I made a promise to myself on the way down to the vacation beach cottage. For two weeks I would try to be a loving husband and father. Totally loving. No ifs, ands or buts.
The idea had come to me as I listened to a talk on my car radio. The speaker was quoting a Biblical passage about husbands and their wives. Then he went on to say, “Love is an act of will. A person can choose to love.” To myself, I had to admit that I had been a selfish husband. Well, for two weeks that would change.
And it did. Right from the moment I kissed Evelyn at the door and said, “That new yellow sweater looks great on you.” “Oh, Tom, you noticed”, sh
e said, surprised and pleased. Maybe a little puzzled. After the long drive, I wanted to sit and read. Evelyn suggested a walk on the beach. I started to refuse, but then I thought, “Evelyn’s been alone here with the kids all week and now she wants to be alone with me.” We walked on the beach while the children flew their kites.
So it went. Two weeks of not calling the Wall Street firm where I am a director; a visit to the shell museum though I usually hate museums. Relaxed and happy, that’s how the whole vacation passed. I made a new promise to keep on remembering to choose love.
There was one thing that went wrong with my experiment, however. Evelyn and I still laugh about it today. On the last night at our cottage, preparing for bed, Evelyn stared at me with the saddest expression.
“What’s the matter?” I asked her.
“Tom,” she said in a voice filled with distress, “ I don’t?”
“What do you mean?”
“Well…that checkup I had several weeks ago…our doctor…did he tell you something about me? Tom, you’ve been so good to me…am I dying?”
It took a moment for it all to be understood. Then I burst out laughing.
“No, honey,” I said, wrapping her in my arms. “You’re not dying; I’m just starting to live.”In the first paragraph, “No ifs, ands or buts” probably means ______.
| A．Unintentionally | B．Independently |
| C．Impressively | D．Unconditionally |
From the story we may infer that Tom drove to the beach cottage ______.
| A．with his family | B．with Evelyn |
| C．alone | D．with his children |
During the two weeks on the beach, Tom showed more love to his wife because ______.
| A．he was determined to be a good husband |
| B．he had made a lot of money in his Wall Street firm |
| C．she looked lovely in her new clothes |
| D．the doctor said his wife was seriously ill |
The author says, “There was one thing that went wrong with my experiment.” What does “one thing” refer to?
| A．He praised her sweater, which puzzled her. |
| B．She insisted on visiting a museum, which he hated. |
| C．He knew something about her illness but didn’t tell her. |
| D．He was so good to her that she thought she must be dying. |
By saying “I’m just starting to live,” Tom means that ______.
| A．he is just beginning to understand the real meaning of life |
| B．he is just beginning to enjoy life as a loving husband |
| C．he lived an unhappy life before and is now starting to change |
| D．he is beginning to feel regret for what he did to his wife before |
Have you ever complained why life is so tiring? Does the sky sometimes seem dark to you? Are your studies sometimes not successful? Well, friends, cheer up and smile all the time. If you see the world with your warm heart, you’ll find that the whole world smiles to you.
While in school, sometimes you are tired of your lessons, but have you ever noticed the happy smile on your teacher’s face when you did a good job?
One day it is fine. Just before you go out, it suddenly starts to rain. Maybe you would feel very sad and start to complain about the weather. But dear friends, why don’t you sit down and listen to the free concerts that the nature offers you? And with the timely rain, crops in the fields will grow better and better and farmers will have a good harvest.
Although everyone wants to succeed in what he tries to do, sometimes failure can’t be avoided. I think failure is not terrible, and the terrible thing is that we are afraid of it and give up hope. When we face failure, we must be confident in ourselves, draw a useful lesson from it and try our best to finish what we have decided to do. As a popular saying goes, “Failure is the mother of success”.
Attitude decides everything. With an optimistic attitude life is easy and pleasant. Let’s smile to whatever we meet and the whole world will smile to us.People sometimes complain _________.
| A．the sky is always dark |
| B．their studies are successful |
| C．they see the world with their heart |
| D．life is tiring |
When we face failure, we ___________.
| A．must be confident in ourselves |
| B．shouldn’t be afraid of it |
| C．shouldn’t give up hope |
| D．All of the above |
The best title for the passage is_______.
| A．Smile and the World Smiles to You |
| B．Complaining about Life |
| C．Failure is the Mother of Success |
| D．It is Very Hard to Succeed |
More than two thirds of the world's polar bears will be wiped out by 2050，according to a shocking new study. By then，scientists say，global warming will have melted 42 percent of the Arctic sea ice. By 2100，only a very few of these important creatures will be left.
The report has been produced by the US Geological Survey. The scientists have publicized their findings in the hope of influencing US Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne，who has been asked to put polar bears on the US endangered species list.
Polar bears depend on floating sea ice as a platform for hunting seals，which are their main food. Without enough ice，polar bears would be forced to go onto the land，where they are poorly skilled hunters，and would be unlikely to adapt to the life on the land in time. Experts say few little bears would survive and the stress could make many females unable to get pregnant.
The team of American and Canadian scientists spent six months studying bears，on the ground，from spotter planes and in the lab，using computer models.
Some team members fear the result is even worse for the bears than what their report says. They say the Arctic is warming faster than anywhere in the world and much faster than their computer had been forecasting. Satellite observations have showed that the ice has decreased to an all－time low.
However，not everyone in the scientific community believes that global warming is happening on such an alarming scale. Another investigation has found that polar bears are still being hunted by wealthy “sportsmen” who want their skins and heads. At least ten international companies offer bear－hunting trips.What do we know about Dirk Kempthorne according to the passage?
| A．He is an animal scientist. |
| B．He is a protector of animals working for the US government. |
| C．He was asked to put polar bears on the US endangered species list. |
| D．He offered to put polar bears on the endangered species list. |
Why will polar bears die out if there is not enough sea ice?
| A．Because polar bears can't catch enough food without ice. |
| B．Because polar bears eat ice when they feel thirsty. |
| C．Because polar bears will be easily found by hunters without ice. |
| D．Because most female bears are used to giving birth under ice. |
After a six－month study，some scientists fear that ________．
| A．there is something wrong with their computers |
| B．polar bears will disappear even faster than they ever expected |
| C．their computer models are not as accurate as they expected |
| D．global warming will destroy everything in the Arctic |
What does the writer want to tell us in the last paragraph?
| A．The forecast about the future of polar bears is not correct. |
| B．Global warming won't have any effect on hunting trips in the Arctic. |
| C．Polar bears are an endangered species as a result of bear－hunting. |
| D．People don't pay enough attention to the protection of endangered species. |
Liu Huan is a professor at the University of International Business and Economics. He is also a noted musician and popular singer in the Chinese mainland.
Born on Aug. 26, 1963 in to a teacher’s family in Tianjin, Liu enrolled at the University of International Relations in Beijing in 1981, majoring in French literature. He was retained at the university as a faculty member(教职工)after graduation in 1985. He won two first prizes in Beijing’s first-ever university English and French singing contests in 1985. To help promote local education by teaching music, he lived in Shizuishan, a remote area in the Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region, in 1985~1986. He was appointed a professor at the University of International Business and Economics to teach the history of Western music in 1991, and has been working at the university for more than 20 years.
As a professor, Liu is invited every year to colleges and universities in Beijing to teach music courses. As a famous musician, when asked if his classes differ from other teachers’, Liu simply said, “Nothing different. While standing on the platform, I am just a teacher. Everything outside has nothing to do with me at that moment. ”
Since becoming a professional singer in 1985, Liu’s singing has been widely welcomed across the country. He won many national awards, including the Top 10 Film and TV Singers in the Country in 1988, in 1990 and in 1992. On Aug. 8, 2008, Liu sang a duet “You and Me” with Sarah Brightman at the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympic Games, reaching the top of his singing career. In addition to singing, Liu Huan also creates original scores for film and TV. His works have been well received by both audiences and his peers in the industry.
Therefore, Liu is chosen to act as one of the four judges on “The Voice of China” , a surprisingly popular singing talent show which has been aired on Zhejiang Satellite TV since July 13, 2012. At the same time, his fellow judges are Na Ying, Yang Kun, and Harlem Yu. (322W)
What does the underlined word “noted” in the first paragraph mean?
| A．Famous. | B．Skilled. | C．Gifted. | D．Important. |
Liu Huan used to live in Shizuishan, a remote area in the Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region to_____
| A．learn about their customs and cultures |
| B．improve his ability of composing music by living in the village |
| C．help promote local education by teaching music |
| D．find some talented students in music |
When he reached the top of his singing career, he was .
| A．45 | B．22 | C．28 | D．49 |
Which is NOT true of the description about his musical achievements?
| A．He has won the Top 10 Film and TV Singers in the Country three times. |
| B．He succeeded in singing a duet “You and Me” with Sarah Brightman at the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympic Games. |
| C．He creates many original scores for film and TV. |
| D．He is the only one who acts as a judge on “The Voice of China”. |
A teacher let her class play a game. The teacher told each child to bring a bag with some potatoes. Each potato would be given a name of a person that the child hated, so the number of potatoes in his/her bag would depend on the number of people the child hated. Some children had two potatoes, some had three and others had up to five potatoes. The teacher then told the children to carry the bag wherever they went for a week. After a week, the teacher asked, “How did you feel?” The children started complaining about the unpleasant smell coming from the rotten potatoes when they had to carry the heavy and smelly potatoes everywhere they went.
Then the teacher said,” This is the same when you carry your hate for somebody inside your heart. The smell of hate will pollute your heart and you will carry it with you wherever you go. If you cannot bear the smell of rotten potatoes for just one week, can you imagine what it is like to have the smell of hate in your heart for your lifetime?”In the game, the students should _________.
| A．keep the bag of potatoes in the classroom |
| B．carry the bag of potatoes everywhere they go |
| C．leave the bag of potatoes at home |
| D．count the bag of potatoes every day |
The underlined word “rotten” most probably means ___________ in Chinese.
| A．delicious | B．fresh | C．sweet | D．bad |
According to the last paragraph, we can learn that ________.
| A．potatoes are very important to the students |
| B．hating others can make the life unhappy |
| C．the smell of hate is good for our health |
| D．the students like to carry the bag of the potatoes |
Which is the best title of this passage?
| A．An interesting game |
| B．Carry the smelly potatoes |
| C．The rotten potatoes |
| D．To excuse others is to excuse yourself. |
You have never seen him, but they're with you every time you fly. They record where you are going, how fast you're traveling and whether everything on your airplane is functioning normally. Their ability to withstand (经受得住)almost any disaster makes them seem like something out of a magic book. They're known as the black box.
When planes fall from the sky, as a Yemeni airliner did on its way to Comoros Islands in the India ocean June 30, 2009, the black box is the best bet for identifying what went wrong. So when a French submarine (潜水艇) detected the device's homing signal five days later, the discovery marked a huge step toward determining the cause of a tragedy in which 152 passengers were killed.
In 1958, Australian scientist David Warren developed a flight-memory recorder that would track basic information like altitude and direction. That was the first mode for a black box, which became a requirement on all U.S. commercial flights by 1960. Early models often failed to withstand crashes, however, so in 1965 the device（装置） was completely redesigned and moved to the back of the plane – the area least affected by impact – from its original position in the landing wells (起落架舱). The same year, the Federal Aviation Authority required that the boxes, which were never actually black, be painted orange or yellow to aid visibility.
Modern airplanes have two black boxes: a voice recorder, which tracks pilots' conversations, and a flight-data recorder, which monitors fuel levels, engine noises and other operating functions that help investigators reconstruct the aircraft's final moments. Placed in an insulated ( 隔绝的) case and surrounded by a quarter-inch-thick panels of stainless steel, the boxes can withstand massive force and temperatures up to 2,000℉. When in deep water, they're also able to emit signals from depths of 20,000 ft. Experts believe the boxes from Air France Flight 447, which crashed near Brazil on June 1,2009, are in water nearly that deep, but statistics say they're still likely to turn up. In the approximately 20 deep-sea crashes over the past 30 years, only one plane's black boxes were never recovered.In Paragraph 1，the author wants to say the black box_________.
| A．comes from a comic book |
| B．is an necessary device on an airplane |
| C．can prevent disasters |
| D．can control the function of an airplane |
From the black box on the Yemeni airliner_________could be found.
| A．the scene of the crash and the degree of the damage |
| B．the total number of passengers on board |
| C．homing signals sent by the pilot before the crash |
| D．data for analyzing the cause of the crash |
Why was the black box redesigned in 1965?
| A．The early models often got damaged in the crash. |
| B．New materials became available by that time. |
| C．Too much space was needed for its device. |
| D．The early models didn't provide the needed data. |
What do we know about the black boxes from Air France Flight 447?
| A．They have stopped sending homing signals. |
| B．There is an urgent need for them to be reconstructed. |
| C．There is still a good chance of their being recovered. |
| D．They were destroyed somewhere near Brazil. |