I was sitting at the kitchen table finishing my morning meal. A little taste of autumn ____ had risen in my soul. The ____ air and falling leaves all ____ the coming of the winter. I took my last drink of meal and carried my ____ bowl over to the sink to clean it. My two cats sat on top of the kitchen counter, ____ above them. I saw that they were both eyeing a tiny spider on a single web from the light above. Just as the spider came near, ____ cats were well prepared to catch and eat him. I quickly took a paper towel and ____ the little guy before he became a kitty ____. I walked out of the back door to let him ____. As soon as I set him down he quickly crawled to ____ on the wall. As I shut the door, I noticed something too. I was ____ and my sadness was gone.
Now I know a lot of people would be ____ about how saving the eight-legged animal could have ____ my spirits, so quickly. After all, it was just a spider. As I thought about it, two sentences I had recently read ____ me. The first was: “The only true thing is ____.” The second was: “ Do everything out of love.” I realized then that no act of love is ____. I had only spared a spider to live another day, but it had ____ my heart and improved my spirit.
Make your life full of love. When you do so, you will ____ not only yourself, but others and this world. Your soul will ____ the cheers of other people. ____ people’s eyes every smile you share is a treasure, and every kind act you do is a triumph(胜利).
1.A. pleasure B. curiosity C. happiness D. sadness
2.A. warm B. cooling C. freezing D. fresh
3.A. mean B. decide C. prove D. consider
4.A. large B. expensive C. white D. empty
5.A. jumping B. playing C. staring D. eating
6.A. both B. neither C. all D. each
7.A. covered B. surrounded C. threw D. saved
8.A. food B. toy C. bed D. enemy
9.A. return B. go C. continue D. catch
10.A. strength B. independence C. importance D. safety
11.A. smiling B. shouting C. reading D. eating
12.A. worried B. shocked C. confused D. satisfied
13.A. lifted B. pressed C. shook D. tapped
14.A. occurred B. hit C. missed D. invented
15.A. pity B. sorry C. apology D. love
16.A. small B. expensive C. far D. dangerous
17.A. cured B. touched C. fed D. hurt
18.A. lose B. help C. endanger D. harm
19.A. draw B. watch C. observe D. hear
20.A. At B. With C. In D. For
Car sickness is a common problem faced by many people. 1. The ears tell the brain that the body is moving, but the eyes say that the body isn’t moving. This leads to many symptoms of car sickness. Though there is no solution to this problem, there are some ways to make it less unpleasant.
Get fresh air. Some people may find fresh air can make car sickness less serious. 2. If symptoms remain, stop the car and get out to breathe in fresh air if possible. The air may help, and stopping the drive should help, too.
3. Often, car sickness is caused by movements outside the car. For this reason, you may feel better when you block your view. Simply closing your eyes may help, especially if you can fall asleep. You can also try sunglasses to achieve the same result.
Use ginger (姜) products. Some people benefit from ginger products to reduce car sickness. You can try ginger chews, ginger cookies, and many other ginger products. 4.
Try pressure. Putting pressure on a particular point of your body may help treat the symptoms of car sickness. Specifically, Nei Guan—a point on the underside of the wrist—may be pressed to help with an upset stomach. 5. Then I believe you will feel better.
A. Fall asleep as soon as possible.
B. Try to stop yourself from seeing outside.
C. It is caused by a disagreement between eyes and ears.
D. Simply opening a window may help reduce your symptoms.
E. Pressing your fingertips there would offer relief in about 10 seconds.
F. If you always have car sickness, keep one or more of these products on hand.
G. Some data has shown that eating something dry may help reduce the symptoms.
“Most children,” Asher Svidensky says, “are a little afraid of golden eagles. However, Kazakh boys in western Mongolia start learning how to use the huge birds to hunt for foxes and hares at the age of 13.” Svidensky, a photographer and travel writer, shot five boys learning the skill as well as the girl, Ashol Pan. “To see her with the eagle was amazing,” he recalls. “She was a lot more comfortable with it, a lot more powerful with it and a lot more at ease with it.”
The Kazakhs in western Mongolia are the only people that hunt with golden eagles, and today there are around 400 practising eagle hunters. Ashol Pan, the daughter of a famous hunter, may well be the country’s only girl hunter.
They hunt in winter, when the temperatures can drop to -40℃. A hunt begins with days of traveling on horseback through a snow mountain or ridge (山脉) giving an excellent view of prey for miles around. Hunters generally work in teams. After a fox is discovered, riders rush to frighten it into the open, and an eagle is released (释放). If the eagle fails to make a kill, another is released.
“The skill of hunting with eagles,” Svidensky says, “lies in bringing an unexpected force of nature under control. You don’t really control the eagle. You can try and make her hunt an animal, and then it’s a matter of nature. What will the eagle do? Will she make it? How will you get her back afterwards?”
Svidensky describes Ashol Pan as a smiling, sweet and shy girl. “Ashol Pan stands for something about Mongolia in the 21st century,” says Svidensky. “Everything there is going to change and is going to be redefined (重新定义), and the possibility is amazing.”
1.What makes Asher Svidensky much surprised?
A. The colorful and powerful eagles.
B. The special way of hunting by the Kazakhs.
C. The wonderful performance of Ashol Pan.
D. The young age of Kazakh eagle hunters.
2.What does the underlined word “prey” in the third paragraph mean?
A. The scenery to be enjoyed.
B. The creature to be caught.
C. The option to be argued.
D. The future to be expected.
3.What can we infer from the fourth paragraph?
A. Man can overcome nature.
B. All efforts will pay off one day.
C. Making use of existing resources is important.
D. Never think about controlling others.
4.What’s the passage mainly about?
A. A photographer and travel writer’s traveling experience.
B. A girl eagle hunter in Mongolia.
C. The true life of the eagle hunters in Mongolia.
D. The future of the traditional way of eagle hunting.
Nowadays, social media like Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat and Twitter are becoming increasingly popular. People have completely made social media part of their daily lives. As a result, many people have developed an Internet personality.
The Internet personality I am talking about is the one we shape on our social media sites. We are always posting information about ourselves for other people to know even when it can be completely untrue. Some people even go so far as to spend money in buying flowers or “likes” or buying a very expensive camera for their friends to take photos of them. I find it unbelievable. The time and energy spent on these silly things can only make us want to be accepted by more people.
Social media are also a modern cause of depression: People see the perfect lives of others and consider their own imperfect lives as bad. Even kids deal with this. They don’t realize that the reason why they struggle to love themselves is that they spend all day receiving untrue information.
I find that many people spend more time and energy in making sure that their online personality is worth accepting than caring for their real presence. So many times I have seen confident and beautiful girls on social media. But in the real world, they are extremely shy. They hardly talk to anyone and spend all their time using the phone.
Social media have gone so far as to even negatively affect marriages. This is because of the fact that there are now “Instagram husbands”—people whose use is to take perfect photos of their partners throughout the day. They spend a lot of time doing that whether they like it or not. Needless to say, social media likely influence relationships in a negative way.
I think everyone should not use social media at least for a few months to experience the difference it makes to them. They may find life is very different and much better.
1.What does “the Internet personality” in the passage refer to?
A. The hope to develop a better personality.
B. The personality developed through social media.
C. The true personality shown by us on social media.
D. The information we get about others on social media.
2.Why are social media a modern cause of depression?
A. We may read some upsetting news.
B. We have to try very hard to be accepted.
C. We can’t really find much useful information.
D. We feel sad about ourselves through comparing.
3.The example given in Paragraph 4 shows that ________.
A. shy people can also become confident
B. social media make people become more energetic
C. social media make people ignore their true presence
D. people today don’t consider their presence important.
4.What’s most probably the author’s attitude towards people’s using social media?
A. Uninterested. B. Negative.
C. Uncertain. D. Supportive.
Alex Elman runs a big business—something hard to imagine after she lost her sight in her twenties. But Elman says that losing her sight helped her focus on finding success.
Elman’s father planted a hillside vineyard(葡萄园) in western Massachusetts in 1981. It’s where Elman spent the darkest period of her life. When she was 27 years old, she went blind as a result of diabetes(糖尿病) 17 years ago. She recalled, “I hid in my home. I hid in the place, to me, that was the safest place in the world.”
However, she found a new way forward.
Elman is the founder of Alex Elman Wines, a growing competitor of organic wines from all around the world: Chianti from Italy, Torrontes from Argentina.
Elman isn’t solitary in her work. Instead, she has a good assistant, a guide dog named Hanley. Hanley is something of a professional wine taster and travels to all of the wine factories that Elman runs, from South America to Europe.
At first, Elman wouldn’t accept a guide dog. Now it’s hard to imagine her life, or her business, without him. She said, "When someone tells me something is organic and I don’t really believe it because I taste something funny on it, I’ll put it in front of his face and if he likes the wine, he’ll actually go in and sniff it. If it’s not right, he’ll turn his head away. That’s how we know whether the soil is actually organic.”
Elman believes the loss of her sight was a gift from God. She said, “It allowed me to pay attention to what I thought was important. Therefore, adapt to a situation, and you’ll be all right. Because you can’t change it anyway, right?”
1.How old was Elman when she began suffering from diabetes?
A. About 10 years old. B. About 17 years old.
C. About 27 years old. D. About 37 years old.
2.What does the underlined word “solitary” probably mean?
A. Fortunate. B. Alone.
C. Skilled. D. Active.
3.What does Hanley do when he dislikes the wine in front of his face?
A. He will shake his head. B. He will make faces at Alex Elman.
C. He will turn away and go home. D. He will refuse to go in and sniff it.
4.Which of the following is TRUE about Alex Elman?
A. She is something of a professional wine taster.
B. She found herself a guide dog soon after she went blind.
C. She takes a positive attitude towards her loss of sight.
D. She always regards her home as the safest place in the world.
What’s the most important thing in a piece of writing? Is it the story, the characters, the description, or the style? Obviously, you can’t choose only one. A great work succeeds in combining all of them in a great mix, producing a wonderful work.
In most cases, you’re better at one writing element over the rest, and working on your strengths will work to your advantage. Building characters, however, is important to your writing. It’s not to be ignored no matter what your case is. So, how do you achieve that?
Make Them Real
This is probably one of the most common pieces of writing advice: make your characters believable. What does it really mean? It means that your characters need to be there for a reason, not just for pushing the story forward. He/She has a real life, with his/her own fears and dreams, and you have to show this. Your characters don’t need to be typical to be believable. The unusual ones are even more interesting, but it’s your job to make your readers relate to them.
Understand Human Psychology
To build great characters, you’ll need to understand people’s psychology: what are they thinking about, what are they feeling and experiencing, and why are they doing what they are doing? Get behind the obvious. Be in the backstage with them. Sit them in a chair and let them talk away. If you truly listen, you will learn.
Be your character
When you immerse (使沉浸) yourself in your writing, you get lost in that world and you start living in it. This is when the magic happens and you become your character. By putting yourself in your character’s shoes, you allow yourself to experience what you’re writing about first-hand. The more it feels real to you, the more the readers will feel the same, too.
1.According to the author, what makes a great work?
A. Being skilled at description. B. Having some unusual characters.
C. Using some special writing styles. D. Combining related things in a great way.
2.According to Paragraph 4, a good writer should be good at ________.
A. knowing others’ minds B. writing down the obvious points
C. thinking differently from others D. starting conversations with others
3.To build a great character, you should ________.
A. write according to true events B. pretend you’re the character
C. talk to others about your character D. forget about your fears and dreams
