Whilewatchingmovies,it’sgettin-优题课

April Fool’s Day is supposed to be a day to play jokes on others in hopes of getting a good laugh and making one feel like a fool. However, the April Fool’s Day of 2014 was quite different for my mom and me.
That day my friend Jimmy and I were playing a game. I had dropped down from a bar (横木) many times in the past without ever having a problem, but that day the simple act of dropping to the ground became a nightmare (噩梦). I broke my arm.
Jimmy’s dad heard my crying and rushed out to see what was going on. When he saw the problem he quickly put me into his truck and went inside to telephone my mom and let her know he would take me to hospital. As that day was April Fool’s Day, Mom was not buying it and really thought all this was a big joke. Mom was finally convinced by Jimmy’s mom. When she saw me, she broke down in tears because she felt so bad –she originally thought this was just a big prank (恶作剧).
I guess one could compare this to the story of The Boy Who Cried Wolf. Since I had pulled pranks before, it is no wonder that my mom didn’t believe it. I as well as my mom was made to look like a fool that day. We both learned a valuable lesson.
What happened to the writer on the April Fool’s Day of 2014?

A．He dreamed a terrible dream.

B．He was hurt by Jimmy.

C．He had an accident.

D．He fooled his mom with his friend.

Why did Jimmy’s dad phone the writer’s mom?

A．Because he wanted to play a joke on her.

B．Because he wanted her to go to the hospital to pay the money.

C．Because he wanted to see how deeply she loved her son.

D．Because he wanted to inform her of the accident.

From the passage we can infer that _________.

A．the writer’s mom didn’t care much about him

B．the writer was a dishonest person

C．the writer won’t pull pranks as before

D．the writer will lose interest in games

The day that a robot wakes you up, cleans your room and walks your dog might still be a few decades （十年）off. But increasingly, engineers are saying that robots are going to make the leap from the factory floor to your family room.
Companies like Sony and General Electric are working on designs for small robots. Products like the Roomba, a robot that can clean floors, are flying off the shelves. On the cover of a recent issue of Scientific American magazine, Bill Gates predicted the “Dawn of the Age of Robots”.
What’s behind this new era (时代)? It’s partly a matter of technology. Devices that can recognize and respond to a human voice have been developed. There are now a few different ways for robots to move around. They can walk, crawl or ride on wheels. They are being made smaller and smaller. They are also becoming more and more energy efficient.
A bigger part of the story is on the demand side. From the day Robert Adler invented the television remote control in the 1950s, people around the world have tirelessly searched for ways to get lazier.
Also take into consideration the increasing wealth of rich people, the time appears ripe to introduce robots to ease our daily lives.
To be sure, robots that walk on two legs and talk like people are still too complex for our present engineering abilities. Today’s robot revolution is to make them for everyday use. Robots will do basic housework such as cleaning or gardening, or just help you have more fun on the basketball court.
What makes a robot different from an ordinary cleaning machine is not the presence of computer chips (芯片). Nowadays even your microwave has a computer chip. It is the ability to sense and make changes to the environment in real time.
For example, a floor-cleaning robot should be able to sense your scared cat and move out of the way. Today’s computing ability is, for the first time, able to make machines that could “think”, at least in certain limited ways.

Robot revolution
What today’s robot can do	What robot can do
Recognize and respond to your voice	talk like people sense and make some changes to the
work in the factory	walk your dog
move around, like walking or on wheels	Clean your floor you up
think in some limited	Accompany you on the basketball court

In the 1920s and 30s the airlines were just beginning. It was unusual for people to travel by air because it was expensive and dangerous. In those days, there were no flight attendants to look after the passengers. Young men ,or “stewards” helped the passengers onto the airplane and carried the passengers’ luggage(行李)but they did not provide food and drinks. But then in 1930,a woman called Ellen Church invented the “stewardess”.
Ellen Church was born in 1904 on a farm in Iowa. She was a different child. She didn’t want to work on a farm or marry a farmer —she wanted a more adventurous(冒险的)life. Ellen studied to be a nurse at the University of Minnesota and then got a job in a hospital. For the next few years she stayed at the hospital but also took flying lessons and got her pilot’s license.
Ellen was twenty-five years old when she first got in touch with Boeing Air Transport. She loved flying but she understood that airlines were a man’s world. Although women like Emelia Earheart were becoming famous, she realized it was impossible for a woman to have a career as a pilot .But she had another idea. Most people were frightened of flying because. flying was still an unreliable(不可靠的) way to travel. There were often delays(延误),many crashes and the bad weathers made many passengers sick. Ellen thought nurses could take care of passengers during flights and B.A.T. agreed.
The young woman from Iowa and seven other nurses became the first air stewardesses.
At first pilots were unhappy because they did not want stewardesses on airplanes, but passengers loved the stewardesses. In 1940 there were around 1000 of them working for different airlines. The early “stewardesses” had to be under twenty-five-year-old, single and slim. When a woman joined an airline, she had to promise not to get married or have children. It was hard job and not well paid. They worked long hours and earned ＄1 an hour.
In the 1970s, stewardesses were unhappy in their job and airlines had to make some changes. Since the 1970s, “stewardesses” have been called flight attendants. They are well paid and work fewer hours than in the past.
The last sentence of the first paragraph suggests that _________.

A．the word “stewardess” was made up by Ellen Church

B．Ellen Church was the first woman who flew a plane

C．Ellen Church was the first woman who worked on a plane

D．Ellen Church was the first woman passenger on a plane

From the second paragraph, we learn that ________.

A．Ellen did not behave in the same way as most other girls

B．Ellen’s family was not rich enough to support her education

C．Ellen was fond of working as a nurse in the hospital

D．Ellen has an unhappy childhood that changed her completely

The main reason for Boeing Air Transport offering Ellen the job was ________.

A．her flying experience	B．her university education
C．her nursing experience	D．her life attitudes

The passage mainly talks about _______.

A．the background of early flying pilots

B．the experience of flying passengers

C．the history of early flight attendants

D．the development of airplanes

For a long time, humans have used technology (科技) to study the world around us, and Mars is the latest place we’re using machines to explore. Besides the earth, the “red planet” is seen, as the one place in our solar system most likely to have life.
Early last month, the first American robot, Spirit, landed on Mars without any problem. Opportunity, the second robot, landed on the planet more than a week ago. Scientists are very excited about these machines’ safe landing on Mars. It means that now we have an excellent chance to look for water and other signs of life. So far, the robots have found some stones that could show Mars was once a wet and warm planet.
But the trips made by Spirit and Opportunity were dangerous. Mars is often called the “death planet”, because in the past its environment has been unfriendly to the robot explorers. Before Spirit and Opportunity, nearly forty spaceships had been sent to Mars since the 1960s. Two-thirds of them failed. The first spaceship, Korabl, sent in 1962 by Russia was among them. It broke apart (分裂) near the earth.
For a long time humans think ________.

A．they can surely find life on Mars

B．there may be life on Mars

C．it’s too late for them to explore Mars now

D．Mars is the only planet that has life on it

The two robots ________.

A．have found out that it is warm and wet on Mars

B．were sent to Mars to find some stones

C．were the first two American robots that landed on Mars

D．are the only machines that have landed on Mars so far

The third paragraph mainly tell us ________.

A．it’s a very hard and dangerous trip for spaceships to Mars

B．two-thirds of the spaceships sent to Mars have failed

C．Spirit and Opportunity landed on Mars successfully

D．Mars is called the “death planet”

Although I had left school against the advice of my teacher, I had, without telling anyone, tried to continue my studies in literature at evening classes. It was a tiresome walk from one end of the city to another and to sit among adults was uninteresting. I was the youngest in the class, so the friendship I knew at school was absent, I put up with it for a short period. It was too long a walk on cold winter’s nights and it was hard to put my heart into Shakespeare with wet shoes and trousers. So I continued reading books and started writing poetry at home.
By chance, I won some prizes and rewards for literature. A young woman from a TV company came to the college one day. She wanted to make a short film about me, to which I said, “No, I couldn’t do that.” Not that I had any real excuse, I was just frightened. In the end she advised me that I should do it the following day.
So I did. They made a short film of me reading one of my poems and I became more interested in literature than ever. I wondered what I should do after this, and decided some weeks later that I could not imagine myself spending the rest of my days dealing with machines. So one evening, I hesitatingly（支吾其词地） told my parents that I wanted to return to school. They wanted to know if I was sure, if I knew what it meant and whether I realized that if I gave up my job training, it would be very difficult to get a good job. But nothing could stop me, and they asked about the matter on future.
Which of the following has most probably been discussed in the paragraphs above this text?

A．The writer’s unhappy childhood.

B．The poor teaching quality of the writer’s school.

C．The writer’s leaving school against his teacher’s advice.

D．Whether it was worth leaving school for job training.

The writer did NOT feel comfortable at the evening school because __________.

A．he found it difficult to make friends with his classmates

B．he had to walk a long distance to the evening school

C．he could not put his heart into reading books after he was caught in the rain

D．all of the above

After his success, he __________.

A．decided to get a good job

B．decided to continue his studies in literature at the evening school

C．decided to return to the school he once left

D．began to feel very important and proud