Once again, I was in a new school. So was a girl in my class named Paris. That's where the similarities ended.
I was tall and she was small. My thick, black hair had been recently cut short. Her natural blonde hair flowed to her waist and looked great. I was awkward and shy. She wasn't. I couldn't stand her. I considered her my enemy. She liked me. She wanted to be friends.
One day, she invited me over and I said yes — I was too shocked to answer any other way. No one had invited me over to play. But this girl who wore the latest fashions wanted me to go home with her after school.
I got very surprised when she led me into an apartment building. She lived on the fourth floor in a two-room place with her mother, her stepfather, her two brothers and her sister.
When we got to the room she shared with her sister, she took out a big case of Barbies — which was my next surprise. I would have thought she'd outgrown them. I had never played with them. But we sat on the floor of a walk-in closet, laughing as we made up crazy stories about the Barbies. That's when we found out that we both wanted to be writers when we were older and we both had wild imaginations.
We had a great day that afternoon. Our jaws ached from smiling so much. She showed me her wardrobe, which had mostly come from a designer clothing store down the block. The woman who owned it used her as a model sometimes for her newspaper ads and gave her clothes in exchange.
Paris had the whole neighborhood charmed. The bookstore owners lent her fashion magazines, the movie theater gave her free passes and the pizza place let her have free slices. Soon I was included in her magic world. We slept over at each other's houses, spent every free moment together. My dark hair grew out and I learned to love being tall.
Paris, my first real friend since childhood, taught me an amazing and very surprising thing about making friends: that your worst enemy can turn out to be your best friend.The writer and Paris were similar in that .
| A．they were both new students |
| B．both of them were friendly |
| C．both of them were tall |
| D．they were both the youngest in class |
In the article the writer described Paris as a girl who was .
| A．awkward and shy | B．fashionable and proud |
| C．quiet and lonely | D．friendly and lovely |
What did the writer learn from Paris?
| A．How to make best use of her neighborhood. |
| B．How to dress and look fashionable. |
| C．How to become a good writer |
| D．How to make friends. |
From the article, we can see that through her friendship with Paris, the writer .
| A．found she and Paris had more similarities than differences |
| B．was able to fit in at her new school with Paris’ help |
| C．was not so awkward or shy as before |
| D．learned more about fashion herself |
Some people believe that a Robin Hood is at work, others that a wealthy person simply wants to distribute his or her fortune before dying. But the donator who started sending envelopes with cash to deserving causes，accompanied by an article from the local paper, has made a northern German city believe in fairytales (童话）
The first envelope was sent to a victim support group. It contained €10,000 with a cutting from the Braunschtveiger Zeitung about how the group supported a woman who was robbed of her handbag； similar plain white anonymous (匿名）envelopes, each containing €10,000, then arrived at a kindergarten and a church.
The envelopes keep coming, and so far at least €190,000 has been distributed. Last month, one of them was sent to the newspaper's own office. It came after a story it published about Tom, a 14-year-old boy who was severely disabled in a swimming accident. The receptionist at the Braunschweiger Zeitung opened an anonymous white envelope to find 20 notes of €500 inside , with a copy of the article. The name of the family was underlined.
"I was driving when I heard the news," Claudia Neumann, the boy's mother, told DerSpiegel magazine. "I had to park on the side of the road； I was speechless. "
The money will be used to make the entrance to their house wheelchair-accessible .and for a course of treatment that their insurance company refused to pay for.
"For someone to act so selflessly, for this to happen in such a society in which everyone thinks of himself, was astonishing," Mrs. Neumann said. Her family wonder whether the donator is a Robin Hood character, taking from banks to give to the needy.
Henning Noske, the editor of the Braunschweiger Zeitung, said： "Maybe it is an old person who is about to die. We just do not know. " However, he has told his reporters not to look for the city's hero, for fear that discovery may stop the donations.
| 1． |
The Braunschweiger Zeitung is the name of.
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| 2． |
Which of the following is TRUE about the donation to Tom?
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| 3． |
It can be inferred from the passage that.
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| 4． |
What would be the best title for the passage?
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Brrriiinnng. The alarm clock announces the start of another busy weekday in the morning. You jump out of bed, rush into the shower, into your clothes and out the door with hardly a moment to think. A stressful journey to work gets your blood pressure climbing. Once at the office, you glance through the newspaper with depressing stories or reports of disasters. In that sort of mood, who can get down to work, particularly some creative, original problem-solving work?
The way most of us spend our mornings is exactly opposite to the conditions that promote flexible, open-minded thinking. Imaginative ideas are most likely to come to us when we’re unfocused. If you are one of those energetic morning people, your most inventive time comes in the early evening when you are relaxed. Sleepy people’s lack of focus leads to an increase in creative problem solving. By not giving yourself time to tune into your wandering mind, you’re missing out on the surprising solutions it may offer.
The trip you take to work doesn’t help, either. The stress slows down the speed with which signals travel between neurons (神经细胞), making inspirations less likely to occur. And while we all should read a lot about what’s going on in the world, it would not make you feel good for sure, so put that news website or newspaper aside until after the day’s work is done.
So what would our mornings look like if we wanted to start them with a full capacity for creative problem solving? We’d set the alarm a few minutes early and lie awake in bed, following our thoughts where they lead. We’d stand a little longer under the warm water of the shower, stopping thinking about tasks in favor of a few more minutes of relaxation. We’d take some deep breaths on our way to work, instead of complaining about heavy traffic. And once in the office—after we get a cup of coffee—we’d click on links not to the news of the day but to the funniest videos the web has to offer. According to the author, we are more creative when we are _______.
| A．focused |
| B．relaxed |
| C．awake |
| D．busy |
What does the author imply about newspapers?
| A．They are solution providers. |
| B．They are a source of inspiration. |
| C．They are normally full of bad news. |
| D．They are more educational than websites. |
By “tune into your wandering mind” (in Para. 2), the author means “_______”.
| A．wander into the wild |
| B．listen to a beautiful tune |
| C．switch to the traffic channel |
| D．stop concentrating on anything |
The author writes the last paragraph in order to _______.
| A．offer practical suggestions |
| B．summarize past experiences |
| C．advocate diverse ways of life |
| D．establish a routine for the future |
How is it that siblings (兄弟姐妹) can turn out so differently? One answer is that in fact each sibling grows up in a different family. The firstborn is, for a while, an only child, and therefore has a completely different experience of the parents than those born later. The next child is, for a while, the youngest, until the situation is changed by a new arrival. The mother and father themselves are changing and growing up too. One sibling might live in a stable and close family in the first few years; another might be raised in a family crisis, with a disappointed mother or an angry father.
Sibling competition was identified as an important shaping force as early as in 1918. But more recently, researchers have found many ways in which brothers and sisters are a lasting force in each others’ lives. Dr. Annette Henderson says firstborn children pick up vocabulary more quickly than their siblings. The reason for this might be that the later children aren’t getting the same one-on-one time with parents. But that doesn’t mean that the younger children have problems with language development. Later-borns don’t enjoy that much talking time with parents, but instead they harvest lessons from bigger brothers and sisters, learning entire phrases and getting an understanding of social concepts such as the difference between “I” and “me”.
A Cambridge University study of 140 children found that siblings created a rich world of play that helped them grow socially. Love-hate relationships were common among the children. Even those siblings who fought the most had just as much positive communication as the other sibling pairs.
One way children seek more attention from parents is by making themselves different from their siblings, particularly if they are close in age. Researchers have found that the first two children in a family are typically more different from each other than the second and third. Girls with brothers show their differences to a maximum degree by being more feminine than girls with sisters. A 2003 research paper studied adolescents from 185 families over two years, finding that those who changed to make themselves different from their siblings were successful in increasing the amount of warmth they gained from their parents. The underlined part “in a different family” (in Para. 1) means “_______”.
| A．in a different family environment |
| B．in a different family tradition |
| C．in different family crises |
| D．in different families |
In terms of language development, later-borns ________.
| A．get their parents’ individual guidance |
| B．learn a lot from their elder siblings |
| C．experience a lot of difficulties |
| D．pick up words more quickly |
What was found about fights among siblings?
| A．Siblings hated fighting and loved playing. |
| B．Siblings in some families fought frequently. |
| C．Sibling fights led to bad sibling relationships. |
| D．Siblings learned to get on together from fights. |
The word “feminine” (in Para. 4) means “_______”.
| A．having qualities of parents |
| B．having qualities of women |
| C．having defensive qualities |
| D．having extraordinary qualities |
It was a simple letter asking for a place to study at Scotland’s oldest university which helped start a revolution in higher education. A 140-year-old letter written by a lady calling for her to be allowed to study medicine at St Andrews University has been discovered by researchers. Written by Sophia Jex-Blake in 1873, the seven-page document, which urged the university to allow women to study medicine at the institution, was released yesterday on International Women’s Day.
The document was discovered buried in the university archives (档案) by part-time history student Lis Smith, who is completing her PhD at St Andrews Institute of Scottish Historical Research. She said: “We knew that Sophia Jex-Blake and her supporters, in their effort to open up university medical education for women, had written to the Senatus Academicus (校评议委员会) at St Andrews in an attempt to gain permission to attend classes there, but we didn’t know documentary evidence existed. While searching the archives for information about the university’s higher certificate for women, I was astonished to come across what must be the very letter Jex-Blake wrote.”
In the letter, Sophia and her supporters offered to hire teachers or build suitable buildings for a medical school and to arrange for lectures to be delivered in the subjects not already covered at St Andrews. Although her letter was not successful, it eventually led to the establishment of the Ladies Literate in Arts at St Andrews, a distance-learning degree for women. The qualification, which ran from 1877 until the 1930s, gave women access to university education in the days before they were admitted as students. It was so popular that it survived long after women were admitted as full students to St Andrews in 1892.
Ms Jex-Blake went on to help establish the London School of Medicine for Women in 1874. She was accepted by the University of Berne, where she was awarded a medical degree in January 1877. Eventually, she moved back to Edinburgh and opened her own practice. Sophia wrote a letter to St Andrews University because she wanted _______.
| A．to carry out a research project there |
| B．to set up a medical institute there |
| C．to study medicine there |
| D．to deliver lectures there |
Lis Smith found Sophia’s letter to St Andrews University _______.
| A．by pure chance |
| B．in the school office |
| C．with her supporters’ help |
| D．while reading history books |
Sophia’s letter resulted in the establishment of _______.
| A．the London School of Medicine for Women |
| B．a degree programme for women |
| C．a system of medical education |
| D．the University of Berne |
When did St Andrews University begin to take full-time women students?
| A．In 1873. |
| B．In 1874. |
| C．In 1877. |
| D．In 1892. |
When my brother and I were young, my mom would take us on Transportation Days.
It goes like this: You can't take any means of transportation more than once. We would start from home, walking two blocks to the rail station. We'd take the train into the city center, then a bus, switching to the tram, then maybe a taxi. We always considered taking a horse carriage in the historic district, but we didn't like the way the horses were treated, so we never did. At the end of the day, we took the subway to our closest station, where Mom's friend was waiting to give us a ride home-our first car ride of the day.
The good thing about Transportation Days is not only that Mom taught us how to get around. She was born to be multimodal (多方式的). She understood that depending on cars only was a failure of imagination and, above all, a failure of confidence-the product of a childhood not spent exploring subway tunnels.
Once you learn the route map and step with certainty over the gap between the train and the platform, nothing is frightening anymore. New cities are just light-rail lines to be explored. And your personal car, if you have one, becomes just one more tool in the toolbox-and often an inadequate one, limiting both your mobility and your wallet.
On Transportation Days, we might stop for lunch on Chestnut Street or buy a new book or toy, but the transportation was the point. First, it was exciting enough to watch the world speed by from the train window. As I got older, my mom helped me unlock the mysteries that would otherwise have paralyzed my first attempts to do it myself: How do I know where to get off? How do I know how much it costs? How do I know when I need tickets, and where to get them? What track, what line, which direction, where's the stop, and will I get wet when we go under the river?
I'm writing this right now on an airplane, a means we didn't try on our Transportation Days and, we now know, the dirtiest and most polluting of them all. My flight routed me through Philadelphia. My multimodal mom met me for dinner in the airport. She took a train to meet me.
| 1． |
Which was forbidden by Mom on Transportation Days?
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| 2． |
According to the writer, what was the greatest benefit of her Transportation Days?
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| 3． |
The underlined word "paralyzed" (in Para. 5) is closest in meaning to "".
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| 4． |
Which means of transportation does the writer probably disapprove of?
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