Every day we go to school and listen to the teacher, and the teacher will ask us some questions. Sometimes, the classmates will ask for your opinions of the work of the class. When you are telling others in the class what you have found out about these topics, remember that they must be able to hear what you are saying. You are not taking part in a family conversation or having a chat with friends— they will remain silent, waiting to hear what you have to say. In the class, you must speak so that they can hear you—loudly enough and clearly enough but without trying to shout or appearing to force yourself.
Remember, too, that it is the same if you are called to an interview whether it is with a professor of your school or a government official who might meet you. The person you are seeing will try to put you at your ease (not worried) but the situation is somewhat different from that of an ordinary conversation. You must take special care that you can be heard.
41. Usually, when you speak to the class, the class is____________.
16．noisy B. quiet C. having a rest D. serious
42. The situation in the class is _____than in your house.
A.not very different from B. sometimes the same as
C. sometimes not different from D. not the same as
43. If you are having a conversation with an official, the most important thing for you is _________.
A. to show your ability B. to be very gentle
C. to make sure that you can be heard D. to put the official at ease
44. The main idea of the passage is _________.
A.that we should not talk in different ways in different situations
17．that we must speak loudly to make ourselves heard when stating our opinions in serious situations
18．that we must keep silent at any time
19．that we must talk with the class
When I was growing up, I had an old neighbor named Doctor Gibbs. He didn't look like any doctor I'd ever known. He never yelled at us for playing in his yard, but was always very kind.
When Doctor Gibbs wasn't saving lives, he was planting trees. He had some interesting theories about planting trees. He believed in the principle: "No pain, no gain". He hardly watered his new trees, an attitude which flew in the face of conventional wisdom.
Once I asked why and he told me that watering plants spoiled them because it made them grow weaker. He said you had to make things tough for the trees so that only the strongest could survive. He talked about how watering trees made them develop shallow roots and how, if they were not watered, trees would grow deep roots in search of water.
So, instead of watering his trees every morning, he'd beat them with a rolled-up newspaper. I asked him why he did that, and he said it was to get the tree's attention.
Doctor Gibbs died a couple of years after I left home. Every now and then, I walked by his house and looked at the trees that I'd watched him plant some 25 years ago. They were tall and strong.
I planted a couple of trees myself a few years ago. Two years of attending these trees meant they grew up weak. Whenever a cold wind blew, their branches trembled. Adversity seemed to benefit Doctor Gibb's trees in ways comfort and ease never could.
Every night before I go to bed, I check on my two sons. I often pray that their lives will be easy. But lately I've been thinking that it's time to change my prayer. I know my children are going to encounter hardship. There's always a cold wind blowing somewhere. What we need to do is to pray for deep roots, so when the rains fall and the winds blow, we won't be torn apart.With the trees planted, Doctor Gibbs often______.
| A．kept watering them every morning |
| B．talked to them to get their attention |
| C．paid little attention to them |
| D．beat them to make them grow deep roots |
What does the underlined word "Adversity" mean in the sixth paragraph?
| A．Difficult living conditions. |
| B．Lack of moisture. |
| C．Enough care or attention. |
| D．Bad weather. |
Which prayer does the author wish for his sons?
| A．Have an easy life, without too much to worry about. |
| B．Be able to stand the rain and wind in their lives. |
| C．Have good luck, encountering less hardship in their life. |
| D．Meet people like Dr Gibbs in the future. |
Mum, it’s me. Hopefully, this Mothering Sunday you will get to hear those three words. I will, of course, try to phone you. I hope we will be able to speak for the allowed 10 minutes. But I suspect many inmates will be using the phone, so if I don’t call and if we don’t speak, then this is what I would have said:
It’s not your fault that I am here. I know that deep in your heart you have questioned whether my current circumstance is somehow your fault, if the reckless stupidity of my past is somehow a failure on your part. It is not. Only one person is to blame, only one person should hurt — me. You have always taught me that when the room goes dark, you can wait for the lights to be switched back on or you can search in the dark and turn the light on yourself. You are my light. You always have been and always will be. There is nobody I admire more, nobody I have strived harder to please in my life, which is why my current failure hurts me so much.
I am so sorry that I will not be there to see you, but I want you to know that now, as always, you are here with me. In my darkest hours, and in the coldest loneliness of my past few months, my mind has so often wandered to the past, to when it was you and me — and I have been able to smile. Yours is the strength that I draw upon.
A parent’s job is to make sure that they pass on the best of themselves to their children. You have done that. It is the inner you in me that will get me through this.
I have failed you so epically, but you have never failed me. If I think back to the tears I shed when Dad left, all those years ago, I see you through their misty glaze. You holding me and you telling me we’d be OK, and we will be. We are and always will be the best team.
Childhood heroes such as footballers, actors and rock stars are clichéd. If the job’s done right, a child’s heroes should be their parents — you are mine. The strength you showed after the divorce from Dad to find your biological parents, to go to university and get your teaching qualifications, to begin your life again, is the strength that I draw on now. It is the belief in myself, it is the belief you have in me, that tells me that once I am released I can and will rebuild my life. I will make you proud again. I will make you happy to have me as your son. Yours is the will that gets me through every day.
I don’t believe you can judge a person for the mistakes they make, as we all make them, but you can judge them for what they do afterwards. And after this, when it is all over, you will still have a son with the same hopes and dreams. They have not diminished. If you can dream it, then you have to believe it can happen — right?
So this Mothering Sunday, please think back to that morning in the 80s, the first Mother’s Day without Dad, when a six-year-old me got up early and made breakfast for you. Do you remember it? Could you ever forget? A slice of bread a doorstep thick and a wedge of cheese equally dense. You didn’t have to eat it, but you did, chewing every dry mouthful. I know now why you forced yourself — because it had been made with love. Well, things don’t change this year — this letter is that bread and cheese (it sure has plenty of the cheese!).
I love you so much. I am sorry I have let you down, but you have taught me that we will always pick ourselves up and become better than we were before. Thank you for everything and this year, more than ever:
Happy Mothering Sunday.
Love, your sonAccording to the passage, what made the author most upset at present?
| A．Losing his freedom temporarily. |
| B．Being unable to phone his mother. |
| C．Failing to live up to his mother’s expectations. |
| D．Having no chance to spend the weekend with mother. |
What does the underlined word “this” in Paragraph 4 refer to?
| A．Mothering Sunday. | B．Dark time. |
| C．His mistake. | D．Near future. |
What did the author do in the loneliness of his past months？
| A．He summed up the causes of the failure in his life. |
| B．He planned to help his mother find her birth parents. |
| C．He recalled the fond memories of being with his mother. |
| D．He prepared himself to go to university for further studies. |
Which of the following is closest in meaning to the underlined word “clichéd” in Paragraph 6?
| A．Ridiculous. | B．Liberal. |
| C．Explicit. | D．Common. |
Which of the following can best describe the author’s mother?
| A．Selfless but stubborn. | B．Guilty but determined. |
| C．Selfish but responsible. | D．Caring but envious. |
Exercise seems to be good for the human brain, with many recent studies suggesting that regular exercise improves memory and thinking skills. But an interesting new study asks whether the apparent cognitive benefits from exercise are real or just a placebo effect — that is, if we think we will be “smarter” after exercise, do our brains respond accordingly? The answer has significant implications for any of us hoping to use exercise to keep our minds sharp throughout our lives.
While many studies suggest that exercise may have cognitive benefits, recently some scientists have begun to question whether the apparently beneficial effects of exercise on thinking might be a placebo effect. So researchers at Florida State University in Tallahassee and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign decided to focus on expectations, on what people anticipate that exercise will do for thinking. If people’s expectations jibe (吻合) closely with the actual benefits, then at least some of those improvements are probably a result of the placebo effect and not of exercise.
For the new study, which was published last month in PLOS One, the researchers recruited 171 people through an online survey system, they asked half of these volunteers to estimate by how much a stretching and toning regimens (拉伸运动) performed three times a week might improve various measures of thinking. The other volunteers were asked the same questions, but about a regular walking program.
In actual experiments, stretching and toning program generally have little if any impact on people’s cognitive skills. Walking, on the other hand, seems to substantially improve thinking ability.
But the survey respondents believed the opposite, estimating that the stretching and toning program would be more beneficial for the mind than walking. The estimates of benefits from walking were lower.
These data, while they do not involve any actual exercise, are good news for people who do exercise. “The results from our study suggest that the benefits of aerobic exercise are not a placebo effect,” said Cary Stothart, a graduate student in cognitive psychology at Florida State University, who led the study.
If expectations had been driving the improvements in cognition seen in studies after exercise, Mr. Stothart said, then people should have expected walking to be more beneficial for thinking than stretching. They didn’t, implying that the changes in the brain and thinking after exercise are physiologically genuine.
The findings are strong enough to suggest that exercise really does change the brain and may, in the process, improve thinking, Mr. Stothart said. That conclusion should encourage scientists to look even more closely into how, at a molecular level, exercise remodels the human brain, he said. It also should encourage the rest of us to move, since the benefits are, it seems, not imaginary, even if they are in our head.Which of the following about the placebo effect is TRUE according to the passage?
| A．It occurs during exercise. |
| B．It has cognitive benefits. |
| C．It is just a mental reaction. |
| D．It is a physiological response. |
Why did the researchers at the two universities conduct the research?
| A．To discover the placebo effect in the exercise. |
| B．To prove the previous studies have a big drawback. |
| C．To test whether exercise can really improve cognition. |
| D．To encourage more scientists to get involved in the research. |
What can we know about the research Cary Stothart and his team carried out?
| A．They employed 171 people to take part in the actual exercise. |
| B．The result of the research removed the recent doubt of some scientists. |
| C．The participants thought walking had a greater impact on thinking ability. |
| D．Their conclusion drives scientists to do research on the placebo effect. |
What might be the best title for the passage?
| A．Is it necessary for us to take exercise? |
| B．How should people exercise properly? |
| C．What makes us smarter during exercise? |
| D．Does exercise really make us smarter? |
According to figures released by the Office for National Statistics (ONS), the U.K. has about 7.7 million families with dependent children, of which 3.7 million have just one child, compared to 3 million with two and 1.1 million with three children or more. The number of families today with just one dependent child is now 47 percent and will likely rise to more than 50 percent in a decade. As the ONS confirms, “It appears that families are getting smaller.”
One obvious reason for this could be that women are putting off having children until they have established careers when they are bound to be less fertile. But it could just as well be a matter of choice. Parents must consider the rising cost of living, combined with economic uncertainty and an increasingly difficult job market. And this trend may continue growing as having an only child becomes more normal, which seems to be the mood on the mothers’ online forum Mumsnet, where one member announced that she “just wanted to start a positive thread about how fab it is to have an only child”.
She had received 231 replies, overwhelmingly in the same upbeat spirit. Parents of only children insist there are plenty of benefits. Nicola Kelly, a writer and lecturer who grew up as an only child and is now a married mother of one, says her 15-year-old son seems more grown-up in many ways than his contemporaries.
Not all products of single-child families are as keen to repeat the experience. In a moving recent account journalist Janice Turner wrote about her own keenness to “squeeze out two sons just 22 months apart” as a reaction to her only-child upbringing.
She was placed on a pedestal by her doting parents, whom she punished with a “brattish, wilful” rejection of everything they stood for. Desperate for a close friend she was repeatedly shattered by rejection and refers to her childhood as being “misery”.
Writer and clinician Dr. Dorothy Rowe, a member of the British Psychological Society, says that we all interpret events in our own individual way and there are some children who no matter what their circumstances feel slighted, while other children see the advantages of their situation.
However, the one part of life that is unlikely to get any easier for only children is when they grow up and find themselves looking after their own parents as they become older.The passage is written with the purpose of ________.
| A．illustrating the strength and weakness of having an only child |
| B．analyzing the reasons why having an only child becomes popular |
| C．presenting us with different opinions about having an only child |
| D．guiding people to look at the same issue from different perspectives |
What does the underlined sentence in Paragraph 4 mean?
| A．Nearly half of families intend to have just one child. |
| B．All people don’t stand for the idea of having an only child. |
| C．Some people fail to recognize the advantage of having an only child. |
| D．People brought up in an only child family resist downsizing the family. |
From what Dr. Dorothy Rowe said, we know that ________.
| A．journalist Janice Turner experienced a miserable childhood |
| B．she has a positive attitude towards Janice Turner’s reaction |
| C．it’s necessary for us to look at the event from our own angle |
| D．some are unable to make an objective assessment of their conditions |
What can be inferred from the passage?
| A．It’s normal to see the imperfection in character in only children. |
| B．Mumsnet is an online forum which promotes having an only child. |
| C．Economic development plays a determining role in the family size. |
| D．Only children will have difficulty in attending to their parents. |
Which of the following is TRUE according to the passage?
| A．The voyage through the wormhole is a considerable challenge. |
| B．A team of crime-fighters uncovers a criminal plot in Big Hero. |
| C．President Coin pushes Katniss to protest Peeta. |
| D．Penguins have to wrestle with problems in District 13. |
The similarity that exists in the four films is that ________.
| A．each of them is a branch of film series |
| B．all of them are concerned with positive energy |
| C．they all have the best actors and actresses in the world |
| D．the four films all have something to do with exploration |
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