It was in my high school science class. I was doing a task in front of the classroom with my favorite shirt on. A _____came. “Nice shirt,” I smiled from ear to ear. Then another voice said, “That shirt belonged to my dad. Greg’s mother works for my family. We were going to______that shirt away, but gave it to her instead.” I was______. I wanted to hide.
I stuck my shirt in the back of the closet and told my ______what had happened. She then dialed her _____ , “I will no longer _____ for your family,” she told him. That night, Mom told my dad that she couldn’t just clean anymore; she knew her life’s achievement was something______ , so she decided to find another job.
The next morning she ______with the personnel manager at the Board of Education. He told her that without a proper education she could not teach. So Mom decided to _____a university.
After the first year in college, she went back to the personnel manager. He said, “Are you serious? I think I have a_____for you as a teacher’s assistant. This ______deals with children who are mentally challenged with little or no chance of _____.” Mom accepted that job opportunity very______.
For almost five years, as a teacher’s assistant, she saw teacher after teacher give up on the children and quit, feeling ______. Then one day, the personnel manager and the principal showed up in her _____. The principal said, “We have watched how you______ the children and how they communicate with you, and we _____ your hard-working spirit over the last five years. We all ______that you should be the teacher of this class.”
My mom ______more than twenty years there. During her career, she was voted Teacher of the Year. All of this came about because of the bad comment made in my classroom that day. Mom showed me how to handle ___ situations and never give up.
1.A. voice B. student C. teacher D. noise
2.A. get B. take C. carry D. throw
3.A. thankful B. silent C. cheerful D. careless
4.A. father B. sister C. mother D. classmate
5.A. assistant B. adviser C. director D. employer
6.A. pay B. apply C. employ D. work
7.A. sweeter B. quicker C. greater D. louder
8.A. went B. met C. worked D. stayed
9.A. visit B. build C. attend D. prepare
10.A. position B. duty C. key D. part
11.A. event B. problem C. meeting D. opportunity
12.A. learning B. judging C. obeying D. imagining
13.A. patiently B. eagerly C. successfully D. angrily
14.A. upset B. frightened C. happy D. comfortable
15.A. home B. classroom C. apartment D. car
16.A. punish B. beat C. treat D. touch
17.A. hate B. forget C. admire D. follow
18.A. discuss B. argue C. disagree D. agree
19.A. waited B. spent C. took D. wasted
20.A. challenging B. simple C. dangerous D. strange
1.You probably think you will never be a top student. This is not necessarily so, however. Anyone can become a better student if he or she wants to. Here’s how:
Plan your time carefully. When planning your work, you should make a list of things that you have to do. After making this list, you should make a schedule of your time. First your time for eating, sleeping, dressing, etc. Then decide a good, regular time for studying. 2. A weekly schedule may not solve all your problems, but it will force you realize what is happening to your time.
Find a good place to study. Look around the house for a good study area. Keep this space, which may be a desk or simply a corner of your room, free of everything but study materials. No games, radios, or television. When you sit down to study, concentrate on the subject.
Make good use of your time in class.3. Listening carefully in class means less work later. Taking notes will help you remember what the teacher says.
Study regularly. When you get home from school, go over your notes, review the important points that your teacher is going to discuss the next day, read that material. 4.If you do these things regularly, the material will become more meaningful, and you’ll remember it longer.
Develop a good attitude towards tests. The purpose of a test is to show what you have learned about a subject. They help you remember your new knowledge. The world won’t end if you don’t pass a test, so don’t be over worried.
5.You will probably discover many others after you have tried these.
A. Take advantage of class time to listen to everything the teacher says.
B. There are other methods that might help you with your studying
C. Don’t forget to set aside enough time for entertainment.
D. No one can become a top student unless he or she works hard.
E. This will help you understand the next class.
F. Make full use of class time to take notes of what the teacher says in class.
G. Maybe you are an average student.
A new study suggests that the more teenagers watch television, the more likely they are to develop depression(情绪低落) as young adults.
The researchers used a national long-term survey of adolescent(青少年的)health to survey the relationship between media use and depression. They based their findings on more than 4,000 adolescents who were not depressed when the survey began in the year 2000.
As part of the survey, the young people were asked how many hours of television or videos they watched daily. They were also asked how often they played computer games and listened to the radio. Media use totaled an average of five and one-half hours a day. More than two hours of that was spent watching TV.
Seven years later, in 2007, more than seven percent of the young people had signs of depression. The average age at that time was twenty-one.
The researchers say they did not find any such relationship with the use of other media such as movies, video games or radio, etc. But the study did find that every extra hour of television meant an eight percent increase in the chances of developing signs of depression. Young men were more likely than young women to develop depression given the same amount of media use.
The study didn’t explore if watching TV causes depression. But one possibility is that it was taking time away from activities that could help prevent depression.
Last December, the journal Social Indicators Research published a study of activities that help lead to happy lives. Sociologists from the University of Maryland found that people who describe themselves as happy spend less time watching television than unhappy people. The study found that happy people are more likely to be socially active, to read, to attend religious services and to vote.
1.We can learn from the survey that of all the media use ___________________.
A. computer games are teenagers’ favorite
B. most teenagers prefer to listen to the radio
C. teenagers enjoy watching TV very much
D. newspaper is not included in the survey
2.According to the passage, what kind of activity may help prevent depression?
A. Taking part in sports. B. Playing computer games.
C. Listening to the radio. D. Watching movies.
3.We can conclude that a teenager should ____________.
A. play more video games instead of watching TV
B. attend religious services and care for politics
C. be more active in reading and studying
D. be active in taking part in outdoor activities
Email has brought the art of letter writing back to life, but some experts think the resulting spread of bad English does more harm than good.
Email is a form of communication that is changing, for the worse, the way we write and use language, say some communication researchers. It is also changing the way we interact(交流) and build relationship. These are a few of the recently recognized features of email, say experts, which should cause individuals and organizations to rethink the way they use email.
“Email has increased the spread of careless writing habits,” says Naomi Baron, a professor of linguistics(语言学) at an American university. She says the poor spelling, grammar, punctuation and sentence structure of emails reflect(反映) a growing unconcern about the way we write.
Baron argues that we shouldn’t forgive and forget the poor writing often shown in email. “The more we use email and its tasteless writing, the more it becomes the normal way of writing,” the professor says.
Others say that despite its poor writing, email has finished what several generations of English teachers couldn’t: it has made writing fashionable again.
“Email is a critical new communication technology.” says Ian Lancashire, a professor of English at Toronto University. “It fills the gap between spoken language and the formal methods of writing that existed before email. It is the purest form of written speech.”
Lancashire says email has the mysterious ability to get people who are usually scared by writing to get their thoughts flowing easily onto a blank screen. He says this is because of email’s close similarity to speech. “It’s like a circle of four or five people around a campfire,” he says.
Still, he accepts that this new-found freedom to express themselves often gets people into trouble. Emails sent in a day almost exceed(超过) the number of letters mailed in a year. But more people are recognizing the content of a typical email message is not often exact.
1. From what Baron says in the third paragraph we can see that ________.
A. careless people use email more than careful people
B. email requires people to change their native language
C. professors in universities don’t need to use email
D. people communicate by email full of mistakes
2.What does the underlined word “it”(in Paragraph 4) refer to?
A. The poor writing. B. Email.
C. The good writing. D. A new communication technology.
3.In Lancashire’s opinion, email is a wonderful technology because _______.
A. it can be useful all over the world
B. it is the fastest way to communicate
C. we can express ourselves in a free way
D. we can save a lot of paper
4.This passage mainly shows us that ______.
A. people should stop using email to communicate
B. experts hold different opinions about email writing
C. Americans only use email to communicate
D. email makes people lose interest in English
Betty is not traditional American beauty. She is unfashionable, has thick red glasses, untidy hair and large metal braces (牙套) on her teeth. But this hasn’t stopped her from becoming one of American’s favorite TV characters. So how did she manage to do it?
The answer is that charm can be more attractive than beauty. Betty is the main character in a TV show Ugly Betty. The show is about her life as an office worker at a fashion magazine in New York.
The TV show has just started. Betty has many exciting experiences and romantic stories. Betty is often looked down on and laughed at by the people around. But she manages to do better than others with her hard work, charm and wisdom. The show tells us about how a girl goes from an ugly young duck into a beautiful swan.
Though you may know the ending of the show from the beginning and the story is familiar to many of us, it has still been a big success in the USA. It has attracted a large number of viewers and won two Golden Globes awards, one of the highest honors for a television program in the USA.“ I think you can see a bit of Betty in all of us, and I mean men as well, because it’s about the underdog (弱者)”，says Ashley Jensen, who plays one of the characters on the show.
The program is so popular because of the performance of the 23-year-old actress America Ferrera who plays the role of Betty. She brings the character alive on the screen.
1.Betty is popular because of ____.
A. her clothes B. her appearance
C. her personality D. her charm
2.Which is the reason for the success of the show?
A. A large number of viewers.
B. Her life as an office worker.
C. The wonderful performance.
D. Two Golden Globes awards.
3.Which of the following is NOT true according of the show?
A. Betty is a girl of wisdom.
B. Betty acts as a beautiful swan on the show.
C. Betty is an American favorite TV character.
D. Betty is often looked down on by the people around.
4.What can be the best title for the passage?
A. Beauty from within. B. A romantic story.
C. An ugly girl. D. An exciting experience.
These people are studying English. However, they are now facing some problems.
I am Pablo. I work 50 hours a week as a taxi driver, so I talk to people all day. They understand me, but I know I make a lot of mistakes. No one corrects me. My vocabulary is strong. Grammar is my problem. I'm trying to change little by little. For example, I don't use the past tense (时态). I always say, “I drive him to the office this morning” instead of “I drove him to the office this morning”. |
My name is Maria Luisa. I'm teaching myself English, and I'm good at grammar. However, it's really difficult to find ways to practice English. I live in an area where everyone speaks my language. My neighbors and friends speak Spanish. I can speak Spanish in the supermarket and at the post office. |
I am Li Ping. I understand the grammar and the readings in my class and I think my writing is good, but I'm very nervous when I speak English. I don't want to make any mistakes because I'm afraid people will think that I'm stupid. Also, my pronunciation isn't good. When I speak, people often say, “What? Say that again”. |
I am Yoshi. I have been in the United States for one year. I'm studying hard and I know grammar well, but the vocabulary is very difficult. When I listen, I don't understand many of the words. When I try to read, there are three or four new words in every sentence. I feel discouraged. |
1.Who may say, “I go to bed late last night”?
A. Pablo. B. Maria Luisa.
C. Li Ping. D. Yoshi.
2.What would be the best advice for Maria Luisa?
A. Try to have a wide vocabulary.
B. Develop a good knowledge of grammar.
C. Read as many English books as possible.
D. Make friends with English-speaking people.
3.Why do people find it hard to understand Li Ping's English?
A. She can't pronounce words in English correctly.
B. She speaks at a very fast speed.
C. Her grammar is terrible.
D. Her voice is very low.
4.What can we learn about Yoshi?
A. He was born in the United States.
B. He has a very small vocabulary.
C. He has learned English for years.
D. He is very good at listening.
