A relationship is defined as a state of connectedness between people. Although in today’s society with its crazy rhythm of everyday life, when people tend to live in thickly populated cities, spending most of their time in the office and hardly knowing their neighbor’s name, we still find ourselves in some kinds of relationships-with friends, family, or colleagues.
Family relationships are the first relationships people enter. Parents and relatives influence our emotional development by creating a model that we are sometimes bound to follow all our lives, often subconsciously （潜意识地）. In day-care, at school, then in the office we spend a lot of time among fellow students and co-workers. We learn to keep business relationships, to work in a team environment, then form smaller groups of like-minded people and finally select some of them as our friends.
What is a true friendship? How does it start? Are we destined to become friends with certain people or can we actually plan whom to be friends with？
“Everybody‘s friend is nobody’s.” said Arthur Schopenhauer. Unlike a companionship based on belonging to the same team or group, friendship is a very personal and selective type of relationship. It calls for trust, sincerity, and emotional bonds.
Sociologists believe that most people are looking for similarities in views, social status, and interests when choosing friends. No wonder that our friends are often people of the same age, sex, and education. Another important factor is joint activity and solidarity. This is the reason why many of us befriend our colleagues and other people who work in the same field.
Most people would agree that a friend is someone who always listens and understands. Understanding in this context implies a lot of meanings-compassion, sympathy, and emotional closeness. It’s a process in which your friend reads your emotional state, shares your feelings, identifies himself or herself with you.What is the best title of this passage？_______
| A．Family and Relationships |
| B．How to Make Friends with Colleagues |
| C．What is a True Friendship |
| D．People and Relationship |
According to the passage, which of the following affects us most when choosing friends？
| A．Kindergarten. | B．Family. | C．School. | D．Office. |
Why are our friends usually of the same age，sex，and education？
| A．Because they are clever and well-behaved. |
| B．Because most of us are looking for similarities in views，social status, and interests when choosing friends. |
| C．Because they help us with our work and share our happiness and sorrow. |
| D．Because they cooperate with us well. |
Which of the following statements is NOT true？
| A．A companionship is based on belonging to the same team or group. |
| B．Friendship needs trust, sincerity, and emotional bonds. |
| C．Relationships are friendships between people. |
| D．Understanding is a process in which the friend reads our emotional state, shares our feelings, identifies himself / herself with us. |
Hans was an honest fellow with a funny round good-humored face. Living alone, every day he worked in his garden. In all the countryside there was no garden so lovely as his. All sorts of flowers grew there, blooming in their proper order as the months went by, one flower taking another flower’s place, so that there were always beautiful things to see, and pleasant odors to smell.
Hans had many friends, the most devoted being the Miller. So devoted was the rich Miller to Hans that he’d never go by his garden without plucking a large bunch of flowers or a handful of sweet herbs, or filling his pockets with fruits. The Miller used to talk about noble ideas, and Hans nodded and smiled, feeling proud of having such a friend.
The neighbors thought it strange that the rich Miller never gave Hans anything in return, though he had hundreds of sacks of flour, many cows and sheep, but Hans never troubled his head about these, and nothing gave him greater pleasure than to listen to all the wonderful things about the unselfishness of true friendship.
In spring, summer, and autumn Hans was very happy, but when winter came, and he had no fruit or flowers to sell, he suffered from cold and hunger. Though extremely lonely, the Miller never came to see him then.
“There’s no good in going to see Hans while the snow lasts.” The Miller said to his wife, “When people are in trouble they shouldn’t be bothered. So I’ll wait till the spring comes when he’s happy to give me flowers.”
“You’re certainly very thoughtful,” answered his wife, “It’s quite a treat to hear you talk about friendship.”
“Couldn’t we ask Hans up here?” said their son. “I’ll give him half my meal, and show him my white rabbits.”
“How silly you are!” cried the Miller. “I really don’t know what’s the use of sending you to school. If Hans came up here, and saw our warm fire, our good supper, and our red wine, he might get envious, and envy is a most terrible thing, and would spoil anybody’s nature. I am his best friend, and I’ll always watch over him, and see that he’s not led into any temptation. Besides, if Hans came here, he might ask me for some flour. Flour is one thing, and friendship is another, and they shouldn’t be confused. The words are spelt differently, and mean quite different things. Everybody can see that.” He looked seriously at his son, who felt so ashamed that he hung his head down, and grew quite scared, and began to cry into his tea.
Spring coming, the Miller went down to see Hans. Again he talked about friendship. “Hans, friendship never forgets. I’m afraid you don’t understand the poetry of life. See, how lovely your roses are!”
Hans said he wanted to sell them in the market to buy back his things which were sold during the hard time of the winter.
“I’ll give you many good things. I think being generous is the base of friendship.” said the Miller. “And now, as I’ll give you many good things, I’m sure you’d like to give me some flowers in return. Here’s the basket, and fill it quite full.”
Poor Hans was afraid to say anything. He ran and plucked all his pretty roses, and filled the Miller’s basket, imagining the many good things promised by the Miller.
The next day he heard the Miller calling: “Hans, would you mind carrying this sack of flour for me to market?”
“I’m sorry, but I am really very busy today.”
“Well,” said the Miller, “considering that I’m going to give you my things, it’s rather unfriendly of you to refuse. Upon my word, you mustn’t mind my speaking quite plainly to you.”
Poor Hans was driven by his friendship theory to work hard for his best friend, leaving his garden dry and wasted.
One evening Hans was sitting by fire when the Miller came.
“Hans,” cried the Miller, “My little boy has fallen off a ladder and hurt himself, and I’m going for the Doctor. But he lives so far away, and it’s such a bad windy night. It has just occurred to me that you can go instead of me. You know I’m going to give you my good things, so you should do something for me in return.”
“Certainly,” cried Hans. He struggled into the stormy night, and got the doctor to ride a horse to the Miller’s house in time to save the boy. However, Hans got lost in the darkness, and wandered off into a deep pool, drowned.
At Hans’ funeral, the Miller said, “I was his best friend. I should walk at the head of the procession.” Every now and then he wiped his eyes with a handkerchief. From the passage, we can learn that Hans ______.
| A．was extremely wise and noble | B．admired the Miller very much |
| C．was highly valued by the Miller | D．had a strong desire for fortune |
Hans worked a lot for the Miller because he ______.
| A．was treated as a best friend by the Miller |
| B．owed the Miller many valuable things |
| C．was convinced of the Miller’s noble talk |
| D．intended to show off his unselfishness |
What’s the main cause of Hans’ tragedy?
| A．True friendship between them. | B．Blind devotion to a friend. |
| C．A sudden change of weather. | D．A lack of formal education. |
The author described the Miller’s behavior in order to ______.
| A．warn the readers about the danger of a false friend |
| B．show the friendship between Hans and the Miller |
| C．entertain the readers with an incredible joking tale |
| D．persuade people to be as intelligent as the Miller |
Homeownership has let us down. For generations, Americans believed that owning a home was undoubtedly good. Our political leaders hammered home the point. Franklin Roosevelt held that a country of homeowners was “unconquerable.” Homeownership could even save babies, save children, save families and save America. A house with a lawn and a fence wasn’t just a nice place to live in or a risk-free investment; it was a way to shape a nation. No wonder leaders of all political types wanted to spend more than $100 billion a year on subsidies（补助）and tax breaks to encourage people to buy.
But the dark side of homeownership is now all too apparent: Indeed, easy lending stimulated（刺激）by the cult of homeownership may have triggered（引起）the financial crisis. Housing remains a drag on the economy. Existing-home sales in April dropped 27% from the previous month, worsening fears of a double-dip. And all that is just the obvious tale of a housing bubble and what happened when it popped. The real story is deeper and darker still.
For the better part of a century, politics, industry and culture lined up to create a fetish of the idea of buying a house. Homeownership has done plenty of good over the decades; it has provided stability to tens of millions of families. Yet by idealizing the act of buying a home, we have ignored the downsides. In the bubble years, lending standards slipped dramatically, allowing many Americans to put far too much of their income into paying for their housing. And we ignored longer-term phenomena too. Homeownership contributed to the hollowing out of cities and kept renters out of the best neighborhoods. It fed America’s overuse of energy and oil. It made it more difficult for those who had lost a job to find another. Perhaps worst of all, it helped us become casually self-deceiving: By telling ourselves that homeownership was a pathway to wealth and stable communities and better test scores, we avoided dealing with these frightening issues head-on.
Now, as the U.S. recovers from the biggest housing bust（破产）since the Great Depression, it is time to rethink how realistic our expectations of homeownership are—and how much money we want to spend chasing them. Many argue that homeownership should not be a goal pursued at all costs.Political leaders wanted to spend money encouraging people to buy houses because______.
| A．owning a home was undoubtedly good |
| B．homeownership could shape a country |
| C．houses could save families and America |
| D．homeownership was unconquerable |
The underlined sentence in Para. 2 means ______.
| A．homeownership has quite a lot of bad effects |
| B．there might be another housing breakdown in the U.S. |
| C．the existing-home sales will keep decreasing in the U.S. |
| D．the result of homeownership is much worse than it appears |
It can be inferred from Para. 3 that ______.
| A．Americans choose to live out of urban areas |
| B．it is the way to wealth to have one’s own house |
| C．it is hard for Americans to get a home loan |
| D．homeownership has made many people out of work |
What is the author’s attitude towards homeownership?
| A．Cautious. | B．Ambiguous. | C．Favorable. | D．Optimistic. |
| DONALD SLOAN |
||
| Gates Hall University of Kansas Lawrence, KS 66045 913-243-1682 |
After May 2009: 46 Clayton Drive St. Louis, MO 63130 314-726-8840 |
|
| Objective |
To work with the client（委托人）population in a social service position. |
|
| Education |
B.A., University of Kansas, Lawrence, KS, 2009 Major: Social Services Minor: Applied Psychology |
|
| Experience |
Assistant Activities Supervisor, Fairview Nursing Home, Lawrence, KS, November 2006-present. Help organize and implement recreational activities for nursing home residents. Activities include crafts, dances, day trips, sing-alongs, and visiting performers. Hotline Volunteer, Teen Crisis Center, Lawrence, KS, September 2006- May 2007. Handled crisis calls from teenagers in the community. Dealt with drug use, unwanted pregnancies, failing grades, and the breakdown of parent-teen relationships. Nurse’s Aide, Danyers General Hospital, St. Louis, MO, Summer 2006. Assisted nurses in patient care. Took histories, updated charts, and helped prepare patients for surgery. |
|
| Activities |
University Concert Board. Work with other board members to plan and implement on-campus concerts. Senior Gift Campaign. Help manage the campaign to raise funds for the senior class gift to the university. Residence Hall Programming Board. Planned social events for Eggar Residence Hall. |
|
| Skills |
Fluent in French. Water safety instructor. Skilled at working with people. |
|
| Interests |
Skiing, softball, classical music, and guitar. |
|
This passage is most probably ______.
| A．an advertisement for enrolling new employees |
| B．a school report at the end of an academic year |
| C．a self-introduction meant to apply for a job |
| D．a part of a recommendation letter from a university |
According to the “Experience” section, we can infer that Donald Sloan can be _____.
| A．a wise leader | B．a skillful performer |
| C．a gifted scientist | D．a good social worker |
From the passage we can learn that Donald Sloan ______.
| A．is good at singing and dancing | B．is about to graduate from a university |
| C．has an interest in being a surgeon | D．specializes in psychology |
An Australian man who has been donating his extremely rare kind of blood for 56 years has saved the lives of more than two million babies.
James Harrison has an antibody in his plasma（血浆）that stops babies dying from Rhesus disease, a form of severe anaemia. He has enabled countless mothers to give birth to healthy babies, including his own daughter, Tracey, who had a healthy son thanks to her father's blood.
Mr. Harrison has been giving blood every few weeks since he was 18 years old and has now racked up a total of 984 donations. When he started donating, his blood was deemed so special that his life was insured for one million Australian dollars.
He was also nicknamed the “man with the golden arm” or the “man in two million”. He said, “I've never thought about stopping. Never!” He made a pledge to be a donor aged 14 after undergoing major chest surgery in which he needed 13 liters of blood. “I was in hospital for three months,” he said. “The blood I received saved my life so I made a pledge to give blood when I was 18.”
Just after he started donating he was found to have the rare and life-saving antibody in his blood. At the time, thousands of babies in Australia were dying each year of Rhesus disease. Other newborns suffered permanent brain damage because of the condition. The disease creates an incompatibility between the mother's blood and her unborn baby's blood. It stems from one having Rh-positive blood and the other Rh-negative.
His blood has since led to the development of a vaccine called Anti-D. After his blood type was discovered, Mr. Harrison volunteered to undergo a series of tests to help develop the Anti-D vaccine. “They insured me for a million dollars so I knew my wife Barbara would be taken care of,” he said. “I wasn't scared. I was glad to help. I had to sign every form going and basically sign my life away.”
Mr. Harrison is Rh-negative and was given injections of Rh-positive blood. It was found his plasma could treat the condition and since then it has been given to hundreds of thousands of women. It has also been given to babies after they are born to stop them developing the disease.
It is estimated he has helped save 2.2 million babies so far. Mr. Harrison is still donating every few weeks now.What does the underlined phrase “two million” refer to?
| A．mothers | B．babies | C．dollars | D．blood |
Why did James decide to donate his blood? Because _____.
| A．his daughter asked him to help her son |
| B．he has a golden arm worth a million dollars |
| C．a vaccine called Anti-D is to be developed |
| D．someone else’s blood saved his life |
The sentence “The disease creates an incompatibility between the mother's blood and her unborn baby's blood” (underlined in Paragraph 5) suggests that _____.
| A．the mother and the baby have different types of blood |
| B．babies suffer permanent brain damage before born |
| C．Rhesus disease contributes to permanent brain damage |
| D．all the patients have a rare antibody in their blood |
What can we infer from the sixth paragraph?
| A．His wife Barbara needed to be taken care of badly then. |
| B．Mr. Harrison was not glad to help develop a new vaccine. |
| C．Some of the tests to develop the vaccine are dangerous. |
| D．His blood type was accidentally discovered after tests |
Signs in Chinese will be set up in public areas such as airports, to benefit Chinese travelers, the Italian Government announced in late February. Now many European countries are expected to follow this example.
Despite the different languages, travel across Europe has never been so simple. Just five years ago, if you wanted to visit Germany in the north and Spain in the south in one trip, you had to wait for weeks to apply for different visas from the two countries. You also needed a calculator because both countries had different money.
Today, with a Schengen Visa issued by any member country, you can travel across 15 European countries without stopping. Since 2002, within most of the EU, there is now just one type of money called the Euro. The Euro was designed to be the only money in the EU, and already makes it easier to shop around. If you drive, your driving license and car insurance policy are valid（有效的）in the other European countries. And you can use your mobile phone everywhere.
All the countries in the continent are melting into a united Europe under the EU. For Europeans and visitors, the result is that it is more convenient to travel back and forth between the different countries.By saying the underlined sentence “Now many European countries are expected to follow this example”, the writer means that ____.
| A．more signs will be set up in Chinese in European countries |
| B．more and more Europeans have a desire to know more about China |
| C．more and more Chinese people will go to travel across Europe |
| D．Chinese is now an important language in Europe |
Compared to five years ago, traveling in Europe has become easier because ___.
| A．you needn’t drive a car |
| B．you can use a calculator to exchange money |
| C．applying for different visas is much simpler |
| D．one visa is good enough for traveling in a number of countries |
It can be inferred from the passage that _____.
| A．an increasing number of Chinese tend to travel to Europe |
| B．Chinese has become an important language in Europe |
| C．the Euro is the only money used in the EU now |
| D．it is always necessary to unite many countries into one |