Sports are the base of my life, next to my mother who raised me when my dad left us. I have been into sports since I was six years old. I have known many coaches and heard hundreds of their tips, but they usually focused on drills to develop my skills and reach the next level of play.
When I was in Senior Two, I met the new school basketball coach, Brian Pawloski. I thought I was certain to be selected for the school team since I had been in it the year before. I showed up to the tryouts and put out about 90% effort since I thought I’d make it with no problem. That was a big mistake.
Brian Pawloski is the hardest-working coach I have ever met. He didn’t expect 100% effort, he expected 200% effort. One example: he once made us do 40 suicide drills for the 40 lay-ups (投篮) we missed in a game. Some think this is crazy, but it isn’t. After this conditioning practice, as we were getting a cup of cold water to drink, I said, “coach, that was the best practice I ever had.” I was completely sincere. This man was and is the person who influenced me most at my high school. He expects us to be excellent not just on the court but in the classroom. If I am not working on basketball, I am reading a book that he thinks will help us better understand life’s challenges, including Wooden, Coach, and The Screwtape Letters.
In the first two years I slacked off, not putting forth my full potential. Now, unlike the coaches of my youth, this man was interested in how he did off the court. He always made sure I kept up with my studies and was able to be trusted. I can honestly say that no other coach has given me so much advice on how to succeed in basketball, but more importantly, in life. My school is lucky to have such a great person to teach, coach and influence their students. I will always remember my high-school basketball days as one of the hardest times I have ever worked in my life not only in basketball but in my growth as an individual.Different from other coaches, Coach Brian ________.
| A．concentrated on skill training |
| B．expected the team to do well in their studies |
| C．trained the team to the edge of death |
| D．asked the team to do more reading than training |
The underlined phrase “slacked off” in the last paragraph probably means ________.
| A．paid no attention | B．showed no interest |
| C．made less effort | D．had less passion |
In the author’s eye, Coach Brian is ________.
| A．professional and serious |
| B．hardworking and honest |
| C．skilled and cruel |
| D．strict and helpful |
Language is always changing. In a society where life continues year after year with few changes, the language does not change either. The earliest known languages had difficult grammar but a small, limited vocabulary. Over the century, the grammar changed, and the vocabulary grew. For example, the English and Spanish people who came to America during the sixteenth century gave names to all the new plants and animals they found. In this way, hundreds of new words were introduced into English and Spanish vocabularies. Today life is changing very fast, and language is changing fast too.
There are several major language families in the world. Some scientists say there are nine main families, but other scientists divide them differently. The languages in each family are connected, and scientists think that they came from the same parent language. About 3 percent of the people in the world speak languages that are not in these major families.The early language had ________.
| A．a lot of problems | B．words and easy grammar |
| C．words but no grammar | D．grammar but not many words |
In the next few hundred years we can expect language to _____.
| A．stay exactly the same | B．change a great deal |
| C．change only a little | D．ask more words and drop some grammar |
What this article shows is that _____.
| A．languages change fast | B．languages really don't want to change |
| C．language really with changes in society | D．Spanish and English change |
There are many ways to find a job. It can be as easy as walking into a neighborhood store to look at its announcement board. Local stores often have areas where people can put small signs telling what kind of service they need or can provide. Such services include caring for children or cleaning houses.
Or, job searchers can look in the newspaper. Local newspapers have employment announcements placed by companies seeking workers.
Another popular tool for finding jobs is the Internet. For example, people in four hundred and fifty cities around the world can use the Craigslist Web site to buy objects, meet people or find a job. Craigslist says that it receives two million new job listings each month.
Another useful way to find a job is through a college or university. For example, students at the University of Texas in Austin can go to the Career Exploration Center to get help in finding a job. Of course, looking for a job requires knowing what kind of work you want to do. For example, there is a book called “What Color is Your Parachute (降落伞)?” by Richard Bolles. This book has been helping people choose a career (职业) since it was first published in nineteen seventy.
Some experts also help people find jobs. Susan W. Miller owns a company called California Career Services in Los Angeles. She says her company helps people find jobs by first helping them understand their strengths, goals and interests. Then she provides them with methods and resources to help them find the right job.What is the passage mainly about?
| A．Finding a job. | B．College students’ part-time jobs. |
| C．Craigslist Web site. | D．The relation between study and work. |
“What Color is Your Parachute?” is a book which gives tips to those who want to _____.
| A．work on the airplane | B．buy a parachute |
| C．publish a book | D．find a suitable job |
It can be learned from the passage that ______.
| A．companies often put job information in local shops |
| B．the Internet is the most popular tool for job hunters in the USA |
| C．Susan W. Miller’s company is helping people choose careers |
| D．California Career Services mainly serves university students |
How many ways of finding a job are mentioned in the passage?
| A．Three. | B．Four. | C．Five. | D．Six. |
Frank Woolworth was born in Rodman, New York., in 1852. His family were very poor farmers, and there was never enough to eat. Frank decided he did not want to be farmer. He took a short business course, and went to work as a salesman in a large city.
Woolworth realized he had a natural skill for showing goods to attract people’s interest, but he soon learned something more important. One day his boss told him to sell some odds and ends (小商品 ) for as much as he could get. Frank put all these things on one table with a sign which said five cents each. People fought and pushed to buy the things and the table was soon cleared.
Soon afterwards, Woolworth opened his own store., selling goods at five and ten cents. But he had another lesson to learn before he became successful. That is, if you want to make money by selling low-price goods, you have to buy them in large quantities directly from the factories. Once, for example, Woolworth went to Germany and placed an order for knives. The order was so large that the factory had to keep running 24 hours a day for a whole year. In this way, the price of the knives was cut down by half.
By 1919, Woolworth had over 1000 stores in the US and Canada, and opened his first store in London. He made many millions and his name became famous throughout the world. He always run his business according to strict rules, of which the most important was: “ The customer is always right.”Frank took a short business course in order to ____________.
| A．earn more money for his family | B．learn something from a salesman |
| C．get away from the farm | D．get enough to eat. |
The price of the knives was cut down by half because ______________.
| A．the factory workers worked 24 hours a day. |
| B．knives were ordered in large quantities directly from the factory. |
| C．the knives were made in Germany, where labour (劳动力) was cheap. |
| D．the knives were produced in one factory. |
_____________ make Woolworth a world-famous man.
| A．His business skills and his wealth. |
| B．The low price of the goods he sold. |
| C．His trip to Germany and his huge order of knives. |
| D．His natural skill for showing things. |
The belief that : “ The customer is always right” suggests that _______________.
| A．whenever there is a quarrel between the customer and shop assistant, the customers are always right. |
| B．If you want to succeed, the rule is the only way. |
| C．stores must always follow the customer’s orders if they want to make more money. |
| D．stores should do their best to meet the customer’s needs if they want to be successful. |
Wilderness
“In wilderness(荒野) is the preservation of the world.” This is a famous saying from a writer regarded as one of the fathers of environmentalism. The frequency with which it is borrowed mirrors a heated debate on environmental protection: whether to place wilderness at the heart of what is to be preserved.
As John Sauven of Greenpeace UK points out, there is a strong appeal in images of the wild, the untouched; more than anything else, they speak of the nature that many people value most dearly. The urge to leave the subject of such images untouched is strong, and the danger exploitation(开发) brings to such landscapes(景观) is real. Some of these wildernesses also perform functions that humans need—the rainforests, for example, store carbon in vast quantities. To Mr.Sauven, these ”ecosystem services” far outweigh the gains from exploitation.
Lee Lane, a visiting fellow at the Hudson Institute, takes the opposing view. He acknowledges that wildernesses do provide useful services, such as water conservation. But that is not, he argues, a reason to avoid all human presence, or indeed commercial and industrial exploitation. There are ever more people on the Earth, and they reasonably and rightfully want to have better lives, rather than merely struggle for survival. While the ways of using resources have improved, there is still a growing need for raw materials, and some wildernesses contain them in abundance. If they can be tapped without reducing the services those wildernesses provide, the argument goes, there is no further reason not to do so. Being untouched is not, in itself, a characteristic worth valuing above all others.
I look forwards to seeing these views taken further, and to their being challenged by the other participants. One challenge that suggests itself to me is that both cases need to take on the question of spiritual value a little more directly. And there is a practical question as to whether wildernesses can be exploited without harm.
This is a topic that calls for not only free expression of feelings, but also the guidance of reason. What position wilderness should enjoy in the preservation of the world obviously deserves much more serious thinking.John Sauven holds that_____.
| A．many people value nature too much |
| B．exploitation of wildernesses is harmful |
| C．wildernesses provide humans with necessities |
| D．the urge to develop the ecosystem services is strong |
What is the main idea of Para. 3?
| A．The exploitation is necessary for the poor people. |
| B．Wildernesses cannot guarantee better use of raw materials. |
| C．Useful services of wildernesses are not the reason for no exploitation. |
| D．All the characteristics concerning the exploitation should be treated equally. |
What is the author’s attitude towards this debate?
| A．Objective. | B．Disapproving. | C．Sceptical. | D．Optimistic. |
Which of the following shows the structure of the passage?
A． |
B． |
C． |
D． |
CP: Central Point P: Point Sp: Sub-point(次要点) : Conclusion
Decision-making under Stress
A new review based on a research shows that acute stress affects the way the brain considers the advantages and disadvantages, causing it to focus on pleasure and ignore the possible negative (负面的) consequences of a decision.
The research suggests that stress may change the way people make choices in predictable ways.
“Stress affects how people learn,” says Professor Mara Mather. “People learn better about positive than negative outcomes under stress.”
For example, two recent studies looked at how people learned to connect images(影像) with either rewards or punishments. In one experiment, some of the participants were first stressed by having to give a speech and do difficult math problems in front of an audience; in the other, some were stressed by having to keep their hands in ice water. In both cases, the stressed participants remembered the rewarded material more accurately and the punished material less accurately than those who hadn’t gone through the stress.
This phenomenon is likely not surprising to anyone who has tried to resist eating cookies or smoking a cigarette while under stress –at those moments, only the pleasure associated with such activities comes to mind. But the findings further suggest that stress may bring about a double effect. Not only are rewarding experiences remembered better, but negative consequences are also easily recalled.
The research also found that stress appears to affect decision-making differently in men and women. While both men and women tend to focus on rewards and less on consequences under stress, their responses to risk turn out to be different.
Men who had been stressed by the cold-water task tended to take more risks in the experiment while women responded in the opposite way. In stressful situations in which risk-taking can pay off big, men may tend to do better, when caution weighs more, however, women will win.
This tendency to slow down and become more cautious when decisions are risky might also help explain why women are less likely to become addicted than men: they may more often avoid making the risky choices that eventually harden into addiction.We can learn from the passage that people under pressure tend to ______.
| A．keep rewards better in their memory |
| B．recall consequences more effortlessly |
| C．make risky decisions more frequently |
| D．learn a subject more effectively |
According to the research, stress affects people most probably in their ______.
| A．ways of making choices | B．preference for pleasure |
| C．tolerance of punishments | D．responses to suggestions |
The research has proved that in a stressful situation, ______.
| A．women find it easier to fall into certain habits |
| B．men have a greater tendency to slow down |
| C．women focus more on outcomes |
| D．men are more likely to take risks |