When my son, Mark, was in the third grade, he saved all his pocket money for over three months to buy holiday presents. The third Saturday in December Mark said he had made his list and had twenty dollars in his pocket.
I drove him to a nearby supermarket. Mark picked up a hand basket and went in while I waited and watched in the car. It took Mark over 45 minutes to choose his presents. Finally he came to the checkout counter (收银台) and reached into his pocket for his money. It was not there! There was a hole in his pocket, but no money. Mark stood there holding his basket, tears falling down his face.
Then a surprising thing happened. A woman came up to Mark and took him in her arms. “You would help me a lot if you let me pay for you,” said the woman. “It would be the most wonderful gift you could give me. I only ask that one day you will pass it on. When you grow up, I would like you to find someone you can help. When you help others, I know you will feel as good about it as I do now.”
Mark took the money, dried his tears and ran back to the checkout counter as fast as he could. That year we all enjoyed our gifts almost as much as Mark enjoyed giving them to us.
I would like to say “thank you” to that very kind woman, and tell her that four years later, Mark went house to house collecting blankets and clothes for the homeless people in the fire. And I want to promise her that Mark will never forget to keep passing it on.When they got to the supermarket, Mark went in ________.
| A．by himself | B．with the writer |
| C．with the woman | D．with his friends |
What happened to Mark in the supermarket?
| A．His gifts were stolen. | B．He lost his money. |
| C．His basket was broken. | D．He lost his way. |
Why did the writer want to say “thank you” to the woman?
| A．Because she bought Mark a nice present. |
| B．Because she always paid money for others. |
| C．Because she collected clothes for the homeless. |
| D．Because she taught Mark to help people in need. |
March 5 is Lei Feng Day. Lei Feng is one of the most famous role models（榜样） in China. He is known for his warm heart and kind deeds（行为）. We should learn from him. In honor of this great person, we did lots of kind deeds on March 4. Take a look!
Xu Hanchi, 13:
I went to a square（广场）in a local university with my classmates to do cleaning. We swept off the fallen leaves and picked up rubbish. When we finished, the ground was very clean. Though no one came up to praise us, we still felt very happy. We learned that doing good things itself could make us happy.
Zhu Lingyue, 14:
My group cleaned the teachers’ office that day. When we got there, we were surprised that the office was not as clean as we expected. How could teachers work in such an untidy（不整洁的） place? We started cleaning quickly. Teachers work really hard and may not have the time to clean their offices. It’s great that we can do something to help make them less tired.
Tom Rui, 14:
We helped clean the yard in the front of a hospital, but some patients（病人） there left us a very bad impression（印象）. They were very impolite and shouted at nurses and doctors. I think nurses and doctors’ work is hard. They try their best to help us. We should give them more respect and understanding. The three children did lots of kind deeds _________
| A．on March 5 | B．on March 8 | C．on March 4 | D．on March 3 |
Zhu Lingyue _______ on that day.
| A．cleaned the yard | B．cleaned the teachers’s office |
| C．cleaned a square | D．cleaned a hospital. |
Tom Rui thinks the patients in the hospital are ________
| A．kind | B．polit | C．happy | D．rude |
He was a single father, raising a 5-year-old boy alone. He worried about his son growing up without a mother to care for him.
One day he went away on business, leaving the child alone. He was worried about the child all the way, not knowing if he had eaten. But his child always told him not to worry. He went home quickly after finishing his work.
When he got home, the child was deep asleep. He was tired out. When he was about to sleep himself, he was surprised to find an overturned bowl of noodles under the quilt. He spanked his sleeping son angrily:"Why are you so naughty, making the quilt dirty? Who will wash it?" It was the first time that he had hit his boy after his wife's death.
"I haven't," the boy explained with tears in his eyes. "This is your supper, Daddy." In order to let his father eat dinner as soon as he got home, the boy cooked two bowls of noodles: one for himself, the other one for his father. He was afraid his father's noodles would get cold, so he placed them under the quilt to keep them hot.
Hearing this, the father hugged his boy tightly without saying a word. According to the passage we know the boy only had _________.
| A．a grandfather | B．a mother | C．a father | D．a grandmother |
The single father was always worried about ______.
| A．his work | B． his money | C．his son | D．his quilt |
When the father got home , __________________________
| A．His son wasn't at home. | B．He was tired out |
| C．His son was doing his homework | D．He was very happy. |
When the father knew the truth, _________.
| A．He hit his son | B．He was very upset. |
| C．He hugged his son tightly. | D．He went outside. |
Parents are a child’s first teachers. But some parents never learned from good examples. In New York City, Covenant House tries to help homeless young mothers become good parents.
The twelve or so teenagers who live at the shelter attend parenting classes four days a week. The class is called Mommy and Me.
Teacher Delores Clemens is a mother of five and a grandmother. She teaches basic skills, like how to give a baby a bath and how to dress a baby in different seasons.
She remembers one student who learned from her mother not to pick up a crying baby. The mother said that would only make the child needy.
“I said ‘That’s not true. You have to hold your baby! He is crying for a reason. If you never pick him up, he’s going to keep crying. Pick your baby up. Hug(拥抱)him! And she started to do that. They just want a little hugging and a little love. And it works!” Delores Clemens said.
Delores Clemens says her students also learn how to be good mothers by letting themselves be mothered. “I’m doing something for them that never has been done for them before.”
In class, with her baby son, is Natasha. She lived on the streets. She is glad not only for the warmth and shelter of Covenant House. As she told reporter Adam Phillips, she is also glad for the help they offer in looking for a safer life.
“Did you go to high school?”
“Yes.”
“Did you graduate?”
“No, I didn’t. I was in my last year and then, I got pregnant(怀孕)and I got lazy.”
“You look like you are willing to accept responsibility(责任)for that.”
“Yes, I am, and I would like to finish.”
Some teenage mothers wish they themselves could be children again. 18-year-old Placida knows that feeling. “Because you have to get up every two hours in the middle of the night, and you can’t go out and say ‘I am going to buy this for myself.’ No. I have to buy pampers, clothes and food. So now it’s two. So it’s very hard.” Placida said.What did Natasha want to finish high school for?
| A．To bring her high school life to an end. |
| B．To accept the responsibility to look after her baby. |
| C．To stop the chatting with Adam. |
| D．To end the relationship with her boyfriend. |
From what Placida said, we know that she thinks _______.
| A．looking after a baby needs love |
| B．having a baby costs more |
| C．being a mom is hard |
| D．loving comes from responsibility |
The passage is mainly about _______.
| A．a class where teen parents are looked after |
| B．a class where parents are teaching their children |
| C．a class where homeless mothers learn to find a job |
| D．a class where teens learn mothering and are mothered |
A Brown University sleep researcher has some advice for people who run high schools: Don’t start classes so early in the morning. It may not be that the students who nod off at their desks are lazy. And it may not be that their parents have failed to enforce(确保) bedtime. Instead, it may be that biologically(生物学上)these sleepyhead(贪睡者)students aren’t used to the early hour.
“Maybe these kids are being asked to rise at the wrong time for their bodies,” says Mary Carskadon, a professor looking at problem of adolescent (青春期的)sleep at Brown’s School of Medicine.
Carskadon is trying to understand more about the effects of early school time in adolescents. And, at a more basic level, she and her team are trying to learn more about how the biological changes of adolescence affect sleep needs and patterns(方式).
Carskadon says her work suggests that adolescents may need more sleep than they did at childhood, no less, as commonly thought.
Sleep patterns change during adolescence, as any parent of an adolescent can prove. Most adolescents prefer to stay up later at night and sleep later in the morning. But it’s not just a matter of choice---their bodies are going through a change of sleep patterns.
All of this makes the transfer(迁移)from middle school to high school---which may start one hour earlier in the morning----all the more difficult, Carskadon says. With their increased need for sleep and their biological clocks set on the “sleep late, rise late” pattern, adolescents are up against difficulties when they try to be up by 5 or 6 a.m. for a 7:30 a.m. first bell. A short sleep on a desktop may be their body’s way of saying. “I need a timeout.”Carskadon suggests that high schools should not start classes so early in the morning because _______.
| A．it is really tough for parents to enforce bedtime |
| B．it is biologically difficult for students to rise early |
| C．students work so late at night that they can’t get up early |
| D．students are so lazy that they don’t like to go to school early |
The underlined phrase nod off most probably means _______.
| A．turn around | B．agree with others | C．fall asleep | D．refuse to work |
What might be a reason for the hard transfer from middle school to high school?
| A．Adolescents depend more on their parents. |
| B．Adolescents have to choose their sleep patterns. |
| C．Adolescents sleep better than they did at childhood. |
| D．Adolescents need more sleep than they used to. |
What is the test mainly about?
| A．Adolescent health care. |
| B．Problems in adolescent learning. |
| C．Adolescent sleep difficulties. |
| D．Changes in adolescent sleep needs and patterns. |
For the 17 years my life was very happy. Then the first sad thing happened. My mother became very ill. Just before she died, she asked Elizabeth and me to go to her room. She said, “Victor and Elizabeth, I’m very happy because you love each other, and because one day you’ll get married. Everyone in the family loves you, Elizabeth. Will you take my place in the family, my dear? I can die happy if you look after them when I have gone.”
My mother died and we were very sad, because we loved her so much. Elizabeth was brave and helped us; her sweet smile gave us some happiness in the unhappy days after my mother’s death. The time came for me to go to university(大学). I didn’t want to leave my sad family, but we all knew that I should go. It was hard to leave, too, because the parents of my good friend Henry would not let him go to university with me. So I had gone alone.
On my first day at university I met Professor Waldman. He gave a wonderful talk to all the students. He ended his talk by saying, “Some of you will become the greatest scientists of tomorrow. You must study hard and discover everything that you can.”
After the professor’s talk, I thought very carefully. I remembered the storm when I was 15; I remembered how the lightning had destroyed the tree. From then on, I wanted to use electricity to help people, and I wanted to discover the secrets of life. I decided to work on these two things.
I started to work the next day. I worked very hard and soon Professor Waldman and I realized that I could learn to be a very good scientist.
The professor and other important scientists helped me. I was interested in my work and I did not take one day’s holiday during the next two years. After two years, I had discovered many things and I built a scientific machine that was the best in the university. My machine would help me answer the most important question of all. How does life begin? Is it possible to put life into dead things? To answer these questions about life I had to learn first about death. I had to watch bodies from the moment when they died and the warm life left them. In the hospital and in the university, I watched the dying and the dead. Day after day, month after month, I followed death, so it was a dark and terrible time.
I built a tall mast(桅杆)about 150 metres high, which is higher than the tallest building in the city, to catch lightning and send the electricity down to my machine in the lab. I believed I could use that electricity to give life to things that were dead.
Then one day, the answer came to me. Suddenly I was sure that I knew the secret of life.Which of the following is TRUE according to the passage?
| A．Elizabeth married shortly after Victor’s mother died. |
| B．Elizabeth was a brave girl who loved Victor and gave him much help. |
| C．Victor’s mother was very angry when she knew he loved Elizabeth. |
| D．Victor did not want to leave his family because his mother died not long before. |
Victor did all the following during his research in the university EXCEPT that ______.
| A．he discovered many things and built a scientific machine |
| B．he learnt much about death both in the hospital and in the university |
| C．he worked hard and took only one day’s holiday during the next two years |
| D．he built a tall mast to catch lightning and send the electricity down to the lab |
According to the writer, the secret of life is to _______.
| A．give life to things that were dead |
| B．build the best machine to learn about death |
| C．use electricity to help others |
| D．become the greatest scientist of tomorrow |
Which is the correct order about the life of Victor?
① Victor’s mother passed away.
② Victor got help from the professor and other scientists.
③ Victor went to university and attended the professor’s talk.
④ Victor found the answer to giving life to things that were dead.
⑤ Victor experienced a storm, seeing the lightning destroying the tree.
| A．①②③④⑤ | B．⑤①②④③ |
| C．①③②⑤④ | D．⑤①③②④ |