I really hadn’t meant to yell at them. But that grey afternoon saw it just as my son and daughter were making a terrible mess on the floor in the kitchen.
With a tiresome report to write, I felt bothered at my desk. Suddenly, it occurred to me that my kids were at fault. A voice inside me insisted that I do something quickly.
“Ok, you two here, what an awful thing you are attempting!” I was shouting angrily. I made for them, while it became evident that the boy wanted no part of me. “Get away from us!” he shouted back, there being an expression of support from his sister.
All of a sudden, I found the fault in myself. Quickly I shaped my hands into pincers(钳子) and crawled towards them, “Crabby（暴躁的） Daddy is here. Ha, Ha, Ha, he likes to yell at children, and then eat them!” My son continued to keep me away, but now he was laughing and crying at the same time. My mission to repair the damage caused by my yelling seemed to work well. Still, I regretted not having controlled myself first in a right way.
Need I let them know how badly they were acting by blaming? This is a lesson that serves myself. It only shows just how to get rid of something (ill-feelings, responsibility…) by blaming others. It’s not my “best self”.
We have to search for our “best self” when with our children. They don’t need perfect parents, but they do need parents who are always trying to get better. Here, I am reminded of the words of a great thinker. “When a man lives with God, his voice shall be as sweet as the murmur of the brook (stream)…” Then, in our lifetime, couldn’t we always speak to our kids in such a sweet voice since most of us consider them as the most precious in the world? And before we reach this level, what should we do when we come across various difficult cases with our children?Which of the following made the author aware of his fault?
| A．No obvious reason. | B．The boy’s yelling back. |
| C．His self-awareness. | D．The girl’s shouting back. |
According to the passage, the author will _________ in another similar situation.
| A．play a crab again like this time | B．apologize to kids in a sincere way |
| C．avoid blaming kids in a hurry | D．beat them up about such things |
What will the writer go on to write about in the next paragraph(s)?
| A．How to behave ourselves properly when kids are at fault. |
| B．How to play with our children in a more interesting way. |
| C．How to deal with the housework with children around us. |
| D．How to persuade children to do what they are told to. |
What does “the boy wanted no part of me” in the third paragraph mean?
| A．The boy was happy because I loved them. |
| B．The boy was curious because I wanted to help them. |
| C．The boy was very happy for I was angry. |
| D．The boy didn’t want me to join them. |
“Your honor(法官大人)！Let me say a few words for myself. What they have told you is just not true. I was not trying to kill anyone, and it was hardly possible to try to kill three strong young men at the same time. I didn't have anything to tell people that night and was quite alone. I didn't know them and needn't hate them. I was attacked by them, and I knocked one of them down. It's true, but I was made to do it, or I might be killed by them. I did this not because I hated the white men as they said. I just had to do so. While I was beaten in the dark street by the three men, a policeman came, caught me and took me here. I know why I was beaten. I have just moved into a house next to these three white men. I have felt that I am not welcome and I have tried to be quiet. I think, as an American, I have the right to choose where to live. I am guilty. What makes me guilty is my color opposite to theirs and I can't enjoy justice(公正). Yes, I'm not guilty. This is all I want to say. Thank you, your honor.”Why did he speak for himself?
| A．He wanted to live in the house next to the whites. |
| B．He wanted to have the right to choose where to live. |
| C．He wanted to show he was not guilty. |
| D．He wanted to show he didn't hate the whites. |
The speaker was caught because________.
| A．the policeman wanted to save him |
| B．he was black and was fighting with the whites |
| C．he killed the three men in a dark street |
| D．he lived in a house next to the whites |
What's the right order of the story?
a. The speaker said something for himself.
b. The three men said something.
c. The speaker knocked down one of the three men.
d. The speaker was beaten by the three men.
e. He was caught by the policeman.
f. The speaker moved into a house near the whites.
| A．abfdce | B．bafcde | C．fdceba | D．fcdeab |
Trying to make a big decision while you’re also preparing for a scary presentation? You might want to hold off on that. Feeling stressed changes how people weigh risk and reward. However, an article published in Current Directions in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, suggests stressed people pay more attention to the positive sides of a possible outcome.
It’s a bit surprising that stress makes people focus on the way things could go right, says Mara Mather of the University of Southern California. She co-wrote the review paper with Nichole R.Lighthall. “This is sort of not what people would think, ” Mather says. “Stress is usually associated with negative experiences, so you’d think, maybe I’m going to be more focused on the negative outcomes.”
But researchers have found that when people are under stress, they start paying more attention to positive information and discounting negative information. “Stress seems to help people learn from positive feedback and impairs（削弱）their learning from negative feedback, ” Mather says.
When people under stress are making a difficult decision, they may pay more attention to the good sides of the alternatives they’re considering and less to the problems. So someone who’s deciding whether to take a new job and is feeling stressed by the decision might focus on the increase in salary more than the longer commute（上下班往返）.
The increased focus on the positives also helps explain why stress plays a role in addictions. People under stress have a harder time controlling their urges. “The compulsion to get that reward comes stronger and they’re less able to resist it,” Mather says. A person who’s under stress might think only about the good feelings they’ll get from a drug, while the downsides shrink into the distance.
Stress also increases the differences in how men and women think about risk. When men are under stress, they become even more willing to take risks; when women are stressed, they get more conservative(保守的). Previous research backs this up — men usually react to difficulties while trying to fight them or escape them; women try to find friends and improve their relationships.By saying “You might want to hold off on that” in the first paragraph, the writer suggests that .
| A．you might want to delay making your big decision |
| B．you should save the presentation for later |
| C．you should avoid taking risks |
| D．you might benefit from the stress |
From the article, we can conclude that stress .
| A．often leads people to take more risks |
| B．often leads people to make balanced decisions |
| C．makes people think more of negative results |
| D．makes people ignore the negative side of problems |
Which of the following is TRUE according to the article?
| A．Stress is helpful in getting rid of addictions. |
| B．People who are addicted to drugs are easily stressed. |
| C．When women are stressed, they do not tend to take risks. |
| D．When men are stressed, they are more likely to develop an addiction. |
What is the central theme of the article?
| A．Stress can affect decision-making. |
| B．Stress increases our desire to get rewards. |
| C．We should think more about the upside of problems. |
| D．There is a link between stress and negative experiences. |
At a psychology conference in England years ago, a woman said to me: “I’ll knock you up in the morning.” I was taken aback by her strange suggestion, but it occurred to me that I might not have understood what she really meant. As it turned out, what she had meant was, “I’ll knock on your door in the morning so that we can meet for breakfast to discuss the panel we’re on.”
This example of the difference in the meaning of “knock you up” in British and American English shows the complicated situations that can result from cultural misunderstandings. A cultural misunderstanding occurs when something — a word, gesture, object, social context, or almost anything you can think of — has a different meaning in two cultures. Sometimes the misunderstandings get resolved, sometimes they lead nowhere, and sometimes they can become the starting point of something much more extreme, from love to war.
Race is one area where cultural misunderstandings are common. We Americans tend to assume that racial categories are biological rather than social, so it may not occur to us that people from other cultures have a different set of racial concepts and classify themselves and us differently. Some African Americans complain that certain immigrants from other countries, such as Haiti or Jamaica, “act as if they aren’t black.” The cultural misunderstanding is that, in the immigrants’ countries of origin, they would never describe themselves as “black”. This doesn’t mean that they think they are white. It just means that their cultures have more categories, like marabou or grimaud in Haiti, or fair or brown in Jamaica, than are used in the United States. Meanwhile, white people in America, unaware of this cultural diversity, sometimes refer to all darker-skinned people as “black” without realizing that an issue exists.
Resolving cultural misunderstandings can clear the air or even lead to laughter. Sometimes, though, when it comes to race, unidentified cultural misunderstandings can create tension, unhappiness and distrust.The main purpose of the first paragraph is to .
| A．show that language misunderstandings would cause big problems |
| B．show the differences between British and American English |
| C．explain in general what cultural misunderstandings are |
| D．introduce the idea of cultural misunderstandings with a story |
The underlined word “resolved” probably means .
| A．complicated | B．settled | C．accepted | D．noticed |
We can learn from the passage that cultural misunderstandings .
| A．mostly come from body language |
| B．are the most serious social problem in the US |
| C．can cause negative feelings among people |
| D．can be cleared up with laughter |
What is the author’s opinion about cultural misunderstandings?
| A．There’s no need to notice racial differences. |
| B．Haitians prefer to be described as fair or brown. |
| C．Cultural misunderstandings based on racial categories may be difficult to spot. |
| D．Americans are especially likely to misunderstand people from other cultures. |
Charles Blackman: Alice in Wonderland
An Exhibition at the National Gallery of Victoria (NGV), Australia
10 June—12 August 2013
Venue(地点) The lan Potter Centre
Admission Free entry
Charles Blackman is famous for his beautiful painting of dreams. In 1956, he heard for the first time Lewis Carroll’s extraordinary tale of Alice in Wonderland—the story of a Victorian girl who falls down a rabbit hole, meets a lot of funny characters and experience all kinds of things. At that time, Blackman’s wife was suffering from progressive blindness. The story of Alice moving through the strange situations, often disheartened by various events, was similar to his wife’s experiences. It also reflected so much of his own life. All this contributed to the completion of the Alice in Wonderland paintings.
Illustrator Workshop
Go straight to the experts for an introductory course in book illustration(插图). The course includes an introduction to the process of illustration and its techniques, workshop exercises and group projects.
Dates Sunday 17June & Sunday 5 Aug. 10 am—1 pm
Venue Gas Works Arts Park
Wonderful World
Celebrate the exhibition and Children’s Book Week with special activities just for the day, including a special visit from Alice and the White Rabbit.
Date Sunday 24 June, 11 am—4 pm
Venue Exhibition Space. Level 3
Topsy-Turvy
Visit the exhibition or discover wonderful curiosities in artworks in the NGV Collection and make a magic world in a box. Alice and the White Rabbit will be with you. Walt Disney’s Alice in Wonderland will be screened.
Dates Sunday 8,15,22,29 July, and Tuesday 24—Friday 27 July, 12 noon—3 pm
Venue Theatre, NGV Australia
Drawing Workshop
Distortions of Scale(比例失真)can make artworks strange but interesting. Find out how Charles Blackman distorted scale in his paintings to create a curious world, then experiment with scale in your own drawings. More information upon booking.
Date Friday 27 July, 10:30 am—3 pm
Venue Foyer, Level 3Charles Blackman’s paintings come from .
| A．his admiration for Lewis Carroll |
| B．his dream of becoming a famous artist |
| C．his wish to express his own feelings |
| D．his eagerness to cure his wife’s illness |
Which two activities can you participate in on the same day?
| A．Illustrator workshop and Wonderful World. |
| B．Illustrator workshop and Drawing Workshop. |
| C．Wonderful World and Topsy-Turvy. |
| D．Topsy-Turvy and Drawing Workshop. |
To understand the Alice in Wonderland paintings, you should go to .
| A．Exhibition Space. Level 3 | B．Gas Works Arts Park |
| C．Theatre, NGV Australia | D．Foyer, Level 3 |
Activities concerning children’s books are to be held .
| A．on June 24 | B．on July 15 | C．on July 24 | D．on August 5 |
Catherine and I were on our way to our nephew’s birthday party one rainy Saturday morning, driving along what some people call moose(驼鹿) alley. It was early, there were few other cars on the road and we were looking forward to a good day with the family. Suddenly, a moose rushed across our path. Fortunately, a quick swerve(突然转向) to the other lane prevented a full impact, with only a small collision on the right side of our car ripping off the mirror and knocking the moose to the pavement.
By the time I stopped and looked back in my rear view mirror, the moose was getting up. It ran into the bush. Shaken but unharmed, we both looked at each other shocked by what had happened. We knew that moose accidents had claimed many lives throughout the years, and that we had been very fortunate to escape with no personal injury or worse. After a quick check of our vehicle, we drove off.
Even though the moose accident lasted just a few seconds, we still remember it to this day. Why?
We had often talked about the frailty of life, the here today and gone tomorrow potential we all face, but it had never felt so real. And it wasn’t that we hadn’t had friends, relatives and colleagues die before, it was that this experience was much more personal. In a matter of seconds, lives can easily change.
The effect of that one near miss with death has been positive, and made us appreciate life. Each one of us has only a limited time on this Earth; no one can predict when your time will end. We should give thanks for each day, to see the sun rise again, and to know that you can accomplish and assist others to appreciate their life if they are caught in the “poor-me” syndrome（综合症状）.What can we learn about the accident form the first two paragraphs?
| A．Fortunately, they didn’t hit the moose. |
| B．They themselves were slightly injured. |
| C．Many people have died from similar accidents. |
| D．The author should be blamed for the accident. |
What did the accident teach the author?
| A．Being open to unexpected turns in life is important. |
| B．Life is long if you know how to use it. |
| C．Life is measured by thoughts and actions, not by time. |
| D．Life is unpredictable, so we should treasure every moment. |
How should we spend every day according to the author?
a. being thankful and helpful
b. appreciating the natural beauty of the world
c. being confident
d. making every effort to succeed
| A．ab | B．bc | C．abc | D．bcd |