In my profession as an educator and health care provider, I have worked with numerous children infected with the virus that causes AIDS．The relationships that I have had with these special kids have been gifts in my life．They have taught me so many things, but I have especially learned that great courage can be found in the smallest of packages． Let me tell you about Tyler．
Tyler was born infected with HIV: his mother was also infected．From the very beginning of his life, he was dependent on medications to enable him to survive．When he was five, he had a tube surgically inserted in a vein in his chest．This tube was connected to a pump, which he carried in a small backpack on his back．M
edications were hooked up to this pump and were continuously supplied through this tube to his bloodstream．At times, he also needed supplemented oxygen to support his breathing．
Tyler wasn’t willing to give up one single moment of his childhood to this deadly disease．It was not unusual to find him playing and racing around his backyard, wearing his medicine - laden backpack and dragging his tank of oxygen behind him in his little wagon．All of us who knew Tyler marveled at his pure joy in being alive and the energy it gave him．Tyler’s mom often teased him by telling him that he moved so fast she needed to dress him in red．That way, when she peered through the window to check on him playing in the yard, she could quickly spot him．
This dreaded（可怕的） disease eventually wore down even the likes of a little dynamo like Tyler．He grew quite ill and, unfortunately, so did his HIV - infected mother．When it became apparent that he wasn’t going to survive, Tyler’s mom talked to him about death．She comforted him by telling Tyler that she was dying too, and that she would be with him soon in heaven．
A few days before his death, Tyler beckoned me over to his hospital bed and whispered, " I might die soon．I’m not scared．When I die, please dress me in red．Mom promised she’s coming to heaven, too．I’ll be playing when she gets there, and I want to make sure she can find me．"
his HIV - infected mother．When it became apparent that he wasn’t going to survive, Tyler’s mom talked to him about death．She comforted him by telling Tyler that she was dying too, and that she would be with him soon in heaven．
A few days before his death, Tyler beckoned me over to his hospital bed and whispered, " I might die soon．I’m not scared．When I die, please dress me in red．Mom promised she’s coming to heaven, too．I’ll be playing when she gets there, and I want to make sure she can find me．"What is the boy Tyler's attitude towards death?
| A．pessimistic（悲观的）． | B．optimistic． | C．sorrowful． | D．fearful． |
Tyler requested the writer to dress him in red when he died simply because___________．
| A．red is a lucky color | B．red might help to cure him |
| C．his mom could spot him easily | D．he could find more mates by wearing red |
Which of the following might serve as a possible title for this passage?
| A．My unusual profession． | B．A caring mother． |
| C．Mother and son． | D．Dying in red． |
The underlined word dynamo in the fourth paragraph here means ________________．
| A．a promising and helpful youth |
| B．an extremely energetic person |
| C．a rare and beautiful flower |
| D．a magic and understanding superstar |
I grew up in a house where the TV was seldom turned on and with one wall in my bedroom entirely lined with bookshelves, most of my childhood was spent on books I could get hold of. In fact, I grew up thinking of reading as natural as breathing and books unbelievably powerful in shaping perspectives (观点) by creating worlds we could step into, take part. in. and live in.
With this unshakable belief, I, at. fourteen, decided to become a writer. Here too, reading became useful. Every writer starts off knowing that he has something to say, but being unable to find the right ways to say it. He has to find his own voice by reading widely and discovering which parts of the writers he agrees or disagrees with, or agrees with so strongly that it reshapes his own world. He cannot write without loving to read, because only through reading other people's writing can one discover what works, what doesn't and, in the end, together with lots of practice, what voice he has.
Now I am in college, and have come to realize how important it is to read fiction (文学作品)．As a. law student, my reading is in fact limited to subject matter-the volume (量) of what I have to read for classes every week means there is little time to read anything else. Such reading made it all the clearer to me that I live in a very small part in this great place called life. Reading fiction reminds me that there is life beyond my own. It allows me to travel across the high seas and along the Silk Road, all from the comfort of my own armchair, to experience, though secondhand, exciting experiences that I wouldn't necessarily be able to have in my lifetime. What can be inferred about the author as a child?
| A． He never watched TV. |
| B． He read what he had to. |
| C． He found reading unbelievable. |
| D． He considered reading part of his life |
The underlined word "voice" in the second paragraph most probably means "_______".
| A． an idea |
| B． a sound quality |
| C． a way of writing |
| D． a world to write about |
What effect does reading have on the author?
| A． It helps him to realize his dream. |
| B． It opens up a wider world for him. |
| C． It makes his college life more interesting. |
| D． It increases his interest in worldwide travel. |
Which of the following can be the best title of this text?
| A． Why do I read? |
| B． How do I read? |
| C． What do I read? |
| D． When do I read? |
Young adult filmmakers all hope to show their works in international festivals like Sundance and Toronto. But what about really young filmmakers who aren’t in film school yet and aren’t, strictly speaking, eve adults?
They are at the heart of Wingspan Arts Film Festival tomorrow, in a setting any director might envy: Lincoln center. Complete with “red carpet” interviews and various awards, the festival has much in common with events for more experienced moviemakers, except for the age of the participants: about 8 to 18.
“What’s really exciting is that it’s film for kids by kids,” said Cori Gardner, managing director of Wingspan Arts, a nonprofit organization offering youth arts programs in the New York area. This year the festival will include films not only from Wingspan but also from other city organizations and one from a middle school in Arlington, Virginia. “We want to make this a national event,” Ms. Gardner added.
The nine shorts to b shown range from a Claymation biography of B.B. King to a science fiction adventure set in the year 3005. “Ａlot of the material is really mature,” Ms. Gardner said, talking about films by the New York branch of Global Action Project, a media arts and leadership-training group. “The choice is about the history of a family and Master Anti-Smoker is about the dangers of secondhand smoke.” Dream of the Invisibles describes young immigrants’ (移民) feelings of both belonging and not belonging in their adopted country.
The festival will end with an open reception at which other films will be shown. These include a music video and a full-length film whose title is Pressure. Wingspan Arts Kids Film Festival _____________.
| A．is organized by a middle school |
| B．is as famous as the Toronto Festival |
| C．shows films made by children |
| D．offers awards to film school students |
Which of the following is true of Wingspan Arts?
| A．It helps young filmmakers to make money. |
| B．It provides arts projects for young people. |
| C．It’s a media arts and leadership-training group. |
| D．It’s a national organization for young people. |
The underlined word “shorts” in Paragraph 4 refers to _________.
| A．short trousers |
| B．short kids |
| C．short films |
| D．short stories |
Movies to be shown in the festival ______________.
| A．cover different subjects |
| B．focus on kid’s life |
| C．are produced by Global Action Project |
| D．are directed by Ms. Gardner |
At the end of this film festival, there will be __________.
| A．various awards |
| B．“red carpet” interviews |
| C．an open reception |
| D．a concert at Lincoln Center |
A team of engineers at Harvard University has been inspired by Nature to create the first robotic fly. The mechanical fly has become a platform for a series of new high-tech integrated systems. Designed to do what a fly does naturally, the tiny machine is the size of a fat housefly. Its mini wings allow it to stay in the air and perform controlled flight tasks.
“It’s extremely important for us to think about this as a whole system and not just the sum of a bunch of individual components (元件),” said Robert Wood, the Harvard engineering professor who has been working on the robotic fly project for over a decade. A few years ago, his team got the go-ahead to start piecing together the components. “The added difficulty with a project like this is that actually none of those components are off the shelf and so we have to develop them all on our own,” he said.
They engineered a series of systems to start and drive the robotic fly. “The seemingly simple system which just moves the wings has a number of interdependencies on the individual components, each of which individually has to perform well, but then has to be matched well to everything it’s connected to,” said Wood. The flight device was built into a set of power, computation, sensing and control systems. Wood says the success of the project proves that the flying robot with these tiny components can be built and manufactured.
While this first robotic flyer is linked to a small, off-board power source, the goal is eventually to equip it with a built-in power source, so that it might someday perform data-gathering work at rescue sites, in farmers’ fields or on the battlefield. “Basically it should be able to take off, land and fly around,” he said.
Wood says the design offers a new way to study flight mechanics and control at insect-scale. Yet, the power, sensing and computation technologies on board could have much broader applications. “You can start thinking about using them to answer open scientific questions, you know, to study biology in ways that would be difficult with the animals, but using these robots instead,” he said. “So there are a lot of technologies and open interesting scientific questions that are really what drives us on a day to day basis.” The difficulty the team of engineers met with while making the robotic fly was that __________.
| A．they had no model in their mind |
| B．they did not have sufficient time |
| C．they had no ready-made components |
| D．they could not assemble the components |
Which of the following can be learned from the passage?
| A．The robotic flyer is designed to learn about insects. |
| B．Animals are not allowed in biological experiments. |
| C．There used to be few ways to study how insects fly. |
| D．Wood’s design can replace animals in some experiments. |
Which of the following might be the best title of the passage?
| A．Father of Robotic Fly |
| B．Inspiration from Engineering Science |
| C．Robotic Fly Imitates Real Life Insect |
| D．Harvard Breaks Through in Insect Study |
Have you ever looked toward the sky on a fall day and witnessed a group of migrating birds? If so, you probably noted the V-shaped formation of the birds or the birds flying in a ball-like formation. Why do birds fly this way? Many theories have been developed to explain the formation patterns of different types of birds.
One theory is that birds fly in certain formations to take advantage of the laws of nature. The birds know that flying in a V-shaped pattern will save energy. Like the lead cyclist in a race who decreases wind force for the cyclists who follow, the lead bird cuts wind force for the birds that follow. This decrease in wind force means that the birds use up to 70 percent less energy during their flight. When the lead bird becomes tired, a more rested bird takes over that position.
But saving energy is important for more than one reason. Sometimes food is short during migration flights. Keeping energy enables the birds to fly longer distances between meals.
When food is sighted, the birds guide one another in a different way. When a bird identifies a familiar feeding area, it might turn around in order to signal the group to change direction. Then, this bird becomes the new leader. It helps guarantee that other birds will know exactly where it is going. Then the whole group makes a change in direction, gently streaming from the sky down to the ground. This formation is like an arrow pointing to the location of food.
Scientists have also studied the birds that sometimes fly in a ball-like formation. Researchers believe that the birds come together if a predator（天敌） is spotted. The predator may then become impatient waiting for a single bird to fly away from the group. The birds will often dip and dive as a group, frustrating even the most persistent enemy. Scientists report that this is a very effective method of defense against an attack.
The birds care for their fellow fliers through teamwork. As transportation expert Henry Ford once said, “If everyone is moving forward together, then success takes care of itself.” When it comes to teamwork, these feathered fliers are a soaring success! According to the passage, we can learn that birds ___________.
| A．move faster than cyclists |
| B．prefer to fly in a V formation |
| C．are smarter than other animals |
| D．play different roles in a formation |
When food is sighted, ____________.
| A．the group follows the discoverer |
| B．the lead bird decides what to do |
| C．the discoverer leaves the group |
| D．the whole group forms a stream |
To protect themselves from attack, birds will _____________ .
| A．break into groups |
| B．come close together |
| C．change directions |
| D．fly up and down |
Which is the best title for the passage?
| A．A Bird’s-Eye View of Teamwork. |
| B．Success Takes Care of Itself. |
| C．The Strongest Will Survive. |
| D．A Science Behind Flying. |
Almost every machine with moving parts has wheels, yet no one knows exactly when the first wheel was invented or what it was used for. We do know, however, that they existed over 5, 500 years ago in ancient Asia.
The oldest known transport wheel was discovered in 2002 in Slovenia. It is over 5, 100 years old. Evidence suggests that wheels for transport didn’t become popular for a while, though. This could be because animals did a perfectly good job of carrying farming tools and humans around.
But it could also be because of a difficult situation. While wheels need to roll on smooth surfaces, roads with smooth surfaces weren’t going to be constructed until there was plenty of demand for them. Eventually, road surfaces did become smoother, but this difficult situation appeared again a few centuries later. There had been no important changes in wheel and vehicle design before the arrival of modern road design.
In the mid-1700s, a Frenchman came up with a new design of road—a base layer(层)of large stones covered with a thin layer of smaller stones. A Scotsman improved on this design in the 1820s and a strong, lasting road surface became a reality. At around the same time, metal hubs(the central part of a wheel)came into being, followed by the pneumatics tyre(充气轮胎)in 1846. Alloy wheels were invented in 1967, sixty years after the appearance of tarmacked roads(柏油路).As wheel design took off, vehicles got faster and faster.What might explain why transport wheels didn’t become popular for some time?
| A．Few knew how to use transport wheels. |
| B．Humans carried farming tools just as well. |
| C．Animals were a good means of transport. |
| D．The existence of transport wheels was not known. |
What do we know about road design from the passage?
| A．It was easier than wheel design. |
| B．It improved after big changes in vehicle design. |
| C．It was promoted by fast-moving vehicles. |
| D．It provided conditions for wheel design to develop. |
How is the last paragraph mainly developed?
| A．By giving examples. |
| B．By making comparisons. |
| C．By following time order. |
| D．By making classifications. |
What is the passage mainly about?
| A．The beginning of road design. |
| B．The development of transport wheels. |
| C．The history of public transport. |
| D．The invention of fast-moving vehicles. |