阅读下列短文，从每题所给的四个选项(A、B、C和D)中选出最佳选项。
That summer an army of crickets(蟋蟀) started a war with my father. Dad didn't care for insects much more than Mamma，but he could tolerate a few living in the basement. Mamma was a city girl and she said a cricket was just too noisy. 
Then to prove her point she wouldn't go to bed. She drank coffee and smoked my father's cigarettes and paced between the sofa and the TV. Next morning she threatened to pack up and leave，so Dad drove to the store and hurried back. He sprayed poison from a jug. When he was finished he told us that was the end of it.
For a couple of weeks we went back to find dead crickets in the laundry. He suggested that we'd all be better off to hide as many as we could from Mamma. I fed a few dozen to the cat who I didn't like because it scratched for no reason.
However，soon live crickets started showing up in the kitchen and bathroom. Mamma was upset because she thought the dead crickets came back，but Dad said these were certainly new ones. He fetched his jug of poison and sprayed all over until the whole house smelled of poison，and then he sprayed the basement again.
A couple of weeks later，when both live and dead crickets kept turning up，Dad emptied the basement of junk. Then he burned a lot of old newspapers and magazines which he said the crickets had turned into nests.
While we ate supper that evening，the wind lifted some flames onto the wood pile. The only gasoline was in the lawn mower's(割草机) fuel tank but that was enough to create an explosion big enough to reach the house. Once the roof caught，there wasn't much anyone could do.
After the fire truck left，Mamma took the others to Aunt Gail's. I helped Dad and Uncle Burt carry things out of the house and pile them by the road. We worked into the night and we didn't talk much，while all around the noise of crickets broke our silence.What do we know about the author's mother?
| A．She didn't like insects at all. |
| B．She liked insects more than his father. |
| C．She cared for insects very much. |
| D．She could only tolerate a few insects. |
The author's father drove to the store to buy ________.
| A．cigarettes for himself |
| B．more coffee for his wife |
| C．some poison |
| D．some gasoline |
The author fed a few dozen crickets to the cat probably to ________.
| A．make his mother happy |
| B．help his mother clear away the crickets |
| C．play with the cat |
| D．harm the cat |
The author's father burned the old newspapers and magazines because he thought
________.
| A．they were no longer useful |
| B．the crickets were afraid of fire |
| C．they became the home of crickets |
| D．the dead crickets came back to life |
We learn from the last paragraph that ________.
| A．the author's family lost their battle against the crickets |
| B．the author's parents learned to put up with insects |
| C．the author's family didn't suffer much in the fire |
| D．the author's parents got divorced |
The United States is one of the few countries in the world that has an official day on which fathers are honoured by their children. On the third Sunday in June, fathers all across the United States are given presents, treated to dinner or otherwise made to feel special.
However，the idea for creating a day for children to honour their fathers began in Spokane，Washington．A woman by the name of Sonora Smart Dodd thought of the idea for Father’s Day while listening to a Mother’s Day sermon in 1909．Having been raised by her father，Henry Jackson Smart，after her mother died，Sonora wanted her father to know how special he was to her．
It was her father that made all the parental sacrifices and was，in the eyes of his daughter，a selfless and loving man．Sonora’s father was born in June，so she chose to hold the first Father’s Day celebration in Spokane，Washington on the 19th of June，1910．
In 1924, President Calvin Coolidge declared the third Sunday in June as Father’s Day．Roses are the Father’s Day flowers：red to be worn for a living father and white if the father has died． When children can’t visit their fathers or take them out to dinner，they send a greeting card．Traditionally，fathers prefer greeting cards that are not too sentimental．Most greeting cards are too special so fathers laugh when they open them．Some give heartfelt thanks for being there whenever the child needs Dad． The United States is special in Father’s Day because _______.
| A．many people celebrate the day |
| B．only America celebrates the day |
| C．America makes it an official day |
| D．all men are honoured in America |
At first，Father’s Day was fixed on June 19th because _______.
| A．Sonora honoured her father on her father’s birthday |
| B．Sonora’s birthday was June 19th |
| C．it was decided by the President at that time |
| D．her mother died on June 19th |
How many years has passed before Father’s Day became an official day since the Father’s Day was celebrated?
| A．4． |
| B．10． |
| C．14． |
| D．24． |
According to the passage，on Father’s Day，_______.
| A．people will wear the same flowers to honour their fathers |
| B．only daughters wear red flowers to honour their fathers |
| C．children must go home to honour their fathers |
| D．fathers are often honoured in different ways |
According to the passage，we can infer that Henry Jackson Smart _______．
| A．was very kind to anyone |
| B．did a lot for his daughter |
| C．was the first father honoured in 1924 |
| D．always helped others by giving money |
Occasionally, my father came back drunk. Late at night, he beat on the door, pleading to my mother to open it .He was on his way home from drinking, gambling, or some combination thereof, misspending money that we could have used and wasting time that we desperately needed.
It was the late-1970s. My parents were separated. My mother was now raising a group of boys on her own. My father spouted off about what he planned to do for us, buy for us.In fact, he had no intention of doing anything. As a father who was supposed to love us, in fact, he lacked the understanding of what it truly meant to love a child—or to hurt one. To him, this was a harmless game that kept us excited and begging. In fact, it was a cruel, corrosive lie. I lost faith in his words and in him. I wanted to stop caring, but I couldn’t.
Maybe it was his own complicated relationship to his father and his father’s family that caused him cold. Maybe it was the pain and guilt associated with a life of misfortune. Who knows. Whatever it was, it stole him from us, and particularly from me.
While my brothers talked about breaking and fixing things, I spent many of my evenings reading and wondering. My favorite books were a set of encyclopedias(百科全书) given by my uncle. They allowed me to explore the world beyond my world, to travel without leaving, to dream dreams greater than my life would otherwise have supported. But losing myself in my own mind also meant that I was completely lost to my father. Not understanding me, he simply ignored me—not just emotionally, but physically as well. Never once did he hug me, never once a pat on the back or a hand on the shoulder or a tousling of the hair.
My best memories of him were from his episodic attempts at engagement with us. During the longest of these episodes（插曲）, once every month or two, he would come pick us up and drive us down the interstate to Trucker’s Paradise, a seedy, smoke-filled, truck stop with gas pumps, a convenience store, a small dining area and a game room through a door in the back. My dad gave each of us a handful of quarters, and we played until they were gone. He sat up front in the dining area, drinking coffee and being particular about the restaurant’s measly offerings.
I loved these days. To me, Trucker’s Paradise was paradise. The quarters and the games were fun but easily forgotten. It was the presence of my father that was most treasured. But, of course, these trips were short-lived.
It wasn’t until I was much older that I would find something that I would be able to cling to as evidence of my father’s love.
When the Commodore 64 personal computer debuted, I convinced myself that I had to have it even though its price was out of my mother’s range. So I decided to earn the money myself. I mowed every yard I could find that summer for a few dollars each, yet it still wasn’t enough. So my dad agreed to help me raise the rest of the money by driving me to one of the watermelon farms south of town, loading up his truck with wholesale melons and driving me around to sell them. He came for me before daybreak. We made small talk, but it didn’t matter. The fact that he was talking to me was all that mattered. I was a teenager by then, but this was the first time that I had ever spent time alone with him. He laughed and repeatedly introduced me as “my boy,” a phrase he relayed with a sense of pride. It was one of the best days of my life.
Although he had never told me that he loved me, I would cling to that day as the greatest evidence of that fact. He had never intended me any wrong. He just didn’t know how to love me right. He wasn’t a mean man. So I took these random episodes and clung to them like a thing most precious, storing them in my mind for the long stretches of coldness when a warm memory would prove most useful.
It just goes to show that no matter how friendless the father, no matter how deep the damage, no matter how shattered the bond, there is still time, still space, still a need for even the smallest bit of evidence of a father’s love.
“My boy.”From the passage, the father was_____ in the writer’s memory.
| A．selfish and cruel | B．proud and cold |
| C．imperfect but loving | D．shy but thoughtful |
The writer used not to feel Father’s true love because______ .
| A．father showed his love but had no good way to express himself to his children |
| B．he just lost himself in his own mind without getting close to his father |
| C．father was too busy so unable to communicate with his children enough |
| D． he had a prejudice（偏见） and was too stubborn to feel it |
The underlined phrase “cling to” can be replaced by __________.
| A．catch hold of | B．depend on |
| C．stick to | D．keep |
From the last parts (para7-11), we can infer that ______ .
| A．father liked to show off his family before others |
| B．I couldn't understand Father’s love unless he expressed to me |
| C．father intended to show a loving father he was but failed. |
| D．I would definitely treasure all the small love from father |
What’s the right order of the episodes?
1. His dad agreed to help him.
2. The Commodore 64 personal computer was just on sale.
3. The writer decided to buy it and earn the money himself.
4 His dad drove the writer to one of the watermelon farms south of town, loaded up his truck with wholesale melons and drove the writer around to sell them.
5. The writer didn’t have enough money.
| A．23541 | B．23514 | C．32541 | D．32514 |
What’s the best title of the passage?
| A．Remembrances of my father | B．Father and son |
| C．My boy | D．The past days |
You hear the comment all the time: the U.S. economy looks good by figures, but it doesn’t feel good. Why doesn’t ever-greater wealth promote ever-greater happiness? It is a question that dates at least to the appearance in 1958 of The Wealthy Society by John Kenneth Galbraith, who died recently at 97.
The Wealthy Society is a modern classic because it helped describe a new moment in the human condition. For most of history, “hunger, sickness, and cold” threatened nearly everyone, Galbraith wrote. “Poverty (贫穷) was found everywhere in that world. Obviously it is not of ours.” After World War II, the fear of another Great Depression gave way to an economic growth. In the 1930s unemployment had averaged 18.2 percent; in the 1950s it was 4.5 percent.
To Galbraith, materialism (物质主义) had gone mad and would cause discontent. Through advertising, companies conditioned consumers to buy things they didn’t really want or need. Because so much spending was artificial, it would be unsatisfying. Meanwhile, government spending that would make everyone better off was being cut down because people wrongly considered government only as “a necessary bad.”
It’s often said that only the rich are getting ahead; everyone else is standing still or falling behind. Well, there are many undeserving rich — overpaid chief managers, for instance. But over any meaningful period, most people’s incomes are increasing. From 1995 to 2004, people feel “squeezed” because their rising incomes often don’t satisfy their rising wants — for bigger homes, more health care, more education, and faster Internet connections.
The other great disappointment is that it has not got rid of insecurity. People regard job stability as part of their standard of living. As company unemployment increased, that part has gradually become weaker. More workers fear they’ve become “the disposable American,” as Louis Uchitelle puts it in his book by the same name.
Because so much previous suffering and social conflict resulted from poverty, the arrival of widespread wealth suggested utopian (乌托邦式的) possibilities. Up to a point, wealth succeeds. There is much less physical suffering than before. People are better off. Unfortunately, wealth also creates new complaints.
Advanced societies need economic growth to satisfy the multiplying wants of their citizens. But the search for growth cause new anxieties and economic conflicts that disturb the social order. Wealth sets free the individual, promising that everyone can choose a unique way to self-accomplishment. But the promise is so unreasonable that it leads to many disappointments and sometimes inspires choices that have anti-social consequences, including family breakdown. Figures indicate that happiness has not risen with incomes.
Should we be surprised? Not really. We’ve simply confirmed an old truth: the seeking of wealth does not always end with happiness.The Wealthy Society is a book ________.
| A．about poverty in the past |
| B．written by Louis Uchitelle |
| C．indicating that people are becoming worse off |
| D．about why happiness does not rise with wealth |
According to Galbraith, people feel discontented because ________.
| A．materialism has run wild in modern society |
| B．they are in fear of another Great Depression |
| C．public spending hasn’t been cut down as expected |
| D．the government has proved to be necessary but ugly |
Why do people feel“squeezed”when their average income rises considerably?
| A．They think there are too many overpaid rich. |
| B．There is more unemployment in modern society. |
| C．Their material demands go faster than their earnings. |
| D．Health care and educational cost have somehow gone out of control. |
What does Louis Uchitelle mean by “the disposable American” ?
| A．People with a stable job. |
| B．Workers who no longer have secure jobs. |
| C．Those who see job stability as part of their living standard. |
| D．People who have a sense of security because of their rising incomes. |
What has wealth brought to American society?
| A．Stability and security. |
| B．Materialism and content. |
| C．A sense of self-accomplishment. |
| D．New anxiety, conflicts and complaints. |
Unlike chemists and physicists, who usually do their experiments using machines, biologists and medical researchers have to use living things like rats. But there are three Nobel prize-winning scientists who actually chose to experiment on themselves – all in the name of science, reported The Telegraph.
1. Werner Forssmann (Nobel prize winner in 1956)
Forssmann was a German scientist. He studied how to put a pipe inside the heart to measure the pressure inside and decide whether a patient needs surgery.
Experiments had been done on horses before, so he wanted to try with human patients. But it was not permitted because the experiment was considered too dangerous.
Not giving up, Forssmann decided to experiment on himself. He anaesthetized (麻醉) his own arm and made a cut, putting the pipe 30 centimeters into his vein. He then climbed two floors to the X-ray room before pushing the pipe all the way into his heart.
2. Barry Marshall (Nobel prize winner in 2005)
Most doctors in the mid-20th century believed that gastritis was down to stress, spicy food or an unusually large amount of stomach acid. But in 1979 an Australian scientist named Robin Warren found that the disease might be related to a bacteria called Helicobacter pylori.
So he teamed up with his colleague, Barry Marshall, to continue the study. When their request to experiment on patients was denied, Marshall bravely drank some of the bacteria. Five days later, he lost his appetite and soon was vomiting each morning – he indeed had gastritis.
3. Ralph Steinman (Nobel prize winner in 2011)
This Canadian scientist discovered a new type of immune system cell called the dendritic cell. He believed that it had the ability to fight against cancer.
Steinman knew he couldn’t yet use his method to treat patients. So in 2007, when doctors told him that he had cancer and that it was unlikely for him to live longer than a year, he saw an opportunity.
With the help of his colleagues, he gave himself three different vaccines based on his research and a total of eight experimental therapies（疗法）. Even though Steinman eventually died from his cancer, he lived four and a half years, much longer than doctors had said he would.The main purpose of the passage is to ________.
| A．present some dangerous experiments that Nobel prize winners did on themselves. |
| B．list difficulties that scientists went through in order to make important discoveries. |
| C．explain why some scientists chose to experiment on themselves. |
| D．introduce a few Nobel prize winners who did experiments on themselves. |
Which of the following is TRUE according to the article?
| A．Forssmann’s experiment ended in failure. |
| B．Forssmann had the pipe pushed all the way into his heart. |
| C．Barry Marshall succeeded by drinking some Helicobacter pylori. |
| D．Barry Marshall’s experiment on himself confirmed that most doctors’ belief about gastritis was correct. |
The underlined word “gastritis” in Paragraph 5 probably means ______.
| A．a kind of bacteria | B．a kind of stomach disease |
| C．a new type of therapy | D．a large amount of stomach acid |
From the text, we can conclude that Ralph Steinman ______.
| A．discovered a new type of cancer cell called the dendritic cell |
| B．tried different therapies containing the dendritic cell on himself |
| C．had his request to experiment on patients denied |
| D．believed that he was better than doctors at treating cancer |
Where can we read such a passage?
| A．In a newspaper. | B．In a poster. |
| C．In a textbook. | D．In a science book. |
One Sunday, my family had gathered at my parents’ house to feast upon Mom’s wonderful cooking．During the normal dinner chatter, I noticed that my father was slurring （说话含混） his words．No one mentioned this during dinner, but I felt compelled to discuss it with my mother afterward．
We decided that there was something seriously wrong and that Dad needed to see the doctor．
Mom phoned me two days later．“The doctor found a brain tumor （肿瘤）．It’s too large at this point to operate．Maybe they can do something then, but the odds are long．”
Even with the treatment, my father’s condition worsened, and the doctor finally informed us that this condition was terminal．During one of his stays in the hospital, we brought our baby daughter Chelsey with us when we visited him．By this time he had great difficulty speaking．I finally figured out that he wanted Chelsey to sit on his stomach so he could make faces at her．
Watching the two of them together, I realized I was living an experience that would stay with me forever．Though grateful for the times they could share, I couldn’t shake the feeling of a clock ticking in the background．
On the visit to my parents’ home during what we all know was my father’s last days, my mother took Chelsey from my arms and announced, “Your father would like to see you alone for a minute．”
I entered the bedroom where my father lay on a rented hospital bed．He appeared even weaker than the day before．
“How are you feeling, Dad?” I asked．“Can I do anything for you?”
He tried to speak, but he couldn’t make out a word．
“I’m sorry, but I can’t understand you,” I said．
With great difficulty he said, “I love you．”
We don’t learn courage from heroes on the evening news．We learn true courage from watching ordinary people rise above hopeless situations．In many ways my father was a strict, uncommunicative man．He found it difficult to show emotion．The bravest thing I ever saw him do was overcome that barrier to open his heart to his son and family at the end of his life．Which of the following statements is TRUE?
| A．The writer accompanied his father to a medical examination． |
| B．The writer’s father got worse after the removal of the brain tumor． |
| C．The writer’s father had known about his illness before the writer discovered it． |
| D．The writer was quick to notice the strange condition of his father． |
What does the underlined sentence “the odds are long” mean?
| A．It takes a long time for Father to recover． |
| B．There’s little possibility for Father to recover． |
| C．Father needs love and care from his family． |
| D．They need a proper time to operate on Father． |
The father had never said “I love you” to the writer before because______．
| A．he was not used to openly showing his emotions |
| B．he was not so attached to the writer |
| C．he thought there was no need to tell the writer |
| D．he believed in strictness and punishment |
What does the writer attempt to tell us?
| A．Life is short, so live your life to the fullest． |
| B．Don’t wait to see a doctor till it is too late． |
| C．Bravely express your love for your family． |
| D．We don’t often value health until we lose it． |
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