When 19-year-old Sophia Giorgi said she was thinking of volunteering to help the Make-A-Wish Foundation (基金会)，nobody understood what she was talking about .But Sophia knew just how important Make – A –Wish could be because this special organization had helped to make a dream come true for one her best friends .We were interested in finding out more ,so we went along to meet Sophia listen to what she had to say .
Sophia told us that Make – A –Wish is a worldwide organization that started in the United States in 1980.”It’s a charity(慈善机构)that helps children who have got very serious illnesses. Make – A –Wish help children feel happy even though they are sick, by making their wishes and dreams come true ,” Sophia explained .
We asked Sophia how Make – A –Wish had first started .She said it had all begun with a very sick young boy called Chris ,who had been dreaming for a long time of becoming a policeman .Sophia said lots of people had wanted to find a way to make Chris’s dream come true ----so, with everybody’s help , Chris, only seven years old at the time ,had been a “policeman” for a day .” when people saw how delighted Chris was when his dream came true, they decided to try and help other sick children too ,and that was the beginning of Make – A –Wish,” explained Sophia
Sophia also told us the Foundation tries to give children and their families a special, happy time. A Make-A-Wish volunteer visits the families and asks the children what they would wish for if they could have anything in the world. Sophia said the volunteers were important because they were the ones who helped to make the wishes come true. They do this either by providing things that are necessary, or by raising money or helping out in whatever way they can.Sophia found out about Make-A-Wish because her best friend had .
| A．volunteeredtohelpit | B．benefitedfromit |
| C．dreamedaboutit | D．toldtheauthoraboutit |
According to Sophia, Make-A-Wish .
| A．isaninternationalcharity |
| B．wasunderstoodbynobodyatfirst |
| C．raisesmoneyforverypoorfamilies |
| D．startedbydrawingtheinterestofthepublic |
What is said about Chris in Paragraph3?
| A．He has been a policeman since he was seven. |
| B．He gave people the idea of starting Make-A-Wish |
| C．He wanted people to help make his dream come true. |
| D．He was the first child Make-A-Wish helped after it had been set up. |
Which of the following is true about Make-A-Wish volunteers?
| A．They are important for making wishes come true. |
| B．They try to help children get over their illnesses. |
| C．They visit sick children to make them feel special. |
| D．They provide what is necessary to make Make-A-Wish popular. |
The novelist, Harriet Beecher Stowe, born 200 years ago, was a poor housewife with six children, and she suffered from various illnesses. Driven by the hatred of slavery, she found time to write Uncle Tom’s Cabin, which became the most influential novel in American history and caused great change, both at home and abroad.
Today, however, the book has a different reputation, owing to the popular image of its character, Uncle Tom, whose name has become a saying for a cowardly（懦弱的）black man who betrays his race.
But this view is wrong: the original Uncle Tom was physically and morally strong, an inspiration for black people and other oppressed（被压迫的）people worldwide. Indeed, that was why, in the mid-19th century, Southerners attacked Uncle Tom’s Cabin as a dangerously destructive book, while Northern reformers—especially black people—often praised it.
The book was influential overseas too. In Russia it inspired Vladimir Lenin, who recalled it as his favorite book in childhood. It was the first American novel to be translated and published in China, and it fueled anti-slavery movements in Cuba and Brazil.
The book’s progressive appeal was the character of Uncle Tom himself: a strong man who is notable because he does not betray his race; one reason he gives up escaping from his plantation（种植园）is that he doesn’t want to put his fellow slaves in danger. And he is finally killed because he refuses to tell his master where two runaway slaves are hiding.
Unfortunately, these themes were lost in many of the stage versions of Uncle Tom’s Cabin.
The play, seen by more people than those who read the book, remained popular up to the 1950s and still appears occasionally. But in the play, Stowe’s revolutionary themes were drowned.
But it doesn’t have to be that way; indeed; during the civil rights era it was those who most closely resembled Uncle Tom—Stowe’s Uncle Tom, not the embarrassed one of popular myth—that proved most effective in promoting progress. Both Stowe and Uncle Tom deserve our reconsideration and our respect.Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote Uncle Tom's Cabin because she .
| A．wanted to earn money to support her family |
| B．tried to set an example to her six children |
| C．hated slavery from the bottom of her heart |
| D．had similar life experiences to Uncle Tom |
Which of the following is TRUE about the influence of the book?
| A．It was the first American novel to be translated into Russian. |
| B．It was the most influential book for Vladimir Lenin in his life |
| C．It also gave rise to anti-slavery movements in faraway Africa. |
| D．It inspired black people and people who were suffering in the world. |
What can we learn about Uncle Tom in the book?
| A．he helps his fellow slaves to avoid getting into danger. |
| B．He is a black man who betrays his race. |
| C．He manages to escape from the plantation. |
| D．He kills himself instead of giving away the slaves. |
According to the passage, which of the following is NOT true?
| A．The themes of revolution and progress in the book were lost in the play |
| B．There are more people who have read the book, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, than those who have seen the stage version. |
| C．The play was very popular and it is still put on from time to time today. |
| D．It was Uncle Tom in the book that promoted the progress of mankind. |
After two classes, I started to recognize several of the faces in each class. There was always someone braver than the others who would introduce themselves and ask me questions about how I was liking Forks. I tried to be diplomatic, so mostly I just lied a lot to appear to be skilled at dealing with people. At least I never needed the map.
One girl sat next to me in both Trig and Spanish, and she walked with me to the cafeteria for lunch. She was tiny, several inches shorter than my five feet four inches, but her wildly curly dark hair made up a lot of the difference between our heights. I couldn't remember her name, so I smiled and nodded as she gossiped about teachers and classes. I didn't try to keep up.
We sat at the end of a full table with several of her friends, who she introduced to me. I forgot all their names as soon as she spoke them. They seemed impressed by her bravery in speaking to me. The boy from England Eric, waved at me from across the room.
It was there, sitting in the lunchroom, trying to make conversation with seven curious strangers, that I first saw them.
They were sitting in the corner of the cafeteria, as far away from where I sat as possible in the long room. There were five of them. They weren't talking, and they weren't eating, though they each had a tray of untouched food in front of them. They weren't staring at me, unlike most of the other students, so it was safe to stare at them without fear of meeting an over interested pair of eyes. But it was none of these things that caught and held my attention.
I stared because their faces, so different, so similar, were all extremely, inhumanly beautiful. They were faces you never expected to see except perhaps on the airbrushed pages of a fashion magazine, or painted by an old master as the face of an angel. It was hard to decide who was the most beautiful -- maybe the perfect blond girl, or the bronze-haired boy.What does the underlined word “diplomatic” mean?
| A．clever | B．smooth | C．honest | D．delight |
From the passage, we can infer that _______________.
| A．“I” was really liking the new place. |
| B．“I” had a bad memory, so it’s hard to remember names. |
| C．“I” was good at making friends. |
| D．“I” was not interested in what the girl said. |
According to the last two paragraphs, why did “they” catch “my” attention?
| A．Because “they” looked incredibly beautiful. |
| B．Because “they” weren’t talking. |
| C．Because “they” sat in the corner. |
| D．Because “they” didn’t eat the food. |
According to the passage, which statement is NOT true?
| A．The girl walked with “me” was a little short. |
| B．“I” saw the five students for the first time. |
| C．Those students sitting in the corner had finished their food. |
| D．“I” probably wanted to know more about those five students. |
Mothers can still offer comfort, even from a distance, a new study has found. The results show that simply hearing their mothers’ voice over the phone works just as well at calming the nerves of stressed children as a real-life pat on the shoulder.
The soothing（抚慰的）effect is most likely due to the release of the hormone（荷尔蒙）, oxytocin（催生素）, in the brain, the researchers say. This “love hormone” is known to quell stress and is likely to be involved in social connections, including those between a mother and a child.
Previous work has revealed that this hormone is released during physical contact with a mother. “But it’s clear from these results that a mother’s voice can have the same effect as a hug, even if she isn’t actually standing there,” said the researcher, Leslie Seltzer, a biological scientist.
Seltzer tested a group of 61 girls, aged 7 to 12, by having them make an unprepared speech and solve a series of maths problems in front of a group of strangers, sending their hearts racing and levels of cortisol—a hormone associated with stress—soaring.
Facing a challenge like that raises stress levels of a lot of people. Once stressed, a third of the girls were comforted in person by their mothers with hugs. A third of the girls watched an emotionally neutral 75-minute video. The rest were handed a telephone with their mothers on the line.
For the girls who interacted in person or over the phone with their mothers, the levels of the “love hormone” rose significantly, and the stress-marking hormone was washed away. This effect didn’t show up for participants who watched the video.
Seltzer is now testing the amount of oxytocin released with other communication methods—like text messaging—and hopes to see the research spread out from human subjects. “It’s not just us, of course. Lots of very social species have voices,” she said. “on the one hand, we are curious to see if this effect is unique to humans. On the other, we’re hoping researchers who study vocal communication will consider looking at oxytocin release in other animals and apply it to broader questions of social behavior and evolutionary biology.Mothers’ voice over the phone can reduce children’s nerves according to the study, because .
| A．children can imagine their mothers’ hugs on the line |
| B．children enjoy their mothers’ voice and forget their worries |
| C．mothers are good at comforting their children, even on the phone |
| D．mothers’ voice can promote the release of the love hormone |
The underlined word “quell” in the second paragraph probably means “ ”.
| A．cause or bring | B．delay or direct |
| C．stop or reduce | D．develop or train |
From the study, we know that .
| A．the level of cortisol determines how stressed a person is |
| B．the 61 girls were divided into two groups in the research |
| C．the recent study had the same results as the previous one |
| D．watching a video is the best way to reduce one’s stress |
From the last paragraph, we can conclude that .
| A．text messaging has the same effect on oxytocin release as telephoning |
| B．the effect of a mother's voice on oxytocin in animals is still not known |
| C．the effect of communication on stress is unique to humans |
| D．the research has been applied to social behavior and evolutionary biology |
It may not be news to parents of teenage girls, but researchers have confirmed that no one can stop their 16-year-old daughter from deciding how the family spends its money.
The willpower and determination of teenage girls give them a big say in how a family’s money is spent on everything from food and meals to mobile phones, and, of course, clothes. Teenage boys did not show up at all in the analysis, which was designed to find out the influence of young people on household spending.
The findings on the spending power of teenage girls were calculated from Office for National Statistics records of family spending during the 1980s and 1990s. Researchers examined how much money went on services and leisure goods in different kinds of homes. They checked spending on food, restaurant meals, alcohol, tobacco, services, heating, transport, clothes and sports in 2,745 British families.
They found that teenage girls in the UK typically played an active role in family decisions about the allocation（分配）of household resources. But older children— those over the age of 21 who are still living with their parents—appear to have no say in household decisions.
They also tried to calculate to what extent the bargaining power of a teenager affected family budgets. “Every parent knows that children, even at a very early age, have their own preferences with regard to consumption, researchers said. “But children are only interested in a limited range of goods—mainly sweets and toys—and parents are able to use punishment to reduce their children’s bargaining power or remove it.” When they become teenagers, however, girls are much more independent and they are capable of earning their own money, which improves their bargaining power in family decisions.
The researchers could not explain why girls have more influence over spending while the evidence for boys is much less conclusive. However, this study could be of great significance to market research and how marketers target children. From the passage we can learn that .
| A．teenage girls have more influence over family budgets than teenage boys |
| B．teenage boys don't want to decide on household spending |
| C．teenage boys have some influence over household |
| D．teenage girls have weaker willpower and determination than teenage boys |
What does the underlined part “give them a big say” in the second paragraph mean?
| A．Make them dare to say something. |
| B．Make them want to know. |
| C．Make them say something meaningful. |
| D．Make their influence stronger. |
It appears that household decisions are NOT affected by .
| A．girls living with parents |
| B．girls over 21 |
| C．girls over 12 |
| D．girls living alone |
How can parents reduce children’s bargaining power?
| A．By persuading them |
| B．By offering them sweets or toys. |
| C．By threatening to punish them. |
| D．By allocating household resources. |
People with disabilities make up a large part of the population. It is estimated（估计） that over 35 million Americans have physical, mental, or other disabilities. About half of these disabilities are “developmental", i.e., they occur before the individual's twenty-second birthday, often from genetic conditions, and are severe enough to affect three or more areas of development, such as mobility, communication, employment, etc. Most other disabilities are considered “adventitious", i.e., accidental or caused by outside forces.
Prior to the 20th century, only a small percentage of people with disabilities survived for long. Medical treatment for these disabilities was unavailable. Advancements in medicine and social services have created a climate in which people with disabilities can expect to have such basic needs as food, shelter, and medical treatment. Unfortunately, these basics are often not available. Civil liberties such as the right to vote, marry, get an education, and gain employment have historically been denied on the basis of disability.
In recent decades, the disability rights movement has been organized to fight against these infringements（违反；侵犯）of civil rights. Congress responded by passing major legislation recognizing people with disabilities as a protected class under civil rights statutes.
Still today, people with disabilities must fight to live their lives independently. It is estimated that more than half of qualified Americans with disabilities are unemployed, and a majority of those who do work are underemployed. About two-thirds live at or below the official poverty level.
Significant barriers, especially in transportation and public awareness, prevent disabled people from taking part in society. For example, while no longer prohibited by law from marrying, a person with no access to transportation is effectively excluded from community and social activities which might lead to the development of long-term relationships.
Only when public attitudes advance as far as laws have will disabled people be fully able to take their rightful place in society.A “developmental" disability ______.
| A．develops very slowly over time |
| B．is caused by forces |
| C．occurs in youth and affects development |
| D．is getting more and more severe |
Most disabled people used to die early because ______.
| A．disabilities destroyed major bodily functions |
| B．they were not very well looked after |
| C．medical techniques were not available |
| D．they were too poor to get proper treatment |
In the author's opinion, to enable the disabled people to take their rightful place in society, ______.
| A．more laws should be passed |
| B．public attitudes should be changed |
| C．government should provide more aids |
| D．more public facilities should be set up |
Which of the following cannot be inferred from the passage ?
| A．Many disabled people may remain single for their whole life. |
| B．The public tends to look down upon the disabled people. |
| C．The disabled people feel inferior to those surrounding them. |
| D．Discriminatory laws prevent the disabled from mixing with others. |
The best title for this passage might be ______.
| A．Handicaps（障碍）of People with Disabilities |
| B．The physical difficulties of the Disabled |
| C．The Causes for Disabilities |
| D．Medical Treatments for Disabilities |
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