B
I have a friend named Monty Roberts who owns a horse ranch(养马场). He has let me use his house to put on fund-raising events. The last time I was there he introduced me by saying: “I want to tell you a story. It all goes back to a story about a young man who was the son of an itinerant horse trainer who would go from stable to stable, race track to race track, farm to farm and ranch to ranch, training horses. As a result, the boy’s high school career was continually interrupted. When he was a senior, he was asked to write a paper about what he wanted to be and do when he grew up.
“That night he wrote a seven-page paper describing his goal of someday owning a horse ranch. He wrote about his dream in great detail and he even drew a diagram of a 200-acre ranch, showing the location of all the buildings, the stables and the track. Then he drew a detailed floor plan for a 4,000-square-foot house that would sit on a 200-acre dream ranch.
“He put a great deal of his heart into the project and the next day he handed it in to his teacher. Two days later he received his paper back. On the front page was a large red F with a note that read, ‘See me after class.’
“The boy with the dream went to see the teacher after class and asked, ‘Why did I receive an F?’ The teacher said, ‘This is an unrealistic dream for a young boy like you. You have no money. You come from an itinerant family. You have no resources. Owning a horse ranch requires a lot of money. You have to buy the land. You have to pay for the original breeding stock and later you’ll have to pay large stud fees. There’s no way you could ever do it.’ Then the teacher added, ‘If you will rewrite this paper with a more realistic goal, I will reconsider your grade.’
“The boy went home and thought about it long and hard. He asked his father what he should do. His father said, ‘Look, son, you have to make up your own mind on this. However, I think it is a very important decision for you.’ Finally, after a week, the boy turned in the same paper, making no changes at all. He stated, ‘You can keep the F and I’ll keep my dream.’ ”
Monty then turned to the group present and said, “I tell you this story because you are sitting in my 4,000-square-foot house in the middle of my 200-acre horse ranch. I still have that school paper framed over the fireplace.” He added, “The best part of the story is that two years ago that same schoolteacher brought 30 kids to camp out on my ranch for a week. When the teacher was leaving, he said, ‘Look, Monty, I can tell you this now. When I was your teacher, I was something of a dream stealer. During those years I stole a lot of kids’ dreams. Fortunately you had enough courage not to give up yours.’ ”
“Don’t let anyone steal your dreams. Follow your heart, no matter what,” Monty at last concluded.The teacher asked the boy to rewrite the paper because __________.
| A．the boy was too poor to achieve his dream |
| B．the teacher doubted his chance of success |
| C．the boy was not good enough to achieve his goal |
| D．the teacher looked down on the boy absolutely |
Which of the following could best express the teacher’s feelings when she said the words before leaving the ranch two years ago?
| A．Regretful and proud. |
| B．Regretful and guilty. |
| C．Honest and sorry. |
| D．Embarrassed and proud. |
Monty told the story to say that __________.
| A．If you don’t agree with the teacher, you should talk with him\her. |
| B．If your dream is beyond reach, give it up and be realistic. |
| C．Your dream will come true as long as you stick to it however hard it is. |
| D．The teacher made little difference to his students. |
What would be the best title of the passage?
| A．Set a practical goal |
| B．Try to be realistic |
| C．Prove yourself through success |
| D．Keep your dream |
Children, especially boys, tend to idealise their fathers when they are young.Every little boy wants to grow up to be just like his father, and every little girl thinks her father is the smartest man on the earth. It’s not very easy to be a good father, but it’s not that difficult either. Children will truly enjoy spending time with their fathers, not just when they are kids, but even when they are adults.
Not all children communicate well with their fathers. Communication is often left to mothers, while fathers dispense advice as and when necessary. Don’t expect all conversations to centre around the dinner table. Go to your children’s bedrooms and talk to them about school, their teachers or their friends. Remember that the conversation cannot be one-sided. When your children open up to you, you also need to open up to them.
If your children come home from school feeling upset, go up to them and ask them what is the matter. And if it is something which seems to you to be a silly reason to be upset, don’t voice your opinion. It may be silly to you, but to your children it is important enough. So don’t wave the topic away by telling them not to bother about such stupid things. Simply discussing their problems with them will help them feel better.
Don’t shy away from having discussions about your teenage children’s love lives. Generally speaking, your children are definitely not going to discuss intimate details with you. Try to let them know that you are relaxed about topics on love. Tell your children how you met your wife. It is perfectly normal for children to go through feelings for the opposite sex as they grow up, and by keeping the topic closed for discussion, you are only shutting them off from discussing their feelings with you. All they will do is turn to their friends.To children their fathers are usually very ______.
| A．important | B．great | C．serious | D．strong |
From the second paragraph we can know that ______.
| A．some children don’t like their fathers at all |
| B．talking with children around the dinner table is bad |
| C．it is better for mothers to communicate with their children |
| D．mothers usually communicate better with their children. |
Suppose your children are worried about something you should _____.
| A．have a talk with them | B．express your option |
| C．keep silent | D．let them alone |
Your children would not like to discuss their love lives with you probably
because they think__________.
| A．you are relaxed about topics on love |
| B．they should ask for help from their friends |
| C．they have already grown up |
| D．it is not normal to experience feelings of love |
When I asked my daughter which item she would keep; the phone, the car, the cooker, the computer, the TV, or her boyfriend, she said” the phone”. Personally, I could do without the phone entirely, which makes me unusual. Because the telephone is changing our lives more than any other piece of technology.
Point 1 The telephone creates the need to communicate, in the same way that more roads create more traffic. My daughter comes home from school at 4:00 pm and then spends an hour on the phone talking to the very people she has been at school with all day. If the phone did not exist, would she have anything to talk about?
Point 2 The mobile phone means that we are never alone. “The mobile saved my life,” says Crystal Johnstone. She had an accident in her Volvo on the A45 between Otley and Skipton. Trapped inside, she managed to make the call that brought the ambulance(救护车) to her rescue.
Point 3 The mobile removes our secret. It allows marketing manager of Haba Deutsch, Carl Nicolaisen, to ring his sales staff all round the world at and time of day to ask where they are , where they are going, and how their last meeting went.
Point 4 The telephone separates us. Antonella Bramante in Rome says, “We worked in separate offices but I could see him through the window. It was easy to get his number. We were so near——but we didn’t meet for the first two weeks!”
Point 5 The telephone allows us to reach out beyond our own lives. Today we can talk to several complete strangers simultaneously ( 同时地) on chat lines (at least my daughter does. I wouldn’t know what to talk about). We can talk across the world. We can even talk to astronauts (if you know any) while they’re space-walking. And, with the phone line hooked up to the computer, we can access(存取) the Internet, the biggest library on Earth. How do you understand ‘Point 1 —The telephone creates the need to communicate,…’？
| A．People don’t communicate without telephone. |
| B．People communicate because of the creating of the telephone. |
| C．People communicate more since telephone has been created. |
| D．People communicate more because of more traffic. |
Which of the following best shows people’s attitude towards mobile phones?
| A．Mobile phones help people deal with the emergency. |
| B．Mobile phones bring convenience as well little secret to people. |
| C．Mobile phones are so important and should be encouraged. |
| D．Mobile phones are part of people’s life. |
Which points do you think support the idea that phones improve people’s life?
a. Point 1. b. Point2. c. Point3. d. Point 4. e. Point 5.
| A．c, d | B．a, e | C．a, c | D．b, e |
It is possible to talk to several complete strangers simultaneously through .
| A．the TV screen | B．a fax machine |
| C．the phone line hooked up to the computer | D．a microphone |
The best heading for the passage is .
| A．Phone Power | B．Kinds of Phone |
| C．How to Use Phones | D．Advantage of Phones |
A large number of women in Western European countries wish that they were born men. The number is said as high as 60% in Germany.
“Women often wish that they had the same chance as men have, and believe it is still men’s world.” Said Dr James Holden, one of the scientists who did the study. Anne Harper has a very good job for an international oil company. She also believes in“Women’s Liberation(解放)”.
“I don’t wish that I were a man,” she says, “and I don’t think many women do .But I do wish that people would stop looking down upon us women. At work, for example, we often do the work that men do but we get less paid. There are still a lot of jobs that are usually the best ones that open only to men. If you’re a man, you have a much better chance of leading an exciting life. How many women pilots are there or engineers or scientists?”What can we learn from the first paragraph?
| A．There are more Western European women wishing to be born men. |
| B．Women in Western European countries wish to deliver boy-babies. |
| C．60%women in Germany wish that they were born men. |
| D．60% Western European women wish that they were born men. |
“it is still men’s world.” means “______.”
| A．There’re more men than women in the world |
| B．There’re more men scientists or engineers in the world |
| C．Women cannot live on themselves without men |
| D．Women have not been given the same chance as men |
The “believes in” in paragraph 2 can be explained as _______.
| A．feels sure of the value of | B．is sure of the existence of |
| C．has some trust in | D．learns something from |
Anne Harper considers that women should ______.
| A．be really liberated | B．live a better life than men |
| C．be well paid | D．get better jobs than men |
Which of the following is NOT true according to the passage?
| A．Usually the best jobs are open to men not to women. |
| B．Women are less paid than men for doing the same job. |
| C．Men pilots, engineers and scientists are more than women ones. |
| D．Women are looked down upon as the second-class citizens. |
Charlie works in a post office. His father lost his job five years ago and his mother is often ill. And he has two brothers and a sister. He works hard and tries his best to buy enough food for his family.
Last month his family had to move to an old house outside the city. It's farther from the post office and he has to get up early in the morning in order to catch the 6:30 train. The head of his office is strict and everybody has to get there on time. He knows what it'll mean if he's late. A friend of his had pity on(同情) him and lent his old car to him. The young man was happy and from then on he could go to work by car.
Last Saturday Charlie went to buy some medicine for his mother. Bad luck! When he came out of the shop, he couldn't find the car. He was quite worried and began to look for it in front of the shop but he didn't find it. Suddenly he saw a woman parked a car there and hurried into the shop. Charlie saw the car wasn't locked. He got on it and drove it at once. He was afraid the loser would run after him and drove fast. A truck hit it at a crossing and he lost consciousness.(知觉)
This morning the young man came back to life and saw there were a few policemen standing by his bed. He asked, "Where am I?"
"In Room 103."
"In hospital or in prison ?"There’re ________ people in Charlie's family.
| A．four | B．five | C．six | D．seven |
Charlie’s family moved to the old house outside the city because _______.
| A．it's very quiet there | B．they hoped to save some money |
| C．he could get to his office by train | D．his father had found a job there |
Charlie has to get to his office on time because ___________.
| A．the head is strict with them | B．he wishes to be praised |
| C．he's usually on duty | D．he's afraid to be fired |
For did Charlie buy any medicine last Saturday?
| A．himself | B．his father |
| C．his sister. | D．his mother |
Charlie was afraid ________, so he drove fast.
| A．to be late | B．to meet the red lights |
| C．to be caught by the loser | D．to miss the 6:30 train |
An early invention by Albert Einstein has been rebuilt by scientists at Oxford University. They are trying to develop an environmentally friendly refrigerator that runs without electricity.
We all know that modern fridges cause damage to the environment. They work by using a kind of man-made greenhouse gas called Freon (氟里昂), which is far more damaging than carbon dioxide.
Now Malcolm McCulloch, an electrical engineer at Oxford, is leading a three-year project to develop appliances that can be used in places without electricity.
His team has completed a prototype (样机) of a fridge patented in 1930 by Einstein. It used only pressurized gases to keep things cold. The design was partly used in the first refrigerators, but the technology was dropped when more efficient compressors (压缩机) became popular in the 1950s. That meant a switch to using Freon.
Einstein's idea uses butane (丁烷) and water and takes advantage of the fact that liquids boil at lower temperatures, when the air pressure around them is lower.
"If you go to the top of Mount Qomolangma, water boils at a much lower temperature than it does when you're at sea level and that's because the pressure is much lower up there," said McCulloch.At one side is the evaporator (蒸发器), a bottle that contains liquid butane. "If you introduce a new vapor above the butane, the liquid boiling temperature decreases and, as it boils off, it takes energy from the surroundings to do so," says McCulloch. "That's what makes it cold."
The gas fridges based on Einstein's design were replaced by Freon-compressor fridges partly because Einstein's design was not very efficient. But McCulloch thinks that by changing the design and replacing the types of gases used it will be possible to quadruple (翻两番) the efficiency.
However, McCulloch's fridge is still in its early stages. "It's very much a prototype," he said. "Give us another month and we'll have it working." According to the passage, an early invention by Albert Einstein _______.
| A．has been rediscovered because it costs much less and works more efficiently |
| B．is being redesigned because it could be used in places without electricity |
| C．has just been found to be energy-saving and environmentally friendly |
| D．will be fully made use of and become the fridge of the future |
Which of the following is TRUE according to the text?
| A．Freon was used in fridges long before the 1950s. |
| B．Freon is what makes current fridges big polluters. |
| C．McCulloch thinks he could improve Einstein's design by using other types of vapors. |
| D．The fridge Malcolm McCulloch and his team designed will be put into production soon. |
We can learn from the text that the prototype completed _______.
| A．changed the air pressure around it |
| B．was tested on the top of Mount Everest |
| C．increased the liquid boiling temperature |
| D．used only pressurized gases to keep things cold |
McCulloch's words in Paragraph 6 _____.
| A．serve as an explanation for the principle behind Einstein's fridge |
| B．give you the reason why Einstein's fridge was not efficient |
| C．tell you how to take advantage of low air pressure |
| D．show you how Einstein's fridge works |
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