阅读理解。
Two days ago I was woken up at 1 am. My roommate stood at the door (she was returning from a club) along with a huge middle-aged man with long hair. “Please let him in,” she told me, “He has been locked out of his apartment.” She had seen him, cold and shivering (it had snowed the previous night) and immediately asked him to sleep at our place. He was a law student in his fifties who had been doing his homework at the Laundromat (自助洗衣店) when he found he had left his keys in his house.
I have never had a strange man sleep in my house before. My roommate and I are both less than 5 feet and we have been asked not to speak to strangers since we were kids. Not to mention that we’re in a new city that we have lived in for less than a month. He accepted our kindness with hesitation and as soon as dawn broke he left.
The next day he came to our house, saying he owed us big time for not being frozen out in the cold. He left us a beautiful card saying—“Thank you so much. Your actions are so sincere.”
Later he cooked us a wonderful simple “thank you” dinner over which he told us about his life (a coach, a guide, a law student). He told us how he was completely touched by our concern for a total stranger. I learnt a lot that evening. As he talked about how once he brought a homeless man in to eat Christmas dinner with his family, I was deeply touched.
My roommate taught me a huge lesson: Let go of your fear; always leave the door of compassion (同情) open and you can never go wrong. From the first paragraph we can infer that _______.
| A．the writer came back from a club earlier |
| B．the writer’s roommate was kind-hearted |
| C．the writer’s roommate often came back late |
| D．the man wanted to find a job at the Laundromat |
When the writer knew the man would stay in their house for the night, at first _______.
| A．she felt nervous | B．she was angry |
| C．she felt excited | D．she was disappointed |
The next day the man went back to the writer’s house to ______.
| A．tell them he was OK | B．give them nice cards |
| C．show his thanks to them | D．show he was really lucky |
What can we learn from the passage?
| A．The writer’s roommate worked in a club. |
| B．The man had helped others before. |
| C．The man was a complete failure in his life. |
| D．The two women have lived in this city since they were young. |
On my first day in America, I was excited, but nervous as well. It was my dear neighbor Susan who helped me get used to my new life far away from home. There was a knock at the door. When I opened it, Susan came in with a home-made apple pie. She hugged me and said：“You must be the precious Chinese doll!” With a big smile, she went on：“Alice, I am sure you have never, ever tried a home-made apple pie before! You are going to love it so much!” To be honest, I was greatly surprised by this welcome from a stranger. And the apple pie made me feel at home.
Susan was very helpful to me. When I was thinking about a costume to wear on Halloween, she suggested I dress up like a traditional Chinese girl. “I happen to have a traditional Chinese dress and guess what, I am a great make-up artist!” she said. Susan didn’t hide her excitement, when, after an hour of hard work, she pushed me to the mirror to examine our work. The clothes fit me perfectly! I am sure that I stood out from the crowd that Halloween, and I am very grateful to Susan for her help.
My first Thanksgiving was another highlight. On the festival morning, I was surprised to find a gift box in my front yard. There was a note on it：“Hello Alice, I am the Thanksgiving bunny! Enjoy your gift!” I looked around and caught Susan looking at me from the porch. Seeing that she had been caught, she awkwardly picked up a newspaper and pretended to read it. I couldn’t help laughing. When I walked up to her, she said：“It was not me. It was the Thanksgiving bunny!” Susan is such a lovely person; she is the American above all others I need to thank.
I saw that the spirit of the Chinese saying, that “Neighbors carry more weight than distant relatives,” is alive and well in America. Susan filled my heart with warmth and joy, just as angels do. What made the writer feel at home in America?
| A．Her Chinese doll. |
| B．Susan’s thanksgiving bunny for Halloween. |
| C．Gifts from her parents in China. |
| D．Susan’s visit on the first day. |
Which of the following is true according to the passage?
| A．The writer lent a Chinese dress to Susan to wear at Halloween. |
| B．Susan often looked at her neighbors to find out what they were doing. |
| C．The writer had never had an apple-pie before she went to America. |
| D．Susan helped the writer to appreciate American festivals. |
What does the phrase “stood out” mean in the passage?
| A．To be more eye-catching. | B．To rise up. |
| C．To be much better. | D．To be strange. |
This passage is most probably taken from_______.
| A．a newspaper | B．a travel guide |
| C．an advertisement | D．a science magazine. |
You have two eyes and they are set close together on the front of your face. Have you wondered why? The reasons are simple and important to the way you see the rest of your world.
Your eyes are like two small cameras. A camera catches an image of an object and records it on film. Similarly, when you look at something, each eye takes in what it sees and sends this image to the back of the eyeball. Because your eyes are set close together, they view the world from about the same height but from slightly different angles. Working as a team, the eyes send the images to your brain, which puts them together into a single, centered image.
Seeing in stereo means seeing with two eyes working together, which is called stereoscopic sight. This allows you to view the world in three dimensions, or 3-D. Seeing depth helps you to judge the distance between you and the objects you see and to adjust to the changing angle at which you see something as you move closer to or farther away from it. If images are coming from only one eye, however, only two of these dimensions----height and width----can be perceived. A world seen with one eye is thus two-dimensional, as in a photograph.
Now consider why your two eyes are on the front of your face. Think of other animals with the same arrangement. They are all animals that hunt, like lions and wolves. Their eyes face directly in front of them. This provides a field of sight about 180 degrees wide, which is called binocular(双眼的) sight. On the other hand, animals that are hunted have eyes on the sides of the head, which provides nearly360-degree field of sight. In order to stay alive, they need to see things coming from the sides and from behind. However, without stereoscopic sight, they have difficulty determining how far a danger is.
With sight both stereoscopic and binocular, humans share with animal hunters the ability to see from side to side and to accurately determine the distance. If you think it would be great to have another type of sight, perhaps with hundreds of tiny eyes like many insects do, think again! Each tiny insect eye sees only a tiny part. Besides, what if you needed glasses? Be glad for the eyesight that you have.According to the passage, the similarity of an eye and a camera is that they both.
| A．can imagine objects | B．can record images |
| C．provide centered images | D．work at the same height |
Stereoscopic sight is a result of having.
| A．two eyes close to each other that work together |
| B．hundreds of eyes, all seeing tiny parts of an image |
| C．a three-hundred-sixty-degree field of sight |
| D．one eye on either side of the head, each seeing a different image |
What is the meaning of the underlined word “perceived” in Para3 most similar to?
| A．known | B．seen | C．taken | D．understood |
We can infer from the last paragraph that.
| A．our eyes work like cameras |
| B．animal hunters are glad for the sight they have |
| C．the three dimensions are depth, height and width |
| D．human beings are fortunate to have such eyesight |
Many of us enjoy doing it: you turn on the camera on your mobile phone and hold it at a high angle, making your eyes look bigger and your cheekbones more defined. You turn to your best side and click. There it is — your selfie.
Over the past year, “selfie” has become a well-known term across the globe. This August the Oxford dictionary added the word to their online dictionary and defined it as: “A photograph that one has taken of oneself, typically with a smartphone or webcam and up-loaded to a social media website.”
Today it’s not difficult to find social networking pages full of photos people have taken of themselves and their friends. And selfie culture has become especially relevant for young people. As many as 91 percent of teenagers have posted photos of themselves online, according to a recent survey by the US Pew Research Center.
So what are the reasons for the rise of selfie culture?
“The cult (狂热) of the selfie celebrates regular people,” Pamela Rutledge, a professor at the Massachusetts School of Professional Psychology, told Vogue magazine. “There are many more photographs available now of real people than models.”
Posting selfies also allows you to control your image online. “I like having the power to choose how I look, even if I’m making a funny face,” Samantha Barks, 19, a high school student in the US, told Vogue.
In addition to self-expression and documentation, selfies “allow of a close friendship for long-distance friends, because you can see each other’s faces every day”, wrote Casey Miller at The Huffmgton Post.
But US psychologist Jill Weber is concerned that selfies might lead to social problems, “There’s a danger that your self-esteem may start to be tied to the comments and ‘likes’ you get when you post a selfie, and they aren’t based on who you are — they’re based on what you look like,” Weber told Vogue. “When you get nothing or a negative response, your confidence can plummet.” With the first paragraph, the author intends to .
| A．tell us the fun of taking a selfie |
| B．describe what a selfie is |
| C．introduce where the selfie came from |
| D．inform readers that the selfie is popular among teenagers |
Why is selfie culture so popular according to the article?
a. It enables people to choose how they look.
b. It helps people improve their self-esteem.
c. It’s a chance for ordinary people to show off themselves.
d. It is believed to be a helpful way to develop a new friendship.
e. It is considered a good way to stay connected with friends that are far away.
| A．a, c, e | B．b, c, d | C．a, b, c | D．b, d, e |
What is Jill Weber’s attitude toward selfies?
| A．She thinks they are a good form of self-expression and documentation. |
| B．She believes the disadvantages of selfies outweigh the advantages. |
| C．She is worried that people’s self-esteem might be affected by how others react to their selfies. |
| D．She thinks that selfies can help people learn about their friends based on who they really are. |
The underlined word “plummet” in the last paragraph probably means .
| A．rapidly develop | B．greatly exaggerate |
| C．become dangerous | D．quickly fall |
OK, I admit it: emoticons(表情符号)are popular. Some people even think they are fun. Many seem unable to get through an e-mail or Instant Message chat sentence without using one. Some feel that they add feeling and character to otherwise cold digital communications.
Some people, such as a Hollywood scriptwriter John Blumenthal, however, blast the use of emoticons as “infantile(幼稚)just like the people who use them”. He believes that words themselves should be enough. “If you’re funny, happy or sad, that should be apparent from the comment that goes before the emoticons,” he argues.
In the eyes of Blumenthal, the use of emoticons is a gender issue. “Men don’t use emoticons very much. Maybe not at all,” he said, “Teenage girls and women seem to use them a lot. Maybe there’s an emoticon gene.”
It’s an interesting opinion, but it is not shared by all.
In an interview with The New York Times, Dacher Keltner, professor of psychology at the University of California, said that emoticons are popular because our brains are programmed “to seek out representations of humanity”. He believes that they are popular not because they are shortcuts for the lazy, but because they bring in something beyond language. They satisfy our needs to be with and communicate with people.
All of these arguments may be somehow right. Each one of us will choose to communicate in our own way. I tried to use one once and felt like I was stealing into a primary school class that I had no place being in. I’d rather let my words do the talking.
Friends, however, send me messages and e-mails full of emoticons. I have no problem with this. I don’t regard any of my friends as lazy or immature. It’s just a question of individuality. What does the underlined word “blast” in the second paragraph mean?
| A．clarify | B．criticize | C．support | D．approve |
Which of the following views would John Blumenthal agree with?
| A．It’s enough to use language in digital communication. |
| B．Instant Message chatters are childish. |
| C．Men never use emoticons. |
| D．There must be an emoticon gene in everybody. |
From the text, we can conclude that the author______________.
| A．feels he has no difficulty using emoticons |
| B．thinks emoticons don’t suit him |
| C．encourages his friends to use emoticons |
| D．believes that emoticons are suitable for everyone |
What is the main point of the article?
| A．Advice on language used over the Internet. |
| B．Arguments over the use of emoticons. |
| C．The history of the use of emoticons. |
| D．Reasons for the popularity of emoticons. |
As is shown in a recent study, the way people sleep at night actually determines a lot about the type personality they have. Robert Phipps, a body language expert, has identified four sleeping positions that affect personality.
Phipps found that worriers, those who stress the most, tend to sleep in the fetal(胎儿的) position. He found that this is by far the most common bedtime position, sleeping on their side with knees up and head down. The more we curl up(蜷曲), the more comfort we are seeking, according to Phipps.
The second most common position is the log, indicating stubbornness. People sleep with a straight body, with arms at each side, as if they are standing guard at Buckingham Palace, and these people (the 28 percent who sleep this way) often wake up stiffer(更僵硬) than when they went to sleep.” The longer you sleep like this, the more rigid your thinking is and you can become inflexible, which means you make things harder for yourself,” according to Phipps.
Yearner(向往型的) sleepers are next on the list. About 25 percent of people sleep in this style----on their backs with arms stretched out in front, looking as if they are either chasing a dream or perhaps being chased themselves. Yearners are typically their own worst critics, always expecting great results, explained Phipps. These people often wake up refreshed and eager to face the challenges of the day ahead.
Perhaps the most special sleep style is the freefaller position. This sleep style makes up 17 percent of the population. They sleep face down with arms stretched out. These people, according to Phipps, feel like they have little control over their life. Not only is this the strangest of sleep styles, it also the least comfortable, and people may wake up feeling tired and have no energy.
In conclusion, Phipps has only one more thing to add: “A good night’s sleep sets you up for the following day and our sleeping positions can determine how we feel when we wake.”Which of the following pictures is the fetal position?
A． |
B． |
C． |
D． |
The underlined word “rigid” the third paragraph is closest in meaning to “________”.
| A．comfortable | B．flexible | C．stubborn | D．strange |
Which sleeping position indicates that the sleeper tends to seek perfection?
| A．The fetal position | B．The log position |
| C．The yearner position | D．The freefaller position |
What is the passage mainly about?
| A．Which sleeping position helps you sleep comfortably？ |
| B．A good night’s sleep sets you up for the following day. |
| C．How you sleep at night affects what you do the next day. |
| D．Your personality depends a lot on how you sleep at night. |