In a movie, a woman reads a storybook to her friend’s daughter. As they approach the last page, she reads, “...and Cinderella and the prince lived happily together ever after.” She closes the book and looks at the young girl, adding, “You know, things don’t always happen like this in real life. I just think you should know that now.”
We were all raised on fairy tales with glass slippers, brave princes and magic! It didn’t take too long to realize that stories like that aren’t necessarily true. In the life, you learned that glass slippers are really uncomfortable, no prince is perfect and magic doesn’t always work.
So what do you do when the way you planned things is not the way they turned out?
Know that parts of your fairy tale have already been written, and sadly, there’s not a whole lot you can do about those first few chapters.You didn’t get the best start.Your trust was unexpectedly betrayed. You didn’t get the job. Whatever falls and failures that happened in your past are just that in your past. There’s still more to the story.
While your life has a lot of contributors(投稿者), you are the editor-in-chief. You take what’s there and create the masterpiece. All the good pages and the bad can come together to make a beautiful adventure.
When you find yourself wishing your life was more like the fairy tales, remember that in some ways it already is. There will be dragons, bad witches, great romances, winding roads and friends to help you along the way. So, keep rewriting your story every day that you’re alive. Whether it’s a comedy, tragedy or a little of both, the pen is in your hand. How it all ends is up to you. What is the author’s purpose in writing the passage?
| A．To help the readers to live a good life. |
| B．To encourage the readers to write their own stories. |
| C．To advise parents to tell the fairy tale to their kids. |
| D．To describe the difficulties in today’s education. |
Which of the following may NOT often appear in the fairy tale?
| A．Glass slipper. | B．Winding roads. |
| C．Sad ending. | D．Bad witches. |
According to the fires paragraph, we know the woman is ________.
| A．wise | B．cruel | C．brave | D．stupid |
Why does the author mention the question in Paragraph 3?
| A．To express the doubt to life |
| B．To compare different ideas. |
| C．To introduce a point for discussion. |
| D．To describe the conditions in life. |
Many people go to school for an education. They learn languages, history, geography, physics, chemistry and mathematics. Others go to school to learn a skill so that they can make a living. School education is very important and useful. Yet no one can learn everything from school. A teacher，no matter how much he knows can not teach his students everything they want to know. The teacher’s job is to show his students how to learn. He teaches them how to read and how to think. So much more is to be learned outside school by the students themselves.
It is always more important to study by oneself than to memorize some facts or a formula(公式). It is actually quite easy to learn a certain fact in history or a formula in maths. But it is very difficult to use a formula in working out a maths problem. Great scientists, such as Einstein，Newton and Galileo didn’t get everything from school. But they were all so successful. They invented so many things for mankind. The reason for their success is that they worked hard all their lives, wasting not a single moment. They would ask many questions as they read and they did thousands of experiments.
Above all, they knew how to use their brains.. The subject which is not spoken of in the article is _____
| A．maths | B．history | C．physiology（生理学） | D．physics |
. The teacher’s job is to teach ___________.
| A．everything the students want to know |
| B．the students everything that they know |
| C．the students some facts of formulas |
| D．the students how to learn |
.Einstein,Newton and Galileo did so many things for mankind because_____.
| A．they learned a lot at school |
| B．they knew how to learn new things outside class by themselves |
| C．they were so useful |
| D．they went to college and learned form professors |
. Who does the article say didn’t waste a single moment?
| A．Great people | B．Persons who work as teachers |
| C．The great scientist－Newton | D．Great scientists |
. From the passage we know that if we want to be successful, we should________ .
| A．Only learn more at school |
| B．needn’t go to school |
| C．Only learn science subjects |
| D．learn to learn at school and learn more outside school |
A beautiful and very successful actress (女演员) was the star for a new musical show. Her home was in the countryside, but she did not want to go back there every night, so she bought an expensive house in the centre of the city, got some beautiful furniture and got a man to paint the rooms in new colours.
It was very difficult to get tickets for her show, because everybody wanted to see it. So she decided to give the painter two of the best seats. She hoped that this would make him work better for her. He took the tickets without saying anything, and she heard no more about them until the end of the month, when she got the painter’s bill (帐单). At the bottom of it were these words: “ Four hours watching Miss Hall sing and dance : 3 pounds,” with this note: “ After 5 p.m. I get 15 shillings (先令) an hour instead of 10 shillings.”The actress bought a house in the centre of the city because _______.
| A．she liked to live in the busiest place. |
| B．she didn’t like to live in the country. |
| C．her home was far away from where she worked. |
| D．she didn’t want to go back to her hometown any longer. |
. In order to make the painter work better for her, the actress ___________.
| A．gave him two tickets for her show |
| B．sang and danced for him for hours |
| C．paid him 3 pounds |
| D．decided to pay him 15 shillings an hour |
. The actress got the painter’s bill ______.
| A．to ask for the money of his painting work. |
| B．to ask her to pay for his watching her show |
| C．in which he showed his thanks for the tickets |
| D．in which he expressed his dissatisfaction |
. It can be learned from the text that one pound is___________ shillings.
| A．10 | B．12 | C．20 | D．15 |
. What kind of man was the painter?
| A．He was a careful man. | B．He was a poor man. |
| C．He was not friendly to others. | D．He knew little about music and dances. |
An African farmer had heard tales about other farmers who had made millions of dollars by discovering diamond mines. These tales so excited the farmer that he could hardly wait to sell his farm and go prospecting for diamonds himself.
So he sold the farm and spent the rest of his life wandering the African continent, searching unsuccessfully for the shining stone that brought such high prices on the markets of the world.
Finally, broke and worn out, he threw himself into a river and drowned.
Meanwhile, back at the farm, the man who had bought his farm happened to be crossing a small river on the property one day when he saw something shining at the bottom of the river. He picked it up. It was a sparkling stone - a good size stone - and, admiring it, he later put it on his fireplace mantel（壁炉架） as an interesting curiosity.
Several weeks later, a visitor admired the stone, looked closely at it, lifted it in his hand and nearly fainted. He asked the farmer if he knew what he'd found. When the farmer said no, that he thought it was just a piece of crystal, the visitor told him he had found one of the largest diamonds ever discovered.
The farmer was astonished. He told the man that his small river was full of these brilliant stones, and his farmland was covered with them. Not all were as large, perhaps, as the one on his mantel, but they were sprinkled generously throughout his property.
Needless to say, the farm the first farmer had sold, so that he could search for a diamond mine, turned out to be the most productive diamond mine on the entire African continent.Why did the first farmer sell his farm?
| A．He had made a fortune by selling diamonds. |
| B．He was tired of his life as a farmer. |
| C．He wanted to make more money elsewhere. |
| D．He was told that there was no diamonds on his farm. |
What happened to him after he sold his property?
| A．He found a river full of diamonds on his farm. |
| B．He lost everything including his own life. |
| C．He discovered a mine filled with brilliant stones. |
| D．He finally got his property back with diamonds. |
When the second farmer first found a shining stone, he ______.
| A．felt sorry for what he had done to the first farmer |
| B．was excited to see he would soon be very rich |
| C．found it special and brought it home |
| D．couldn’t wait to share his joy with his friends |
The visitor nearly passed out after a close look at the stone because _______.
| A．he was shocked by the misfortune of the first farmer |
| B．the discovery was too good to be true |
| C．it was not discovered on his own farm |
| D．he was blinded by the light from the stone |
What do we learn from the story?
| A．Treasure a farm with a river running across it. |
| B．Show your belongings to others to find their real value. |
| C．Dig deep into what we have instead of wandering elsewhere. |
| D．Ask for professional advice before selling anything to others. |
All 20 children who died in a shooting at a school in Connecticut were aged between six and seven,according to an official list of the dead.
The state's chief medical examiner said the gunman used a rifle as his main weapon, and all the victims appeared to have been shot several times.
The gunman, named in media reports as Adam Lanza, killed his mother before driving to the school and opening fire.
Six adults, all women, were also killed before the gunman shot himself dead.
The head teacher at Sandy Hook school in Newtown, Dawn Hochsprung, is listed among the dead, along with adults Rachel DaVino, Anne Marie Murphy, Lauren Russo, Mary Sherlach and Victoria Soto.
Eight boys and 12 girls were killed - all but four of them were aged six.
The youngest, Noah Pozner, celebrated his birthday only last month.
A woman who worked at the school was the only person to be shot and survive.
Scores of people have left flowers at a memorial outside the school, and on Saturday evening hundreds attended a candlelight vigil（守夜）.
President Barack Obama is to visit Newtown on Sunday to meet families and speak at an interfaith vigil at the town's high school.
After the attack, he urged "meaningful action" against gun crime in the US.
"As a country we have been through this too many times," he said in an emotional White House address.How many people of the school got shot during this heartbreaking event?
| A．26. | B．27. | C．20. | D．12 |
Among the student victims, how many are just six years old?
| A．12 | B．20. | C．4. | D．16 |
Very few victims survived the shooting probably because _____.
| A．they were all too young |
| B．they failed to call the police in time |
| C．they each were shot several times |
| D．they were not taken to hospital soon enough |
What did the gunman do after the massive killing?
| A．He shot his mother dead. |
| B．He was caught by the head teacher. |
| C．He killed himself with his gun. |
| D．He got out to attend a candlelight vigil |
From President Barack Obama’s words we can expect that ______.
| A．the control of the use of guns will be tighter in U.S.A |
| B．more gun crimes will be inspired by this attack |
| C．more people will own guns to protect themselves |
| D．fewer people will send their kids to the school |
Originally, both the British and the American spoke with a rhotic accent. Rhotic essentially means an accent where the letter “r” is pronounced strongly after a vowel (元音). Rhotic accents are strong in both the US and Scotland, but seem to have disappeared from British English and its derivatives, such as Australian English and New Zealand English.
The major American accent –– the typical accent of the mid-western US –– is rhotic, and British English is, as a rule, non-rhotic. Specifically, US speakers pronounce every “r”, wherever they appear in a word. Most British speakers (and you will note that there are some British Isle accents that are strongly rhotic, like US) do not pronounce every “r”. Americans stress the “r” at the end of words such as “teacher” or “neighbour”, but in many non-rhotic British accents it is more of a “schwa” (an unstressed sound) so it comes out as, “teacha” (unstressed) or “neighba”.
This main difference also differs across the country of origin. For example, the US has a clear difference in the accents between people of the north and south, not to mention less clear differences across the states. Similarly, British people have a different accent according to their locality. The “cockney (伦敦东区)” accent is greatly different to the middle and upper class accents.
Another common difference appears to be that Americans pronounce words such as “herbal” without the “h”. Syllables (音节) may be stressed differently, too. “Oregano” in the US tends to be pronounced “o–reg–a–no” while in British English it is more likely to be “o–reg–AH–no”.When a rhotic accent occurs, ______.
| A．the letter “r” is silent in any positions |
| B．the letter “r” is sounded after a vowel |
| C．the ending syllable of a word is stressed |
| D．the ending syllable of a word is unheard |
The underlined word “derivatives” in the first paragraph probably means “_____”.
| A．neighbours | B．ancestors |
| C．symbols | D．branches |
In non-rhotic British accents, ______.
| A．“bother” sounds the same as “buther” |
| B．“cheaper” sounds the same as “chapter” |
| C．“worker” sounds the same as “worka” |
| D．“painting” sounds the same as “paintin” |
Even in the original country of the specific English language, accents differ ____.
| A．from area to area | B．from person to person |
| C．from word to word | D．from stress to stress |
American people trend to pronounce words like “herbal” with the “h” ______.
| A．stressed | B．silent | C．changed | D．loud |