I remembered that when I was a little child, I used to look for Sunday of the week. Yes, I was so looking forward to an adventure.
Now, I still have a strong affinity for buses. I used to wonder where those gigantic (巨大的) buses finally stopped. On sunshine Sundays, that’s my adventure times. He took me to the bus stop. Time passed, while I was growing impatient, he was smiling, as he always does.
It was really not that easy to get on a bus as often as we do today. I was so worried that the bus driver would have missed us. I waved my hands so high with all my strength. I looked hopefully at him. He didn’t move at all. He was still standing. It seemed that the late and infrequent coming of the bus wasn’t any trouble to him at all.
He took my hand. We managed to find seats on the upper deck. I was so excited. Only sitting beside the windows made me happy. Looking at the rewinding buildings, streets and people through windows from a higher ground was so much fun. Then, he was sitting peacefully by me and whispered to me where the bus finally would stop. I was curious about what would be the next stop of our destination as much as what really means something to him.[]
That is me. I know now. I am all he cares. He wants me to be happy, as he always does. That’s the strong bond between father and son. Childhood, naive(天真) and precious, you showed me the world and the way I look at the world. I am so grateful for your presence in my life. Thanks, you are so wonderful!Who is “he” throughout the text?
| A．The brother of the writer. | B．The son of the writer. |
| C．The father of the writer. | D．A bus driver. |
In the second paragraph, what is the probably meaning of “affinity”?
| A．Hate. | B．Disappointment. | C．Liking. | D．Confusion. |
Where does this text probably come from?
| A．A bus guide. | B．A student’s diary. |
| C．An adventure story. | D．A transportation report. |
Pollutants coming from automobile operation have begun to cause many environmental problems. It has been calculated, for example, that 70% of the carbon monoxide(一氧化碳), 45% of the nitrogen oxides(氮氧化合物), and 34% of the hydrocarbon (碳氢化合物) pollution in the United States can be traced directly to automobile exhausts (废气). In addition, rubber, motor oil and other materials accumulate on roadways and are washed into streams, with effects nearly as serious as those of untreated waste water.
In an effort to improve the situation, the U.S. government has made regulations on the use of the constituents (成分) of automobile exhaust gas that are known to cause air pollution. These constituents fall roughly into three types: hydrocarbons that pass through the engine unburned; carbon monoxide, also a product of incomplete burning; and nitrogen oxides which are formed when nitrogen and oxygen are in contact at high temperatures. Besides their own poisonous character, hydrocarbons and nitrogen oxides react in the presence of sunlight to form harmful smog. Carbon monoxide and hydrocarbons are rather easily controlled by the use of higher burning temperatures in engines. Unfortunately, the conditions that produce minimum emission of hydrocarbons tend to raise emission of nitrogen oxides. In a way this difficulty is solved by adding recycled exhaust gas to the fuel mixture, thus avoiding the oversupply of oxygen that favors formation of nitrogen oxides.
California, which has the most strict air-pollution laws in the United States, requires further special compounding of gas to control emissions, and several states have ordered that alcohol be mixed with gas, as this will reduce emissions of the carbon monoxide by 35 per cent and the hydrocarbons by 15 per cent. The author uses figures in Paragraph 1 ________.
| A．to reflect the rapid growth of automobile use |
| B．to highlight the importance of environment protection |
| C．to show the consequence of automobile exhausts |
| D．to criticize the low quality of cars |
How are nitrogen oxides formed according to the text?
| A．Nitrogen and oxygen are put together in great heat. |
| B．Carbon monoxide and oxygen are mixed together. |
| C．Hydrocarbons pass through the engine. |
| D．Nitrogen is burned incompletely. |
Which of the following is NOT true according to the text?
| A．Carbon monoxide can be controlled in the engine. |
| B．Smog will form when hydrocarbons meet nitrogen oxides in the sunlight. |
| C．Hydrocarbons have no poisonous character themselves. |
| D．The conditions that decease emission of hydrocarbons will increase emission of nitrogen oxides. |
According to the text, alcohol is added to gas in order to ______.
| A．increase awareness of environment protection |
| B．control air pollution |
| C．increase the fuel efficiency |
| D．replace gas gradually |
According to the survey conducted by some scientists, it is common to have difficulty sleeping during the day. Humans are naturally wired to sleep best at night and be awake during the day. However, modern work schedules require some people to try to accommodate the unnatural schedule of shift（轮班）work — being awake at night and sleeping during the day.
In order to make this adjustment, you need to pay special attention to your sleep environment and your preparation for sleep. If shift work is a necessary part of your work life, here are some suggestions that may help.
Arrange to sleep uninterrupted in a quiet, dark room. This means you may have to turn off or unplug your phone, hang darkening curtains on the windows or wear a sleep eye mask, and train your family and friends to leave you alone while you sleep.
Fit in a nap (小睡). When your daytime sleep period is too short, taking a short nap of less than 30 minutes just before work or on a break has been shown to improve alertness and enhance performance.
Develop and follow a sleep routine. It's best if you go to sleep and wake up at the same time every day. Try not to vary this too much on weekends. Your body likes routine.
Take extra care to make healthy choices. You may be tempted to reach for unhealthy foods or nicotine to stay awake or alcohol to try to sleep. But ultimately these choices are more harmful than helpful.
If you have tried all these things and are still having problems getting enough quality sleep during the day, talk to your doctor or a sleep specialist. Sometimes medications (药物治疗) may be helpful and safe. In other cases, there may be an underlying sleep disorder that needs to be addressed.The purpose of the text is to_____ .
| A．persuade workers to have a good sleep |
| B．advise night workers to keep healthy |
| C．encourage workers to do day work |
| D．help night workers to sleep well |
What does the author recommend?
| A．A suitable amount of alcohol to help sleep. |
| B．A regular life on weekday’s and weekends. |
| C．A bright room without phones to sleep in. |
| D．A break for sleeping anytime during the day. |
On which condition should a person turn to a sleep specialist for help?
| A．If he suffers from a sleep disorder for the first time. |
| B．If a good sleep environment is greatly needed for him. |
| C．If he fails to get quality sleep through his own efforts. |
| D．If he has the problem of falling asleep in the daytime. |
We can learn from the text that_____________.
| A．night workers need a long time to fall asleep |
| B．constant breaks at work help to improve performance |
| C．it is difficult to create a good sleep environment |
| D．night work requires people to adjust their body clocks |
Goddington Theater
The Goddington Theater Ticket Office is open from 10 a.m. until 4 p.m. Monday to Friday, and for half an hour in the evening before the advertised start time of each performance.
Telephone bookings
Your tickets are held at the Ticket Office for you to collect or, if you prefer, a charge of 35 cents is made to post them to you if you pay by cash. We’ll post them to you for free if you book by credit card. No extra charge.
Postal bookings
You can write to the Ticket Office requesting tickets, or to confirm a reservation.
Where to find Goddington Theater
Goddington Theater can be found within the Goddington University site, next to the car park, which is available for public use after 5 p.m. on weekdays and all day on weekends.
If travelling by car
Coming from the south end of Princes Street, you will see the library on your right. Next to the library is Goddington University. Take the next turning on the right, then first right into the car park gate straight ahead of you, stopping as close as possible to the orange machine. Put a $ 1 coin in the machine and the gate will rise.
If travelling by train/bus/ taxi
You will need to allow 30 minutes to walk from the train station. Taxis are available from the front of the station.
The University is a 5 to 10 minutes’ walk from the main bus station.
When ordering a taxi from the theater, ask to be picked up at the bottom of North Street. Taxis will not come into the car park because of the entrance charge. You can book your tickets ________.
| A．at 9 a.m. on Monday | B．at 5 p.m. on Wednesday |
| C．at lunch time on weekends | D．at noon on workdays |
Where is the Goddington Theater?
| A．To the south of Princes Street. |
| B．On the right of the Ticket Office. |
| C．In the Goddington university. |
| D．At the bottom of North Street. |
What can we learn from the passage?
| A．You can find a free parking place in the university. |
| B．You have to collect your tickets if you pay by credit card. |
| C．Tickets paid by cash will be posted to you at no extra charge. |
| D．Taxi drivers are unwilling to pick up customers inside the car park. |
Children have their own rules in playing games. They seldom need a judge and rarely trouble to keep scores. They don’t care much about who wins or loses, and it doesn’t seem to worry them if the game is not finished. Yet, they like games that depend a lot on luck, so that their personal abilities cannot be directly compared. They also enjoy games that move in stages, in which each stage, the choosing of leaders, the picking-up of sides, or the determining of which side shall start, is almost a game in itself.
Grown-ups can hardly find children’s games exciting, and they often feel puzzled at why their kids play such simple games again and again. However, it is found that a child plays games for very important reasons. He can be a good player without having to think whether he is a popular person, and he can find himself being a useful partner to someone of whom he is ordinarily afraid. He becomes a leader when it comes to his turn. He can be confident, too, in particular games, that it is his place to give orders, to pretend to be dead, to throw a ball actually at someone, or to kiss someone he caught.
It appears to us that when children play a game they imagine a situation under their control. Everyone knows the rules, and more important, everyone plays according to the rules. Those rules may be childish, but they make sure that every child has a chance to win.What is true about children when they play games?
| A．They can stop playing any time they like. |
| B．They can test their personal abilities. |
| C．They want to pick a better team. |
| D．They don’t need rules. |
To become a leader in a game the child has to ______.
| A．play well | B．be popular among his playmates |
| C．be confident in himself | D．wait for his turn |
What do we know about grown-ups?
| A．They are not interested in games. |
| B．They find children’s games too easy. |
| C．They don’t need a reason to play games. |
| D．They don’t understand children’s games. |
The writer believes that _______.
| A．children should make better rules for their games |
| B．children should invite grow-ups to play with them |
| C．children’s games can do them a lot of good |
| D．children play games without reasons |
My Way to Success
From the day I signed up for theNaumburg Competition, everything changed. I had made a decision to start again, to save my life, and that meant a 360-degreeturnaround.
I kept on practicing. An enormous amount of work had to be done in two months. I went from not practicing at all to thirteen hours a day.
I spent two weeks just playing scales. If I thought I sounded bad before, now I sounded worse than awful.
At the time I lived on 72nd Street, close to West End Avenue. I had an apartment with a window the size of a shoebox. I didn't do mylaundry. I left my apartment only to walk toJuilliard─and not onBroadwaylike everyone else.I walked up Amsterdam Avenue because I didn't want to see anybody, didn't want to run into anybody, didn't want anyone to ask what I was doing.
I stopped going to classes and became a hermit.I even talked Miss DeLay into giving my lesson at night.
My eating habits were awful. I lived on fried sausages, a pint of peanut butter/chocolate ice cream, and a gallon of Coca-Cola every day. That's all I ate for eight weeks.
I was nuts.I was completely obsessed with getting back into shape, with doing well in this competition.If I could, people would know I was still on earth. Not to count me out; to stop asking, “Whatever happened to Nadja?”
The last week before the Naumburg auditions, I couldn't touch the violin. I had worked and worked and worked and worked and then I just couldn't work anymore.
I certainly could have used it. I wasn't as prepared as I should have been. But I simply had to say,“Nadja, you've dedicated yourself to this thing. Ready or not, do your best.”
Fifty violinists from around the worldauditionedfor the competition on May 25, 26, and 27, 1981. Those that made it past thepreliminarieswould go on to the semifinals. Those that passed that stage would go to the finals. In years past, one violinist was chosen as winner and two received second and third place.
On May 26, the day of my audition, I went to the Merkin Concert Hall at 67th Street and Broadway. I waited, played for twenty minutes, and went home. I couldn't tell whether the preliminary judges were impressed or not. I'd find out the next evening.
Maybe subconsciously I was trying to keep busy; that night, when I fried the sausages, I accidentally set my apartment on fire. I grabbed my cat and my violin, and ran out the door. The fire was put out, but everything in my place was wrecked.
Fortunately, the phone was okay and on the evening of May 27, I had the news from Lucy Rowan Mann of Naumburg. Thirteen of us had made it.
Talk about mixed emotions. I was thrilled to be among the thirteen; a group that included established violinists, some of whom had already made records. But it also meant I had to play the next day in the semifinals of the competition.
Everyone entering the competition had been given two lists of concertos. One was a list of standardrepertorypieces. The other list was twentieth-century repertory. For our big competition piece, we were to choose from each list and play a movement from one in the semifinals, and a movement from the other in the finals─if we made it that far.
From the standard repertory list, I chose the Tchaikovsky Concerto. I had been playing the Tchaik for three years, so it was a good piece for me.
From the twentieth-century list, I chose the Prokofiev G minor Concerto. I had never played it onstage before.
My goal had been just passing the auditions, but now my thought pattern began to change. If I wanted asliverof a chance of advancing again, my brain said, “Play your strong piece first.”
Logically, I should play the Tchaikovsky in the semifinals just to make it to the next stage. Who cared if that left me with a piece I probably wouldn't play as well in the finals of the competition? It'd be a miracle to get that far.
There wouldn't be more than seven violinists chosen for the final round, and if I were in the top seven of an international group, that was plenty good enough.
The semifinals were held on May 28 in Merkin Concert Hall. You were to play for thirty minutes: your big piece first, then the judges would ask to hear another.
There was a panel of eight judges. They had a piece of paper with my choices of the Tchaikovsky and the Prokofiev in front of them. “Which would you like to play?” they asked.
I said meekly, “Prokofiev.”
My brain and all the logic in the world had said, “Play your strong piece.” My heart said, “Go for it all. Play your weak piece now, save Tchaikovsky for the finals.”
Maybe I don't listen to logic so easily after all.
My good friend, the pianist Sandra Rivers, had been chosen as accompanistfor the competition. She knew I was nervous. There had been a very short time to prepare; I was sure there'd be memory slips, that I'd blank out in the middle and the judges would throw me out. My hands were like ice.
The first eight measures of the Prokofiev don't have accompaniment. The violin starts the piece alone. So I started playing.
I got through the first movement and Sandra said later my face was as white as snow.She said I was so tense, I was beyond shaking. Just a solid brick.
It was the best I'd ever played it. No memory slips at all. Technically, musically, it was there.
I finished it thinking, “Have I sold my soul for this? Is the devil going to visit me at midnight? How come it went so well?”
I didn't know why, but often I do my best under the worst of circumstances. I don't know if it'sgutsor a determination not to disappoint people. Who knows what it is, but it came through for me, and I thank God for that.
As the first movement ended, the judges said, “Thank you.” Then they asked for the Carmen Fantasy.
I turned and asked Sandy for an A, to retune, and later she said the blood was just rushing back into my face.
I whispered, “Sandy, I made it. I did it.”
“Yeah,” she whispered back, kiddingly, “too bad you didn't screw up. Maybe next time.”
At that point I didn't care if I did make the finals because I had played the Prokofiev so well. I was so proud of myself for coming through.
I needed a shot in the arm; that afternoon I gotevicted. While I was at Merkin, mymopedhad blown up. For my landlord, that was the last straw.
What good news. I was completely broke and didn't have the next month's rent anyway. The landlord wanted me out that day. I said, “Please, can I have two days. I might get into the finals, can I please go through this first?”
I talked him into it, and got back to my place in time for the phone call. “Congratulations, Nadja,”“they said. “You have made the finals.”
I had achieved the ridiculously unlikely, and I had saved my best piece. Yet part of me was sorry. I wanted it to be over already. In the three days from the preliminariesto the semifinals, I lost eight pounds. I was so tired of the pressure.
There was a fellow who advanced to the finals with me, an old, good friend since Pre-College. Competition against friends is inevitable in music, but I never saw competition push a friendship out the window so quickly. By the day of the finals, I hated him and he hated me. Pressure was that intense.
The finals were held on May 29 at Carnegie Hall and open to the public. I was the fourth violinist of the morning, then there was a lunch break, and three more violinists in the afternoon.
I played my Tchaikovsky, Saint-Sa‘ns’s Havanaise, and Ravel's Tzigane for the judges: managers, famous violinists, teachers, and critics. I went on stage at five past eleven and finished at noon. Those fifty-five minutes seemed like three days.
I was so relieved when I finished playing; I was finished! It's impossible to say how happy I was to see the dressing room. I went out for lunch with my friends. It was like coming back from the grave. We laughed and joked and watched TV.
As I returned to Carnegie Hall to hear the other violinists, I realized I'd made a big mistake: they might ask for recalls. A recall is when they can't decide between two people and they want you to play again. It's been done; it's done all the time in competitions. No way was I in shape to go onstage and play again.
In the late afternoon, the competition was over. Everybody had finished playing. Quite luckily─no recalls.
The judges deliberated for an hour. The tension in the air was unbelievable. All the violinists were sitting with their little circle of friends. I had my few friends around me, but no one was saying much now.
Finally, the Naumburg Foundation president Robert Mann came on stage.
“It's always so difficult to choose ...” he began.
“Every year we hold this competition,” Robert Mann said. “And in the past, we've awarded three prizes. This year we've elected to only have one prize, the first prize.”
My heart sank. Nothing for me. Not even MissCongeniality.
“We have found,” Mann went on, “that second place usually brings great dismay to the artist because they feel like a loser. We don't want anyone here to feel like a loser. Every finalist will receive five hundred dollars except the winner, who will receive three thousand dollars.”
And then he repeated how difficult it was to choose, how well everyone had played ...dah, dah, dah.
I was looking down at the floor.
“The winner is ...”
And he said my name.
A friend next to me said, “Nadja, I think you won!”
I went numb. My friends pulled me up and pointed me toward the stage. It was a long walk because I had slipped into a seat in the back. Sitting up in front was my old friend. I would have to walk right past him and I was dreading it, but before I could, he got up and stopped me.
He threw his arms around me and I threw my arms around him. I kept telling him how sorry I was. I was holding him and started to cry, saying, “I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry.” I didn't want to lose, but I really didn't want him to lose either. And he was holding me and saying, “Don't be sorry. I'm so proud of you.” It was over, and we would be friends again.
I took my bow, then ran to Juilliard. Ten blocks uptown, one block west, to give Miss DeLay the news. She could be proud of me now, too.
Suddenly, everything was clear. Playing the violin is what I'd do with my life. Heaven handed me a prize: “You've been through a lot, kid. Here's an international competition.”
Everything had changed when I prepared for the Naumburg, and now everything changed again. I made my first recording. Between September 1981 and May 1982, I played a hundred concerts in America, made one trip to Europe, then two months of summer festivals. And people asked me back.
There was a great deal of anxiety playing in Europe for the first time. But I was able to rely on my self-confidence to pull me through.
Self-confidence onstage doesn't mean a lack of nerves backstage. The stakes had increased. This wasn't practice anymore, this was my life. I'd stare into a dressing-room mirror and say, “Nadja, people have bought tickets, hired baby-sitters, you've got to calm down; go out there and prove yourself.”
Every night I'd prove myself again. My life work had truly begun.In a gesture to prepare for the competition, Nadja did all the following except _________.
| A．preoccupying herself in practice |
| B．trying to carry out her deeds secretly |
| C．abandoning going to school for classes |
| D．consuming the best food to get enough energy |
.How many violinists does the passage mention advanced to the finals?
| A．Four. | B．Five. | C．Six. | D．Seven. |
After Nadja finished playing at the finals, she went out for a while and when she came back to hear the other violinists she realized she had made a mistake because _________.
| A．she forgot that there was going to be a recall |
| B．she didn’t get hold of the permission to leave |
| C．chances were that she had to replay and she was off guard |
| D．there was another play she had to take part in in the afternoon |