InDecember,2010,manyAmericanne-优题课

I arrived at my mother’s home for our Monday family dinner. The smells of food flew over from the kitchen. Mother was pulling out quilt(被子)after quilt from the boxes, proudly showing me their beauties. She was preparing for a quilt show at the Elmhurst Church. When we began to fold and put them back into the boxes, I noticed something at the bottom of one box. I pulled it out. “What is this?” I asked.
“Oh?” Mom said, “That’s Mama’s quilt.”
I spread the quilt. It looked at if a group of school children had pieced it together; irregular designs, childish pictures, a crooked line on the right.
“Grandmother made this?” I said, surprised. My grandmother was a master at making quilts. This certainly didn’t look like any of the quilts she had made.
“Yes, right before she died. I brought it home with me last year and made some changes,” she said. “I’m still working on it. See, this is what I’ve done so far.”
I looked at it more closely. She had made straight a crooked line. At the center of the quilt, she had stitched(缝) a piece of cloth with these words: “My mother made many quilts. She didn’t get all lines straight. But I think this is beautiful. I want to see it finished. Her last quilt.”
“Ooh, this is so nice, Mom,” I said. It occurred to me that by completing my grandmother’s quilt, my mother was honoring her own mother. I realized, too, that I held in my hands a family treasure. It started with the loving hands of one woman, and continued with the loving hands of another.
Why did the author go to mother’s home?

A．To see her mother’s quilts.	B．To help prepare for a show.
C．To get together for the family dinner.	D．To discuss her grandmother’s life.

The author was surprised because .

A．the quilt looked very strange.	B．her grandmother liked the quilt.
C．the quilt was the best she had seen.	D．her mother had made some changes

The underlined wood “crooked” in the passage most probably means .

A．unfinished

B．broken

C．bent

D．unusual

Which of the following would be the best title for the passage?

A．A Quilt Show

B．Mother’s Home

C．A Monday Dinner

D．Grandmother’s Quilt

阅读理解: 阅读下列短文，从每题所给的四个选项（A、B、C和D）中，选出最佳选项。
Melissa Poe was 9 years old when she began a campaign for a cleaner environment by writing a letter to the then President Bush. Through her own efforts, her letter was reproduced on over 250 donated billboards across the country.
The response to her request for help was so huge that Poe established Kids For A Cleaner Environment (Kids F.A.C.E.) in 1989. There are now 300,000 members of Kids FACE worldwide and is the world's largest youth environmental organization.
Poe has also asked the National Park Service to carry out a "Children's Forest" project in every national park. In 1992, she was invited as one of only six children in the world to speak at the Earth Summit in Brazil as part of the Voices of the Future Program. In 1993, she was given a Caring Award for her efforts by the Caring Institute.
Since the organization started, Kids F.A.C.E. members have distributed and planted over 1 million trees! Ongoing tree-planting projects include Kid's Yards – the creation of backyard wildlife habitats (栖息地) and now Kids F.A.C.E. is involved in the exciting Earth Odyssey, which is a great way to start helping.
"Starting the club turned out to be a way to help people get involved with the environment. Club members started doing things like recycling, picking up litter and planting trees as well as inviting other kids to join their club."
"We try to tell kids that it's not OK to be lazy," she explains. "You need to start being a responsible, environmentally friendly person now, right away, before you become a resource-sucking adult."
1. Kids F.A.C.E is _____.
A. a program to help students with writing
B. a project of litter recycling
C. a campaign launched by President Bush
D. a club of environmental protection
2. What can we learn about Poe?
A. She was awarded a prize in Brazil.
B. She donated billboard across the country.
C. She got positive responses for her efforts
D. She joined the National Park Service.
3. Kid’s Yards is _____.
A. established in a national park.
B. started to protect wildlife
C. a wildlife- raising project
D. an entertainment park for kids.
4. Which of the following can be inferred from the text?
A. Adults are resource-sucking people
B. Poe sought help from a youth organization
C. Kids F.A.C.E members are from the U.S.
D. Kids are urged to save natural resources.

阅读理解: 阅读下列短文，从每题所给的四个选项（A、B、C和D）中，选出最佳选项。
It was the summer of 1965. DeLuca, then 17, visited Peter Buck, a family friend. Buck asked DeLuca about his plans for the future. “I’m going to college, but I need a way to pay for it,” DeLuca recalls saying. “Buck said, ‘You should open a sandwich shop.’”
That afternoon, they agreed to be partners. And they set a goal: to open 32 stores in ten years. After doing some research, Buck wrote a check for $1000. DeLuca rented a storefront (店面) in Connecticut, and when they couldn’t cover their start-up costs, Buck kicked in another $1000.
But business didn’t go smoothly as they expected. DeLuca says, “After six months, we were doing poorly, but we didn’t know how badly, because we didn’t have any financial controls.” All he and Buck knew was that their sales were lower than their costs.
DeLuca was managing the store and going to the University of Bridgeport at the same time. Buck was working at his day job as a nuclear physicist in New York. They’d meet Monday evenings and brainstorm ideas for keeping the business running. “We convinced ourselves to open a second store. We figured we could tell the public, ‘We are so successful, we are opening a second store.’” And they did—in the spring of 1966. Still, it was a lot of learning by trial and error.
But the partners’ learn-as-you-go approach turned out to be their greatest strength. Every Friday, DeLuca would drive around and hand-deliver the checks to pay their suppliers. “It probably took me two and a half hours and it wasn’t necessary, but as a result, the suppliers got to know me very well, and the personal relationships established really helped out,” DeLuca says.
And having a goal was also important. “There are so many problems that can get you down. You just have to keep working toward your goal,” DeLuca adds.
DeLuca ended up founding Subway Sandwich, the multimillion-dollar restaurant chain.
1. DeLuca opened the first sandwich shop in order to ____.
A. support his family
B. pay for his college education
C. help his partner expand business
D. do some research
2. Which of the following is true of Buck?
A. He put money into the sandwich business.
B. He was a professor of business administration.
C. He was studying at the University of Bridgeport.
D. He rented a storefront for DeLuca.
3. What can we learn about their first shop?
A. It stood at an unfavorable palce.
B. It lowered the prices to promote sales.
C. It made no profits due to poor management
D. It lacked control over the quality of sandwiches
4. They decided to open a second store because they ___.
A. had enough money to do it.
B. had succeeded in their business
C. wished to meet the increasing demand of customers
D. wanted to make believe that they were successful
5. What contribute most to their success according to the author?
A. Learning by trial and error.
B. Making friends with suppliers.
C. Finding a good partner.
D. Opening chain stores.

阅读理解: 阅读下列短文，从每题所给的四个选项（A、B、C和D）中，选出最佳选项。
Young adult filmmakers all hope to show their works in international festivals like Sundance and Toronto. But what about really young filmmakers who aren’t in film school yet and aren’t, strictly speaking, even adults?
They are at the heart of Wingspan Arts Kids Films Festival, tomorrow, in a setting any director might envy: Lincoln Center. Complete with “red carpet” interviews and various awards, the festival has much in common with events for more experienced moviemakers, except for the age of the participants: about 8 to 18.
“What’s really exciting is that it’s film for kids by kids,” said Cori Gardner, managing director of Wingspan Arts, a nonprofit organization offering youth arts programs in the New York area. This year the festival will include films not only from Wingspan but also from other city organizations and one from a middle school in Arlington, Virginia. “We want to make this a national event,” Ms. Gardner added.
The nine shorts to be shown range from a Claymation biography of B.B. King to a science fiction adventure set in the year 3005. “A lot of the material is really mature,” Ms. Gardner said, talking about films by the New York City branch of Global Action Project, a media arts and leadership-training group. “The Choice is about the history of a family and Master Anti-Smoker is about the dangers of secondhand smoke.” Dream of the Invisibles describes young immigrants’ feelings of both belonging and not belonging in their adopted country.
The festival will end with an open reception at which other films will be shown. These include a music video and full-length film whose title is Pressures.
1. Wingspan Arts Kids Film Festival ____.
A. is organized by a middle school
B. is as famous as the Toronto Festival
C. shows films made by children
D. offers awards to film school students
2. Which of the following is true of Wingspan Arts?
A. It helps young filmmakers to make money.
B. It provides arts projects for young people.
C. It’s a media arts and leadership-training group.
D. It’s a national organization for young people.
3. The underlined word “shorts” in Paragraph 4 refers to _____.
A. short trousers B. short kids C. short films D. short stories
4. Movies to shown in the festival ____.
A. cover different subjects.
B. focus on kids’ life
C. are produced by Global Action Project
D. are directed by Ms. Gardner
5. At the end of this film festival, there will be ____.
A. various awards B. “red carpet” interviews
C. an open reception D. a concert at Lincoln Center

On May 29, 1973, Thomas Bradley, a black man, was elected mayor of Los Angeles. Los Angeles is the third largest city in the United States, with a population of three million. About sixteen percent of the city’s population are black.
News of this election appeared on the front pages of newspapers everywhere in the United States. Here is how one major newspaper reported the event:
LOS ANGELES ELECTS BRADLEY MAYOR UNSEATING YORTYBLACK WINS 56% OF VOTES
Bradley called his victory over Yorty “the fulfillment (实现) of a dream”. During his childhood and youth, people had kept telling him, “You can’t do this, you can’t go there, because you are a Negro.” Nevertheless he had won a decisive victory over a man who had been won 43.7 percent.
Los Angeles voters have had many opportunities to judge. Thomas Bradley had to form an opinion of him. The son of a poor farmer Texas, he joined the Los Angeles police force in 1940. During his twenty-one years on the police force he earned a law degree by attending school at night. He was elected to the city council (市政厅) ten years ago.
At the time of the Los Angeles election, three other American cities already had black mayors, but none of those cities had as large a population as Los Angeles. Besides, the percentage of blacks in those other cities was much larger. Cleveland, Ohio, had thirty-six percent black when Carl Stokes was elected mayor of Cleveland in 1967. In the same year Richard Hatcher was elected mayor of Cary. In Newark, New Jersey, sixty percent of the population were black when Kenneth Gibson was elected in 1970. Thus election of a black mayor in those cities was not very surprising.
In Los Angeles thousands of white citizens voted for Thomas Bradley because they believed he would be a better mayor than the white candidate(候选人). Bradley had spent forty-eight of his fifty-five years in Los Angeles. Four years ago Bradley lost mayoral election to Yorty. This time Bradley won.
In the author’s opinion, it was surprising that _______.

A．the whites would vote for a black mayor

B．a black mayor would be elected in such a large city

C．a black from a poor farmer’s family could be elected mayor of Los Angeles

D．there would be so many black mayors

From the passage we can infer that people ________.

A．voted for Bradley because of his black color

B．didn’t care much about his color when they voted

C．voted for him to give a chance to fulfill his dream

D．voted for Bradley because they trust him

Bradley hit the front page headline for _______.

A．he was the first black mayor in history

B．he was the first black mayor in the south of USA

C．he was the first black mayor of one of the largest cities in USA

D．a poor farmer’s son could also win an important election

From Bradley’s victory in the election we can see that ________.

A．blacks had equal rights as whites in the USA

B．black people’s situation began to be improving much more than before

C．one can be successful through hard work in the USA no matter what color he is

D．it is certain that someday the USA will have a black president

A．The Imperfectionists	B．A Visit from the Goon Squad
C．Just Kids	D．Life

A．Life	B．Cleopatra: A Life
C．Freedom	D．A Visit from the Goon Squad