July 27st, 2010 was a typical English summer’s day – it rained for 24 hours! As usual, I rushed home from work at midday to check on the house. Nothing was amiss. By the time I left work at 5pm, however, the road into our village was flooded. Our house had never been flooded but, as I opened the front door, a wave of water greeted me. Thank God the kids weren’t with me, because the house was 5 feet deep in water. We lost everything downstairs.
At first we tried to push on through. We didn’t want to move the children out of home, so we camped upstairs. We put a sheet of plastic across the floor to protect us from the damp. But after three months, we felt very sick, so we moved to a wooden house in a park. The house was small, but at first we were all just delighted to be in a new place. Unfortunately, things took longer than expected and we were there for 10 months. The life there was inconvenient. What surprised me most was how much I missed being part of a community（社区）. We had lived in a friendly village with good neighbours, and I’d never thought how much I’d miss that.
Although our situation was very had, it’s difficult to feel too sorry for yourself when you look at what’s happening elsewhere. I watched a news report about floods in Northern India and thought, “We didn’t have a straw but（茅草房）that who swept away, and our house is still standing. We’re lucky.”
We moved back home in August. With December coming, there’s still reconstruction work to be done, so it’s difficult to prepare for Christmas, But I can’t wait-I’m going to throw a party for our friends in the village to say thanks for their support. This year, I won’t need any gifts-living away from home for months has made me realize how little we actually need or miss all our possessions. Although we are replacing things, there’s really no rush-we have our home back, and that’s the main thing. What does the underlined word “amiss” in the first paragraph mean?
| A．Wrong | B．Missing | C．Right | D．Difficult |
Why does the author say that they were lucky in the third paragraph?
| A．Because they were able to move to a new place. |
| B．Because many other places were flooded. |
| C．Because their straw hut was not swept away. |
| D．Because some others suffered even more. |
It can be inferred from the text that the author .
| A．was sick of staying upstairs |
| B．cared much about her children |
| C．could not stand living in a wooden house |
| D．did not deal well with her family affairs during the flood |
What does the author mainly want to express by telling her story?
| A．She valued human feelings more than before. |
| B．She realized she almost didn’t need possessions. |
| C．She found Christmas gifts no longer badly needed. |
| D．She thought her own home was the most important. |
四、阅读理解
Each morning a rich man found a poor man sitting on a park bench (长凳). The poor man always sat there, looking at the big hotel in which the rich man lived. One day the rich man got out of his car and said to the poor man, “Excuse me, but I just want to know why you sit here and look at my hotel every morning.” “Sir,” said the poor man, “I am a failure. I have no money, no family, no home. I sleep on this bench, and every night I dream that one day I’ll sleep in that hotel.” The rich man said, “That is not so hard. Tonight your dream will come true. I’ll pay for the best room in that hotel for you for a whole month.”
A few days later, the rich man went by the poor man’s room to ask him how he was enjoying himself. To his surprise, he found that the man had moved out of the hotel, back to his park bench. When the rich man asked why, the poor man said, “you see, when I am down here sleeping on my bench, I dream I’m up there, in that big hotel. It’s a wonderful dream. But when I was up there, I dreamed I was back to this cold bench. It was a terrible dream, and I couldn’t get any sleep at all.”
1. The poor man lived in_____ before he met the rich man.
A. the hotel B. his home C. the park D. the car
2. Every morning, the poor man sat on the bench and _____
A. waited for the rich man B. looked at the rich man’s hotel
C. looked at the rich man’s car D. enjoyed the clean air
3. The poor man moved out of the hotel because_______
A. he didn’t want to live in such a fine room
B. he didn’t like the rich man
C. he couldn’t pay for the room
D. he couldn’t get any sleep at all there
4. In the end, the poor man found it _____to sleep in the hotel.
A. sorry B. nice C. sad D.terrible
第三部分：阅读理解(共20小题；每小题2分，满分40分)
阅读下列短文，从短文所给的四个选项(A、B、C和D)中，选出最佳选项，并在答题卡上将相应的字母涂黑。
Sandra Cisneros was born in Chicago in 1954 to a Mexican American family. As the only girl in a family of seven children, she often felt like she had “seven fathers,” because her six brothers, as well as her father, tried to control her. Feeling shy and unimportant, she retreated(躲避) into books. Despite her love of reading, she did not do well in elementary school because she was too shy to participate.
In high school, with the encouragement of one particular teacher, Cisneros improved her grades and worked for the school literary magazine. Her father encouraged her to go to college because he thought it would be a good way for her to find a husband. Cisneros did attend college, but instead of searching for a husband, she found a teacher who helped her join the famous graduate writing program at the University of Iowa. At the university’s Writers’ Workshop, however, she felt lonely—a Mexican American from a poor neighborhood among students from wealthy families. The feeling of being so different helped Cisneros find her “creative voice.”
“It was not until this moment when I considered myself truly different that my writing acquired （获得）a voice. I knew I was a Mexican woman, but I didn’t think it had anything to do with why I felt so much imbalance（不平衡） in my life, but it had everything to do with it! That’s when I decided I would write about something my classmates couldn’t write about.”
Cisneros published her first work, The House on Mango Street, when she was twenty-nine. The book tells about a young Mexican American girl growing up in a Spanish-speaking area in Chicago, much like the neighborhoods in which Cisneros lived as a child. The book won an award in 1985 and has been used in classes from high school through graduate school level. Since then, Cisneros has published several books of poetry, a children’s book, and a short-story collection.
1. Which of the following is TRUE about Cisneros in her childhood?
A. She had seven brothers. B. She felt herself a nobody.
C. She was too shy to go to school. D. She did not have any good teachers.
2. The graduate program gave Cisneros a chance to _____.
A. work for a school magazine B. run away from her family
C. make a lot of friends D. develop her writing style
3. According to Cisneros, what played the decisive role in her success?
A. Her early years in college. B. Her training in the Workshop.
C. Her feeling of being different. D. Her childhood experience.
4. What do we learn about The House on Mango Street?
A. It is quite popular among students.
B. It is the only book ever written by Cisneros.
C. It wasn’t a success as it was written in Spanish.
D. It won an award when Cisneros was twenty-nine.