Family traditions were important in our house, and none was more appreciated than the perfect Christmas tree.
“Dad, can we watch when you trim(修剪) the tree?” My eldest son, Dan, nine, and his seven-year-old brother John, asked.
“I won’t be cutting this year,” my husband Bob said. “Dan, you and John are old enough to measure things. Do it all by yourselves. Think you boys can handle it?”
Dan and John seemed to grow six inches in their chairs at the thought of such an amazing responsibility. “We can handle it,” Dan promised. “We won’t let you down.”
A few days before Christmas, Dan and John rushed in after school. They gathered the tools they’d need and brought them out to the yard, where the tree waited. I was cooking when I heard the happy sounds as the boys carried the tree into the living room. Then I heard the sound that every mother knows is trouble: dead silence. I hurried out to them. The tree was cut too short. John crossed his arms tight across his chest. His eyes filled with angry tears.
I felt worried. The tree was central to our holiday. I didn’t want the boys to feel ashamed every time they looked at it. I couldn’t lower the ceiling, and I couldn’t raise the floor either. There was no way to undo the damage done. Suddenly, a thought came to my mind, which turned the problem into the solution.
“We can’t make the tree taller,” I said. “But we can put it on a higher position.”
Dan nodded his head sideways. “We could put it on the coffee table. It just might work! Let’s try it!”
When Bob got home and looked at the big tree on top of the coffee table, Dan and John held their breath.
“What a good idea!” he declared. “Why didn’t I ever think of such a thing?”
John broke into a grin. Dan’s chest swelled with pride.The underlined part “grow six inches” (Para. 4) implies the brothers felt .
| A．proud | B．nervous | C．embarrassed | D．Scared |
What happened after the brothers moved the Christmas tree into the living room?
| A．They rushed to school. |
| B．They began to decorate the tree. |
| C．They got angry with each other. |
| D．They found the tree was cut short. |
How could the short tree be turned into a perfect one?
| A．By making the tree taller. |
| B．By lowering the ceiling. |
| C．By placing it on a coffee table. |
| D．By raising the floor. |
What Bob said in the last but one paragraph showed .
| A．he was a little disappointed |
| B．he was too stupid to think of the idea |
| C．he appreciated what the brothers had done |
| D．he should not have given them the task |
Now, it’s time for some brief news items.
Teens Go Online
Some 13 million European children under 18 use the Internet for schoolwork, games and music according to research done by Nielsen’s “Net-rating”. The study covered Britain, Germany, France, Italy and Spain. Experts advised parents to limit the time their kids spend on line and keep them away from chat rooms.
Chat to the magic Mum
British author J. K. Rowling, mother of magic boy Harry Potter, will do an Internet interview about her new book “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince” on June 26. Before the event, children are invited to send their questions about Harry to the website. The book will hit stores in the US and UK on June 21 and will arrive in China in August.
School Soldiers
Russian school students will have to do basic military training in their final year of school, the government has decided. The lesson will include learning to fire guns, marching drills and how to deal with a chemical, nuclear or biological attack. The activity is seen as part of a drive toward the education of their love for their country.
Is it hard for you to get up early and get ready for classes? Some students at Winter Park High School just roll out of bed in their pajamas (睡衣) and go to class in their own bedrooms, Of course, their teachers and classmates do not see them because all their class work is on the computer. The Florida High School, the state’s only online school, has 250 students who are taking classes at home by computer. Students in this first online program take classes in algebra (代数), American government, chemistry, computer, economics, and web-page design. They also have to go to regular school to attend other classes.In the first news item, which country is NOT covered in the research?
| A．Britain. | B．France. | C．Sweden. | D．Spain. |
What is the second news item mainly about?
| A．J. K. Rowling will have an Internet interview. |
| B．Children will meet Harry Potter’s mother. |
| C．The Harry Potter book will be available on the Internet. |
| D．The Harry Potter book will arrive in China in early June. |
Why will Russian school students have basic military training?
| A．To get ready for a military parade. |
| B．To learn to protect themselves. |
| C．To gain some military knowledge. |
| D．To develop their love for the country. |
The last news can be given a title “________”.
| A．Get up Late | B．Online School |
| C．Magical Computers | D．No Teachers |
Homework can put you in a bad mood (心情), and that might actually be a good thing. Researchers from the University of Plymouth in England doubted whether mood might affect the way kids learn. To find out the answer, they did two experiments with children.
The first experiment tested 30 kids. Some shapes (图片) were hidden inside a different, larger picture. The kids had to find the small shapes while sitting in a room with either cheerful or sad music playing in the background. To test their mood, the scientists asked the kids to point to one of five faces, from happy to sad. Children who listened to cheerful music tended to point to the smiley faces while the others pointed to the unhappy ones. The researchers found that sad kids took at least a second less to find the small shapes. They also found an average of three or four more shapes.
In the second experiment, 61 children watched one of two scenes from a film. One scene was happy, and the other was sad. Just like in the first experiment, kids who saw the sad scene acted better compared to the others.
The researchers guessed that feeling down makes people more likely to focus on a problem or difficult situation. Not all scientists agree with them, however. Other studies argued that maybe, that cheerful music in the first experiment distracted (使分心) kids from finding shapes.
While scientists work on finding out the answers, it still might be wise to choose when to do your tasks according to your mood. After eating a delicious ice cream, for example, write an essay. Researchers did experiments on kids in order to find out ______.
| A．how they really feel when they are learning |
| B．whether mood affects their learning ability |
| C．what methods are easy for kids to learn |
| D．the relationship between sadness and happiness |
The researchers found in the first experiment that ______.
| A．kids who listened to happy music turned out to be energetic |
| B．kids who listened to sad music liked to choose smiley faces |
| C．kids worked harder in the background of happy music |
| D．sad music helped kids find out small shapes quickly |
What can we learn from the text?
| A．The researchers will continue to do experiments. |
| B．The researchers have found a clear answer. |
| C．The experiments are popular among kids. |
| D．Kids change their feelings more easily. |
We can infer that the text is ______.
| A．a science survey | B．a research report |
| C．a school project | D．an introduction to an experiment |
My 8-year-old daughter is making an experiment. She has been making her own colorful smile cards and often takes them with her everywhere.
Last Sunday, I took my kid to go shopping with me. She was hoping to see John, who is an elderly man and gives out samples. We see him from time to time and he is so happy and friendly. John wasn’t at the store on Sunday, so my daughter decided that it would be a good idea to distribute her smile cards to the store’s other employees.
So she did. In the produce department, she gave a card to a young man and she hoped it would make him smile. And he smiled at her and thanked her. Then she came across an older gentleman who looked rather impatient. And she snuck a card into his cart on top of his groceries, remarking to me later that he looked at her suspiciously as if she was dumping trash in his cart. But I thought he would be happy later.
When we got back from our shopping trip, she had run out of cards. She was walking by a woman with two babies in her cart. My daughter smiled at her and the young mother smiled back. My daughter came to me and said excitedly, “Mom, I just realized something. You don’t need cards to make someone smile. All you need to do is make eye contact and smile into their eyes and they will smile back.”
What a beautiful lesson my daughter reminded me of. You are never too young or too old to experiment with kindness and smiles. At first, the writer’s daughter made an experiment by ______.
| A．giving smile cards | B．giving samples |
| C．making eye contact | D．giving groceries |
According to the text, John was a man ______.
| A．who is very young and lively | B．who may be a salesman |
| C．who is in trouble and needs smiles | D．who is never seen to smile |
The underlined word “distribute” in paragraph 2 probably means ______.
| A．make up | B．tear up | C．give out | D．sell out |
From the text, we can learn that ______.
| A．John got a smile card from the writer’s daughter |
| B．the older gentleman would smile later after he got the smile card |
| C．we could make others smile only by giving them what they wanted |
| D．the mother with two babies smiled because she got a smile card |
“Eat local.” It’s one way to reduce human effect on the planet. Eating local means to try to buy and consume foods that are grown in places close to home. However, most of the food sold at supermarkets is not locally grown or produced. Trucks and planes deliver these foods from hundreds or thousands of miles away. During the transportation, greenhouse(温室)gases are produced, causing global warming. So the shorter the distance your foods must travel, the less the harm is done to the environment.
But how do you get local food if you live in a large city, hundreds of miles away from farms？Environmental health scientist Dickson Despommier and his students came up with the idea of a “vertical(垂直的)farm”. 
A vertical farm is a glass-walled structure that could be built as tall as a skyscraper(摩天大楼). Since the garden is built upwards, rather than outwards, it requires much less space than an ordinary farm. The world is quickly running out of room for ordinary farming. Vertical farms could be a key to this situation. Despommier imagines a 30-story building with a greenhouse on every floor. The walls of the building would be clear, to allow crops to get as much sunlight as possible. Depending on a city’s water resources, Despommier thinks hydroponic(水培的) farming is another method for the vertical farm which needs no soil to grow plants.
Despommier says the hydroponic greenhouses would use a system that would use a city’s waste water and fill it with nutritions to make the crops grow. If this method works, it would provide food to a city and save millions of tons of water.
The idea of a vertical farm has attracted the attention of government officials around the world. Scott Stringer, a government official from New York City, thinks the city is suitable for the vertical farming. “Obviously we don’t have much land left for us,” Stringer said. “But the sky is the limit in Manhattan. ”
Despommier admits that there is still a lot of work to do to make vertical farms a reality. “But I think vertical farming is an idea that can work in a big way,” he says.Why are people advised to eat local?
| A．Because it means convenience(方便) to people. |
| B．Because it can help people save a lot of money. |
| C．Because local food has more nutrition. |
| D．Because it is environmentally friendly. |
Which is one of the vertical farm’s benefits when compared with ordinary farming?
| A．It produces healthier food. |
| B．It does less harm to the cities. |
| C．It needs less space of the city. |
| D．It requires less transport costs. |
By saying “the sky is the limit in Manhattan”, Stringer means _____.
| A．people can make full use of vertical space of Manhattan |
| B．there is a limit for using empty land in Manhattan |
| C．the height of buildings in Manhattan is limited |
| D．Manhattan can spread as far as possible |
What can we learn about the vertical farming in the passage?
| A．No soil is needed to grow plants in a vertical farm. |
| B．It has solved the problem of the food shortage in a big way. |
| C．It is a 30-story building with a greenhouse on every floor. |
| D．Crops are mainly grown in the rainwater in a vertical farm. |
When an official at the U. S. Open Pocket Pool(台球)Championship saw a 9-year-old girl playing at one of the tournament tables, he told her that spectators(观众)were not allowed to play. But much to his surprise, the girl was actually a competitor. That was nine years ago, and today, with five U. S. Open Women’s titles behind her and a recently won world championship, no one is likely to mistake Jean Balukas for a spectator again.
It doesn’t seem too surprising that Jean became caught up in pool——her father owns a pool hall within walking distance of the family’s home in Brooklyn. When she was just tall enough to see over the table, she fell in love with the game soon. Five years later Jean was ready to enter her first U. S. Open. She still remembers the letter the officials sent her reminding her that she wouldn’t be allowed to stand on a box to play.
As Jean improved, she found it increasingly difficult to play games at her father’s pool hall. “If I’d beat one of the guys, his friends would laugh at them about losing to me,” she says. Now Jean comes to the hall only weeks before a tournament when she plays Johnny Goon, her father’s pool manager.
That Johnny can beat her shows the gap that now exists in pool — as in other sports — between the top men and women competitors. “I’m supposedly the top woman player, but I’d have a hard time beating the number 50 man,” says Jean. “If I was a boy and played pool, I’d be a nobody.”
Jean thinks that women pool players still have a long way to go because pool has been a man’s game for so long. “When they think of pool players, people have this picture in their head of gambling(赌博) and smoke,” she says.
Jean won four of the seven games in these two years. She was as surprised as anyone else at her performance, even though she was a New York City tennis champion and center for her high-school basketball team. Jean does not take full credit for her achievements, saying, “I think what I have in sports is a gift from God, and that’s why I can get out there and do so well.”We can learn from the first passage that Jean Balukas_____.
| A．had become well-known at the age of 9 |
| B．had achieved great fame at the age of 18 |
| C．was often asked to play with men players |
| D．was refused to play in the U. S. Open for her young age |
The letter Jean received before her first U. S. Open_____.
| A．told her to arrive in time for the game |
| B．showed people’s doubt about her ability |
| C．told her about the basic rules of the game |
| D．invited her to compete in the U. S. Open |
Jean Balukas believed that women pool players_____.
| A．fall far behind men players |
| B．aren’t suitable for a man’s game |
| C．are impossible to beat any man player |
| D．have a bad reputation(名声) for gambling and smoking |
By saying the underlined words in the last paragraph Jean meant that _____.
| A．women players had a long way to go |
| B．she wouldn’t stop before her great achievement |
| C．she had much confidence in the game |
| D．she achieved her success because of her born gift |