Last July, Angela Peters, 36, rolled her wheelchair into a nail salon located at the Walmart shopping center in Burton, Michigan, with the idea of painting her nails. But Peters, who has cerebral palsy（脑瘫）, was turned away. The salon (which is not owned by Walmart), she says, told her that they were afraid it would be too difficult to properly do the job given that her hands shook. What was meant to be a day of beauty bliss for Peters was now a disappointment.
Watching the interaction from a few feet away was a Walmart cashier about to go on her break. Ebony Harris, 40, recognized Peters as a Walmart regular. Now what she recognized in Peters was a kindred spirit. “She’s just like you, me, my daughter, anybody,” Harris told ABC News, “She wants to look pretty. So why can’t she?”
Harris approached Peters. “Do you want me to do your nails?” she asked. A smile spread across Peters’ face. “Yeah!” Having found a table for two, Harris gently took Peter’s hand into hers and carefully began painting her nails.
“I was a little nervous and was shaking because I didn’t want to mess her nails up,” Harris admitted. “I told her she’s a blessing to anybody, not just me. She makes me look at life and appreciate it much more than I have.”
Watching it all with amazement and admiration was Subway employee Tasia Smith. What struck her most was the ease and gentleness displayed by Harris as she painted Peters’ nails, all the while chatting as if they were old friends. Smith was so taken by the scene that she wrote about it on Facebook. “They were so patient with her,” she wrote. “Thanks to the Walmart worker for making this beautiful girl’s day!”
Peters, who runs a poetry website, harbors no bitterness toward the nail salon that turned her away. “When people do us wrong, we must forgive,” Peters wrote on Facebook. “I just want to educate people that those with different challenges, like being in a wheelchair, can have our own business and get our nails done like anyone else.”
1.Why was Peters declined when she wanted to have her nails painted?
A.She insisted on sitting in a wheelchair.
B.She was not a regular customer of the salon.
C.Her hands shook involuntarily due to disability.
D.There was no need for her to have nails painted.
2.It can be inferred from “a kindred spirit” in Paragraph 2 that _______.
A.Peters was in high spirits just like others around her.
B.Peters was approached with special attention and care.
C.Peters was more tolerant of the denial than normal people.
D.Peters was no different from the people around her.
3.In Paragraph 4, Harris referred to Angela Peters as “a blessing” because _______.
A.Peters deserved to be happy and be treated kindly.
B.Harris was reminded why she should be grateful.
C.Harris felt obliged to offer her a hand on a voluntary basis
D.Peters got her nails done despite the previous rejection.
4.What may well be Angela Peters’ guiding principle in life?
A.Beauty is about having a pretty mind, a pretty soul, as well as pretty poetry.
B.Forgive others who have wronged us, and we are likely to enjoy our life more.
C.Being grateful is a way to sing for our life which comes just from our love and hope.
D.Life is a mirror and will reflect back to the thinker what he thinks into it.
If you examine the birth certificate of every soccer player in the last Word Cup tournament, you will most likely find the excellent players were born in the earlier months of the year. If you then examine the European national youth teams that feed the World Cup, you will find this phenomenon even more _______ .
What might account for this strange phenomenon? Some guess a certain astrological sign(星座) _________superior soccer skills; others maintain that winter-born babies have higher oxygen capacity which increases soccer stamina(it t ).But Anderson Ericsson, a 58-year-old professor who is called the expert on experts, believes in neither. His first experiment, nearly 30 years ago, involved _______ training a person to hear and repeat a random series of numbers. "With the first subject after 20 hours of training, his digital span rose to 20, Ericsson recalls, "and after about 200 hours of training he could repeat up to 80 numbers
This success, coupled with later research showing memory itself is not _______ determined, led Ericsson to conclude that the act of memorizing is a cognitive( i in a) exercise, which means whatever inborn differences two people may exhibit in their abilities to memorize, those differences are _________ by how well each person encodes the information. And the best way to learn how to encode information meaningfully, Ericsson determined, was a process known as _________ practice. It involves more than simply repeating a task _______ playing a C-minor scale 100 times hitting tennis serves until your shoulder pops out of its socket. _______ it involves stepping outside your comfort zone, setting specific and well-defined goals, focusing on _______ areas of expertise, obtaining immediate feedback from professionals and concentrating as much on technique as on outcome.
Ericsson and his colleagues have thus taken to studying high achievers in a wide range of ________ including soccer, golf, chess, piano playing and darts. They gather all the data they can and make a rather shocking statement: the trait we commonly call talent is highly ________, And yes, expert performers are nearly always made.
Ericsson’s formula seems appealing to many tiger parents: "practice makes perfect" is naturally ________ to genetic determinism. By________ innate ability as insignificant, many are confident they can make a concert-level pianist or an Olympic figure skater of their kids as long as they push them hard enough. Ericsson, ________ believes what parents should learn from the science of expertise is not the effect of logging thousands of hours, but how to get kids to. ________ the importance and challenge of effective practice
1.A.understandable B.misleading C.appealing D.noticeable
2.A.promises B.improves C.compromises D.masters
3.A.numbers B.subjects C.memory D.practice
4.A.physically B.genetically C.fundamentally D.psychologically
5.A.overshadow B.demonstrated C.strengthened D.produced
6.A.enormous B.deliberate C.desperate D.persistent
7.A.on average B.more importantly C.for instance D.in particular
8.A.Besides B.Nevertheless C.Therefore D.Rather
9.A.various B.comprehensive C.targeted D.minor
10.A.pursuits B.occupations C.performances D.assumptions
11.A.underestimate B.overrated C.flexible D.demanding
12.A.equal B.inferior C.preferable D.beneficial
13.A.dismissing B.lacking C.recognizing D.highlighting
14.A.likewise B.therefore C.besides D.however
15.A.study B.practice C.reflect D.embrace
Directions: After reading the passage below, fill in the blanks to make the passage coherent and grammatically correct. For the blanks with a given word, fill in each blank with the proper form of the given word; for the other blanks, use one word that best fits each blank.
Joaquin Phoenix took home the best-actor Oscar on Sunday night for his role in “Joker.” In the following lengthy and wide-ranging speech, the actor, 45, tackled issues of equality and nature preservation.
I’m full of so much gratitude right now. And I do not feel elevated above any of my fellow nominees (被提名者) or anyone in this room 1. we share the same love, the love of film.
But I think the greatest gift it’s given me, and many of us in this room, 2. (be) the opportunity to use our voice for the voiceless. And this form of expression has given me the most extraordinary life. I don’t know what I’d be 3. it.
I’ve been thinking a lot about some of the 4. (distress) issues that we are facing collectively. I think at times we’re made 5. (feel), that we champion different causes. But for me, I see commonality. I think, 6.we’re talking about gender inequality or racism or animal rights, we’re talking about the fight against injustice. We’re talking about the fight against the belief that one nation, one race, or one gender or one species has the right to dominate, control and exploit 7. without punishment.
I think that we’ve become very disconnected from the natural world, and 8. we’re guilty of is a self-centered world view that we're the center of the universe.
And I think we fear the idea of personal change because we think that we have to sacrifice something, but human beings, at our best, are so inventive and creative and original. And I think that when we use love and compassion as our guiding principles, we can create, and implement systems of change 9. are beneficial to all emotional beings and to the environment.
Now, I have been, I have been a villain in my life. I’ve been selfish. I’ve been cruel at times, hard to work with, and I’m grateful that I 10. (give) a second chance because of the many of you in this room.
Directions: Write an English composition in 120 -150 words according to the instructions given below in Chinese.
最近新冠病毒肆虐的特殊时期，全国各地大中小学都在组织学生在家上网课，学生利用电脑、手机以及各种 App 学习。 经历了两个多月的网上学习体验，请把居家上网课和在学 校课堂学习做一个比较，并说明你更喜欢哪一种方式及理由。
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Directions: Translate the following sentences into English, using the words given in the brackets.
1.有些家长从来没有意识到，替孩子们做所有事情其实对孩子们的成长弊大于利。（It）
2.专家认为 2019 冠状病毒病（COVID-19）的疫苗可能需要 12 至 18 个月才能成功研发出来。（take）
3.各种在线学习课程会把你的时间表排满，所以你得抽出充足的时间去放松或运动，正如你在校园学习时一样。（set aside）
4.当被要求居家隔离并保持社交距离时，很多人用各种活动自娱自乐，以乐观心态应对这 场危机。（entertain）
Directions: Read the following passage. Summarize the main idea and the main point(s) of the passage in no more than 60 words. Use your own words as far as possible.
Standing desks have been praised for their positive effects on physical health, reducing sitting time and lowering certain health risks linked to a sedentary( 久坐的) lifestyle. But could standing desks have positive mental effects?
New research suggests that students may think best when they are on their feet. It offers some of the first evidence of mental benefits of standing desks in classrooms.
Testing was done on high school freshmen who used standing desks, evaluating them at the beginning and end of the school year. Dr. Ranjana Mehta, an assistant professor at the Texas A&M School of Public Health, led the experiments aiming to assess standing desks’ mental benefits.
Through computerized tests, students’ executive functions were evaluated. Executive functions are the cognitive skills used to analyze tasks and break them into steps, and are directly related to academic needs like time management, memorizing facts and solving multi-step problems. These functions are largely controlled by frontal(前额的) brain regions, so researchers used a portable brain-imaging device to examine any related changes.
“Test results indicated that continued use of standing desks was associated with significant improvements in executive functions and working memory abilities,” Mehta said. “Changes in corresponding brain activation patterns were also observed.”
“Interestingly, our research showed the use of standing desks improved mental function, which is consistent with results from previous studies on school-based exercise programs,” Mehta noted.
Policymakers, public health professionals and school administrators should consider the positive effects of standing desks and make some simple changes in classrooms that will have the potential to increase energy expenditure and develop cognitive skills. That would be a valuable contribution to the educational world.
