I am usually in a bad mood after a long day at work, but on this particular Friday afternoon I was in a high mood. I planned to have a good meal and watch Bridget Jones’s Diary.
My local supermarket is always busy. The first parking space I spotted was convenient, but I’d noticed a woman in an old car circling for a while. I let her have it. On the edge of the car park I backed into the next available spot — it was a tight fit.
In record time I’d made my way through the supermarket and was back in the fresh air. In a rush of good spirits, I emptied my purse change into the hands of a homeless man and helped a struggling woman reverse (倒车) into a parking space.
Just as I spotted my car, I saw the woman I’d let have my car spot earlier. I smiled and wished her a pleasant day.
As I got back into my car, I spotted the same lady looking in at me. “ Hello,” she said, hesitantly (犹豫地). “ This might sound crazy but I was on my way to drop some of my mother’s things off at the charity bins.” I looked quickly at the orange bins in the corner of the parking lot, confused. “ I saw you helping those people, and you seemed so happy. My mom had a dress just like that.”
She looked at me meaningfully. I smiled at her in encouragement, hoping she wouldn’t notice that the dress she was admiring was now full of holes. “ I was going to give these away, but you are just so much like her.” She passed a box in through the window. Shocked, unthinking, I took it automatically (无意识地). “ I think she would like you to have it.” She smiled and walked away.
After a pause, I opened the box. Inside was a beautiful gold necklace. It was the nicest gift I’d ever received, and it was from a complete stranger.
Later, I thought back on the day. I didn’t feel the usual sense of exhaustion. The necklace was around my neck, a warm reminder of human kindness.
This Friday afternoon, the author ________.
| A．watched a new movie |
| B．had trouble parking her car |
| C．was in the mood to help others |
| D．spent a long time in the supermarket |
Which of the following is TRUE about the author?
| A．She was not very wealthy actually. |
| B．She considered her dress beautiful. |
| C．She had met the lady’s mum. |
| D．She was living on charity. |
What does the author mainly intend to tell us?
| A．Success leads to happiness. |
| B．Good is rewarded with good. |
| C．Two heads are better than one. |
| D．A friend in need is a friend indeed. |
Sports shoes that work out whether their owner has done enough exercise to warrant time in front of the television have been devised in the UK.
The shoes — named Square Eyes — contain an electronic pressure sensor and a tiny computer chip to record how many steps the wearer has taken in a day. A wireless transmitter passes the information to a receiver connected to a television, and this decides how much evening viewing time the wearer deserves, based on the day’s efforts.
The design was inspired by a desire to fight against the rapidly ballooning waistlines among British teenagers, says Gillian Swan, who developed Square Eyes as a final year design project at Brunel University in London, UK. “We looked at current issues and childhood overweight really stood out,” she says. “And I wanted to tackle that with my design.”
Once a child has used up their daily allowance gained through exercise, the television automatically switches off. And further time in front of the TV can only be earned through more steps.
Swan calculated how exercise should translate to television time using the recommended daily amounts of both. Health experts suggest that a child take 12,000 steps each day and watch no more than two hours of television. So, every 100 steps recorded by the Square Eyes shoes equals precisely one minute of TV time.
Existing pedometers （计步器） normally clip onto a belt or slip into a pocket and keep count of steps by measuring sudden movement. Swan says these can be easily tricked into recording steps through shaking. But her shoe has been built to be harder for lazy teenagers to cheat. “It is possible, but it would be a lot of effort,” she says. “That was one of my main design considerations.” According to Swan, the purpose of her design project is to ________.
| A．keep a record of the steps of the wearer |
| B．deal with overweight among teenagers |
| C．enable children to resist the temptation of TV |
| D．prevent children from being tricked by TV programs |
Which of the following is true of Square Eyes shoes?
| A．They regulate a child’s evening TV viewing time. |
| B．They determine a child’s daily pocket money. |
| C．They have raised the hot issue of overweight. |
| D．They contain information of the receiver. |
What is stressed by health experts in their suggestion?
| A．The exact number of steps to be taken. |
| B．The precise number of hours spent on TV. |
| C．The proper amount of daily exercise and TV time. |
| D．The way of changing steps into TV watching time. |
Compared with other similar products, the new design ________.
| A．makes it difficult for lazy teenagers to cheat |
| B．counts the wearer’s steps through shaking |
| C．records the sudden movement of the wearer |
| D．sends teenagers’ health data to the receiver |
Which of the following would be the best title for the text?
| A．Smart Shoes Decide on Television Time |
| B．Smart Shoes Guarantee More Exercise |
| C．Smart Shoes Measure Time of Exercise |
| D．Smart Shoes Stop Childhood Overweight |
When Andrea Peterson landed her first teaching job, she faced the daunting task of creating a music program with almost no money for equipment or supplies in a climate where standards-based learning was the focus and music just provided a break for students and teachers.
For her drive and creativity in overcoming those challenges, she’s been named national teacher of the year.
Principal Waynes Kettler said he’s worked with many outstanding teachers in his 22 years as an educator, but Peterson is “just that one step above anybody I’ve ever worked with before.”
Kettler and others at Monte Cristo Elementary School talk about the ways she has introduced the learning from other classrooms into her music program and her creativity in working around things such as the lack of money for new music.
When students were reading S.E. Hinton’s novel The Outsiders in their regular classroom, Peterson helped them write a 30-minute play with scenes from the book. Then they chose three Broadway tunes that focused on race, equality and social justice, the themes of the book. Peterson composed two other songs herself after classroom discussions about the play and the book.
The honor means a lot to residents of Granite Falls. It’s inspiring to know that people from small towns can even win national honors.
As national teacher of the year, Peterson will spend the next year outside the classroom, as a national and international spokeswoman for education.
Not surpassingly, she is a big believe in the value of acts education. She said it’s essential for schools to offer classes such as act or music and physical education because for some kids one of those subjects is the only thing that motivates them to come back to school day after day. The underlined word “daunting” in Paragraph 1 most probably means __________.
| A．discouraging | B．interesting |
| C．creative | D．unbearable |
When Peterson began her teaching career, ____________.
| A．music was a focus of learning in most schools |
| B．the environment was favorable to music teaching |
| C．the school lacked teaching facilities for music |
| D．financial support for music programs was unavailable |
What is the most important reason that Peterson won the award?
| A．She concerned herself with current social problems. |
| B．She motivated students to learn music with her creativity. |
| C．She has taught music at the elementary school for 22 years. |
| D．She made great efforts to arouse students’ interest in literature. |
Which of the following is an example of Peterson’s way of teaching music?
| A．She wrote plays on themes of race, equality and social justice. |
| B．She made use of the contents of other classes in her teaching. |
| C．She organized classroom discussions of Broadway tunes. |
| D．She helped students compose songs by themselves. |
In Peterson’s opinion, ____________.
| A．art, music and PE classes are all important |
| B．more subjects should be offered to students |
| C．students should be motivated to attend art classes |
| D．arts education is more important than other subjects |
It can be inferred from the text that ________.
| A．Peterson’s honor was a surprise for the local people |
| B．Peterson’s art classes attracted students back to school |
| C．Peterson aroused the local residents’ passion for music |
| D．Peterson will change her profession next year |
If you look for a book as a present for a child. You will be spoiled for choice even in a year when there is no new Harry Potter. J.K Rowling’s wizard is not alone: the past decade has been a harvest for good children’s books, which has set off a large quantity of films and in turn led to increased sales of classics such as The Lord of the Rings.
Yet despite that, reading is increasingly unpopular among children. According to statistics, in 1997 23% said they didn’t like reading at all. In 2003, 35% did. And around 6% of children leave primary school each year unable to read properly.
Maybe the decline is caused by the increasing availability of computes games. Maybe the books boom has affected only the top of the educational pile. Either way, Chancellor Gordon Brown plans to change things for the bottom of the class .In his pre-budget report, he announced the national project of Reading Recovery to help the children struggling most.
Reading Recovery is aimed at six-year-olds, who receive four months of individual daily half-hour classes with a specially trained teacher. An evaluation earlier this year reported that children on the scheme made 20 months’ progress in just one year, whereas similarly weak readers without special help made just five months’ progress, and so ended the year even further below the level expected for their age.
International research tends to find that when British children leave primary school they read well, but read less often for fun than those elsewhere. Reading for fun matters because children who are keen on reading can expect lifelong pleasure and loving books is an excellent indicator of future educational success. According to the OECD, being a regular and enthusiastic reader is of great advantage. Which of the following is true of Paragraph 1?
| A．Many children’s books have been adapted from films. |
| B．Many high-quality children’s books have been published. |
| C．The sales of classics have led to the popularity of films. |
| D．The sales of presents for children have increased. |
Statistics suggested that .
| A．the number of top students increased with the use of computers |
| B．a decreasing number of children showed interest in reading |
| C．a minority of primary school children read properly |
| D．a large percentage of children read regularly |
What do we know about Reading Recovery?
| A．An evaluation of it will be made sometime this year. |
| B．Weak readers on the project were the most hardworking. |
| C．It aims to train special teachers to help children with reading. |
| D．Children on the project showed noticeable progress in reading. |
Reading for fun is important because book-loving children _________.
| A． take greater advantage of the project |
| B．show the potential to enjoy a long life |
| C．are likely to succeed in their education |
| D．would make excellent future researchers |
The aim of this text would probably be _________.
| A．to overcome primary school pupils’ reading difficulty |
| B．to encourage the publication of more children’s books |
| C．to remind children of the importance of reading for fun |
| D．to introduce a way to improve early children reading |
A month after Hurricane Katrina, I returned home in New Orleans. There lay my house, reduced towaist-high ruins, smelly and dirty.
Before the trip, I’d had my car fixed. When the office employee of the garage was writing up the bill，she noticed my Louisiana license plate. “You from New Orleans?”she asked I said I was, “No charge.”She said, and firmly shook her head when I reached for my wallet. The next day I went for a haircut, and the same thing happened.
As my wife was studying in Florida, we decided to move there and tried to find a rental house that we could afford while also paying off a mortgage (抵押贷款〉on our mined house. We looked at many places, but none was satisfactory. We’d began to accept that we*d have to live in extremely reduced circumstances for a while, when I got a very curious e-mail from a James Kemmedy in California. He’d read some pieces I’d written about our sufferings for State, the online magazine and wanted to give us (""no conditions attached’）a new house across thelake from New Orleans.
It sounded too good to be true, but I replied, thanking him for his exceptional generosity, that we had no plan to go back. Then a poet at the University of Florida offered to let his house to me, while he went to England on his one-year paid leave. The rent was rather reasonable. I mentioned the poet’s offer to James Kemdedy, and the next day he sent a check covering our entire rent for eight months.
Throughout this painful experience, the kindness of strangers has done much to bring back my faith in humanity. It’s almost worth losing your worldly possessions to be reminded that people are really nice when given half a chance.The garage employee’s attitude toward the author was that of
| A．unconcern | B．sympathy |
| C．doubt | D．tolerance |
What do we know about James Kemnedy?
| A．He was a writer of an online magazine. |
| B．He was a poet at the University of Florida |
| C．He offered the author a new house free of charge. |
| D．He learned about the author’s sufferings via e-mail |
It can be inferred from the text that
| A．the author’s family was in financial difficulty |
| B．rents were comparatively reasonable despite the disaster |
| C．houses were difficult to find in the hurricane-stricken area |
| D．the mortgage on the ruined house was paid off by the bank |
The author learned from his experience that
| A．worldly possessions can be given up when necessary |
| B．generosity should be encouraged in some cases |
| C．people benefit from their sad stories |
| D．human beings are kind after all. |
Understanding the process of making career choices and managing your career is a basic life skill that everyone should understand.
Your career decisions have such a profound effect on all aspects of your life. It’s important to have the knowledge and resources needed to make smart, informed decisions. Whether you are looking for a new job, aiming to take the next step at your current job or planning your retirement options, you are making career decisions. Using good resources and the guidance of a career counselor can help you to make those decisions well.
Many people mistakenly believe that choosing a career is a one-time event that happens some time in early adulthood. However, career management is actually a life-long process, and we continue to make consequential (重大的) career choices over the years. When people want to take action in their career, career management and job search are about so much more than writing a good resume. If you learn about and act on the following areas of career management, you’ll be rewarded throughout your career.
Your interests, abilities, values, personal needs and realities should all be taken into account in any career decision making process. You spend countless hours at work, and it impacts your life in so many ways; it makes sense that you should be fully informed before making such profound decisions.
Do you know how many different career choices are available to you? Both The Dictionary of Occupational Titles (American) and The National Occupational Classification (Canadian) list well over 20,000 different job titles. So unless you’ve actively explored a variety of career options, there’s a very good chance that there are great possibilities available to you, and you don’t even realize they exist.
Match your understanding of yourself with your understanding of possible career options. Once you have developed a good understanding of yourself, you will be able to combine that self-knowledge with your career and labor market research to determine potential careers that are a great fit for you.
When you’ve made a well informed decision, then you’re ready to make it happen. Making use of good career guidance and resources will help you to acquire the education, skills, and experience needed to get the job and learn and implement (实施) effective job search strategies.
Time spent understanding your needs, researching your career options and developing outstanding job search skills, guided by great career resources, is a powerful investment in your future.What’s the main idea of the passage?
| A．In the process of making career decisions, people should consider interests, abilities, values, personal needs and realities. |
| B．All the people should have a good knowledge of how to make career choices and manage their career. |
| C．Career decisions have a great impact on people’s life. |
| D．There are various possibilities available to you of making career decisions. |
How many tips does the author give on career management?
| A．1. | B．2. | C．3. | D．4. |
It can be inferred that _______.
| A．career decision is misunderstood by many people because they don’t take it as a life-long process |
| B．your career will be definitely successful if you make a well informed decision |
| C．making yourself understood can help you make a final choice |
| D．writing a good resume can find a good job |
Which of the following statements is NOT TRUE according to the passage?
| A．Your interests in the occupation you choose are vital. |
| B．Good career guidance and resources can help you gain the skills and experience. |
| C．You are to make significant decisions without good resources and the guidance of a career adviser. |
| D．Planning your retirement options is related to career management. |
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