Sonoma County, California is famous for its natural beauty. The area is also known for its fruits, vegetables, eggs, and seafood. When I first moved to the area years ago, I had no idea I would be living in such a rich area!
After the summer, local festivals practically celebrate the richness of the county every weekend. From Egg Days, Tomato Festival to Seafood Festival, Sonoma County has something for everyone. An event held every year is one of the most special in the area, which celebrates the harvest(收获) of tomatoes, showing over 170 kinds of this tasty fruit. Cooks prepare the most favorite tomato-inspired dishes. You can enjoy all kinds of food while listening to live music, and taste the world famous Kendall Jackson wine.
Another great feature of this event is the opportunity to take part in the yearly competition with your own tomatoes. Tomatoes are judged (判断) on looks, taste, and weight and winners will be awarded (奖励). If you’re planning on visiting and want to attend this event, get your ticket early as it sells out quickly.
This year, to celebrate Tomato Festival, I decided to plant a few tomatoes in a wine barrel (桶) that had kept a lemon tree before. The tree, after about 6 years, finally did not produce fruits anymore, so I changed to plant 3 tomato plants instead. The three wine barrel plants stand over six feet tall and that’s above the top of the barrel! They have lots of flowers and some have started to produce fruits. As usual, harvest may be late this year, but the quality of my tomatoes will be excellent. I believe I’ll realize my dream of being the best tomato gardener.We can know from the first two paragraphs that .
| A．the author didn’t live there long |
| B．Sonoma County lies by the sea |
| C．people there like drinking wine |
| D．there are celebrations every day |
The passage mainly tells us something about .
| A．Egg Days | B．Seafood Festival |
| C．Tomato Festival | D．Vegetable Days |
If you are the best tomato gardener you will .
| A．be given prizes as a winner | B．eat tomato dishes for free |
| C．be respected by the local people | D．drink Kendall Jackson wine free |
Searching for airfares（飞机票价） often seems like a game that passengers are bound to lose．
Prices change from day to day, even minute to minute． Looking through multiple websites for the best deal can be a big challenge． Even when you do book, there’s no guarantee that you are going to get the best price．
"You just don’t know when to pull the trigger． It’s not like buying anything else I can think of,” said George Hobica, founder of Airfarewatchdog．com．
Harriet Levy paid $179 for a recent round-trip flight on American Airlines between New York and Fort Lauderdale, Florida． Sitting just one row behind her, Shirley Harrison paid $215． A few rows back, Ellis and Dianne Traub paid $317 each．There were at least 12 fares on the flight, ranging from $169 to $360．
There’s no reason for it, Harrison said．
Fares can change significantly in just a few hours． One Delta flight from New York to Los Angeles jumped from $755 to $1,143 from a Friday to Saturday in late April, then fell to $718 0n Sunday．
The flight was one of a dozen the Associated Press followed over three months for a vacation between July 16 and 22． The number one finding: avoid booking tickets on weekends． It’s the most expensive time to buy．
There’s no way to guarantee the best fare． But before booking, travelers should pay attention to this additional advice:
Book on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday． That’s when airlines most often offer sales．
Buy in advance, but not too early． The best time is four to six weeks before traveling． In general, prices for any given flight are highest eight to ten weeks and two to three weeks in advance．
Make use of social media． Airlines are giving more benefits like exclusive（独有的 ） sales to travelers who interact with them on Twitter and Facebook． Those specials are often gone within hours．
The so-called discount airlines - JetBlue, Air-Tran, Southwest and Frontier-adjust their fares less frequently than other airlines, so you can feel more confident that the price will stay the same． But their prices aren’t always the lowest．Researching multiple airlines’ fares is the only way to get a good deal．
The underlined phrase "pull the trigger" in Paragraph 3 probably means ________.
| A．start searching | B．get the highest price |
| C．make a purchase | D．get on board the plane |
Two students started quarreling at school. One student shouted dirty words at the other, and a fight began. What can be done to stop fights like this at school? In some schools, the disputants sit down with peer mediators(同龄调解者). Peer mediators are students with special training in this kind of problems.
Peer mediators help the disputants to talk in a friendly way. Here are some of the ways they use:
1) Put what you think clearly but don’t say anything to hurt the other. Begin with “I feel…” instead of “You always…”
2) Listen carefully to what the other person is saying. Don’t stop the other person’s words.
3) Keep looking at the other person’s eyes when he or she talks.
4) Try to see the other person’s side of the problem.
5) Never put anyone down. Saying things like “You are foolish” makes the talk difficult.
6) Try to find a result that makes both people happy.
Peer mediators never decide the result or the winner. They don’t decide who is right and who is wrong. Instead, they help the two students to find their own “win-win” result.
The underlined word “disputants” refers to the students ________.
| A．who make peace | B．who give in |
| C．who are lazy | D．who quarrel |
If you could take a large snapshot (照片) of everyone in the United States today, it would contain six minion more females than males. In this country, women outlive men by about seven years. Throughout the modern world, cultures are different, diets are different, ways of life and causes of death are different, but one thing is the same--- women outlive men.
It starts before birth. At conception, male fetuses(胎儿) outnumber female by about 110 to 100; at birth, the rate has already fallen to about 105 boys to every 100 girls. By the age of 30, there are only enough men left to match the number of women. Then women start taking a lead. Beyond the age of 80, there are nearly twice as many women as men.
“If you look at the top ten or twelve causes of death,” said Deborah Wingard, a disease expert at the University of California at San Diego, “every single one kills more men.” She listed out one sad fate after another – heart disease, lung cancer and so on. Each kills men at roughly twice the rate of that it does women.
More than a century ago American men surpassed and outlived the women. But in the 20th century, women began living longer, primarily because pregnancy（怀孕) and giving birth to children had become less dangerous. The gap grew steadily. In 1946, for the first time ever in the United States, females outnumbered males.
Parts of the reasons are self-made. Men smoke more, drink more and take more life-threatening chances than women. Men are murdered (usually by other men) three times as often as women are. They commit suicide at a higher rate and have more than twice as many fatal car accidents as women do. Men are likely to be involved in alcohol-related deaths.
But behavior doesn’t explain away the longevity gap.
Today, some scientists studying the gender gap believe that the data point to one conclusion Mother Nature may be partial(偏袒) to women.
Every living thing is assembled according to instructions on its chromosomes (染色体), and humans have 23 pairs of them. But in males, one of these is a weak non-matching pair, expressed by “xy”. The agreement pair in females is “xx”, and its genetic “backup” power is sometimes listed as a clue to woman’s superior restoring force. If the male’s single “x” chromosome isn’t perfect, it is possible for a serious genetic disorder to appear. Some blood diseases, for instance, are diseases caused by a shortcoming in a single gene on the “x” chromosome. They are far more common in males than females.
What may the underlined word “outlive” in Paragraph1 mean?
| A．Become stronger than. | B．Live longer than. |
| C．Be wiser than. | D．Be born more earlier than. |
Homework and stress are rarely reduced inside the classroom. Meanwhile, outside the classroom, the pressure is on to find scholarships for college.
According to Braintrack, a higher education database with worldwide reach, more than 3 billion US dollars (18 billion yuan) in private scholarships are awarded to college students annually. Average awards range from $2,000 to $3,000.
The scholarship application process is similar to the college application process: forms to be completed, test scores and transcripts to be sent, essays to be written and often interviews to be prepared for.
A few great places to start looking for scholarships are: www.fastweb.com, www.finaid.org and www.collegexpress.com.Check out the annual scholarship guidebooks Scholarships, Grants & Prizes by Peterson’s and the Ultimate Scholarship Book: Billions of Dollars in Scholarships, Grants and Prizes by Gen Tanabe and Kelly Tanabe.
Be selective. Thoroughly research the qualifications required by each of the scholarships. Don’t waste your time applying for those that are need-based if you can’t produce the appropriate documents.
Research past recipients (接受者). Check out the websites of the organizations sponsoring the scholarships. Many post the biographies of past recipients. You don’t need to have cured cancer, but if you don’t think your résumé (履历) measures up to the past winners’, you might be better served by moving onto the next scholarship on your list. Prepare for the interview.
You’ll want to dazzle them with your personality, but above all you’ll want to be prepared. Find someone you trust to conduct a similar interview with you – someone who will be honest with you and provide valuable suggestions.
Let your personality shine through in your essays. The essays are the best way for students to share who they are, where they’ve come from, what they’ve overcome and so on. Tell your story in an interesting and persuasive way. And if you do have an interview, send a thank-you note afterward.
By Lee Bierer
The underlined word “dazzle” in Paragraph 7 is closest in meaning to ___.
| A．influence | B．impress | C．guide | D．present |
Whether you’re eating at a fancy restaurant or dining in someone’s home, proper table manners are likely to help you make a good impression. According to a US expert, Emily Post, “All rules of table manners are made to avoid ugliness.”
While Henry Hitchings of the Los Angeles Times admits that good manners can reduce social conflict, he points out that mostly their purpose is protective – they turn our natural warrior-like selves into more elegant ones.
So where did table manners come from?
In medieval England, a writer named Petrus Alfonsi took the lead to urge people not to speak with their mouths full. And King David I of Scotland also proposed that any of his people who learned to eat more neatly be given a tax deduction (减除).
Disappointingly, that idea never caught on. It was during the Renaissance, when there were real technical developments, opinions of correct behavior changed for good. “None of these was more significant than the introduction of the table fork,” wrote Hitchings. “Gradually, as forks became popular, they brought the new way of eating, making it possible, for instance, to consume berries without making one’s fingers dirty.”
Forks were introduced to Britain in 1608 and 25 years later, the first table fork reached America. Yet while most of the essentials (基本要素) are the same on both sides of the Atlantic, there are a few clear differences between what’s normal in the US and what holds true in the UK. For example, in the US, when food needs cutting with a knife, people generally cut a bite, then lay aside the knife and switch the fork to their right hand. Then they pick up one bite at a time. By contrast, Britons keep the fork in the left hand and don’t lay the knife down.
Though globalization has developed a new, simpler international standard of table manners, some people still stick with the American cut-and-switch method.The Los Angeles Times noted, “They are hanging on to a form of behavior that favors manners above efficiency.”
The underlined phrase “caught on” in the passage probably means ______.
| A．worked in practice | B．became popular |
| C．drew attention | D．had a positive effect |