AnAmericanresearchcompanyshows-优题课

It was the afternoon of December 24, the day before Christmas; and as the newest doctor in our office, I had to work. The only thing that brightened my day was the beautifully decorated Christmas tree in our waiting room and a gift sent to me by a fellow I was dating — a dozen long-stemmed red roses.
As I was cleaning my office, I was told a lady urgently needed to speak with me. As I stepped out, I noticed a young, tired-looking woman with a baby in her arms. Nervously, she explained that her husband — a prisoner in a nearby prison — was my next patient. She told me she wasn’t allowed to visit her husband in prison and that he had never seen his son. Her request was for me to let the boy’s father sit in the waiting room with her as long as possible before I called him for his appointment. Since my schedule wasn’t full, I agreed. After all, it was Christmas Eve.
A short time later, her husband arrived — with chains on his feet and hands, and two armed guards as bodyguards. The woman’s tired face lit up like our little Christmas tree when her husband took a seat beside her. I kept glancing out to watch them laugh, cry and share their child. After almost an hour, I called the prisoner back to my office. The patient seemed like a gentle and modest man. I wondered what he possibly could have done to be held under such conditions. I tried to make him as comfortable as possible.
At the end of the appointment, I wished him a Merry Christmas----a difficult thing to say to a man headed back to prison. He smiled and thanked me. He also said he felt saddened by the fact he hadn’t been able to get his wife anything for Christmas. On hearing this, I was inspired with a wonderful idea.
I’ll never forget the look on both their faces as the prisoner gave his wife the beautiful, long-stemmed roses. I’m not sure who experienced the most joy — the husband in giving, the wife in receiving, or myself in having the opportunity to share in this special moment.
What can be inferred from the first paragraph?

A．The writer was a newcomer to her office.

B．A fellow sent her a dozen red roses as Christmas present.

C．She was in low spirits because she had to work before Christmas.

D．She was at work with a light heart.

The young woman came to the writer’s office for the purpose of __________.

A．having her baby examined

B．giving her husband a chance to make his escape

C．having her husband examined

D．getting a chance for her family to get together

The underlined part in paragraph 3 most probably means “__________”.

A．to be sent to hospital	B．to be separated from his family
C．to be comfortable	D．to become a prisoner

What does the writer learn from the story?

A．The wife experienced the most joy in receiving.

B．An act of kindness can mean a lot.

C．The prisoner was treated with mercy.

D．Whoever breaks the law should be punished.

Work your brain!
Between 2 and 3 pounds of wonder, it controls everything we say, do or think, who we are and what we care about. The way we walk or laugh or figure out things. What we like and the talents we possess. How we see and talk and run and jump and process our food.
The brain uses 20 percent of our body’s oxygen and 20 percent of its blood. Somewhere within its protein, fat, 100,000 miles of blood vessels and 100 billion nerve cells, it helps us remember where we put our gym shoes. Change our temperature so we don’t die because of the heat or cold. Speed us up or slow us down. Help us choose between orange juice or orangeflavored drinks.
Its complexity are stunning, far beyond anything most of us can imagine. To keep this work of art as polished as possible we need to eat right, exercise and keep mentally stimulated. Good nutrition helps brain cells communicate with each other. Exercise stimulates a hormone in our brain that improves memory. Mental stimulation keeps you sharp even as you age.
“It’s very important that we tell people to be physically active and mentally active,” said neurologist Malcolm Stewart.“People cannot stop aging, but you’re able to reduce the damage; you’re able to keep the function up.”
Following are Dr. Stewart’s advice for improving brain health：

Nutrition	Avoid fast food. Follow the old adage(格言): For breakfast, eat like a king; for lunch, like a queen; for supper, like a beggar.
Exercise	Do a combination of stretching aerobic and muscle strengthening every day.
Mental games	Try to have a sense of hope about the future. Do puzzles. Listen to music. Reach out to others to make their lives better.

The purpose of the author in writing this passage is to ______.

A．inform us how the brain works

B．give us advice on how to keep the brain healthy

C．tell us that the brain plays an important role in our lives

D．show how special the brain is to us

The underlined word “stunning” means ______.

A．interesting 　

B．strange

C．significant　

D．amazing

According to the text，more exercise ______.

A．keeps our mind sharp

B．helps improve our memory

C．gives our brain a rest 　

D．is good for brain cells communicating with each other

In order to keep brain healthy，we should avoid ______.

A．eating a good lunch	B．doing puzzles
C．eating a large supper	D．taking aerobic exercise

Boiler rooms are often dirty and steamy, but this one is clean and cool. Fox Point is a very new 47-unit living building in South Bronx, one of the city’s poorest areas. Two-thirds of the people living there are formerly homeless people, whose rent is paid by the government. The rest are low-income families. The boiler room has special equipment, which produces energy for electricity and heat. It reuses heat that would otherwise be lost to the air, reducing carbon emissions while also cutting costs.

Fox Point is operated by Palladia, a group that specializes in providing housing and services to needy people. Palladia received support from Enterprise Community Partners (ECP), which helps build affordable housing by providing support to housing developers.
ECP has created national standards for healthy, environmentally clever and affordable homes which are called the Green Communities Standards. These standards include water keeping, energy saving and the use of environmentally friendly building materials. Meeting the standards increases housing construction costs by 2%, which is rapidly paid back by lower running costs. Even the positioning of a window to get most daylight can help save energy.
Michael Bloomberg, New York’s mayor, plans to create 165,000 affordable housing units for 500,000 New Yorkers. Almost 80% of New York City’s greenhouse-gas emissions come from buildings, and 40% of those are caused by housing. So he recently announced that the city’s Department of Housing and Preservation and Development (DHPD) , whose duty is to develop and keep the city’s supply of affordable housing, will require all its new projects to follow ECP’s green standards.
Similar measures have been taken by other cities, such as Cleveland and Denver, but New York’s DHPD is the largest city developer of affordable housing in the country.
What is the purpose of describing the boiler room in the first paragraph?

A．To explain the measures the city takes to care for poor people.

B．To suggest that affordable housing is possible in all areas.

C．To show how the environment-friendly building works.

D．To compare old and new boiler rooms.

What is an advantage of the buildings meeting the Green Communities Standards? 5

A．Lower running costs.

B．Costing less in construction.

C．Less air to be lost in hot days.

D．Better prices for homeless people.

It can be learned from the text that.

A．New York City is seriously polluted

B．people’s daily life causes many carbon emissions in New York City

C．a great number of people in New York City don’t have houses to live in

D．some other cities have developed more affordable housing than New York City

What is the main purpose of this text?

A．To call on people to pay more attention to housing problems.

B．To prove that some standards are needed for affordable housing.

C．To ask society to help homeless people and low-income families.

D．To introduce healthy, environmentally clever and affordable housing.

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 (勉强地) 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, 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

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 happened to the ball at last?

A．The writer managed to throw the ball back.

B．The boy got the ball back by himself.

C．The writer threw the ball away out of anger.

D．The boys got angry and left without the ball.

Thousands of people living in the Chinese capital will celebrate the start of the Chinese New year by heading for the skiresorts (滑雪场). Never mind that Beijing’s dry weather seldom produces snow. It is cold enough in winter for snow-making machines to make a covering for the hills north to the capital. And the rapid growth of a pleasure-seeking middle class has formed the basis for this new craze(热潮）.
Since Beijing’s first ski resort was opened ten years ago, the sport has enjoyed astonishing increase. There are now more than a dozen resorts. Clothes markets in the cityhave added bright colored ski suits to their winter collections. Mr. Wei, a manager of a newly-opened ski resort in Beijing, sees the growth of an industry that could soon lead Chinese to head for the ski resorts of Europe. In recent years ski resorts offering natural snow have opened in China. But many are in faraway areas of the country and can’t really match the equipment and services of some ski resorts in Europe.
Beijing’s skiing craze is partly a result of the recent increase in private cars. This has led to the growth of a leisure industry in the capital’s suburbs, which until the late-1990s were unreachable to ordinary people. According to Mr. Wei, about 40% of the visitors to his resort come in their own cars. The rest are bused in by schools, businesses or government offices.
The problem is making money. Starting ski resorts requires quite a lot of money: hiring land from the local government, preparing the hills, buying snow machines, making sure there are enough water and electricity to run them, and buying ski equipment for hiring out to customers.
The ski resort where Mr. Wei works cost nearly $4m to set up. And, as so often in China when someone comes up with a good idea, many others rush in and price wars break out. Beijing now offers some of the cheapest ski training classes in the world, though with most people rather new to the sport, expecting a few more doing the same job.
What does this text mainly talk about?

A．Convenience for skiers brought about by private cars.

B．Skiing as a new way of enjoying one’s spare time.

C．Things to be considered when starting a ski resort.

D．A sudden increase of ski training classes in Beijing.

Why are some Chinese likely to go skiing in Europe?

A．To visit more ski areas.

B．To ski on natural snow.

C．For a large collection of ski suits.

D．For better services and equipment.

What is the main problem in running a ski resort?

A．Difficulty in hiring land

B．Lack of business experience

C．Price wars with other ski resorts

D．Shortage of water and electricity

A．Chewing Gum.	B．Kidney Stone.
C．An Imaginary Friend.	D．A Rock That Looks Like Meat.

A．Britney Spears	B．William Shatner
C．Jon Malipieman	D．Fidel Castro