One Sunday, my family had gathered at my parents’ house to feast upon Mom’s wonderful cooking．During the normal dinner chatter, I noticed that my father was slurring （说话含混） his words．No one mentioned this during dinner, but I felt compelled to discuss it with my mother afterward．
We decided that there was something seriously wrong and that Dad needed to see the doctor．
Mom phoned me two days later．“The doctor found a brain tumor （肿瘤）．It’s too large at this point to operate．Maybe they can do something then, but the odds are long．”
Even with the treatment, my father’s condition worsened, and the doctor finally informed us that this condition was terminal．During one of his stays in the hospital, we brought our baby daughter Chelsey with us when we visited him．By this time he had great difficulty speaking．I finally figured out that he wanted Chelsey to sit on his stomach so he could make faces at her．
Watching the two of them together, I realized I was living an experience that would stay with me forever．Though grateful for the times they could share, I couldn’t shake the feeling of a clock ticking in the background．
On the visit to my parents’ home during what we all know was my father’s last days, my mother took Chelsey from my arms and announced, “Your father would like to see you alone for a minute．”
I entered the bedroom where my father lay on a rented hospital bed．He appeared even weaker than the day before．
“How are you feeling, Dad?” I asked．“Can I do anything for you?”
He tried to speak, but he couldn’t make out a word．
“I’m sorry, but I can’t understand you,” I said．
With great difficulty he said, “I love you．”
We don’t learn courage from heroes on the evening news．We learn true courage from watching ordinary people rise above hopeless situations．In many ways my father was a strict, uncommunicative man．He found it difficult to show emotion．The bravest thing I ever saw him do was overcome that barrier to open his heart to his son and family at the end of his life．
What does the underlined sentence “the odds are long” mean?
| A．It takes a long time for Father to recover． |
| B．There’s little possibility for Father to recover． |
| C．Father needs love and care from his family． |
| D．They need a proper time to operate on Father． |
Welcome to Financial Aid Need Estimator! This free service can help you plan more effectively to meet college costs. The Financial Aid Need Estimator allows you to figure out your family costs at specific intitutions by taking you through two steps.
Step 1:during the first step, the Financial Aid Need Estimator will help you estimate how much you and your family will be expected to pay.
Step 2:Using the second step, you may estimate the costs of attending specific institution. Your results will show your results will show your eligibility(合格) for financial aid based on both your expected family costs and the costs of attending the institution you selected. By selecting another institution, you may repeat these calculations for as many institutions as you wish without entering your personal information.
The Financial Aid Need Estimator does not ask you to identify yourself and will not keep your personal information.
Because international students are not eligible for federal need-based financial aid program results from the Financial Aid Need Estimator will apply only to students who are the U citizens.
41.The result of calculation you get from the Financial Aid Need Estimator will .
A.help you get the financial aid
B.provide database for official results
C.help you meet your college costs
D.show your eligibility for financial aid
42.The Financial Aid Need Estimator is reliable because .
A.it is controlled by government
B.it uses the same formula as the government’s official results
C.it can make sure of its accuracy
D.it provides good services free of charge
43.Who will be most interested in the passage?
A.The Us students who want to apply for financial aid.
B.The international students who have financial difficulty.
C.The US students who want to go to college.
D.The international students who want further study.
44. The Financial Aid Need Estimator may mainly consider .
A.the college you want to go to
B.the accuracy of the information you provide
C.family costs and college costs
D.the application for financial aid
45.The purpose of writing this passage is probably to .
A.tell the possible ways to get financial aid
B.tell who will the eligible for financial aid
C.introduce the financial Aid Need Estimator
D.introduce the financial aid to college students
It’s a Christmas tradition that’s more than half a century old. And it happened completely by accident.
It started in 1955, when a local Sears store in Colorado Springs, Colorado printed an ad, which included a spedial phone mumber kids could call to know where Santa’s sleigh was at any given moment. Unfortunately, someone made a mistake in printing the phone mumber and kids were calling the wrong line.
A Colonel(上校) named Henry Shoup began answering his phong at what would become NORAD, the North American Aerospace Defence Command. At first, he thought it was a simple error of one caller.
But as the phone ketp ringing and tiny voices kept asking about Santa, Shoup realized he couldn’t disappoint them. So he told the staff to issue updates to any one asking about the location of Santa.
The wrong turned into a custom of the holiday and kept growing in popularity, and NORAD finally decided to make it permanent.
It’s become a holiday favourite ever since, adapting to whatever new technology has come along since. In the early days, it was a phone line. Then in the 60s, NORAD put out a special series of “reports” that was played on hundreds of radio stations across North America, broadcasting the Jolly Old Elf’s exact position on Christmas Eve.
Think of it as kind of an early GPS without the computer gear.
Finally ,came the Internet and NORAD has now transferred its annual watch onto the Web, with a site devoted to keeping tabs on the most famous journey in the world—what you might call the real amazing race, an around-the-world mission that has to be finished within 24hours.
This year’s entry allows kids to track Santa in 3Dusing Google Earth and play games at the North Pole using the Kids Countdown Section, and it even offers Santa Cams which are only operational on the night before Christmas.
36.Why did children keep calling Henry Shoup?
A.Because they wanted to play a joke on him.
B. Because they wanted to amuse him.
C.Because he knew where Santa exactly was.
D.Because they wanted to know where Santa’s sleigh was.
37.What did Colonel Henry Shoup do when more and more children kept calling?
A.He became annoyed and decided to tell them the truth.
B.He became excited and jioned them in searching Santa.
C.He thought quickly and took it seriously to satisfy their needs.
D.He laughed at them and took no notice of their calls.
38.What does “Jolly Old Elf” in Paragraph 6 most probably refer to?
A.Santa Claus.
B.Colonel Henry Shoup.
C.NOARD.
D.The staff in Henry Shoup’s charge.
39.According to the passage, how did people learn about the Jolly Old Elf’s exact position in the 1960s?
A.By calling a special phone mumber.
B.By listening to a special series of reports over the radio.
C.With the help of a kind of early GPS.
D.By scanning the spedial column in the newspaper.
40.The passage mainly tells us .
A.an old favorite holiday that develops along with new technology
B.50-year-old tracking Santa tradition that started by accident
C.a real amazing race, an around-the-world mission within 24 hours
D.a Colonel and the North American Aerospace Defence Command
The HOPE IS A GAME--CHANGER PROJECT will deliver unbreakable soccer balls to kids who, all too often, see things horrible, broken and not survive the simplest of circumstances. The project started taking form well before anyone knew where it would lead –which is to test the power of like-minded people working together to turn inspiration into action.
Four years ago Bobby was in Rwanda offering help to the people there and taking photos of a child soldier named Moise with his “soccer ball”，which was a pile of rubbish tied together with a string. This “ball” was the only thing Moise could call his own --- no family, no home, no place to go. Forced to fight in the Congo and having killed three people at the unbearably young age of seven, the boy’s spirit was broken. And Bobby knew, as he took one photo after the next, that he’d never forget him. In fact, he returned the following year to tell Moise he had stayed deep within his heart ---but he was gone.
I recently helped Bobby launch his new book The Power of the Invisible Sun which features a photo of Moise, his ball, and kids from war-torn areas around the world. All of his earnings go towards the HOPE IS A GAME-CHANGER PROJECT for the kids he visited over the past decade. They caught the emotional landscape from heartbreak to joy, but share the undeniable longing for recovery and hope.
Bobby and I share the unchangeable belief that delivering hope is really a game-changer, especially to a child. We believe that each indestructible ball will come to represent a lasting symbol of hope. A light no matter how small---The Power of the Invisible Sun.
This holiday season, I ask you to think about whether you are doing enough to help someone else in the world. Or as Bobby likes to put it, consider “taking a concrete baby step”, which added together, can create transformational change. It’s my great hope that the HOPE IS A GAME-CHANGER PROJECT will change the lives of children in the world over --- one book, one ball at a time.
59．In the first sentence of the passage, the writer implies that .
A．kids live an unsafe life in parts of the world
B．the balls sent to kids should be of good quality
C．young kids can not overcome the difficulties
D．kids intend to break their toys into pieces
60．How may Bobby feel about Mosie?
A．He was very proud of Mosie’s bravery.
B．He felt sorry for Mosie’s ruined childhood.
C．He thought money could solve Mosie’s problem.
D．He felt happy to tell him what was in his heart.
61．Which of the following about Bobby’s new book is TRUE?
A．It earned a lot of money to help kids like Mosie.
B．The photos inside reflected the kids’ hopeless life.
C．Its title shows the author’s belief to change the world.
D．It changed the life of the kids recorded in the book.
62．The underlined part in the last paragrph probably means .
A．starting the first step as a baby does
B．taking an active action from now on
C．making great changes step by step
D．doing some small but good deeds
Can you believe your eyes? A recent experiment suggests that the answer to that question may depend on your age.
Martin Doherty, a psychologist at the University of Stirling in Scotland, led the team of scientists. In this experiment, Doherty and his team tested the perception(观察力) of some people, using pictures of some orange circles. The researchers showed the same pictures to two groups of people. The first group included 151 children aged 4 to 10, and the second group included 24 adults aged 18 to 25.
The first group of pictures showed two circles alone on a white background. One of the circles was larger than the other, and these people were asked to identify the larger one. Four-year-olds identified the correct circle 79 percent of the time. Adults identified the correct circle 95 percent of the time.
Next, both groups were shown a picture where the orange circles, again of different sizes, were surrounded by gray circles. Here’s where the trick lies in. In some of the pictures, the smaller orange circle was surrounded by even smaller gray circles — making the orange circle appear larger than the other orange circle, which was the real larger one. And the larger orange circle was surrounded by even bigger gray circles — so it appeared to be smaller than the real smaller orange circle.
When young children aged 4 to 6 looked at these tricky pictures, they weren’t fooled — they were still able to find the bigger circle with roughly the same accuracy as before. Older children and adults, on the other hand, did not do as well. Older children often identified the smaller circle as the larger one, and adults got it wrong most of the time.
As children get older, Doherty said, their brains may develop the ability to identify visual context. In other words, they will begin to process the whole picture at once: the tricky gray circles, as well as the orange circle in the middle. As a result, they’re more likely to fall for this kind of visual trick.
55．Doherty and his team of scientists did an experiment to evaluate .
A．children’s and adults’ eye-sight
B．people’s ability to see accurately
C．children’s and adults’ brains
D．the influence of people’s age
56．When asked to find the larger circle, .
A．children at 6 got it wrong 79 % of the time with no gray ones around
B．only adults over 18 got it right 95% of the time with gray ones around
C．children at 4 got it right about 79 % of the time with gray ones around
D．adults got it right most of the time with gray ones around
57．Visual context may work when children get older than .
A．4 B．6 C．10 D．18
58．Why are younger children not fooled?
A．Because they are smarter than older children and adults.
B．Because older people are influenced by their experience.
C．Because people’s eyes become weaker as they grow older.
D．Because their brain can hardly notice related things together.
On September 22, 1986, Jay Brunkella, a police officer in the Rogers Park district in Chicago, was shot during a drug arrest and died. Shortly afterwards, fellow officer Ken Knapcik, a 20-year veteran（老警官）of the force, returned home after work to find a note from his 15 year old daughter on the dining table.
Dad—This poem came directly from my heart. I love you so much! It scares and amazes me that you go out every day and risk everything to provide us with all that we have. I wrote this to express how much I love you and how much lost I’d be without you ---Laura. PS: Hey, let’s be careful out there.
Titled The Ultimate Cop, Laura’s poem was dedicated “To all the cops in the world who have daughters who love them with all their hearts. And especially to my dad”. It was about a police officer’s daughter who sees on the night time news that her father has been shot. Part of poem: “Daddy, my Daddy, can you hear me cry? Oh, God, I need my Daddy, please don’t let him die.”
Ken Knapcik stood alone as he read the poem. “It took me several minutes,” he said. “I’d get through part of it and have to stop before I could go on. I was weeping. She had never told me she was scared.” He took the poem to work the next day and showed it to his fellow officers. I’ve never seen so many grown men cry. Some couldn’t finish it.”
Knapcik keeps Laura’s poem in the pocket of his police jacket. He takes it with him every time he leaves the house for a new shift. “I don’t want to be out there without it,” he said. “I’ll probably carry it with me forever.”
51. Laura wrote the poem ____________.
A. in memory of her father who was shot in the drug arrest
B. to show her great sorrow in losing her father
C. to show her respect to all the cops who lost their lives
D. to tell Officer Ken Knapcik how much she loved him
52. All the officers cried because ____________.
A. Jay Brunkella was shot and died
B. they were greatly touched by the poem
C. the poem was so sad that they couldn’t hold back their tears
D. they thought of their dangerous life
53. Knapcik keeps Laura’s poem in his pocket ______________.
A. to treasure her daughter’s love and to value his own life
B. to keep it from getting lost
C. because he can’t go out without it
D. to mourn over the death of Officer Jay Brunkella
54. Which of the following is the best title for the passage?
A. Poem for a cop B. An officer’s death
C. A cop’s daughter D. Love my job, love my daughter