Nowroz: Iranian New Year or Nowroz is celebrated on the first day of spring sometime in March. Nowroz ceremonies are symbolic representations of good and evil. People sing, dance and parade as in a carnival through the streets with drums and trumpets to spread the news of the coming new year.
Rosh Hashanah: The Jewish New Year is called “Rosh Hashanah”, and is celebrated in the month of September. It is a holy time when people think of the things they have done wrong in the past, and promise to do better in the future. Special prayers are held, and an instrument called a Shofar is played. Children are given new clothes, and New Year loaves are baked and fruits are consumed to remind people of harvest time.
Shogatsu: In Japan, the New Year (Shogatsu) celebrations are from January 1 to January 3 and most Japanese don’t work during these days. In Japan, years are traditionally seen as completely separate from each other, and the New Year is a fresh start. This means that in December all duties should be completed. Parties are held to forget the worries and troubles of the old year. Homes and cars are decorated. On New Year’s Eve, most people spend their time with their families.
Bahai New Year: The Bahai people have their own calendar consisting of nineteen months of nineteen days plus a couple of extra days between the eighteenth and nineteenth months. They have, however, adopted the Iranian custom of beginning the New Year in the spring equinox (春分). The day begins at sunset rather than midnight, and the New Year celebrations are held on the evening of March 20th.During the Jewish New Year, .
| A．people don’t mention things they have done wrong |
| B．children often wear new clothes |
| C．loaves and fruits are often forbidden to be served |
| D．Shofar is their favourite food |
Which of the following festivals are celebrated in the same month?
| A．Nowroz and Shogatsu. | B．Rosh Hashanah and Shogatsu. |
| C．Nowroz and Rosh Hashanah. | D．Nowroz and the Bahai New Year. |
What can we learn from the text?
| A．Japanese families often stay together to celebrate Shogatsu. |
| B．The Bahai people usually hold a carnival to celebrate the New Year. |
| C．The Jewish harvest fruits to celebrate Rosh Hashanah. |
| D．The Iranians often hold family parties to celebrate Nowroz. |
It must be something in the air as every company that possibly can is having a baby contest. Of course, babies are wonderful , and many parents would be the first to agree. Companies really bring in much money.
Walgreens Baby Contest
If you play the new Baby Milestones Challenge Contest by BabyCenter & Walgreens, you could be entered to win $1,000 in Walgreens & Beauty.com Gift Cards and Certificates. You can play the instant win to see if you get a $25 Walgreen’s gift card, but you have to plug in your email address and receive all their sales and other information for the contest.
Kids and Babies
Kids and Babies are accepting entries for May 2012 Free Photo Contest. Baby Photo Gallery with theme albums and age group albums is moved to the new website Cute Baby Gallery. Check KidsandBibs.com for their Baby Photo Contest blog’s latest update. Grand prize is $25,000. The catch: Winners are decided by the visitors coming to the site and voting for their favorite babies, so you have to advertise their site for them.
Parents.com
Perents.com has a website only for their members, but if you are into “baby” photos, it is well worth surfing. You could receive offers on free samples, money- saving coupons (优惠券), and chances to win the latest contests.
Avon
Avon is another company that has a baby photo contest this spring. Avon is advertising their newest collection. It is Avon’s only collection for the photos of babies. Babies’ age: newborn to 2 years. Just go to TinyTillia.com and upload your recent baby’s photos. First place Baby will be featured in a Tiny Tillia Storybook and win a $5,000 U.S. Savings Bond. The Cuties will win $300 in Tiny Tillia products.
The tip is to run a search engine for all the latest contests going on and start entering them today. You could be lucky and win enough to put “Baby” through college! Have fun!In the author’s opinion, holding a baby contest __________.
| A．is not reasonable at all |
| B．is funny and interesting |
| C．attracts parents’ attention |
| D．can cost a company much money |
If your baby enters for the 2012 Free Photo Contest, you will __________.
| A．have to help to advertise their site |
| B．take your baby to the gallery in May |
| C．advise the visitors to come to the site |
| D．see the Baby Photo Gallery’s update about Babies’ photos of the contest |
What can we learn from this passage？
| A．Free Photo Contest will be held in March, 2012. |
| B．Avon is a website that will hold a baby photo contest. |
| C．Parents.com only accepts the photos of its members’ babies. |
| D．You can upload your one-year-old baby’s photos to TinyTillia.com. |
In the last paragraph, the author advises you to __________.
| A．try your best to bring up your baby well |
| B．enter for all the contests as soon as possible |
| C．let your kid go to college when he grows up |
| D．get more information about these contests |
That summer an army of crickets(蟋蟀) started a war with my father. Dad didn’t care for insects much more than Mamma, but he could tolerate a few living in the basement. Mamma was a city girl and she said a cricket was just too noisy. Then to support her point she wouldn’t go to bed. She drank coffee and smoked my father’s cigarettes and paced between the sofa and the TV. Next morning she threatened to pack up and leave, so Dad drove to the store and hurried back. He sprayed poison from a jug. When he was finished he told us that was the end of it.
For a couple of weeks we went back to find dead crickets in the laundry. He suggested that we’d all be better off to hide as many as we could from Mamma. I fed a few dozen to the cat who I didn’t like because he scratched for no reason.
However, soon live crickets started showing up in the kitchen and bathroom. Mamma was upset because she thought they were the dead crickets coming back, but Dad said these were certainly new ones. He fetched his jug of poison and sprayed all over until the whole house smelled of poison, and then he sprayed the basement again.
A couple of weeks later, when both live and dead crickets kept turning up, Dad emptied the basement of junk. Then he burned a lot of old newspapers and magazines which he said the crickets had turned into nests.
While we ate supper that evening, the wind lifted some flames onto the wood pile. The only gasoline was in the lawn mower’s(割草机) fuel tank but that was enough to create an explosion big enough to reach the house. Once the roof caught, there wasn’t much anyone could do.
After the fire trucks left, Mamma took the others to Aunt Gail’s. I helped Dad and Uncle Burt carry things out of the house and pile them by the road. We worked into the night and we didn’t talk much, while all around the noise of crickets broke our silence. What do we know about the author’s mother?
| A．She didn’t like insects at all. |
| B．She liked insects more than his father. |
| C．She cared for insects very much. |
| D．She could only tolerate a few insects. |
The author’s father drove to the store to buy _______.
| A．cigarettes for himself | B．some poison |
| C．more coffee for his wife | D．some gasoline |
The author’s father burned the old newspapers and magazines because he thought ______.
| A．they were no longer useful |
| B．the crickets were afraid of fires |
| C．they became the home of crickets |
| D．the dead crickets came back to life |
We learn from the last paragraph that ________.
| A．the author’s family lost their battle against the crickets |
| B．the author’s parents learned to put up with insects |
| C．the author’s family didn’t suffer much in the fire |
| D．the author’s parents got divorced |
Around the world coral reefs(珊瑚礁) are facing threats(威胁) brought by climate change and great changes in sea temperatures. While ocean warming has been the primary focus for scientists and ocean policy managers, cold events can also whiten corals. A new study by scientists compared damaged to corals exposed to heat as well as cold stress. The results show that cool temperatures can cause more damage in the short term, but heat is more destructive(破坏性的) in the long run.
Climate change is widely known to produce warming conditions in the oceans, but extreme cold-water events have become more frequent and serious as well. In 2010, for example, coral reefs around the world faced on of the coldest winters and one of the hottest summers on record.
During a unique experiment, corals under cold temperatures suffered greater damage in just days compared with heat treated corals. Yet the researchers found that corals were eventually able to adjust to the cold conditions, make their health stable and continue to grow. However, over the long term corals subjected to heat suffered more greatly than those in cold, with evidence of severe whitening and growth stoppage, which leads to death.
The coral’s ability to adjust to cool temperatures surprised the researchers, who say the study’s results show the complexities(复杂性) of monitoring coral health in response to different environmental factors(因素).
“Global warming is associated with increases but also decreases of temperatures,” said Deheyn, one of the researchers. “Not much has been known about the comparative effects of temperature decrease on corals. These results are important because they show that corals react differently to temperature differences, which is important for future management of coral reefs in the field of climate change.”Which of the following is TRUE according to the passage?
| A．Corals are unable to adjust to temperature changes. |
| B．Cold temperature causes greater damage to corals. |
| C．Hot temperature helps coral reefs to grow quickly. |
| D．Heat and cold damage corals in their own ways. |
We can learn from the passage that .
| A．scientists used to pay no attention to the effect of cold events on corals |
| B．2010 witnessed one of the greatest temperature differences on record |
| C．corals prefer warmer conditions to cold temperatures in the long run |
| D．global warming has nothing to do with the decrease of temperature |
According to the research, .
| A．corals may continue to grow in cold events after a few days |
| B．cold events help corals grow more quickly in a short time |
| C．corals show no response to hot temperatures in the first days |
| D．corals are whitened mainly because of warm temperatures |
Scientists reached the conclusion through .
| A．news report | B．scientific study | C．great imagination | D．natural conditions |
Ernest Miller Hemingway (July 21, 1899—July 2, 1961) was an American writer and journalist. His writing style had a strong influence on 20th-century fiction, while his life of adventure and his public image(形象) affected later generations. Hemingway produced most of his works between the mid-1920s and the mid-1950s, and won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1954.
Hemingway was raised in Illinois. After high school he reported for The Kansas City Star, before leaving for the Italian front to enlist with the World War I ambulance drivers. In 1918, he was seriously wounded and returned home. In 1922, he married Hadley Richardson. The couple moved to Paris, where he worked as a foreign journalist. Advised and encouraged by other American writers in Paris—F. Scott Fitzgerald, Gertrude Stein, Ezra Pound, he began to see his work appear in print there, and in 1925 his first important book, a collection of stories called In Our Time, was published. A year later, he published The Sun Also Rises, a novel with which he scored his first solid success. The writing of books occupied Hemingway for most of the postwar years. He remained based in Paris, but he traveled widely for bullfighting(斗牛), fishing, and hunting that by then had become part of his life and formed the background for much of his writing. Hemingway’s love of Spain and bullfighting resulted in Death in the Afternoon (1932). His position as a master of short fiction had been advanced by Men Without Women in 1927. The harvest of Hemingway’s considerable experience of Spain in war and peace was the novel For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940). In the public view, however, the novel A Farewell to Arms (1929) overshadowed such works.
Shortly after he published The Old Man and the Sea in 1952, Hemingway went to Africa, where he was almost killed in a plane crash that left him in pain or ill-health for much of the rest of his life. Hemingway lived in Florida and Cuba during the 1930s and 1940s, but in 1959 he moved from Cuba to Ketchum, Idaho, where ended his life in the summer of 1961.Which best arranges Hemingway’s works in the correct order of time?
a. A Farewell to Arms b. Men Without Women
c. The Old Man and the Sea d. Death in the Afternoon
e. The Sun Also Rises f. For Whom the Bell Tolls
| A．e, a, b, f, d, c | B．e, b, a, d, f, c |
| C．b, a, d, f, e, c | D．b, d, a, e, c, f |
The underlined sentence in Paragraph 3 probably means that A Farewell to Arms .
| A．was thought to be better than other works of Hemingway’s |
| B．was considered to make a show in Hemingway’s life |
| C．was only as excellent as the other works of Hemingway’s |
| D．was believed to be among the worst works of Hemingway’s |
Which of the following is TRUE according to the passage?
A. Hemingway must have spent his childhood in Italy.
B. Hemingway was an energetic writer with a wide interest.
C. Hemingway’s first book In Our Time was published before 1925.
D Hemingway won the Nobel Prize for Literature just before his death.It can be concluded from the passage that .
| A．Hemingway produced most of his works in Africa |
| B．Hemingway led a very happy life in his last few years |
| C．most of Hemingway’s works were based on his life experience |
| D．Hemingway’s writing style affected the life of later generations |
The New York Philharmonic(爱乐乐团) came to an unexpected stop on Tuesday night when an audience member’s cell phone started ringing and wouldn’t stop.
Conductor Alan Gilbert was nearing the end of Mahler’s Ninth Symphony(交响乐) when the interruption began. As eh New York Times writes, the symphony, “contains some of the most spiritual and peaceful music ever written.”
As the cell phone continued to ring, the iPhone’s signature ringtone, Gilbert stopped the entire performance. And yet shockingly the phone continued to ring. “Nothing happened,” Gilbert told the Times, “Nobody was to blame for it. It was unbelievable.”
Gilbert said minor cell phone interruptions have become common and rarely interfere with a live performance. The Philharmonic does what it can to remind to audience to turn off their cell phones before the performance begins. But the audience and performers stood by in astonished silence as Gilbert asked the offender(肇事者) to silence the phone, only to hear it continue.
Mr Gilbert said audience pointed out two people sitting where the sound was coming from. “They were staring at me firmly,” he said of the couple. Eventually, the man put his hand in his pocket and the ringing stopped.
The conductor said he asked the man if he was sure the phone was quieted. “Then he nodded his head,” Mr Gilbert said.
People in the hall had been shouting for the sound to stop. Mr Pelkonen reported that they yelled: “Thousand-dollar fine!” “Kick him out!” “Get out!”
Once the phone was finally silenced, Gilbert apologized to the audience. They responded with cheers and applause(掌声). And the performance continued.The underlined words “interfere with” in the third paragraph means “ ”.
| A．enjoy | B．attend | C．disturb | D．complete |
What do we know about the offender?
| A．He silenced the phone the moment he was reminded to. |
| B．He enjoyed the ringtone so he kept the phone ringing. |
| C．He quieted the phone after hearing people’s angry shouts. |
| D．He didn’t like the music so he wouldn’t silence the phone. |
What does the writer of this passage intend to imply?
| A．It’s not acceptable to carry an iPhone to a concert. |
| B．It’s rude to attend a concert with the phone ringing. |
| C．It’s necessary to quiet the phones when the performance is over. |
| D．It’s common for a conductor to make an apology to the audience. |
What can be the best title for the passage?
| A．iPhone ringtone bring New York Philharmonic to a stop |
| B．iPhone signature ringtone defeats New York Philharmonic |
| C．New York Philharmonic puts on a successful performance |
| D．New York Philharmonic stops the audience using iPhone |