Have you ever wanted to achieve a goal and ended up doing tons of research on how to achieve the goal? As you learn more and more, it feels like you know less and less because when you learn something new, you find that there is a lot to know about those things.
Sometimes, people will get stuck in this needing to gather more and more information. There’s nothing wrong with learning a lot, but when you let learning get in the way of doing, you will never get going. When you never get going, you still never start having the things you want. Too much learning can paralyze you in terms of taking action.
A better way to go about achieving a goal is to gather some information and immediately start taking action on the information you have gathered. Many times you will feel unprepared, and that’s OK. The best way to learn is to take action and learn from the results you get from those actions.
When you are able to get past the fear of not being perfect and just take the first step, you will be further ahead than the majority of people who are still in the preparation stage. It’s good to be prepared especially in situations such as a pilot and crew making sure the plane is ready to take off, but over-preparation in trying to reach a goal won’t give you any results. The knowledge and skills you will need will be picked up along the way.
If a baby wants to learn how to walk, it will never be able to do it by sitting there and analyzing how to walk. The best way for a baby to walk is to actually stand up and start walking. Sure it may fall, but with every fall, it will learn what is working and what is not and adjust to it. By doing this over and over again, it will eventually learn to walk. This is the approach you need to take when you want to achieve your goals as well. It works. Learning more is great but if all you’re doing is learning and not taking action, it’s time to change. Just take the first step! The author thinks that learning __________.
| A．stops us from doing things |
| B．prevents us from achieving a goal |
| C．should be combined with practice |
| D．means gathering more and more information |
According to the passage, we'd better learn from_____.
| A．our experiences |
| B．adequate preparations |
| C．other people who have succeeded |
| D．the information we have gathered |
The passage implies that the more we learn,_____.
| A．the less we will know |
| B．the more we want to explore |
| C．the more likely we are to succeed |
| D．the better preparations we will make |
What does the underlined word “it” (in the last paragraph) refer to?
| A．Walking | B．Falling | C．Learning | D．Analyzing |
Why does the author mention how a baby learns to walk?
| A．To prove another point is wrong. |
| B．To encourage readers to change. |
| C．To introduce a learning approach. |
| D．To support a conclusion. |
It's great fun to explore (探索) new places—it feels like an adventure, even when you know you're not the first to have been there. But make sure not to get lost or waste time going round in circles.
● Do the map reading if you're being driven somewhere. It'll be easier if you keep turning the map so it follows the direction you' re traveling in. Keep looking ahead so that you can give the driver lots of warning before having to make a turn, or you'll have to move to the back seat.
● Get a group of friends together and go exploring. You'll need a good map, a compass (指南针), a raincoat, a cell phone to call for help in case you get lost, and a bit of spare cash for emergencies (应急现金). Tell someone where you're going before you set out and let them know what time you expect to be back. The test is in not getting lost, not in seeing how fast you can go, so always stick together, waiting for slower friends to catch up.
● See if your school or a club organizes orienteering activities, in which you need a map and a compass to find your way. This can be done as a sport, with teams trying to find the way from A to B (and B to C, etc. ) in the fastest time, or simply as a spare-time activity. Either way, it's not only good fun, but a great way to keep fit.Sitting beside the driver, you should ________.
| A．direct the driver when necessary |
| B．look ahead to see where there's a turn |
| C．move to the back seat if feeling uncomfortable |
| D．keep looking at the map to find a place to go to |
Why do you need to tell someone your exploration plan before setting out?
| A．To get information when in danger. |
| B．To be saved in case of an accident. |
| C．To share the fun with him/her in exploration. |
| D．To tell him/her what's going on with the group members. |
Orienteering activities can ________.
| A．make people work fast | B．help people stay healthy |
| C．help people organize other activities | D．make people get prepared for sports |
The text mainly talks about ?
| A．the fun of exploration |
| B．what to bring for exploration |
| C．the way to use the map in exploration |
| D．how to prevent getting lost in exploration |
I believe that my country, Poland, is a perfect example for a place where food is particularly important. When we were little children, we began to understand how much a loaf of bread meant to our parents—to some it might sound silly but for me the custom of kissing bread before you started cutting it was simply amazing. It's not so common nowadays to treat food that way, since you hardly ever bake your own bread. Besides, everyone would call you crazy if you tried to kiss every bread roll before you ate them! But though we no longer make our food from scratch (起点), some customs have been kept--that's why I feel so sorry every time I have to throw any food away—even though I no longer live with my parents and nobody would blame me for this anymore!
Many people of our nation are still working as farmers, eating what they grow and harvest and therefore enjoying everything more. It's widely known that you value more anything that needs your effort in the first place. In most homes in Poland, especially those of farmers, the whole family would try and have their meals together--extremely difficult now, but so rewarding (值得) ! You can share other members' troubles and successes, give your children some attention, or just sit down for a moment instead of rushing through life aimlessly. Furthermore, your body, and stomach in particular will be very grateful (感激) for such a time!
In Poland, a wedding, Christmas or even a birthday is celebrated with a great meal. Women in the house get together and cook, sometimes for a few days before the event, and the extremely good or unusual food will be remembered and widely talked about.
You cannot over-value the importance of food in the country. What's more, almost everyone in Poland will be as interested in the topic as I am.When the writer was a child, he / she ________.
| A．found people were crazy about bread | B．began to realize the importance of food |
| C．thought that cutting bread was amazing | D．learned people hardly baked their own bread |
The writer feels very sorry when he/she has to throw away any food because
| A．he/she makes food from scratch | B．his/her parents would blame him/her |
| C．some customs still have effect on him/her | D．many people are still working hard as farmers |
From the text, we can learn that, in Poland, ________.
| A．most meals can be interesting topics for a long time |
| B．the whole family often have meals together nowadays |
| C．it's common for women to get together to cook for a few days |
| D．family members can know more. about each other by having meals together |
I entered high school having read hundreds of books. But I was not a good reader. Merely bookish, I lacked a point of view when I read. Rather, I read in order to get a point of view. I searched books for good expressions and sayings, pieces of information, ideas, themes—anything to enrich my thought and make me feel educated. When one of my teachers suggested to his sleepy tenth-grade English class that a person could not have a "complicated (复杂的) idea" until he had read at least two thousand books, I heard the words without recognizing either its irony (嘲讽) or its very complicated truth. I merely determined to make a list of all the books I had ever read. Strict with myself, I included only once a title I might have read several times. ( How, after all, could one read a book more than once?) And I included only those books over a hundred pages in length. ( Could anything shorter be a book?)
There was yet another high school list I made. One day I came across a newspaper article about an English professor at a nearby state college. The article had a list of the "hundred most important books of Western Civilization. " "More than anything else in my life," the professor told the reporter with finality , " these books have made me all that I am . " That was the kind of words I couldn’t ignore (忽视). I kept the list for the several months it took me to read all of the titles. Most books, of course, I hardly understood. While reading Plato's The Republic, for example, I needed to keep looking at the introduction of the book to remind myself what the text was about. However, with the special patience and superstition (迷信) of a schoolboy, I looked at every word of the text. And by me time I reached the last word, pleased, I persuaded myself that I had read The Republic, and seriously crossed Plato off my list.On hearing the teacher's suggestion of reading, the writer thought________.
| A．one must read as many books as possible |
| B．a student should not have a complicated idea |
| C．it was impossible for one to read two thousand books |
| D．students ought to make a list of the books they had read |
While at high school, the writer________.
| A．had plans for reading | B．learned to educate himself |
| C．only read books over 100 pages | D．read only one book several times |
The underlined phrase "with finality" probably means
| A．firmly | B．clearly | C．proudly | D．pleasantly |
The writer's purpose in mentioning The Republic is to________.
| A．explain why it was included in the list |
| B．describe why he seriously crossed it off the list |
| C．show that he read the books blindly though they were hard to understand |
| D．prove that he understood most of it because he had looked at every word |
The writer provides two book lists to ________.
| A．show how he developed his point of view |
| B．tell his reading experience at high school |
| C．introduce the two persons' reading methods |
| D．explain that he read many books at high school |
Jim suffered heart problems. In conversation he expressed little joy and it seemed that his life was drawing to a close.
When his heart problems led to operation, Jim went through it successfully, and a full recovery was expected. Within days, however, his heart was not beating properly. Jim was rushed back to operation, but nothing was found to explain the cause of his illness. He died on the operating table on the day before his 48th birthday.
Dr. Bruce Smoller, a psychologist (心理学家), had had many conversations with him, and the more he learned, the stranger he realized Jim's case was. When Jim was a child, his father, a teacher, suffered a heart attack and stayed home to recover. One morning Jim asked his father to look over his homework, promising to come home from school at noon to pick it up. His father agreed, but when Jim returned his father had died. Jim's father was 48.
"I think all his life Jim believed he killed his father," Dr. Smoller says. "He felt that if he had not asked him to look at his homework, his father would have lived. Jim had been troubled by the idea. The operation was the trial (判决) he had expected for forty years. " Smoller believes that Jim willed himself not to live to the age of 48.
Jim's case shows the powerful role that attitude (态度) plays in physical health, and that childhood experiences produce far-reaching effect on the health of grown-ups. Although most cases are less direct than Jim's, studies show that childhood events, besides genes, may well cause such midlife diseases as cancer, heart disease and mental illness.Jim was sent back to operation because ________.
| A．his heart didn't work well | B．he expected a full recovery |
| C．his life was drawing to a close | D．the first one wasn't well performed |
What made Dr. Smoller feel strange about Jim's case?
| A．Jim died at a young age. |
| B．Jim died on the operating table. |
| C．Both Jim and his father died of the same disease. |
| D．Jim's death is closely connected with his father's. |
From Smoller's words, we can infer that ________.
| A．Jim's father cared little about his study |
| B．Smoller agreed that Jim did kill his father |
| C．Jim thought he would be punished some day |
| D．Smoller believed Jim wouldn't live to the age of 48 |
Which of the following could have strong effect on one's physical health according to the text.?
| A．a, b, d | B．a, b, e | C．a, c, e | D．b, c, d |
It’s only 4 hours flying time from Sydney, but a world away. What better place to rest than a country where the only place people hurry is on the football field and things are done in “Fiji time”?
Viti Levu – Great Fiji – is the largest island. Here you’ll find the capital Suva and the international airport at Nadi. Vatoa, on the other hand, is a tiny island in the farthest part of Fiji. Then there are 331 other islands, many of them with places to stay.
Whit less than a million people living on islands, you’ll never feel crowded. And with a climate(气候) that changes only for five degrees between seasons, there’s never a bad time to come.
From cities to villages, from mountains to beaches, from water sports to wooden artworks, Fiji can give you more adventures and special experiences than you could find almost anywhere in the world.
Whenever you come, wherever you go, you’re sure to see some unforgettable events. From war dances to religious(宗教的) songs. From market days to religious days. It’s not just staged for tourists; it’s still a part of everyday life in Fiji. And any one of us can enjoy Fiji’s spirit by being part of the traditional(传统的) sharing of yaqona, a drink made from the root of a Fiji plant.
So why not join us for the experience of a life me?Where is the international airport of Fiji?
| A．In Suva. |
| B．In Sydney. |
| C．On the island of Vatoa. |
| D．On the island of Viti Levu. |
What does the text tell us about Fijian people?
| A．They invented “Fiji time” for visitors. |
| B．They stick to a traditional way of life. |
| C．They like to travel from place to place. |
| D．They love taking adventures abroad. |
One of the things that make Fiji a tourist attraction is _______.
| A．it’s comfortable hotels |
| B．its good weather all year round |
| C．its exciting football matches |
| D．its religious beliefs |
Where can we most probably read this text?
| A．In a personal diary | B．In a science report |
| C．In a travel magazine | D．In a geography textbook |