Girl with a Pearl Earring
Johannes Vermeer is a Dutch painter of the 17th century. Vermeer’s paintings are realistic pictures of scenes from everyday life. Not many of Vermeer’s paintings still exist. When one was put on sale in London in 2004, someone paid ￡16,000,000 for it, so you can see Vermeer is an artist who is valued very highly.
One of Vermeer’s most beautiful and well-known paintings is the Girl with a Pearl Earring. It shows a pretty young woman with blue cloth around her head and a large, shining pearl earring. We do not know much about Vermeer’s life, and the English writer Tracy Chevalier decided to think of a story to explain who the girl is in this painting. She gave the book the same name as the painting. Chevalier imagines that the girl in the painting works for the Vermeer family. Her name is Griet.
She comes from a poor family and does the cleaning and housework. Some of Vermeer’s family are nice to her, but others are not. The Vermeer family needs him to sell paintings to live. Vermeer works all day in his studio. He does not like anyone else to go into it, but Griet can go in to clean it. A rich man who often buys Vermeer’s paintings thinks Griet is beautiful and suggests Vermeer paint her. This makes trouble for the girl because Vermeer’s wife is unhappy that Vermeer allows Griet in his studio and paints her, and not his wife. She wants to send Griet away but the wife’s mother stops her, as she wants Vermeer to work and earn money.
Griet becomes interested in Vermeer’s work and more friendly with the artist. He asks her to make special colours for him and she spends more time in the studio.
Vermeer is not happy with the painting. Something is wrong-he cannot finish it. Then he remembers his wife’s lovely pearl earring. He asks his mother-in-law（岳母）for it and she gives it to him as she wants the painting finished and sold. When the wife is out, Griet wears the pearl earring and Vermeer paints it. When the painting is nearly finished, the wife sees it and is very angry that this girl she hates has had her earring. Griet loses her job and is sent away, but the butcher’s son loves her and takes care of her. In the end, they marry and lead a happy life.
This is Chevalier’s explanation of the famous painting and the expression on the girl’s face. The book has been made into a film with the same name. Do you think the story matches the picture？
1.Vermeer’s paintings are expensive because ______.
A.there are not many in the world B.they are very large
C.they show everyday life D.they are based on true stories
2.Griet is allowed into Vermeer’s studio because ______.
A.she needs to clean B.she needs to paint
C.Vermeer likes her D.she works as a student painter
3.According to the passage, we know that Vermeer’s mother-in-law ______.
A.wants the painting for herself B.wants Vermeer to make money
C.likes Griet very much D.hates her daughter
4.The ending of the story is ______.
A.happy B.sad C.uncertain D.negative
The Music of Ray Charles
Master of many styles
Ray Charles, a black singer and pianist, was born in 1930 in Georgia, USA. His relaxed style combined jazz, blues, pop and a type of black music called soul, which comes from the traditional music sung by slaves in the south of the USA. By the time Ray Charles died in 2004, he had won 12 Grammy Awards and performed at 10,000 concerts around the world. Many musicians called him simply “the Genius”.
Childhood poverty
Ray Charles was born into a poor family, without a father. When he was 5 years old, his younger brother died； and around the same time, Charles started to lose his sight. By the age of 7 he was completely blind. He had already been learning the piano for a year, and when he went blind, his mother knew this would be the only way he would earn any money in the future. All his life, Charles remembered her saying: “Do it right, or don’t do it at all”.
Becoming a musician
Later he went to a school for blind and deaf children where the teachers also encouraged him to study music. Sadly, while he was still at school, his mother died. He left school and in the early 1950s Charles formed a group of players. He sang, played the saxophone and the piano and composed music.
Three classic tunes
He made many recordings which are still classics: Georgia on my Mind, I Can’t Stop Loving You, and Hit the Road, Jack are the three best-known songs. He recorded CDs with famous artists like Elton John. Others, such as The Beatles, thought his music was wonderful and said that the music they composed used many of his techniques.
The film of his life
In 2003 a film biography of his life was produced, called Ray. The part of Charles was played by a young actor and musician called Jamie Foxx. The film director brought Foxx to meet Charles. After they had been playing together for two hours, Charles, then aged 73, jumped up and said, “He’s the one……he can do it.” A year later Charles died aged 74. The film of his life has been as popular as his songs and means that the memory of Charles’ music will live on.
1.Ray Charles was a black American singer ______.
A.who sang many different styles of music B.who mostly sang jazz
C.who mostly sang pop music D.who mostly sang soul music
2.Ray Charles’ mother encouraged him to play music because ______.
A.it would help him get used to being blind
B.it was a good way for a blind person to earn money
C.his father was a musician as well
D.she knew she would die soon
3.Ray Charles thought that Jamie Foxx ______.
A.was a good musician
B.was an excellent director
C.was the wrong person to play him in the film
D.was the right person to play him in the film
假设你是中学生李华，你的美国朋友Greg参加了当地一个网上举办的中国古诗背诵比赛（Chinese ancient poetry recitation competition），并且获得了一等奖，他写了一封邮件向你报喜，现在，你回一封邮件，邮件主要内容包括：
1、向他道贺；
2、赞赏他的付出；
3、鼓励他继续进步。
要求：
1、适当增加细节，以使行文连贯、流畅。
2、词数：100字左右。
Dear Greg，
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Yours sincerely
Li Hua
假定英语课上老师要求同桌之间交换修改作文，请你修改你同桌写的以下作文。文中共有5处语言错误，每句中最多有两处。错误仅涉及一个单词的增加、删除或修改。
增加：在缺词处加一个漏字符号（∧），并在其下面写出该加的词；
删除：把多余的词用（\）划掉；
修改：在错的词下画一横线，并在该词下面写出修改后的词。
注意：1.每处错误及其修改均仅限一词；
2.只允许修改5处，多者（从第6处起）不计分。
Li Ziqi, a Chinese girl living in small village with her grandma in Mianyang, seldom speaks to media. At 29, she is famous as her beautiful videos of country life, posted on Weibo and YouTube.
She tends to work in silence. Absorbed in the natural beauty of the countryside, she devotes herself to extreme traditional ways of cooking, planting and making clothes. Although Ms. Li is almost always alone, but she doesn’t seem lonely. She shows that every single bit of food come from hard work. Long processes of making food seem meaningful and worthwhile.
It was very hot in New York City last July 4th.Three police officers ducked into a Whole Foods Market to get something________to drink. What they walked into was a heated human drama.
When the three officers，Louis，Esanidy and Michael，were inside，a store security guard________went up to them. He had been anxiously looking for________with a possible thief. The woman in question didn’t have the look of a career criminal. She was________frightened, eyes red and cheeks wet with________.
The officers________her bag on the counter. “All we saw was containers of food We saw________else,” Louis told CBS New York.
“I’m starving.” she explained________a low voice, wiping tears from her cheeks repeatedly.
Caught red-handed, the woman thought she would be pushed off to________for the crime.________, the officers had another idea. “We’ll pay for her food,” Michael told the surprised________.
They picked up the woman’s bag and _______her to a cashier, where each paid $10 for the bill.
All the woman could do was weep in________. Covering her face with a handkerchief and drying her eyes, she kept saying, “Thank you, thank you.”
She wasn’t the only one moved by this act of kindness. “It was a very beautiful,________moment,” says Paul Bozynowski, a customer at the store. He was so taken by what he’d witnessed that he________a photo on Twitter for all to see and got many likes.
1.A.cold B.soft C.hot D.tasty
2.A.sadly B.immediately C.secretly D.carefully
3.A.time B.trouble C.order D.help
4.A.obviously B.finally C.actually D.slowly
5.A.smiles B.tears C.drinks D.sweat
6.A.looked after B.looked out C.looked up D.looked into
7.A.everything B.something C.nothing D.anything
8.A.with B.over C.through D.in
9.A.school B.prison C.street D.store
10.A.However B.Therefore C.Moreover D.Otherwise
11.A.shopkeeper B.woman C.reporter D.guard
12.A.pushed B.walked C.lifted D.invited
13.A.gratitude B.shame C.sadness D.disappointment
14.A.encouraging B.challenging C.touching D.satisfying
15.A.took B.posted C.drew D.painted
How I Handle My Attention
Recently, I started to feel pressed. Having to work two different jobs, plus writing and working on personal projects is difficult.1.I would wake up earlier. I would separate my day into 3-4 different pieces and try to fill them with various projects until I realized that it just doesn’t work. Why? Because time management is not as important as attention management.
I learned a few things:
Focusing on a task is returning to it every 48 hours.2.
There is a cap of two different tasks that you can do within a single day. I learned that it’s not the work that exhausted me the most, but the switching between different types of work.
3.And personal projects should be taken care of on my own time (e.g.,on weekends and holidays).
The more creative a task is, the earlier you should work on it. I am a morning person, so I try to write before breakfast.
4.Just telling yourself to do a specific activity five minutes longer than usual can help create stillness, and it leads to high-quality focus.
Attention is a rare resource. It’s only the deep focus, the “deep work”, as Cal Newport calls it, that leads to high-quality results and productivity.5.You’ll thank yourself later.
A.Stillness breeds focus.
B.Workweek should be for work.
C.Devote 2020 to mastering this vital skill.
D.If it takes longer, it’s not in the “focus zone”
E.Stay quiet, and I found myself deeply focused.
F.What matters today is where we focus our mental energy.
G.So I started to apply the old time-management techniques to myself.
