As you know, for years I’ve planned to write up the memories. Now that you are grown, I’ve signed up for a memoir writing class. You know what? It’s such a struggle!
Sometimes, I wake up in the middle of the night with just the right thought in my mind. Grabbing notepaper and pen, I go in the bathroom and write it down. Great! I don’t want to lose that, and in the morning it may be gone. But I’m having trouble getting back to sleep these days and find myself nodding off in my chair after dinner.
Instead of writing “I remember,” we are encouraged to be creative. The right expression came -during the night. Naturally I jumped up and got it written just the way I wanted. It’s all sort of a torture (拆磨). I’m walking around with dark circles underneath my eyes.
I spend a great deal of time staring out the window, deep in thoughts. I’ve noticed I’m having a little bit of trouble sometimes getting my eyes to focus again. I also carry around a notebook in my purse to seize the thoughts when I’m driving around or at the grocery store. The notebook takes up so much space in my purse!
It’s great to have pictures to illustrate the writings. But in finding just the right ones, I have to search around through all the boxes, and the house is in a mess. in fact, I’m becoming absent-minded, I have to admit. I forgot to turn on the coffee pot the other morning, and yesterday the potatoes burned when I was writing down this great description.
So, my dears, I’ve decided it’s fun to write all the memorable times in my life and to share the happy days of your growing up years. But I think at my age, I need my rest. Enjoy the ones I’ve written because I’ve decided not to write any more memoirs.
Love, Mom
1. What happened to the author after taking part in the memoir writing class?| A．Her memoir was soon accomplished. |
| B．Her sleeping quality was greatly affected. |
| C．She formed a habit of sleeping after dinner. |
| D．She became a creative writer after struggle. |
| A．To help her driving. |
| B．To communicate with people. |
| C．To write down her thoughts. |
| D．To take up the space of her purse. |
| A．Her memory became poor. |
| B．She was not good at cooking. |
| C．She liked drawing pictures. |
| D．Her house was always in a mess. |
| A．Optimistic but confused. |
| B．Pessimistic but tolerant. |
| C．Sorrowful and frustrated. |
| D．Objective and sensible. |
2 . I’ve spent a long time thinking about one of the lessons life has to offer uncertainty. I often hear,“ Nothing could have prepared us for this pandemic.” While it came as a surprise, some of us have had to deal with times of great uncertainty before.
This was the case for my family when my father began falling over. We would blame the ice. Then just the road.“ Who makes these things so high?” we wondered. Then, he slowed. He began to drag his feet.“ Well,” we said,“ he’s getting older.”
When his speech became worse, it became harder to explain. When did he last see a doctor anyway? We searched the Internet as he worsened—because we felt real medical attention was not required.
Uncertainty.
It’ s uncomfortable. It makes your stomach tighten. If you don’ t fight it, it will seep through (渗入)your body, lighting your brain up with anxiety. When a neurologist(神经病学家) explained the problem, it wasn’t what we wanted to hear. Instead, we opened a Pandora’ s box of even more unknowns.
When we found out he had AIS (肌肉萎缩性侧面硬化病)the uncertainty became a burden. He was losing control of his muscles, his speech, ability to swallow—and we were paralyzed on how to prepare.
ALS is cruel. It traps you in your body. When the future looks so dark, you have to take comfort in the tiniest pleasures. I wish I’d done more. But I was new to uncertainty. I’d never experienced such a lack of control. I was focused on solving problem that couldn’t be solved.
I worried about how my father would get worse. I read everything I could to try and help his situation, but there was nothing I could do. But my dad didn’t live long enough for me to prepare for his condition to get worse. Life doesn’t go according to plan and there is a difference between preparation and worry.
As we battle global uncertainty, it is teaching us the same lesson. A lesson about humility (谦卑) . About the fact that you cannot save something you love alone. If COVID -19 is disturbing everyone, we should consider what we can learn. These lessons are hard, teaching us to hold on to what matters and how to let go.
1. Why is the pandemic mentioned in the beginning ?| A．To explain its impact on the author’s life. |
| B．To lead up to the topic of uncertainty. |
| C．To show how the author got used to it. |
| D．To tell the lessons the author learned from it. |
| A．Anxious | B．Peaceful | C．Annoyed | D．Optimistic |
| A．It makes people stronger. | B．It leads to a lack of control. |
| C．It brings family closer to each other. | D．It can remove the darkness in life. |
| A．Be humble to the unknown. | B．Prepare for uncertainty in advance. |
| C．Express our love before it’s too late. | D．Cherish what matters and learn to let go. |
3 . In December 2004, I had just become a professional photographer and was working on a project about communities who live on the sea, known as sea nomads (海上游牧民族). I was living with members of the Chao-Ley tribe (部落) on a small island in southern Thailand. We didn’t share a language and relied on body language to communicate.
I went out to sea with them regularly. One morning, I was due to set out with a group of six Chao-Ley fishermen in a small boat. The sea looked different, with the water totally still.
About 20 minutes after we left and a few miles out in the open sea, one of the fishermen pointed to a small white spot far in the distance. It was getting bigger and bigger very quickly. This was a tsunami (海啸) wave speeding through the ocean.
Usually, the deeper the water, the weaker the wave. But we weren’t out far enough to be safe, nor close enough to shore to make it back in time. We were stuck. I began to feel really scared.
The captain told the six of us where to sit, so we would balance out the boat. My camera was in my backpack. I wanted to capture the scene, but I couldn’t. Any movement would imbalance the boat. Suddenly there was a huge noise. The wave hit the boat, but in a flash the skilled captain managed to swerve (使突然转向) us up and onto the wave. Then the boat moved from the tip of the wave down into safe waters. Our eyes and mouths were wide open, and everyone let out heavy sighs. The captain had saved us all.
Surviving gave me a deep understanding of how important life can be. I’ve been going back to Southeast Asia almost every year since. The photography project has become a thank-you to the people who saved my life. The picture I wanted to take on the boat remains “the one that got away” – I think every photographer has one. But mine changed my life.
1. What happened before the author set out with the fishermen?| A．The captain wanted to cancel the trip. |
| B．He noticed something unusual. |
| C．They saw a white spot in the distance. |
| D．It looked like it was about to rain. |
| A．When fishermen on the boat felt nervous. |
| B．When he realized they were trapped. |
| C．When the boat was about to be hit. |
| D．When the boat shook violently. |
| A．Helping the captain swerve. |
| B．Taking a photo of the wave. |
| C．Trying not to move. |
| D．Reaching for his backpack. |
| A．We should have the courage to take risks. |
| B．Opportunity never knocks twice. |
| C．Life is too short to be wasted. |
| D．Sometimes regrets in life can save us. |
4 . I started playing the piano when I was around four years old—that was 15 years ago!—and since then, the longest I haven’t touched piano keys was probably two months. This was an enormous amount of devotion to something that I wasn’t even planning to make money off of—so there must have been something worth holding on to, right?
The easy guess is that I was always so purely in love with music and piano that I couldn’t bear to let them go. However, it’s a bit more complicated than that. I struggled a lot with piano. I felt pressure to improve, innovate, and be the best in order to prove something to others. The seed of my musical interest was grown with competition and doubt.
It’s difficult to learn to love something that you didn’t choose in the first place. But somehow, sometime, love grew. And by high school, it was strong enough that I found the strength to hold on tighter, dig further, and find something of my own to grow. In a way, I had to start over.
And so, I took a pause. I switched teachers, and got incredibly lucky with one who encouraged me and helped me tunnel into what I loved, not what I was told I should learn. Anything I had was good enough to be loved.
This summer, I started learning the guitar. I deliberately wanted to learn on my own—this was just for me, to form a new relationship to music. Even though my guitar skills are miles lower than my piano skills, I feel I can express myself even more wholly through strings than keys. There’s just something about doing it all for myself that has helped me heal the damages to my relationship to music.
The love and hate I’ve had for the piano were both planted and grown. If you too have learned to hate something you once loved—or something you never chose—remember that with dedication, it can be uprooted, and love can make a home in its place. There is always time. There is always room.
1. What can we learn about the author’s experience from Paragraph 1?| A．He probably spent two months in playing the piano. |
| B．He began to play the piano when he was 15 years old. |
| C．He thought it necessary to start playing the piano early. |
| D．He committed himself to the piano not for financial factors. |
| A．Bittersweet. | B．Harmonious. | C．Painful. | D．Passive. |
| A．His teacher’s constant encouragement. | B．His desire for a new relationship with music. |
| C．His interest in strings rather than keys. | D．His talent for playing musical instruments. |
| A．Practice makes perfect | B．Love cannot be forced |
| C．Love is a thing that grows | D．There is no end to learning |
5 . The US Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) recently asked scientists, lawyers, social scientists and other experts to consider some of these ethical dimension. To give two examples: on privacy, as we let more listening devices into our homes, how do we prevent the data they collect falling into the wrong hands through hacking (黑客) or simply being sold between companies without us receiving any money? Another example: mixed reality, including virtual reality, will become pervasive in the next few years. As we move from headsets to what the IEEE committee describes as “more delicate sensory enhancements” we will use technology to live in an illusory world in many aspects of our lives. How do we balance the rights of the individual, control over our virtual identity, and the need to live and interact on a face-to-face basis while being empowered to live rich lives in mixed reality?
There is, of course, always a tension between innovation and regulation. But it can often seem that giant steps are taken in technology with minimal public discussion. Take the self-driving car: although it may be safer than human drivers and is likely to save more than a million lives a year worldwide, it will also take jobs from drivers, traffic police, sign-makers, car-repair companies, carmakers and more. Is this a bargain we want to make? In taking that decision, have we given thought to a car that knows everywhere we go, decides routes, perhaps, based on paid advertisement from shops along the way—and listens and sees everything we do on board? What will happen to that data and can it be kept safe?
Additionally, while some worry about the uncommon “trolley problem” of whom the car should choose to hit in a strange accident—an old lady or a mother and baby—perhaps the more frequent issue will be how we find out what the algorithm (运算程序) was thinking at the time of an accident, because AIs (Artificial Intelligence) are self-learning and devise their own strategies.
Similar concerns are emerging over the internet of things. Robot vacuum-cleaners already plot cleaning cycles using computer-aided vision that, for some models, is relayed to their manufacturers. As more things at home become connected, they will be hackable and the data they collect saleable.
It’s time for some messy, democratic discussions about the future of AI.
1. Two examples in paragraph 1 are used to________.| A．shed some light on hacking in our modern life |
| B．lead the reader to think of ethical issues brought by hi-tech |
| C．lead in the following example concerning the self-driving car |
| D．list the existing problems that caught the attention of experts |
| A．intelligent | B．powerful | C．widespread | D．skillful |
| A．innovation should be accompanied by guidelines to relieve tension |
| B．more giant innovative steps will lead to fewer public discussion |
| C．disadvantages of the self-driving car will outweigh its advantages |
| D．artificial intelligence fails to have a promising and bright future |
| A．expose some underlying problems in high-technology |
| B．call on professionals to enforce law and order |
| C．illustrate AI’s abilities in self-devising and self-learning strategies |
| D．display our inter-connected computer-aided life in future |
6 . When you were a kid, did you ever dream about getting locked somewhere overnight? Maybe it was a store dressing room, a train station, or a corner of a museum. When you’re young, there’s something romantic about being alone and awake as the rest of the world sleeps.
On the night of December 4, I missed my 7 pm flight from Chicago to my home in Baltimore.
There is always magic to be found in the wake of missed flights. The night is still, the crowds are gone and the world belongs to you.
| A．At age 41, I finally got to live my childhood dream |
| B．I waved to security cameras, hoping someone was watching |
| C．My journey began as the final arrivals of the day touched down |
| D．The next plane wouldn’t be arriving until early the next morning |
| E．It seems that everyone has grown blind to the beauty all around us |
| F．Arriving at my gate, I posted some of my airport adventures online |
| G．At museums, you are forced to keep your distance from dinosaur bones |
7 . We all have things that we want to achieve in our lives-getting into the better shape, building a successful business, raising a wonderful family, and so on.
What I’m starting to realize, however, is that when it comes to actually getting things done and making progress in the areas that are important to you, there is a much better way to do things. It all comes down to the difference between goals and systems.
Goals are good for planning your progress and systems are good for actually making progress.Goals can provide direction and even push you forward in the short term, but eventually a well-designed system will always win. Having a system is what matters.
| A．None of this is to say that goals are useless. |
| B．If you’re a writer, your goal is to write a book. |
| C．Forget about predicting the future and build a system. |
| D．I never set a word count goal for any particular article. |
| E．Committing to the process is what makes the difference. |
| F．And for most of us, the path to those things starts by setting a specific goal. |
| G．As an example, I just added up the total word count for the articles I’ve written this year. |
8 . Have you noticed that many people can spend a lot of time comparing prices while shopping online, but always make decisions casually in the critical moments of their life?
To explore this issue, we must first understand three concepts: strategy, tactics(技术), and guideline.
Simply put, “strategy” is “what to do”, that is, to choose a direction. The “tactics” have to be lower than strategy, which means that they decide “how to do it” after the strategy has been established.
Strategy is a ruler’s learning. For each person himself, whether to consider strategic issues determines whether you are the master of your own life. Maybe you can live successfully according to the guide given by others, but is this life really worth it? This is not a life, but a performance, because you actually have no dominance in yourself.
| A．We constantly make choices. |
| B．Take choosing college major for example. |
| C．These people may be reliable but they can’t create things. |
| D．Many people seem to focus only on the “guideline” level. |
| E．The key to strategy is making choices and bearing its consequences. |
| F．At first glance, they seem to be similar, but in fact they are totally different. |
| G．“Guideline” is even lower, referring to doing things as others have done them. |
9 . Now I live in Paris. Actually, I don’t mind the food or the people, but I do care about the land that is extraordinarily lack of characteristics of hiking. I enjoy being outdoors and hiking, but Paris’s natural resources don’t hold much potential for my bent. So when my dad asked if I wanted to go hiking with him, I was overjoyed.
We started our main hike up Flattop Mountain. As we hiked it was much more challenging than I expected.
I stared up at the top to see how much farther we had to go and I began to worry that I wouldn’t finish it.
As I was hiking, I started to reflect on how hiking was similar to other aspects of my life.
| A．Hiking could make me fly. |
| B．Hiking gave time for my mind to wander. |
| C．I thought I would finish the journey with ease. |
| D．But I was shocked at the beauty surrounding me. |
| E．I was satisfied with the landscape along the way. |
| F．It was unlike anything I had ever witnessed before. |
| G．A recent ankle injury had left me unsure of my physical capabilities. |
10 . Forgiving doesn’t mean saying the pain doesn’t matter or what the other person said or did was OK. It doesn’t mean forgetting what happened. It means letting go of your need for an apology. It means making peace with past hurt and pain. It means choosing to move on. All of this is easy to say, hard to do. But forgiveness can happen in a series of small steps over time.
Take your feelings seriously. Forgiving doesn’t mean shrugging your shoulders and saying “Oh, well.” Cry, feel sad, throw things hard, or write angry passages in your diary to get rid of some of the stress. Talk with trusted friends or family to ask for advice to help find solutions to your problems. You have the right to feel hurt and angry. But suffering these feelings over time does you great harm.
Make a difference in your life. I’ve seen that many miss the opportunity for getting back a good relationship with someone else because they just wait for the apology that may never come. Others stay stuck in anger long after the other person has stopped to be a part of their lives. Make a decision to make a difference for yourself. That may be forgiving or being the first to reach out to the other so that you can move on with your own life.
Forgive yourself and engage in positive self-talk. Although you may mainly blame the other person, it’s important to forgive yourself with positive self-talk. Feel certain that you can learn from this and move on. Tell yourself that you will survive this pain and that life will get better because you can make a choice to let go.
Try understanding the other. This doesn’t reduce your pain but may make what happened more understandable. Understanding doesn’t forgive hurtful behavior, but understanding can help to get rid of your anger and to forgive.
Realize that forgiveness benefits you most of all. The other person may never know about your forgiveness. But forgiving and letting go can lighten the load on your body and on your spirit.
1. What does forgiving mean according to the text?| A．The pain the other person brought you isn’t very serious. |
| B．What the other person has said or done doesn’t hurt you. |
| C．You don’t care and have forgotten what happened to you. |
| D．You needn’t the other person to say sorry to you any more. |
| A．Positive. | B．Negative. | C．Objective. | D．Uncertain. |
| A．Wait for your friend’s apology. |
| B．Take the initiative (主动性) to say hello to your friend. |
| C．Try your best to forget your problem. |
| D．Have positive self-talk. |
| A．How to forgive other people. |
| B．Forgiveness is helpful for us all. |
| C．Understanding can help forgive others. |
| D．Life gets better if you choose to forgive. |
