There is nothing in the US quite like Black Friday. Before midnight on Thursday, in malls across the US, people start queuing up outside the locked entrances of stores, making longer and longer lines, holding coupons (优惠券), sipping coffee and hot chocolate, rubbing their hands and stamping (跺脚) their feet for warmth, excitedly chatting, and waiting for the clerks to open the door when the time arrives.
Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving, which fell on Nov 28，2014, “has become in recent decades a special American holiday”, said the International Business Times. Indeed, up to 147 million Black Friday shoppers were expected to put up with the dark of night and the elbows(手肘)of other shoppers so that they could bring home some bargains, according to the US National Retail Federation.
But why does the shopping festival have such a name?
The name was first used in Philadelphia in the 1970s. The streets and sidewalks of the city became so packed with traffic and crowds on the day after Thanksgiving Day that the local police did not look forward to it. Because of this, they called the day “Black Friday”, said The Huffington Post. However, others believe that Black Friday takes its name from the fact that because of the increase in sales on the day, shops are able for the first time in the year to move out of the “red” – that is, debt – and into the “black”, or profit. Businesses, of course, try to take advantage of this day. A decade ago, retailers (零售商) opened at 5 or 6 am. Now, many of the big stores open at midnight.
People really seem to like the whole experience of queuing up before midnight, “for it isn’t just about the bargains”, noted CNN. “For many shoppers, it’s just fun to be part of a large crowd. Those who go to the malls at midnight are driven by the same thing that makes a million people get together in Times Square each New Year’s Eve.”Which of the following statements about Black Friday is TRUE?
| A．It is a special day in the US on which government hands out coupons to customers. |
| B．It is a shopping festival in the US that falls on the second Friday after Thanksgiving. |
| C．It has been a traditional American holiday since the founding of the nation. |
| D．It is an opportunity for Americans to get things they want at a much lower price. |
According to The Huffington Post, the name of “Black Friday” may be first used ______.
| A．at the beginning of the 20th century in the US |
| B．by American people who expected to bring home bargains after Thanksgiving Day |
| C．by the police to show their displeasure toward heavy traffic caused by shopping crowds |
| D．to describe the bad weather on the day |
According to the article, people who queue up for Black Friday ______.
| A．usually help each other to find good bargains |
| B．have great fun as part of the waiting crowd |
| C．have a lot of complaints about the service of the retail clerks |
| D．have to wait until 5 to 6 am to start shopping |
What is the article mainly about?
| A．The shopping habits of Americans. |
| B．An introduction to the origin and influences of Black Friday. |
| C．Tips on how to get good bargains on Black Friday. |
| D．People’s mixed feelings toward Black Friday. |
Some people don’t mind being fat. Other people can keep slim 
(苗条) without any effort. But a lot of people do put on too much weight and don’t like it. The question is, what can thy do about it?
Some believe exercise can be helpful. But the trouble is that it only makes you want to eat more. You might sweat out a couple of pounds playing tennis or climbing a mountain, but you put it all back on again with a big steak or bread and jam.
A helpful way is food choosing. But what sort of food should you choose? Some believe that the less they eat, the slimmer they will be. They don’t eat anything until they become weak with hunger. Some stick to milk and bananas. You’ll find you need a lot of bananas, and unless you live where they grow, they aren’t cheap. Another says that if you eat things like hard-boiled eggs, and apples with their skins on which are hard for your stomach to digest (消化), the more you eat, the thinner you get. This is because you use up the fat in your body to get the energy to digest the food.
For most of us these methods are too extreme (极端的). The simplest way is just to cut down on the carbohydrates (糖
类) that means not eating bread, potatoes, cakes, sugar, rice, and so on and eating anything else you like. It’s straight forward and often quite effective.
Still others like to be more scientific. They are calorie countries. They get a table, which tells them that, for example, 100 grams of roast let of lamb gives you 330 calories and a 50 gram helping of Yokshire pudding gives you 130 calories..
. According to the passage, the best way to keep slim is ______.
| A．exercising | B．hunger | C．food-choosing | D．eating milk and bananas |
.
There seems nothing wrong with exercise except that ______.
| A．it makes you sweat | B．it’s hard work |
| C．it tires you out | D．it makes you eat more |
.
. The practical method suggested here means ______.
| A．sticking to bananas | B．not eating many carbohydrates |
| C．eating as little as possible | D．eating things that are hard to digest |
.
. Which of the following do you think is the best title for the passage?
| A．Don’t Eat Too Much | B．Various Ways of Losing Weight |
| C．Ways to Keep Fit | D．Food and Health |
Chinese are very generous when it comes to educating their children. Not caring about the money, parents often send their children to the best schools or even abroad to England, the United States or Australia. They also want their children to take extra-course activities where they will learn a musical instrument or ballet or other classes which will give them a head start in life. The Chinese believe that the more expensive an education is , the better it is. So the parents will spend an unreasonable amount of money on education . Even poor couples will buy a computer for their son or daughter.
However, what most parents fail to see is that the best early education they can give their children is usually very cheap.
Parents can see that their children’s skills vary, skilled in some areas while poor in others. What most parents fail to realize though, is that today’s children lack (缺乏) self-respect and self-confidence.
The problem is that parents are only educating their children on how to take multiple-choice tests and how to study well, but parents aren’t teaching them the most important skills they need to be confident , happy and clever.
Parents can achieve this by teaching practical skills like cooking, sewing and doing housework.
Teaching a child to cook will improve many of the skills that he will need later in life. Cooking demands patience and time. It’s an enjoyable but difficult experiment. A good cook always tries to improve his cooking, so he will learn to work hard and gradually to finish his job successfully. His result, a well-cooked dinner, will give him much satisfaction and a lot of self-confidence.
Some old machines , such as a broken radio or TV set that you give your children to play with will make him curious (好奇) and arouse his interest He will spend hours looking at them, trying to fix them; your child might become an engineer when he grows up. These activities aren’t merely teac
hing a child to read a book , but rather to think, to use his mind. And that is more important..
Parents in China, according to this passage,_________.
A. are too strict with their children
B. are too rich to educate their children
C have some problems in educating their children correctly
D. are too poor to educate their children.
Generally speaking, children’s skills_______.
| A．come from their parents |
| B．have nothing to do with their education |
| C．may be different |
| D．have something to do with their marks in the exams |
.
The writer of this passage doesn’t seem to be satisfied with_______.
| A．the parents’ idea of educating their children |
| B．the education system |
| C．children’s skills |
| D．children’s hobbies |
.
. Doing some cooking at home helps children_________.
| A．learn how to serve their parents |
| B．learn how to become strong and fat |
| C．benefit from it and prepare themselves for the future |
| D．make their parents believe that they are clever |
Doctors have known for a long time that extremely loud noises can cause hearing damage or loss.The no
ise can be the sound of a jet airplane or machines in factories of loud music or other common sound at home and at work. A person only needs to hear the noise for little mire than one second to be affected.
An American scientist has found that using aspirin (阿斯匹林) increase the temporary (暂时的)hearing loss or damage from loud noise. He did an experiment using a number of students at a university who all had normal hearing. He gave them different amounts of aspirin for different periods of time, then he tested their hearing ability. He found that students who were given four grams of aspirin a day for two days suffered much greater temporary hearing loss than those who did not use aspirin. The hearing loss was about two times as great.
The scientist said millions of persons in the U.S. use much larger amounts of aspirin than were used in his experiment. He said these persons face a serious danger of suffering hearing loss from loud noise..
.Doctors have long known that__________.
| A．one may lose his hearing when he hears a terribly loud noise. |
| B．one may become deaf when he hears a loud noise. |
| C．loud noises can cause damage to the hearing of the young people only |
| D．common sounds at home are not harmful to the ear |
.
.One conclusion you can draw from the passage is that aspirin________.
| A．makes hearing damage from loud noise worse |
| B．should never be taken more than four grams |
| C．can damage one’s hearing when it is given more than four grams daily |
| D．always increases hearing loss by two times |
.
. The American scientist did his experiment in order to find ________.
A．how  much aspirin would affect a person’s hearing |
| B．how much aspirin should be given in the treatment of the patients with hearing damage from loud noise |
C．whether aspirin would incr ease the temporary hearing damage from loud noises |
| D．whether the people who had hearing damage should use aspirin |
One night last February, a seventeen-year-old Duffy drove home along a winding road, he saw a strange light thrown against the tree. “I knew it wasn’t the moon”, he said. “I drive this road all the time and I notice little things out of place.”
Duffy stopped his car and got out to examine. Below him far down in the deep valley lay a broken car with its headlights on. Thirty minutes earlier, a man had driven off the edge of the road, which h
as no guardrail. His car fell and rolled end over end, landing on its top more than two hundred feet below.
Duffy rushed to call for help, then returned and got down to reach the injured driver. Snow covered the valley and the temperature was below freezing. After struggling back up the cliff, Duffy took off his jacket and shirt and wrapped the injured man in time, along with the blankets from his car.
Life-saving deeds are starting to become usual action for Duffy, the oldest of seven children. When he was 12, he saved his ten-year-old brother from drowning. Two years ago, his three-year-old sister ate rat poison, and Duffy cleaned out her mouth, make her drink milk to protect her stomach and called doctors.
“We have tried to teach the children good values, and it looks like we have got some reward for it.” His father says..The strange light came from ________.
| A．The bright moon. | B．Duffy’s car. |
| C．The broken car in the valley | D．an unknown place |
.The phrase” landing on its top” means the car lay_________.
| A．on the top of the cliff | B．with its wheels upward |
| C．with its head upward | D．on the road as usual |
. Duffy wrapped the man because_________.
| A．he was badly injured | B．he had lost too much blood |
| C．he had nothing on | D．it was too cold that day |
. From the above article, we can see Duffy has saved ________ at least.
| A．two | B．three | C．four | D．five |
Special Bridges Help Animals Cross the Road
----Reported by Sheila Carrick
Why did the chicken cross the road? To get to the other side.
Most people know this joke. But recently, some people have been much more worried about how the grizzly bear(灰熊)and mountain lion can cross the road.
"Millions of animals die each year on US roads," the Federal Highway Administration reports. In fact，only about 80 ocelots, an endangered wild cat, exist in the US today. The main reason? Road kill. "Ecopassages" may help animals cross the road without being hit by cars. They are paths both over and under roads. "These ecopassages can be extremely useful, so that wildlife can avoid road accidents," said Jodi Hilty of the Wildlife Protection Society.
But do animals actually use the ecopassages? The answer is yes. Paul Beier of Northern Arizona University found foot marks left by mountain lions on an ecopassage that went under a highway. This showed that the lions used the passage.
Builders of ecopassages try to make them look like a natural part of an area by planting trees on and around them. Animals seem to be catching on. Animals as different as salamanders(火蜥蜴) and grizzly bears are using the bridges and underpasses.
The next time you visit a park or drive through an area with a lot of wildlife, look around. You might see an animal overpass!.
. The writer uses the example of "ocelots " to show that .
| A．wild animals have become more dangerous |
| B．the driving conditions have improved greatly |
| C．an increasing number of animals are killed in road accidents |
| D．the measure for protecting wildlife fails to work |
.
. From the news story, we know an ecopassage is .
A．an underground path for c ars |
| B．a fence built for the safety of the area |
| C．a bridge for animals to get over a river |
| D．a path for animals to cross the road |
.
. The writer asks visitors and drivers to look around when traveling because .
| A．wild animals may attack cars | B．wild animals may jam the road |
| C．they may see wild animals on ecopassages | D．they may see wild animals in the park |
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