When Armida Armato’s daughter, Alexia, came home from school one day last year keen to go on a school trip to Ecuador, she wasn’t too sure how to feel. She was happy that her daughter could experience something she never did as a teen but was fearful of letting her travel to such a remote part of the world.
Alexia was 16 at the time, a student at Westwood High School. The school sponsored a humanitarian trip for 26 students and two teachers to spend 18 days living in a mountain village to build a one-room school. Even though Armato trusted her daughter, the other students and the teachers, she was worried about the side effects from the travel vaccines, possible accidents, and medical care.
Now that Alexia was home, Armato said she saw her daughter’s new maturity, greater confidence and independence. “This is the best thing I ever did,” Alexia said. “The experience was so eye-opening and life-changing. You’re with people who are not as lucky as you are. They live in very poor conditions but they’re so happy and outgoing. You say, ‘My God. I’m taking everything for granted back home.’”
She said they built a one-room school from scratch with no mechanical cement mixers. They used their hands, shovels and basic tools. She and another student lived with a local family in a small village about eight hours outside the capital, Quito. Despite the initial strangeness and knowing only basic Spanish, she said they grew very close and felt like a family.
Every year, groups of students at Montreal High School like Alexia pack their bags and fly off with classmates and teachers to developing countries where they volunteer for a variety of projects.
“Armato’s worries are very common among parents,” says Bill Nevin, a teacher at St. George’s High School. He organizes a humanitarian rip to India to the Sheela Bal Bhavan orphanage and says the three biggest fears families have are health, security and contact.
1.When hearing the news that her daughter would go on a school trip to Ecuador, Armato was _______.
A．proud and happy
B．supportive but concerned
C．fearful and nervous
D．excited but puzzled
2.The underlined phrase “from scratch” in Paragraph 4 probably means “______”.
A．having great help
B．using high technology
C．ending up in failure
D．starting from the beginning
3.What would be the best title for the text?
A．Volunteering helps students grow and develop.
B．School trips make parents worried about their children.
C．Ecuador is the most attractive travel destination in the world.
D．Brave Alexia dreams to work in Ecuador one day.
假设你是正在读高三的李林，你的好友张华最近给你来信，想了解你的近况，请你用英语给他写一封回信，告诉他进入高三以来你学习以及生活情况的变化。主要内容包括：
1.学习态度与学习压力的变化；
2.时间安排的变化；
3.你后期的打算（两点）。
注意：1. 内容包括以上要点，但不要逐句翻译；
2. 字数不能少于100；
3. 文章开头已提供，不计入总词数。
Dear Zhang Hua,
I’m happy to have received your letter. Now I’m writing to express my thanks for your care and tell 
you something about my study and life.
阅读下面的短文，请根据短文后的要求答题。
Rock climbing requires not only physical strength, but also complete mental concentration. So it is not an easy sport. But this may not be true for 20-year-old Sasha diGuilian. This fearless girl who has been dominating the sport ever since she entered this field is just getting warmed up.
The youngster who is also studying for a creative writing degree at Columbia University says that she began climbing even before she could walk. As a baby, she constantly escaped from her bed and led her friends to the nearest rocks or hills. Then at the age of seven she attended brother’s birthday party at a local rock climbing gym and found her gift for it.
Soon after, she joined the local center in her hometown of Alexandria, Virginia and began climbing— first once a week, then twice and soon, almost every day. At the age of nine, she won her first climbing competition by participating in an event that she hadn’t even been aware of, until she went to the gym for her normal climbing routine. Her competitive nature and love for the sport immediately reached the peak and she began training seriously, but this time outside the gym—climbing real mountains.
As a youngster, she dominated the Junior Continental Championships from 2004 to 2010. Then she went on to catch the Pan American Championship and the US National Championship as soon as she was old enough. And in 2011, at just 18 years old, she was crowned(加冕)Female Overall World Champion in Arco, Italy at her first attempt.
Sasha diGuilian is also the youngest woman who has completed the 5.14d graded climb in which climbers must climb rocks that are vertical. The 5.14d graded climb is regarded as the most difficult climb and it is something that even the most experienced climbers are a little afraid to take on, because a small slip could result in a severe injury or even death.
1.What does the underlined word “dominating” (Paragraph 1) mean?(1 word)
2.Where and when did Sasha diGuilia
n find she had the talent for rock climbing? (No more than 12 words)
3.What made Sasha diGuilian begin training seriously to climb real mountains? (No more than 10 words)
4.Why is the 5.14d graded climb considered the most difficult climb? (No more than 7 words)
5. Please explain how you are inspired by Sasha diGuilian.(No more than25 words)
Rain and cold weather this summer saw honey yields from hives(巢)fall by almost three-quarters, the British Beekeepers Association(BBKA)said today. The average crop per hive was down 72% compared to last year, with just 3.6kg (81b) of honey produced compared to an annual average, the annual honey survey by the BBKA revealed.
The survey of 2,712 beekeepers in England, Northern Ireland and Wales found that 88% said this summer’s bad weather caused the descent in honey yields. The bad weather made it difficult for bees to excrete(排泄),which led to disease easily, and the bad weather also increased the risk o
f keeping bees for heavy rain caused the places which bees regularly visited to meet natural disasters. The bad weather also influenced the plants flowering which increased the cost of keeping bees. The BBKA issued a midsummer warning to feed bees if necessary to avoid dying from hunger. But in London, which recorded the worst results with just 2.5kg (5.61b)of honey harvested on average, beekeeping experts said that in addition to the bad weather there was a lack of food for bees in the city.
Angela Woods, secretary of the London Beekeepers Association, said, “Rather than putting beehives on office roofs, we encourage companies in London that want to help to look at different ways of supporting bees and beekeepers. We need more food for the bees and better-educated beekeepers.”
Elsewhere, the weather was the main problem. Peter Hutton, a beekeeper in Tunbridge Wells, Kent, said, “It has been the most difficult year I have known in my 53 years of beekeeping. Bad weather in spring prevented bees in many areas from collecting nectar(花蜜)from early-flowering crops such as oilseed rape(油菜),and the rain continued in many places throughout June and July, preventing honeybees from searching for food on later crops.”
The BBKA warned that as well as reducing the honey harvest, the bad weather is likely to have a longer-term influence as it will have affected the normal process of breeding for t
he queens, which mate(交配)on the wing on fine, still summer days. As a result they may have mated poorly and be unable to produce enough new babies to see groups through the winter.
1.According to the passage, last year the average crop per hive might be____.
A.5 kg
B.7.2 kg
C.10kg
D.13 kg
2.The underlined word “descent” means_____.
A. fall B. rise
C. disease D. variety
3.What caused the lack of food?
A. The bad weather in both autumn and winter.
B. The bad weather in both winter and spring.
C. The bad weather in both spring and summer.
D. The bad weather in both summer and autumn.
4.What does the last paragraph mainly tell us?
A. The bad weather just affects honey harvest.
B. The bad weather has effect on bees’ breeding.
C. The bad weather only has a short-term impact on bees.
D. The bad weather has effect on bees’ life in winter.
5. Which of the following statements is NOT true according to the passage?
A. The quality of the honeybees is influenced by the bad weather.
B. London companies are encouraged to take part in helping bees and beekeepers.
C. Both the cost and the risk of keeping bees are increased because of the bad weather.
D. Better-educated beekeepers are needed to improve the bad situations that the bad weather brought to bees.
Cell phone use and 
texting are increasingly common, especially among teens. And that could be a problem. Texting affects learning and performing on test, a new study finds. So a Montana teen, Colin decided to test that.
They asked 47 classmates to take part in a two-part experiment. The goal was to test how well these students understood written material. Each one had to read a paragraph or two about a certain topic, then answer questions about it.
In the first part, the participants had 15 minutes to understand and then answer questions about six readings. Throughout this test, they met no distractions.
During a new set of readings, the brothers sent messages to the participants’ cell phones every 90 seconds. In each message, there were questions that required a reply.
Participants should have scored better on the second test because it was easier. In fact, they scored worse when distracted by messages. Only a few students scored as well when replying to messages as they did when undistracted. But importantly, nobody performed better during the texting part.
The brothers presented details of their findings at the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair. Boys and girls scored equally poorly while texting, the brothers noticed. Older participants didn’t do any better than younger ones. And it didn’t matter if a student thought he was good at multitasking. On average, the brothers found that even students who were confident of their abilities did just as poorly while texting. Surprisingly, even though the students remembered less of what they read while texting, most of them answered questions in messages perfectly.
“Our teachers are very happy to see these results,” says Coler. The teens’ new data strongly support their teachers’ opinion that texting while studying is a serious distraction.
1. What did Colter and Colin want to test?
A. Cell phone use and texting are more common.
B. Teens should avoid cell phone use and texting.
C. Texting affects students’ performance on test.
D. The effect of texting differs from person to person.
2.What can we learn from the two-part experiment?
A. The written material in the two parts was the same.
B. Participants in part 2 received more than one message.
C. The time of the test in two parts was the same.
D. All the participants were distracted by messages.
3.The brothers’ findings were related to participants’ ________.
A. reading performance B. quality
C. writing ability D. reading speed
4. From the results of the experiment, we can find _________.
A. boys were better at multitasking than girls
B. the easier the tests were, the more mistakes were made
C. nobody did good jobs in the two-part experiment
D. some students’ test results were not affected by texting
5.What’s Colter’s teachers’ attitude toward the results?
A. Surprised. B. Worried.
C. Satisfied. D. Serious.
I’d like to share a little story with you about something that happened when I was four. I remember it clearly. Our loving family dog was nearing the end of his life. My father picked him up and put him in a little bed we had made for him. Our dog, my companion, whom we had cared for, bit my father when he attempted to help him. How could he? Why? I couldn’t understand it. I didn’t like him anymore.
I hadn’t thought about that story for a long time but something that happened last week brought it back to me. I went to speak with a friend. When I knocked on the door, I met in an instant an angry look and a few harsh(尖刻的)words. When the door was slammed(砰地关上)in my face, I stood there shocked, and in a rush, I was reminded of my dog bit my father 20 years ago or so. What brought that story back was that same feeling of betrayal.
Both stories taught me something the next day. You see, when I got up in the morning and was told my dog had died, it became clear to me that he must have been in great pain. For him to have bitten a family member, he could not have been himself. Much the same for the other story when I learned that my friend’s wife had just left him.
We are all beings of our environments, our opinions and feelings. And all of those things can cause you to say and do things that can’t be understood by those who are not in the same situation with you.
If you meet someone either behaving out of character or acting in a way that doesn’t seem to fit the situation, put out your hand and be patient when you think it is least possible for him to do so. You may turn around a story that has a sad ending simply by your actions.
1.The incident that happened when the author was four______.
A. hurt the author’s feeling deeply
B. has puzzled the author ever since
C. left a deep impression on the author
D. made the author dislike dogs
2.What made the author think about the story of about 20 years ago?
A. His friend’s attitude.
B. The photo of the dog.
C. His father’s wound.
D. His friend’s suffering.
3.The author's friend said harsh words to the author because______.
A. he was bad-tempered
B. he was suffering the pain of losing his wife
C. he was bothered by an unexpected visit
D. they once quarreled and he couldn’t forgive the author
4.What conclusion did the author get from the two stories?
A. Misunderstanding should be removed in time.
B. Sometimes one will be hurt without any reason.
C. Many people think more of themselves and less of others.
D. Many factors will affect one’s behavior.
5.What’s the author’s advice to us?
A. Help those in need.
B. Look before you leap.
C. Learn to understand others.
D. Tolerance is a kind of virtue.
