On one of her trips to New York several years ago, Eudora Welty decided to take a couple of New York friends out to dinner. They settled in at a comfortable East Side cafe and within minutes, another customer was approaching their table.
“Hey, aren’t you from Mississippi?” the elegant, white-haired writer remembered being asked by the stranger. “I’m from Mississippi too.”
Without a second thought, the woman joined the Welty party. When her dinner partner showed up, she also pulled up a chair.
“They began telling me all the news of Mississippi,” Welty said. “I didn’t know what my New York friends were thinking.”
Taxis on a rainy New York night are rarer than sunshine. By the time the group got up to leave, it was pouring outside. Welty’s new friends immediately sent a waiter to find a cab. Heading back downtown toward her hotel, her big-city friends were amazed at the turn of events that had changed their Big Apple dinner into a Mississippi.
“My friends said: ‘Now we believe your stories,’” Welty added. “And I said: ‘Now you know. These are the people that make me write them.’”
Sitting on a sofa in her room, Welty, a slim figure in a simple gray dress, looked pleased with this explanation.
“I don’t make them up,” she said of the characters in her fiction these last 50 or so years. “I don’t have to.”
Beauticians, bartenders, piano players and people with purple hats, Welty’s people come from afternoons spent visiting with old friends, from walks through the streets of her native Jackson, Miss., from conversations overheard on a bus. It annoys Welty that, at 78, her left ear has now given out. Sometimes, sitting on a bus or a train, she hears only a fragment(片段) of a particularly interesting story.
1.What happened when Welty was with her friends at the cafe?
A.Two strangers joined her.
B.Her childhood friends came in.
C.A heavy rain ruined the dinner.
D.Some people held a party there.
2.The underlined word “them” in Paragraph 6 refers to Welty’s ________.
A.readers B.parties
C.friends D.stories
3.What can we learn about the characters in Welty’s fiction?
A.They live in big cities.
B.They are mostly women.
C.They come from real life.
D.They are pleasure seekers.
A new collection of photos brings an unsuccessful Antarctic voyage back to life.
Frank Hurley's pictures would be outstanding—undoubtedly firstrate photojournalism—if they had been made last week.In fact，they were shot from 1914 through 1916, most of them after a disastrous shipwreck(海难), by a cameraman who had no reasonable expectation of survival.Many of the images were stored in an ice chest, under freezing water, in the damaged wooden ship.
The ship was the Endurance, a small, tight, Norwegianbuilt threemaster that was intended to take Sir Ernest Shackleton and a small crew of seamen and scientists, 27 men in all，to the southernmost shore of Antarctica's Weddell Sea.From that point Shackleton wanted to force a passage by dog sled (雪橇) across the continent.The journey was intended to achieve more than what Captain Robert Falcon Scott had done.Captain Scott had reached the South Pole early in 1912 but had died with his four companions on the march back.
As writer Caroline Alexander makes clear in her forceful and wellresearched story The Endurance, adventuring was even then a thoroughly commercial effort.Scott's last journey，completed as he lay in a tent dying of cold and hunger, caught the world's imagination, and a film made in his honor drew crowds.Shackleton, a onetime British merchantnavy officer who had got to within 100 miles of the South Pole in 1908, started a business before his 1914 voyage to make money from movie and still photography.Frank Hurley, a confident and gifted Australian photographer who knew the Antarctic，was hired to make the images, most of which have never before been published.
1.What do we know about the photos taken by Hurley?
A.They were made last week.
B.They showed undersea sceneries.
C.They were found by a cameraman.
D.They recorded a disastrous adventure.
2.Who reached the South Pole first according to the text?
A.Frank Hurley.
B.Ernest Shackleton.
C.Robert Falcon Scott.
D.Caroline Alexander.
3.What does Alexander think was the purpose of the 1914 voyage?
A.Artistic creation. B.Scientific research.
C.Money making. D.Treasure hunting.
Reading can be a social activity．Think of the people who belong to book groups．They choose books to read and then meet to discuss them．Now the website BookCrossing．com turns the page on the traditional idea of a book group．
Members go on the site and register the books they own and would like to share．BookCrossing provides an identification number to stick inside the book．Then the person leaves it in a public place，hoping that the book will have an adventure，traveling far and wide with each new reader who finds it．
Bruce Pederson，the managing director of BookCrossing，says，"The two things that change your life are the people you meet and books you read．BookCrossing combines both．"
Members leave books on park benches and buses，in train stations and coffee shops．Whoever finds their book will go to the site and record where they found it．
People who find a book can also leave a journal entry describing what they thought of it．E-mails are then sent to the BookCrossers to keep them updated about where their books have been found．Bruce Peterson says the idea is for people not to be selfish by keeping a book to gather dust on a shelf at home．
BookCrossing is part of a trend among people who want to get back to the"real"and not the virtual（虚拟）．The site now has more than one million members in more than one hundred thirty-five countries．
1.Why does the author mention book groups in the first paragraph？ ______
A.To explain what they are．
B.To introduce BookCrossing．
C.To stress the importance of reading．
D.To encourage readers to share their ideas．
2.What does the underlined word"it"in Paragraph 2 refer to？ ______
A.The book．
B.An adventure．
C.A public place．
D.The identification number．
3.What will a BookCrosser do with a book after reading it？ ______
A.Meet other readers to discuss it．
B.Pass it on to another reader．
C.Keep it safe in his bookcase．
D.Mail it back to its owner．
4.What is the best title for the text？ ______
A.Online Reading：A Virtual Tour
B.Electronic Books：A new Trend
C.A Book Group Brings Tradition Back
D.A Website Links People through Books
Five years ago, when I taught art at a school in Seattle, I used Tinkertoys as a test at the beginning of a term to find out something about my students. I put a small set of Tinkertoys in front of each student, and said: “Make something out of the Tinkertoys. You have 45 minutes today — and 45 minutes each day for the rest of the week.”
A few students hesitated to start. They waited to see the rest of the class would do. Several others checked the instructions and made something according to one of the model plans provided. Another group built something out of their own imaginations.
Once I had a boy who worked experimentally with Tinkertoys in his free time, his constructions filled a shelf in the art classroom and a good part of his bedroom at home. I was delighted at the presence of such a student. Here was an exceptionally creative mind at work. His presence meant that I had an unexpected teaching assistant in class whose creativity would infect(感染) other students.
Encouraging this kind of thinking has a downside. I ran the risk of losing those students who had a different style of thinking. Without fail one would declare, “But I’m just not creative.”
“Do you dream at night when you’re asleep?”
“Oh, sure.”
“So tell me one of your most interesting dreams.” The student would tell something wildly imaginative. Flying in the sky or in a time machine or growing three heads. “That’s pretty creative. Who does that for you?”
“Nobody. I do it.”
“Really-at night, when you’re asleep?”
“Sure.”
“Try doing it in the daytime, in class, okay?”
1.The teacher used Tinkertoys in class in order to ________.
A.know more about the students
B.make the lessons more exciting
C.raise the students’ interest in art
D.teach the students about toy design
2.What do we know about the boy mentioned in Paragraph 3?
A.He liked to help his teacher. B.He preferred to study alone.
C.He was active in class. D.He was imaginative.
3.What does the underlined word “downside” in Paragraph 4 probably mean?
A.Mistake. B.Drawback.
C.Difficulty. D.Burden.
4.Why did the teacher ask the students to talk about their dreams?
A.To help them to see their creativity.
B.To find out about their sleeping habits.
C.To help them to improve their memory.
D.To find out about their ways of thinking.
The meaning of silence varies among cultural groups.Silences may be thoughtful, or they may be empty when a person has nothing to say. A silence in a conversation may also show stubbornness, uneasiness, or worry. Silence may be viewed by some cultural groups as extremely uncomfortable; therefore attempts may be made to fill every gap(间隙) with conversation. Persons in other cultural groups value silence and view it as necessary for understanding a person's needs.
Many Native Americans value silence and feel it is a basic part of communicating among people, just as some traditional Chinese and Thai persons do. Therefore, when a person from one of these cultures is speaking and suddenly stops, what may be implied(暗示) is that the person wants the listener to consider what has been said before continuing.In these cultures, silence is a call for reflection.
Other cultures may use silence in other ways, particularly when dealing with conflicts among people or in relationships of people with different amounts of power. For example, Russian, French, and Spanish persons may use silence to show agreement between parties about the topic under discussion. However, Mexicans may use silence when instructions are given by a person in authority rather than be rude to that person by arguing with him or her. In still another use, persons in Asian cultures may view silence as a sign of respect, particularly to an elder or a person in authority.
Nurses and other care-givers need to be aware of the possible meanings of silence when they come across the personal anxiety their patients may be experiencing. Nurses should recognize their own personal and cultural construction of silence so that a patient’s silence is not interrupted too early or allowed to go on unnecessarily. A nurse who understands the healing(治愈) value of silence can use this understanding to assist in the care of patients from their own and from other cultures.
1.What does the author say about silence in conversations?
A.It implies anger.
B.It promotes friendship.
C.It is culture-specific.
D.It is content-based.
2.Which of the following people might regard silence as a call for careful thought?
A.The Chinese.
B.The French.
C.The Mexicans.
D.The Russians.
3.What does the author advise nurses to do about silence?
A.Let it continue as the patient pleases.
B.Break it while treating patients.
C.Evaluate its harm to patients.
D.Make use of its healing effects.
4.What may be the best title for the text?
A.Sound and Silence
B.What It Means to Be Silent
C.Silence to Native Americans
D.Speech Is Silver; Silence Is Gold
Grandparents Answer a Call
As a third－generation native of Brownsville, Texas, Mildred Garza never planned to move away.Even when her daughter and son asked her to move to San Antonio to help with their children, she politely refused.Only after a year of friendly discussion did Ms.Garza finally say yes.That was four years ago.Today all three generations regard the move as a success, giving them a closer relationship than they would have had in separate cities.
No statistics show the number of grandparents like Garza who are moving closer to adult children and grandchildren. Yet there is evidence suggesting that the trend is growing.Even President Obama’s mother-in-law, Marian Robinson, has agreed to leave Chicago and move into the White House to help care for her granddaughters. According to a study by grandparents.com, 83 percent of the people said Mrs.Robinson's decision will influence grandparents in the American family.Two－thirds believe more families will follow the example of Obama’s family.
“In the 1960s we were all a little wild and couldn't get away from home far enough or fast enough to prove we could do it on our own,”says Christine Crosby, publisher of Grand, a magazine for grandparents. “We now realize how important family is and how important it is to be near them, especially when you’re raising children.”
Moving is not for everyone. Almost every grandparent wants to be with his or her grandchildren and is willing to make sacrifices, but sometimes it is wiser to say no and visit frequently instead.Having your grandchildren far away is hard, especially knowing your adult child is struggling, but giving up the life you know may be harder.
1.Why was Garza’s move a success?
A.It strengthened her family ties.
B.It improved her living conditions.
C.It enabled her to make more friends.
D.It helped her know more new places.
2.What was the reaction of the public to Mrs.Robinson’s decision?
A.17% expressed their support for it.
B.Few people responded sympathetically.
C.83% believed it had a bad influence.
D.The majority thought it was a trend.
3.What did Crosby say about people in the 1960s?
A.They were unsure of themselves.
B.They were eager to raise more children.
C.They wanted to live away from their parents.
D.They had little respect for their grandparents.
4.What does the author suggest the grandparents do in the last paragraph?
A.Make decisions in the best interests of their own.
B.Ask their children to pay more visits to them.
C.Sacrifice for their struggling children.
D.Get to know themselves better.
