One day I heard that one of my dear friends had lost his mother. This made me sad, for my friend was very close to his mother. He had been by her side as she traveled through her long and hard journey with cancer. At this time, many memories about my loved ones that had passed away came flooding to me. Finally these memories passed, but it was really sad to think that my friend would have to go through the pain.
Three times I tried to write an email to my friend and three times words failed me. I am a person who is not often lost for words and I decided to have a sleep. Upon waking up I could hardly wait for my computer to work, the words I needed were there. I was still left with a heavy heart although I had sent an email.
Everything in this universe is balanced and indeed it is. Three days later, I received his reply letter. I was happy to hear that he’d been admitted to (录取) Cambridge University. It served as a gentle reminder for me that my friend would be okay and that life would go on.
Everything in life is balanced; the lowest feelings change places with the highest feelings. Without the lows, we would never appreciate the highs. No matter how dark the clouds seem to be, the sunshine is always there and just waiting for the opportunity to shine through. When the author learnt her friend had lost his mother, she ______.
| A．gave him some money |
| B．wrote an email to him |
| C．went to visit him |
| D．went for a journey with him |
What good news did the author’s friend receive?
| A．He received the author’s email. |
| B．He was told that life would go on. |
| C．He would go to Cambridge University. |
| D．His life would go back to normal again |
Which of the following is TRUE according to the text?
| A．The author wrote four emails to her friend. |
| B．The mother of the author’s friend died from cancer. |
| C．The author’s friend is a teacher in Cambridge University. |
| D．The author felt relaxed after sending the email. |
From the text, we can learn that the author is ______.
| A．sincere and warm-hearted |
| B．proud and confident |
| C．serious and friendly |
| D．funny and responsible |
The author aims to tell us that ______.
| A．life is not fair to everybody |
| B．time waits for no man |
| C．everyone has good and bad times in life |
| D．where there is a will, there is a way |
A daughter’s duty? Adult daughters are often expected to caregiver for older parents. In 2007, Jorjan Sarich and her dad moved from California to Idaho. It was where he wanted to live his rest time.
“I left my occupation, I left my friends; he did the same thing,” said Sarich, who bought a house with her father, George Snyder, in the China Gardens neighborhood of Hailey after his health began to decline. Though a graduate student struggling to finish her dissertation（论文）, Sarich chose to be her dad’s full-time caregiver.
“It’s only now, several years later, that I’m realizing how much work it was. It’s the kind of exhaustion（疲惫）that sleep doesn’t cure,” she said.
About 6 million Americans provide care to elderly relatives or friends living outside of nursing homes. Laurel Kennedy, author of “The Daughter Trap” (Thomas Dunne Books, $25.95), says that women bear a disproportionate（不成比例的）share of the burden — about 70 percent of hands-on care giving such as bathing.
“I want to be clear: Women don’t hate this,” Kennedy said. “What they hate is that everyone just assumes they’ll do it.”
Kennedy is calling for a social revolution equal to the rise of affordable child care and day care: Employers should help working caregivers by offering accommodations. Men should step up more often. It’s unfair that women are always chosen to provide care for an elderly family member.
Despite the hard work it took on Sarich — interrupted sleep and the knowledge that his 2009 death was the end game, she would do it again. Since about half a century had gone by, she wasn’t the person he remembered, and he wasn’t the person she remembered either. Caring for her father changed how each saw the other. Why did Jorjan Sarich caregiver for her father?
| A．It was a very easy job. | B．She had no work to do. |
| C．It was the social practice. | D．She lived with her father. |
What can we infer from the book “The Daughter Trap”?
| A．Daughters don’t like care giving. |
| B．Daughters devote a lot to care giving. |
| C．Care giving is daughters’ duty. |
| D．Care giving should be sons’ duty. |
What does the underlined phrase “a social revolution” refer to?
| A．The child care revolution. | B．The reform in day care. |
| C．The social development. | D．The change in care giving. |
How many years did Jorjan Sarich work as her father’s full-time caregiver?
| A．Five years. | B．Only one year. | C．Four years. | D．Two years. |
In her care giving, Jorjan Sarich _____.
| A．got along well with her father | B．was a little tired of her father |
| C．changed her father in every way | D．felt it was unfair to do so |
The common cold is the world's most widespread illness, which is plagues(疫病) that flesh receives.
The most widespread fallacy(谬误) of all is that colds are caused by cold. They are not. They are caused by viruses passing on from person to person. You catch a cold by coming into contact, directly or indirectly, with someone who already has one. If cold causes colds, it would be reasonable to expect the Eskimos to suffer from them forever. But they do not. And in isolated Arctic regions explorers have reported being free from colds until coming into contact again with infected people from the outside world by way of packages and mail dropped from airplanes.
During the First World War soldiers who spent long periods in the trenches(战壕), cold and wet, showed no increased tendency to catch colds.
In the Second World War prisoners at the notorious Auschwitz Concentration Camp(奥斯维辛集中营), naked and starving, were astonished to find that they seldom had colds. At the Common Cold Research Unit in England, volunteers took part in Experiments in which they gave themselves to the discomforts of being cold and wet for long stretches of time. After taking hot baths, they put on bathing suits, allowed themselves to be with cold water, and then stood about dripping wet in drafty room. Some wore wet socks all day while others exercised in the rain until close to exhaustion. Not one of the volunteers came down with a cold unless a cold virus was actually dropped in his nose.
If, then, cold and wet have nothing to do with catching colds, why are they more frequent in the winter? Despite the most pains-taking research, no one has yet found the answer. One explanation offered by scientists is that people tend to stay together indoors more in cold weather than at other times, and this makes it easier for cold viruses to be passed on.
No one has yet found a cure for the cold. There are drugs and pain suppressors(止痛片) such as aspirin, but all they do is relieve the symptoms. Which of the following does not agree with the chosen passage?
| A．The Eskimos do not suffer from colds all the time. |
| B．Colds are not caused by cold. |
| C．People suffer from colds just because they like to stay indoors. . . |
| D．A person may catch a cold by touching someone who already has one. |
Arctic explorers may catch colds when .
| A．they are working in the isolated arctic regions |
| B．they are writing reports in terribly cold weather |
| C．they are free from work in the isolated arctic regions |
| D．they are coming into touch again with the outside world |
Volunteers taking part in the experiments in the Common Cold Research Unit .
| A．suffered a lot | B．never caught colds | C．often caught colds | D．became very strong |
The passage mainly discusses .
| A．the experiments on the common cold | B．the fallacy about the common cold |
| C．the reason and the way people catch colds | D．the continued spread of common colds |
YOUR mom might cook a bowl of noodle for you on birthday. But in the US, a mom makes a cupcake for her children on their birthday.
Cupcakes are small, round cakes topped with frosting. It has been an American tradition that moms bring cupcakes to celebrate their child’s birthday.
But recently some doctors have called for this to be banned. They believe cupcakes contribute to child obesity.
Despite their good intentions, however, some people believe that experts are interfering with American culture. The cupcakes is seen as American as apple pie only prettier.
According to Marion Nestle, a professor of nutrition at New York university, the cupcakes is the most democratic of desserts. As they are small enough for one person, you don’t have go share your cupcake with anyone –it’s all yours. They are also all the same size, so there can’t be any cries of “she got the bigger piece!”
Each bite can taste different depending on how much icing you have. It is a lesson in self determination. Some people eat only a little of the frosting every time, other have it all in just one bite.
In recent years, eating a cupcake has become as trendy as having a cup of Starbucks coffee.
Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton jokingly promised on a talk show that if she was elected president, a he would give everyone a cupcake on her birthday.
Ruth Reichl, editor---in----chief of gourmet magazine, explains that the rise of the cupcake is very much about going buck to American national identity in food, which is all about comfort. “People want to about when they and their country were innocent,” she said.According to the passage, it has been an American tradition that_______.
| A．a party for children is held on their birthday |
| B．A mom cooks a bowl of noodles for her children on their birthday |
| C．A mom makes a cupcake for her children on their birthday and brings it to the classroom |
| D．parents go traveling with their children on their birthday |
Why do doctors ask people to ban cupcake on children’s birthday?
| A．Because they themselves don’t like cupcake |
| B．Because they think cupcakes are not so delicious |
| C．Because they believe cupcakes will cause cries of “she got the bigger piece”. |
| D．Because they believe cupcakes are one of the causes to make children become fat. |
The following are true according to Marion Nestle expect that ______
| A．the cupcake is more democratic than any other deserts in the US |
| B．the cupcake is too small to share with others |
| C．the sizes of cupcakes are the same so it is equal to everyone |
| D．cupcakes will lead to child obesity so they should be banned |
Why did the writer mention Hillary Clinton and Ruth Reichl?
| A．To arouse the readers’ attention |
| B．To show that cupcakes are becoming a popular to show kindness and comfort. |
| C．To make a comparison between them |
| D．To give readers a general idea of cupcakes |
To what degree can a computer achieve intelligence? The answer to this question may lie in a newly-developed US computer program called Smarter Child and the Internet.
If you ran into Smarter Child online, you would be surprised at this kid’s huge memory. It can recite many facts. For example, Smarter Child knows every baseball player in every team this season.
He knows every word in the dictionary and the weather in every major city areas across the US. However, if you ask Smarter Child other questions, you get strange answers. A question about Smarter Child’s age returns. “One year, 11 days, 16 hours, 7 minutes, and 47 seconds!” Asking where he lives，you get, “In a clean room in a high-tech building in California.”
Smarter Child uses the vast information on the World Wide Web as his memory bank. To answer questions about spelling, for instance, Smarter Child goes to American Heritage Dictionary online. For the weather, he visits www.intellicast.com.
Some scientists believe that by joining the many systems of the Internet, an artificial being with the combined knowledge of, say, Albert Einstein, Richard Nixon and Britney Spears can be born. However, if Smarter Child wants to think and learn on his own like the boy-computer David in the movie A. I. (Artificial Intelligence), he must overcome two problems.
The first is that computers find it difficult to read web pages because the files are labeled in different ways. That’s why programmers need to tell Smarter Child where to look for the weather. It would be a much more difficult task to let him find it himself.
Another problem is that while Smarter Child can process information more exactly and faster than any human, he lacks common sense—a basic grounding of knowledge that is obvious to any young child. From the text we can infer that www.intellicast.com is a website .
| A．which is specially designed to help Smarter Child |
| B．where we people can find Smarter Child |
| C．where weather forecasts are made |
| D．which is about artificial intelligence |
It is probably most difficult for Smarter Child to .
| A．tell us how to spell a difficult word |
| B．tell us how the American government is run |
| C．provide us with a famous poem by Shakespeare |
| D．learn the ability to tell right behaviors from wrong ones |
Which of the following is TRUE according to the text?
A. Smart Child has his own memory bank big enough for all kinds of information.
B. A.I. (Artificial Intelligence) is probably the name of a film about a boy-computer.
C. Smart Child can recognize different files and find information needed on his own.
D. We have similar product now which has the knowledge of Einstein, Nixon and Spears.Which of the following is the best title for the passage?
| A．A New Web Child | B．Smarter Child |
| C．The Future of Internet | D．Intelligence Development |
People in the United States honor their parents with two special days: Mother’s Day, on the second Sunday in May, and Father’s Day, on the third Sunday in June. These days are set aside to show love and respect for parents. They raise their children and educate them to be responsible citizens. They give love and care. These two days offer a chance to think about the changing roles of mothers and fathers. More mothers now work outside the home. More fathers must help with child-care.
These two special days are celebrated in many different ways. On Mother’s Day people wear carnations. A red one stands for a living mother. A white one shows that the mother is dead. Many people attend religious services to honor parents. It is also a day when people whose parents are dead visit their graves. On these days, families get together at home and in restaurants. They often have outdoor BBQs for Father’s Day. These are days of fun and good feelings and memories.
Another tradition is to give cards and gifts. Children make them in school. Many people make their own presents. These are valued more than the ones bought in stores. It is not the value of the gift that is important, but it is “the thought that counts”. Greeting card stores, florists, candy makers, bakeries, telephones companies and other stores do a lot of business during these holidays. Which is NOT a reason for children to show love and respect for parents?
| A．Parents bring up children. |
| B．Parents give love and care to children. |
| C．Parents pass away before children grow up. |
| D．Parents educate children to be good persons. |
What do you know from the passage?
| A．Mother’s Day and Father’s Day are both in May. |
| B．Not all the children respect their parents. |
| C．Fewer women worked outside the home in the past. |
| D．Fathers are not as important as mothers at home. |
Which do you think is right about “carnation”?
| A．It only has two kinds of color. |
| B．It is a special kind of clothes people wear on Mother’s Day or Father’s Day. |
| C．People can wear carnations only on the second Sunday in June. |
| D．It’s a kind of flower showing love and best wishes. |
What do you think “florists” do?
| A．They sell flowers. |
| B．They made bread. |
| C．They offer enough room for having family parties. |
| D．They sell special clothes for Mother’s Day and Father’s Day. |
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