My family moved from Taiwan to a small town in central Georgia，where my dad got a visa for his family and a job． I had just learned English，and from what little I could gather from my classmates，Santa Claus would come down one’s chimney（烟囱） and put toys in one’s stocking on Christmas Eve! What a great country，I thought．After I looked up “stocking” in my Chinese-English dictionary，I knew what I had to do．
On that fateful night，after everyone went to bed，I took my longest，cleanest knee sock and attached it to a nail already on the mantel(壁炉)．Obviously，the previous owners of this house were no strangers to this Santa character．
I woke up before everyone else on Christmas Day and ran to the fireplace．To make a sob story short，I was hit with the reality of an empty sock and the biggest lie ever told． I burst into tears，quickly took down the sock，and stuffed it in the back of a drawer．Santa was dead．
Every December since then，the topic of Christmas memories would unavoidably come up，and I would amuse my friends with my poor-little-me story．I had to make it as funny as possible，or else I would cry．
How could I know that Santa was just late? Nine years ago，on Christmas Eve，an older man with a white beard and a red cap knocked on my front door．He said，“I’ve been looking for you for twenty-five years．” He handed me a bulging red stocking，winked，and left．On top of the stocking was a card． It read: “For Becky—I may have missed you in the second grade，but you’ve always lived in my heart．Santa． ”
Through tear-blurred eyes，I recognized the handwriting of Jill，a friend I had met just two months before．I later discovered that the older man was her father．Jill had seen the hurt little girl underneath the thirty-something woman and decided to do something about it．
So now I believe that Santa is real．I don’t mean the twinkle-eyed character of children’s mythology(神话) or the creation of American holiday marketers．Those Santas annoy and sadden me．I believe in the Santa Claus that live inside good and thoughtful people．This Santa does not return to the North Pole after a crazy delivery but lives each day purposefully，really listens to friends，and then plans deliberate acts of kindness．What does the underlined part “what I had to do” in Paragraph 1 refer to?
| A．Waiting for Santa Claus． |
| B．Putting a stocking on the mantel． |
| C．Asking for gifts from her parents． |
| D．Looking up “stocking” in the dictionary |
It can be inferred from the passage that the author’s parents ____．
| A．didn’t love their child at all |
| B．didn’t know the previous owners of the house |
| C．didn’t know much about Christmas tradition |
| D．didn’t have enough money to buy the author Christmas presents |
When the author told her friends about the story，she felt ______in her heart．
| A．proud | B．amusing | C．hate | D．regret |
By writing the passage，the author speaks highly of ________
| A．friendship |
| B．parenting |
| C．religion |
| D．culture |
The author of the passage is probably ________．
| A．a teenager |
| B．a primary school student |
| C．a middle-aged woman |
| D．a native American |
“You'll have to take care of the baby today,” a woman told her husband. "I'm not feeling well."
"Then you must stay in bed and rest, dear" her husband said. "I'll be pleased to look after our baby." "By the way, shall I do the shopping for you as well?” her husband asked.
The woman was very glad and said, "That will help me very much. I'll give you a list of things to buy"
She wrote out the list and gave it to him.
The man took the baby to the supermarket and put him in the shopping cart. Then he pushed the shopping cart along the rows of things and looked for those that were on his list.
At first everything was OK, but then the baby began to cry.
Then he started to scream.
And scream!
And SCREAM!
“Keep calm, George,” the man said. “Don’t get excited. Don’t shout, George. Don’t lose your temper, George.”
A woman in the supermarket heard him saying so. She walked up to him.
“I think you are wonderful,” she said. “You are so patient with your little George.”
“Madam,” the man said, “I’m George. He’s Edward.”The man took care of the baby instead because his wife was .
| A．ill | B．busy doing housework |
| C．angry | D．going to buy things |
The baby cried so hard .
| A．at home | B．in the supermarket | C．in the street | D．in the car |
When the baby was crying, the father kept taking to for relaxing.
| A．his baby | B．the woman | C．himself | D．George |
The underlined sentence “Don’t lose your temper.” in this passage means“ ”.
| A．become angry | B．shut up | C．walk on | D．calm down |
A mouse looked through a hole in the wall to see the farmer and his wife opening a package. What food might it contain? He was astonished to discover that it was a mouse trap!
Running to the farmyard, the mouse shouted, warning, “There is a mouse trap in the house; there is a mouse trap in the house.” The chicken with her head high, said, “Shut up, Little Ugly. This is a great concern to you, but it has nothing to do with me; I cannot be bothered by it.”
The mouse turned to the pig and told him, “There is a mouse trap in the house.” “I am so very sorry, Mr. Mouse,” said the pig, “but there is nothing I can do about it but pray; you are always in my prayers.”
The mouse turned to the cow, who said, “A mouse trap; am I in great danger, huh?”
So the mouse had to face the farmer’s mouse trap alone.
That very night a sound was heard through the house, like the sound of a mouse trap catching its prey. The farmer’s wife rushed to see what was caught. In the darkness, she did not see that it was a poisonous snake whose tail the trap had caught. The snake bit the farmer’s wife. The farmer rushed her to the hospital.
She returned home with a fever. It is said that drinking fresh chicken soup will help treat fever, so the farmer took his sharp knife to the farmyard for the soup’s main ingredient. His wife’s sickness continued so that friends and neighbors came to sit with her around the clock. To feed them, the farmer killed the pig. The farmer’s wife did not get well, in fact, she died, and so many people came for her funeral. The farmer had the cow killed to provide meat for all of them to eat.
So next time someone is facing a problem, don’t say that has nothing to do with you.We could see from the passage that the mouse was______.
| A．good at cheating others | B．dishonest |
| C．kind and warm-hearted | D．foolish |
Which of the following is NOT true according to the passage?
| A．The others helped the farmer kill the cow. |
| B．The mouse trap was very practical. |
| C．The pig is more friendly than the other animals . |
| D．The farmer’s family had no friends at all |
What can we learn from the story?
| A．Traps can always cause chain reactions |
| B．Sometimes when the least of us are threatened, we all might be at risk. |
| C．It is better to be safe than to be sorry. |
| D．To keep the balance of nature is the duty of us all. |
We’ve heard about radiation from the damaged nuclear reactors in Japan reaching American shores. Experts say so far there is no reason to worry, and point out that we meet radiation every day. Where and how? NPR’s Renee Montagne posed that question to Peter Caracappa, a radiation safety officer and professor of nuclear engineering.
MONTAGNE: How many things emit radiation?
Dr CARACAPPA: Well, radiation and radioactive material is a part of nature. So everything that’s living has some amount of radiation coming from it—a very small amout. Plus there’s radiation in the ground and the air.
So the extremes are uranium in the soil to bananas?
Yes.
By the way, why do bananas have radiation?
Bananas have a lot of potassium(钾). And a small amount of potassium naturally is called potassium 40, which is radioactive
What’s the difference between radiation that’s harmful and not harmful?
Well, the term radiation can apply to a lot of different things. But the harmful radiation is ionizing(离子)radiation. It has enough energy that it can make chemical changes in material. We could get ionizing radiation from an X-ray, for example. It’s the kind of radiation that causes cancer.
The broader definition of radiation includes a lot of things that we call non-ionizing radiation. That includes everything like radio waves and visible light and your microwave.
So what then is the largest contributor of ionizing radiation?
For the natural sources of ionizing radiation, actually the biggest chunk of that tends to come from radon(氡), which is a radioactive material that is present in the air. It can become a concern when it builds up in low-lying areas of homes like basements.
Would it be fair to say that most people do not need to worry about the danger of being exposed to radiation?
I would say that the everyday exposure to radioation that we meet contributes an extremely tiny risk to our life or to our health compared to all of the other risks that we meet in our day-to-day life.We can infer from the first paragraph that radiation is______.
| A．rare | B．powerful | C．dangerous | D．common |
The passage may be _______.
| A．an interview | B．an argument | C．a talk show program | D．a science report |
Whether radiation is harmful or not depends on______.
| A．whether it has a small amount of potassium |
| B．whether it changes chemical in materials. |
| C．whether it has energy to change materials |
| D．whether it is visible in life |
The purpose of writing this passage is to _______.
| A．advise on how to protect us from radiation |
| B．analyze what causes radiation in daily life |
| C．warn people of the danger of radiation |
| D．expect people not to fear everyday radiation |
If you are asked to name some national emblems of China, the dragon will probably be one of the famous images that pop into your head. We Chinese often consider ourselves "the descendants（后代）of the dragon." It is not unfamiliar to you that your parents hope that you "may become the dragon".
As a mythical（神秘的）creature, the dragon is deeply rooted in Chinese culture. Traditionally, dragons are considered to govern rainfall. They have the power to decide where and when the rain falls. In addition, the dragon is a symbol of imperial （帝王的）power. The emperors thought they were real dragons and the sons of the heaven.
But the creature is regarded differently in Western countries. In the Bible, dragons represent the devil（恶人）. Western people usually see dragons as cold-blooded reptiles（爬虫）, like snakes and cruel killers. In their eyes, dragons are also dishonest.
Dragons in Western literature are presented as monsters（怪物）. It is a common tale for a mediaeval knight（中世纪的骑士） to kill a dragon and save a princess and her country from its evil. Even the popular boy wizard Harry Potter has to battle against a dragon.
However, dragons are not all bad in the West. "Puff the Magic Dragon" is a well-known song. The lyrics(歌词) tell a bitter-sweet story of the dragon Puff and his playmate Jackie Paper, a little boy. When Jackie grows up, he loses interest in the imaginary adventures of childhood and leaves Puff upset. Puff represents the innocence of a child's imagination, which is very positive for a dragon. The underlined word” emblems” in the first paragraph means “_______”.
| A．symbols | B．names | C．places | D．parks |
What is a dragon presented as according to Western literature?
A wizard B. A mediaeval knight C. A princess D. A monster The writer gave the example of “ Puff the Magic Dragon” to show_____.
| A．dragons can represent the innocence of child’s imagination |
| B．children don’t like to play with dragons |
| C．dragons are not all bad in the West |
| D．not all people in the West like dragons |
Will it matter if you don't take your breakfast? Recently a test was given in the United States. Those tested included people of different ages, from 12 to 83. During the experiment, these people were given all kinds of breakfasts, and sometimes they got no breakfast at all. Special tests were set up to see how well their bodies worked when they had eaten a certain kind of breakfast. The results show that if a person eats a proper breakfast, he or she will work with better effect than if he or she has no breakfast. This fact appears to be especially true if a person works with his brains. If a student eats fruit, eggs, bread and milk before going to school, he will learn more quickly and listen with more attention to class.
Opposite to(与.....相反) what many people believe, if you don't eat breakfast, you will not lose weight. This is because people become so hungry at noon that they eat too much for lunch, and end up gaining weight instead of losing. You will probably lose more weight if you reduce your other meals.During the test, those who were tested were given ________.
| A．no breakfast at all |
| B．very rich breakfast |
| C．little food for breakfast |
| D．different breakfast or none |
The results of the test show that ________.
| A．breakfast has great effect on work and studies |
| B．breakfast has little to do with a person’s work |
| C．a person will work better if he has a simple(简单的) breakfast |
| D．those working with brains needn’t have anything for breakfast |
The passage mentions that many people believe that if you don't eat breakfast, you will _________.
| A．lose weight |
| B．not lose weight |
| C．be healthier |
| D．gain a lot of weight |
Which of the following is not true according to the passage?
| A．Poor breakfasts affect those who work with brains. |
| B．Eating nothing in the morning may cause one to get fatter. |
| C．Reducing lunch and supper is of less use in weight losing. |
| D．Eating less in lunch and supper may help to lose weight. |
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