“Our aim is to take our art to the world and make people understand what it is to move,” said David Belle, the founder of parkour(跑酷).
Do you love running? It is a good exercise, yet many people find it boring. But what if making your morning jog a creative one? Like jumping from walls and over gaps, and ground rolls? Just like the James Bond in the movie Casino Royale? Bond jumps down from a roof to a windowsill and then runs several blocks over obstacles on the way. It is just because of Bond's wonderful performances that the sport has become popular worldwide.
Yes, that's parkour, an extreme street sport aimed at moving from one point to another as quickly as possible, getting over all the obstacles in the path using only the abilities of the human body. Parkour is considered an extreme sport. As its participants（参与者）dash around a city, they may jump over fences, run up walls and even move from roof top to roof top.
Parkour can be just as exciting and charming as it sounds, but its participants see parkour much more than that.
Overcoming all the obstacles on the course and in life is part of the philosophy(理念) behind parkour. This is the same as life. You must determine your destination, go straight, jump over all the barriers as if in parkour and never fall back from them in your life to reach the destination successfully. A parkour lover said, “I love parkour because its philosophy has become my life, my way to do everything.”
Another philosophy we've learnt from parkour is freedom. It can be done by anyone, at any time, anywhere in the world. It is a kind of expression of trust in yourself. It is only a state of mind. It is when you trust yourself that you earn energy.Parkour has become popular throughout the world because of ________.
| A．its founder, David Belle |
| B．the varieties of participants |
| C．its risks and tricks |
| D．the film, Casino Royale |
The underlined word “obstacles” in Paragraph 2 is closest in meaning to “________”.
| A．streets | B．buildings |
| C．barriers | D．roofs |
Which of the following is true of parkour?
| A．It needs special training. |
| B．It is a good but boring sport. |
| C．It challenges human abilities. |
| D．It is a team sport. |
As its participants move around a city, ________.
| A．they should run to extremes |
| B．they may choose to escape |
| C．they can ask for help |
| D．they must learn to survive |
Which of the following is the philosophy of parkour?
| A．Sports and extremes. |
| B．Excitement and freedom. |
| C．Determination and freedom. |
| D．Dreams and success. |
Count Me Out
Call me old-fashioned. Call me old. Call me what you want, but I refuse to become part of this new Internet world.
I do not possess a computer at home or at the office. Actually, I stopped going to an office 35 years ago, when all communications were done with a pen, a typewriter, or, if the matter was of world-shaking importance, over the telephone. Likewise, if you like something advertised in a newspaper or magazine, you visited the shop selling it at the given address, or you phoned the number shown. Then you spoke to the fellow and asked for further details.
Tell me what you think of the following ad that appeared the other day in the newspaper. It was for a cure for cancer and this is what it said: “Awareness is the key. Visit spfulford. com at the awareness site.” There was no address or telephone number for the site. So what do unfortunate people without a computer do if they are seeking a cure for their illness?
There are, I am told, certain advantages in having access to the Internet. You can, for example, send love messages across the world or even get married to someone that you meet online. This bit doesn’t interest me; I have been happily married for 60 years. There are, of course, other activities for Internet users besides finding love. They can pay bills, order groceries, or discuss with their doctors.
And this is by no means all. More amazing things are yet to come in the near future. I read a newspaper report recently that quoted Stephen Hawking, an important British scientist. “The complexity of a computer as it exists today is probably less than the brain of an earthworm,” he said. “But, as technology advances, computers will become more complex, and a time may come when the Internet may develop ‘consciousness.’ In other words, the Internet will be able to think, have feelings, and may well be able to act on its own.”
If Professor Hawking is right, I may change my attitude to computers. As I grow older each day, I would like one of those that not only thinks for me but also accepts responsibilities for all my mistakes.
What’s the meaning of the title “Count Me Out”?
| A．Get me out of the Internet world. |
| B．Computers are trying to take control of life. |
| C．Modern technology pushes old people away. |
| D．Do not expect me to be a supporter of the Internet. |
According to Paragraph 2, the author thinks computers are .
| A．unnecessary | B．convenient | C．expensive | D．advanced |
What might the author like about the future computer?
| A．Taking blames. | B．Curing illnesses. |
| C．Delivering messages. | D．Responding to emotions. |
When other nine-year-old kids were playing games, she was working at a petrol station. When other teens were studying or going out, she struggled to find a place to sleep on the street. But she overcame these terrible setbacks to win a highly competitive scholarship and gain entry to Harvard University. And her amazing story has inspired a movie, “Homeless to Harvard：The Liz Murray Story” , shown in late April.
Liz Murray , a 22-- year-- old American girl, has been writing a real--life story of willpower and determination. Liz grew up in the shadow of two drug--addicted parents. There was never enough food or warm clothes in the house. Liz was the only member of the family who had a job. Her mother had AIDS and died when Liz was just 15 years old. The effect of that loss became a turning point in her life. Connecting the environment in which she had grown up with how her mother had died, she decided to do something about it.
Liz went back to school. She threw herself into her studies, never telling her teachers that she was homeless. At night, she lived on the streets. “What drove me to live on had something to do with understanding, My understanding was that there was a whole other way of being. I had only experienced a small part of society,” she wrote in her book Breaking Night.
She admitted that she used envy to drive herself on. She used the benefits that come easily to others, such as a safe living environment, to encourage herself that "next to nothing could hold me down". She finished high school in just two years and won a full scholarship to study at Harvard University. But Liz decided to leave her top university a couple of months earlier this year in order to take care of her father, who has also developed AIDS. "I love my parents so much. They are drug addicts. But I never forget that they love me all the time."
Liz wants moviegoers to come away with the idea that changing your life is "as simple as making a decision". The word “setback” in the first paragraph most probably means___________?
| A．danger | B．difficulty | C．unhappiness | D．disaster |
What’s the best title of the passage?
| A．Liz’s Harvard Dream | B．Bitter Childhood of Liz |
| C．Liz’s Love for Her Parents | D．Liz’s Struggle for Her Life |
What actually made Liz throw herself into her studies ?
| A．Her parents’ addiction to drugs | B．Her mother’ s disease |
| C．Lack of food and clothes | D．Her mother’ s death |
According to the passage, which is NOT true about Liz?
| A．strong-- willed | B．envious | C．determined | D．respectful |
Motorists who used to listen to the radio or their favorite tunes on CDs may have a new way to entertain themselves, after engineers in Japan developed a musical road surface.
A team from the Hokkaido Industrial Research Institute has built a number of“melody roads,”which use cars as tuning forks to play music as they travel.
The concept works by using grooves(凹槽).They are cut at very specific intervals in the road surface. The melody road uses the spaces between to create different notes.
Depending on how far apart the grooves are, a car moving over them will produce a series of high or low notes, and designers are able to create a distinct tune.
Paten documents for the design describe it as notches “formed in a road surface so as to play a melody without producing simple sound or rhythm and reproduce melody-like tones”.
There are three musical strips in central and northern Japan—one of which plays the tune of a Japanese pop song. Reports say the system was invented by Shizuo Shinoda. He scraped some markings into a road with a bulldozer before driving over them and found that they helped to produce all kinds of tones.
The optimal speed for melody road is 44kph,but people say it is not always easy to get the intended sound.
“You need to keep the car windows closed to hear well,”wrote one Japanese blogger.“Driving too fast will sound like playing fast forward, while driving around 12mph［20km/h］has a slow-motion effect, making you almost car-sick.”According to the passage, melody roads use to create different notes.
| A．cars | B．grooves | C．spaces between intervals | D．bulldozers |
We can learn from the passage that the highness of notes is depended on .
| A．how far the grooves are | B．how big the grooves are |
| C．the number of the grooves | D．the speed of the car |
The underlined word “optimal” in the passage might mean .
| A．fastest | B．possible | C．best | D．suitable |
In order to hear the music well, you have to .
| A．drive very fast | B．drive slowly |
| C．open the windows wide | D．keep the windows closed |
What’s the best title of the passage?
| A．A New Type of Music | B．Melody Roads in Japan |
| C．A Musical Road Surface | D．A New Invention in J |
The world itself is becoming much smaller by using modern traffic and modern communication means （通讯设备）.Life today is much easier than it was hundreds of years ago, but it has brought new problems. One of the biggest is pollution. To pollute means to make things dirty. Pollution comes in many ways. We see it, smell it, drink it and even hear it.
Man has been polluting the earth. The more people, the more pollution. Many years ago, the problem was not so serious because there were not so many people. When the land was used up or the river was dirty in one place, Man moved to another place. But this is no longer true. Man is now slowly polluting the whole world.
Air pollution is still the most serious. It’s bad for all living things in the world, but it is not the only one kind of pollution. Water pollution kills our fish and pollutes our drinking water. Noise pollution makes us angry more easily.
Many countries are making rules to fight pollution. They stop people from burning coal in houses and factories in the city, and from putting dirty smoke into the air.
Pollution by carbon dioxide is now the most dangerous kind of air pollution. It is caused by heavy traffic. It is true that if there are fewer people driving, there will be less air pollution.
The earth is our home. We must take care of it. That means keeping the land, water and air clean. And we must take care of the rise in population at the same time.
Hundreds of years ago, the pollution was _________it is today.
| A．much easier than | B．as easy as | C．as hard as | D．much less than |
Our world is becoming much smaller_________.
| A．because the earth is being polluted day and night |
| B．because science is developing |
| C．because of the rise in population |
| D．because the earth is blown away by the wind every year |
Air pollution is the most serious kind of pollution because_________.
| A．it does harm to all living things in the world | B．it makes much noise |
| C．it makes our rivers and lakes dirty | D．it makes us angry more easily |
Which of the following is NOT the possible way to reduce air pollution?
| A．Stop people from burning coal in the houses and factories in the city |
| B．Stop putting dirty smoke into the air |
| C．Encourage people to go to work by bike or on foot instead of driving a car |
| D．Don’t throw rubbish into the river. |
Which of the following is NOT true?
| A．The problem of pollution is not so serious because there are not so many people living on the earth. |
| B．The pollution of the earth grows as fast as the world’s population does. |
| C．If people could go to work by bike ,it would be helpful against the problem of carbon dioxide. |
| D．Many countries are making rules to fight against pollution. |
One hot night last July, when our new baby wouldn’t or couldn’t sleep, I tried everything I could think of : a warm bottle, songs gentle rocking. Nothing would settle him down. Guessing that I would have a long night ahead of me, I brought a portable (便携式)TV into his room, figuring that watching the late movie was as good a way as any to kill off the hours till dawn. To my surprise, as soon as the TV lit up, the baby quieted right now, his little eyes focused brightly on the tube. Not to waste an opportunity for sleep, I then walked out of the room, leaving him to watch the actors celebrate John Bellushi's forty-fifth birthday.
My wife and I heard no more of the baby that night, and the next morning when I went into his room, I found him still watching TV himself. I found in my baby's a metaphor（启示）for the new generation. My wife and I had given him some books to examine, but he merely spit upon them. When we read to him, he did not feel comfortable. And so it is in the schools. We find that our students don't read , that they look down upon reading and scold those of us who teach it. All they want to do is watching TV.
After this experience with the baby, however, I have reached a conclusion: “Let them watch it!” If television is that much more attractive to children than books, why should we fight it? Let them watch it all they want!
Father brought a TV set into his son's room____.
| A．to stop his son crying | B．to let him learn something |
| C．to make him frightened | D．to let his son spend a good night |
To the couple’s surprise the boy ___after they brought a TV set into his room.
| A．soon fell asleep | B．cried all that night |
| C．became quiet and silent | D．slept quite well that night |
Form the last paragraph we know that the writer thinks it____.
| A．terrible for children to watch so many TV programmes |
| B．useless for parents to blame their children |
| C．necessary for TV stations to improve their TV programmes |
| D．favorable for children to watch the programmes they like |
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