You may know your mother, but how well do you really know Mother’s Day? Cards, flowers, sales, TV specials, and a day off for someone who really deserves it ---- those are what probably come to mind for many people when they think of Mother’s Day. But there’s more to the story.
The earliest Mother’s Day celebrations were held during spring in ancient Greece. The celebrations honored Rhea, the Mother of the gods. During the 1600’s, England celebrated a day called Mothering Sunday. On this day even servants were given the day off to spend with their families. A mothering cake was even served with the family meal.
In the US, Mother’s Day began in 1872 when Julia Ward Howe, who wrote the words to the famous song The Battle Hymn of the Republic, suggested it as a day devoted to peace. But it didn’t really become popular until 1907 when Anna Jarvis stared a campaign to honor mothers. She believed that mothers could help people get over the pain they experienced during the Civil
War. The US isn’t alone in devoting a day to mothers. Many other countries including Denmark, Finland, Italy, Turkey, Australia, Japan, and Belgium also honor their mothers in May. Other countries honor their mothers at different times of the year.
Learning more about Mother’s Day and celebrating Mother’s Day are important, but probably not as important as understanding what your own mother, or grandmother, or aunt has really done for you. And that will certainly be appreciated more than one day in a year.
1.What is the passage mainly about?
A. The reason why people celebrate Mother’s Day. B. The ways people honor mothers.
C. The history of Mother’s Day. D. The great contribution of mothers.
2.Where was the earliest Mother’s Day celebrated?
A. In ancient Greece. B. In the US. C. In England. D. In Italy.
3.We can learn from the passage that _____.
A. Rhea is the mother of a king in ancient Greece
B. not all the countries celebrate Mother’s Day in May
C. only mothers were given a day off on Mothering Sunday
D. it was in 1872 that Mother’s Day really came into being
4.The last paragraph tells us that _____.
A. all the people should celebrate Mother’s Day
B. only mothers are honored on Mother’s Day
C. understanding mothers’ work is more important than just celebrating Mother’s Day
D. people should celebrate Mother’s Day every day
What is most likely to affect your success at school or at a job? The ability to read. And that goes for your kids too. The declining literacy(读写能力的下降) of our society has been a main concern of educators for a while now, and yet things are not getting better.
In most cases, how well we learn to read will depend largely on our exposure（接触） to language as children. If we hear people around us talking about all kinds of subjects as children, we naturally pick up the words and phrases they use. If we pick up a lot of words, we will learn to read better.
Much of the traditional advice to struggling readers, theses days, seems to include developing “cognitive strategies”（认知策略）. In this way, readers are asked to centre more, to think, to be interested and ask questions, to analyze, to predict, to reason, and to check their understanding, or worse still to answer questions of what they have read. In other words they are asked to become self-conscious（有自我意识的） readers. I do not agree with this approach.
Here are my several strategies for reading improvement.
Read about things that interest you. If you are interested in what you are reading about, the words will come alive, and you will understand better. The more you read, the better you will become at reading. Just get started and it will become a habit, as long as you are interested in what you are reading.
Read material that is at your level or just a little difficult for you. Read material that you find easy to read, or just a little challenging. Looking up many unknown words in a dictionary is dull, and the results of the dictionary search are quickly forgotten.
_____ If you can hear the new words and phrases that you are reading, you will have an easier time understanding and remembering them. Hearing the rhythm of someone reading a text will help your own reading.
Don’t worry about what you don’t understand. Most of your reading should be for pleasure. You can still enjoy reading without understanding all of what you read. You may even understand some things in your own personal way.
Unfortunately not all reading is just for pleasure. When you are reading a textbook or report or other material for school, you may need to underline, take notes and read some parts over again. However, if you have developed the habit of reading for pleasure, you will find that the skills you need will come naturally, and that you will understand a lot better than before.
1.In Paragraph 2, the author tells us the importance of _____.
A. hearing people around as children B. talking ability as children
C. contacting different people D. learning different languages
2.Which sentence is best to be filled in the blank in the passage?
A. Listen as much as possible. B. Try to use your imagination.
C. Great works need to be read out loud. D. Listen first if you have trouble reading.
3.It can be learned from the last paragraph that _____.
A. you should find pleasure from reading a textbook
B. the habit of reading for pleasure is important
C. reading for school is helpful for reading for pleasure
D. reading for school requires different skills from reading for pleasure
4.What is the purpose of the author in writing the passage?
A. To tell us some ways to improve reading ability.
B. To show that poor literacy has been a big problem.
C. To teach us how to look for fun in reading.
D. To tell us some ways to pick up new words and phrases.
A healthy amount of sunshine may be the secret to staying young. British scientists have discovered.
Vitamin D is produced naturally by the skin in response to(对…的反应) sunlight and may help to slow the ageing process and protect against heart disease, according to the study.
Researchers from King’s College London studied 2,160 women aged between 18 and 79, looking at their telomeres--- a biological marker of ageing found in DNA. As people get older, their telomeres get shorter and they become more susceptible(易受伤害的) to certain illnesses.
But the study found women with high levels of vitamin D had comparatively longer telomeres--- a sign of being biologically younger and healthier.
The study suggests vitamin D may help to slow down the ageing process of DNA, and therefore the ageing process as a whole.
Lead researcher Dr Brent Richards said, “These results are exciting because they show for the first time that people who have higher levels of vitamin D may age more slowly than people with lower levels of vitamin D.” This could help to explain how vitamin D has a protective effect on many ageing related diseases, such as heart disease and cancer.”
Professor Tim Spector, a co-author of the report, added, “Although it might sound absurd
(荒唐的), it’s possible that the same sunshine which may increase our risk of skin cancer may also have a healthy effect on the general ageing process.”
Vitamin D made by the action of sunlight on the skin accounts for 90 percent of the body’s supply, but lower levels can also be got through food such as fish, eggs and breakfast cereals(粥).
Other studies have suggested the vitamin plays a key role in protecting against cancer and heart disease.
1. A certain amount of sunshine helps people stay young because _____.
A. people feel happy and energetic in the sun
B. sunshine protects people against heart disease
C. vitamin D makes one’s skin look young and healthy
D. vitamin D may help to slow the ageing process
2.From Brent Richards, we know that _____.
A. sunlight causes skin cancer to people with high level of vitamin D
B. the study generally has a healthy effect on the general ageing process
C. vitamin D can only be got from fish, eggs and breakfast cereals
D. the higher levels of vitamin D people have, the more slowly people may age
3.What can we infer from the passage?
A. Telomeres are important signs of ageing of the DNA.
B. Sunlight can be dangerous as it causes skin cancer.
C. Sunlight does a great deal of good to our health.
D. Vitamin D can also be gained from food.
4. What is the best title of the passage?
A. Secret of Staying Young B. Vitamin D Helps Slow Ageing
C. Sunlight and Vitamin D D. Sunlight and Health
MONTREAL (Reuters) – Crossing the US-Canada border to go to church on a Sunday cost an American ＄10,000 for breaking Washington’s strict new security rules.
The expensive trip to church was a surprise for Richard Albert, who lives on the Canadian border. Albert often crosses the border like the other half-dozen people of Township 15. The nearby Quebec village of St. Pamphile is where they shop, eat and go to church. There are many such situations in these areas along the largely unguarded 5,530-mile border between Canada and the US, which in some cases actually runs down the middle of streets or through buildings.
As a result, Albert says he did not expect any problems three weeks ago when he returned home to the US after attending church in Canada as usual. The US customs station in this area is closed on Sundays, so he just drove around the locked gate, as he had done every weekend since the gate appeared last May, following a tightening of border security. Two days later, Albert was told to go to the customs office, where an officer told him he had been caught on camera crossing the border illegally.
Ottawa has given out special passes to some 300 Americans in that area so they can enter the country when Canadian customs stations are closed, but the US stopped a similar program last May. That forces the people to a 200-mile detour along hilly roads to get home through another border checkpoint.
Albert has requested that the customs office change their decisions on the fine, but he has not attended a Sunday church since. “I feel like I’m living in a prison,” he said.
1.We learn from the text that Richard Albert is .
A. an American working in a Canadian church B. a Canadian living in a Quebec village
C. a Canadian working in a customs station D. an American living in Township 15
2.Albert was fined because he .
A. broke the American security rules B. failed to obey traffic rules
C. worked in St. Pamphile without a pass D. damaged the gate of the customs office
3.According to paragraph 4, how can Americans in that area get home?
A. They have to drive through the town.
B. They have to race across the fields.
C. They have to drive to the mountain area.
D. They have to drive in a roundabout (绕道的) way.
4.What would be the best title for the text?
A. A Cross-country Trip. B. An Expensive Church Visit.
C. An Unguarded Border. D. A Special Border Pass.
Global warming is the process of earth’s atmosphere heating up. Over the last 100 years, the average temperature of earth’s atmosphere has gone up 1 Fahrenheit. The weather has not changed exactly the same way in every area of the planet. But scientists think that the rise in average temperature is already affecting the earth’s climate.
Many scientists now believe that global warming is caused by cutting down trees, producing more trash, and polluting the environment which are some of the reasons why the temperature has gone up. Many scientists believe that the biggest causes of global warming are new human technologies that release greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.
The greenhouse effect is not new. Certain gases in the atmosphere, like carbon dioxide, nitrous oxide and methane, making it hard for heat energy to go into space. In the past, the climate didn’t change much because nature produced just the right amount of greenhouse gases to deal with it.
Today, most scientists are pretty sure that the rising temperature can’t be blamed on nature. Ever since the industrial revolution in the 1700s, humans have relied on machines for daily life. And many of those machines give off a lot of greenhouse gases. An increase in the release of greenhouse gases from human activities is throwing nature off balance.
The climate is a very complicated thing, but many scientists agree that the rising atmospheric temperature has already damaged the environment. Sheets of ice, called glaciers, are melting in Antarctica and other parts of the globe. As glaciers break off and melt into the oceans, they are adding warm water to the oceans and causing the sea level to rise.
Over the past 100 years, the sea level has risen 6-8 inches around the world. That means land along the coasts is beginning to disappear under water. Bigger and warmer oceans are also adding to other weather problems caused by pollution in the atmosphere. Some places have received more rain, others have had bigger storms and a few areas in the world have experienced unusual droughts.
1.What is mainly talked about in this passage?
A. The melting of glaciers. B. Global warming.
C. The world’s weather. D. The earth’s temperature.
2.What causes global warming according to scientists?
A. Human activities. B. The nature itself.
C. The earth’s atmosphere. D. New discoveries
3.How can greenhouse gases make the globe warm?
A. They keep heat in the atmosphere. B. They let the heat go out into space.
C. They release heat into the air. D. They can make the other gases warm.
4.From the passage we can see that global warming will bring about _____.
A. the pollution in the atmosphere B. natural disasters
C. population pollution D. the rise of glaciers
When I was young, I belonged to a club that did community service work. There was one specific event that was unusual for me. I spent three or four hours handing out warm dinner to the homeless out in the streets. After that I went to a homeless shelter not far from the Bay Bridge.
I was in high school and at the time my sister was too young to __36__. She wanted to help, __37__ she made four or five dozen chocolate chip cookies for me to __38__ and hand out to people. When getting to the homeless shelter __39__ passed out the remaining meals. __40__, I began making sandwiches and __41__ them with the crowd. I had the containers with my __42__ cookies in them and began to __43__, offering them to anyone near me.
I __44__ an old gentleman and said, “sir, would you like a cookie?” He stopped and turned around, __45__ and said, “What did you say? Did you call me sir?” I told him I __46__, and his eyes __47__ a little bit and he said, “No one has __48__ called me sir.” So he was __49__ taken aback(意外). It struck me.
I explained I had been raised that__ 50__color and social status, everyone deserved respect. It __51__ me to think that just because he was homeless, no one__ 52__ him the honor. It broke my heart, and I __53__. I just didn’t understand__ 54__ no one ever called him sir. I had never thought that anyone was below me because I wasn’t raised that way. Every __55__ person deserves to be treated with dignity. Years later, I still carry that memory and the lessons it taught me. Sometimes, what we take for granted can really make a difference in someone’s life.
How have you made a difference to others? How have others made a difference to you?
1.A. participate B. decide C. choose D. go
2. A. however B. but C. yet D. so
3.A. bring B. fetch C. collect D. take
4.A. I B. you C. she D. we
5.A. First B. Next C. Third D. Finally
6.A. shared B. gave C. helped D. assisted
7. A. classmate’s B. schoolmate’s C. sister’s D. family’s
8.A. walk around B. knock around C. come around D. stand around
9. A. went B. came C. approached D. met
10.A. glanced at me rightly B. stared at me with difficulty
C. glared at me in anger D. looked at me right in the eye
11.A. had B. called C. did D. do
12.A. watered B. cried C. tore D. dropped
13.A. already B. ever C.still D. yet
14.A. differently B. normally C. completely D. exactly
15.A. in spite B. regardless of C. concerned about D. for fear of
16.A. strengthened B. saddened C.frightened D. pleased
17.A. handed B. afforded C. provided D. supplied
18.A. had no choice but to cry B. couldn’t help to cry
C. had no right to cry D. couldn’t help but cry
19.A. what B. when C. whether D. why
20.A. single B. poor C. ordinary D. normal
