I went over my grandmother’s house today and she didn’t have time for me. You see, the lady’s husband downstairs died and my Grandmother wanted to make some cookies for her. My grandmother did not analyze (分析) how the lady treated her, or if the lady needed any cookies, or even if the lady would like the cookies. She didn’t think how much the lady has done for her. She simply began baking.
My Grandmother turned 94 last week and this I believe is her secret to life. My grandmother is generous (慷慨) and hard-working in a way that is rare for our time. She lives by a simple belief: if someone needs your help, you help. Never mind all the analyzing and thinking whether the person deserves or appreciates the help. My grandmother doesn’t sit around thinking about who might be making use of her: she simply does what is needed.
At 94, she is busy in life. She is making a blanket for a new great grandchild, and worried that I don’t have enough kitchen towels for my home. She is bringing soup to a sick neighbor, and teaching the new wife of her cousin (who is 88) how to cook Italian food.
My grandmother had every right to give up, but she didn’t — and amazingly life did bring her good things, like a husband with twinkling blue eyes who was much ahead of his time and believed that men should do an equal amount of cooking and cleaning in the home, three beautiful children (my father and two aunts), 22 grandchildren, and five great grandchildren. My grandmother is not afraid to give someone she barely knows a bowl of soup. She never keeps herself out of the world.
61. The reason why my grandmother made cookies for the lady downstairs is that ________.
A. she thought the lady was too busy
B. she would make them as thanks to her
C. she thought she 
should do something for the lady at the special time
D. they had had an agreement before
62. In the writer’s opinion, ________.
A. my grandmother has a secret way of living
B
. my grandmother does everything on careful consideration
C. few people are as generous as my grandmother now
D. my grandmother will get something in return
63. Which of the following is NOT true according to the passage?
A. My grandmother cares for her children even some strangers.
B. My grandfather does not treat women in an unfair way.
C. This is a family in which there are nearly 30 people now.
D. My grandmother never keeps everything for herself.
64. We may infer from the text that the writer ________.
A. thinks his grandmother is living a tired life
B. thinks his grandmother is doing what she should do
C. thinks his grandmother should not be so kind
D. is proud of his grandmother
My father was always a good gardener. One of my earliest memories is standing without shoes in the freshly tilled(翻耕的) soil, my hands blackened from digging in the ground.
As a child, I loved following Dad around in the garden. I remember Dad pushing the tiller(耕作机) ahead in perfectly straight lines. Dad loved growing all sorts of things: yellow and green onions, watermelons almost as big as me, rows of yellow corn, and our favorite--- red tomatoes.
As I grew into a teenager, I didn’t get so excited about gardening with Dad. Instead of magical land of possibility, it had turned into some kind of prison. As Dad grew older, his love for gardening never disappeared. After all the kids were grown and had started families of their own, Dad turned to gardening like never before. Even when he was diagnosed with cancer, he still took care of his garden.
But then, the cancer, bit by bit, invaded his body. I had to do the things he used to do. What really convinced me that Dad was dying was the state of his garden that year. The rows and rows of multicolored vegetables were gone. Too tired to weed them, he simply let them be.
For the first few years after he died, I couldn’t even bear to look at anyone’s garden without having strong memories pour over me like cold water from a bucket. Three years ago, I decided to plant my own garden and started out with just a few tomatoes. That morning, after breaking up a fair amount of soil, something caught the corner of my eye and I had to smile. It was my eight-year-old son Nathan, happily playing in the freshly tilled soil.Why did the author like the garden when he was a child?
| A．He wanted to be a garden-crazy like his father. |
| B．He loved being in the garden with his father. |
| C．The garden was full of his favorite food. |
| D．The garden was just freshly tilled. |
When all the kids started their own families, the author’s father _____.
| A．stopped his gardening |
| B．turned to other hobbies |
| C．devoted more to gardening |
| D．focused on planting tomatoes |
What happened to the garden when the author’s father was seriously ill?
| A．There was a great harvest. |
| B．The garden was almost deserted. |
| C．No plant grew in the garden at all. |
| D．The author’s son took charge of the garden. |
Why did the author start his garden with tomatoes?
| A．He wanted to honor his father. |
| B．His son liked the fields of tomatoes. |
| C．He only knew how to grow tomatoes. |
| D．He thought tomatoes were easy to manage. |
In modern society there is a great deal of argument about competition. Some value it highly, believing that it is responsible for social-progress and prosperity. Others say that competition is bad; that it sets one person against another; that it leads to unfriendly relationship between people.
I have taught many children who held the belief that their self-worth relied on how well they performed at tennis and other skills. For them, playing well and winning are often life-and-death affairs. In their single-minded pursuit of success, the development of many other human qualities is sadly forgotten.
However, while some seem to be lost in the desire to succeed, others take an opposite attitude. In a culture which values only the winner and pays no attention to the ordinary players, they strongly blame competition. Among the most vocal are youngsters who have suffered under competitive pressures from their parents or society. Teaching these young people, I often observe in them a desire to fail. They seem to seek failure by not trying to win or achieve success. By not trying, they always have an excuse: "I may have lost, but it doesn't matter because I really didn't try." What is not usually admitted by themselves is the belief that if they had really tried and lost, that would mean a lot. Such a loss would be a measure of their worth. Clearly, this belief is the same as that of the true competitors who try to prove themselves. Both are based on the mistake belief that-one's self-respect relies on how well one performs in comparison with others. Both are afraid of not being valued. Only as this basic and often troublesome fear begins to dissolve (缓解) can we discover a new meaning in competition.What does this text mainly talk about?
| A．Competition helps to set up self-respect. |
| B．Competition is harmful to personal quality development. |
| C．People hold different opinions about competition. |
| D．Failures are necessary experience in competition. |
Some people favor competition because they think it __.
| A．builds up a sense of pride |
| B．pushes society forward |
| C．improves social abilities |
| D．develops people's relationship |
The underlined phrase "the most vocal” in Paragraph 3 refers to those who
| A．are strongly against competition |
| B．highly value competition |
| C．try their best to win |
| D．mostly rely on others for success |
Which viewpoint does the author agree to?
| A．Self-worth relies on winning. |
| B．Competition leads to unfriendly relationship. |
| C．Fear of failure should be removed in competition. |
| D．Winning should be a life-and-death matter. |
The rise of the Internet has been one of the most transformative developments in human history, comparable in impact to the invention of the printing press and the telegraph. Over two billion people worldwide now have access to vastly more information than ever before, and can communicate with each other instantly, often using Web-connected mobile devices they carry everywhere. But the Internet’s tremendous impact has only just begun.
“Mass adoption of the Internet is driving one of the most exciting social, cultural, and political transformations in history, and unlike earlier periods of change, this time the effects are fully global,” Schmidt and Cohen write in their new book The New Digital Age.
Perhaps the most profound changes will come when the five billion people worldwide who currently lack Internet access get online. The authors do an excellent job of examining the implications of the Internet revolution for individuals, governments, and institutions like the news media. But if the book has one major shortcoming, it’s that authors don’t spend enough time applying a critical eye to the role of Internet businesses in these sweeping changes.
In their book, the authors provide the most authoritative volume to date that describes — and more importantly predicts — how the Internet will shape our lives in the coming decades. They paint a picture of a world in which individuals, companies, institutions, and governments must deal with two realities, one physical, and one virtual.
At the core of the book is the idea that “technology is neutral, but people aren’t.” By using this concept as a starting point, the authors aim to move beyond the now familiar optimist vs. pessimist dichotomy (对立观点) that has characterized many recent debates about whether the rise of the Internet will ultimately be good or bad for society. In an interview with TIME earlier this week, Cohen said although he and his co-author are optimistic about many aspects of the Internet, they’re also realistic about the risks and dangers that lie ahead when the next five billion people come online, particularly with respect to personal privacy and state surveillance(监视).
【题文1】 In what way is the rise of the Internet similar to the invention of the printing press and the telegraph?
A. It transforms human history.
B. It revolutionizes people's thinking.
C. It is adopted by all human beings.
D. It makes daily communication easy.
【题文2】 In what respect is the book The New Digital Age considered inadequate?
A. It lacks an objective evaluation of the role of Internet businesses
B. It fails to look into the social implications of the Internet.
C. It fails to recognize the impact of the Internet technology.
D. It does not address the technical aspects of Internet communication.What will the future be like when everybody gets online?
| A．People don’t have to travel to see the world. |
| B．People will have equal access to information. |
| C．People will be living in two different realities. |
| D．People don’t have to communicate face to face. |
What does the passage say about the authors of The New Digital Age?
| A．They leave many questions unanswered concerning the Internet. |
| B．They don’t take sides in analyzing the effects of the Internet. |
| C．They have explored the unknown territories of the virtual world. |
| D．They are optimistic about the future of the Internet revolution. |
It’s hard to find Alice Munro in the media. Even after she won the 2013 Nobel Prize in Literature, the Canadian writer just appeared for a quick interview and then dropped out of sight. On Dec 29, she still didn't seek the spotlight（聚光灯）when she was named one of the five Women of the Year by the Financial Times.
In Munro's eyes, ordinary lives always hide larger dramas. So she records what we casually think of as the everyday actions of normal people. She often focuses on life in her hometown, a small village in Ontario which she is most familiar with. She writes about the ordinary things in the village－fox forming, trees filled in the Ontario wilderness, poor country alcohol and long last illnesses. Above all, she talks about girls and women who have seemingly ordinary lives but struggle against daily misfortune.
She has a special talent for uncovering the extraordinary in the ordinary. These are ordinary people, ordinary stories, but she has the magic. Her precise language, depth of detail and the logic of her storytelling have made her stories inviting.
Runaway, one of Munro’s representative works, is a good example of her writing style. One of the stories centers on the life of an ordinary woman Carla, who lives in a small Canadian town with her husband Clark. The story slowly forms a picture of Carla, trapped in a bad marriage, her unhappiness building into desperation until she decided to flee. The story of Carla is a story of the power and betrayals of love. It is about lost children and lots of chances that we can all find in life, There is pain beneath the surface, like a needle in the heart.
Since she published her first collection of short stories in 1968, Munro has won many awards, with the Nobel Prize being her biggest honor. On Oct 10, 2013, the Nobel Prize committee named Munro the “master of the contemporary short story”.We learn from Paragraph 1 that Alice Munro_____
| A．didn't get on well with the media |
| B．remained modest though very successful |
| C．didn’t value the title of Women of the Year |
| D．was surprised at winning the Nobel Prize |
What makes Alice Munro’s stories fascinating according to the text?
| A．Her writing techniques |
| B．The complicated plots |
| C．The humorous language |
| D．Her rich imagination |
In her representative work Runaway, Carla_____
| A．leads a happy life with Clark |
| B．is a faithful wife to her husband |
| C．loses all hopes for a better life |
| D．tries to run away from her husband |
What is the text mainly about?
| A．Alice Munro and her hometown |
| B．The awards Alice Munro won |
| C．Alice Munro and her writing style |
| D．Alice Munro’s literary life |
A small boy sat on the street with a hat by his feet. He held up a sign which said: “ I am blind, please help”. There were only a few coins in the hat.
A man was walking by. He took a few coins from his pocket and dropped them into the hat. He then took the sign, turned it around, and wrote some words. He put the sign back so that everyone who walked by would see the new words. Soon the hat began to fill up. A lot more people were giving money to the blind boy. That afternoon the man who had changed the sign came to see how things were.
The boy recognized his footsteps and asked :“Were you the one who changed my sign this morning? What did you write?” The man said: “I only wrote the truth. I said what you said but in a different way.”
What he had written was: “Today is a beautiful day but I cannot see it.”
Do you think the first sign and the second sign were saying the same thing? Of course both signs told people the boy was blind. But the first sign simply told people to help by putting some money in the hat. The second sign told people that they were able to enjoy the day, but the boy could not enjoy it because he was blind.
The first sign simply said the boy was blind. The second sign told people they were so lucky that they were not blind.
There are at least two lessons we can learn from this simple story.
The first is: Be thankful for what you have. Someone else has less. Help where you can.
The second is：Be creative. Think differently. There is always a better way! What was the boy doing on the street?
| A．He was selling his old hat. |
| B．He was busy counting coins. |
| C．He was begging for money. |
| D．He was showing his handwriting. |
How did the man help the blind boy?
| A．He took the boy's sign away. |
| B．He only gave the boy some money. |
| C．He changed the words on the sign. |
| D．He asked others to help the blind boy. |
The blind boy recognized the kind man by his ______ .
| A．words | B．smell | C．voice | D．Footsteps |