vicious (恶性的) circle of unhappiness, it must be by true interests. But before that, he should analyze his trouble first.
Admit to himself every day at least one painful truth.
All unhappiness depends upon lack of integration (融合). There is disintegration within the self,consciously and unconsciously or between the self and society.
A.There is much he can do about it. |
B.The man who receives love is the man who gives it. |
C.The interests will arise when you overcome being self-centered. |
D.The happy life is to an extraordinary extent the same as the good life. |
E.Teach himself life is worth even not having great virtue or intelligence. |
F.Self-denying leaves a man self-absorbed and aware of his own sacrifice. |
G.Neither divided against the self nor the world, the happy man never fails to unite. |
strive for greatness wipe out die out be committed to be to blame in one's attempt to get ahead up to in short take action set so apart at risk of boil down to |
Why do Olympic athletes push themselves to the limits? One of the Olympic triathletes personifies the phrase herself.
To get to the top, she has made an endless list of sacrifices and it
Having been through fears and tears, she never regrets. To reach the winner's platform, athletes should
5 . If there is one thing in life that we could choose not to experience, it is the death of someone we love. Losing a friend or family member is heartbreaking and hard to accept, but how we deal with it, and how we “move on”, varies from person to person.
Death is inevitable, but sometimes we feel the passing of a loved one has come too soon. Our first reaction is to grieve, and even though we may soon be encouraged to let go, the grieving can last a while. But grief is a very natural, human response to loss and can take the form of many unexpected emotions, from shock to guilt, anger and disbelief.
When someone dies, we may be tempted to put on a brave face and hide our feelings. But experts say that this doesn’t help. Instead it is better to talk about feelings – even cry and sob and show people you are suffering. There’s nothing wrong with trying to keep the memory of the deceased alive. You can talk to them in your head, write them a letter or share memories with other people who knew them.
Some people have chosen to make a more permanent reminder of someone by getting a memorial tattoo. In this way they believe they can have a continuing bond with the dead. So this is also a very important way for people to come to terms that someone’s left.
Whatever approach you take to grieving and to keeping someone’s memory alive, eventually the physical aching and pain caused by the loss of a loved one will subside. But the memories of that person and the times we shared can stay with us forever, and talking about them and expressing your feelings is all part of the healing process.
1. What does the underlined word “subside” in Para5 mean?A.Decrease. | B.Appear. | C.Calm. | D.Promise. |
A.We hide ourselves. |
B.We are heartbroken. |
C.We become encouraged. |
D.We feel it is normal and unavoidable. |
A.Talking about our sufferings with friends. |
B.Pretending to be brave and hiding our grief. |
C.Keeping calm and stay indoors for several days. |
D.Taking physical exercises and exhausting ourselves. |
A.compare different ways of relieving grief |
B.introduce a latest trend popular with the young |
C.present different attitudes towards getting a tattoo |
D.show readers an approach to keeping the memory of the dead |
6 . Where is the future going?
Our work habits have changed a lot over the past thirty years. While our parents may have expected to stay in one job, with one company, for their whole life, we are faced with the possibility of changing jobs and even careers several times. Our understanding of education, work and society is different from that of earlier generations.
People in the future will still need food, of course, but the way we produce food will not be the same.
What about people who work with computers? Well, things will change for them, too. More advanced computer programs and new technologies will remove the need for computer operators who perform simple actions. Modern search engines can do many of the things that yesterday's computer operators did. Word processing and simple information handling can be done automatically.
A rapidly changing job market also creates new challenges for students, teachers and parents.
A.What life will be like in the future is difficult to predict. |
B.Not only the way we work and view the job has changed. |
C.It is hard to imagine where all these advanced technologies will lead us. |
D.For people with these skills, there will be new jobs as database managers. |
E.Where is the future going and what can we do to find a place for ourselves in it? |
F.Small farms that use old methods will be replaced by large farms with high efficiency. |
G.The difference in values, skills, education and desires between two generations is growing. |
7 . In the 1990s, a psychologist named Martin Seligman led the positive psychology movement, which placed the study of human happiness squarely at the center of psychology research and theory.
Since then, thousands of studies and hundreds of books have been published with the goal of increasing well-being and helping people lead more satisfying lives. But for over 40 years, self-reported measures of happiness have stayed stagnant(停滞的). Such efforts to improve happiness have been an ineffective attempt to swim against the tide, as we may actually be programmed to be dissatisfied most of the time. Why aren't we happier?
Part of the problem is that happiness isn't just one thing. Jennifer Hecht, a philosopher who studies the history of happiness, proposes that we all experience different types of happiness, which are not necessarily complementary Some types of happiness may even conflict with one another. In other words, having too much of one type of happiness may weaken our ability to have enough of the others. For example, a satisfying life is built on a successful career and a good marriage. It takes a lot of work and often requires cutting back on many of life's pleasures. That means we can't spend one pleasant lazy day after another in the company of good friends.
This difficult situation becomes more confused by the way our brains process the experience of happiness. A lot of evidence shows that most of the people possess something called the optimistic bias. They tend to think that their future will be better than the present.
Cognitive psychologists have also identified something called the Pollyanna Principle. It means that people process, rehearse and remember pleasant information more than unpleasant information. Why the good old days seem so good is because we focus on the pleasant stuff and tend to forget the unpleasantness. And if our past is great and our future can be even better, then we can work our way out of the unpleasant present.
Dissatisfaction with the present and dreams of the future are what keep us motivated. In fact, endless happiness would completely destroy our will. Among our earliest ancestors, those who were perfectly content may have been left in the dust.
Recognizing that happiness exists may help us appreciate it more when it arrives. Furthermore, understanding that it's impossible to have happiness in all aspects of life can help us enjoy the happiness that has touched us. Recognizing that no one "has it all" can cut down on the one thing that psychologists know prevents happiness: envy.
1. We can learn from Paragraph 2 that people________.A.are born to be dissatisfied |
B.will never be happier than before |
C.fail to achieve their desire for happiness |
D.find it impossible to measure their happiness |
A.happiness needs to be experienced without limits |
B.people can't have all types of happiness at the same time |
C.different people have different types of happiness |
D.different types of happiness always conflict with one another |
A.People focus on the nice things in the past. |
B.People tend to recall their past failures alone. |
C.People are usually disappointed with what they have. |
D.People consider their future to be better than the present. |
A.restricts our ability of achieving goals |
B.leads to our envying others' happiness |
C.enables people to feel perfectly content |
D.motivates people to seek more happiness |
8 . One Mother to Another
On Wednesday evening, our daughter, who was at a boarding school over 200 kilometers away, told us that she had lost her phone when she took part in an activity off campus. We realized that we had little chance of finding it.
The next morning, my phone beeped (哔哔响) loudly. A kind voice announced that she had something that belonged to my daughter. I
After contacting the people I know who lived near the school, I was out of
I gave them directions and they
We had thought that the chance of getting back the phone was
A.suggested | B.reported | C.explained | D.argued |
A.date | B.luck | C.work | D.control |
A.pick up | B.carry out | C.hand in | D.give away |
A.find | B.show | C.miss | D.take |
A.regret | B.surprise | C.amusement | D.disappointment |
A.especially | B.certainly | C.definitely | D.probably |
A.conducted | B.arranged | C.delivered | D.identified |
A.doubts | B.interests | C.predicts | D.worries |
A.free | B.slim | C.hard | D.fair |
A.tell | B.face | C.mean | D.join |
9 . My daughter was being thrown out of the sixth grade. The teacher said, “She may not be up to what we’re trying to accomplish.” He was really saying she didn’t have the intelligence. I got mad because I knew she was smart, just as my father had known I was smart when I was failing in school. We had her tested. I decided to get myself tested as well, and found that the troubles she was having were exactly what I had had — dyslexia. By then I was a successful television writer, and had won an Emmy Award for “The Rockford Files.”
If I had known earlier that something beyond my control could explain why I was a low achiever, I may not have worked so hard in my late 20s and early 30s. I was writing and writing. I was working for no other reason than to hear people praise me, because I did badly in all my courses.
I once asked a friend who had always gotten an A, “How long did you study for this?” He said, “I didn’t. I just glanced at it.” So he must be smarter. I began to ask, “What will happen to me when I’m not good at anything?” Despite my doubts, I did become successful, and people now say to me, “So you’ve overcome dyslexia.”
No. You don’t overcome it, you learn to compensate for it. Some easy things are very hard for me. Most people who go through college read twice as fast as I do. I avoid dialing a phone if I can, because I sometimes have to try three times to get the number right.
Despite my weaknesses I view dyslexia as a gift, not a curse (诅咒). Many dyslexics are good at right-brain, abstract thought, and that’s what my kind of creative writing is. And I can write quickly, and can get up to 15 pages a day. Writing is my strength.
The real fear I have for dyslexic children is not they have to struggle in school, but that they will quit on themselves before they get out of school. Parents have to create victories for them, whether it’s music, sports or art. You can make your dyslexic child able to say, “Yeah, reading is hard. But I have other things I can do.”
1. The writer decided to get himself tested as well because he________.A.wanted to know if they had the same problem |
B.didn’t believe his daughter had the problem |
C.had to take a regular medical examination |
D.accepted that his daughter was not smart |
A.struggled and got better grades |
B.didn’t work hard when he was young |
C.was praised for overcoming dyslexia |
D.was thankful not knowing of dyslexia earlier |
A.is less intelligent | B.always fails in school |
C.reads more slowly than normal people | D.performs worse in left-brain activities |
A.Clumsy birds have to start flying early. | B.God shuts one door but opens another. |
C.Never judge a person by his appearance. | D.No one can make a good coat with bad cloth. |
10 . Every man wants his son to be somewhat of a clone, not in features but in footsteps. As he grows you also age, and your ambitions become more unachievable. You begin to realize that your boy, in your footsteps, could probably accomplish what you hoped for. But footsteps can be muddied and they can go off in different directions.
My son Jody has hated school since day one in kindergarten. Science projects waited until the last moment. Book reports weren’t written until the final threat.
I’ve been a newspaperman all my adult life. My daughter is a university graduate working towards her master’s degree in English. But Jody? When he entered the tenth grade he became a “vo-tech” student (技校学生). They’re called “motorheads” by the rest of the student body.
When a secretary in my office first called him “motorhead”, I was shocked. “Hey, he’s a good kid, ” I wanted to say. “And smart, really.”
I learned later that motorheads are, indeed, different. They usually have dirty hands and wear dirty work clothes. And they don’t often make school honor rolls (光荣榜).
But being the parent of a motorhead is itself an experience in education. We who labor in clean shirts in offices don’t have the abilities that motorheads have. I began to learn this when I had my car crashed. The cost to repair it was estimated at $800. “Hey, I can fix it,” said Jody. I doubted it, but let him go ahead, for I had nothing to lose.
My son, with other motorheads, fixed the car. They got parts from a junkyard, and ability from vo-tech classes. The cost was $25 instead of $800.
Since that first repair job, a broken air-conditioner, a non-functioning washer and a non-toasting toaster have been fixed. Neighbours and co-workers trust their car repairs to him.
These kids are happiest when doing repairs. They joke and laugh and are living in their own relaxed world. And their minds are bright despite their dirty hands and clothes.
I have learned a lot from my motorhead: publishers need printers, engineers need mechanics, and architects need builders. Most important, I have learned that fathers don’t need clones in footsteps or anywhere else.
My son may never make the school honor roll. But he made mine.
1. What used to be the author’s hope for his son?A.To avoid becoming his clone. | B.To resemble him in appearance. |
C.To develop in a different direction. | D.To reach the author’s unachieved goals. |
A.His daughter does better in school. |
B.His daughter has got a master’s degree. |
C.His son tried hard to finish homework. |
D.His son couldn’t write his book reports. |
A.his son had the ability to fix it | B.it would save him much time |
C.it wouldn’t cause him any more loss | D.other motorheads would come to help |
A.It is unwise to expect your child to follow your path. |
B.It is important for one to make the honor roll. |
C.Architects play a more important role than builders. |
D.Motorheads have greater ability than office workers. |