American culture is unique because it is formed and developed under certain conditions. The major factors contributing to the making of this new nation and the forming of a new culture are the hard environment, ethnic diversity (多样性；差异) and plural religion, which is quite different from other nations in the world. What is more, these elements are still influencing the American culture.
The early immigrants（移民）who were English Puritans settled down in northeast part of America from 1607 to 1892. Frontiers were pushed further west. The frontiersmen looked for a land of rich resources and a land of promise, opportunity and freedom. Actually they looked for a better life. So individualism(个人主义), self-reliance, and equality of opportunity have perhaps been the values most closely associated with the frontier heritage（遗产）of America.
In history, people from different countries in the world rushed to America three times. They brought their own culture to America and later on, different cultures were mixed together. Thus the unique American culture was formed, a common cultural life with commonly shared values.
The fundamental American belief in individual freedom and the fight of individuals to practice their own religion is at the center of religious experience in the United States. The great diversity of ethnic backgrounds has produced religious pluralism(多元化); almost all of the religions of the world are now practiced in the United States.
Nowadays, we can see the continual influence of the three elements in the current American society. American family is typically parents and their unmarried children. Middle-aged and elderly people generally do not live with their married children. The people in America have a very strong desire to start a new life in a new place. Quite a number of people change residences every year. The average American moves fourteen times in his lifetime. We can learn from this article that ________.
| A．the population of the United States includes a large variety of ethnic groups |
| B．the early immigrants brought about the unique American culture |
| C．people in the world once rushed to America because of its unique culture |
| D．the American family members don't get along well with each other |
What's the author's attitude towards American culture?
| A．He is critical of it. |
| B．He admires it very much. |
| C．He just states the facts. |
| D．He looks down upon it. |
The last paragraph is about________.
| A．the family structure in American society |
| B．the influence of the three elements in the current American society |
| C．the new life style of American family |
| D．the reason why American people like to change residences |
What might be the most suitable title of this article?
| A．The Immigrants in America |
| B．Why American Culture Is Unique |
| C．The Influence of American Culture |
| D．Plural Religion and American Culture |
Now many young people are traveling around the world on their own, not because they have no one to travel with, but because they prefer to go alone.
Kristina Wegscheider from California first traveled alone when she was at college and believes that it is something everyone should do at least once in their life. “It opens up your mind to new things and pushes you out of your comfort zone.” Wegscheider has visited 46 countries covering all seven continents.
In foreign countries, with no one to help you read a map, look after you if you get ill, or lend you money if your wallet is stolen, it is challenging. This is what drives young people to travel alone. It is seen as character building and a chance to prove that they can make it on their own.
Chris Richardson decided to leave his sales job in Australia to go traveling last year. He set up a website, The Aussie Nomad, to document his adventures. He says he wished he had traveled alone earlier. “The people you meet, the places you visit, or the things you do, everything is up to you and it forces you to grow as a person,” said the 30-year-old man.
Richardson describes traveling alone like “a shot in the arm”, which “makes you a more confident person that is ready to deal with anything”. He said, “The feeling of having overcome something on my own is a major part of what drives me each day when I’m dealing with a difficult task. I walk around with my head up because I know deep down inside that nothing is impossible if you try.”
The great 19thcentury explorer John Muir once said, “Only by going alone in silence can one truly get into the heart of the wilderness.” Which of the following will Kristina Wegscheider agree with?
| A． Traveling alone is a necessary experience for everyone. |
| B． It is more meaningful to travel in foreign countries. |
| C． It is comfortable to travel around without a friend. |
| D． Traveling abroad helps people to find new things. |
Traveling alone is challenging because ________.
| A． you have to make things on your own |
| B． it is hard for you to prove yourself to others |
| C． you can only depend on yourself whatever happens |
| D． it will finally build your character |
What can we infer about Chris Richardson?
| A． He started traveling alone at an early age. |
| B． He was once shot in the arm. |
| C． He used to work as a salesman. |
| D． His website inspires others a lot. |
What is the best title for the passage?
| A． Travel Abroad | B． Travel Alone |
| C． Travel Light | D． Travel Wide and Far |
Do you like chocolate? Maybe most people do. A box of it can be a great gift. Buy one for a friend and give it as a surprise. See how happy that person gets.
Say you just got a box of chocolate. Which piece do you pick first? A man has studied people’s choices. He says they tell something about the person. Did you choose a round piece? You are a person who likes to party. Did youchoosean ovalshape? You area person who likes to make things. Picking a square shape shows something else. The person is honest and truthful. You can depend on him or her.
What kind of chocolate do you pick? Maybe you like milk chocolate. This shows you have warm feelings about the past. Dark chocolate means something else. A person who chooses it looks toward the future. What about white chocolate? Would you choose it? If so, you may find it hard to make up your mind. Some people like chocolate with nuts. These are people who like to help others.
Do you believe these ideas? Can candy tell all these things? It doesn’t really matter. There is one sure thing about eaters of chocolate. They eat it because they like it.This passage mainly tells us ______.
| A．why people like chocolate |
| B．almost everyone likes chocolate |
| C．about different kinds of chocolate |
| D．different choices may show different characters |
Picking a round shape of chocolate shows that a person ______.
| A．likes singing, dancing and drinking |
| B．likes to do something for others |
| C．is good at making things |
| D．can be depended on |
From this passage we can see that a helpful man may choose chocolate ______.
| A．in oval shape | B．in square shape |
| C．with nuts | D．with coffee |
The last paragraph suggests that the writer ______.
| A．believes all the information about chocolate |
| B．does not believe the information about candy |
| C．is trying to get you to believe false information |
| D．doesn’t think it important whether you believe the ideas |
After 20 years as a full-time wife and mother, I decided to be a school bus driver for I loved kids. After hard practice, by the time school started that year I’d gotten the hang of it. I was happy in my new work. I became a combination of chauffeur, nurse and friend. And if the kids needed it, I’d put on my “Tough Big Sister” act. It was a lot like my previous job---being a mom.
When I think about my years of bus driving, many things crowded in, but mostly, I remember Charlie.
Charlie, eight years old, with blond hair and crystalline gray eyes, began riding my bus in September of my fourth year driving. They all had stories to tell me about their summers. Charlie, though, ignored me. He didn’t even answer when I asked his name.
From that day on, Charlie was a trial. If a fight broke out I didn’t have to turn my head to know who had started it. If someone was throwing spitballs I could guess the culprit’s name. If a girl was crying, chances were Charlie had pulled her hair. No matter how I spoke to him, gently or firmly, he wouldn’t say a word. He’d just stare at me with those big gray eyes of his.
I asked around some, and found out Charlie’s father was dead and he didn’t live with his mother. He deserves my patience, I thought. So I practiced every bit of patience I could muster. To my cheery “Good Morning”, he was silent. When I wished him a happy Halloween, he sneered. Many, many times I asked God how I could reach Charlie. “I’m at my wit’s end.” I’d say. Still I was sure that this child needed to feel some warmth from me. So, when he’d pass by, I’d ruffle his hair or pat him on the arm.
Toward the end of that year, the kids on my bus gave me a small trophy inscribed “To the Best Bus Driver Ever”. I propped it up on the dashboard. On top I hung a small tin heart that a little girl had given me. In red paint she had written, “I love Polly and Polly loves me.”
On the next-to-last day of school I was delayed a few minutes talking to the principal. When I got on the bus I realized that the tin heart was gone. “Does anyone know what happened to the little heart that was up here?” I asked. For once with 39 children, there was silence.
One boy piped up, “Charlie was the first one on the bus. I bet（打赌） he took it.” Other children joined the chorus, “Yeah! Charlie did it! Search him!” I asked Charlie, “Have you seen the heart?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he protested（抗议）. Standing up, he took a few pennies and a small ball out of his pockets. “See, I don’t have it.”
“I bet he does!” insisted the girl who had given me the heart. “Check his pockets.”
Charlie glowered when I asked him to come forward. His gaze burned into mine. I stuck my hand into one pocket. Nothing. I reached into the other pocket. Then I felt it ---the familiar outline of the small tin heart. Charlie stared at me for a long time. There were no tears in those big gray eyes, no plea(乞求) for mercy. He seemed to be waiting for what he’d come to expect from the world. I was about to pull the tin heart out of Charlie’s pocket when I stopped myself. Let him keep it, a voice seemed to whisper.
“It must have fallen off before I got here,” I said to the kids. “I’ll probably find it back at the depot.” Without a word, Charlie returned to his seat. When he got off at his stop, he didn’t so much as glance at me.
That summer Charlie moved away.
Eventually I retired. And there my story as a school bus driver ends, except for one more incident. A dozen years after retirement I was in a department store in Kansas City, when someone said tentatively, “Polly?”
I turned to see a balding（在脱发的） man who was approaching middle age. “Yes?”
His face didn’t look familiar until I noticed his big gray eyes. There was no doubt. It was Charlie.
He told me he was living in Montana and doing well. Then, to my surprise, he hugged me. After he let go, he pulled something from his pocket and held it up for me to see. An old key chain….bent out of shape, the lettering faded. You can probably guess what it was---the little tin heart that said, “I love Polly and Polly loves me.”
“You were the only one who kept trying,” he explained. We hugged again, and went our separate ways. That night I thought over his words. You were the only one who kept trying. Before I fell asleep I thanked the Lord for the reassurance that I’d done a good job and for all the qualifications he’d given me to do it with.From whose point of view is the story told?
| A．a mother’s | B．Polly’s |
| C．Charlie’s | D．Tough Big Sister’s |
From the passage, we learn that Charlie was _______ .
| A．gentle and smart | B．cold and firm |
| C．naughty and lazy | D．tough and lonely |
The sentence “He seemed to be waiting for what he’d come to expect from the world.”
suggests that Charlie __________.
| A．felt ashamed of what he had done |
| B．felt Polly had done wrong to him |
| C．expected to get away with what he had done |
| D．expected to get punished for what he had done |
Charlie kept the tin heart all the time because it reminded him __________.
| A．it was a Christmas gift from Polly |
| B．it once gave him warmth |
| C．someone there cared him |
| D．it was once a shame to him |
What do you think is the best reward to Polly’s love for Charlie?
| A．His doing well in his life. |
| B．People’s appreciation for her kindness. |
| C．His thanks to her love. |
| D．Charlie’s recognition of Polly after many years. |
Which detail from the story best shows Polly’s love for Charlie?
| A．She wished him a happy Halloween. |
| B．She ruffled his hair when he passed her. |
| C．She greeted him with cheery “Good Morning”. |
| D．She lied to the other kids about what happened to the tin heart. |
“OK,”I said to my daughter as she bent over her afternoon bowl of rice. “What’s going on with you and your friend J.?” J. is the leader of a group of third-graders at her camp-- a position Lucy herself occupied the previous summer. Now she’s the one on the outs. and every day at snack time, she tells me all about it, while I offer the unhelpful advice all summer long.
“She’s fond of giving orders, ”Lucy complained. “She’s turning everyone against me. She’s mean. And she’s fat.” “Excuse me,” I said, struggling for calm. “What did you just said?” “She’s fat.” Lucy mumbled(含糊地说).“We’re going upstairs,” I said, my voice cold. “We’re going to discuss this.” And up we went. I’d spent the nine years since her birth getting ready for this day, the day we’d have the conversation about this horrible word. I knew exactly what to say to the girl on the receiving end of the teasing, but in all of my imaginings, it never once occurred to me that my daughter would be the one who used the F word-Fat.
My daughter sat on her bed, and I sat beside her. “How would you feel if someone made fun of you for something that wasn’t your fault?” I began. “She could stop eating so much,” Lucy mumbled, mouthing the simple advice a thousand doctors have given overweight women for years.
“It’s not always that easy,” I said . “Everyone’s different in terms of how they treat food.” Lucy looked at me, waiting for me to go on. I opened my mouth, then closed it. Should I tell her that, in teasing a woman’s weight, she’s joined the long tradition of critics? Should I tell her I didn’t cry when someone posted my picture and commented , “I’m sorry, but aren’t authors who write books marketed to young women supposed to be pretty?”
Does she need to know, now, that life isn’t fair ? I feel her eyes on me, waiting for an answer I don’t have. Words are my tools. Stories are my job. It’s possible she’ll remember what I say forever, and I have no idea what to say.
So I tell her the only thing I can come up with that is absolutely true. I say to my daughter, “I love you, and there is nothing you could ever do to make me not love you. But I’m disappointed in you right now. There are plenty of reasons for not liking someone. What she looks like isn’t one of them. ”
Lucy nods, tears on her cheeks. “I won’t say that again,” she tells me, and I pull her close, pressing my nose against her hair. As we sit there together, I pray for her to be smart and strong. I pray for her to find friends, work she loves, a partner who loves her. And still, always, I pray that she will never struggle as I’ve struggled, that weight will never be her cross to bear. She may not be able to use the word in our home, but I can use in my head. I pray that she will never get fat.
The underlined sentence in Paragraph 1 indicates that Lucy ______.
| A．has turned against her friend J. |
| B．gets along well with her friend J. |
| C．has begun to compete with her friend J. |
| D．often makes fun of her friend J. |
Why does the author want to discuss with Lucy?
| A．Because she decides to tell Lucy a similar story of her own. |
| B．Because she is really shocked at Lucy’s rudeness. |
| C．Because she has prepared the conversation for nine years. |
| D．Because she wants to offer some other helpful advice. |
What does the author want to tell her daughter?
| A．People shouldn’t complain because life is unfair. |
| B．She herself was once laughed at for her appearance. |
| C．People shouldn’t be blamed for their appearance. |
| D．It is not easy to take the doctors’ advice to eat less. |
It can be inferred from the passage that_________.
| A．the author earns a living by writing stories. |
| B．the author is a fat but good-looking woman. |
| C．the author will stop loving her daughter for what she said. |
| D．the author’s daughter agreed with her from the very beginning. |
We can learn from the last paragraph that_________.
| A．Lucy was deeply moved by her mother’s prayer. |
| B．a mother’s prayer will shape her daughter’s attitude towards life |
| C．the author allows her daughter to use the F word in her head |
| D．the author hopes her daughter will never have weight trouble |
The author’s attitude towards her daughter can be best described as _________.
| A．unsatisfied and angry | B．loving but strict |
| C．indifferent but patient | D．satisfied and friendly |
I lost my sight when I was four years old by falling off a box car in a freight yard in Atlantic City and landing on my head. Now I am thirty two. I can vaguely remember the brightness of sunshine and what color red is. It would be wonderful to see again, but a calamity can do strange things to people. It occurred to me the other day that I might not have come to love life as I do if I hadn't been blind. I believe in life now. I am not so sure that I would have believed in it so deeply, otherwise. I don't mean that I would prefer to go without my eyes. I simply mean that the loss of them made me appreciate the more what I had left.
Life, I believe, asks a continuous series of adjustments to reality. The more readily a person is able to make these adjustments, the more meaningful his own private world becomes. The adjustment is never easy. I was bewildered and afraid. But I was lucky. My parents and my teachers saw something in me--a potential to live, you might call it--which I didn't see, and they made me want to fight it out with blindness.
The hardest lesson I had to learn was to believe in myself. That was basic. If I hadn't been able to do that, I would have collapsed and become a chair rocker on the front porch for the rest of my life. When I say belief in myself I am not talking about simply the kind of self confidence that helps me down an unfamiliar staircase alone. That is part of it. But I mean something bigger than that: an assurance that I am, despite imperfections, a real, positive person; that somewhere in the sweeping, intricate pattern of people there is a special place where I can make myself fit.
It took me years to discover and strengthen this assurance. It had to start with the most elementary things. Once a man gave me an indoor baseball. I thought he was mocking me and I was hurt. "I can't use this." I said. "Take it with you," he urged me, "and roll it around." The words stuck in my head. "Roll it around! "By rolling the ball I could hear where it went. This gave me an idea how to achieve a goal I had thought impossible: playing baseball. At Philadelphia's Overbrook School for the Blind I invented a successful variation of baseball. We called it ground ball.
All my life I have set ahead of me a series of goals and then tried to reach them, one at a time. I had to learn my limitations. It was no good to try for something I knew at the start was wildly out of reach because that only invited the bitterness of failure. I would fail sometimes anyway but on the average I made progress.
We can learn from the beginning of the passage that __________________.
| A．the author lost his sight because of a car crash. |
| B．the disaster strengthened the author's desire to see |
| C．the disaster made the author appreciate what he had. |
| D．the author wouldn't love life if the disaster didn't happen. |
What's the most difficult thing for the author?
| A．Building up assurance that he can find his place in life. |
| B．To find a special work that suits the author. |
| C．Learning to manage his life alone. |
| D．How to adjust himself to reality. |
According to the context, "a chair rocker on the front porch" in paragraph 3 means that the author
| A．was paralyzed and stayed in a rocking chair. |
| B．would sit in a rocking chair and enjoy his life. |
| C．would sit in a chair and stay at home. |
| D．would lose his will to struggle against difficulties. |
According to the passage, the baseball and encouragement offered by the man
| A．inspired the author. |
| B．hurt the author's feeling. |
| C．gave the author a deep impression |
| D．directly led to the invention of ground ball. |
According to the passage, which of the following is CORRECT?
| A．The author set goals for himself but only invited failure most of the time. |
| B．The author suggested not trying something beyond one's ability at the beginning. |
| C．Because of his limitations, the author tried to reach one goal at a time. |
| D．The bitterness of failure prevented the author from trying something out of reach. |
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