I was shopping in the supermarket when I heard a young voice. “Mom, come here! There’s a lady here my size!” The mother rushed to her son; then she turned to me to apologize. I smiled and told her, “It’s okay.” Then talked to the boy, “Hi, I’m Darry Kramer. How are you?” He studied me from head to toe, and asked, “Are you a little mommy?” “Yes, I have a son,” I answered. “Why are you so little?” he asked. “It’s the way I was born,” I said. “Some people are little. Some are tall. I’m just not going to grow any bigger.” After I answered his other questions, I shook the boy’s hand and left.
My life as a little person is filled with stories like that. I enjoy talking to children and explaining why I look different from their parents.
It takes only one glance to see my uniqueness. I stand three feet nine inches tall. I was born an achondroplasia dwarf (侏儒). Despite this, I did all the things other kids did when I was growing up.
I didn’t realize how short I was until I started school. Some kids joked on me, calling me names. Then I knew. I began to hate the first day of school each year. New students would always stare at me as I struggled to climb the school bus stairs.
But I learned to smile and accept the fact that I was going to be noticed my whole life. I decided to make my uniqueness an advantage rather than a disadvantage. What I lacked in height, I made up for in personality.
I’m 47 now, and the stares have not diminished as I’ve grown older. People are amazed when they see me driving. I try to keep a good attitude. When people are rude, I remind myself, “Look what else I have--a great family, nice friends.”
It’s the children’s questions that make my life special. I enjoy answering their questions. My hope is that I will encourage them to accept their peers (a person of the same age, class, position, etc.), whatever size and shape they come in, and treat them with respect.Why did the mother apologize to the author?
| A．Because the boy studied the author from head to toe. |
| B．Because the boy laughed at the author. |
| C．Because they boy said the author was shorter than him. |
| D．Because the mother thought the boy’s words had hurt the author. |
When did the author realize that she was too short?
| A．When she grew up. |
| B．When she began to go to school. |
| C．When she was 47 years old. |
| D．When she met the boy in the supermarket. |
Which of the following word can best replace the underlined word “diminished”?
| A．doubted | B．decreased |
| C．remained | D．improved |
Which is NOT true about the author according to the passage?
| A．She suffered lots of discrimination when growing up. |
| B．She is grateful for what she has. |
| C．She doesn’t see herself different. |
| D．She thinks people should be treated equally. |
Stephen would take my literature lesson. After we introduced ourselves to each other, we talked about what the class would cover and all the things he would learn. It was a course in which he would learn a lot of facts and details in one term. As I talked, I saw Stephen’s eyes getting big with fear.
I told him to do his assignments (作业) and hand them in on time. I also told him that most successful students made a calendar of all the assignments so they could plan their work load.
As the fall term went by, I learned more of Stephen’s story. He had struggled in school. It had taken him longer to finish than most young people. Family members, including his mother, kept reminding him that he was a failure. But he kept at it. He told me that before coming to our school, no one had believed he had much potential (潜力).
Stephen didn’t become an “A” student. His name didn’t appear on any honors list. One reason was that he never did real well on tests. Still, he managed to pass most of his courses by being in class every day, turning in all of his assignments on time and breaking down his studying into bite-sized digestible portions (易理解的部分). By passing course after course he began to gain a measure of self-esteem (自尊). He was a great singer and he was on the school’s cross-country team.
Every time I saw him at school he would say, “One bite at a time.” His secret, he said, was that he was practicing what I taught him before classes ever started: “Take it one bite at a time.”
On graduation day, he said with a bright smile, “One bite at a time.”
65. Before Stephen began his class, _____.
A. the author had known him for a long time
B. the author told him something about his lessons
C. he was confident about his studies
D. he made a study plan
66. From the passage we can know that Stephen’s family _____.
A. kept encouraging him to continue his studies
B. thought he had much potential to study well
C. didn’t think he would do well at school
D. thought it would take him more time to study than others
67. What do we know about Stephen?
A. He was honored for his good results.
B. He didn’t do anything except study.
C. He only broke down his literature lesson into bite-sized portions.
D. He tried his best to pass his courses.
68. Which of the following can best describe Stephen’s story?
A. Nothing is difficult to a willing heart.
B. A friend in need is a friend indeed.
C. Well begun, half done.
D. Failure is the mother of success.
It’s not easy growing up. Growing up can be a real “pain” for some of us. We are always doing things that someone else makes us do and aren’t allowed to do all the things we like. Sometimes we feel sad, sometimes we are fearful, and sometimes we just don’t understand why we can’t stay young forever. But we should take a look back on all the hardships (苦难) in life with a positive attitude and learn from them. We should realize that all of our growing pains actually turn into growing gains!
Throughout our lives we are going to face many challenges and pains, but we should never let these obstacles keep us from following our dreams. We must overcome every obstacle one small step at a time.
As a young girl, my parents forced me to do so many things that I didn’t like. They made me learn to play the violin and then the piano. At that time I hated music and I also hated them. But looking back now, I am so glad that my parents encouraged me to take music lessons. Music has enriched (丰富) my life in so many ways. I now realize that my parents and teachers wanted me to have a better life than they did themselves.
We are all going to experience growing pains, but they are just part of our life. Think about how we would feel if we had no challenges and lived a life like that. Life would be really boring and meaningless. The future is ours! A little hard work and sweat never hurt anyone! If we realize that these pains are just small bumps (碰撞) on our road to success, we will realize that our growing pains are actually growing gains!
1. What would be the best title for this passage?
A. No pains, no gains
B. Growing pains and gains
C. Growing up is a pain
D. Growing up is easy
2. The underlined word “obstacles” (in Paragraph 2) refers to things that _____.
A. make it easy for you to do sth
B. make it difficult for you to do sth
C. make you happy
D. make you full of energy
3. What does the author now think about what her parents did for her in the past?
A. She is angry with them.
B. She is dissatisfied with them.
C. She is thankful to them.
D. She couldn’t forgive them.
4. Which of the following is NOT true according to the passage?
A. Growing pains are part of our life.
B. Our growing pains will finally turn into growing gains.
C. We should stop when facing many challenges.
D. Life without challenges is boring and meaningless.
IV 阅读理解(每小题2分，共24分)
I travel a lot in my work, and what I dislike about my job is eating alone. It always makes me feel lonely to see others laughing and talking. So, room service for several nights was a better choice for me.
After having room service three nights at a hotel in Houston, however, I needed to get out of my room. Although the restaurant opened at 6:30, I arrived at 6:25. The waiter at the front desk made a comment about my “being there really early”. I explained my dislike of eating alone in restaurants. He then seated me at a lovely table and asked me whether I would mind if he sat down with me for a while.
I was glad! He sat and talked with me about his career goals and the difficulty of being at work on nights, weekends and holidays. He said he hadn’t enough time to be with his family. After 15 minutes, he saw some customers at the front desk and excused himself. I noticed that before he went to the front desk, he stopped in the kitchen for a moment.
Then another waiter came out of the kitchen and had a wonderful chat with me. Before I left that night, some other waiters, even the cook, had come out of the kitchen and sat with me!
When I asked for my bill about one hour later, all the people who had sat down with me came over in a big group to my table, and presented me with a red rose. And I cried! What had begun as a lonely night ended as a beautiful experience.
57. The reason why the author hated to eat in the hotel restaurant is that the author didn’t like ______.
A. meeting strangers in the restaurant
B. being disturbed by the noises around
C. the discomfort caused by eating alone
D. being pointed at or laughed at
58. How did the waiter feel when he saw the author come in at 6:25?
A. Dissatisfied. B. Pleased. C. Surprised. D. Angry.
59. From the third paragraph, we can learn that the waiter at the front desk ______.
A. knew how to attract more customers to his restaurant
B. found it hard to balance his work and his family
C. was getting tired of his present job
D. had never had such a chance to talk about his worries
60. The author wants to tell us that ______.
A. people can get help for their loneliness
B. restaurants should put the need of customers first
C. the kindness of strangers can make you less lonely
D. restaurants are full of surprises
Before the earthquake in China’s Sichuan Province, 38-year-old Sarah Bexell was working to develop a new environmental consciousness(意识) among Chinese people and to encourage them to protect wildlife and habitat-in particular, that of the giant panda.
Bexell, an American who is the director of conservation education at the Chengdu Research Base for Giant Panda Breeding. Bexell has spent a lot of time teaching young people the value of protecting the environment.
“The younger generation in China can afford to care,” Bexell said before the earthquake. “They’re not starving. Thay have food, good jobs, and access to education.”
Now, Bexell worries about the people she has been working with and who are up in the mountains. She doesn’t know whether they and their families are safe. And she knows the work to which she is devoted has become more urgent during the immediate crisis.
Bexell and her Chinese colleagues have been trying to spread the message that the tourist boom, population growth, and pillaging (掠夺) of resources form terrible threats to the environment.
There are stories of pandas wandering out of the forest and into villages. This is a troubling sign for what should be a rare species.
To make matters worse, there are fears that with the earthquake and landslides ,bamboo could massively die off. That’s the main food source for the giant pandas, whose habitat was already damaged.
In April, Bexell took Block way up a twisting mountain road into the Longxi-Hongkou National Nature Reserve. The reserve was set up in 1997 to protect the giant panda and its habitat. It was very near the epicenter(震中) of the earthquake, so this area suffered severe damage.
58．Bexell is devoted to________ in Sichuan Province.
A．protecting giant pandas B．environment-protection education
C．research on people’s lives D．research on the environment after earthquakes
59．The main threats to the wildlife and the environment are the following EXCEPT ________.
A．population growth B．tourist development
C．bamboo’s massive death because of bad weather D．the overuse of resources
60．According to what Bexell says, ________.
A．we should care for animals since we have enough food and clothing
B．many young people in China are usually selfish
C．rich people should spend more on young people’s education
D．animal and environmental protection needs a lot of money and time
Have you ever dreamed of visiting a planet in the Milk Way (银河系)？While the trip sounds exciting, it would take years and years to reach your destination. So in the future, bedtime for astronauts may be more than a few hours of regular shut-eye. They would have to sleep for years.
European researchers are now conducting hibernation(冬眠) experiments. The study may help them understand whether humans could ever sleep through the years it would take for a spaceflight to distant planets. “If there was an effective technology, it could make deep-space travel a reality,” said Mark Ayre of the European Space Agency last month.
What seems like science fiction is not completely unlikely. Researchers have been able to use chemicals to put living cells into a sleep-like state. They have now moved on to small, non-hibernating mammals like rats.
A major challenge is the fact that cells can be very simple systems, whereas body organs are far more complex. “It’s like moving from a simple Apple computer to a supercomputer,” said Marco Biggiogera, a hibernation researcher at Italy’s University of Pavia. Just like bears and frogs, the hibernation of human beings would cause a person’s metabolism (新陈代谢) to lower so they would need less energy.
Medical research, however, is just half of a spaceflight hibernation system. There is the challenge of designing a suitable protective shelter(栖身所). Such a shelter would provide the proper environment for hibernation, such as the proper temperature It would also have to monitor (监控) life functions and serve the physiological needs of the hibernator.
According to Ayre, the six-person human Outer Planets Exploration Mission to jupiter’s moon (木星的卫星) Callisto, could be an opportunity to use human hibernation. The mission aims to send six humans on a five-year flight to Callisto, where they will spend 30 days, in 2045.
54．According to the article, the hibernation research ________.
A．is just an idea B．is always a science fiction
C．has already finished successfully D．has made some progress
55．There are ________ major challenges facing scientists who study hibernation.
A．two B．three C．four D．five
56．The first use of the hibernation technology ________ the six-person human Outer Planets Exploration Mission to jupiter’s moon Callisto.
A．must he B．has been planned for C．is certain to be D．may be
57．What is the best title for the article?
A．Hibernation Study for Space Travel B．Welcome to Our Space Travel
C．To Hibernate, to Live Longer D．Welcome to Milk Way