Some people who find themselves facing a problem react by just giving up. But it is not good to escape from problems by giving up or by making excuses for failures. You may be sure that all young people go through the same difficult process that you are going through: meeting new situations, developing new skills, and testing their abilities.
If you are unhappy about something, face it. Try to state the problem in a few words, so that you will know exactly what you are up against. Then see if you can “put your finger” on the cause of your unhappiness.
In many cases, we only “think” there is no solution to a particular problem. But often we can overcome the problem and achieve the goal by making a direct attack.
For example, a boy wanted to be a debater(辩论家). When he tried out for the debating team as a freshman, the coach thought he was hopeless. He was shy; he had a high-pitched voice; and his posture(体态) was poor. Although he was given little hope of success, he took advantage of every opportunity to debate. He studied successful speakers and evaluated his own weaknesses and advantages. Then he spent many hours learning all the facts on the topics for debate, and worked at developing good posture and at speaking clearly. By his junior year, he made the school debating team, and in his senior year he was on the winning team in his state. He achieved his goal because he had made a direct attack upon his problem.
Although direct attack is often the best way to meet problems, we have to be realistic(现实的) in judging situations. Sometimes it is necessary to change either the method or the goal.
A boy who wants to be a great football player may not be too strong and not quite fast enough for football. In this situation, becoming a great football player may be an unreasonable goal for him. However, he may become outstanding in tennis or golf, and satisfy his desire to take part in sports.
A girl who is not good-looking may decide that she cannot win popularity with her face, and so she may try to develop an interesting personality, which eventually will get her much further. In this situation, she must change her method of achieving her goal.
So, although direct attack is often the best way to handle problems, it is important to study the situation and make a wise decision about what to do.
63. From the first paragraph, we can infer that .
A. not all people will meet the problems that they can’t solve
B. not all people can solve the problems that they meet
C. all people will not give up finding the solutions to problems
D. all people will make some excuses for failures
64. The underlined phrase “are up against” in the second paragraph could be best replaced by .
A. are dealing with B. are faced with C. meet with D. look after
65. Which of the following best shows the structure of the text?
(①-⑧ stand for “paragraph 1—paragraph 8”)
A. ① B. ①
② ② ③
③④ ⑤⑥⑦⑧ ④⑤ ⑥⑦⑧
C. ① D. ①
② ② ③
③④⑤ ⑥⑦⑧ ④⑤⑥ ⑦⑧
66. Which of the following is not right?
A. When we meet difficulties, it is the best to give a direct attack.
B. If a girl is not good looking, she’d better change her style of appearance.
C. Whenever we face difficulty, we can find a way out, whatever it is.
D. Both a direct attack and a good analysis of the reality are good for solving problems.
It’s such a happy-looking library, painted yellow, decorated with palm-tree stickers and sheltered from the Florida sun by its own roof. About the size of a microwave oven, it’s pedestrian-friendly, too, waiting for book lovers next to a sidewalk in Palm Beach Country Estates, along the northern boundary of Palm Beach Gardens.
It’s a library built with love.
A year ago, shortly after, Janey Henriksen saw a Brian Williams report about the Little Free. Library organization, a Wisconsin-based nonprofit that aims to promote literacy and build a sense of community in a neighborhood by making，books freely available, she announced to her family of four, “That’s what we’re going to do for our spring break!”
Son Austin, now a 10th-grader, didn’t see the point of building a library that resembles a mailbos. But Janey insisted, and husband Peter unwillingly got to work. The 51-year-old owner of a ship supply company modified a small wooden house that he’d built years earlier for daughter Abbie’s toy horses, and made a door of glass.
After adding the library’s final touches(装点), the family hung a signboard on the front, instructing users to “take a book, return a book,” and making the Henriksen library, now one of several hundred like it nationwide and among more than 2,500 in the world, the only Little Free Library in Palm Beach county.
They stocked it with 20 or so books they’d already read, a mix of science fiction, reference titles, novels and kids’ favorites. “I told them, keep in mind that you might not see it again,” said Janey s stay-at-home mom.
Since then, the collection keeps replenishing(补充) itself, thanks to ongoing donations from borrowers. The library now gets an average of five visits a day.
The project’s best payoff, says Peter, are the thank-you notes left behind. “We had no idea in the beginning that it would be so popular.”In what way is the library “pedestrian—friendly”?
| A．It owns a yellow roof. |
| B．It stands near a sidewalk. |
| C．It protects book lovers from the sun. |
| D．It uses palm-tree stickers as decorations. |
Janey got the idea to build a library from .
| A．a visit to Brian Williams |
| B．a spring break with her family |
| C．a book sent by one of her neighbors |
| D．a report on a Wisconsin-based organization |
What can we infer about the signboard?
| A．It Was made by a user of the library. |
| B．It marked a final touch to the library. |
| C．It aimed at making the library last long. |
| D．It indicated the library was a family property. |
The flying car has been talked about for many years, but now it appears to become a reality.
An international company has built a two-seater plane that, at the touch of a button, transforms into a car perfectly suitable for driving on public roads. It takes 15 seconds to switch between flying and driving. With its wings fully open and the propeller(螺旋桨) spinning, it can take off from any airfield.
Flying cars are quicker than traditional ones, and they can run on ordinary fuel. Another big advantage is that they are cool, like something you would see in an action film. At the moment, however, the flying car’s wheels are illegal to leave the ground. That is not because of technical reasons or problems with the design. It is because the various road and aircraft authorities simply cannot agree on whether it is a car or a plane.
Nevertheless the company hopes to produce and deliver its first flying car soon. The company already has orders for 40 of them. The majority potential customers are older and some are retired. There have even been orders from some people who have no pilot’s license.
The flying car will cost around $ 200,000. “For an airplane, that’s a very reasonable price, but for a car, it’s quite expensive,” explains Alan. “But it just is not possible to make a $ 10,000 flying car yet.”
This latest means of transport will not become a mass-market item in the near future, but in the long term it has the potential to change the way you travel. It will become no more expensive than driving your car on the motorway. Travel time could be reduced by more than half.
So the next time you are told to fasten your seat belt, it may be to prepare for take-off.We know from the passage that the flying car .
| A．has to run on special fuel |
| B．will replace traditional planes |
| C．is popular with the rich |
| D．can shift between two forms |
The flying car is presently forbidden to take off because .
| A．many people think driving is not very safe |
| B．it’s hard to decide whether it’s a car or a plane |
| C．the government and the authorities accept it |
| D．there are still some technical problems to be solved |
According to the passage, we can learn .
| A．in the future few people will be able to afford a flying ear |
| B．owning two kinds of driving licenses is of great importance |
| C．because of the appearance of the flying car, traffic jams will disappear |
| D．flying cars may share the market in the future |
What’s the best title of the passage?
| A．Your Car Is Ready for Take-off |
| B．Flying Car Will Be the Leading Means of Transportation |
| C．Affording a Flying Car Is a Necessity |
| D．The Advantages of Flying Cars |
In 1947 a group of famous people from the art world headed by an Austrian conductor decided to hold an international festival of music, dance and theatre in Edinburgh. The idea was to reunite Europe after the Second World War.
It quickly attracted famous names such as Alec Guinness, Richard Button, Dame Margot Fonteyn and Marlene Dietrich as well as the big symphony orchestras(交响乐团). It became fixed event every August and now attracts 400,000 people yearly.
At the Same time, the “Fringe” appeared as a challenge to the official festival. Eight theatre groups turned up uninvited in1947, in the belief that everyone should have the right to perform, and they did so in a public house disused for years.
Soon, groups of students firstly from Edinburgh University, and later from the universities of Oxford and Cambridge, Durham and Birmingham were making the journey to the Scottish capital each summer to perform theatre by little-known writers of plays in small church halls to the people of Edinburgh.
Today the “Fringe”, once less recognized, has far outgrown the festival with around 1,500 performances of theatre, music and dance on every one of the 21 days it lasts. And yet as early as 1959, with only 19 theatre groups performing, some said it was getting too big.
A paid administrator was first employed only in 1971, and today there are eight administrators working all year round and the number rises to 150 during August itself. In 2004 there were 200 places housing 1,695 shows by over 600 different groups from 50 different countries. More than 1.25 million tickets were sold.What was the purpose of Edinburgh Festival at the beginning?
| A．To bring Europe together again. |
| B．To honor heroes of World War II. |
| C．To introduce young theatre groups. |
| D．To attract great artists from Europe. |
Why did some uninvited theatre groups come to Edinburgh in 1947?
| A．They owned a public house there. |
| B．They came to take up a challenge. |
| C．They thought they were also famous. |
| D．They wanted to take part in the festival. |
Who joined the “Fringe” after it appeared?
| A．Popular writers. |
| B．University students. |
| C．Artists from around the world. |
| D．Performers of music and dance. |
We may learn from the text that Edinburgh Festival .
| A．has become a non-official event |
| B．has gone beyond an art festival |
| C．gives shows all year round |
| D．keeps growing rapidly |
Who Owns the Moon?
Within the next ten years, the US, China, Israel, and a crowd of private companies plan to set up camp on the moon. So if and when they plant a flag, does that give them property rights?
A NASA working group hosted a discussion this week to ask: Who owns the moon? The answer, of course, is no use. The Outer Space Treaty, the international law signed by more than 100 countries, states that the moon and other celestial bodies(天体) are the province of all mankind. No doubt that would annoy all of the people throughout the ages, like monks from the Middle Ages, who have tried to claim the moon was theirs.
But ownership is different from property rights. People who rent apartments, for example, don’t own where they live, but they still hold rights. So with all of the upcoming missions(派遣团) to visit the moon and beyond, space industry thought leaders are seriously asking themselves how to deal with a potential land rush.
“This is a very relevant discussion right now. We’ve got this wave of new lunar missions from around the world,” said William Marshall, a scientist in the small-spacecraft office at NASA, but who spoke this week at an event hosted by NASA’s Co Lab, a collaborative(协力的) public-private working group. He was peaking from his personal interest and not on behalf of the agency.
To be sure, the United States aims to send astronauts back to the moon by as early as 2015, in a mission that would include a long-term settlement. China and Israel, among others, are also working on lunar projects. And for the first time, several private groups are building spacecraft to land on the moon in an attempt to win millions of dollars in the Google Lunar X Prize. Some participants say that they plan to gain some property rights in the mission.
In the passage the writer seems to be worrying that .
| A．the US will live on the moon forever |
| B．the moon will not be able to hold all mankind |
| C．the potential land rush will become more and more frequent |
| D．no one can answer the question “Who owns the moon?” |
The “Google Lunar X Prize” aims to .
| A．encourage private groups to land on the moon |
| B．help NASA host a discussion about land rush on the moon |
| C．help some developing countries complete their lunar projects |
| D．reward some countries or private groups which haven’t stepped on the moon |
The underlined word “that” in the first paragraph refers to .
| A．the Outer Space Treaty | B．if and when they plant a flag |
| C．the NASA working group | D．monks from the Middle Ages |
What is the main idea of the last paragraph?
| A．The US astronauts will live on the moon for a longer time. |
| B．Many countries and private groups plan to go to the moon. |
| C．Why some private groups wish to land on the moon. |
| D．It is easy to gain some property rights on the moon. |
Michelle Obama, Kate Moss and Samantha Cameron are three of the most stylish﹙时髦的﹚ women on the planet because they have their daughters rather than their style. A new research has shown that women with daughters tend to be more stylish than mothers of sons; a fact partly because of the style advice their daughters offer as they get older.
78 percent of women over the age of 50 say they would be more than happy to let their daughters choose a complete outfit﹙全套衣装﹚ for them. However, just five percent of women say they would turn to their sons for style advice, while 28 percent believe that mothers of boys are less fashionable than women with girls.
“Women who don’t have daughters become less interested in style as they grow older but having a daughter may keep alive her interest in looking great,” comments psychologist Honey Langcaster-James. “And, because of their close relationship, they also have a source of support and encouragement when it comes to their style decisions.”
More than a quarter of women believe that Mums who have sons are less fashion-conscious than Mums with daughters. The most common reasons for this are that daughters are more critical, offer good advice and inspiration, and add an element of competition to look the best while sons don’t seem to care and aren’t as strict as daughters.
Interestingly, although mothers tend to rely on their daughters’ style tips, their confidence isn’t reciprocated﹙互换﹚, with 40 percent of women between the age of 19 and 34 saying they wouldn’t allow their mothers to shop for them as what their mothers would choose for them would not be as good as they expected.
And although they might not appreciate the fashion advice, the research, which was conducted by online retailer Gray & Osbourn, showed that daughters do still need their mothers with 71 percent saying they chat to their female parent every day.
“In short, the research shows just how important relationships are between mothers and daughters,” added Langcaster-James, “and just how much women appreciate an honest and trustworthy opinion.”The opening paragraph is mainly to show .
| A．girls influence their mothers’ style decision |
| B．women with children are often less stylish |
| C．mothers like to follow their children’s advice |
| D．boys are actually better advisors than girls |
Which of the following may Langcaster-James agree with?
| A．Daughters usually love their mothers more than sons do. |
| B．It’s hard for boys to get along well with their mothers. |
| C．Mothers without daughters show less interest in style. |
| D．Girls are more independent than boys in some ways. |
It can be inferred from the passage that girls .
| A．show more interest in science than boys. |
| B．care more about what their mothers wear |
| C．can help a lot to solve family problems |
| D．are good at encouraging other people |
By saying “their confidence isn’t reciprocated” in Paragraph 5, the author means that .
| A．some women don’t like to choose clothes for their mothers |
| B．some women aren’t sure what to wear when attending a party |
| C．some women often show no confidence in themselves |
| D．some women would not like to follow their mothers’ style advice |
What does the author mainly tell us in the passage?
| A．It confuses many parents how to talk with their kids. |
| B．Daughters prefer to talk with their mums instead of dads. |
| C．It is important for parents to respect their children’s choice. |
| D．Mothers of girls are more fashionable than those of boys |