When Monty Roberts was a child, his daddy as a horse fitness instructor was moving from ranch(农场) to ranch, training horses. ________, the boy’s education was frequently interrupted. One day, in school his ________ told him to create and write about what he wished to be when he grew up. He didn’t ________ one minute and wrote a seven-page paper about his trying to be a manager of a horse ranch with a plan in ________.
Soon after, he ________ his paper back with an “F”. After class he came to the instructor and asked, “Why did I ________ an F?” The instructor responded, “These dreams are too ________ for a boy, who does not have any money, no information and who comes from a very ________ family. There is absolutely no ________ that you’ll achieve your great goals when you grow up.” Then the teacher told Monty to ________ the paper with an realistic attitude.
The boy went home and asked his daddy what he should do. His dad ________, “This decision is important for you, which means you have to ________ your own decision.”
After several days and nights the boy ________ exactly the same paper to his teacher. No ________ were made. He said, “Keep your ________ and I am going to keep my dream.”
Now Monty Roberts ________ a 4,000-square-foot house in the center of a 200-acre horse ranch and even now he has that school ________ framed(给……加框) on the fireplace.
Remember don’t ever let someone tell you you can’t do ________. Not even your teachers. You got a ________; you got to protect it. People can’t do something themselves so they want to tell you you can’t do it. If you want something, go to ________ it.
1.A. HoweverB. ConsequentlyC. PossiblyD. Unluckily
2.A. teacherB. motherC. fatherD. monitor
3.A. makeB. loseC. hesitateD. talk
4.A. lengthB. widthC. colorD. depth
5.A. receivedB. acceptedC. respondedD. demanded
6.A. preserveB. reserveC. getD. require
7.A. detailedB. specificC. strangeD. unrealistic
8.A. wealthyB. poorC. specialD. complete
9.A. possibilityB. needC. doubtD. evidence
10.A. reciteB. retellC. rewriteD. review
11.A. commentedB. decidedC. promisedD. answered
12.A. makeB. obeyC. respectD. examine
13.A. readB. broughtC. suggestedD. approved
14.A. improvementsB. studiesC. remarksD. plans
15.A. ruleB. regulationC. gradeD. style
16.A. cleansB. witnessesC. ownsD. admires
17.A. pictureB. photoC. contractD. paper
18.A. nothingB. somethingC. everythingD. anything
19.A. dreamB. friendC. propertyD. thought
20.A. takeB. purchaseC. obtainD. control
Anger can feel like its eating you up inside as it practically ruins your entire day 1. Let's cool it a little shall we?
2. Effectively, to constantly water it would mean you've created the habit of anger. You're probably even addicted to it. To stop being so angry, you've to break out of anger. Stop watering the angry seed within, live your life and start planting other seeds!
Anger is not a primary emotion. It's secondary. 3. What is it? Fear? Rejection? Sadness? Guilt? It's going to be terrifying, but you've to be honest with yourself and start asking the bigger questions in order to overcome anger.
For every minute you are angry you lose sixty seconds of happiness. It's only logical. Getting angry is not allowing other positive emotions to come in and that is time and space you'll never get back. And life is way too short to be pissed off(使生气) all the time. 4.
Happiness cannot come from hatred or anger. Nobody can say, “Today I am happy because this morning I was angry.” 5. They can say “Today I am not very happy, because I lost my temper this morning.” This is so straight-forward. Anger in the end, cannot sustain(维持) you. It can perhaps propel you with energy, but if you use it to create more anger, then happiness will never come to you.
A. On the contrary, people feel uneasy and sad.
B. You’re responsible for your anger.
C. You’ve found the root cause of your anger.
D. People will find a way to make you angry.
E. while filling your head with a bunch of angry, negative thoughts.
F. and it states how easy it is to be angry.
G. You're going to die eventually, so be smart about it!
A trip across the Pacific will guarantee you a different experience with a tipping(给小费) culture you’ve never come across in China.
In the US,giving a little extra money to service workers on top of your bill is a common practice.
Though US national law requires that businesses pay workers at least $7.25 (45 yuan) per hour,employees receiving tips—often waiters and waitresses—are the exceptions.They usually only receive at least $2.13 an hour,and tips make up the difference.As The Wall Street Journal put it:“The American system of tipping holds the promise of great rewards for waiting staff.”
So how should you tip if you are in the US?
Normally you pay tips as a percentage of the bill.Offering an extra 15 percent of the bill to the waiter or waitress in a restaurant and to the delivery man or woman is customary and expected.You can offer more for great service and less for poor service.
Yet there is an exception.For take-out food,you don’t have to provide tips,though some people say that filling an order still requires work and time that deserve a little extra—but maybe a little less.
Tips are not expected at fast food restaurants,pizza parlors,cafés or ice cream shops either,though a tip jar might be right by the cash register (收银机).Don’t feel obligated to throw some money in,but also remember that it doesn’t hurt.Those workers do not rely on tips.
Other service workers also receive tips.For taxi drivers,15 percent is the norm (标准),more if they help with your bags.Hairdressers often receive about 15 percent of the bill.The same goes for spa therapists(理疗师) and tour guides.
Today,you can even pay tips on a credit card.When receiving a copy of the bill to sign,you are free to fill in how much you’d like to tip.
Though thinking about when to tip and how much you should tip causes a big headache for many Chinese people,it’s important to bear in mind that as long as you show respect and use your reasoning,things will be just fine.
1.What is the article mainly about?
A. How tipping culture started in the US.
B. How to give tips properly in the US.
C. New ways to give tips in the US.
D. The different attitudes that Chinese people and Americans have toward tipping.
2.Which of the following is said to be against the norm of tipping in the US?
A. Paying waiters and waitresses less than $7.25 per hour.
B. Ignoring the tip jar at fast food restaurants,cafés,or ice cream shops.
C. Tipping taxi drivers less than 15% because of poor service.
D. Refusing to give tips to your tour guide.
3.The underlined word “obligated” in Paragraph 7 probably means .
A. being forced to do something B. being grateful for something
C. being surprised at something D. being embarrassed about something
4.According to the author,Chinese consumers .
A. don’t necessarily have to follow the tipping rules in the US
B. should use their credit cards to give tips
C. must argue about the amount of tip they have to pay
D. should take it easy and give the correct tips for different occasions
A college student has turned the act of telling someone off into an art form. Lama Ali, who attend school in Virginia, had three final assignments due on the same day for her fashion drawing class. Exhausted after working on painting for seven hours straight, the 20-year-old decided to include a message in American Sign Language to her professor:
When your drawing teacher assigns 3 finals so you secretly write “you got me fucked up” in sign language on your final piece.
——Shawty Arabia(@LemAli23) December 7,2016
“You got me fucked up,” a bunch of hands in the painting spell out in ASL, in a form of sign known as finger spelling(聋哑字母表), which uses signs for each letter, rather than for the words themselves.
“Honestly the idea just came to me while I was finishing up the piece,” Ali told The Huffington Post.” I was looking at it and thought, ‘This could really use something else’. And then the idea struck me: Why not secretly express how I was feeling while struggling at the library at 4 a. m.?”
Once the fashion design major had finished her masterpiece, she posted it to Twitter on Dec. 7, where it has received over 113,000likes and 48,000 retweets (转发).
Ali, who does not know ASL, told HuffPost she taught herself a little bit just for this particular assignment.
“You know it’s bad when you have to learn a whole other language to express how done you are,” she said. “I remembered seeing a post on Tumblr long ago with a similar phrase by the post, she decided to look up the letters in ASL to spell out the message. Someone on Twitter even did the good work of circling them in the painting.
Ali told HuffPost that when she finally presented the piece to her professor in her class, he absolutely loved it.
“Most of my friends in class actually knew about the secret message, so I was really surprised when no one laughed or blew my cover during critique(评论).” She also admits that her professor still doesn’t know about the message, despite her post getting so much attention.
1.Which of the following is closest in meaning to “You got me fucked up”?
A. I was greatly astonished.
B. You really worn me out.
C. I felt much appreciated.
D. You left me impressed.
2.What was it that gave Ali the inspiration to use ASL to express her feeling?
A. Her professor’s assignment.
B. Being too exhausted.
C. A post on Tumblr with ASL.
D. Her classmates’ encouragement.
3.Which of the following can be inferred from the last paragraph?
A. Her professor is not so clever as her classmates.
B. Her professor pretended not to understand.
C. Her professor is still in the dark about the message.
D. Her professor had been informed by her classmates.
4.How did Ali know about American Sign Language?
A. She learned it in middle school.
B. She majored in it at college.
C. She taught herself when prepared for the assignment.
D. Someone taught her on Twitter.
Children grow quickly, especially their feet, but many families cannot buy new shoes each time a child needs them. As a result, about 300 million children around the world go barefoot. Those children risk picking up diseases and parasites from the soil.
An American man may have a solution for those barefoot kids — a shoe that grows with the child. Kenton Lee is the creator of The Shoe That Grows. He explains how the shoe works and how it is able to last so long.
“It grows in three places: the front; it can also grow on the side with Velcro; and on the back with our buckle. It can last up to five years. The bottom is compressed rubber like tire rubber. The top is just high-quality leather.” The shoe comes in two sizes: small that fits children aged 4 to 9 and large for children aged 9 to 14.
Lee says he got the idea for the shoe while working as a volunteer in an orphanage in Kenya. “… and there was a little girl in a white dress walking next to me. And I just remember looking down and seeing how small her shoes were. They were just way too small for her feet. They were so small that she had to cut open the front of her shoes to let her toes stick out. And I just remember thinking, wouldn't it be nice if there were a pair of shoes that could grow with her feet?”
However, Lee says it was not easy to turn his idea into a reality. “I kept writing down I should do this because of this or because of that. All these reasons why it really was important for me to try to make the shoes that could grow and try to help.” Finally, in 2009 Lee founded a non-profit organization called Because International. In the office of Because International, Lee keeps a pair of his own shoes to help him remember his promise. “I told myself I would not get new shoes until the idea was done. So, those are the shoes that I wore for a little over five years.”
1.Which of the following is the characteristic of the newly invented shoes?
A. They are more expensive.
B. They are not so comfortable.
C. They can grow with a child.
D. They come in different sizes.
2.Who is this kind of newly invented shoes intended for?
A. All the teenagers.
B. Children aged 4 to 14.
C. Middle-aged women in Africa.
D. Senior citizens with low income.
3.What does Para. 4 mainly talk about?
A. How the shoes work.
B. How Lee got his inspiration.
C. How to make the new shoes.
D. Where to order this kind of shoes.
4.Why does Kenton Lee keep a pair of his own shoes in the office?
A. To remind him of his promise.
B. To copy the design of them.
C. To get a change conveniently.
D. To use them as an example.
The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen
Amazon Best Books of 2015: Top 10 Literature & Fiction #5
Amazon Best Books of 2015: Top 100 Editors’ Picks #16
Publisher’s Weekly Best Books of 2015: Fiction #1
New York Times 100 Notable Books of 2015 #6
Library Journal Best Books 2015: The Top Ten #1
2016 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction: Winner
Book Description
A profound, startling, and beautifully crafted debut novel, The Sympathizer is the story of a man of two minds, someone whose political beliefs clash with his individual loyalties.
It is April 1975, and Saigon is in chaos. At his villa, a general of the South Vietnamese army is drinking whiskey and, with the help of his trusted captain, drawing up a list of those who will be given passage aboard the last flights out of the country. The general and his compatriots start a new life in Los Angeles, unaware that one among their number, the captain, is secretly observing and reporting on the group to a higher-up in the Viet Cong. The Sympathizer is the story of this captain: a man brought up by an absent French father and a poor Vietnamese mother, a man who went to university in America, but returned to Vietnam to fight for the Communist cause. A gripping（扣人心弦的） spy novel, an astute exploration of extreme politics, and a moving love story, The Sympathizer explores a life between two worlds and examines the legacy of the Vietnam War in literature, film, and the wars we fight today.
Viet Thanh Nguyen Award Statistics
Major Prize Nominations(提名) 3
Unique Books Nominated for a Major Prize 1
Pulitzer Prize Wins 1(The Sympathizer)
PEN/Faulkner Award Wins 0
PEN/Faulkner Award Nominations 1 (The Sympathizer)
1.In what kind of honor was the book ranked highest?
A. Amazon Best Books of 2015: Top 10 Literature & Fiction
B. Amazon Best Books of 2015: Top 100 Editors’ Picks
C. New York Times 100 Notable Books of 2015
D. Library Journal Best Books 2015: The Top Ten
2.Who does “a man of two minds” in the text refer to ?
A. The captain mentioned.
B. The general mentioned.
C. Viet Thanh Nguyen.
D. The captain’s mother.
3.What can be learned about the book The Sympathizer?
A. It belongs to a science fiction.
B. It is set in the Vietnam War.
C. It is no more than a loving story.
D. It won PEN/Faulkner Award once.
