It was Thanksgiving morning. I was busy preparing the traditional Thanksgiving turkey when the doorbell rang. I opened the front door and saw two small children in rags huddling together on the top step.
“Any old papers, lady？” asked one of them.
I was busy. I wanted to say “no” until I looked down at their feet. They were wearing thin little sandals, wet with heavy snow.
“Come in and I'll make you a cup of hot cocoa.”
They walked over and sat down at the table. Their wet sandals left marks upon the floor. I served them cocoa and bread to fight against the cold outside. Then I went back to the kitchen and started cooking.
The silence in the front room struck me. I looked in. The girl held the empty cup in her hands, looking at it. The boy asked in a flat voice, “Lady, are you rich？”
“Am I rich? Pity, no！”
I looked at my wornout slipcovers(椅套). The girl put her cup back in its saucer (碟) carefully and said, “Your cups match your saucers.” They left after that, holding their papers against the wind. They had reminded me that I had so much for which to be grateful.
Plain blue china cups and saucers were only worth five pence. But they matched.
I tasted the potatoes and stirred the meat soup. Potatoes and brown meat soup, a roof over our heads, my man with a regular job, these matched, too.
I moved the chairs back from the fire and cleaned the living room. The muddy marks of little sandals were still wet upon my floor. Let them be for a while, I thought, just in case I should begin to forget how rich I am.Which of the following would be the best title for the text?
| A．Lady, are you rich? |
| B．A story of Thanksgiving Day |
| C．Don't forget how rich you are |
| D．Does cups and saucers match well? |
The writer let the two children come in and served them well because________.
| A．she wanted to sell old papers to them |
| B．she showed great pity and care on them |
| C．she wanted to invite them to her Thanksgiving party |
| D．she had the same experience as them in the past |
Which of the following statements is NOT true according to the passage?
| A．The girl thought the writer was rich just because she wanted to make the writer happy. |
| B．The writer had thought she wasn't rich because her supplies were not expensive. |
| C．If cups and saucers match well, they are a best pair even though cheap. |
| D．After hearing what they said, the writer seemed to understand what a rich life was. |
The writer left the muddy marks of little sandals on the floor for a while to________.
| A．show that she was a kindhearted lady |
| B．leave room for readers to think about what being rich is |
| C．remind her that she shouldn't forget how rich she was |
| D．prove that she had understood what meant being rich |
It can be inferred from the text that whether you are rich depends on________.
| A．how much money you have made |
| B．what attitude you have had towards life |
| C．the way you help others |
| D．your social relationship |
How to apologize properly is much more difficult than we think. Provided you want to teach your children to apologize, you must be good at saying sorry yourself, especially to your own children. But how you say it can be quite tricky.
If you say to your children “I’m sorry I got angry with you, but …” what follows that “but” can make the apology ineffective: “I had a bad day” or “your noise was giving me a headache ” leaves the person feeling that he should be apologizing for his bad behavior in expecting an apology.
Another method by which people appear to apologize without actually doing so is to say “I’m sorry you’re upset”; this suggests that you are somehow at fault for allowing yourself to get upset by what the other person has done.
Then there is the general, all covering apology, which avoids the necessity of identifying a specific act that was particularly hurtful or insulting, and which the person who is apologizing should promise never to do again. Saying “I’m useless as a parent” does not make any sense.
These false apologies are used by people who believe saying sorry shows weakness. Parents who wish to teach their children to apologize should see it as a sign of strength, and therefore not voice these false apologies.
But even when presented with examples of really being sorry, children still need help to become aware of the complexities of saying sorry. A three-year-old might need help in understanding that other children feel pain just as he does, and that hitting a playmate over the head with a heavy toy requires an apology. A six-year-old might need reminding that spoiling other children’s expectations can require an apology. A 12-year-old might need to be shown that taking the biscuit without asking permission is acceptable, but that borrowing a parent’s clothes without permission is not. If a mother adds “but” to an apology,________.
| A．the child may feel that he owes her an apology |
| B．she knows that the child has been hurt |
| C．the child may find the apology easier to accept |
| D．she feels that she should have apologized |
According to the author, saying “I’m sorry you’re upset” most probably means “_______”.
| A．You have good reason to get upset |
| B．I apologize for hurting your feelings |
| C．I’m aware you’re upset , but I’m not to blame |
| D．I’m at fault for making you upset |
We learn from the last paragraph that iiS teaching children to say sorry
A. the complexities involved should be ignored
B. parents need to set them a good example
C. their ages should be taken into account
D parents should be patient and tolerantIt can be inferred from the passage that apologizing properly is
| A． to say sorry in a general way |
| B． a way to improve your relationships |
| C． a sign of social progress and social harmony |
| D．not as simple as it seems |
The cash machine is 47 years old, but where was the birthplace of this world-beating invention? New York? Tokyo? No. The first ever cash machine was born in Enfield Town, north London. It was a Scottish inventor, John shepherd Barron, who realized the concept of a self-service machine that could be used 24 hours a day, seven days a week, to withdraw cash from one’s own bank account. It struck the inventor while he was in the bath. He hit upon the idea of a chocolate bar dispenser, replacing chocolate with cash.
On September 2 in 1969, America’s first automatic teller machine (ATM) appeared in public, giving out cash to customers at Chemical Bank, New York. It was only able to give out cash, but in 1971, an ATM that could handle many functions, including depositing(存款) money, was introduced. Today there are over one million ATMs around the world, with a new one added every five minutes. It is reported that Americans over the age of 18 use their ATM card six to eight times a mouth. Not surprisingly, ATMs get their busiest workouts on Fridays. In the 1990s, banks began charging fees to use ATMs, a profitable move for them and an annoying one for consumers.
Consumers were also faced with an increase in ATM crimes. Robbers preyed(抢夺) on people using money machines in poorly lit or otherwise unsafe locations, and criminals also thought up ways to steal customers’ PINs (personal identification numbers), even setting up fake money machines to capture the information. In response, city and state governments passed laws such as New York’s ATM Safety Act in 1996, which required banks to install such things as surveillance cameras (监控摄像头), reflective mirrors and locked entryways for their ATMs.What does the underlined word, “It”, in the first paragraph, probably refer to?
| A．The opening time of the bank. |
| B．The concept of an ATM. |
| C．Ordinary banking service. |
| D．The act of withdrawing cash. |
Which of the following is true about ATM?
| A．It appeared earlier than the chocolate bar dispenser. |
| B．It was invented by a Scottish man in 1971. |
| C．It was at first free of charge for its consumers. |
| D．It was originally designed to deposit money. |
What can we learn from the text? "
| A． Americans under the age of 18 are not allowed to have an ATM card. |
| B． People are more likely to turn to ATMs for banking service on Fridays. |
| C． Criminals usually choose unsafe locations to steal customers' PINs. |
| D． The ATM crime rate in New York is much lower than that in other state |
Which of the following might be the best title for the text?
| A． How to Operate on an ATM |
| B． What is Waiting for ATMs in the Future? |
| C． The First ATM Opened for Business |
| D．The Unknown Truth about ATM |
I had an experience once which taught me something about the ways people made a bad situation worse by blaming themselves. One January, I officiated(主持) at two funerals for two elderly women. Both died a natural death. At the first home, the son of the deceased(已故) woman said, “If only I had sent my mother to Florida and gotten her out of this cold and snow, she would be alive today. It’s my fault that she died.” At the second home, the son said, “If only I had not insisted her going to Florida, she would be alive today. That long airplane ride was more than she could take. It is my fault.”
When things don’t turn out as we would like them to, we tend to assume that had we done things differently, the story would have had a happier ending. Any time there is a death, the survivors will feel guilty. Because the course of action they took turned out bad, they believe that the opposite course, for example, keeping mother at home, would have turned out better. After all, how could it have turned out any worse?
There seem to be elements involved in our readiness to feel guilty. The first lies in our belief that the world makes sense——there is a reason for everything that happens.
The second is the thought that we are the cause of what happens, especially the bad things that happen. The roots of this feeling may lie in our childhood. A baby comes to think that the world exists to meet his needs, and that he makes everything happen in it. He wakes up in the morning and calls the rest of the world to its tasks. He cries, and someone comes to attend to him. When he is hungry, people feed him, and when he is wet, people change him. Very often, we do not completely abandon that childish thought that our wishes cause things to happen. What is true about the two deceased elderly women?
| A．They died from accidents. |
| B．They both died of old age. |
| C．They died due to lack of care by family members. |
| D．They weren’t accustomed to the change in life. |
People feel guilty for the death of their loved ones because______.
| A．they cannot find a better way to express their sorrow |
| B．they don’t know that natural course of events |
| C．they believe that it is their fault |
| D．they don’t know things often turn out in the opposite direction |
People have believed since early childhood that.
| A． everybody is at their command |
| B． life and death is an unsolved mystery |
| C． every story should have a happy ending |
| D． their wishes are the cause of everything that happens |
What is the main idea of this passage?
| A． Two sons blamed themselves for their mother's death. |
| B． Things don't always go well as we expect. |
| C． Two factors account for guilty sense. |
| D．Baby's wishes lead everything to happen. |
Fortunately, I've been able to avoid the traffic jam brought by presidential visits because ! don't have to commute anywhere. Barack Obama visited Los Angeles recently which paralyzed large sections of a city and you could almost hear the collective pain of unhappy commuters.
I am among the l0 percent of people in the US that regularly work from home. You could include Obama among them, although I suspect his working area in the White House is better-equipped than my small space on to the back of the garage. He also probably doesn't have a problem with three little kids interrupting his phone calls or bursting into his office at inappropriate moments.
Every day there they are, knocking on my window and peering inside, as if looking at an animal in a zoo. Once, a telephone interview I was doing with the former California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger was interrupted by my older son, then three years old, and completely naked "Ahaaar!" he shouted to my face. "What was that?" said Schwarzenegger. I stammered(结巴地说出) something about the joys of children and silently managed to shoo the boy out of the room without putting down the phone.
I shouldn't complain. I no longer have to stand having someone's armpit(腋窝) being pressed into my face on a crowded train and home status means ! should be a more productive worker although working from home could also lead to "avoiding duties from home". I would argue that a bigger problem is going nuts: Staring at the same walls every day and not going anywhere can do strange things to a person.
I realized I had to get out of the house at least once a day to avoid turning into an unshaven and unshoweredrecluse(隐士) who was still in his pyjamas at dinner time. I would work for an hour or so in a local coffee shop but, like most routine, this became boring because I would constantly see the same faces: Screenwriters poring over screenplays, elderly women heading to the yoga studio next door and hordes of overweight middle-aged male cycling by.
And yet here I am several years later, still working from home consciously and, I'm happy to report, not sitting at my desk in my pyjamas. Not since last Tuesday, anyway.The author may agree that __
| A．it's a bad decision to work from home |
| B．presidential visits bring inconvenience to the locals |
| C．if a person wants to be more productive, he must work from home |
| D．the former California governor was angry at the interruption during the interview |
The incident of three-year-old son is described to prove that___
| A．working from home has some drawbacks |
| B．working from home is a pleasant experience |
| C．Barack Obama has better working conditions than the author |
| D．it's unfortunate for the author to have a naughty boy |
The reason why the author goes to the coffee shop is that __
| A．he wants to get familiar with the people around |
| B．he doesn't like working in his pyjamas at home |
| C．he becomes bored with being a commuter |
| D．he needs some changes to get relaxation |
The whole passage suggests that __
| A．the author has to work from home |
| B．any routine definitely means boredom |
| C．the author is a humorous person |
| D．working from home contributes to avoiding duties |
While Andrew was getting ready for work one Friday morning, he announced to his wife that he had finally decided to ask his boss for a salary raise. All day Andrew felt nervous and anxious as he thought about the upcoming showdown. What if Mr. Larchmont refused to grant his request? Andrew had worked so hard in the last 18 months and landed some great accounts for Braer and Hopkins Advertising Agency. Of course, he deserved a wage increase.
The thought of walking into Larchmont’s office left Andrew weak in the knees. Late in the afternoon he was finally courageous enough to approach his superior. To his delight and surprise, the ever frugal Harvey Larchmont agreed to give Andrew a raise!
Andrew arrived home that evening—despite breaking all city and state speed limits—to a beautiful table set with their best china, and candles lit. His wife, Tina, had prepared a delicate meal including his favorite dishes. Immediately he figured someone from the office had tipped her off!
Next to his plate Andrew found a beautiful lettered note. It was from his wife. It read: “Congratulations, my love! I knew you’d get the raise! I prepared this dinner to show just how much I love you. I am so proud of your accomplishments!” He read it and stopped to reflect on how sensitive and caring Tina was.
After dinner, Andrew was on his way to the kitchen to get dessert when he observed that a second card had slipped out of Tina’s pocket onto the floor. He bent forward to pick it up. It read: “Don’t worry about not getting the raise! You do deserve one! You are a wonderful provider and I prepared this dinner to show you just how much I love you even though you did not get the increase.”
Suddenly tears swelled in Andrew’s eyes. Total acceptance! Tina’s support for him was not conditional upon his success at work.
The fear of rejection is often softened and we can undergo almost any setback or rejection when we know someone loves us regardless of our success or failure. What was Andrew’s plan that Friday?
| A．To request a wage increase from his boss. |
| B．To land some great accounts for the company. |
| C．To celebrate his success with his wife at home. |
| D．To get a job in the Braer and Hopkins Advertising Agency. |
The underlined word “frugal” in Paragraph 2 most probably means “_________”.
| A．wasteful | B．simple | C．economical | D．effective |
Why did Tina prepare a grand dinner for Andrew that day?
| A．She was confident of his getting a pay raise. |
| B．She meant to show her support whatever the result would be. |
| C．She believed that her husband was the best in his company. |
| D．She wanted to express her gratitude for his devotion to the family. |
We can conclude from the text that ______.
| A．many fears turn out to be unfounded |
| B．work hard and you will be rewarded |
| C．we should never be afraid to ask for what is due to us |
| D．unconditional love brings courage and strength |