OF course, Ms Cratty wasn’t really my aunt and, out of fear, I never called her that to her face. I only called her “My Aunt Fannie (俚语)” because the name always made my father chuckle (轻声地笑) and caused my mother to look seriously at both of us – at me for being disrespectful of my elder, and at my father for encouraging my bad behavior. I enjoyed both reactions so I looked for every opportunity to work the name into as many conversations as possible.
As a young woman, my mother had worked in the kitchen of a large farmhouse owned by Ms Cratty and her twin brother. Neither had married, and they had no children. My father once told me that it was because they were both too mean to share their family’s money or pass it on. Ms Cratty was famous for her jam and for never sharing the recipe with another one. Even though my mother knew the recipe , she never made the jam without Ms Cratty kitchen to direct the process and keep the secret.
Each August, my mother would prepare me for Aunt Fannie’s visit. One year, after I had been particularly helpful with the jam process Aunt Fannie gave me a quarter and then made me promise that I would never spend it. “Hold onto this quarter,” she said, “and someday you will be rich. I still have my very first quarter, given to me by my grandfather.” It had obviously worked for her. So, I put the quarter in my dresser drawer, and waited to become rich.
I now have the jam recipe and the quarter from Aunt Fannie. Neither has made me wealthy, but I keep them as reminders to hold onto the valuable things in life. Money can make you feel rich for a while, but it is the relationships and the memories of time spent with friends and family that truly leave you wealthy. And that is a fortune that anyone can build.
| A．Because she wanted to show respect for her. |
| B．Because she believed that made her seem closer to her. |
| C．Because she loved to see her parents’ responses to it. |
| D．Because she didn’t like her and thus made fun of her. |
| A．owned the large farmhouse with Aunt Fannie |
| B．disliked Aunt Fannie’s meanness and the way she would never share |
| C．didn’t know the exact way to make the jam |
| D．tried to make Aunt Fannie believe that the secret recipe was safe |
| A．was a reminder of the valuable things in her life |
| B．would bring her good luck and make her rich |
| C．was a small reward for her help with the jam process |
| D．was the exact one that Aunt Fannie had received from her grandfather |
| A．have a certain secret recipe |
| B．have lasting love and friendship |
| C．share our wealth with others |
| D．have good fortune and money |
In the Netherlands，cycling isn't seen as eccrfriendly exercise; it's part of everyday life, as it's people's top choice to school and work. There are more bicycles than residents in the Netherlands. In cities like Amsterdam and The Hague, up to 70 percent of all journeys are made by bike.
So how did cycling become such a popular means of transportation in the European country?
In the 1970s, the Dutch government began to improve its cycling infrastructure（基础设施）due to both a social movement demanding safer cycling condition for children and the oil crisis in the Middle East, when oil producing countries stopped their exports to Western Europe.
To make cycling safer and more appealing, the Dutch have built the widest cycling net- work in the world. The country has over 40，000 kilometers of bicycle lanes and paths，which are clearly marked. They have smooth surfaces，separate signs and lights for those on two wheels. The lanes are wide enough to allow side-by-side cycling and passing.
In many cities the bike lanes are completely segregated（隔离的）from motorized traffic. And in many traffic situations cyclists are given priority（优先权）over drivers. Sometimes， where space is limited and both must share, you can see signs showing an image of a cyclist with a car behind accompanied by the words "Bike Street：Cars are guests".
As young people aren't allowed to drive alone until they are 18，cycling offers Dutch teen- agers an alternative form of freedom. The government also makes cycling training lessons a compulsory part of the Dutch school curriculum（课程）．
Bike parking facilities are ubiquitous in the country. Cyclists are accommodated in the way motorists are elsewhere. Take Groningen, a city in the northeastern part of the Netherlands，for example. The city's central train station has underground parking for 10，000 bikes.We can conclude that in the Netherlands cycling is____．
| A．regarded as eco-friendly exercise |
| B．thought of as part of people's life |
| C．looked on as a way to lose weight |
| D．considered as a way to entertain |
What can we learn about the Netherlands from the first paragraph?
| A．Most vehicles the Dutch use are buses. |
| B．The native people cycle the best in the world. |
| C．Everyone has one bike on average in the Netherlands. |
| D．The number of bikes is larger than the population there. |
Which of the following made the government improve the cycling infrastructure?
| A．A large number of bikes. |
| B．Hope for healthy life style. |
| C．People's preference to bikes. |
| D．Children's safety demand and lack of oil. |
The underlined word "ubiquitous" in the last paragraph means“＿，，．
| A．high quality | B．unique | C．very common | D．special |
What does the Dutch government do about teenagers cycling?
| A．It makes cycling covered by school education. |
| B．It encourages teenagers to cycle alone. |
| C．It will watch over teenagers who ride bikes. |
| D．It suggests teenagers cycling before driving. |
Self-confidence is an attitude which allows individuals to have positive yet realistic views of themselves and their situations. Self-confident people trust their own abilities, have a general sense of control in their lives, and believe that，within reason, they will be able to do what they wish., plan., and expect. Having self-confidence does not mean that individuals will be able to do everything. Self-confident people have expectations that are realistic. Even when some of their expectations are not met，they continue to be positive and to accept themselves.
People who are not self-confident depend too much on the approval of others in order to feel good about themselves. They tend to avoid taking risks because they fear failure. They generally do not expect to be successful. They often put themselves down and tend to ignore compliments（赞美）paid to them By contrast，self-confident people are willing to risk the disapproval of others because they generally trust their own abilities. They tend to accept themselves；they don't feel they have to conform in order to be accepted.
Many factors affect the development of self-confidence. Parents' attitudes are crucial to children's feelings about themselves，particularly in children's early years. When parents pro- vide acceptance, children receive a solid foundation for good feelings about themselves. If one or both parents are much to critical or demanding, or if they are overprotective and discourage children's moves toward independence, children may come to believe they are unqualified or inadequate.
Surprisingly, lack of self-confidence is not necessarily related to lack of ability. Instead it is often the result of focusing too much on the unrealistic expectations or standards of others， especially parents and society. Friends' influences can be as powerful or more powerful than those of parents and society in shaping feelings of one's self. Students in their college years reexamine values and develop their own identities and thus are particularly sensitive to the influence of friends.Paragraph 1 mainly talks about____．
| A．the sources of self-confidence |
| B．the benefits of self-confidence |
| C．the development of self-confidence |
| D．the lack of self-confidence |
In Paragraph 2，the underlined word "conform" probably means“_______”．
| A．refuse | B．separate | C．permit | D．obey |
According to the passage, self-confident people tend to____．
| A．be practical | B．control others |
| C．avoid risks | D．depend on others |
Which of the following can we learn about self-confidence according to the passage?
| A．Self-confidence is usually the symbol of special abilities. |
| B．Parents' protection prevents children's self-confidence development. |
| C．Parents and friends matter in building one's self-confidence. |
| D．College students are the least self-confident group in society. |
What might the author most probably continue to talk about in the following passage?
| A．How we can become more acceptable. |
| B．Lack of self-confident has many side effects. |
| C．What self-confident children usually get from parents. |
| D．What one should avoid in building self-confidence. |
She may have lacked a home, but now this teen has top honors.
A 17-year old student who spent much of high school living around homeless shelters and sometimes sleeping in her car-today graduated and spoke on behalf of her class at Charles Drew High School in Clayton County, Ga.，just outside of Atlanta.
Chelsea Fearce, who held a 4.466 GPA and scored 1，900 on her SATs despite having to use her cellphone to study after the shelter lights were turned off at night.
"I know I have been made stronger. I was homeless. My family slept on cushions on the floor and we were lucky if we got more than one full meal a day. Getting a shower, food and clean clothes was an everyday struggle,” Fearce said in a speech she gave at her graduation ceremony. Fearce overcame her day-to-day struggles by focusing on a better day. "I just told myself to keep working, because the future will not be like this anymore, she told WSBTV.
Fearce，one of five children, grew up in a family that sometimes had an apartment to live in, but at other times had to live in homeless shelters or even out of their car, if they had one. "You're worried about your home life and then worried at school. Worry about being a little hungry sometimes and go hungry sometimes. You just have to deal with it, You eat what you can, when you can.”
To our surprise, Fearce overcame the difficulties and even tested high enough to be ad- mitted into college halfway through her high school career. She starts college next year at Spelman College as a junior where she is planning to study biology, pre-"med（医学预科），"Don't give up. Do what you have to do right now so that you can have the future that you want,”Fearce said.Which of the following is the best title of the passage?
| A．So Many Homeless Students in America |
| B．How Does a Homeless Student Live in Society? |
| C．The Hardship of Fearce and Her Family in America |
| D．Homeless Teen Graduates as a Speaker of High School Class |
How did Fearce go on with her study without access to lights?
| A．By the car light. | B．By her cellphone. |
| C．By lights out of shelters. | D．By moonlight. |
When Fearce starts college at Spelman College, she will＿__．
| A．have graduated earlier from high school than normal |
| B．be a 17-year-old student from a poor family |
| C．have a home without sleeping in her car or shelters |
| D．have raised enough money to go to college |
From the passage, we can learn that＿__．
| A．SAT is easy for the students of high schools |
| B．Fearce's parents have six children to support |
| C．Fearce often had to struggle with starvation |
| D．Fearce gave a speech at a ceremony of Spelman College |
What can we learn from Fearce's experience?
| A．Knowledge can change your fate. |
| B．Don't give up, and tomorrow will be better. |
| C．Whatever is worth doing is worth doing well. |
| D．He that will not work shall not eat. |
A sixth of undergraduates in Beijing this year have registered at driving school. The students, mostly from majors such as business management or international trade, will finish their driving courses within 20 days or so.
Training costs have dropped to 2, 600 yuan for students, according to the Haidian Driving School in Beijing. The price is not really low, but students will accept it, seeing it as an investment （投资）in their future. Familiarity with the operation of computers and fluent English are the basic skills graduating students need to find a job. But a driver’s permit has become another factor.
“In the job market, owning a driver’s permit sometimes strengthens a graduating student’s competitiveness for a good position, ”says Zhou Yang, an undergraduate at the China University of Political Science and Law.
Cars will become a necessary part of many people’s lives in the coming years, and it is difficult to get a permit out of campus because of the pressures on working people’s time. “Having a fulltime job after graduation offers limited time to learn to drive. We senior students have plenty of spare time, plenty of opportunity to learn. ”Zhou says.
Xu Jian, an official at the driving school, said undergraduates were very able and serious, and could grasp in an hour what ordinary people took four hours to learn. In this driving school, middle-aged people, young women and college students are the main customers.
To get a driver’s permit, a beginner is now required to have at least 86 hours’ practice before the final road test.The undergraduates are learning to drive because ________.
| A．they like to drive cars |
| B．they need this skill to find a good job |
| C．they will not have any time to learn to drive after they have found a full-time job |
| D．most of them will be able to buy cars in the future |
Which of the following is likely to be Xu Jian’s opinion of students learning to drive?
| A．It is better to learn it at college than at work. |
| B．Young people have an advantage in learning to drive. |
| C．It is a waste of money and time to learn to drive. |
| D．They will spend three times more time to learn to drive than usual. |
Which of the following can be the best headline for the passage?
| A．Students Learn to Drive. |
| B．Students Pay Less to Learn to Drive Now. |
| C．It is Better to Learn to Drive at Colleges. |
| D．Welcome to the Driving School. |
The Queen’s English is now sounding less upper-class, a scientific study of the Queen’s Christmas broadcasts has found. Researchers have studied each of her messages to the Commonwealth countries since 1952 to find out the change in her pronunciation from the noble Upper Received to the Standard Received.
Jonathan Harrington, a professor at Germany’s University of Munich, wanted to discover whether accent changes recorded over the past half century would take place within one person. “As far as I know, there just is nobody else for whom there is this sort of broadcast records,” he said.
He said the noble way of pronouncing vowels(元音) had gradually lost ground as the noble upper-class accent over the past years. “Her accent sounds slightly less noble than it did 50 years ago. But these are very, very small and slow changes that we don’t notice from year to year.”
“We may be able to relate it to changes in the social classes,” he told The Daily Telegraph, a British newspaper. “In 1952 she would have been heard saying ‘thet men in the bleck het’. Now it would be ‘that man in the black hat’. Similarly, she would have spoken of ‘the citay’ and’dutay’, rather than ‘citee’ and ‘dutee’, and ‘hame’ rather than ‘home’. In the 1950s she would have been ‘lorst’, but by the 1970s ‘lost’.”
The Queen’s broadcast is a personal message to the Commonwealth countries. Each Christmas, the 10-minute broadcast is put on TV at 3 pm in Britain as many families are recovering from their traditional turkey lunch(传统火鸡午餐).
The results were published(发表) in the Journal of Phonetics.The Queen’s broadcasts were chosen for the study mainly because .
| A．she has been Queen for many years |
| B．she has a less upper-class accent now |
| C．her speeches have been recorded for 50 years |
| D．her speeches are familiar to many people |
Which of the following is an example of a less noble accent in English?
| A．“Dutay”. | B． “Hame”. | C．“Citee”. | D．“Lorst”. |
We may infer from the text that the Journal of Phonetics is a magazine on .
| A．Christmas customs | B．speech sounds |
| C．TV broadcasting | D．personal messages |
What is the text mainly about?
| A．The changes in a person’s accent. |
| B．The Queen’s Christmas speeches on TV. |
| C．The relationship between accents and social classes. |
| D．The recent development of the English language. |
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