April 2018, Manchester
My dearest daughter,
As I looked across at you sitting on the sofa watching The X Factor, I noticed that you are no longer a child, and that having just celebrated your 14th birthday, you are now a young woman starting a journey into becoming an adult woman. As I looked at you, I remembered myself at 14, and the vastly different places we are beginning this journey from.
Your identity as a mixed-race young woman, with an English father and a Pakistani mother, has already influenced how you place yourself in this world. Until now, you are unaware of the personal struggles that I took at the age of 25 to marry. How it felt when my mother refused to come to my wedding. The sharp criticisms of the Asian community that such marriages do not work out and always end in divorce. The confidence I had to grow, as we chose to live in a multicultural community, as I refused to be shamed into living in the leafier white suburbs.
Then, at the age of 30, I became your mum with all the joys and struggles this brought, as I refused the Asian traditions for a new baby's arrival. From your birth, your life could not have been more different from mine. I was brought up on a council estate, within a tight-knit extended Muslim family, through which poverty, racism and neglect were woven. I was never given the freedoms or the opportunity to experience new things. Now, as I hear you play your piano, I am grateful that you have these opportunities.
So many doors were closed to me as a young person, and as I fought for small steps of freedom, I soon learned that it was better to do what I wanted without the knowledge of my parents, and so deceit and deception(欺骗) became woven into my life too. The pressures to obey, to be a "good Muslim" girl and to keep the family honour were choking. Behind closed doors at home, the neglect and abuse took place. It was hidden; I felt the shame, lived with the fear and suffered alongside my sister and two younger brothers. Oh, the power we thought our parents had over us! I was convinced that one day my father would indeed beat us so hard that leaving us for dead, he would, as his threats said, bury us in the large back garden and tell the school he had taken us back to Pakistan for good. My sister and I longed for a different blue sky to live under.
As a daughter of immigrant parents, I carried their hopes of a better education for their children my own veins(血管) pulsing with the hard-work ethic(道德) and need to be grateful for the opportunity of a free education. And it was education that provided me with the strength to find my own blue sky. I fought to leave home to go to university at the age of 18, and never returned to live with my parents again.
Now as you explore your mixed-race heritage, which I hope we have supported you to do with visits to Pakistan and ensuring you go to multi-cultural schools, I want you to take the very best of all that is Asian with you as you become a woman.
The struggles of identity and belonging will come but I hope that we have given you a strong foundation from which to explore these struggles. All the opportunities and freedoms that I only dreamed of as a young woman, I have offered you. I have chosen a different path of loving you as my daughter, with an unconditional love that many consider "western".
I want you to know that although your journey has been vastly different. I am excited as I watch you standing on the threshold of becoming a woman for all the adventures and possibilities the future holds for you.
May you fly your blue sky with grace, confidence and hope as you find your place in this beautiful and crazy world.
Loving you now and always.
Mommy
1.Mommy's mother refused to attend her wedding probably because _____.
A. she married against the wishes of her family
B. she refused traditional Asian wedding ceremony
C. she would leave the family to settle in the white suburbs
D. she would bring shame to the multicultural community
2.By "your life could not have been more different from mine." Mommy means ______.
A. her childhood was no different from her daughter's
B. her parents treated her the way she does her daughter
C. her daughter experienced the same traditions at birth with her
D. her daughter can enjoy the opportunities which she didn’t
3.What can be inferred from Mommy's Muslim family life?
A. She behaved like a good Muslim girl. B. She fought against her Muslim identity.
C. She suffered much abuse in the family. D. She was forced to drop out of school.
4.Mommy sends her daughter to multi-cultural schools to _____.
A. provide her daughter with more opportunities and freedoms
B. increase her daughter's exposure to different cultures
C. encourage her daughter to grow up to be a better woman
D. ensure her daughter more opportunities to visit Pakistan
5.Mommy writes the letter mainly to _____.
A. uncover the sufferings she had as a teenage girl
B. criticize the social prejudice in her community
C. emphasize the importance of family support
D. encourage her daughter to try to achieve her dream
High-sugar diets raise risks for heart disease, obesity and diabetes, but we do love our sweets, so health experts have tried to suggest alternatives, and honey has been foremost among them.
Honey is actually sweeter than sugar is , which means, in theory at least, that you could enhance flavor equally with a smaller quantity of honey. But honey actually has a higher calorie count. It may have more minerals, which looks better on a label but, in reality, these are such trace amounts that they don’t offer any real advantages.
Honey’s reputation as a medicine is not wholly unfounded. Some honey does indeed have antibacterial properties. One byproduct of enzymes in honey is hydrogen peroxide, a powerful germ killer. Plus, honey’s texture and consistency are good for keeping wounds clean, and bad for bugs that might want to infect them. Honey is moist and its gooey consistency mean it can easily spread over and stay over wounds while keeping the tissue from becoming dry and fragile. The sticky substance means bacteria can not accumulate and multiply easily. It is particularly well-known for fighting bacteria like staph, salmonella, E. Coliand certain bacteria that can infect the gut and cause ulcers.
However, scientists can only say this for sure about Makuna and Malaysian Tualang honey. We don’t know yet whether local home grown honey has the same potency-or safety. A hot cup of tea with some honey stirred in certainly sounds like it would make you feel better. But it’s difficult to say for sure that it will.
When you have a cold, contact with warm water (from tea) may help to bust up phlegm(痰）that blocks your airways. But some suspect the real secret to the qualities of a cuppa is in the honey. There are studies that suggest that honey does work as well or better than cough suppressant（抑制性的）drugs like Robitussin.
Most of these, however, were considered by the academic world to be widely misinterpreted by the media. One of the findings that seemed to have given the honey trend some additional legs came from a study that said there was “no difference”, statistically speaking, between honey and one particular cough suppressant.
1.What can we learn from the passage?
A. Honey has more minerals than sugar.
B. Honey can be used to treat wounds.
C. The sweetness in honey can fight bacteria.
D. All kinds of honey can act as medicines.
2.What is the author's attitude when it comes to the functions of honey?
A. Objective B. Critical
C. Supportive D. Skeptical
3.What might be talked about next?
A. Honey will be widely used in other fields.
B. Honey will not be recommended in medical treatment any more.
C. Other studies showed honey worked better than some cough medicines.
D. Other studies showed neither honey nor some cough medicines functioned well.
As years went by, I realized that one of the biggest problems of adults was worry. A large majority of my students were businessmen, executives, salesmen, engineers, accountants: a cross section of all the trades and professions and most of them had problems! There were women in the classes business women and housewives. They too had problems. Clearly, what I needed was a textbook on how to conquer worry. So again, I tried to find one.
I went to the New York great public library at Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street and discovered to my astonishment that this library had only twenty-two books listed under the title WORRY. I also noticed, to my amusement, that it had one hundred and eighty-nine books listed under WORMS. Almost nine times as many books about worms as about worry! Surprising, isn't it? Since worry is one of the biggest problems facing mankind, you would think, wouldn't you, that every high school and college in the land would give a course on “How to Stop Worrying”?
Yet, if there is even one course on that subject in any college in the land, I have never heard of it. No wonder David Seabury said in his book How to Worry Successfully: “We come to maturity with as little preparation for the pressures of experience as a bookworm asked to do a ballet.”
The result? More than half of our hospital beds are all occupied by people with nervous and emotional troubles.
I looked over those twenty-two books on worry on the shelves of the New York Public Library. In addition, I purchased all the books on worry I could find; yet I couldn't discover even one that I could use as a text in my course for adults. So I decided to write one by myself.
1.What made the writer realize one of the adults’ biggest problems?
A. His wide reading. B. His practical survey.
C. His students’ real situation. D. His scientific research.
2.The writer went to New York's great public library with the purpose of________.
A. getting a book for his teaching
B. finding some material for his new book
C. obtaining some information for his research
D. borrowing some books on worms for his students
3.What do David Seabury’s words in paragraph 3 show?
A. Worry is extremely common. B. We lack knowledge of worry.
C. We show no interest in worry. D. Worry can hardly be controlled.
4.What's the writer’s purpose of writing the passage?
A. To warn us of the possible danger of worry.
B. To persuade us to get rid of worry.
C. To explain why he wanted to write a book on worry.
D. To tell us how to conquer worry.
Visitors to Britain may find the best place to sample local culture is in a traditional pub. But these friendly pubs can be dangerous places of potential gaffes (失礼) for the newcomers.
A team of researchers have discovered some of the unknown customs of British pub starting with the difficulty of getting a drink. Most pubs have no waiters you have to go to the bar to buy drinks. A group of Italian youths waiting 45 minutes before they realized they would have to fetch their own. This may sound inconvenient, but there is a hidden purpose.
Pub culture is designed to promote sociability in a society known for its reserve. Standing at the bar for service allows you to chat with others waiting to be served. The bar counter is possibly the only site in the British Isles in which friendly conversation with strangers is considered entirely suitable and really quite normal behavior. “If you haven't been to a pub, you haven't been to Britain.” This tip can be found in a booklet, Passport to the Pub: The Tourists' Guide to Pub Etiquette, a customers' rule of conduct for those wanting to sample “a central part of British life and culture”.
The trouble is that if you do not follow the local rules, the experience may fall flat. For example, if you are in a big group, it is best if only one or two people go to buy the drinks. Nothing annoys the regular customers and bar staff more than a group of strangers blocking all access to the bar while they chat and hesitate about what to order.
1.The underlined word “sample” in the first paragraph probably means “________”.
A. taste B. experience C. test D. record
2.The culture of pub in Britain is so developed to ______.
A. encourage people to communicate with each other
B. encourage more people to consume drinks
C. attract more tourists to the pubs
D. form its own character of culture
3.What does the author mean by giving the example of a group of Italian youths in Paragraph 2?
A. British pubs don’t always have waiters or waitresses.
B. There is always a hidden purpose in most British pubs.
C. It is quite convenient for people to get a drink in British pubs.
D. Not knowing the custom of British pubs may cause inconvenience.
听下面一段独白，回答以下小题。
1.When was Greenpeace founded?
A. Twenty years ago. B. Fifty years ago. C. Seventy years ago.
2.What role does the man play in the organization?
A. He is the action organizer. B. He is a leading nuclear scientist.
C. He is one of the plan makers.
3.What has the man been involved in recently?
A. Protesting the use of nuclear weapons. B. Protecting animals and plants.
C. Environmental campaign.
4.How did people react to the man’s appeal last week?
A. They showed little interest in it. B. They were against the demonstration.
C. They expressed their support in different ways.
听下面一段较长对话，回答以下小题。
1.When will the woman leave her home?
A. At 6:30. B. At 7:30. C. At 8:30.
2.What does the woman plan to take with her?
A. One large bag and two small bags. B. Two large bags and one small bag.
C. One large bag and a handbag.
3.Where will the man say goodbye to the woman?
A. In the waiting room. B. Outside the train. C. At the entrance.
4.What does the man ask the woman to do?
A. Wait for him at the airport. B. Come back a week later.
C. Give him a call.
