1 . When I was in primary school, my favourite place was the library. I was the kid who got shouted at for trying to bring home sixty books at a time because I just couldn't decide which world I wanted to experience that week. I remember spending my weekends glued to a book, hungering for experiencing lives other than my own. Up until middle school, reading was a passion of mine.
Something changed after I entered high school though. All of a sudden, reading was a task that I could not avoid fast enough. The books that I read in school bored me, or even if I enjoyed the books themselves, the repetitive, challenging homework we completed about those books made me hate reading as a whole.
It wasn’t until recently that I rediscovered my love for reading. How, you may ask? Audiobooks. Last summer, I spent every morning taking long walks while listening to them, and I would find myself lost in the stories for hours. And now I'm rediscovering my passion for reading. I feel that pull again. That curiosity.
My love story with reading may have had a happy ending, but not everyone is as lucky as me. What went wrong?
What tends to happen is that students lose their love for reading because of the way many schools try to encourage children to read. For example, when a child is told to read for twenty minutes every night, they tend to read for the required amount of time and then check the task off on their list. In this way, reading has suddenly become a boring task instead of an exciting experience.
Making sure that kids keep their passion for reading will require us to rethink how we teach reading in schools and how we introduce books to children outside of school as well. There needs to be less of a focus on meeting reading requirements and more of a focus on creating an environment in which students are excited to read.
1. Which of the following best describes the author’s love for books before high school?| A．Short-lived | B．Crazy. | C．Secret. | D．Conditional |
| A．High school books were too difficult. |
| B．She couldn’t choose what to read. |
| C．Reading as a task made her lose interest in it. |
| D．She was given too many books to read. |
| A．Influence. | B．Boredom. | C．Duty | D．Attraction |
| A．Read to children every night. |
| B．Reconsider schools’ methods of teaching reading. |
| C．Give kids after-school reading task. |
| D．Encourage parents to introduce interesting books to kids. |
2 . If you like the idea of being able to read much faster, remember more easily, and being more creative, this list of Tony Buzan’s books might be inspirational to get you started.
Study Skills Handbook
This book does not focus only on reading efficiency but also covers the subjects of memory improvement and mind mapping. It is an absolute must for students of all ages.
Speed Reading
This popular book explains the principles of efficient reading. It allows you to improve your reading and retention (记忆力) skills immediately. The book gets right down to the practical matter of learning to read fast and remember what you have read.
The Mind Map Book
The Mind Map Book is a ground-breaking work on the basics of mind mapping suitable for everyone and introduces revolutionary techniques for planning and note-taking. It is one of Tony Buzan’s books that have taken the world by storm, selling more than 250 million copies. This guide will teach you how to use your brain properly and to maximum effect and additionally contains numerous practical exercises.
Use Your Head
Use Your Head is for those of you that feel as if you have not been able to reach your full potential. In this book, Tony Buzan teaches you how to think and learn from all possible sources of learning. You will also increase your creativity and your problem-solving abilities. Use Your Head has been translated into 27 different languages and is one of the most popular and best-selling Tony Buzan’s books on every continent. You will most certainly gain valuable advice on how to achieve your mental potential fully.
1. Which book can help students take better notes?| A．Study Skills Handbook. |
| B．The Mind Map Book. |
| C．Speed Reading. |
| D．Use Your Head. |
| A．It offers different sources of learning. |
| B．It is the best-selling book on every continent. |
| C．It helps solve problems in different languages. |
| D．It provides tips on reaching full mental potential. |
| A．Learning motivation. | B．Daily life skills. |
| C．Personal development. | D．Memory skills. |
| A．Borrow a book. | B．Buy a book on the Internet. | C．Return a book to the library. |
4 . Every child in Montana will have a chance to get free books from Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library which is in partnership with the state’s first lady, Susan Gianforte.
Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library is a book gifting program to improve childhood literacy and a love for reading. The program provides free age-appropriate (与年龄相符的) books to children from birth to age five, regardless of the money their family makes. By providing free books and improving early reading ability, the program hopes to improve educational outcomes and create a foundation (基础) for a lifelong love of learning in young children.
“I’m so excited to be starting my Imagination Library widely in Montana!” said Parton. “I want to send my very special thanks to first lady Susan Gianforte for her partnership in making this amazing gift available (可获得的) to children and families across the state.”
Parton’s Imagination Library will provide a free book each month to any Montana child, ages 0 to 5 years old, who is registered with the organization.
“The ability of reading and writing helps the kids a lot with their development. When parents read to their kids or when the kids read alone, books attract them, fire their imagination, and spark their curiosity,” Gianforte said.
1. What does the underlined word “literacy” in paragraph 2 mean?| A．The idea of sharing. |
| B．The habit of listening. |
| C．The skill of solving problems |
| D．The ability of reading and writing. |
| A．By selling books statewide. |
| B．By working together with Gianforte. |
| C．By improving their early reading ability. |
| D．By organizing learning activities for their parents. |
| A．4. | B．6. | C．7. | D．8. |
| A．It’s costly. | B．It’s important. | C．It’s difficult. | D．It’s doubtful. |
1. What does Joe probably prefer to read?
| A．Poems. | B．Horror fiction. | C．Science books. |
| A．Interesting. | B．Boring. | C．Meaningful. |
| A．Wednesday. | B．Thursday. | C．Saturday. |
6 . We don’t think with a pen and paper. We “think” with Google. We don’t even have to complete the search question ourselves. Google’s auto-complete function takes that burden off our shoulders by telling us what we should be searching for and what we should be thinking. We then sort through selected results to find the answer to life, the universe, and everything. This process gives us the false impression of thinking—when, in reality, we’ve lost touch with one of the most basic of human experiences.
Thinking for yourself isn’t just about reducing external inputs. It’s about making thought an intentional practice and thinking about an issue before researching it. It’s about forgetting the habit of immediately looking to others for answers and instead becoming curious about our own thoughts.
Deep thinking requires time. It’s only by concentrating on the problem or question long enough that you’ll dive deeper and locate better insights. Most of us resist setting aside time for deep thinking because it doesn’t produce immediate obvious results. But ideas, as the filmmaker David Lynch puts it, are like fish: “If you want to catch little fish, you can stay in the shallow water. But if you want to catch the big fish, you’ve got to go deeper.”
After you’ve gone deeper on a question by thinking about it yourself, turn to reading what others have written about it. But don’t pause your own thinking. The goal of reading isn’t just to understand. It’s to treat what you read as a tool-a key to unlocking what’s inside of you. Some of the best ideas that come up when I’m reading a book aren’t from the book. An idea I read will often knock out a related thought in me that was previously hidden. The text will act as a mirror, helping me see myself and my thoughts more clearly.
Breakthroughs lie—not in absorbing all the wisdom outside of you-but in uncovering the wisdom within you.
1. Why does the author mention Google in the first paragraph?| A．To compare it with pens and paper. | B．To stress its convenience to our life. |
| C．To give examples of its multi-function. | D．To remind us to do the real thinking. |
| A．Sharing your ideas online. | B．Asking questions about life. |
| C．Seeking answers from others. | D．Making intentional thoughts. |
| A．It is a waste of time. | B．It is worth the effort. |
| C．It requires basic skills. | D．It is widely accepted. |
| A．To find out ideas from books. | B．To fully absorb others’ wisdom. |
| C．To bring out our inner thoughts. | D．To understand the question better. |
7 . One day when I was 12, my mother gave me an order: I was to walk to the public library, and borrow at least one book for the summer. This was one more weapon for her to defeat my strange problem—inability to read.
In the library, I found my way into the “Children’s Room.” I sat down on the floor and pulled a few books off the shelf at random. The cover of a book caught my eye. It presented a picture of a beagle. I had recently had a beagle, the first and only animal companion I ever had as a child. He was my secret sharer, but one morning, he was gone, given away to some one who had the space and the money to care for him. I never forgot my beagle.
There on the book’s cover was a beagle which looked identical (相同的) to my dog. I ran my fingers over the picture of the dog on the cover. My eyes ran across the title, Amos, the Beagle with a Plan. Unknowingly, I had read the title. Without opening the book, I borrowed it from the library for the summer.
Under the shade of a bush, I started to read about Amos. I read very, very slowly with difficulty. Though pages were turned slowly, I got the main idea of the story about a dog who, like mine, had been separated from his family and who finally found his way back home. The dog was my dog, and I was the little boy in the book. At the end of the story, my mind continued the final scene of reunion, on and on, until my own lost dog and I were, in my mind, running together.
My mother’s call returned me to the real world. I suddenly realized something: I had read a book, and I had loved reading that book. Everyone knew I could not read. But I had read it. Books could be incredibly wonderful and I was going to read them.
I never told my mother about my “miraculous” (奇迹般的) experience that summer, but she saw a slow but remarkable improvement in my classroom performance during the next year. And years later, she was proud that her so n had read thousands of books, was awarded a PhD in literature, and authored his own books, articles, poetry and fiction. The power of the words was held.
1. The author’s mother told him to borrow a book in order to ______.| A．encourage him to do more walking | B．let him spend a meaningful summer |
| C．help cure him of his reading problems | D．make him learn more about weapons |
| A．it contained pretty pictures of animals | B．it reminded him of his own dog |
| C．he found its title easy to understand | D．he liked children’s stories very much |
| A．He was forced by his mother to read it. | B．The happy ending of the story attracted him. |
| C．The book told the story of his pet dog. | D．He identified with the story in the book. |
| A．The author has become a successful writer. | B．The author’s mother read the same book. |
| C．The author’s mother rewarded him with books. | D．The author has had happy summers ever since. |
8 . No summer is complete without a good book in your hand. Here are some of the best books of this season and YOU WON’T WANT TO MISS A WORD!
Re-Making the American Dream
By David Vaught www.authorhouse.com
Hardback | Paperback | E-book $23.99 | $12.99 | $4.99
The U. S. Military Academy at West Point’s mission is “to educate, train, and inspire the corps of cadets (军训生)”. The challenge by cadets to its requirement arose from the values of the American Dream and also re-made them through the resulting events.
The History of College Nicknames, Mascots and School Colors
By Gary Hudson www.xlibris.com
Hardback | Paperback | E-book $29.99 | $19.99 | $3.99
College nicknames are fun. They are filled with history and if you ask 10 people how the nickname came about, you are more than likely to get several different answers. The History of College Nicknames, Mascots and School Colors explains the history behind them.
WWII+V
By Johan Zwaan www.xlibris.com
Hardback | Paperback | E-book $29.99 | $18.99 | $6.99
1,500 troops. 7,000 ships. 4,000 American and British people died. Johan Zwaan narrates his memories of war as a kid 75 years after witnessing the Normandy invasion. The book has been translated into different languages and is a prize-winner.
Have Knife, Will Travel
By Hugh Cameron www.authorhouse.com
Hardback | Paperback | E-book $19.99 | $12.99 | $3.99
A story of the development of artificial joint replacement, and how a band of surgeons known as Traveling Road Show crossed the world teaching this new technology to thousands of other surgeons.
1. What is The History of College Nicknames, Mascots and School Colors mainly about?| A．Tips on naming schools. |
| B．Facts about college nicknames. |
| C．Opinions about education systems. |
| D．History of artificial joint replacement. |
| A．David Vaught. | B．Gary Hudson. |
| C．Johan Zwaan. | D．Hugh Cameron. |
| A．They both cost $12.99 for paperbacks. |
| B．They are both available on www.libris.com. |
| C．They are both about touching wartime stories. |
| D．They are both translated into different languages. |
1. 你的选择;
2. 你的理由。
注意：1. 写作词数应为80个左右，开头结尾已给出，不计入总词数;
2. 可以适当增加细节，以使行文连贯;
3. 参考词汇：原版original version;改写版adapted version
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10 . A recent survey said an average Chinese adult read less than eight books a year. Some of us would find it hard to remember the last time we read in a bookstore. To keep their appeal, some bookstores are now bigger, more beautiful and grander.
Librairie Avant-Garde, Nanjing
As a cultural icon in Nanjing, Librairie Avant-Garde is a must-see for both book lovers and travelers. The bookshop was listed among the world’s most beautiful bookshops by BBC in 2014. The 4,000-square-meter store, founded in 1996, now sits in an underground parking lot, housing more than 300, 000 books, mainly philosophy, literature, history and art.
Eslite, Suzhou
The Taiwan-based Eslite opened its first branch on the Chinese mainland in Suzhou, due to its popularity among book lovers. The store houses over 500,000 books, of which one-third are from Taiwan. It’s also famous for varied creative cultural products. Wandering inside, you may get lost which books and delicate cups to buy.
Liyuan Library, Beijing
Located in mountains of Huairou on the suburbs of Beijing, the Liyuan Library is a comfortable place to escape from the crowded urban life in Beijing. It houses over 10,000 books ranging from works of literature and art to history and philosophy. The most outstanding part in its structure is that the walls and roof of the 170-square-meter library are covered with 40,000 firewood sticks.
Fang Suo Commune, Guangzhou
The Fang Suo Commune is a 2, 000-square-meter place for reading, relaxing and shopping in downtown Guangzhou, South China’s Guangdong province. The store houses over 90, 000 publications from both China and abroad, covering mainly designing, architecture, literature and arts.
1. Which bookstore has the largest collection of books?| A．Eslite. | B．Liyuan Library. |
| C．Librairie Avant-Garde. | D．Fang Suo Commune. |
| A．It attracts only book lovers. | B．It has branches nationwide. |
| C．It rose to fame internationally. | D．It sits in an open parking lot. |
| A．They both hold books from abroad. | B．They are both suitable for relaxation. |
| C．They are both located in downtown areas. | D．They both have unique structures. |
