English is a very interesting language. It has borrowed words from many other languages. Immigrants(移民) coming into the United States have contributed many words to the language, which have kept their original pronunciation. “Coolie” and “kowtow” were taken from the Chinese language, “kamikaze from the Japanese, “shampoo” from India, “blitz” from German, “amigo” and “Los Angeles” from Spanish and so on.
Many students have studied English for years, some as many as eight. However, some students still have difficulty in speaking fluent English. Some know many words but are unable to discern them when native speakers use them. In our Oral English classes we will focus on speaking and listening to native English speakers. For this reason, because we are trying to train your ears to hear English and your mouths to speak intelligible (易理解的) English, we will have a rule that ONLY ENGLISH will be spoken in our English classes. Anyone speaking Chinese in class will be required to pay a fine(罚款) in order to encourage the speaking and understanding of English. If teachers enter a classroom and discover that anyone is speaking Chinese, they will require everyone in the room to pay the fine. It is everyone’s job to enforce the English-Only rule. It is for your benefit. It is because we want to accustom (使习惯于) your ears to hearing English.
Other subjects may be learned only from books but the only way to learn a foreign language is to SPEAK IT! Students are often nervous about speaking in class at first but we hope to make the classes fun, so you will forget your nervousness and learn to speak out. Enjoy your classes.The first paragraph is mainly about________.
| A．the difficulty of learning English. |
| B．different words in different languages |
| C．how interesting and various English is |
| D．the immigrants’ contributions to America |
The underlined word “discern” in Para 2 can be replaced by___________.
| A．notice | B．understand |
| C．hear | D．speak |
In the author’s opinion, the only way to learn a language well is to__________.
| A．listen to it on the radio |
| B．learn it from books |
| C．play games with it |
| D．speak it often |
The article is probably aimed at________.
| A．Japanese students | B．German students |
| C．Chinese students | D．Indian students |
One day, Soapy Smith and I visited a shelter for badly-treated women located in a deserted section of the city. No one smiled a greeting, and they appeared uninterested in Soapy. One little girl in particular moved like a wisp (纤弱的小东西) in the background. The staff informed me that she had been there for over a month and had not spoken the entire time. Her mother said she had talked at one time but not in recent memory. I didn't want to imagine what could have happened to rob this little girl of the natural curiosity and enthusiasm so natural to childhood.
Spreading a blanket on the floor, I sat down and put Soapy on the blanket. As the silent child circled past me, I told the group that Soapy would come to talk to them if they sat on his blanket. Several children did this, including the silent girl. She sat rigidly at the edge of the blanket, legs held stiffly out straight in front of her. She was staring hard at Soapy. It appeared that he kept making eye contact with her. She didn't reach out to him or encourage him in any way. Rather she sat tensely, just staring.
Finally Soapy came to a stop about two inches from her. He quietly reached out and laid his chin on her knee. I was astonished. While a common behavior for dogs, this is not a behavior exhibited by rabbits, especially not by this rabbit.
The child did not reach out to touch Soapy. Instead, she slowly leaned toward him. When her face was within inches of his, she carefully reached out and circled him with her arms. So softly that no one in the room could hear, she began to talk. Folded around the rabbit, she pillowed her head on his back and whispered to him. Soapy remained motionless.
I looked up and noticed that the shelter workers had stopped talking. Every adult in the room froze in place. Time seemed to have stopped.
The little girl reappeared when I was preparing to leave. She reached her hands out and looked me directly in the eye. I held Soapy out to her. She wrapped him in a big hug and pressed her face against him. Suspended (悬挂) from my hands as he was, I was concerned that he would begin to struggle. Instead he reached out his head again and laid it on the child's shoulder. His breathing slowed and he closed his eyes. As quickly as it happened, the little girl released her hug and stepped back. As she turned away, I thought I saw the beginnings of a faint smile.
The rabbit in his cloud of soft, warm fur had touched something deep in the child — something that had died from too much hard experience. Soapy's innocence and trust appeared to arouse those very same qualities in the little girl. It seems the language of the heart is simple after all.The little girl didn't speak any word because ___________.
| A．she liked staying silent and still |
| B．she had no friends to talk with |
| C．she had too much hard experience |
| D．the people in the shelter all kept silent |
What is the correct order of the following events?
a. The little girl gave a faint smile.
b. Soapy reached out and laid his chin on her knee.
c. The little girl carefully reached out and circled him with her arms.
d. Soapy's breathing slowed and he closed his eyes.
e. The little girl began to whisper to Soapy.
| A．c; b; e; d; a | B．b; c; d; e; a |
| C．b; c; e; d; a | D．c; b; d; e; a |
The author's purpose of writing the passage is to tell us ___________.
| A．a moving story about a lonely girl who hasn't talked for years |
| B．to pay more attention to those children who have been deserted by their parents |
| C．a lot of kind people around us are offering help to those in need |
| D．the heart-to-heart communication between animal and human is powerful |
The best title for this passage may be ___________.
| A．Soapy Smith and A Little Girl |
| B．A Great Surprise |
| C．The Language of The Heart |
| D．Human Beings and Animals |
After students come home from a tiring day at school, they tend to worry a lot about their homework.
Whether students are working on English or chemistry homework, they are simply working on the assignment in order to get it done, attempting to memorize the concepts for the time being and do not absorb any of the information afterward. Students are wasting their time on insignificant assignments rather than effectively using that time to achieve other accomplishments. According to www.dailymail.com, many parents are concerned that homework is being assigned rather than being used to integrate what teachers are covering in the classroom. In their eyes, if less homework is assigned, students would have much less stress and could focus more on their passions and hobbies.
Homework gets in the way of participating in community service events as well as opportunities for getting a job or being a part of an extra-curricular activity. These responsibilities are important for teenagers to take on because they prepare the teenagers for the "real world." Without the proper exposure to work that is not school related, students will find themselves lost after they graduate. If homework were no longer given, students would have a lot more time to mature in other fields rather than being educated only on academics.
In spite of the fact that teachers want students to do better on tests and absorb the material that they are teaching, homework is not accomplishing its purpose. Because school is becoming increasingly more competitive and challenging, homework is becoming a setback rather than extra practice. Its removal would benefit the well being of teenagers as well as encourage them to get out in the "real world" and discover themselves instead of staring at a pile of assignments.Students are wasting their time on insignificant homework because___________.
| A．they are working on it carelessly and hurriedly |
| B．they attempt to get only part of the information memorized |
| C．they spend too much time doing it without understanding |
| D．they fail to take in the information after finishing it |
From the third paragraph, we can infer that homework might ___________.
| A．guarantee students more job opportunities |
| B．make students lose the sense of responsibilities |
| C．weaken students' social adaptation ability |
| D．cause students to feel lost after graduation |
The author insists that homework should be ___________.
| A．made simpler and easier |
| B．got rid of |
| C．connected with social activities |
| D．switched over to subject competitions |
In the case of mobile phones, change is everything. Recent research indicates that the mobile phone is changing not only our culture, but our very bodies as well.
First, let’s talk about culture. The difference between the mobile phone and its parent, the fixed-line phone, is that a mobile number corresponds to a person, while a landline goes to a place. If you call my mobile, you get me. If you call my fixed-line phone, you get whoever answers it.
This has several implications（含义）. The most common one, however, and perhaps the thing that has changed our culture forever, is the “meeting” influence. People no longer need to make firm plans about when and where to meet. Twenty years ago, a Friday night would need to be arranged in advance. You needed enough time to allow everyone to get from their place of work to the first meeting place. Now, however, a night out can be arranged on the run. It is no longer “see you there at 8”,but “text me around 8 and we’ll see where we all are.”
Texting changes people as well. In their paper, “Insights into the Social and Psychological Effects of SMS (Short Message Service) Text Messaging", two British researchers distinguished between two types of mobile phone users: the “talkers” and the “texters”－those who prefer voice to text messages and those who prefer text to voice.
They found that the mobile phone’s individuality and privacy gave texters the ability to express a whole new outer personality. Texters were likely to report that their family would be surprised if they were to read their texts. This suggests that texting allowed texters to present a self-image that differed from the one familiar to those who knew them well.
Another scientist wrote of the changes that mobiles have brought to body language. There are two kinds that people use while speaking on the phone. There is the “speakeasy”: the head is held high, in a self-confident way, chatting away. And there is the “spacemaker”: these people focus on themselves and keep out other people.
Who can blame them? Phone meetings get cancelled or reformed and camera- phones intrude（侵入）on people’s privacy. So, it is understandable if your mobile makes you nervous. But perhaps you needn’t worry so much. After all, it is good to talk. The “meeting” influence of a mobile phone refers to the fact that ________.
| A．people can arrange their meeting place and time more flexibly |
| B．people have to make a firm plan about when and where to meet |
| C．people are able to meet someone at any place and any time |
| D．people have to attend phone meetings than ever before |
According to the two British researchers, the Social and Psychological Effects are most likely to be seen on ________.
| A．talkers | B．the “speakeasy” |
| C．the “spacemaker” | D．texters |
Which of the following can be the best title of the passage?
| A．The Influence of Short Message Service |
| B．Changes Caused by Mobile Phone Use |
| C．Changes in the Use of the Mobile |
| D．Body Language and the Mobile Phone |
My parents have certainly had their troubles, and as their child I’ll never know how they made it to 38 years of marriage. They loved each other, but they didn’t seem to like each other very much. Dad was too fond of his beer, and he talked down to Mom a lot. When she tried to stand up to him, a fight would unavoidably follow.
It was my dad’s disease that began to change things. The year 1998 was the beginning of a remarkable transformation for my family. My father, Jim Dineen, the always healthy, weightlifting, never-missed-a-day-of-work kind of dad, discovered he had kidney (肾)disease.
The decision to go ahead with a transplant for my father was a long and tough one, mostly because he had liver damage too. One physician’s assistant told him, “According to your file, you’re supposed to be dead.” And for a while, doctors mistakenly thought that he would need not just a kidney transplant, but a liver transplant too. Dad’s future hung in midpoint.
When the donor testing process finally began in the spring of 2003, numerous people, including me, my uncle Tom, and my mom, came back as matches of varying degree. But Mom was the one who insisted on going further. She decided to donate a kidney to my father. She said she was not scared, and it was the right thing to do. We all stepped back in amazement.
At last a date was chosen – November 11, 2003. All of a sudden, the only thing that seemed to matter Dad was telling the world what a wonderful thing Mom was doing for him. A month before the surgery, he sent her birthday flowers with a note that read, “I love you and I love your kidney! Thank you!”
Financially, the disease was upsetting to them. So my sister and I were humbled and surprised when, shortly before his surgery day, Dad handed us a diamond jewelry that we were to give to Mom after the operation. He’d accumulated his spare dollars to buy it.
At the hospital on the day of the transplant, all our relatives and friends gathered in the waiting room and became involved in a mean euchre (尤克牌游戏) tournament. My family has always handled things with a lot of laughter, and even though we were all tense, everybody was taking bets on how long this “change of conduct” would last in my parents.
We would inform Dad that if he chose to act like a real pain on any particular day after the operation, he wasn’t allowed to blame it on PMS just because he’d now have a female kidney.
The surgeries went well, and not long afterward, my sister and I were allowed to go in to visit. Dad was in a great deal of pain but again, all he could talk about was Mom. Was she okay? How was she feeling? Then the nurses let us do something unconventional. As they were wheeling Mom out of recovery room, they rolled her into a separate position to visit Dad. It was strange to see both my parents hooked up to IVs and machines and trying to talk to each other through tears. The nurses allowed us to present the diamond jewelry to Mom so that Dad could watch her open it. Everyone was crying, even the nurses.
As I stood with digital camera in hand, I tried to keep the presence of mind to document the moment. My dad was having a hard time fighting back emotion, and suddenly my parents unexpectedly reached out to hold each other’s hands.
In my nearly 35 years of existence, I’d never seen my parents do that, and I was spellbound. I snapped a picture and later rushed home to make sure I’d captured that enormous, life-defining moment. After so many years of disagreement, it was apparent to me that they finally understood how much each loved the other.The underlined part “Dad’s future hung in midpoint” in Para.3 suggests that ____________.
| A．Dad was bound to die |
| B．Dad came to a serious moment in his life |
| C．Dad’s future was decided by doctors |
| D．Dad faced a tough decision in his life |
Before the surgery, which of the following words can best describe the feeling of the families?
| A．Worried and negative. | B．Anxious and helpless. |
| C．Nervous but optimistic. | D．Relaxed and positive. |
Which of the following is TRUE according the passage?
| A．Dad bought a diamond jewelry to Mom for their wedding anniversary. |
| B．Dad asked the nurse to visit Mom soon after the operation. |
| C．Despite a lot of pain, Dad was eager to know Mom’s condition soon after the operation. |
| D．On the day of the transplant, the families involved in a euchre tournament to entertain themselves. |
What’s the best title for the passage?
| A．Dad’s disease | B．Mom’s decision |
| C．The Gift of Life | D．The photo of hands |
Write a winning story!
You could win ￡1,000 in this year’s Fiction Prize and have your story printed in Keep Writing magazine. Ten other lucky people will win a cheque for ￡100.
Once again, we need people who can write good stories. The judges, who include Mary Littlejohn, the novelist, Michael Brown, the television reporter, and Susan Hitchins, the editor of Keep Writing, are looking for interesting and original stories. Detective fiction was extremely popular last year, although the competition winner produced a love story. You can write down about whatever you want but here’s some advice to start your thinking:
Write about what you know
This is the advice which every writer should pay attention to and, last year, nearly everyone who wrote for us did exactly that. Love, family, problems with friends ---- these were the main subjects of the stories. However, you need to turn ordinary situations into something interesting that people will want to read about. Make the reader want to continue reading by writing about ordinary things in a new and surprising way.
Get your facts right
It’s no good giving a description of a town or explaining how a jet engine works if you get it wrong. So avoid writing anything unless you’re certain about it.
Hold the reader’s attention
Make the beginning interesting and the ending a surprise. There is nothing worse than a poor ending. Develop the story carefully and try to think of something unusual happening at the end.
Think about the characters
Try to bring the people in your story alive for the reader by using well-chosen words to make them seem real.
Your story must be your own work, between 2,000 and 2,5000 words and typed, double-spaced, on one side only of each sheet of paper.
Even if you’re in danger of missing the closing date, we are unable to accept stories by fax or email. You must include the application form with your story. Unfortunately your story cannot be returned, nor can we discuss our decisions.
You should not have had any fiction printed in any magazine or book in this country ---- a change in the rules by popular request ---- and the story must not have happened in print or in recorded form, for example on radio or TV, anywhere in the world.
Your fee of ￡5 will go to the Writers’ Association. Make your cheque payable to Keep Writing and send it with the application form and your story to:
Keep Writing
75 Broad Street Birmingham
B12 4TG
The closing date is 30 July and we will inform the winner within one month of this date. Please note that if you win, you must agree to have your story printed in our magazine.How should writers deal with ordinary situations while writing?
| A．They should make them appealing to readers. |
| B．They should copy others’ ideas. |
| C．They should change some facts to make them interesting. |
| D．They should describe them as they are. |
What shouldn’t a writer do?
| A．Making the contents interesting. |
| B．Getting the facts right. |
| C．Meeting the deadline. |
| D．Making the end ordinary. |
Writers should present their works in the following ways except that ____________.
| A．they should write originally |
| B．they can type their stories as they like |
| C．they should follow some rules |
| D．they should hand in their stories in time |
Which of the following is TRUE according to the passage?
| A．Late stories can be faxed if necessary. |
| B．Entry needs no fee. |
| C．Winners can have their stories printed in other magazines. |
| D．All stories should be presented by mail. |