An American educational expert, Frederick M. Hess, says that a long summer vacation doesn’t make sense in today’s world.
This summer, 50 million kids will spend much time talking online, watching TV, playing video games and asking older brothers or sisters to take them to the supermarket. They will also be putting their academic futures at risk.
During much of the 20th century, many Americans worked in factories that did not need a college degree but still offered a high salary. Also, in the 19th century, there was no air condition. And poor hygiene (卫生) meant that crowded schools had health risks.
Things have changed. For today’s students, academic skills are key to future success. Many countries don’t give kids an American-style summer vacation. They offer no more than seven consecutive (连续的) weeks of vacation. Most American school districts offer up to 13 weeks. To compete in global marketplace, Americans must be prepared to go up against international competitors.
Summer vacation also causes challenges for today’s families. In the 1960s, more than 60% of families had a stay-at-home mum. Now, two-thirds of American children live families where every adult works. For these families, summer vacation can be more burden than break. Someone must watch the kids.
But the biggest problem may be how summer vacation hurts academic achievement. Scientist have found that disadvantaged students lose important ground in the summertime.
A school year can allow time-limited teachers to conduct richer and more imaginative lessons. Schools would have more time for sports, languages, music and the arts.Before the 20th century, a long summer vacation might ______.
| A．reduce income for Americans |
| B．reduce health risks for students |
| C．cause career failure for Americans |
| D．cause loss in global market for America |
How long does an American-style summer vacation last？
| A．No more than two months. |
| B．Less than three months. |
| C．As long as three months. |
| D．As long as four months. |
According to the text, who will benefit from a long school year?
| A．American students, teachers and parents. |
| B．American students, parents and shop owners. |
| C．American students, parents and international competitors. |
| D．American students, teachers and international competitors. |
How many reasons did the writer give to support his/her opinion?
| A．One. | B．Two. | C．Three. | D．Four. |
Travel Unaccompanied
Now many young people are traveling around the world on their own, not because they have no one to travel with, but because they prefer to go alone．
Kristina Wegscheider from California first traveled alone when she was at college and believes that it is something everyone should do at least once in their life. “It opens up your mind to new things and pushes you out of your comfort zone.” Wegscheider has visited 46 countries covering all seven continents．
In foreign countries, with no one to help you read a map, look after you if you get ill, or lend you money if your wallet is stolen. It is challenging. This is what drives young people to travel alone．It is seen as character building and a chance to prove that they can make it on their own．
Chris Richardson decided to leave his sales job in Australia to go traveling last year．He set up a website, The Aussie Nomad, to document his adventures. He said he wished he had traveled alone earlier. “The people you meet, the places you visit, or the things you do, everything is up to you and it forces you to grow as a person,” said the 30-year-old．
Richardson describes traveling alone like “a shot in the arm”, which “makes you a more confident person that was ready to deal with anything”. He said: “The feeling of having conquered something on my own is a major part of what drives me each day when I’m dealing with a difficult task. I walk around with my head up because I know deep down inside that nothing is impossible if you try.”
The great 19th century explorer John Muir once said: “Only by going alone in silence can one truly get into the heart of the wilderness.”Which of the following will Kristina Wegscheider agree with?
| A．Traveling alone is a necessary experience for everyone. |
| B．It is more meaningful to travel in foreign countries. |
| C．It is comfortable to travel around without a friend. |
| D．Traveling abroad helps people to find new things. |
Traveling alone is challenging because .
| A．it will finally build your character |
| B．you have to make things on your own |
| C．you depend on yourself whatever happens |
| D．it is hard for you to prove yourself to others |
What can we infer about Chris Richardson?
| A．He started traveling at an early age． | B．He was once shot in the arm. |
| C．His website inspires others a lot. | D．He used to work as a salesman． |
Have you ever picked a job based on the fact that you were good at it but later found it made you feel very uncomfortable over time? When you select your career, there’s a whole lot more to it than assessing your skills and matching them with a particular position. If you ignore your personality, it will get you a long-term hurt regardless of your skills or the job’s pay. There are several areas of your personality that you need to consider to help you find a good job. Here are a few of those main areas:
1) Do you prefer working alone or with other people?
There are isolating（孤立的）jobs that will drive an outgoing person crazy and also interactive jobs that will make a shy person uneasy. Most people are not extremes in either direction but do have a tendency that they prefer. There are also positions that are sometimes a combination of the two, which may be best for someone in the middle who adapts easily to either situation.
2) How do you handle change?
Most jobs these days have some elements of change to them, but some are more than others. If you need stability in your life, you may need a job where the changes don’t happen so often. Other people would be bored of the same daily routine.
3) Do you enjoy working with computers？
I do see this as a kind of personality characteristic. There are people who are happy to spend more than 40 hours a week on a computer, while there are others who need a lot of human interaction throughout the day. Again, these are extremes and you’ll likely find a lot of positions somewhere in the middle as well.
4) What type of work environment do you enjoy？
This can range from being in a large building with a lot of people you won’t know immediately to a smaller setting where you’ll get to know almost all the people there fairly quickly.
5) How do you like to get paid?
Some people are motivated by the pay they get, while others feel too stressed to be like that. The variety of payment designs in the sales industry is a typical example for this.
Anyway, these are a great starting point for you. I’ve seen it over and over again with people that they make more money over time when they do something they love. It may take you a little longer, but making a move to do what you have a passion for can change the course of your life for the better.What does the underlined sentence in Paragraph 1 mean?
| A．You may ignore your skills when you select job. |
| B．Job skills are the most important things when you select job. |
| C．There are more important things than job skills when you select job. |
| D．Selecting job, you should assess your skills and match them with the position. |
Which of the following is TRUE according to the passage?
| A．Isolating jobs usually drive people mad. |
| B．Interactive jobs make people shy easily. |
| C．Extreme people tend to work with others. |
| D．Almost everyone has a tendency in jobs. |
What is the missing word about a job search in the following chart?
| A．Design | B．Changes | C．Cooperation | D．Hobbies |
What is the best title for this passage?
| A．Lifestyles and Job Pay | B．Jobs and Environment |
| C．Job Skills and Abilities | D．Personalities and Jobs |
Sandra Cisneros was born in Chicago in 1954 to a Mexican American family. As the only girl in a family of seven children, she often felt like she had “seven fathers,” because her six brothers, as well as her father, tried to control her. Feeling shy and unimportant, she retreated(躲避) into books. Despite her love of reading, she did not do well in elementary school because she was too shy to participate.
In high school, with the encouragement of one particular teacher, Cisneros improved her grades and worked for the school literary magazine. Her father encouraged her to go to college because he thought it would be a good way for her to find a husband. Cisneros did attend college, but instead of searching for a husband, she found a teacher who helped her join the famous graduate writing program at the University of Iowa. At the university’s Writers’ Workshop, however, she felt lonely―a Mexican American from a poor neighborhood among students from wealthy families. The feeling of being so different helped Cisneros find her “creative voice.”
“It was not until this moment when I considered myself truly different that my writing acquired a voice. I knew I was a Mexican woman, but I didn’t think it had anything to do with why I felt so much imbalance in my life, but it had everything to do with it! That’s when I decided I would write about something my classmates couldn’t write about.”
Cisneros published her first work, The House on Mango Street, when she was twenty-nine. The book tells about a young Mexican American girl growing up in a Spanish-speaking area in Chicago, much like the neighborhoods in which Cisneros lived as a child. The book won an award in 1985 and has been used in classes from high school through graduate school level. Since then, Cisneros has published several books of poetry, a children’s book, and a short-story collection. Which of the following is TRUE about Cisneros in her childhood?
| A．She had seven brothers. | B．She felt herself a nobody. |
| C．She was too shy to go to school. | D．She did not have any good teachers. |
The graduate program gave Cisneros a chance to _____.
| A．develop her writing style | B．run away from her family |
| C．make a lot of friends | D．search for a husband |
According to Cisneros, what was the key factor in her success?
| A．Her early years in college. | B．Her training in the Workshop. |
| C．Her childhood experience | D．Her feeling of being different. |
What do we learn about The House on Mango Street?
| A．It is quite popular among students. |
| B．It is a book of poetry written by Cisneros. |
| C．It wasn’t a success as it was written in Spanish. |
| D．It won an award when Cisneros was twenty-nine. |
Not long ago, people thought babies were not able to learn things until they were five or six months old. Yet doctors in the United States say babies begin learning on their first day of life.
Scientists note that babies are strongly influenced by their environment. They say a baby will smile if her mother does something the baby likes. A baby learns to get the best care possible by smiling to please her mother or other caregiver. This is how babies learn to connect and communicate with other human beings.
One study shows that babies can learn before they are born. The researchers placed a tape recorder on the stomach of a pregnant woman. Then, they played a recording of a short story. On the day the baby was born, the researchers attempted to find if he knew the sounds of the story repeated while in his mother. They did this by placing a device in the mouth of the newborn baby. The baby would hear the story if he moved his mouth one way. If the baby moved his mouth the other way, he would hear a different story. The researchers say the baby clearly liked the story he heard before he was born. They say the baby would move his mouth so he could hear the story again and again.
Another study shows how mothers can strongly influence social development and language skills in their children. Researchers studied the children from the age of one month to three years. The researchers attempted to measure the sensitivity of the mothers. The women were considered sensitive if they supported their children’s activities and did not interfere unnecessarily. They tested the children for thinking and language development when they were three years old. Also, the researchers observed the women for signs of depression.
The children of depressed women did not do as well in tests as the children of women who did not suffer from depression. The children of depressed women did poorly in tests of language skills and understanding what they hear.
These children also were less cooperative and had more problems dealing with other people. The researchers noted that the sensitivity of the mothers was important to the intelligence development of their children. Children did better when their mothers were caring, even when they suffered from depression.According to the passage, which of the following is NOT the factor that influences intelligence development in babies?
| A．The environment. | B．Mother’s sensitivity. |
| C．Their peers (同龄人) | D．Education before birth. |
What is the purpose of the experiment in which newborn babies heard the stories?
| A．To prove that babies can learn before they are born. |
| B．To prove that babies can learn on the first day they are born. |
| C．To show mothers can strongly influence intelligence development in their babies. |
| D．To indicate early education has a deep effect on the babies’ language skills. |
Which group of children did the worst in tests of language skills?
| A．The children of depressed mothers who cared little for their children. |
| B．The children of women who did not suffer from depression. |
| C．The children of depressed but caring mothers. |
| D．Children with high communication abilities. |
What is the main idea of the passage?
| A．Scientific findings about how babies develop before birth. |
| B．Scientific findings about how the environment has an effect on babies’ intelligence. |
| C．A study shows babies are not able to learn things until they are rice or six months old. |
| D．Scientific findings about how intelligence develops in babies. |
“Tom!”
There was no answer.
“Tom!”
Still no answer.
“Where’s that boy gone? Tom!”
The old lady looked all around the room. She looked under the bed, but found only the cat.
“If I catch that boy, …” she murmured to herself.
She opened the door and looked out into the garden.
“Tom!” she shouted.
Then she heard a slight noise behind her. She turned round just in time to catch the boy as he came out of a cupboard.
“And what have you been doing in there?”
“Nothing,” said the boy.
“Nothing! Look at your hands and your mouth! What is that stuff?”
“I don’t know, Aunt.”
“Well, I know. It’s a jam. I’ve told you forty times that if you touched that jam, I’d skin you.
Give me that stick.”
“Look out, Aunt! Look behind you!”
The old lady turned round and Tom was out of the door in a flash, over the garden fence and away.
“Damn that boy! Will I never learn? He’s always playing tricks on me. And he seems to know just now how far he can go, too. But I can’t take a stick to him. I really can’t. After all, he’s my dead sister’s boy. Ah well, he’ll play truant today and I’ll have to make him work tomorrow.”
At supper Aunt Polly tried to trick Tom into admitting that he hadn’t gone to school.
“It was rather hot today, wasn’t it, Tom?”
“Yes,” answered Tom.
“You didn’t have to open your shirt collar where I sewed（缝） it, then.”
Tom was confident, now. He opened his jacket. His collar was securely sewed.
“Oh Tom,” said Aunt Polly. “You’re a good boy really.”
She was sorry that she had been wrong about him.
“But Aunt,” came a voice. It was Sidney, Tom’s younger brother. “Didn’ t you sew Tom’s collar with white cotton? Look! Now it’s black.
Tom was already running out of the door.
---The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark TwainThe underlined word “skin” probably mean in the passage?
| A．praise | B．cheat | C．touch | D．beat |
Which of the following words can be best used to describe Tom?
| A．stupid | B．clever | C．naughty | D．brave |
What can be inferred from Sidney’s words in the passage?
| A．Tom made his jacket dirty on purpose. |
| B．Tom didn’t go to school that day. |
| C．Tom was a dirty boy. |
| D．Sidney hated Tom so he wanted to punish him. |
Which of the following is TRUE according to the passage?
| A．Tom’s mother passed away. |
| B．Tom’s aunt was a good sewer. |
| C．Tom was good at sports. |
| D．Aunt Polly felt sorry for his misunderstanding to Tom. |
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