Sometimes your biggest weakness can become your biggest strength. Take，for example，the story of one 10－year－old boy who decided to study judo(柔道) despite the fact that he had lost his left arm in a devastating car accident.
The boy began lessons with an old Japanese judo master. The boy was doing well，so he couldn't understand why，after three months of training，the master had taught him only one move.
“Sensei，” the boy finally said，“shouldn't I be learning more moves？” “This is the only move you know，but this is the only move you'll ever need to know，” the sensei replied.
Not quite understanding，but believing in his teacher，the boy kept training. Several months later，the sensei took the boy to his first tournament(锦标赛，联赛)．Surprising himself，the boy easily won his first two matches. The third match proved to be more difficult，but after some time，his opponent became impatient and charged；the boy deftly(熟练地) used his one move to win the match. Still amazed by his success，the boy was now in the finals.
This time，his opponent was bigger，stronger，and more experienced. For a while，the boy appeared to be defeated. Concerned that the boy might get hurt，the referee called a time out. He was about to stop the match when the sensei intervened. “No，” the sensei insisted，“let him continue.” Soon after the match resumed，his opponent made a big mistake: he dropped his guard. Instantly，the boy had won the match and the tournament. He was the champion.
On the way home，the boy and sensei reviewed every move in each and every match. Then the boy gathered the courage to ask what was really on his mind. “Sensei，how did I win the tournament with only one move? ”“You won for two reasons，” the sensei answered. “First，you've almost mastered one of the most difficult throws in all of judo. Second，the only known defense for that move is for your opponent to grab your left arm. ”The boy's biggest weakness had become his biggest strength.
What's the best title of the passage?
| A．No pains no gains. |
| B．Weakness can become strength. |
| C．Where there is a will there is a way. |
| D．A great judo master. |
According to the second paragraph the boy was ______ with his teacher.
| A．satisfied | B．pleased |
| C．unsatisfied | D．careful |
Why did the referee call a timeout in the finals?
| A．Because he thought the boy would be the loser definitely. |
| B．Because he thought the boy would give up. |
| C．Because he dropped his guard. |
| D．Because he was experienced. |
In the last paragraph the author wanted to tell us ______．
| A．who was the champion |
| B．the reason why the boy won every match |
| C．the sensei was very excellent |
| D．the boy was very courageous |
There have been big changes in the attitudes of most parents over the last few years. Physical punishment is banned in schools in most countries ,and in many countries, there are moves to ban all physical punishment of children even at home. However, many parents still believe that they have the right to use some physical punishments to deal with certain misbehavior at certain ages.
It ‘s easy to find reasons to allow some physical punishments. One issue is that many parents find it very difficult to abandon physical punishment completely. Parents argue that this was the way they were brought up and that it didn’t do any harm to them. They believe that for the child’s sake they have the right to discipline the child in any way they consider fit ，including using some physical punishments. The other one is that physical punishment can be quick and effective. There is not much point reasoning with a screaming child in the supermarket.
However, there are several reasons why we should stop using physical punishment. One point is that most parents are not trained to deal with misbehaving children. They don’t have enough resources or choices to handle the situation. As a result, they immediately react by hitting the child even if there are other solutions to the problem. Another point is that unless people are challenged or forced to change their belief, they may keep following negative habits. An example is seat belt use ——now most people wear seat belts without thinking, while years ago the idea of using seat belts was strange to most people. In the same way, banning physical punishment will force people to change their habits.
In conclusion, parents have to change some of their belief and ideas about how children should be raised. It is possible to avoid the use of physical force,and doing so will help us move closer to the dream of removing violence from our society.According to the first paragraph, many parents think that _____
| A． they are free to use physical punishment on their children |
| B． most of the children behave badly in their daily life |
| C． they have changed their attitudes towards their children |
| D． physical punishment is effective to educate their children |
Many parents won’t give up physical punishment because _____.
| A． they are disappointed with their children |
| B． they were brought up just in the same way |
| C． they don’t want to hurt their children badly |
| D． they don’t know what to do with their children |
The author gives the example of using seat belts in order to show _____.
| A． most people are used to wearing seat belts |
| B． it’s not difficult to change some negative habits |
| C． seat belts are really very necessary and useful |
| D． people won’t change their old habits unless forced |
The main purpose of the author in writing this passage is to _____.
| A． talk about a ban on using physical punishment |
| B． tell us we should educate our children in other ways |
| C． advise parents to give up using physical punishment |
| D． suggest physical punishment should be used at home |
“ Dining out”, or “ eating out ”,is a phrase people use in Britain when they eat in a restaurant or a pub. Eating out is more popular in Britain today than ever before.
However, eating out can be expensive. Restaurants are normally more expensive than pubs, though many pubs serve very good ，simple food. As British people don’t dine out every night of the week ,eating in a restaurant is often seen as a special occasion. When going for the first date， or if celebrating an anniversary or a birthday, many people like to go to a restaurant. People often eat in a restaurant before going to the cinema or the theatre.
As in all cultures, there are many rules of etiquette (礼节)surrounding food and eating, and nowhere is this more pronounced than when eating in a smart restaurant. People are almost always expected to eat with a knife and fork and these should be held in the correct hand and used in the correct way. It is also impolite to have your elbows on the dining table when you are eating.
There’re many such “unspoken” rules — they are normally only important when eating in a very elegant and expensive restaurant, and vary slightly from restaurant to restaurant and place to place. A recent nationwide survey showed that there was a divide in manners between the north and south of Britain ---the “worst” manners were in Scotland and the northeast, and the “best” in Wales and the southeast! However, this survey was almost certainly conducted by someone in the southeast, so it may not be entirely fair.
Naturally, restaurants vary greatly in quality and price. However, almost all British cities have a vast range of food and cooking styles to choose from as well as traditional British food, from the very cheap to the very expensive — French, Italian, Indian, Greek, Thai, Japanese and many more. In fact, when asked what their favorite food is, many British people say an Indian curry (咖喱菜)rather than any other dish!
As well as dining in a restaurant ，when people are too tired to cook after work they often get a “takeaway”. This means they order from a takeaway or takeout restaurant by phone, then go to collect it and take it home to eat. Many takeout restaurants also deliver to your house. While you can normally find a takeout restaurant for almost any cuisine, the most popular are Italian, Indian and Chinese — and all you have to do is to open the door, pay and eat! What can be concluded from the first two paragraphs?
| A． The British spend more eating out than cooking at home. |
| B． The British pay great attention to eating in a restaurant. |
| C． The British often dine out when celebrating festivals. |
| D． People tend to eat in a restaurant after watching a movie. |
The underlined word “pronounced" in Paragraph 3 probably means “_____
| A． polite | B．expensive | C．strange | D．obvious |
According to the passage, which of the following statements is true?
| A． There exist great differences of rules in different restaurants. |
| B． People from Wales and southeast Britain are the most polite. |
| C． Your order in a takeout restaurant can be sent to your home. |
| D． Traditional British food is seldom served in British restaurants. |
What does the passage mainly talk about?
| A．Restaurant culture in Britain. |
| B．Table manners in Britain. |
| C．Different restaurants in Britain. |
| D．Traditional and foreign foods in Britain. |
Back those photos up
The images were striking. Homes on the East Coast were washed away by Super storm Sandy. People were in tears, picking up faded photographs, among their only remaining possessions.
If that doesn’t move you to get serious about safekeeping your lifetime of memories, what will? The digital age offers tools never imaginable before—including one-click access to a lifetime of family photos.
Here is a brochure on how to back up (存) your photos and save them online, where they can live forever and be accessible in good times and bad.
Scanning
The first step for those old photos is to scan them and save them to a digital format. Most printers come with scanners these days, so that’s an easy but extremely time-consuming step.
Storing the photos
With your scans in place, import the photos into your computer, and back them up.
You could make multiple copies of the disks and spread them to loved ones. Or you could choose external(外接的) hard drives or USB thumb drive, and add your photo and video collection from your computer.
Online backup
If you need lots of space, look at a pure online backup service, Caronite.
Caronite backs up 300 million files daily. Once you sign up, it starts to pick up everything you have on your hard drive. But photo collection on your computer’s main hard drive charges for $59 a year.
Cloud Storage
For folks who don’t need automatic backup, but instead want to take a more active approach, Dropbox, Google Drive and Microsoft’s Sky Drive let you store files online by yourself, share and instantly access them. All offer free options—2GB of free storage for Dropbox, 5GB for Google and 7GB for Sky Drive. But if you want more, you need to pay.
Bottom Line
The hard drive or flash drive is the cheapest and easiest. But drives can fail. Online services are more expensive, but more secure. With more of us switching back and forth between our computers, such services are the best way to get access to our data from wherever we are. Why does the author mention Super storm Sandy?
| A．To tell the background of the scanning photos. |
| B．To describe a severe natural disaster. |
| C．To attract the readers’ interest in the backups. |
| D．To win the readers’ sympathy. |
What can we know from the passage?
| A．Scanning photos take little time but costs a lot. |
| B．Caronite charges for backing up photos from hard drive. |
| C．Google Drive offers unlimited free photo storage on line. |
| D．The hard drive or flash drive is the cheapest and safest. |
Which of the following allows storing files automatically?
| A．Dropbox. | B．SkyDrive. | C．Caronite. | D．Flash drive. |
The main purpose of the passage is to _____.
| A．introduce some of the storage services |
| B．tell real stories about storage services |
| C．describe the functions of storage services |
| D．argue about the advantage of storage services |
In the United States, when one becomes rich, he wants people to know it. And even if he does not become very rich, he wants people to think that he is. That is what "keeping up with the Joneses" is about. It is the story of someone who tried to look as rich as his neighbors.
The expression was first used in 1913 by a young American called Arthur Momand. He told this story about himself. He began earning $ 125 a week at the age of 23. That was a lot of money in those days. He got married and moved with his wife to a very wealthy neighborhoodoutside New York City.. When he saw that rich people rode horses, Momand went horseback riding every day. When he saw that rich people had servants, Momand and his wife also hired a servant and gave big parties for their new neighbors.
It was like a race, but one could never finish this race because one was always trying to keep up. The race ended for Momand and his wife when they could no longer pay for their new way of life. They had to move back to an apartment in New York City. Momand looked around him and noticed that many people do things just to keep up with rich lifestyle of their neighbors. He saw the funny side of it and started to write a series of short stories. He called it "Keeping up with the Joneses” because "Jones" is a very common name in the United States. "Keeping up with the Joneses" came to mean keeping up with rich lifestyle of the people around you. Momand's series appeared in different newspapers across the country for over 28 years.
People never seem to get tired of keeping up with the Joneses. And there are "Joneses" in every city of the world. But one must get tired of trying to keep up with the Joneses because no matter what one does, Mr. Jones always seems to be ahead.Some people want to keep up with the Joneses because they ______.
| A．want to be as rich as their neighbors |
| B．want others to know or to think that they are rich |
| C．don't want others to know they are rich |
| D．want to be happy |
It can be inferred from the story that rich people like to ________.
| A．live outside New York City |
| B．live in New York City |
| C．live in apartments |
| D．live with many neighbors |
What's the author's attitude to keeping up with the Joneses?
| A．Negative. | B．Positive. | C．Supportive. | D．Objective. |
Millions of people die of hunger in southern Africa every year, but when Zambia was offered thousands of tons of free maize by the US, the government politely said no.
“We don’t know whether the food is safe,” said Zambia’s commerce, Trade and Industry Minister Dipak Patel.
His worries are shared by countries around the world that are in two minds about America’s genetically modified（GM,转基因的）crops．Just last week, EU（欧盟）member nations were discussing whether or not to import GM sweet corn from the US．
Ever since people started farming, they have tried to crossbreed（杂交）plants to make them stronger or better tasting. At one time, only related plants could be crossed with each other．
But when GM techniques were developed in the 1970s, scientists were able to put a single gene from a living creature into an unrelated creature.
This means they can make crops more productive and resistant to disease by adding genes from other species．They can also create food with special characteristics, such as “golden rice”, which is enriched with vitamin A. But many people believe GM foods are a health risk.
At the moment, the official argument is that GM foods “are not likely to present risks for human health”. But there are still many questions to be answered as the foods are produced in different ways.
Some experts believe the genetic material added to plants can transfer to humans and give damage to our bodies. Further harm could be caused by the genes from GM plants crossbreeding with naturally produced crops．
People in China are also getting worried about GM foods. More than 70 percent of the
country’s soybean oil is produced from imported GM soybeans. Meanwhile, an investigation last November found that 12 of 60 famous foods sold across the country were GM products. The government has begun to introduce a marking system for GM goods so that people can choose whether or not to eat them. Which is the best title for the passage?
| A．Harmful GM foods | B．Advantages of GM foods |
| C．GM foods, a health risk? | D．the Techniques of GM foods |
Why has Zambia refused the American free maize?
| A．they decide to follow EU member’s advice |
| B．they are concerned about the safety of GM foods |
| C．they care little about the problem of starvation |
| D．they are too proud to accept free offer |
It has been proved that _________.
| A．GM foods are harmful to people’s health |
| B．GM food is no better than naturally produced foods |
| C．only related plans could be crossed with each other |
| D．GM techniques can increase the production of crops |
Which of the following statement is TRUE?
| A．GM foods are a health risk. |
| B．Only Zambia worries about the safety of GM foods . |
| C．China’s government hasn’t taken any action about GM foods. |
| D．Some experts believe human bodies can absorb genetic material from GM foods. |
What’s the author’s attitude towards GM foods?
| A．Supportive. | B．Neutral. | C．Doubtful. | D．Critical. |
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