A long-term American study shows the importance of early education for poor children. The study is known as the Abecedarian Project. It involved more than one-hundred young children from poor families in North Carolina.
Half of the children attended an all-day program at a high-quality child-care center. The center offered educational, health and social programs. Children took part in games and activities to increase their thinking and language skills and social and emotional development. The program also included health foods for the children.
The children attended the program from when they were a few weeks old until the age of five years. The other group of children did not attend the child-care center. After the age of five, both groups attended public school.
Researchers compared the two groups of children. When they were babies, both groups had similar results in tests for mental and physical skills. However, from the age of eighteen months, the children in the educational child-care program did much better in tests.
The researchers tested the children again when they were twelve and fifteen years old. The tests found that the children who had been in the child-care center continued to have higher average test results. These children did much better on tests of reading and mathematics.
A few years ago, organizers of the Abecedarian Project tested the students again. At the time, each student was twenty-one years old. They were tested for thinking and educational ability, employment, parenting and social skills. The researchers found that the young adults who had the early education still did better in reading and mathematics tests. They were more than two times as likely to be attending college or to have completed college. In addition, the children who received early education were older on average, when their first child was born.
The study offers more evidence that learning during the first months and years of life is important for all later development.
The researchers of the Abecedarian Project believe their study shows a need for lawmakers to spend money on public early education. They believe these kinds of programs could reduce the number of children who do not complete school and are unemployed.
1.The Abecedarian Project has lasted _____.
A. almost one year
B. about five years
C. more than 20 years
D. no more than 15 years
2.Those who had been in the child-care center _____ compared with those who hadn't.
A. have their children at later ages
B. get more help from other people
C. have no parenting or social skills
D. are poorer at reading and mathematics
3.What don't we know about the Abecedarian Project after reading the text?
A. What the children learned at the child-care center.
B. How important early education is for poor children.
C. How many children are involved in the Abecedarian Project.
D. Whether lawmakers will spend money on public early education.
A good teacher is many things to many people. In my own experience, the people I respect the most and think about the most are the teachers who demanded the most discipline (纪律) from their students.
I miss one teacher in particular that I had in high school. I think she was a good teacher because she was a very strict person. I remember very clearly a sign on her classroom door. It was a simple sign that said, "Laboratory: in this room the first five letters of the word was stressed not the last seven." In other words, labor for her was more important than oratory, which means making speeches.
She prepared her work very carefully and told us to do the same. We got lots of homework from her. Once she had broken her arm, and everybody in the class thought that maybe the homework load would be reduced, but it continued just the same. She checked our work by stamping her name at the bottom of the papers to show that she had read them.
I think sometimes teachers who demand the most are liked the least. But as time goes by, this discipline really seems to benefit the students.
1.Which of the following is considered a good teacher by the writer?
A. A patient teacher.
B. An honest teacher.
C. A strict teacher.
D. An easy-going teacher.
2.When the teacher's arm was broken, she _____.
A. gave her students the usual amount of homework
B. gave her students less homework
C. asked her students to check the homework themselves
D. gave her students more homework
3.What's the writer's opinion of discipline?
A. It makes the students dislike their teachers.
B. It does good to the students in the long run.
C. It's too much for young children.
D. It does more harm than good to the students.
4.What's the Chinese for the underlined word "oratory"?
A. 演讲 B. 讲稿
C. 访谈 D. 采访
My dad loved pennies, especially those with the elegant stalk of wheat curving around each side of the ONE CENT on the back. Those were the pennies he grew up with during the Depression (大萧条).
As a kid, I would go for walks with Dad, spying coins along the way—a penny here, a dime (一角硬币) there. Whenever I picked up a penny, he'd ask, "Is it a wheat?" It always thrilled him when we found one of those special coins produced between 1909 and 1958, the year of my birth.
One gray Sunday morning in winter, not long after my father's death in 2002, I was walking down Fifth Avenue, feeling bereft. I found myself in front of the church where Dad once worked. I was warmly shown in and led to a seat. Hearing Dad's favorite "A Mighty Fortress Is Our God", I burst into tears. We'd sung that at his funeral. After the service, I shook the pastor's hand and stepped onto the sidewalk—and there was a penny. I bent to pick it up, turned it over, and sure enough, it was a wheat. A 1944, a year my father was serving on a ship in the South Pacific.
That started it. Suddenly wheat pennies began turning up on the sidewalks of New York everywhere. I got most of the important years: his birth year, my mom's birth year, the year he graduated from college, the year he met my mom, the year they got married, the year my sister was born. But alas, no 1958 wheat penny—my year, the last year they were made.
The next Sunday, after the service, I was walking up Fifth Avenue and spotted a penny in the middle of a crossing. Oh, no, it was a busy street; cabs were speeding by—should I risk it? I just had to get it.
A wheat! But the penny was worn, and I couldn't read the date. On arriving home, I took out my glasses and took it to the light. There was my birthday!
I found 21 wheat pennies on the streets of Manhattan in the year after my father died, and I don't think that's a coincidence.
1.The writer's father loved pennies with wheat because _____.
A. when he first saw it, he began to love it
B. when he saw the wheat, he thought of his time during the Depression
C. when he was young, he had a lot of pennies with wheat
D. when he was a child, he never got a coin with wheat
2.The underlined word "bereft" (in Para.3) means _____.
A. alone
B. disappointed
C. upset
D. discouraged
3.Which of the following statements about the author is NOT true?
A. He was born in 1958.
B. He went to church because of his father.
C. He once worked in a church.
D. He knew the church well.
4.The best title for the passage would be _____.
A. My father's life story
B. Pennies from Heaven
C. My father's hobby
D. Living in New York
假设你是李华，你的好友Peter今天上午来你家找你陪他练习汉语口语。你因临时有急事外出，让他扑了个空。请根据以上情景，给Peter写一封信。内容如下：
1. 表示歉意；
2. 解释具体原因，并希望他能谅解；
3. 告诉他下次练习的时间、地点及话题。
注意：1.词数100左右；
2. 可适当增加细节，以使行文连贯；
3. 书信的开头和结尾已给出，不计入总词数。
Dear Peter,
____________________________________________________________________________________________
____________________________________________________________________________________________
____________________________________________________________________________________________
____________________________________________________________________________________________
____________________________________________________________________________________________
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Yours,
Li Hua
假定英语课上老师要求同桌之间交换修改作文，请你修改你同桌写的以下作文。文中共有10处语言错误,每句中最多有两处。每处错误仅涉及一个单词的增加、删除或修改。
增加：在缺词处加一个漏字符号（∧），并在其下面写出该加的词。
删除：把多余的词用斜线（\）划掉。
修改：在错的词下划一横线，并在该词下面写出修改后的词。
注意：1.每处错误及其修改均仅限一词；
2.只允许修改10处，多者（从第11处起）不计分。
Last week I visited my friend Li Lei. His mother sincerely asked us to stay for lunch with them, and I agreed. There was only three people for lunch all altogether. However, my friend’s mother prepared eight dish and we couldn’t finished the food at all. As a result, the food that was not finished thrown away in the end. When I went back home I saw some homeless people beg the street, where reminded me of the wasted food. I felt really sad. What I wish that no food will be wasted from now on! In this way, nobody on the earth will be hungry.
Chopsticks are shaped pairs of equal-length sticks that have been used in the kitchen and on the table in almost all of East Asia for over 6, 000 years. First 1. (use) by the Chinese, chopsticks later spread to other locations 2. (include) Japan, Korea, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.
In ancient China, chopsticks signified far more than tools 3. take food to the mouth, and they also signified status and rules “can” and “can’t”. During the Northern Song Dynasty,4. official named Tang Su once had dinner with the emperor. He was not well informed in noble table manners and 5. (lay) down his chopsticks horizontally on the table before the emperor did. As a result, he was sent to a frontier area as a 6. (punish).
Actually, there were over a dozen taboos concerning chopsticks. For example, they could not be placed 7. (vertical) into a dish, as this was a way of making sacrifices to the dead. Diners could not tap 8. push a dish with chopsticks, nor use a chopstick as a fork. When taking food, they could not let their chopsticks go from one dish to another or cross over 9. of others. When diners wanted 10. (put) down their chopsticks during a meal, they would place them lengthways on a chopstick holder or on the plate on their right-hand side. Many of these chopstick taboos are valid to this day.
