Yesterday I started the Year of Giving, my first day of a year-long journey into exploring the act of giving and the meaning of charity. I chose December 15 as the starting date, which marked three years since my mother died from heart disease. She was one of the most generous people that I have ever known. She always thought of others first and certainly serves as an inspiration to me.
I had a rather busy day yesterday, ironic(具有讽刺意义的) for someone who is unemployed right now. In the morning I went to the gym, and unsuccessfully got the phone call from the unemployment office for some job searching. Before I knew it, it was noon. I grabbed a quick lunch and rushed down to a meeting. On my way to Connecticut, I wondered if I would see someone that I would feel forced to give my first $10 to. I was running late and decided to do it afterwards.
After the meeting I had about half an hour to find the first person of my Year of Giving! I decided to check out Dupont Circle. I had met a guy there named Jerry once and thought he would willingly accept my first $10. He wasn’t there, but I did see a man sitting by himself who looked really lonely, so I approached him. Now I had to figure out what I was going to say. I think I said something like, “Hi, can I sit down here?” “I would like to know if I could give you $10?” He asked me to repeat what I had said. I did, then he looked at me funny, got up and left.
I then started walking south where I spotted a man standing by the bus stop on Connecticut Ave. He appeared to be in his 60s. I don’t know what drew me to him, but I thought I would make my second attempt. I was a bit nervous and asked him which bus came by that stop. Then I explained that I was starting a year-long project to give $10 to someone every day and that I wanted to give my $10 for today to him. The gentleman, I later found out that his name was Ed, responded without hesitation that he could not accept my offer and that there were many people more deserving the money than him. This was exactly one of the things that I hoped would happen. People would think of others before themselves!
1. The author set the starting date on December 15 to .
A. help the charity
B. remember his mother
C. make an exploration
D. fulfill a wish of his mum
2. In the author’s first attempt to give away the money， .
A. he was considered ridiculous
B. he hesitated for a long time
C. he was forced to donate the money
D. he had no time to take action
3.In the author’s second attempt, the gentleman refused his offer because .
A. he didn’t need others’ help
B. he thought more for others
C. he didn’t care about money
D. he wanted to get more money
4.We can infer that the author was inspired by .
A. true friendship B. his own kindness
C. generous donations D.human’s good nature
假设你是红星中学高三学生李华。你和同学从网上得知美国抗癌男孩Dorian的愿望是看到有人在长城上举着“D-Strong”的牌子。请根据以下四幅图的先后顺序，给校刊“英语角”写一篇英文稿件，介绍你们帮助小男孩圆梦，并号召他人进行爱心接力的全过程。
注意：词数不少于60。
提示词：微信朋友圈 WeChat Moments
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假设你是红星中学高三学生李华。今年寒假你参加了学校组织的赴美游学活动。请给接待你的史密斯夫妇写一封感谢信，内容包括：
1. 感谢对你的照顾；
2. 感谢带你体验西方文化；
3. 邀请他们来中国游玩。
注意：1. 词数不少于50；
2. 开头和结尾已给出，不计入总词数。
Dear Mr. and Mrs. Smith,
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Yours,
Li Hua
根据短文内容，从短文后的七个选项中选出能填入空白处的最佳选项。选项中有两项为多余选项。
Rhythm of Life
Choosing the right time to sleep, the correct moment to make decisions, the best hour to eat—and even go into hospital—could be your key to perfect health.
Centuries after man discovered the rhythms(节奏、韵律) of the planets and the cycles of crops, scientists have learned that we too live by precise rhythms that govern everything from our basic bodily functions to mental skills. Man is a prisoner of time.
But it’s not just the experts who are switching on to the way our bodies work. 1. Prince Charles consults a chart which tells him when he will be at his peak on a physical, emotional and intellectual level. Boxer Frank Bruno is another who charts his bio-rhythms to plan for big fights.
2. Sleep, blood pressure, hormone levels and heartbeat all follow their own clocks, which may bear only slight relation to our man-made 24-hour cycle.
Research shows that in laboratory experiments when social signals and, most importantly, light indicators such as dawn are taken away, people lose touch with the 24-hour clock and sleeping patterns change. Temperature and heartbeat cycles lengthen and settle into “days” lasting about 25 hours.
In the real world, light and dark keep adjusting internal clock to the 24-hour day. But the best indicator of performance is body temperature. As it falls from a 10 p.m. high of 37.2℃ to a pre-dawn low of 36.1℃, mental functions fall too. 3.
The most famous example is the nuclear accident at Three Mile Island in the US. The three operators in the control room worked alternating(交替的) weeks of day, evening and night shifts. 4. Investigators believe this caused the workers to overlook a warning light and fail to close an open valve.
Finding the secret of what makes us tick has long fascinated scientists and work done over the last decade has yielded important clues. 5. For example, the time we eat may be important if we want to maximize intellectual or sporting performance. There is already evidence suggesting that the time when medicine is given to patients affects how well it works.
A. The rhythm of life is a slight beat.
B. The aim is to help us become more efficient(高效的).
C. Jenny Hope claims to have tested their body clocks to the limit.
D. This is a key reason why shift work can cause so many problems.
E. Experts say every aspect of human bodies is influenced by daily rhythms.
F. Many people study the state of their bio-rhythms before making their daily plans.
G. Such a dangerous combination never gave their bodies’ natural rhythms a chance to settle down.
“If we can set it up so you can’t unlock your phone unless you’ve got the right fingerprint(指纹),” Barack Obama asked last Tuesday, “why can’t we do the same thing for our guns?” For this reasonable-sounding question, the president was applauded throughout the media.
As it happens, though, there is a good answer to this question: there is no market for guns that work just some of the time. Guns are simple things designed to operate as easily and reliably as possible. The introduction of electronics eats away this simplicity, and to a degree that is absolutely unacceptable to the consumer. As President Obama well knows, the fingerprint software on his phone works rather erratically: Often it takes a user two or three tries to log in; occasionally, it falls asleep deeply and obeys the password. When this happens on an phone, the user is mildly inconvenienced. If this were to happen on a gun, the user would be dead. There is a reason that modern smartphones put the camera function outside of the authentication(认证) process.
How could we possibly think that guns are the same as other commercial products? It is true that, say, cars have become considerably safer over the last few decades; true, too, that “research” has contributed to this improvement. But it matters enormously that a car is not intended to hurt people, and that in a perfect world nobody would ever be injured by one. Can we say the same of guns? Of course not. Guns are killing machines, designed explicitly to do damage to living things. In fact, they have no other purpose. As such, the salient question before any free people is not “are guns dangerous?”, they are, but “who gets them, and why?”
This is not to say that nothing at all can be done to improve public safety. On an individual level, gun owners should do everything to ensure that their guns are kept away from children, and, where possible, they should train themselves in case they are ever called upon to shoot in anger. At the national level, the combination of better policing and economic growth can help to reduce crime—and, indeed, it has. In 1993, gun crime was more than twice as common as it is now, and there were many fewer guns in circulation. Ugly as it is in its own right, that we have reached the point at which two-thirds of all guns-related deaths are deliberately self-inflicted is a small victory.
How to address those deaths that remain? That is a tricky one. I do not know the answer, and nor, frankly, does anybody else. But selling fantasies to the ignorant is not going to cut it.
1.What does the writer mainly argue in this passage?
A. Gun crime has been greatly reduced.
B. The idea of smart guns is not realistic.
C. Gun control will not succeed in America.
D. Guns-related deaths deserve public attention.
2.The underlined word “erratically” in Paragraph 2 probably means ________.
A. with effectiveness
B. with passion and energy
C. in an unpredictable manner
D. in a reasonable and fair way
3.The writer supports his ideas in Paragraphs 2 and 3 mainly by ________.
A. analyzing statistics
B. presenting problems and solutions
C. quoting the authorities
D. making comparisons and contrasts
4.Which of the following might the writer NOT agree with?
A. Few know how to deal with guns-related deaths.
B. Efforts to improve public safety have partly paid off.
C. The nature of guns distinguishes them from other products.
D. Guns using fingerprint software can risk the lives of the users.
The truth was written all over her face. The eyes are the window to the soul. From those sayings, you would think that we could read faces. In fact, people tend to overestimate their ability to do it.
Most of us can’t distinguish between certain expressions without contextual clues. In one study, participants were unable to tell whether faces in photos were showing pain or pleasure about a quarter of the time. In another, when people watched silent videos of the same person experiencing pain and faking pain, they couldn’t tell which was which.
And yet, as bad as we are at reading expressions, we jump to all kinds of conclusions based on people’s faces. We might scoff at the ancient physiognomy—assessing character on the basis of facial feature—but we unknowingly practice it daily. Recent research shows that while there’s practically no evidence that faces reveal character, we nonetheless behave as if certain features signal certain traits. People with typically “female” facial features seem more trustworthy; those with lower eyebrows appear more controlling. In another study, people were ready to decide whether an unfamiliar face should be trusted after looking at it for just 200 milliseconds. Even when given a chance to look longer, they rarely changed their mind.
Such judgments can defy logic. Subjects playing a trust game invested more money with a player who had a trustworthy face than with one who didn’t—even when the two players had the same fame. Another study reported that judges needed less evidence to sentence a person with an untrustworthy face. And a researcher focusing on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict found that a Palestinian peace offering was more likely to be accepted by Jewish Israeli if it was attributed to a politician with “babyfacedness”.
Which brings us to a contradiction. A person’s face may not reflect her nature, and yet research finds that specific facial features do seem to influence futures. U.S. Army War College graduates with controlling-looking faces are more likely than their peers to become generals; people with obvious cheekbones, appearing strong and competent, are more likely to become CEOs of successful companies. This makes a certain sense. If everyone assumes strong-chinned Daniel is an ambitious person, he’s more likely to become one. Perhaps by treating others as though their face reveals their character, we motivate them to become the people we assume them to be.
1.Miss Green wants to find a pet shop for her dog while she is on holiday. She is most likely to choose the shop’s owner with ________.
A. a strong chin B. “female” facial features
C. low eyebrows D. obvious cheekbones
2.Which of the following is TRUE according to the author?
A. People rush to judgments based on facial features.
B. People are better at telling “pain” than “delight” from faces.
C. People consider it instructive to study the ancient physiognomy.
D. People would change their first impression if given more chances.
3.In Paragraph 4, the examples are used to show ________.
A. facial features reveal minds
B. trust is essential in big issues
C. baby faces are more trustworthy
D. decisions are easily influenced by faces
4.According to the last paragraph, the author believes ________.
A. facial features mirror character
B. people’s behavior is contradictory
C. people won’t be judged by appearance
D. facial features can influence eventual character
