Once upon a time, there was a lovely vegetable field, on which grew a very thick tree. Both the vegetables and the tree gave the place a wonderful appearance, which was the joy of the garden’s owner. What no one knew was that the vegetables in the field and the tree couldn’t stand each other. The vegetables hated the tree’s shadow, because it left them only just enough light to survive. The tree, on the other hand, hated the vegetables because they drank nearly all the water before it could get to him, leaving him with just enough to survive.
The situation became so extreme that the vegetables got totally fed up and decided to use up all the water in the ground so that the tree would dry up. The tree answered back by refusing to give the vegetables shadow from the hot midday sun, so they both began to dry up. Before long, the vegetables were really thin and the tree’s branches were drying up.
Neither of them thought that the gardener, on seeing his vegetable field becoming worse, would stop watering it. When he did that, both the tree and the vegetables really learned what thirst was. There seemed to be no solution, but one of the vegetables, a small courgette（小胡瓜）, understood what was going on, and decided to deal with it. Despite the little water and the unbearable heat, the little courgette did all he could to grow, grow...He managed to grow so big that the gardener started watering the field again. The gardener wanted to enter that beautiful big courgette in some gardening contest.
And so the vegetables and the tree realized that it was better to help each other than to fight. They should really learn how to live in harmony with those around them, doing the best they could. So they decided to work together, using both the shadow and the water in the best combination to grow good vegetables. Seeing how well they were doing, the gardener now gave the best of care to his vegetable field, watering it better than any other field for miles around.What is the problem between the tree and the vegetables?
| A．They looked down upon each other. |
| B．They didn’t leave water to each other. |
| C．They couldn’t stand each other. |
| D．They didn’t know how to protect themselves. |
What is the result of the fight between the tree and the vegetables?
| A．They grew taller and stronger. |
| B．They were both drying up. |
| C．The tree defeated the vegetables. |
| D．The vegetables defeated the tree. |
The courgette thought of ways to solve the conflict by .
| A．making peace with the tree |
| B．working together with other vegetables |
| C．entering the gardening contests |
| D．growing big enough |
What can we learn from this passage?
| A．We ought to live in harmony with others. |
| B．We ought to save as much water as possible. |
| C．We ought to learn from each other in some ways. |
| D．We ought to learn to respect each other. |
Dear Guys,
I’d like to talk to you about the shame you subjected me to last night. Let me first refresh your memory: You, a group of fit, young men, were playing soccer on the field across from my apartment building. I, a better-than-average looking young woman, was walking along the sidewalk with my groceries. That’s when your ball came flying over the fence and landed in front of me.
One of you approached and asked politely if I would throw the ball back to you. Fighting the urge to drop my bags and run screaming down the street, I reluctantly agreed.
Before I continue, let me explain something that I didn’t have a chance to mention last night: I hate sports. More specifically, I hate sports involving balls. This results from my lack of natural ability when it comes to throwing, catching and hitting. I’m bad at aiming too. So you can understand why I’d be nervous at what I’m sure seemed to you like a laughably simple request.However, wanting to appear agreeable, I put my bags down, picked up the ball and, eyes half-shut, and threw it as hard as I could.
It hit the middle of the fence and bounced back to me.
Trying to act casually, I said something about being out of practice, then picked up the ball again. If you’ll remember, at your command, I agreed to try throwing underhand. While outwardly I was smiling, in my head, I was praying, Oh God, oh please oh please oh please. I threw the ball upward with all my strength, terrified by what happened next.
The ball hit slightly higher up on the fence and bounced back to me.
This is the point where I start to take issue with you. Wouldn’t it have been a better use of your time, and mine, if you had just walked around the fence and took the ball then? I was clearly struggling; my smiles were more and more forced. And yet, you all just stood there, motionless.
Seeing that you weren’t going to let me out of the trouble, I became desperate. Memories of middle school softball came flooding back. I tried hard to throw the ball but it only went about eight feet, then I decided to pick it up and dash with ball in hand towards the baseline, while annoyed thirteen-year-old boys screamed at me that I was ruining their lives. Children are cruel.Being a big girl now, I pushed those memories aside and picked up the soccer ball for the third time. I forced a good-natured laugh while crying inside as you patiently shouted words of support over the fence at me.
“Throw it granny-style!” one of you said.
“Just back up a little and give it all you’ve got!” another offered.
And, most embarrassing of all, “You can do it!”
I know you thought you were being encouraging, but it only served to deepen the shame.
Anyway, I accepted your ball-throwing advice, backed up, rocked back and forth a little, took a deep breath and let it fly.
It hit the edge of the fence and bounced back to me.
I surprised myself --- and I’m sure you as well --- by letting out a cry, “DAMN IT!!!” I then willed myself to have a heart attack and pass out in front of you just so I’d be put out of my misery. Alas, the heart attack didn’t happen, and you continued to look at me expectantly, like you were content to do this all night. I had become a sort of exhibition for you. I could feel your collective thoughts drifting through the chain-link: “Can she really not do it? But I mean, really?”
Unfortunately for you, I wasn’t really game to continue your experiment. Three failed attempts at a simple task in front of a group of people in a two-minute period was just enough blow for me for one night. I picked up the ball one last time, approached the fence and grumbled, “Please just come get the damn ball.”
And you did. And thanks to you, I decided at that very moment to never throw anything ever again, except disrespectful glances at people who play sports.
Sincerely, Jen Cordery The writer agreed to throw the ball because _______.
| A．she needed to have a relax carrying the heavy groceries |
| B．she wanted to refresh her childhood memories |
| C．she could not refuse the polite request from the young man |
| D．she had fallen in love with the young man at first sight |
Which of the following is closest in meaning to the underlined word “game”?
| A．anxious | B．brave | C．afraid | D．curious |
Why did the writer mention her middle school memory?
| A．To explain why she failed the attempts to throw the ball back. |
| B．To complain that she had not mastered the ball throwing skills. |
| C．To show how cruel those 13-year-old boys were. |
| D．To express her dislike towards softball. |
What the boys said before the writer’s third attempt actually made the writer ________.
| A．inspired | B．encouraged | C．embarrassed | D．depressed |
What’s the writer’s purpose in writing this open letter?
| A．To express her regret over what she did the day before. |
| B．To announce that she would never play ball games again. |
| C．To explain her own inability to throw the ball over the fence. |
| D．To criticize the young men for their cruelty to her dignity. |
Still seeking a destination for your long summer holidays? There is a good place which may be your favorite option.
Arts of Hope is an overnight performing arts summer camp in Saint Paul, Minnesota, the USA for kids aged 10 and older from around the world. More than just a performing arts camp, Arts of Hope offers participants a unique opportunity to live with kids from other cultures while learning and performing music from many countries.
Each summer, up to 75 children venture to Minnesota from Europe, Asia, Africa, Latin America, the Middle East, and the US. They arrive as strangers but soon become friends as they learn popular songs and dances from each other’s cultures. The lessons learned during these six weeks are profound. The friendships are enduring. And the stories are inspirational. Taking part in the Arts of Hope camp is a life-changing experience.
DATES
The Arts of Hope 2013 session will run from June 17 to July 30. Because Arts of Hope is a global camp, it is impossible for us to schedule the program to fit all the school schedules of all the schools in the world. Therefore, we understand that some participants may need to arrive late or leave early. Don’t let that stop you from applying! We are happy to make special arrangements as needed. Just send us an email to explain your scheduling challenges. We are happy to arrange a special study room for late arrivals to make up for the missed lessons.
PARTICIPANT FEE
For the 2013 summer, the fee for new, first-time participants is $2,950, subject to the special discounts offered below.
SPECIAL DISCOUNTS
If you apply before February 28, you can get a special fee reduction of $100. Also, there is a 20% fee discount for additional participants from your family if you have a brother or sister who is a Arts of Hope participant. The discount applies to the second, third, and any other additional siblings attending in the same year from the same family.
Apply early to assure your place! Please sign up now! Which of the following statement is not true?
| A．The camp will last more than one month. |
| B．The discount applies to the third sibling from the same family. |
| C．Kids can learn more about different cultures. |
| D．You’d better sign up for the camp early. |
If you leave early or arrive late, what will happen ?
| A．They will make up for the missed lessons. |
| B．You will have to attend the next year’s camp. |
| C．They will give you a special discount. |
| D．You will have to miss some lessons. |
If you and your sister apply for the first time on May 16, how much will both of you pay in total？
| A．$4，720 | B．$5，310 | C．$5，900 | D．$5，700 |
Recently the busiest person on the Internet is absolutely Yuanfang, a fictional figure from the Chinese TV series “Detective Di Renjie”. In the TV series, Li was often asked by Di, “How do you see it, Yuanfang?” Then, the dialogues between them help advance the plot. Now, the casual pet phrase is used as many as 2.5 million times by netizens in a single day, according to statistics.
In fact, it is not the first popular sentence pattern on the Internet. Many other types of popular network words include those evolved from “the slogans of Vancl(凡客网)” and actor’s lines of “The Legend of Concubine Zhen Huan”.
The explosive spread of the sentence “How do you see it, Yuanfang?” again proved the vast power of the network spread. The appearance of a buzzword(流行词) on the Internet may be coincidental, but the spread of numerous buzzwords has started a social and cultural phenomenon. It is more noticeable that the spread is not a deliberate choice but by chance. Usually, everyone has known about it, except the one concerned.
The appearance of buzzwords is resulting from the agreement of netizens. If something is new and interesting enough, it will cause public attention.
The rise of these buzzwords also benefits from their strong “adhesive(粘着的) force”. After analyzing these buzzwords, we find that they have a common character, namely “novel in structure but empty in content”. Therefore, any concrete contents can be added in these buzzwords, creating fantastic results.
Taking the “Yuanfang-style” as an example, its popularity displayed a social mentality of questioning. Although it seems a little funny to ask “Yuanfang”, a fictional character, and some people even find it boring. This way of asking a question reveals a valuable quality-listening. The Internet provides a space for everyone to express their views, but it also causes controversies. What’s your opinion, Yuanfang?We can learn from the passage that Yuanfang.
| A．is the busiest person in modern industrial societies |
| B．plays an important role in a Chinese TV series |
| C．is a fictional figure currently popular with netizens |
| D．starts a social and cultural phenomenon by himself |
What does the underlined words “a deliberate choice” in Paragraph3 mean?
| A．a choice made on purpose | B．a choice made by accident |
| C．a choice done in person | D．a choice done at ease |
Which of the following is TRUE according to the passage?
| A．The dialogues between Di Renjie and Yuanfang help understand the network buzzwords. |
| B．The “Yuanfang-style” suggests once again that the power of the network spread is quite vast. |
| C．The spread of numerous buzzwords has started a social development of structure and content. |
| D．The result of the netizens’ agreement directly leads to the rise of some socially strong problems. |
What can we infer from the last passage?
| A．People benefited from the Internet on which they can learn a lot about real society. |
| B．People learned about some controversies from the Internet and decided to deal with them. |
| C．People provided a space through which they can display their own criminal mentality. |
| D．People found out a place where they can question and express their different views. |
A new study suggests that sad music might actually arouse positive emotions. The finding helps to explain why people enjoy listening to sad music, say Ai Kawakami and her colleagues from Tokyo University of the Arts and the RIKEN Brain Science Institute, Japan. Ai Kawakami and her colleagues asked 44 volunteers, including both musicians and nonspecialists, to listen to two pieces of sad music and one piece of happy music. Each participant was required to use a set of keywords to rate both their perception(观念) of the music and their own emotional state.
The sad pieces of music included Glinka’s La Separation in F minor and Blumenfeld’s Etude Sur Mer in G minor. The happy music piece was Granados’s Allegro de Concierto in G major. To control the “happy” effect of major key, they also played the minor key(小调) pieces in major key, and vise versa.
The researchers explained that sad music aroused contradictory emotions because the participants of the study tended to feel sad to be more tragic and less romantic than they felt themselves while listening to it.
“ In general, sad music causes sadness in listeners, and sadness is regarded as an unpleasant emotion. If sad music actually arouses only unpleasant emotion, we would not listen to it,” the researchers wrote in the study.
“Music that is believed as sad actually causes romantic emotion as well as sad emotion.And people, regardless of their musical training, experience this ambivalent(矛盾的) emotion to listen to the sad music,” added the researchers.
Also, unlike sadness in daily life, sadness experienced through art actually feels pleasant, possibly because the latter does not cause an actual threat to our safety. This could help people to deal with their negative emotions in daily life, concluded the authors.
“Emotion experienced by music has no direct danger or harm unlike the emotion experienced in everyday life. Therefore, we can even enjoy unpleasant emotion such as sadness. If we suffer from unpleasant emotion aroused through daily life, sad music might be helpful to alleviate negative emotion,” they added. People enjoy listening to sad music because _______.
| A．sad music may help arouse positive emotions |
| B．sad music can make people relax |
| C．Sad music has a positive effect on people’s health |
| D．many experts recommend people to listen to sad music |
We can learn from the passage that _______.
| A．sad music only causes sadness in listeners |
| B．Only musicians were invited to take part in the survey |
| C．The volunteers were asked to listen to three pieces of music in all |
| D．Granados’s Allegro de Concierto in G major can cause positive emotions |
The underlined word “alleviate” in the last paragraph means “ ”.
| A．add | B．strengthen | C．cause | D．reduce |
What is the main idea of this passage?
| A．People should listen to sad music. |
| B．Happy music can make people sad. |
| C．Sad music may actually cause positive emotions. |
| D．Sad music is really bad to people. |
My husband and I had just opened up a pet sitting business earlier that year. Our customers had slowly risen from three to thirty a month. We were busy through those hot summer months, driving between visits. Our services were strictly held at the pet owner’s home. It was almost too busy for the two of us, but we were making good money!
We asked pet owners new to our services to phone two weeks ahead so we had enough time to meet the owners and pets at their homes and make any following meetings before the owner leaves.
One day, we decided to take on a new customer just two days before they would leave. We met the family, filled in a form, and spent some time with their dog, Hercules. He playfully jumped on us and touched our hands and arms using his tongue. The family laughed as he did this, showing us that he was very loving.
Two days later I appeared at the house, alone. I came up to Hercules and said hello happily. I filled up his water bowl and cleaned any messes he made. Meanwhile, he was so lovely sitting beside. I thought this would be the good picture to send to the owners, a usual service. After the light and “click” sound went off, Hercules rushed at me. I didn’t know what had just happened until I noticed the drops of blood. I ran out and did the only thing — calling my husband.
Then I went to neighbors for help. My husband arrived after ten minutes. The helpful neighbor and my husband led Hercules back into his pen (圈). Then my husband and I took off to the hospital.
I must have looked like I was shot when I walked into the hospital. The nurses quickly moved me to a room. I asked the doctor in a weak but playful manner, “ Am I going to die？” He replied, “Finally.”According to the text, the author’s work was .
| A．tiring and dangerous | B．easy and free |
| C．well paid | D．done outdoors |
What did the author often do during her work?
| A．Cleaning the clients’ house. |
| B．Walking the pets outside. |
| C．Bringing the pets to her own house. |
| D．Taking a photo of pets to the owners. |
It can be inferred from the text that the author was attacked because .
| A．Hercules feared the sound and the flash |
| B．the author attacked Hercules first |
| C．Hercules was very hungry then |
| D．the author treated Hercules badly |
The doctor’s answer gave us a sense of .
| A．anger | B．humor | C．carelessness | D．patience |