After 20 years of marriage, my wife wanted me to take another woman out to _______. She said, “I love you, but I know this other woman loves you too.”
The other woman that my wife wanted me to visit was my mother, who has been a widow (寡妇) for 19 years, but my busy life had made it impossible to visit her _______. That night I called to _______ her out for dinner.
“What’s wrong? are you well?” she asked. My mother is the type of woman who suspects that a late night _______ is a sign of bad news.
“I thought that it would be pleasant to spend some time with you,” I _______.
She thought about it for a moment, and _______. During the dinner, we had an agreeable conversation — _______ extraordinary but recent events of each other’s life.
Before we _______, she said, “I’ll go out with you again, _______ only if you let me invite you.”
A few days ________, my mother died of a heart attack. It ________ so suddenly that I didn’t have a chance to do anything for her. A few days after the funeral, I received an envelope with a receipt (收据) from the same place where mother and I had ________. An attached note ________:
“I paid this bill ________. I wasn’t sure that I could be there; but nevertheless, I paid for two ________ —one for you and the other for your ________. You will never know what that night meant for me. I ________ you, son.”
At that moment, I ________ the importance of saying in time: “I LOVE YOU”. Give your family the ________ they deserve, because sometimes things cannot be ________ till “some other time”.
1.A.home B.talk C.movie D.dinner
2.A.directly B.frequently C.rarely D.exactly
3.A.bring B.take C.force D.invite
4.A.visit B.meal C.ring D.date
5.A.argued B.whispered C.committed D.responded
6.A.agreed B.refused C.promised D.nodded
7.A.anything B.nothing C.something D.everything
8.A.met B.parted C.left D.divided
9.A.but B.and C.so D.or
10.A.before B.earlier C.ago D.later
11.A.broke B.formed C.fell D.struck
12.A.sat B.waited C.gathered D.dined
13.A.saw B.read C.showed D.wrote
14.A.in advance B.on purpose C.by accident D.with patience
15.A.tables B.dishes C.seats D.chances
16.A.mother B.family C.wife D.child
17.A.miss B.admire C.love D.hug
18.A.sensed B.accepted C.checked D.pursued
19.A.time B.money C.comfort D.calls
20.A.ensured B.delayed C.forgotten D.forgiven
There are many things we remember from our childhood—the games we played, the music we listened to...but what about earning pocket money? This was our first ever wage for completing tasks such as tidying our bedroom or sorting the laundry. Our reward was a handful of coins that we safely stored. 1.
There was a time when cash was the main currency for financial transactions (交易). These days, though, using credit cards, or making cashless payments, are the most convenient ways of paying. 2. Research has found that 84% of British parents currently give notes and coins to their children—usually 7 pounds a week as an allowance.
But banks predict that by 2028 only one in ten transactions will be with cash, and that is something today’s children will have to deal with. One issue is that children may not understand the value of cash because they never see it. 3. They either should find a new way to hand out pocket money, or needn’t bother to pay it at all.
Still, solutions are available. Giving children lessons at school about finance is important. 4. The trick is to go and get some coins so that children have the opportunity to interact with them. Besides, bank accounts for older children can be opened to give them cash cards to use. Whatever method a parent chooses to adopt, their children will get some idea of the value of pocket money. 5.
A. Parents face a dilemma too.
B. This, in turn, makes the buying much easier.
C. They have completely taken the place of cash.
D. So how do parents hand out pocket money at present?
E. But parents need to teach their kids that money doesn’t grow on trees!
F. But now, it seems that parents’ attitude to handing out cash is changing.
G. And parents are advised to get children started with money as young as possible.
According to a new study， teens focus on rewards and have a hard time learning to avoid punishment or consider the consequences of alternative actions.
University College London researchers compared how teens and adults learn to make choices based on the available information. They tracked the way in which 18 volunteers aged 12-17 and 20 volunteers aged 18-32 completed tasks in which they had to choose between abstract symbols.
Each symbol was consistently associated with a fixed chance of a reward, punishment, or no outcome. As the trial progressed ， participants learned which symbols were likely to lead to each outcome and adjusted their choices accordingly. Teens and adults were equally good at learning to choose symbols associated with reward， but teens were less good at avoiding symbols associated with punishment. Adults also performed significantly better when they were told what would have happened if they had chosen the other symbol after each choice， while teens did not appear to take this information into account.
“From this experimental lab study we can draw conclusions about learning during the teen years. We find that teens and adults learn in different ways， something that might be relevant to education," said lead author Dr. Stefano Palminteri. " Unlike adults, teens are not so good at learning to adjust their choices to avoid punishment. This suggests that incentive systems based on reward rather than punishment may be more effective for this age group. Additionally, we found that teens did not learn from being shown what would have happened if they made alternative choices."
To interpret the results, the researchers developed computational models of learning and ran simulations （模拟）applying them to the results of the study. The first was a simple model, one that learned from rewards, and the second model added to this by also learning from the option that was not chosen. The third model was the most complete and took the full context into account, with equal weight given to punishment avoidance and reward seeking. For example, obtaining no outcome rather than losing a point is weighted equally to gaining a point rather than having no outcome.
Comparing the experimental data to the models, the team found that teens" behavior followed the simple reward-based model while adults" behavior matched the complete, contextual model. “Our study suggests that teens are more receptive to rewards than they are to punishments of equal value, ” said senior author Dr. Sarah-Jayne Blakemore. “As a result, it may be useful for parents and teachers to frame things in more positive terms.”
1.It can be learned from the study that .
A.adults made choices faster than teens
B.adults understood rewards better than teens
C.teens reacted better to reward than punishment
D.teens were aware of the outcome of each choice
2.What do we know about the three computational models?
A.They reflected people’s strong desire for punishment avoidance.
B.They gave circumstances different degrees of consideration.
C.They paid equal attention to reward and punishment.
D.They shaped the behavior of people at different ages.
3.The underlined word “receptive" in the last paragraph probably means .
A.accustomed B.opposed
C.sympathetic D.responsive
4.According to the writer, which of the following statements works best for teens?
A.“If you insist on doing things in this way， you will lose ten points. "
B.“If we had talked about this earlier， you wouldn’t have made the mistake. "
C.“ If you hand in your assignment ahead of time， you will get an extra bonus."
D.“If you want to approach a problem differently ， you can talk to your parents. "
Pigeons in London have a bad reputation. Some people call them flying rats. And many blame them for causing pollution with their droppings. But now the birds are being used to fight another kind of pollution in this city of 8.5 million.
“The problem for air pollution is that it’s been largely ignored as an issue for a long time,” says Andrea Lee, who works for the London-based environmental organization Client Earth. “People don’t realize how bad it is, and how it actually affects their health.” London’s poor air quality is linked to nearly 10,000 early deaths a year. Lee says, citing(引用)a report released by the city manager last year. If people were better informed about the pollution they’ re breathing, she says, they could pressure the government to do something about it.
Nearby, on a windy hill in London’s Regent’s Park, an experiment is underway that could help—the first week of flights by the Pigeon Air Patrol. It all began when Pierre Duquesnoy, the director for DigitasLBi, a marketing firm, won a London Design Festival contest last year to show how a world problem could be solved using Twitter. Duquesnoy, from France, chose the problem of air pollution.
“Basically, I realized how important the problem was,” he says. “But also I realized that most of the people around me didn’t know anything about it.” Duquesnoy says he wants to better measure pollution, while at the same time making the results accessible to the public through Twitter.
“So”, he wondered, “how could we go across the city quickly collecting as much data as possible?” Drones were his first thought. But it’s illegal to fly them over London. “But pigeons can fly above London, right?” he says. “They live—actually, they are Londoners as well. So, yeah, I thought about using pigeons equipped with mobile apps. And we can use not just street pigeons, but racing pigeons, because they fly pretty quickly and pretty low.”
So it might be time for Londoners to have more respect for their pigeons. The birds may just be helping to improve the quality of the city’s air.
1.What can we infer about London’s air quality from Paragraph 2?
A.Londoners are very satisfied with it.
B.The government is trying to improve it.
C.Londoners should pay more attention to it.
D.The government has done a lot to improve it.
2.Duquesnoy attended the London Design Festival to _________.
A.entertain Londoners. B.solve a world problem.
C.design a product for sale. D.protect animals like pigeons.
3.Why did Duquesnoy give up using drones to fly across London?
A.Because they are too expensive. B.Because they fly too quickly.
C.Because they are forbidden. D.Because they fly too high.
4.Which can be the best title for the text?
A.Clean air in London. B.London’s dirty secret.
C.London’s new pollution fighter. D.Causes of air pollution in London.
I used to be an average student in Bohunt High school until I took Dr. Whitworth’s class. He was such a life-changer to me that I left that class determined never to underachieve again. He not only taught me to perform better and achieve more success than expected, he, more importantly, taught me to think. He convinced me, as much by example as words that it was my moral obligation to do so and to serve others.
Neither of us could know how our relationship would evolve over the years. When I came back to Bohunt to teach English, I worked for Dr. Whitworth, the department chair. My discussion with him was like graduate seminars in adolescent development, classroom management and school leadership.
After several years, I was named department chair, and our relationship shifted again. I thought that it might be awkward chairing the department, since all of my former English teachers were still there, but Dr. Whitworth supported me throughout. As the former chair, he knew when to give me advice about curriculum, texts and personnel, and when to let me chart my own course.
In 1997, I needed his opinion about leaving Bohunt to become principal at another school. If he had asked me to stay at Bohunt, I might have. Instead, he encouraged me to seize the opportunity.
Five years ago, I became the principal of Bohunt. Once again, Dr. Whitworth was there for me, letting me know that I could count on him. I have learned from him that great teachers have an inexhaustible (用不完的) wealth of lessons to teach.
1.The underlined word in Paragraph 1 could be best replaced by ________.
A.underperform B.underestimate
C.undertake D.understand
2.What did the author mean by “our relationship shifted again”?
A.They became teacher and student again.
B.They chaired the department together.
C.They were colleagues and Dr. Whitworth worked for him.
D.They were colleagues and he worked for Dr. Whitworth.
3.The story is mainly carried out ________.
A.in time order B.in space order
C.by giving examples D.by comparison
4.Where does this passage possibly come from?
A.A speech. B.An autobiography.
C.A newspaper. D.A poster.
Our Annual Cultural Events
A Night in Rio
We are proud to bring the energy and enthusiasm of Brazilian Carnival to Charlotte with A Night in
Rio! Get a taste of Carnival through dancing, live music, authentic food, drinks and marketplace. Put on your green and yellow, and join us for the unforgettable experience of Brazilian Carnival!
Date: Saturday, February 24, 2018
TICKETS AVAILABLE ONLY AT THE DOOR
Location: Neighborhood Theatre, Charlotte
Time: 7 PM
Ritmo & Sabor
We are thrilled to bring the annual celebration Ritmo & Sabor Festival! Featuring dance performances and FREE dance lessons and delicious, authentic Latin cuisine, this festival will be a fantastic celebration for the entire family to enjoy! Food and beer will be available for purchase. Come out to enjoy a great summer evening of Ritmo & Sabor!
Date: Saturday July 2, 2018
Location: International & Cultural Center, Charlotte
Time: 5-11 PM
FREE ADMISSION
Las Américas
Join us in the annual celebration LAS AMÉRICAS! We display our history and identity of Latin America through musical performances, story-telling and poetry. Enjoy yourself with local artists, shop your way through a market of arts and crafts and join in some of the finest Latin American cuisine.
Date: August 18, 2018
Location: Midwood International & Culture Center, Charlotte
Time: 2-7 PM
Admission is FREE.
Latin American Festival
Festival Latinoamericano returns for its 28th year, with musical artists and dance performances, a diverse authentic selection of Latin American food, visual artists, and a street festival environment with activities for the whole family.
Location: Symphony Park at South Park Mall, Charlotte
Date: Saturday Sept. 29 (1-8pm)
Admission: $10; Children aged 8 & under are free.
1.What does Ritmo & Sabor mainly provide?
A. Music and visual art. B. Food and beer.
C. Dance and poetry. D. Dance and food.
2.What can you do at Las Américas?
A. Buy some local crafts as souvenirs.
B. Enjoy typical Latin American beer.
C. Dance in green and yellow clothes.
D. Watch local dancers’ performances.
3.Which event requires a ticket for a seven-year-old child?
A. Las Américas. B. Ritmo & Sabor.
C. A Night in Rio. D. Latin American Festival.
