One spring, when I was 10, during one of my father’s layoffs(失业), I could tell my mother was unhappy. I decided to cheer her up by buying her a special Mother’s Day gift.
One day after school I rode my bike to the Agins, which, I learned years later, was known for its high-end fashions(时尚) and style. I introduced myself to Sylvia Agins, telling her I was looking for a Mother’s Day present.
“Do you think she’d like a purse?” she asked. I told her. I thought she might.
She took out an Italian handbag made of leather.She asked me what I thought, and I told her that my mom would like it.
“How much money do you have?” she asked.
“Twelve dollars,” I said.
“You’re in luck,” she told me. “It’s only $11. You have a dollar left over for the card.” She gift-wrapped the purse and thanked me for my business, and I rode off home with the package under my arm.
When my mother opened the gift the next Sunday morning, she asked in an accusing tone, “Where did you get this?”
“I bought it at the Agins. It cost me $11.” I said.
My mother was shocked into silence.
It wasn’t until many years later, when I learned that the purse was worth several hundred dollars, that I appreciated just how wonderful Sylvia Agins had been to me. I always felt bad that I never had a chance to properly thank her.
“You know, my son, what really amazes me to this day,” my mother said, “Letting you have the purse for just a few dollars was unbelievable enough. But the fact that she let you leave the store with a dollar for the card was a touch of kindness that I’ll never forget.”The author bought his mother a purse to ________.
A.surprise his mother |
B.make his mother happy |
C.show his ability of making money |
D.thank his mother for buying him a bike |
Why was the author’s mother shocked into silence?
A.She wasn’t expecting a gift from her son. |
B.The purse was bought from the Agins. |
C.The author bought a card to go with the purse. |
D.The Agins charged so little money for the purse. |
Sylvia Agins’s behavior shows that________.
A.she is good at making money |
B.she is kind and thoughtful |
C.she knows how to choose presents |
D.she is critical and mean |
Which of the following can be the best title for the text?
A.An Unforgettable Event. |
B.A Considerate Mother. |
C.A Priceless Mother’s Day Gift. |
D.A Kind-hearted Shop Owner. |
London, Reuters---What could annoy teenagers enough to make them stop hanging out with friends and go home?
No, it’s not a visit from their mothers, and not a threat to take away their cellphones or pocket money.
It’s high-frequency noise. The UK police recently agreed to use a device (装置) called the Sonic Teenager Deterrent. It sends out a sound that makes teenagers become so impatient and angry that they have to cover their ears tightly and walk away.
The sound is at extreme high-pitch that can be heard by those under 20. The body’s natural ability to detect some wave bands (波段) decreases almost entirely after 20, so few adults can hear the sounds. The black-box device, nicknamed the Mosquito because of its sound, can be fixed to the outside walls of shops, offices and homes. It sounds to youngsters like a crazy insect or a badly played violin. But it causes no physical damage.
A number of police forces and councils have given permission to use the system and want to install it at trouble spots.
Staffordshire Police Inspector Amanda Davies, who has given the device to shopkeepers in the Moorlands area, said," It is controlled by the shopkeepers--if they can see through their window that there is a problem, they turn the device on for a while until the group has run away."The device can be used to ____________.
A.threaten teenagers in public |
B.drive away trouble-makers under 20 |
C.help mothers control their teenage children |
D.help the police control shopkeepers |
From the passage we can know that ___________.
A.young people often suffer from pains in ears |
B.shopkeepers are troubled by noisy insects |
C.high-frequency noise is beyond the listening ability of people over 20 |
D.the police invented a new device to deal with teenagers |
The purpose of the writer to write the passage is ________.
A.to advertise a new hi-tech device |
B.to tell the reader a piece of news |
C.to sell the device to shopkeepers |
D.to inform the public as the spokesman of the police |
Who will welcome the device most?
A.Shopkeepers. | B.The police. | C.Young people. | D.The producer. |
A woman came out of her house and saw three old men sitting in her front yard. She said, "I don’t think I know you, but you must be hungry. Please come in and have something to eat."
"Is the man of the house home?” they asked. "No", she replied, "He’s out.""Then we cannot come in", they replied.
In the evening when her husband came home, she told him what had happened. "Go to tell them I am home and invite them in!" The woman went out and invited the men in. "We do not go into a house together," they replied. "Why is that?" she asked.
One of the old men explained that their names were Wealth(财富), Success and Love. Then he added, "Now go in and discuss with your husband which one of us you want in your home."
The woman went in and told her husband what was said. Her husband was overjoyed and he suggested inviting Wealth to fill their home with wealth. And his wife wanted to invite Success; but their daughter-in-law suggested they should invite Love so that their home would be filled with love. At last the husband said to his wife. "Go out and invite Love to be our guest."
The woman went out and asked the three old men, "Which one of you is Love? Please come in and be our guest."
Love got up and started walking toward the house.
The other two also got up and followed him. Surprised, the lady asked Wealth and Success: "I only invited Love, Why are you coming in?"
The old men replied together: "If you had invited Wealth or Success, the other two of us would have stayed out, but since you invited Love, wherever He goes, we go with him. Wherever there is Love, there is also Wealth and Success!"The best title for this passage would be __________.
A.A Woman and Three Men | B.Wealth, Success and Love |
C.A Strange Thing Happened to a Woman | D.A Husband and his Wife |
The woman asked the three men to come in and have something to eat because _________.
A.she was a warm-hearted woman | B.they were her neighbors |
C.they asked her to do | D.they were her friends |
Who does the underlined word “the man” in the second paragraph refer to?
A.The woman’s son. | B.The woman’s father. |
C.The woman’s son-in-law(女婿) | D.The woman’s husband. |
It can be inferred(推断)from the passage that __________.
A.The three old men are brothers and they can’t be separated. |
B.The husband will refuse them in. |
C.The wife will be scolded by the husband. |
D.If a person has love, he will own everything. |
“How can I learn English well?” This is a question many students ask. In my opinion, the most effective way is to learn lessons by heart. If you can recite(背诵) the text and write it out, you’ve learned it fairly well. And if you can tell, in your own words, what the lesson says, you’re a very successful learner indeed. Your English will be quite perfect.
This is a difficult task. However, if you try to learn by heart only part of each lesson, you’ll find it not half so hard as you might have thought. Learning this way, you will make rapid progress. Of course, writing is also necessary. It helps you a lot on our way to success in English.
Equally important is to feel the language. You should be able to laugh at jokes and be shocked at bad news. When using English, try to forget your mother tongue. Instead of helping you, your own language gets in your way. So, never try to see English through translation.In the writer’s opinion, the most effective way in learning English is _______.
A.to practise speaking, writing and feeling it |
B.to memorize the English words and grammatical rules |
C.to translate everything into his own language |
D.to forget your own native language |
“Instead of helping you, your own language gets in your way.”This sentence means that memorizing your own language can ________.
A.stop you mastering English | B.help you study English well |
C.make English easy to learn | D.help you notice mistakes |
The underlined words“to feel the language” here means________.
A.to get a knowledge of English by touching |
B.to be able to read and write English |
C.to be able to experience the rich feeling of the language |
D.to translate English into your own by imagining |
Malnutrition (营养失调)remains a serious problem for India. But a new study shows that India’s leading causes of death now also include diseases related to obesity(肥胖)such as heart disease.
India’s National Family Health Survey shows that more than twenty percent of Indians living in cities are overweight or obese. And in the northwestern state of Punjab, that is true for almost forty percent of women.
Aradhna Tripathi is a business professional in New Delhi. She said, “ Eating is the most important thing in any Indian household and how you show your love and gratitude(感激) for a person is through the kind of food you serve him. And the kind of lifestyle we are leading is one of the reasons why we have the number of obese people increasing every day.
But Aradhna Tripathi says she has decided to lose weight. Her mother and grandmother are also diabetic(患糖尿病的). In fact, the International Diabetes Federation says India is now the diabetes capital of the world. Researchers say Indians store more body fat per kilogram than Europeans. That means obese Indians are even more at the risk of diabetes than other people.
Doctor Anoop Misra at Fortis Hospital in New Delhi says the risk of diabetes is crossing social and economic lines. Five years ago, he says, obesity and diabetes were limited to India’s richest people, but now things have changed.
But Doctor Misra is hopeful that the spread (蔓延,传播)of obesity can be slowed. And he says it must start in schools by giving all Indian children the same instruction on physical activity and diet.
The World Health Organization says China is also moving up in obesity rates. The estimate (估计) has reached about five percent countryside and as high as twenty percent in some cities.What is this passage mainly about?
A.Obesity has become a big killer in India. |
B.Heart disease is troubling people in India. |
C.People in India live a very unhealthy life. |
D.Malnutrition remains a serious problem in India. |
According to Aradhna Tripathi , one of the causes of the obesity problems is____.
A..the development of economy |
B.the change of Indians’ lifestyle |
C.Indians’ attitude (态度)towards eating |
D.Indians’ attitude towards obesity. |
What can we infer from the underlined sentence in Paragraph 5?
A.Most rich people in India are overweight. |
B.Five years ago, few people in India were overweight |
C.Few poor people are diabetic for economic reasons. |
D.Now even the poor in India suffer from obesity. |
Some people are lucky enough to be born with a good sense of direction and even if they have only visited a place once, they will be able to find it again years later.
I am one of those unlucky people who have poor sense of direction and I may have visited a place time after time but I still get lost on my way there. When I was young I was so shy that I never dared ask complete strangers the way and so I used to wander round in circles and hope that by some chance I would get to the place I was heading for.
I am no longer too shy to ask people for direction, but I often receive replies that puzzle me. Often people do not like to admit(承认)that they didn’t know their hometown and will insist on telling you the way, even if they do not know it; others, who are anxious to prove that they know their hometown very well, will give you a long list of directions which you can not possibly hope to remember, and still others do not seem to be able to tell between their left and their right and you find in the end that you are going in the opposite(相反的)direction to that in which you should be going.
If anyone ever asks me the way to somewhere, I always tell them I am a stranger to the town in order to avoid giving them wrong direction but even this can have embarrassing results.
Once I was on my way to work when I was stopped by a man who asked me if I would direct him the way to the Sunlight Building. I gave my usual reply, but I had not walked on a few steps when I realized that he had asked for directions to my office building. However, at this point, I decide it was too late to turn back and search for him out of the crowd behind me as I was going to meet with someone at the office and I did not want to keep him waiting.
Imagine my embarrassment when my secretary showed in the very man who had asked for directions of my office and his astonishment when he recognized me as the person he had asked.What is the writer going to do when someone asks him for direction?
A.He will direct the right way to the person willingly. |
B.He will reply to it by the means of being a stranger to the town. |
C.He will give the very person long list of direction. |
D.He is going to show the man an opposite direction. |
Why did the writer consider himself to be an unlucky dog?
A.Because of his poor sense of direction. |
B.Because he always forget the way to home. |
C.Because he did not have any friend. |
D. Because he used to be shy and dared not ask others the way. |
How did the visitor feel when he was showed into the very room?
A.He felt strange. | B.He felt embarrassed. |
C.He felt very sad. | D.He felt astonished. |
Who showed the right way to the interviewee according to the passage?
A.Someone we don’t know. | B.The writer did it for himself. |
C.The secretary did so. | D.A warm-hearted old lady did itI. |