It is of great importance for students to be able to get a feel for the rhythm and sounds of a poem---more so than for most pieces of prose (散文). This isn’t always easy in a second language, and so listening to their teacher read the poem, or to a professional recording, perhaps by the poet or by an actor, is, I feel, necessary.
As with any listening activity, students will need some kind of preparation and task so that they can be actively engaged. They might be asked to check predictions that arose from a warm-up discussion, to compare their suggested rhyming couplets with the poet’s, or to identify stressed words and syllables.
You might also want to get your students to listen to recorded or live discussions about poems. This can, for example, take the form of a couple of teachers or a group of students giving their views on a poem, or even an interview with the poet.
I’m a big fan of jigsaw listening because of the natural information gap. If your school has the facilities, you might like to:
divide your students into two, or even three groups
give each group a different cassette or CD and tasks to work on
then they come back together to share what they have learned.
Remember that your own enthusiasm is a key factor in any activity relating to literature in the classroom.
Finally, don’t forget to encourage art for art’s sake. Listening for pleasure, to poetry (or to anything else, for that matter), is to be fostered at every opportunity, because of the obvious benefits which include motivation, vocabulary acquisition and learner independence. Many good song lyrics (歌词) could be termed poetry and treated accordingly in the classroom, copyright rules permitting. Which of the following is true according to the passage?
| A．An English student will have difficulty understanding Li Bai’s poems. |
| B．an English student will have some difficulty understanding Walt Whitman. |
| C．A Chinese student will have some difficulty understanding Du Fu’s works. |
| D．An American student will have some difficulty understanding William Shakespeare. |
What kind of preparations should the students do in the listening activity？
a. They’d better predict what the poem is about.
b. They’d better have a warm-up discussion.
c. They will share their own works with their classmates
d. They should know the stressed words.
e. They should make clear the stressed syllables.
f. They should first go to an actor.
| A．abcf | B．abde | C．cdef | D．bcdf |
Who do you think is this passage written for?
| A．The students. | B．The poets. |
| C．The teachers. | D．The readers. |
What’s the main idea of the passage?
| A．How to use poems to develop the students’ skills. |
| B．Listening to poem is more difficult than reading prose. |
| C．The schools should encourage the students to study poems. |
| D．Preparations should be done before teaching. |
The Museum:The Charles Dickens Museum in London is the world’s most important collection of material relating to the great Victorian novelist and social commentator（时事评论员）.The only surviving London home of Dickens (from 1837 until 1839) was opened as a museum in 1925 and is still welcoming visitors from all over the world. On four floors, visitors can see paintings, rare editions, manuscripts（手稿）, original furniture and many items relating to the life of one of the most popular and beloved personalities of the Victorian age.
Opening Hours
The Museum is open from Mondays to Saturdays 10:00—17:00; Sundays 11:00—17:00.
Last admission is 30 minutes before closing time.
Special opening times can be arranged for groups, who may wish to book a private view.
Admission Charges: Adults: £5.00; Students: £4.00; Seniors: £4.00; Children: £3.00; Families: £14.00
(2 adults & up to five children)
Group Rates: For a group of 10 or more, a special group rate of £4.00 each applies. Children will still be admitted for £3.00 each.
Access: We are constantly working to improve access to the Museum and its collection. Our current projects involve the fitting of a wheelchair ramp（波道）for better access, a customer care kit and an audio tour for visitors with impaired (受损的)vision. Our Handling Sessions are also suitable for the visually（视觉上地）impaired. The Museum has developed an online virtual（虚拟的）tour through the Museum. Click here to visit all the rooms in the Museum online.
Hire the Museum: The Museum can be hired for private functions, performances soirees (社交晚会) and many other social occasions.
Find Us: The Museum may be reached by using the following buses: 7,17, 19, 38, 45, 46, 55, 243. And by these underground services: Piccadilly Line; Central Line. For a map, please click here. The British Museum and the Foundling Museum are within walking distance.The passage is probably from a(n)________.
| A．book | B．website | C．newspaper | D．announcement |
If a family with two adults and five children go to the Museum together, they will save ______ compared to going there separately.
| A．£25.00 | B．£ 14.00 | C．£ 9.00 | D．£11.00 |
According to the passage, which of the following statements is TRUE?
| A．In any case people cannot visit the Museum after 17:00. |
| B．Visitors with poor vision cannot enjoy the Museum. |
| C．The Museum is not very far from the British Museum. |
| D．Anyone cannot hire the Museum for other uses. |
The passage is written to _______.
| A．persuade readers to visit the Charles Dickens Museum. |
| B．inform readers about the history of the Charles Dickens Museum. |
| C．offer readers some information about the Charles Dickens Museum. |
| D．tell readers how to make use of the Charles Dickens Museum. |
We were standing at the top of a church tower. My father had brought me to this spot in a small town not far from our home in Rome. I wondered why.
“Look down, Elsa,” father said. I gathered all my courage and looked down. I saw the square in the center of the village. And I saw the crisscross (十字形) of twisting, turning streets leading to the square. “ See, my dear,” father said gently. “ There is more than one way to the square. Life is like that. If you can’t get to the place where you want to go by one road, try another.”
Now I understood why I was there. Earlier that day I had begged my mother to do something about the awful(糟糕的) lunches that were served at school. But she refused because she could not believe the lunches were as bad as I said.
When I turned to father for help, he didn’t say anything. Instead, he brought me to this high tower to give me a lesson. By the time we reached home, I had a plan.
At school the next day, I secretly poured my luncheon（午餐）soup into a bottle and brought it home. Then I asked our cook to serve it to mother at dinner. The plan worked perfectly. She swallowed one spoonful and sputtered（喷溅出） “ The cook must have gone mad！” Quickly I told her what I had done, and Mother stated firmly that she would take up the matter of lunches at school the next day!
In the years that followed I often remembered the lesson father taught me. I began to work as a fashion designer two years ago. I wouldn’t stop working until I tried every possible means to my goal. Father’s wise words always remind me that there is more than one way to the square.The author's father took her to the top of a church tower to _____．
| A．enjoy the beautiful scenery of the whole town |
| B．find out how many ways lead to the square |
| C．inspire her to find out another way to solve her problem |
| D．help her forget some unpleasant things earlier that day |
What did the author want her mother to do earlier that day?
| A．Do something delicious for lunch. |
| B．Taste her awful lunch. |
| C．Dismiss the mad cook. |
| D．Speak to the school about lunch. |
By sharing her own experiences, the author tries to tell us ____________.
| A．when one road is blocked, try another |
| B．how bad the lunch of her school is |
| C．how wise her father is |
| D．about the church tower near her home |
“If you talk to the plants, they will grow faster and the effect is even better if you’re a woman.” Researchers at Royal Horticultural Society carried out an experient to find that the voice of a woman gardener makes plants grow faster.
The experiment lasted a month and by the end of the study scientists managed to discover that tomato plants grew up two inches taller when women gardeners talked to them instead of male.
Sarah Darwin was the one making the plants registered the best growth. Her voice was the most “inspiring” for plants than those of nine other gardeners when reading a passage from The Origin of Species. The great-great-granddaughter of the famous botanist(植物学家) Charles Darwin found that her plant grew about two inches taller than the plant of the best male gardener.
Colin Crosbie, Garden Superintendent at RHS, said that the finding cannot yet be explained. He assumes that women have a greater range of pitch（音高） and tone（音调） which might have a certain effect on the sound waves that reach the plant. “Sound waves are an environmental effect just like rain or light ,”said Mr Grosbie.
The study began in April at RHS Garden Wisley in Survey. Scientists started with open auditions(听力) for the people who were asked to record passages from John Wyndham's The Day of the Triffids, Shakespeare’s A Midsummer's Night Dream and Darwin's The Origin of Species.
Afterwards researchers selected a number of different voices and played them to 10 tomato plants during a period of a month. Each plant had headphones（耳机） connected to it. Through the headphones the sound waves could hit the plants. It was discovered that plants that “listened” to female voices on average grew taller by an inch in comparison to plants that heard male voices.
Miss Darwin said, “I think it is an honor to have a voice that can make tomatoes grow, and especially fitting because for a number of years I have been studying wild tomatoes from the Galapagos Island at the Natural History Museum in London.”What does the passage talk about?
| A．Plants enjoy men’s voices than women’s. |
| B．A botanical experiment in a museum. |
| C．Voice’s influence on plant growing. |
| D．Strange phenomenon（现象） at Royal Horticultural Society. |
What does the underlined sentence in paragraph 4 mean?
| A．Plants need sound as well as rain and light. |
| B．Sound is basic for the plant to grow. |
| C．Sound has a good effect as rain or light does. |
| D．Plants can’t live without sound, rain or light. |
Sarah Darwin is most likely a (an)_____.
| A．botanist | B．gardener | C．astronomer | D．environmentalist |
What can we learn from the passage?
| A．The experiment ended in May. |
| B．Scientist can explain the findings clearly. |
| C．Plants enjoy listening to the passages from masterpieces. |
| D．The findings are of great importance to human beings. |
I still remember my first day at school in London and I was half-excited and half-frightened. On my way to school I wondered what sort of questions the other boys would ask me and practiced all the answers: “I am nine years old. I was born here but I haven’t lived here since I was two. I was living in Farley. It’s about thirty miles away. I came back to London two months ago.” I also wondered if it was the custom for boys to fight strangers like me, but I was tall for my age. I hoped they would decide not to risk it.
No one took any notice of me before school. I stood in the center of the playground, expecting someone to say “hello”, but no one spoke to me. When a teacher called my name and told me where my classroom was, one or two boys looked at me but that was all.
My teacher was called Mr. Jones. There were 42 boys in the class, so I didn’t stand out there, either, until the first lesson of the afternoon. Mr. Jones was very fond of Charles Dickens and he had decided to read aloud to us from David Copperfield, but first he asked several boys if they knew Dickens’ birthplace, but no one guessed right. A boy called Brian, the biggest in the class, said: “Timbuktu”, and Mr. Jones went red in the face. Then he asked me. I said: “Portsmouth”, and everyone stared at me because Mr. Jones said I was right. This didn’t make me very popular, of course.
“He thinks he’s clever,” I heard Brian say.
After that, we went out to the playground to play football. I was in Brian’s team, and he obviously had Dickens in mind because he told me to go in goal. No one ever wanted to be the goalkeeper.
“He’s big enough and useless enough.” Brian said when someone asked him why he had chosen me.
I suppose Mr. Jones, who served as the judge, remembered Dickens, too, because when the game was nearly over, Brian pushed one of the players on the other team, and he gave them a penalty (惩罚). As the boy kicked the ball to my right, I threw myself down instinctively (本能地) and saved it. All my team crowded round me. My bare knees were injured and bleeding. Brian took out a handkerchief and offered it to me.
“Do you want to join my gang (帮派)?” he said.
At the end of the day, I was no longer a stranger.The writer prepared to answer all of the following questions EXCEPT “ ”.
| A．How old are you? |
| B．Where are you from? |
| C．Do you want to join my gang? |
| D．When did you come back to London? |
We can learn from the passage that .
| A．boys were usually unfriendly to new students |
| B．the writer was not greeted as he expected |
| C．Brian praised the writer for his cleverness |
| D．the writer was glad to be a goalkeeper |
The underlined part “I didn’t stand out” in paragraph 3 means that the writer was not .
| A．noticeable | B．welcome | C．important | D．foolish |
The writer was offered a handkerchief because .
| A．he threw himself down and saved the goal |
| B．he pushed a player on the other team |
| C．he was beginning to be accepted |
| D．he was no longer a newcomer |
Knowing the best way to study will help you to be a better student．By using your time properly，you can do your homework more quickly．Learning to stuady is not difficult．
The first thing to remember is that you must be willing to learn．It doesn’t mean that you must always like the subject．It does mean，however，that you must be willing to do whatever is necessary to learn．Try to understand why it is important and how it will help you now and later to do and learn other things．Knowing mathematics facts will be useful in your whole life．Knowing how to spell makes any kind of writing easier．Sometimes a subject that you think is going to be uninteresting will be exciting when you begin to work at it and understand it more clearly．Learning things can be fun if you are willing to work with them．
Here’s some advice for you：have a certain time each day and a quiet place with good lighting for study，so that you can concentrate(集中)on your study without interruptions(中断，打断)；have everything ready before you sit down to study—a dictionary，paper，a pen and books；be sure you understand what you should learn before you start；read carefully and pay special attention to the most important things；when memorizing(记忆), first find out the main parts and then recite(背诵)the whole thing；check your homework after you finish it：never forget the importance of review and preview．The main idea of the text is ．
| A．to prove that learning is not difficult |
| B．to make the readers be interested in study |
| C．to tell the importance of self-teaching |
| D．to tell the students how to study well |
The first thing to remember in studying is that ．
| A．you must like the subject |
| B．you must follow the teacher |
| C．you must enioy learning |
| D．you must study hard |
What does the underlined word“preview”mean?
| A．To go over． |
| B．To review again． |
| C．To view in advance． |
| D．To discuss． |
Which of the following is NOT the advice given in the text?
| A．To put a pen，paper and books beside you before study． |
| B．To study at any possible time and place． |
| C．To review and preview． |
| D．To pay attention to the most important things。 |