Robert Burns, the son of a hard-working and intelligent farmer, was the oldest of seven children. Although always hard pressed financially, their father encouraged his sons with their education. As a result, Burns not only read the Scottish poetry of Ramsay and the collections by Hailes and Herd, but also the works of Pope, Locke, and Shakespeare.
By 1781, Burns had tried his hand at several agricultural jobs without success. Although he had begun writing, and his poems were spread widely in manuscript (手稿), none were published until 1786, when Burns published Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect (1786), which was an immediate success. Later Burns brought out a second edition of his poems at Edinburgh in 1787, and for two winters he was socially active in the Scottish city. In 1788 he retired to a farm at Ellis land. By 1791 Burns had failed as a farmer, and he moved to Dumfries, where he held a position as a tax collector. He died of illness at 37.
Burns’s art is at its best in songs such as My Heart’s in the Highlands. Some of his songs, such as Auld Lang Syne and Comin’ thro’ the Rye, are among the most familiar and best-loved songs in the English language. But his talent was not limited to songs; two descriptive pieces, Tam o’ Shanter and The Jolly Beggars, are among his masterpieces.
Burns had a fine sense of humor, which was reflected in his satirical (讽刺的), descriptive, and playful poems. His great popularity with the Scots lay in his ability to describe the life of his fellow rural Scots. His use of dialect brought an energetic, much-needed freshness into English poetry. What can we learn from the first paragraph?
| A．Burn had a wealthy childhood. |
| B．Burns was best loved by his parents. |
| C．Burns’s father cared more about his kids’ education. |
| D．Burns wanted to be a poet when he grew up. |
Robert was not officially accepted by readers until______.
| A．1781 | B．1786 | C．1787 | D．1791 |
Robert made his best achievement in art by writing _______.
| A．songs | B．poems | C．stories | D．humors |
What was Robert’s biggest contribution to English poetry?
| A．His satirical style. | B．His descriptiveness. |
| C．His fine sense of humor. | D．His use of Scottish dialect. |
We can conclude from the passage that Robert _______.
| A．majored in agriculture when he was a student |
| B．earned a lot of money by publishing his poems |
| C．was a failure in managing farms but a success in art |
| D．showed much interest in collecting tax before he died |
At exactly eleven Sir Percival knocked and entered, with anxiety and worry in every line of his face. This meeting would decide his future life，and he obviously knew it.
"You may wonder, Sir Percival,"said Laura calmly, "if I am going to ask to be released (免除）from my promise to many you. I am not going to ask this. I respect my father's wishes too much."
His face relaxed a little, but one of his feet kept beating the carpet.
"No, if we are going to withdraw. (退出）from our planned marriage, it will be because of your wish, not mine.
"Mine?" he said in great surprise. "What reason could I have for withdrawing?'
"A reason that is very hard to tell you," she answered. "There is a change in me."
His face went so pale that even his lips lost their color. He turned his head to one side.
"What change?" he asked, trying to appear calm.
"When the promise was made two years ago," she said, 44 my love did not belong to anyone. Will you forgive me, Sir Percival, if I tell you that it now belongs to another person?"
"I wish you to understand, "Laura continued, "that I will never see this person again, and that if you leave me, you only allow mc to remain a single woman for the rest of my life. All I ask is that you forgive mc and keep my secret."
"I will do both those things, "he said. Then he looked at Laura, as if he was waiting to hear more.
"I think I have said enough to give you reason to withdraw from our marriage, "she added quietly.
"No. You have said enough to make it the dearest wish of my life to marry you, " he said.
| 1． |
How did Percival feel during his meeting with Laura?
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| 2． |
We can learn from the passage that.
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| 3． |
The passage is probably taken out of.
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Some people believe that a Robin Hood is at work, others that a wealthy person simply wants to distribute his or her fortune before dying. But the donator who started sending envelopes with cash to deserving causes，accompanied by an article from the local paper, has made a northern German city believe in fairytales (童话）
The first envelope was sent to a victim support group. It contained €10,000 with a cutting from the Braunschtveiger Zeitung about how the group supported a woman who was robbed of her handbag； similar plain white anonymous (匿名）envelopes, each containing €10,000, then arrived at a kindergarten and a church.
The envelopes keep coming, and so far at least €190,000 has been distributed. Last month, one of them was sent to the newspaper's own office. It came after a story it published about Tom, a 14-year-old boy who was severely disabled in a swimming accident. The receptionist at the Braunschweiger Zeitung opened an anonymous white envelope to find 20 notes of €500 inside , with a copy of the article. The name of the family was underlined.
"I was driving when I heard the news," Claudia Neumann, the boy's mother, told DerSpiegel magazine. "I had to park on the side of the road； I was speechless. "
The money will be used to make the entrance to their house wheelchair-accessible .and for a course of treatment that their insurance company refused to pay for.
"For someone to act so selflessly, for this to happen in such a society in which everyone thinks of himself, was astonishing," Mrs. Neumann said. Her family wonder whether the donator is a Robin Hood character, taking from banks to give to the needy.
Henning Noske, the editor of the Braunschweiger Zeitung, said： "Maybe it is an old person who is about to die. We just do not know. " However, he has told his reporters not to look for the city's hero, for fear that discovery may stop the donations.
| 1． |
The Braunschweiger Zeitung is the name of.
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| 2． |
Which of the following is TRUE about the donation to Tom?
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| 3． |
It can be inferred from the passage that.
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| 4． |
What would be the best title for the passage?
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Brrriiinnng. The alarm clock announces the start of another busy weekday in the morning. You jump out of bed, rush into the shower, into your clothes and out the door with hardly a moment to think. A stressful journey to work gets your blood pressure climbing. Once at the office, you glance through the newspaper with depressing stories or reports of disasters. In that sort of mood, who can get down to work, particularly some creative, original problem-solving work?
The way most of us spend our mornings is exactly opposite to the conditions that promote flexible, open-minded thinking. Imaginative ideas are most likely to come to us when we’re unfocused. If you are one of those energetic morning people, your most inventive time comes in the early evening when you are relaxed. Sleepy people’s lack of focus leads to an increase in creative problem solving. By not giving yourself time to tune into your wandering mind, you’re missing out on the surprising solutions it may offer.
The trip you take to work doesn’t help, either. The stress slows down the speed with which signals travel between neurons (神经细胞), making inspirations less likely to occur. And while we all should read a lot about what’s going on in the world, it would not make you feel good for sure, so put that news website or newspaper aside until after the day’s work is done.
So what would our mornings look like if we wanted to start them with a full capacity for creative problem solving? We’d set the alarm a few minutes early and lie awake in bed, following our thoughts where they lead. We’d stand a little longer under the warm water of the shower, stopping thinking about tasks in favor of a few more minutes of relaxation. We’d take some deep breaths on our way to work, instead of complaining about heavy traffic. And once in the office—after we get a cup of coffee—we’d click on links not to the news of the day but to the funniest videos the web has to offer.According to the author, we are more creative when we are _______.
| A．focused |
| B．relaxed |
| C．awake |
| D．busy |
What does the author imply about newspapers?
| A．They are solution providers. |
| B．They are a source of inspiration. |
| C．They are normally full of bad news. |
| D．They are more educational than websites. |
By “tune into your wandering mind” (in Para. 2), the author means “_______”.
| A．wander into the wild |
| B．listen to a beautiful tune |
| C．switch to the traffic channel |
| D．stop concentrating on anything |
The author writes the last paragraph in order to _______.
| A．offer practical suggestions |
| B．summarize past experiences |
| C．advocate diverse ways of life |
| D．establish a routine for the future |
How is it that siblings (兄弟姐妹) can turn out so differently? One answer is that in fact each sibling grows up in a different family. The firstborn is, for a while, an only child, and therefore has a completely different experience of the parents than those born later. The next child is, for a while, the youngest, until the situation is changed by a new arrival. The mother and father themselves are changing and growing up too. One sibling might live in a stable and close family in the first few years; another might be raised in a family crisis, with a disappointed mother or an angry father.
Sibling competition was identified as an important shaping force as early as in 1918. But more recently, researchers have found many ways in which brothers and sisters are a lasting force in each others’ lives. Dr. Annette Henderson says firstborn children pick up vocabulary more quickly than their siblings. The reason for this might be that the later children aren’t getting the same one-on-one time with parents. But that doesn’t mean that the younger children have problems with language development. Later-borns don’t enjoy that much talking time with parents, but instead they harvest lessons from bigger brothers and sisters, learning entire phrases and getting an understanding of social concepts such as the difference between “I” and “me”.
A Cambridge University study of 140 children found that siblings created a rich world of play that helped them grow socially. Love-hate relationships were common among the children. Even those siblings who fought the most had just as much positive communication as the other sibling pairs.
One way children seek more attention from parents is by making themselves different from their siblings, particularly if they are close in age. Researchers have found that the first two children in a family are typically more different from each other than the second and third. Girls with brothers show their differences to a maximum degree by being more feminine than girls with sisters. A 2003 research paper studied adolescents from 185 families over two years, finding that those who changed to make themselves different from their siblings were successful in increasing the amount of warmth they gained from their parents. The underlined part “in a different family” (in Para. 1) means “_______”.
| A．in a different family environment |
| B．in a different family tradition |
| C．in different family crises |
| D．in different families |
In terms of language development, later-borns ________.
| A．get their parents’ individual guidance |
| B．learn a lot from their elder siblings |
| C．experience a lot of difficulties |
| D．pick up words more quickly |
What was found about fights among siblings?
| A．Siblings hated fighting and loved playing. |
| B．Siblings in some families fought frequently. |
| C．Sibling fights led to bad sibling relationships. |
| D．Siblings learned to get on together from fights. |
The word “feminine” (in Para. 4) means “_______”.
| A．having qualities of parents |
| B．having qualities of women |
| C．having defensive qualities |
| D．having extraordinary qualities |
It was a simple letter asking for a place to study at Scotland’s oldest university which helped start a revolution in higher education. A 140-year-old letter written by a lady calling for her to be allowed to study medicine at St Andrews University has been discovered by researchers. Written by Sophia Jex-Blake in 1873, the seven-page document, which urged the university to allow women to study medicine at the institution, was released yesterday on International Women’s Day.
The document was discovered buried in the university archives (档案) by part-time history student Lis Smith, who is completing her PhD at St Andrews Institute of Scottish Historical Research. She said: “We knew that Sophia Jex-Blake and her supporters, in their effort to open up university medical education for women, had written to the Senatus Academicus (校评议委员会) at St Andrews in an attempt to gain permission to attend classes there, but we didn’t know documentary evidence existed. While searching the archives for information about the university’s higher certificate for women, I was astonished to come across what must be the very letter Jex-Blake wrote.”
In the letter, Sophia and her supporters offered to hire teachers or build suitable buildings for a medical school and to arrange for lectures to be delivered in the subjects not already covered at St Andrews. Although her letter was not successful, it eventually led to the establishment of the Ladies Literate in Arts at St Andrews, a distance-learning degree for women. The qualification, which ran from 1877 until the 1930s, gave women access to university education in the days before they were admitted as students. It was so popular that it survived long after women were admitted as full students to St Andrews in 1892.
Ms Jex-Blake went on to help establish the London School of Medicine for Women in 1874. She was accepted by the University of Berne, where she was awarded a medical degree in January 1877. Eventually, she moved back to Edinburgh and opened her own practice. Sophia wrote a letter to St Andrews University because she wanted _______.
| A．to carry out a research project there |
| B．to set up a medical institute there |
| C．to study medicine there |
| D．to deliver lectures there |
Lis Smith found Sophia’s letter to St Andrews University _______.
| A．by pure chance |
| B．in the school office |
| C．with her supporters’ help |
| D．while reading history books |
Sophia’s letter resulted in the establishment of _______.
| A．the London School of Medicine for Women |
| B．a degree programme for women |
| C．a system of medical education |
| D．the University of Berne |
When did St Andrews University begin to take full-time women students?
| A．In 1873. |
| B．In 1874. |
| C．In 1877. |
| D．In 1892. |