Picking tomatoes
For as long as I can remember, Grandma’s plentiful tomato garden has been a sign of summer’s end. Each September, just as the decreased heat of the sun suggests cooler days, Grandma requests my help in her tomato garden. She convinces me she cannot pick tomatoes without my youthful eyes and quick mind. She says we need to examine each tomato and agree on its readiness for picking. While Grandma’s request for my help in the tomato garden is always the same, her desire for my help seems to increase each year.
Grandma has eyes for finding even the tomatoes hidden by undergrowth and other tomatoes. I, however, just turn circles looking for the ones I think Grandma will like. I spot what looks like a ripe tomato, head in its direction, and then get sidetracked by another that appears to be equally ripe. I usually end up watching Grandma and trying to stay out of her way, which seems the only way my eyes and mind ale useful.
There we are, lost in the tomato vines（藤）. Grandma’s eyes are always knowing, and they are no different in the vegetable garden. From afar she spots what looks like a ripe tomato. As she walks toward the garden, she evaluates the tomato for a second time. but from a different angle. I already know it will end up in the basket with the pile of others Grandma has carefully chosen. However, Grandma acts as if she needs a final look to be sure. She calls me to her side, kneels beside the vine while enjoying the warmth of the fading sunlight on her face, and grasps the tomato in her hand. She turns each round, red ball toward the sunlight before disconnecting it from thevine with a half-hearted smile.
She then looks at me. I nod my head and smile. Grandma assumes I smile in agreement with her tomato selection. I know I smile, instead, at her.Why does Grandma ask the author to go to the tomato garden with her?
| A．He can help pick more tomatoes. |
| B．He can learn the hardship of labor. |
| C．She enjoys staying with him while working. |
| D．She tries to share the happiness of harvest with him. |
The second paragraph shows that the author .
| A．is an inefficient tomato picker |
| B．really has youthful eyes and quick mind |
| C．has spent a lot of time gardening with Grandma |
| D．is a naughty child trying to be out of Grandma’s sight |
In the last paragraph, the author smiled to Grandma because he .
| A．realizes her true intentions |
| B．feels very happy to pick tomatoes for her |
| C．confirms that her choice of tomato is great |
| D．appreciates her skill in finding ripe tomatoes |
What can we infer from the story?
| A．The grandchild will become more skillful at gardening than Grandma. |
| B．Grandma will develop more patience in working with the grandchild. |
| C．The grandchild will gradually become more independent of Grandma. |
| D．Grandma’s need for the grandchild's company will grow over time. |
I fell in love with England because it was quaint (古雅)—all those little houses, looking terribly old-fashioned but nice, like dolls’ houses. I loved the countryside and the pubs, and I loved London. I’ve slightly changed my mind after seventeen years because I think it’s an ugly town now.
Things have changed. For everybody, England meant gentlemen, fair play, and good manners. The fair play is going, unfortunately, and so are the gentlemanly attitudes and good manners—people shut doors heavily in your face and politeness is disappearing.
I regret that there are so few comfortable meeting places. You’re forced to live indoors. In Paris I go out much more, to restaurants and nightclubs. To meet friends here it usually has to be in a pub, and it can be difficult to go there alone as a woman. The cafes are not terribly nice.
As a woman, I feel unsafe here. I spend a bomb on taxis because I will not take public transport after 10 p. m. I used to use it , but now I’m afraid.
The idea of family seems to be more or less non-existent in England. My family is well united and that’s typically French. In Middlesex I had a neighbor who is 82 now. His family only lived two miles away, but I took him to France for Christmas once because he was always alone.The writer doesn’t like London because she ______.
| A．is not used to the life there now |
| B．has lived there for seventeen years |
| C．prefers to live in an old-fashioned house |
| D．has to be polite to everyone she meets there |
Where do people usually meet their friends in England?
| A．In a cafe. | B．In a restaurant. |
| C．In a nightclub. | D．In a pub. |
The underlined part “it” (in Para. 4) refers to______.
| A．a taxi | B．the money |
| C．a bomb | D．public transport |
The writer took her neighbors to France for Christmas because he ______.
| A．felt lonely in England |
| B．had never been to France |
| C．was from a typical French family |
| D．didn't like the British idea of family |
Samuel Osmond is a 19-year-old law student from Cornwall, England. He never studied the piano. However, he can play very difficult musical pieces by musicians such as Chopin and Beethoven just a few minutes after he hears them. He learns a piece of music by listening to it in parts. Then he thinks about the notes in his head. Two years ago, he played his first piece Moonlight Sonata（奏鸣曲）by Beethoven. He surprised everyone around him.
Amazed that he remembered this long and difficult piece of music and played it perfectly, his teachers say Samuel is unbelievable .They say his ability is very rare, but Samuel doesn’t even realize that what he can do is special. Samuel wanted to become a lawyer as it was the wish of his parents, but music teachers told him he should study music instead. Now, he studies law and music.
Samuel can’t understand why everyone is so surprised. “I grew up with music. My mother played the piano and my father played the guitar. About two years ago, I suddenly decided to start playing the piano, without being able to read music and without having any lessons. It comes easily to me ---I hear the notes and can bear them in mind---each and every note,” says Samuel.
Recently, Samuel performed a piece during a special event at his college. The piece had more than a thousand notes. The audience was impressed by his amazing performance. He is now learning a piece that is so difficult that many professional pianists can’t play it. Samuel says confidently,” It’s all about super memory---I guess I have that gift.”
However, Samuel’s ability to remember things doesn’t stop with music. His family says that even when he was a young boy, Samuel heard someone read a story, and then he could retell the story word for word.
Samuel is still only a teenager. He doesn’t know what he wants to do in the future. For now, he is just happy to play beautiful music and continue his studies.What is special about Samuel Osmond?
| A．He has a gift for writing music. |
| B．He can write down the note he hears. |
| C．He is a top student at the law school. |
| D．He can play the musical piece he hears. |
What can we learn from Paragraph 2 ?
| A．Samuel chose law against the wish of his parents. |
| B．Samuel planned to be a lawyer rather than a musician. |
| C．Samuel thinks of himself as a man of great musical ability. |
| D．Samuel studies law and music on the advice of his teachers. |
Everyone around Samuel was surprised because he _________.
| A．received a good early education in music |
| B．played the guitar and the piano perfectly |
| C．could play the piano without reading music |
| D．could play the guitar better than his father |
Which of the following is the best title of the passage?
| A．The Qualities of a Musician |
| B．The Story of a Musical Talent |
| C．The Importance of Early Education |
| D．The Relationship between Memory and Music. |
Less than one year after France imposed a nationwide ban on smoking in most public places, it will, from Jan. 1, 2009, extend the ban to bars, restaurants, hotels, nightclubs—and the most cherished of all: cafés.
Ireland and Italy show that countries with long-standing smoking traditions may introduce bans fairly smoothly, as they did in 2004 and 2005. In Germany, where regulations vary locally, Berlin will join France on Jan 1. But fierce critics of the new law in France say it all but destroys the café's basic function: to serve as the socio-economic glue of society.
Cécile Perez, owner of La Fronde, a typical Parisian neighborhood café, said: “In the morning, street cleaners in bright green uniforms sip coffee next to well-dressed businessmen; at lunch hour, working-class types rub shoulders with those of the latest fashion at the bar, while couples of all ages rub noses over salads; during the after-work rush, there is a steady soundtrack of clinking glasses combined with conversation; the constant, no matter what time of day, is the smoke that drifts through the air in curls and clouds, seemingly unnoticed.”
“Our motto in France is: liberty, equality, fraternity,” Olivier Seconda, a regular at the café, said. “The café is the place that represents that. You’re free to smoke, everyone pays the same price for a beer and different kinds of people talk with one another. This new law goes against that.”
Seconda expects the ban to be felt even more strongly in small villages far from Paris, where the café is often the only means of social activity. “People already miss the space that allows people of all walks of life to share something—even if it is sometimes no more than a few words and the smoke floating between them.”Cécile Perez mentions the curls and clouds of smoke drifting through the air to ______.
| A．describe a friendly atmosphere |
| B．show the beauty of his own café |
| C．support the ban on smoking |
| D．remind us of something unnoticed |
Olivier Seconda implies that ______.
| A．the café provides people with enough liberty, equality, and fraternity |
| B．people, regardless of their social classes, enjoy equal rights in a café |
| C．the new ban on café smoking should be put in effect only in villages |
| D．people would not find fun in a café without smoking a cigarette |
The passage is written to _______.
| A．show the writer’s personal opinion against a new law |
| B．provide information for law-makers to pass a new law |
| C．tell why some people are unhappy about smoking ban in cafés |
| D．compare attitudes to a law, held by people from different countries |
The Queen’s English is now sounding less upper-class, a scientific study of the Queen’s Christmas broadcasts had found. Researchers have studied each of her messages to the Commonwealth countries since 1952 to find out the change in her pronunciation from the noble Upper Received to the Standard Received.
Jonathan Harrington, a professor at Germany’s University of Munich, wanted to discover whether accent changes recorded over the past half century would take place within one person. “As far as I know, there just is nobody else for whom there is this sort of broadcast records,” he said.
He said the noble way of pronouncing vowels (元音) had gradually lost ground as the noble upper-class accent over the past years. “Her accent sounds slightly less noble than it did 50 years ago. But these are very, very small and slow changes that we don’t notice from year to year.”
“We may be able to relate it to changes in the social classes,” he told The Daily Telegraph, a British newspaper. “In 1952 she would have been heard saying ‘thet men in the bleck het’. Now it would be ‘that man in the black hat’. Similarly, she would have spoken of ‘citay ’ and ‘dutay’ , rather than ‘citee’ and ‘dutee’ and ‘hame’ rather than ‘home’. In the 1950s she would have been ‘lorst’, but by the 1970s ‘lost’.”
The Queen’s broadcast is a personal message to the Commonwealth countries. Each Christmas, the 10-minute broadcast is put on TV at 3 pm in Britain as many families are recovering from their traditional turkey lunch.
The results were published in the Journal of Phonetics.The Queen’s broadcasts were chosen for the study mainly because ______.
| A．she has been Queen for many years. |
| B．she has a less upper-class accent now. |
| C．her speeches are familiar to many people. |
| D．her speeches have been recorded for 50 years. |
Which of the following is an example of a less noble accent in English?
| A．“dutay” | B．“citee” | C．“hame” | D．“lorst” |
We may infer from the text that the Journal of Phonetics is a magazine on _________.
| A．speech sounds | B．Christmas customs |
| C．TV broadcasting | D．personal messages |
What is the text mainly about?
| A．The Queen’s Christmas speeches on TV. |
| B．The relationship between accents and social classes. |
| C．The changes in a person’s accent. |
| D．The recent development of the English language. |
Dear SJ,
Losing a best friend is never easy.
Your problem, is not just that you miss your best friend, it is that you feel empty and lost without her friendship.
It takes time to get over a lost, and during that time, your mind is getting used to a new way of being. This is usually a good thing, even if it feels like a bad thing.
Now that you are on your own, you are being forced to learn to be by yourself and to rely upon your own inner voice for guidance. I am sure that this feels strange for you, but if you can hang on for a bit longer, it may work to your advantage.
Best friends are cool, but it is important to know the difference between missing someone and being too independent upon them.
At your age, girls do tend to stick together and having a good boyfriend may not yet be the better choice. Your friend is leaving you, her best friend, for a boyfriend. Boyfriends are completely different from best friends. The distinction is that boyfriends come and go, while girl friends often stay in your life throughout high school, and even afterwards. It is a completely different sort of bond.
I suggest that you take advantage of this period in your life to expand your horizons. Enjoy the freedom of having no best friend for a while, and hang with the group. By the time your former best friend breaks up with her boyfriend, you will be in a completely different place, a far better place.
And, by the way, next time you feel empty and lost, try to write about it in a diary. In several months, you will look back and read it with curiosity about yourself. “Who was I then, and what could I have been thinking?”Judging from the letter, SJ’s problem was that she didn’t know _______ .
| A．whether to give up her best friend |
| B．what to do without her best friend |
| C．whom to choose between two friends |
| D．how to stop missing her former friend |
The underlined part “a new way of being” (in Paragraph 3) refers to the situation in which SJ has to _______.
| A．find a new friendship | B．live without her boyfriend |
| C．learn to give up | D．learn to be independent |
The writer believes by the time SJ’s former friend loses her boyfriend, SJ will _______.
| A．take revenge on her former friend |
| B．comfort her former friend |
| C．feel more independent and confident |
| D．continue friendship with her former friend |
What does the last paragraph seem to suggest?
| A．Unhappy experiences are easy to forget. |
| B．Keeping a diary helps correct oneself. |
| C．SJ will get over her problem soon. |
| D．One shouldn’t forget the past experiences. |