What makes a gift special? Is it the price you see on the gift receipt? Or is it the look on the recipient's face when they receive it that determines the true value? What gift is worth the most?
This Christmas I was debating what to give my father. My dad is a hard person to buy for because he never wants anything. I pulled out my phone to read a text message from my mom saying that we were leaving for Christmas shopping for him when I came across a message on my phone that I had locked. The message was from my father. My eyes fell on a photo of a flower taken in Wyoming. and underneath a poem by William Blake. The flower, a lone dandelion standing against the bright blue sky, inspired me. My dad had been reciting those words to me since I was a kid. That may even be the reason why I love writing. I decided that those words would be my gift to my father.
I called back. I told my mom to go without me and that I already created my gift. I sent the photo of the cream-colored flower to my computer and typed the poem on top of it. As I was arranging the details another poem came to mind. The poem was written by Edgar Allan Poe; my dad recited it as much as he did the other. I typed that out as well and searched online for a background to the words of it. The poem was focused around dreaming, and after searching I found the perfect picture. The image was painted with blues and greens and purples, twisting together to create the theme and wonder of a dream. As I watched both poems passing through the printer, the white paper coloring with words that shaped my childhood. I felt that this was a gift that my father would truly appreciate.
Christmas soon arrived. The minute I saw the look on my dad's face as he unwrapped those swirling black letters carefully placed in a cheap frame, I knew I had given the perfect gift.The idea for a special gift began to form when the author was______.
| A．doing shopping | B．having a debate |
| C．reading a message | D．leaving for Wyoming |
The author's inspiration for the gift came from_____.
| A．a photo of a flower | B．a story about a kid |
| C．a call from the mother | D．a text about Christmas |
The underlined word "it" in Paragraph 3 refers to a poem by_____.
| A．the father | B．the author |
| C．William Blake | D．Edgar Allan Poe |
What is the main purpose of the passage?
| A．To show how to design images for gifts. |
| B．To suggest making gifts from one's heart. |
| C．To explain how computers help create gifts. |
| D．To describe the gifts the author has receive |
The Happiest Cities On Earth
If you’re looking for a cheery destination for your next vacation, consider these four spots and get ready to take notes on how to really live the good life.
Singapore
With one of the highest population densities（密度）in the world and residents known for being workaholics, it’s hard to imagine the city-state of Singapore having one of the happiest populations on earth. And yet in a recent survey, 95% of them said they were either very happy or quite happy.
They give their city high marks for cleanliness and safety—subways are pristine (洁净的) and unfailingly arrive on time, and police are seen as helpful and good at their jobs. What’s more, they feel they can count on their neighbours—all 5.1 million of them.
Arhus, Denmark
The residents of Arhus cheerfully part with 68% of their income in taxes, knowing that in return they will be guaranteed free healthcare, free daycare, and a top-notch (第一流的) education for their children.
An energetic city of 300,000 with a lively cultural scene and a diverse number of religions represented, the sense of equality (the range in incomes is narrow), as well as easy access to the nearby sea and surrounding countryside, make Arhus seem more like a small town.
San Luis Obispo, CA
According to a 2008 Gallup-Healthways study, people who live in San Luis Obispo are more likely than residents of other U.S. cities to smile and experience joy and are less likely to experience pain or depression. About 64,000 of the 260,000 people in the greater metropolitan area (都市区), located halfway between Los Angeles and San Francisco, volunteer at over 11,000 non-profit organizations.
Few journeys to work are longer than 10 minutes (one reason its members rank in the upper third for job satisfaction), so “it’s easy to be involved,” resident Pierre Rademaker said. Business signs are unobtrusive (不显眼的) by law, fewer than 11% of residents smoke—the lower rate in the U.S.—there are lots of bike lanes, and the city’s plaza draws crowds of people for free concerts on summer Fridays. What’s not to love?
Monterrey, Mexico
The people of Monterrey don’t enjoy high household incomes or access to good healthcare. Instead, there’s a profound sense of gratitude for the new political freedom enjoyed since the oppressive Institutional Revolutionary Party lost power in 2000—the first time in nearly a century—as well as an emphasis on social life over work.
Another reason Monterrey residents may be so happy is their faith in God and family, and their ability to tough it out through bad times.
“We laugh at sickness, poverty and even death,” says Basanez, a political scientist who lives in Monterrey. “We even have a holiday to celebrate death. November 2, the Day of the Dead, is one of the biggest holidays of the year.”According to the passage, what do the residents in the four cities have in common?
| A．All the residents can make great fortunes by working hard. |
| B．The residents there are mostly educators. |
| C．All the residents enjoy enough material wealth. |
| D．The majority of the residents are satisfied with their current life. |
According to the passage, we can infer that _______.
| A．the people of Singapore expect their neighbours to come to their help when necessary |
| B．the people of Monterrey even observe one’s death on a special day of a year |
| C．the residents of Arhus happily pay 68% of their income for their children’s education fee |
| D．the people who live in San Luis Obispo have job satisfaction because they can enjoy good working conditions |
According to the passage which of the following statements is NOT TRUE?
| A．The people of Monterrey didn’t enjoy political freedom until 2000. |
| B．The residents in Singapore feel happy because of its low population density. |
| C．The people of San Luis Obispo can enjoy free concerts in summer. |
| D．Arhus is handy to the seaside and countryside. |
What can we learn from the underlined part “the sense of equality”?
| A．The residents of Arhus have no racial discrimination. |
| B．Arhus is considered as a family sharing everything with each other. |
| C．There is no wide gap between the rich and the poor in Arhus. |
| D．The residents of Arhus can depend on their neighbours to help. |
People who averaged fewer than seven hours of sleep per night in the weeks before being exposed to the cold virus were nearly three times as likely to get sick as those who averaged eight hours or more, a new study found.
Researchers used frequent telephone interviews to track the sleep habits of more than 150 men and women aged 21 to 55 over the last few weeks. Then they exposed the subjects to the virus, quarantined (检疫隔离) them for five days and kept track of who got sick.
Besides sleeping more, sleeping better also seemed to help the body fight illness: Patients who fared better on a measure known as “sleep efficiency”—the percentage of time in bed that you’re actually sleeping—were also less likely to get sick.
The results held true even after researchers adjusted for elements such as body-mass index, age, sex, smoking and pre-existing antibodies (抗体) to the virus.
The researchers aren’t exactly sure why sleeping better makes you less likely to develop a cold. But they do try to give an answer: “Sleep disturbance influences the regulation of symptom mediators (调节因子) that are released in response to infection.” In plain English, maybe tossing and turning when you’re infected with the cold virus contributes to the symptoms that define a cold.
The researchers were based at Carnegie Mellon, the University of Pittsburgh and the University of Virginia, and the study was funded by the National Institutes of Health. According to the passage, what does the underlined word “subjects” mean in paragraph 2?
| A．areas of knowledge in a school |
| B．people being studied in an experiment |
| C．research topics |
| D．animals being tested |
It is shown in the passage that _______.
| A．the researchers obtain information about the sleep habits by frequent interviews |
| B．the researchers do their research in the National Institutes of Health |
| C．people hope to avoid being infected with a cold by sleeping as much as possible |
| D．sleeping more and better helps regulate the symptom mediators |
What’s the best title of the passage?
| A．The Relationship Between Virus and Cold |
| B．How to Sleep Well |
| C．Good Sleep Helps Fight a Cold |
| D．The More the Sleep, the Better Your Body |
Last Sunday I made a visit to some new neighbors down the block. No specific in mind, just an opportunity to sit at the kitchen table, have some tea and chat. As I did so, it occurred to me how rare the Sunday visit has become.
When I was a kid in New Jersey of the 1960s, Sunday visits were routine. Most stores were closed, almost nobody worked, and the highways, as a result, were not desperate steeplechases(障碍赛跑) they have become today. My family normally traveled eight city blocks to the home of my grandmother, where adults would sit on the front porch and chat while we children played hide-and-seek.
The Sunday visit was something to desire strongly. It was the repetition to church, our reward for an hour of devotion, an opportunity to take advantage of the fact that Dad was not at work, we were not in school, and there was no housework that couldn’t wait until Monday. Sunday was, indeed, different from the other days of the week, because everyone seemed to be on the same schedule, which means that there was one day when everyone seemed to have time for everybody else.
Sunday as a day of rest is, or was, so deeply rooted in the culture that it’s surprising to find that, in a short span of time, it has almost entirely lost this association. In my childhood, it was assumed that everyone would either be home or visiting someone else’s home on Sunday. But now the question is, “What do you plan to DO this Sunday?” The answer can range from going to the mall, to participating in a road race, to Montreal for lunch. If one were to respond, “I’m making a Sunday visit to family,” such an answer would feel strange, which sounds like an echo from another era.
I suppose I should be grateful to live in Maine, a state of small towns, abundant land and tight relationships. Even though folks work as hard here as they do anywhere else, the state’s powerfully rural feature still keeps at least remnants(残余部分) of the moral of yesterday’s America, where people had to depend on one another in the face of economic vagaries(反复无常的情况) and a challenging environment. The writer’s general impression of the Sunday in the past was a day when＿＿.
| A．everyone was paying a visit to some relatives far away |
| B．everyone seemed to be free for others |
| C．Dad was not at work while Mom was busy cleaning the house |
| D．nearly every adult would go to church and children weren’t at school |
In the fourth paragraph, the writer compares the response “I’m making a Sunday visit to family” to an echo from another era because_____.
| A．people nowadays prefer staying at home on Sunday |
| B．such answers are rarely heard in our modern society |
| C．people in the city dislike being disturbed on Sunday |
| D．visiting someone on Sunday was routine in the past |
From the last paragraph we may infer that_____.
| A．people in Maine suffer more from economic depression and the changed environment |
| B．people in Maine have abandoned their tradition and lived an absolutely new life |
| C．land in Maine is short, thus the relationship between people is tense |
| D．people in Maine tend to help each other out of necessity |
What’s the main idea of the passage?
| A．Doing many activities on Sunday is beneficial. |
| B．We should often travel a long distance to visit some friends and relatives. |
| C．Nowadays, Sunday has almost lost its association as a day of rest. |
| D．We should abandon some old tradition. |
It was a Sunday and the heavy storm had lasted all night. The morning after the storm, though, was beautiful: blue skies, warm air and a calm, inviting sea touching the shore gently.
My father realized it was a good day for fishing and invited my sister and me to go with him. I was only 14 and fishing had never been my thing, but I decided to go all the same. I ’m so glad I did.
On the road to the harbour we could see the terrible destruction on the coast, but the harbour itself was in fairly good shape. After all, it was protected by the arms of a bay that only one tiny channel to the sea. As we got on board, we noticed two big humps(里脊）in the distance.
On approaching them, we saw it was a mother whale with her baby. We couldn’t believe it---there aren’t any whales along the coast here. The storm must have driven them across the ocean into the bay, in which the still water was so badly polluted that nothing could survive.
The little baby whale--- actually as big as our boat-- was obviously stuck and could not move. The mother dived under the water and camp up suddenly, making big whirlpools(旋涡）and waves. “ she’s trying to help her baby, but on the wrong side,” my father said. At this point , my father moved our boat in a semicircle to the other side and, heading the boat towards the baby whale, pushed it gently. With our several gentle pushes the big hump turned over and disappeared under water. Then it swam up right beside its mum. They struggled in their desperate attempts to escape but missed the exit and started heading in the wrong direction. We hurried up to the whales and tried to lead them towards the bay channel. Slowly, they let us lead them, sometimes rising from the water right beside us to breathe---and to give us a trusting look with those huge eyes. Once they hit their first part of clean water flowing straight from the sea, the mum gave us a wave with her tail and off they swam into the distance.
In the excitement it had felt like only a few minutes, but we had been with those wonderful animals for almost an hour and a half. That was the simple and lasting beauty of the day. Nearly four decades later, I still look back fondly to that golden day at sea.The author says “ I’m so glad I did”(in Para.2) because_________
| A．he witnessed the whole process of fishing |
| B．he enjoyed the beauty of the calm sea |
| C．he spent the weekend with his family |
| D．he experienced the rescue of the whales |
The harbour survived the storm owing to____________
| A．the shape of the harbour |
| B．the arms of the bay |
| C．the still water in the channel |
| D．the long coast line |
The mother whale failed to help her baby because___________
| A．she had stayed in the polluted water for too long. |
| B．the whirlpools she had made were no big enough. |
| C．the waves pushed her baby in the wrong direction. |
| D．she had no other whales around to turn to for help |
What is the theme of the story?
| A．Fishing provides excitement for children. |
| B．It’s necessary to live in harmony with animals. |
| C．It’s vital to protect the environment. |
| D．Saving lives brings people a sense of happiness. |
The flag, the most common symbol of a nation in the modern world, is also one of the most ancient. With a clear symbolic meaning, the flag in the traditional form is still used today to mark building, ships and other vehicles related to a country.
The national flag as we know it today is in no way a primitive artifact. It is , rather, the product of thousands of years’ development. Historians believe that it had two major ancestors, of which the earlier served to show wind direction.
Early human beings used very fragile houses and boats. Often strong winds would tear roofs from houses or cause high waves that endangered travelers. People’s food supplies were similarly vulnerable (易受损害的). Even after they had learned how to plant grains, they still needed help from nature to ensure good harvests. Therefore they feared and depended on the power of the wind, which could bring warmth from one direction and cold from another.
Using a simple piece of cloth tied to the top of a post to tell the direction of the wind was more dependable than earlier methods, such as watching the rising of smoke from a fire. The connection of the flag with heavenly power was therefore reasonable. Early human societies began to fix long pieces of cloth to the tops of totems (图腾)before carrying them into battle. They believed that the power of the wind would be added to the good wishes of the gods and ancestors represented by the totems themselves.
These flags developed very slowly into modern flags. The first known flag of a nation or a ruler was unmarked: The king of China around 1008 B.C. was known to have a white flag carried ahead of him. This practice might have been learned from Egyptians even further in the past, but it was from China that it spread over trade routes through India, then across Arab lands, and finally to Europe, where it met up with the other ancestor of the national flag.The best title for the passage would be_________________
| A．Uses of Flags | B．Power of the National Flag |
| C．Type of Flags | D．Development of the National Flag |
The earliest flags were connected with heavenly power because_____________
| A．they could tell wind direction |
| B．they could bring good luck to fighters |
| C．they were believed to stand for natural forces. |
| D．they were handed down by the ancestors |
What does the author know of the first national flag?
| A．He knows when it was sent to Europe. |
| B．He believes it was made in Egypt. |
| C．He doubts where it started |
| D．He thinks it came from China. |
What will the author most probably talk about next?
| A．The second ancestor of the national flag. |
| B．The role of China in the spread of the national flag. |
| C．The use of modern flags in Europe. |
| D．The importance of modern flags. |