Ever since farmers began to grow grain, they have had to protect their crops from birds. In the 1300's, English farmers hired children to protect their crops. They were called “bird scares”. The children chased birds and threw stones at them.
Bird scares were replaced in the 1800's by scarecrows. A scarecrow is anything that is set in a field to scare birds away. Often it is a pole dressed like a person. Some farms with small fields still use scarecrows today.
Farming became big business in the twentieth century. Scarecrows could no longer protect the huge fields of grain, so farmers used poisonous chemicals on the fields. The poison made the grain bitter. The birds usually would not eat the bitter grain.
Although they can prevent crops from being destroyed by insects and birds, some chemicals can be harmful to humans. Therefore, farmers are using fewer chemicals now than they did twenty years ago. Perhaps scarecrows may be seen more often in the fields in the future.English farmers began to hire children to get away birds since_____.
| A．the twelfth century | B．the fifteenth century |
| C．the sixteenth century | D．the fourteenth century |
“Bird scares” keep birds away from crops by_____.
| A．feeding them bitter grain | B．pretending to be scarecrows |
| C．spreading chemicals in the fields | D．chasing them and throwing stones |
Which statement from the passage supports the idea that scarecrows may be seen more often in the fields in the future?
| A．Scarecrows could no longer protect fields. | B．They were called “bird scares”. |
| C．English farmers hired children. | D．Farmers are using fewer chemicals. |
The author's purpose is to ________.
| A．give information about children who worked as bird scares |
| B．tell how crops have been protected from birds |
| C．make the readers feel sorry for birds that eat poisoned grain |
| D．entertain the readers with a funny story |
If you want fully enjoy your vacation, then you’d better check the Durban City Tours! This is actually one of the best choices in South Africa today.
There is nothing more relaxing than to think about that there is a place to go and relax, right? City life is strained, but you can escape this situation and be in the place where there is nothing but relaxation. Here in Durban you will get to see all the amazing tourist attractions. If you love animals and want to see some elephants wandering around the streets, then Durban is the place to go. You can even get to ride one if you want!
Here you will also get to taste all the delicious South African food. You can choose from Italian cooking to its native dishes. Durban is a great place to tour with your friends and family. You will learn a lot about its history through the landmarks you will see down the streets. Tourists and even the local villagers just can’t get enough of these treats!
However, it is important that you make the necessary arrangements. There are actually lots of tour guides that will help you as you make your journey along the streets of Durban. But if you prefer the best tour guides here in Durban, then you’d better choose the Street Scene Tours. Their staff are all well-trained and professional. They will certainly make your stay here an unforgettable one. No wonder tourists prefer the Street Scene Tours when it comes to Durban City Tours.The underlined word“strained”in Para. 2 means ______.
| A．easy | B．stressful | C．relaxing | D．wonderful |
What is the main idea of Paragraph 2?
| A．Durban is relaxing city. | B．People don’t like city life. |
| C．It is good to have a place to relax. | D．One can have fun riding elephants. |
If you walk in the streets of Durban, what will impress you most?
| A．Tourists from all over the world. |
| B．The buildings and many kinds of animals. |
| C．The streets and some wandering elephants. |
| D．The friendly local people and the scenery. |
What does the last sentence in Paragraph 3 show?
| A．The food can’t satisfy them. | B．They are bored with the streets. |
| C．They are treated very well here. | D．never get tired of the sights. |
We tried so hard to make things better for our kids but we made them worse. For my naughty boys, I’d know better. I’d really like for them to know about hand-me-down clothes and home-made ice cream and leftover meatloaf. I really would.
Mycherished boys, I hope you learnhumility (谦逊)by surviving failure and that you learn to be honest even when no one is looking. I hope you get a black eye fighting for something you believe in. I hope you have to share a bedroom with your younger brother. And it is all right to draw a line down the middle of the room, but when he wants tocrawl (爬)under the covers (被子) with you because he’s scared, I hope you’ll let him. And when you want to see a Disney movie and your kid brother wants to tag along, I hope you take him.
I hope you have to walk uphill with your friends and that you live in a town where you can do it safely. I hope you learn to dig in the dirt and read books, and when you learn to use computers, you also learn how to add andsubtract (减) in your head.
May you skin your knee climbing a mountain, burn your hand on thestoveandstickyour tongue on a frozen flagpole (旗杆). I hope you get sick when someone blows smoke in your face. I don’t care if you try beer once, but I hope you won’t like it.
I sure hope you make time to sit on a porch with your grandpa or go fishing with your uncle.
I hope your father punishes you when you throw abaseballthrough a neighbor’s window, and that your mother hugs you and kisses you when you give her aplasterof paredmold (一个石膏模型)of your hand.
These things I wish for you—tough times anddisappointment, hard work and happiness.Who wrote the letter?
| A．A grandmother. | B．A grandfather. | C．A father. | D．A mother. |
What does the author hope for the boys?
| A．they learn a lesson from a fight with others. |
| B．they know how to calculate with computers. |
| C．they get on well with family members. |
| D．they burn their hand on the stove and stick their tongue on a frozen flagpole. |
It can be inferred from the text that the boys _________________.
| A．often fight with others | B．are to develop good qualities |
| C．always keep their grandpa company | D．score high in the exam |
Why does the author write the letter?
| A．To show the boys it’s not easy growing up. |
| B．To teach the boys dos and don’ts on the way growing up. |
| C．To help the boys to avoid making mistakes on the way growing up. |
| D．To encourage the boys to fully experience life on the way growing up. |
One cold, rainy night in 1979, staying on the deck of the nuclear attack submarine(核攻击潜艇) USS Birmingham entering Hampton Roads Harbor, a soldier who was called Jeff Harris was suddenly hit by a huge wave that took away his ship’s ball cap.
Months later, while walking along Chesapeake Boulevard beach in Hampton, Will Miller, a Vietnam veteran(退伍军人) and Navy(海军) commander, happened to find Harris’ cap which was half-buried in the sand then. Knowing how important a ship’s cap was to its owner, Miller saved the hat, hoping one day to find its owner. The cap was packed away for years but recently appeared again at Miller’s home in Florida.
“It suddenly fell out of a box onto my computer keyboard, right in front of me,” said Miller. “I guessed it was telling me, ‘It’s time to get me home.’”
An extensive Internet search led Miller to a USS Birmingham website and finally to Harris. The two sent e-mails back and forth, and one night Miller’s phone rang.
“This is Jeff Harris,” the voice on the phone said. “You have my hat!”
The two sailors talked for almost half an hour, telling sea stories to each other and thinking of the common relationship between seamen.”
“Most non-seagoing people wouldn’t understand how much a sailor likes his hat,” Miller said. “Your hat protects you from sun, wind, salt and cold, and when you lose it, especially one with your ship’s name on it, it’s a big thing. I’m delighted to get it back to Jeff.”What is the main idea of the story?
| A．A sailor looked for his hat for years. |
| B．Hats are important for sailors. |
| C．A sailor reunited with his hat years after losing it. |
| D．Friendship was based on a hat. |
Jeff Harris’s hat dropped off into the sea because of ______.
| A．a sudden wave | B．his carelessness |
| C．a strong wind | D．something wrong with his hat |
Will Miller kept the hat for years because ______.
| A．he wanted to leave it to his child |
| B．it was valuable as a gift |
| C．he wanted to return it to its owner |
| D．he wanted to sell it one day |
From the passage we can know Jeff Harris and Miller ______.
| A．had been friends before the story happened |
| B．didn’t know the importance of the hat |
| C．often told sea stories to each other |
| D．once worked at sea |
My husband and son took a New York-to-Milwaukee flight that was supposed to leave Friday at 11:29 am. The flight boarded after 4 pm and didn’t leave the gate until 4:40, and half an hour later the pilot announced it would be another hour until takeoff. At that point a Jewish family, worried about violating the Sabbath （安息日）, asked to get off. Going back to the gate cost the plane its place in line for takeoff, and the flight was eventually cancelled. Was the airline right to grant that request?
M. W, Norwalk, CONN.
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Situations like that can bring out the worst in people. But despite the increasing resentment（怨恨） of a plane full of people, the pilot tried to do the right thing. He went out of his way to satisfy one family’s urgent need. He should not have done so.
Passengers bought tickets in the belief that the airline’s primary goal was to get them to their destination as close to the schedule as possible. Once they got on the plane and the doors are locked, it’s not correct to announce that the rules have changed and that a personal (as opposed to medical) emergency —no matter how urgent — might take precedence（优先）.
That would be just as true if turning back to the gate had merely cost a few minutes rather than doomed the flight entirely, since on a plane, even a slight delay can spread outward, from the people in the cabin to those meeting them to the passengers waiting to board the plane for the next leg of its journey and so on. It would also be true if the personal emergency were not religious — if someone suddenly realized she’d made a professional mistake that might cost her millions, and she had to race back to the office to fix it.
If a religious practice does nothing to harm others, then airlines should make a reasonable effort to accommodate it. Though that family has every right to observe the Sabbath, it has no right to enlist an airplane full of captive bystanders to help them do so. By boarding a flight on a Friday afternoon, the family knowingly risked running into trouble. The risk was theirs alone to bear.M. W. wrote the letter to ask whether ______.
| A．Any religious passenger has the right to ask the pilot to take off |
| B．The airline has the right to cancel the flight without any reason |
| C．A flight should meet any passenger’s need despite others’ benefit |
| D．A plane which has left the gate should give up taking off |
What do we know from the reply letter?
| A．The pilot did the right thing in spite of the fierce resentment. |
| B．The plane should turn back if anyone aboard is seriously ill. |
| C．Anybody who has boarded has no chance to get off the plane. |
| D．Any flight shouldn’t change its schedule no matter what has happened. |
What does the underlined part in Paragraph 4 mean?
| A．Turning back to the gate usually takes a plane quite a long time. |
| B．Nobody should take precedence to require the plane to turn back to the gate. |
| C．Even if it had taken a few minutes it was not right to turn back to the gate. |
| D．It was OK if turning back to the gate hadn’t caused the flight to be cancelled. |
The author of the reply letter thinks that _________.
| A．It’s right for the plane to turn back to the gate to save a passenger’s treasure |
| B．The Jewish family should give up observing the Sabbath after boarding |
| C．The biggest problem of turning back is to bring trouble to the pilot |
| D．The Jewish family had better avoid boarding on Friday afternoon |
For generations here in the deepest South, there had been a great taboo（禁忌）: publicly crossing the color line for love. Less than 45 years ago, marriage between blacks and whites was illegal, and it has been forbidden for much of the time since.
So when a great job about an hour’s drive north of the Gulf Coast attracted him, Jeffrey Norwood, a black college basketball coach, had reservations. He was in a serious relationship with a woman who was white and Asian.
“You’re thinking about a life in South Mississippi?” his father said in a skeptical voice, recalling days when a black man could face mortal（致命的） danger just being seen with a woman of another race, regardless of intentions. "Are you sure?"
But on visits to Hattiesburg, the younger Mr. Norwood said he liked what he saw: growing diversity. So he moved, married, and, with his wife, had a baby girl, who was counted on the last census（人口普查） as black, white and Asian. Taylor Rae Norwood, three, is one of thousands of mixed-race children who have made this state home to one of the nation's most rapidly expanding multiracial populations, up 70 percent between 2000 and 2010, according to new data from the Census Bureau.
In the first comprehensive accounting of multiracial Americans since statistics were first collected about them in 2000, reporting from the 2010 census, made public in recent days, shows that the nation’s mixed-race population is growing far more quickly than many researchers had estimated, particularly in the South and parts of the Midwest. That conclusion is based on the bureau’s analysis of 42 states; the data from the remaining eight states will be released soon.
In North Carolina, the mixed-race population doubled. In Georgia, it grew by more than 80 percent, and by nearly as much in Kentucky and Tennessee. In Indiana, Iowa and South Dakota, the multiracial population increased by about 70percent.
Census officials estimated the national multiracial growth rate was about 35 percent since2000 according to the known result, when seven million people ----- 2.4 percent of the population ------ chose more than one race.If a black man married a white woman 50 years ago, the worst result was that _____.
| A．he was sentenced to death | B．he was considered to be immoral |
| C．he was criticized by the public | D．he was treated as a lawbreaker |
The underlined word “serious” in Paragraph 2 can be replaced by “____”.
| A．stable | B．bad | C．mixed | D．dangerous |
What can we infer from Paragraph 4?
| A．Jeffrey Norwood was born in Hattiesburg and grew up there. |
| B．Taylor Rae Norwood’s mother is a white-Asian. |
| C．70 percent of the people in Mississippi are multiracial. |
| D．Mississippi has the largest multiracial population in the US. |
Which of the following states had the fastest growth rate of mixed-race population?
| A．Georgia. | B．Tennessee. | C．North Carolina. | D．South Dakota. |