Grandma Moses is among the most famous twentieth-century painters of the United States, yet she did not start painting until she was in her late seventies. As she once said of herself: “I would never sit back in a rocking chair, waiting for someone to help me.” No one could have had a more productive old age.
She was born Anna Mary Robertson on a farm in New York State, one of five boys and five girls. At twelve she left home and was in domestic(家庭的) service until, at twenty-seven, she married Thomas Moses, the hired hand of one of her employers. They farmed most of their lives, first in Virginia and then in New York State, at Eagle Bridge. She had ten children, of whom five survived; her husband died in 1927.
Grandma Moses painted a little as a child and made embroidery(刺绣) pictures as a hobby, but only changed to oils in old age because her hands had become too stiff(硬的) to sew and she wanted to keep busy and pass the time. Her pictures were first sold at a local market and were soon noticed by a businessman who bought everything she painted. Three of the pictures exhibited in the Museum of Modern Art, and in 1940 she had her first exhibition in New York. Between the 1930s and her death she produced some 2,000 pictures: detailed and lively portrayals(描绘) of the country life she had known for so long, with a wonderful sense of colour and form. “I think really hard till I think of something really pretty, and then I paint it.” she said.According to the passage, Grandma Moses began to paint because she wanted to .
| A．make herself beautiful | B．keep active |
| C．earn more money | D．become famous |
The underlined word “survived” means .
| A．graduated from college | B．examined the condition of the house |
| C．lived longer than the other children | D．gave up themselves to the police |
From Grandma Moses’ description of herself in the first paragraph, it can be inferred that she was .
| A．independent | B．pretty | C．rich | D．nervous |
Which of the following would be the best title for the passage?
| A．Grandma Moses: Her Life and Pictures. | B．The Children of Grandma Moses. |
| C．Grandma Moses: Her Best Exhibition. | D．Grandma Moses and Other Older Artists. |
Today, several of the world's nearly 7,000 languages face a serious risk of extinction. "For example, Ainu, a language in Japan, is now seriously threatened, with only 10 native speakers left," said lead study author Tatsuya Amano at the University of Cambridge in England.
The scientists found that 25 percent of the world's languages are threatened. After identifying where the endangered languages were, they looked for any environmental and social or economic factors those languages might have in common, such as rugged terrain or rapid population growth. "We found that at the global scale, language speaker declines are strongly linked to economic growth-that is, declines are particularly occurring in economically developed regions," Amano said.
One important implication of this new study "is that languages in the tropics and Himalayan region are likely to be increasingly threatened in the near future, because these regions still have many local indigenous languages (土语) with a small number of speakers, and at the same time are experiencing rapid economic growth," Amano said.
Economic growth may endanger languages for a variety of reasons. For instance, speakers of endangered languages may view another more dominant language as offering economic opportunities, and thus forego their own languages. There are other important factors that might endanger languages, the researchers said. For instance, policies regarding how languages are used and taught in schools can be very different among countries and even within each country, and these factors may explain more detailed patterns in language endangerment.
Amano suggested it could be possible to forecast future threats to linguistic diversity. "There exists detailed information on projected future changes in the environment, economies and climates," Amano said. "Using such information, together with the findings of this study and further analysis, we would like to understand what will happen to the world's languages, where it will happen and which languages will be threatened in particular."The language of Ainu is mentioned in Paragraph l in order to tell us that _______________.
| A．Japanese is new seriously threatened |
| B．few people speak Japanese in the world |
| C．Japanese is made up of many languages |
| D．it is most likely to disappear in the future |
What may endanger the languages most according to Amano?
| A．The diversity of society. |
| B．The decline of the population. |
| C．The development of economy |
| D．The improvement of the environment. |
The writer shows us the reasons that languages are endangered by ___________________.
| A．offering some examples |
| B．performing some experiments . |
| C．telling some interesting stories |
| D．making a list of important facts . |
It can be inferred from the last paragraph that _______________.
| A．the study is very important to languages |
| B．world's languages are developing rapidly |
| C．it is rather hard for us to protect languages |
| D．future threats to languages can be predicted |
Freda Bright says, “Only in opera do people die of love.” It’s true. You really can’t love somebody to death. I’ve known people to die from no love, but I’ve never known anyone to be loved to death. We just can’t love one another enough.
A hear-warming story tells of a woman who finally decided to ask her boss for a raise in salary. All day she felt nervous and late in the afternoon she summoned the courage to approach her employer. To her delight, the boss agreed to the raise.
The woman arrived home that evening to a beautiful table set with their best dishes. Candles were softly glowing. Her husband had come home early and prepared a festival meal. She wondered if someone from the office had tipped him off, or --- did he just somehow know that she would not get turned down?
She found him in the kitchen and told him the good news. They embraced and kissed, then sat down to the wonderful meal. Next to her plate the woman found a beautifully lettered note. It read: “Congratulations, darling! I knew you’d get the raise! These things will tell you how much I love you.”
Someone has said that the measure of love for his wife is love without measure. What this man feels for his wife is total acceptance and love, whether she succeeds or fails. His love celebrates her victories and soothes her wounds. He stands with her, no matter what life throws in their direction.
Upon receiving the Nobel Peace Prize, Mother Teresa said, “What can you do to promote world peace? Go home and love your family. And love your friends. Love them without measure.”The sentence in the first paragraph “Only in opera do people die of love.” means ________.
| A．no love in the world is believable |
| B．love is one thing, and life is another |
| C．love in operas is truly touching |
| D．love can survive forever, though people die at different ages |
That the husband prepared her a second letter about her raise suggests that ________.
| A．he loves her because he believes that she is sure to receive a raise |
| B．he has a great way to promote his wife’s love towards him |
| C．he has a false love for people even if the person is his wife |
| D．he loves his family members truly, whether they are in good conditions or not |
From the text, we might say the author ________.
| A．refuse any spiritual emotions as embraced and kissed |
| B．criticizes the attitude of suspicion of the love |
| C．doesn’t believe there is true love in the world |
| D．thinks the true love does not expect repayment |
I am 26. I’m clear that I’m never going to catch up with Mother Teresa. But I want to do something to help people every single day like her.
Everybody thinks we just serve food and soda. The safety training is serious and stressful. Caring for 49 people in a business class in 90 minutes is not easy. I had a roommate who was a waitress; she just left a candle and a table cloth burning, and I used a fire extinguisher (灭火器) to put out the fire. If something goes bad at her job, she calls the police. But if something happens up in the air, it’s up to us.
I’m single and have no kids. I’ve flown every Christmas since 1995. If I fly, someone else can be with their kids. Christmas in an airport can be depressing, but it’s the little things that make a difference.
We’re not robots. It’s hard to put on a smile and just pretend everything is great when it isn’t. I’ve seen co-workers lose a family member the day before a trip and just pull themselves together (take control of their feelings and believe in a calm way). At the end of a 14-hour flight, it’s like, “It was really nice to help you, but I’m ready for you to get off the plane.” Those last 15 minutes can be the longest 15 minutes of your life. You can’t wait to turn off the flight attendant’s voice and get something to eat without anyone saying “Excuse me.”
Sometimes I go all day and never hear a “please” or a “thank you.” When you say thank you, it’s huge. It makes us feel like you actually see us as fellow humans. We’re up there together at a height of 30,000 feet, enjoying the miracle (奇迹) of the modern flight.What’s the author’s attitude towards Mother Teresa?
| A．Grateful | B．Fearful | C．Doubtful | D．Admiring |
How did the author like her roommate’s job?
| A．It was the same as hers | B．It was more interesting than hers |
| C．It was easier than hers | D．It was more serious than hers |
Why does the author fly every Christmas?
| A．Because she has nowhere to go. |
| B．Because she’s trying to be a helpful co-worker. |
| C．Because she owes her co-workers some favors. |
| D．Because she’d like to earn more money. |
What does the author imply by saying the underlined sentence “We’re not robots”?
| A．Flight attendants are not stronger than robots. |
| B．Flight attendants also experience emotions. |
| C．Flight attendants get tired while robots don’t. |
| D．Flight attendants need to rest now and then. |
Life gets noisier every day and very few people can be free from noise of some sort or another. It doesn’t matter where you live ---- in the middle of a modern city, or a faraway village --- the chances are that you’ll be disturbed by jet planes, transistor radios, oil-powered engines, etc. we seem to be getting used to noise, too. Some people feel quite lonely without background music while they’re working.
Scientific tests have shown that total silence can be a very frightening experience for a human being. However, some people enjoy listening to pop music which is very loud, and this can do harm to their eardrums (耳鼓). The noise level in some discos is far above the usual safety level for heavy industrial areas.
One recent report about noise and concentration suggested that although a lot of people say that any noise disturbs their concentration, what really influences their ability to concentrate is a change in the level of noise. It goes on to say that a background noise which doesn’t change too much (music, for example) may even help to concentrate.According to this passage, the noise pollution ____________________.
| A．has become the worst in the countryside |
| B．has become better in big cities |
| C．has spread from cities to villages |
| D．has been controlled in modern cities |
Some people have their hearing harmed _____________.
| A．while listening to pop music |
| B．in complete silence |
| C．when speaking loudly |
| D．while watching TV |
Which of the following isn’t included among the things causing noise?
| A．trucks | B．motorcycles |
| C．electric engines | D．jet planes |
Scientists have discovered that what prevents people from concentrating on something is _______.
| A．all kinds of noise | B．great changes in the level of noise |
| C．background noise | D．popular music |
It was a winter morning, just a couple of weeks before Christmas 2005. While most people were warming up their cars, Trevor, my husband, had to get up early to ride his bike four kilometers away from home to work. On arrival, he parked his bike outside the back door as he usually does. After putting in 10 hours of labor, he returned to find his bike gone.
The bike, a black Kona 18 speed, was our only transport. Trevor used it to get to work, putting in 60-hour weeks to support his young family. And the bike was also used to get groceries（食品杂货），saving us from having to walk long distances from where we live.
I was so sad that someone would steal our bike that I wrote to the newspaper and told them our story. Shortly after that, several people in our area offered to help. One wonderful stranger even bought a bike, then called my husband to pick it up. Once again my husband had a way to get to and from his job. It really is an honor that a complete stranger would go out of their way for someone they have never met before.
People say that a smile can be passed from one person to another, but acts of kindness from strangers are even more so. This experience has had a spreading effect in our lives because it strengthened our faith in humanity（人性）as a whole. And it has influenced（影响）us to be more mindful of ways we, too, can share with others. No matter how big or how small, an act of kindness shows that someone cares. And the results can be everlasting.Why was the bike so important to the couple?
| A．They used it for work and daily life. |
| B．It was their only possession. |
| C．It was a nice Kona 18 speed. |
| D．The man’s job was bike racing. |
We can infer from the text that ____________.
| A．the couple worked 60 hours a week. |
| B．people were busy before Christmas |
| C．the stranger brought over the bike |
| D．life was hard for the young family. |
What do the couple learn from their experience?
| A．Strangers are usually of little help |
| B．One should take care of their bike. |
| C．News reports make people famous. |
| D．An act of kindness can mean a lot. |