About a year ago，if you had asked who Dinara Safina was，the answer would have been，“She is Marat Safin’s younger sister.” She was overshadowed by her wonder brother.But now she has made a name for herself：the world No.1 player in women’s tennis.
The 22yearold Russian overtook Serena Williams of the US for top ranking on April 20.“Before，every place I go，I am Marat’s sister.Nothing else，”she told New York Times.“I always wanted to be myself，and now finally the results come，and people can know me as Dinara Safina.”
Safina has made it to two great event finals，in the 2008 French and in the 2009 Australian Open，and won a silver medal in the Beijing Olympic Games.
Clearly，family isn’t the only connection Safina and her brother share.Their DNA burns with competitive fire.Safin has held the distinction for years of being a hottempered player on court.When he lost his temper，he would smash a racket (球拍)．Safina is as emotionally explosive as her brother.A headline in the newspaper The Australian once described her as “mad as a snake”．The Sydney Morning Herald，during the Australian Open，summed up Safina’s volatile (不稳定的) emotional state with the headline—Safina goes from basket case to top of the world.
It’s not rare for a family to have two top tennis players.Safina’s father owns a tennis academy and her mother worked as a coach.“I had no choice but to become a tennis player，but I don’t mind being a tennis player，” Safina said.
From this talented family she is also given one of her best weapons on court，her size.She is 1.82 meters tall and weighs 70kg.But it is hard work that led her to her recent success.
“I hope to prove to everyone over the coming months that I deserve the honor of being world No.1，”she said.What is the passage mainly about?
| A．How Safina came first in women’s tennis. |
| B．How the parents taught Safina to play tennis. |
| C．How her brother helped Safina play tennis. |
| D．How Safina beat her brother in playing tennis. |
Which one of the following doesn’t contribute to Safina’s success?
| A．Her hard work and strong competitiveness. |
| B．Her emotional explosion and volatile emotional state. |
| C．The fact that she is 1.82 meters tall and weighs 70kg. |
| D．The fact that her parents are both good tennis players. |
Which of the following statements is TRUE?
| A．Serena Williams was topped by Safina on ranking list on April 20. |
| B．Dinara Safina was always very confident and eager to succeed. |
| C．Safina was eager to become a tennis player when she was a child. |
| D．Marat Safin won the two finals，in the 2008 French and in the 2009 Australian Open. |
What can we infer from the headline “Safina goes from basket case to top of the world”？
| A．Safina wanted to top the world in tennis when she was a baby in a basket. |
| B．After she won the Australian Open，Dinara Safina cried. |
| C．Too nervous at first，Safina finally gained confidence and won. |
| D．Safina learnt from the basket case and finally came top of the world. |
As many as 4 out of every 1,000 infants born today have permanent hearing loss. When parents learn that their child has hearing loss, they are faced with many difficult decisions. These decisions can include choosing therapies and schools, as well as finding financial help for hearing aids or cochlear implants (人工耳蜗).
Help Me Hear Foundation is a public charity that gives the gift of hearing to deaf children from families existing on very low incomes around the world. The foundation offers life-changing services for impoverished families, and provides real help for children with hearing impairment who may otherwise be left behind in schools or society due to their lack of hearing.
Help Me Hear Foundation believes that a child’s first years of development are critical. Being able to hear is vital to human, and Help Me Hear Foundation seeks to provide a positive lasting impression on society through its programs. Help Me Hear Foundation has many goals, including relieving the burden on communities with hearing-impaired infants and children, and strengthening the social structure of families and neighborhoods.
Recipients of Help Me Hear Foundation’s benefits receive state-of-the-art hearing devices that otherwise would cost thousands of dollars per child over the course of their lifetime. The Foundation raises money through donations for hearing aids and cochlear implants, which saves recipients and their families on average over $50,000 on related expenses.
The Foundation tries to be a transparent charity, and wants to be a catalyst for allowing deaf and hearing-impaired children to develop in a typical fashion alongside their peers.
Needy families can obtain information on specific services, and find out about deafness education by visiting the Help Me Hear Foundation’s website. The website offers helpful information on how hearing aids work, and how hearing aids ease many of the learning and language challenges that hearing-impaired children deal with on a daily basis.Help Me Hear Foundation was probably set up to _____.
| A．build schools for deaf children |
| B．research deaf children’s behavior |
| C．protect deaf children from being ignored |
| D．offer real help to poor deaf children |
We learn from the text that _____.
| A．the local government is in charge of the foundation |
| B．the work of the foundation depends on donations |
| C．even blind children can turn to the foundation |
| D．poor deaf African children cannot get help from the foundation |
Visit the foundation’s website, and you will learn about _____.
| A．the function of hearing aids |
| B．the specific services the foundation needs |
| C．the challenges that children face every day |
| D．the prices of a variety of hearing aids |
For whom is the text most probably written?
| A．Poor parents who have deaf children. |
| B．Doctors who want to improve skills. |
| C．Students who cannot see the blackboard clearly. |
| D．Teachers who have deaf children in their class. |
The author writes the text mainly to _____.
| A．tell how to avoid permanent hearing loss |
| B．explain how hard a life deaf children live |
| C．introduce Help Me Hear Foundation |
| D．advise people to give money to Help Me Hear Foundation |
Homestay UK/Great Britain
Here you will find a selection of homestay hosts and host families in the UK. If you want to learn more about the British host family of your choice, please click on information at www. Homestaybooking. Com. You will then see a personal introduction of the UK homestay host. If you don’t want to search yourself, just register for free and receive our matching recommendations.
Chika and Tara from London, the United Kingdom
Information about the homestay host
Chika is 28 years old. She is away from home most of the time. Tara is 18 years old. She is at home every day. They both speak English.
Chika and Tara’s guests can stay for at least 5 nights and up to a maximum of 365 nights. Chika and Tara have no children living at home. It is a non-smoking residence(住宅). No pets live in this household.
Information about the homestay accommodation
The accommodation is in London. The name of the neighborhood is Greenwich. The distance to the city center is 1.6km. The next access point to public transport is at 15 m distance.
Three guests can stay in Tara and Chika’s house at the same time. The following accommodation is generally available:
Single room with shared use of the family bathroom
*Size: 12.0 ㎡
*Facilities: desk, Internet access, mirror, hairdryer and wardrobe(衣橱)
*Price per night per person: ￡20.00 per night(one single)
Twin room with shared use of the family bathroom
*Size: 15.0 ㎡
*Facilities: TV, desk, Internet access, mirror, hairdryer and wordrobe
*Price per night per person:
￡20.00 per night(one guest)
￡17.00 per night(two guests)
The room charge includes the following services: Internet access, regular room cleaning, breakfast, free use of the washing machine.
Additional available service at an extra charge: Pick-up service(￡60.00 one-way); Lunch(￡6.00 per person per day); Dinner(￡6.00 per person per night)
Vegetarian(素食的) meals are available.Chika and Tara’s house would be a good choice for _______.
| A．a pet lover |
| B．a heavy smoker |
| C．a person who eats no meat |
| D．one who needs a one-night stay |
What do we know about Chika and Tara’s house?
| A．It lies in the center of the city. |
| B．It is not far away from Greenwich. |
| C．Public transport is convenient there. |
| D．The distance from the house to London is 1.6 km. |
If Mary chooses a twin room and pick-up service(two-way), how much should she pay per day?
| A．￡140. | B．￡137. | C．￡80. | D．￡77 |
When Armida Armato’s daughter, Alexia, came home from school one day last year keen to go on a school trip to Ecuador, she wasn’t too sure how to feel. She was happy that her daughter could experience something she never did as a teen but was fearful of letting her travel to such a remote part of the world.
Alexia was 16 at the time, a student at Westwood High School. The school sponsored a humanitarian trip for 26 students and two teachers to spend 18 days living in a mountain village to build a one-room school. Even though Armato trusted her daughter, the other students and the teachers, she was worried about the side effects from the travel vaccines, possible accidents, and medical care.
Now that Alexia was home, Armato said she saw her daughter’s new maturity, greater confidence and independence. “This is the best thing I ever did,” Alexia said. “The experience was so eye-opening and life-changing. You’re with people who are not as lucky as you are. They live in very poor conditions but they’re so happy and outgoing. You say, ‘My God. I’m taking everything for granted back home.’”
She said they built a one-room school from scratch with no mechanical cement mixers. They used their hands, shovels and basic tools. She and another student lived with a local family in a small village about eight hours outside the capital, Quito. Despite the initial strangeness and knowing only basic Spanish, she said they grew very close and felt like a family.
Every year, groups of students at Montreal High School like Alexia pack their bags and fly off with classmates and teachers to developing countries where they volunteer for a variety of projects.
“Armato’s worries are very common among parents,” says Bill Nevin, a teacher at St. George’s High School. He organizes a humanitarian rip to India to the Sheela Bal Bhavan orphanage and says the three biggest fears families have are health, security and contact.When hearing the news that her daughter would go on a school trip to Ecuador, Armato was____.
| A．proud and happy | B．supportive but concerned |
| C．fearful and nervous | D．excited but puzzled |
The underlined phrase “from scratch” in Paragraph 4 probably means “______”.
| A．having great help | B．using high technology |
| C．ending up in failure | D．starting from the beginning |
What would be the best title for the text?
| A．Volunteering helps students grow and develop. |
| B．School trips make parents worried about their children. |
| C．Ecuador is the most attractive travel destination in the world. |
| D．Brave Alexia dreams to work in Ecuador one day. |
Reading is good for you. There is increasing evidence to show that reading isn’t merely a way of improving literacy and knowledge, but that it might actually be good for one’s mental and physical health, too.
In the age of Twitter and short attention spans, reading novels, which requires intense concentration over a long period of time, could be the antidote(矫正方法).
Neuroscientists Baroness Susan Greenfield says that reading helps to lengthen attention spans in children and improve their ability to think clearly. “Stories have a structure that encourages our brain to think in sequence, to link cause, effect and significance,” she says “It is essential to learn this skill as a small child.”
“In a computer game, you might rescue a princess, but you don’t care about her, you just want to win,” she explains, “But a princess in a book has a past, present and future. You can relate to her. You see the world through her eyes”
According to professor John Stein, Oxford university, reading is far from a passive activity. “Reading exercises the whole brain,” he explains. “ When we get lost in a good book, we are doing more than following a story, Imaging what is happening is as good as activating the brain as doing it. In other words, our brains simulate(模仿) real experiences, and it is just as if we were experiencing them ourselves. This doesn’t happen when we are watching a TV or playing computer games.”
Getting stuck in a good novel appears to be good for one’s mental health. Reading helps one not only fights loneliness, but also forget one’s own problems for a while.
Researchers found that just six minutes of reading could reduce stress levels by more than two-thirds, more than listening to music or going out for a walk. The concentration required to read distracts the mind, easing muscle’s tension and slowing the heart rate. Reading may be good for physical health, too, by preventing brain aging and disease.Which of the following statement is true about playing computer games?
| A．It encourages our brains to think clearly |
| B．It makes people feel lonely |
| C．It makes the player concentrate on the result instead of the role in it |
| D．It can help lengthen one’s attention span. |
According to John Stein, reading _______
| A．is simply following a story |
| B．is a passive activity |
| C．can active the brain |
| D．has the same results as watching TV |
What is the main purpose of this passage?
| A．To show how to improve children’s attention spans |
| B．To encourage people to read |
| C．To show that Twitter has a negative influence |
| D．To compare the results of reading and watching TV |
The last two paragraphs are mainly about
| A．the mental and physical benefits of reading |
| B．ways of getting rid of stress |
| C．the problems we face in daily life |
| D．the factors that cause people to feel lonely |
What would be the best title for the passage?
| A．Reading Books Helps Keep Your Healthy |
| B．The Structure of a Book |
| C．The Brain Activities While Reading |
| D．How to Teach Children to Read |
It’s the place where smart people make smart machines work even smarter. It’s also in the heart of sunny California, a great place to start a family and raise kids. What could be better?
But something is happening to their children. Up until the age of two they develop normally. But then everything seems to go backwards. The children become locked into their own small world, unable to communicate at all.
They call it the “curse(诅咒)of Silicon Valley,” but the medical name for the condition is autism(自闭症). It used to be thought that autism was a kind of mental illness. Now doctors are sure that it is a neurological disease transmitted genetically. It seems that the people leading the communications revolution are having children who cannot communicate at all.
But even the parents have trouble communicating. Asperger’s Syndrome is a mild version of autism. People who have it are highly intelligent and often brilliant with numbers or system but have no social skill. This very combination of symptoms makes Asperger’s sufferers into ideal computer professionals.
The Asperger’s sufferer has always been a well-known figure in popular culture. He or she was the eccentric but dedicated scholar or the strange uncle or auntie who never married. But the high numbers of such people in Silicon Valley mean that they can meet others who understand them and share their interests. And while they might not be personally attractive, they can earn truly attractive amounts of money. They can get married and have kids. Unfortunately, many of the children of two Asperger’s parents seem to be developing serious autism.
There is little anyone can do. It takes hours of work just to make autistic child realize that anyone else exists. And there is no cure in sight. Some argue that no cure should be found. “It may be that autistics are essentially different from normal people, but that these differences make them invaluable for the evolution of the human race,” says Dr. Kirk Whilhelmsen of the University of California. “To eliminate the genes for autism could be disastrous. ”
It seems that the children of Silicon Valley are paying the price of genius.What is the best title of the passage?
| A．The Price of Genius |
| B．Asperger’s Syndrome, a Mild Version of Autism |
| C．No Cure Should Be Found |
| D．Ideal Computer Professionals |
What does Dr Kirk Whilhelmsen think of autism?
| A．It is disastrous to society. |
| B．It is not completely a bad thing. |
| C．It is a punishment to those working in Silicon Valley. |
| D．People with autism should never marry. |
What can we learn about autism according to the passage?
| A．It is believed to be a kind of mental illness that can be cured. |
| B．People with autism can’t find people sharing their interests. |
| C．They do not care about the presence of others. |
| D．They are a burden for the society. |
Why do people call autism “curse of Silicon Valley”？
| A．Because autistic people live in Silicon Valley. |
| B．Because many people working in Silicon Valley have autism children. |
| C．Because people with autism will be driven out of Silicon Valley. |
| D．Because people with autism are not personally attractive and not liked by others. |
What can we know about Asperger’s Syndrome according to the passage?
| A．Asperger’s sufferers are ideal computer professionals. |
| B．Asperger’s sufferers never get married and have children. |
| C．Asperger’s sufferers are ashamed of themselves and locked into their own world. |
| D．Asperger’s sufferers can be beneficial to society if they are cured. |
粤公网安备 44130202000953号