My three-year-old son, Dayton, lay on the couch, held the family iPad and clicked on the Angry Birds app. It was a beautiful, sunny Wednesday morning and all he wanted to do was play a video game. I felt guilty. Why hadn’t I planned some activity for us to do together? I’d been wanting for months to spend more time with Dayton, take him to a story hour at the library or to the Native American Museum. But whenever I thought of it I was busy doing something else.
It was so much easier with Sydney. She was always coming to me with a book she wanted me to read to her. She loved playing dress up, having tea parties and social activities I liked too. I’d left my teaching job when she was born to devote my full time to being a mother. But I worried I was shortchanging (忽视) Dayton. What if I made today all about him?
“Let’s do something fun together, just you and me, Dayton. What would you like to do?” I asked. He didn’t hesitate, “Crystal Bridges.”
“Sounds good,” I said, trying to hide my surprise. Crystal Bridges, an art museum in nearby Bentonville, is home to world famous paintings and sculptures (雕塑) by American artists. We’d been there as a family a few times, but an art museum was not exactly the first thing I think of when I was looking for someplace fun to take a three-year-old boy to. Was this really what he wanted? Still, this was Dayton’s day. I told myself to just go with the flow, but even as we were in the car I couldn’t help but wonder what I was getting myself into.
We finally got to the museum. Dayton glanced toward the entrance. Suddenly he ran to a sculpture of the word LOVE. With his hand, Dayton followed the curves (弧形) of the letters. He moved slowly through the space between the V and the E, then climbed to the top of the L and sat there, a big smile across his face, as if he’d just gotten to the top of a jungle gym (儿童游戏用的攀登架).
Then he was off again, tearing across bridges and up some stone steps. He found a yellow butterfly and dashed after it, the two of them doing a kind of dance together. “I see you found something yellow,” I said. “That’s your favourite colour, isn’t it?” Dayton nodded excitedly, as if this was the most amazing thing there was to know about him. I probably never would have noticed it.
I was still considering this when Dayton had ran to a distant spring. “Is the water cold?” he asked.
“Yes,” I said. “It comes from under the ground.”
“Must be the coldest water in the world!” he said. Usually, I felt compelled (强迫) to tell him that a rock or a tree wasn’t the biggest in the world. But that day I let it go.
He ran almost the whole way and led me inside the museum to a big room designed for children. Dayton got a box of tangrams (七巧板) and in minutes there before him appeared a ... What was it?
“It’s a car,” he said. To me they were just pieces of plastic, but Dayton’s mind was so different from mine. For him everything was so fresh and exciting that I had to run so as not to miss a single thing. I could understand my son’s amazement, now that I was finally seeing the wonder of who he was made to be.
1.Seeing her son playing a video game on the couch, the author _____ .
A. got very angry
B. felt sorry for it
C. wondered what he wanted to do
D. planned to take him to the library
2.What can we learn from Paragraph 2?
A. The author’s daughter loved reading very much.
B. The author was a fulltime mother when Sydney was born.
C. The author loved her daughter more than her son.
D. The author wanted to spend a day with her two kids.
3.The author was surprised when her son wanted to go to the art museum because _____ .
A. she thought that she had always shortchanged her son
B. her son had never gone to the art museum before
C. there were many famous paintings and sculptures in the art museum
D. she didn’t think a three-year-old child would consider an art museum as a fun place
4.What did Dayton do during his visit to the museum?
A. He bought a box of tangrams.
B. He ran after two yellow butterflies.
C. He explored the sculpture of the word LOVE.
D. He had a taste of the water from Crystal Bridges’ spring.
5.What’s the author’s understanding about her son’s amazement?
A. He had a great interest in art.
B. He had a different mind from his sister.
C. He needed more attention from the family.
D. He saw the world as being alive with colours and sounds.
6.Which would be the best title for the passage?
A. A day at the museum
B. A world-famous museum
C. What children are thinking about
D. How to keep children away from video games
The comic-book superhero Daredevil (超胆侠) became blind by accident, but his blindness only made his other senses superhuman.
It’s commonly believed that deaf or blind people may have other Daredevil-like senses. But the reality is that people with one impaired (受损的) sense don’t have general improvements in their other senses, but rather very specific brain changes, new research shows.
Scientists are now uncovering some of the brain differences that underlie changes or improvements in other senses.
“For example, research shows that people who are deaf from birth tend to be more sensitive to light or movement in their peripheral vision (周边视觉), compared with people who can hear,” said Christina Karns, a neuroscientist at the University of Oregon.
Karns and her colleagues wanted to know whether the areas of the brain responsible (负责的) for hearing were also organized differently in deaf people, compared with people who could hear. In experiments with people who can hear, when the participants see a light flashed in their peripheral vision and hear two beeps at the same time, they experience the illusion (错觉) that they saw two flashes of light. Karns’ team did the same experiment with deaf individuals, except that the beeps were replaced with puffs of air on the participants’ faces.
Deaf people reported seeing two flashes of light when they felt two puffs of air, suggesting they use touch the same way hearing people use sound to improve visual accuracy (精确性). “Hearing people are doing this all the time,” said Karns, who presented her findings. “Deaf people don’t have sound, so they end up building a visual system that’s more accurate.”
But the improvements in deaf people’s other senses are very specific. Studies show that vision in the fovea, the central part of the eye, is no better in deaf people than in hearing people. Also, the improvements aren’t seen in people who become deaf later in life.
One of the big questions driving research on this topic is whether being deaf or blind frees up brain areas for other senses. Stephen Lomber, a neuroscientist at the University of Western Ontario, and colleagues found that cooling down the hearing cortex (皮层) of deaf cats caused the animals to lose their improved peripheral vision, suggesting those brain areas had, indeed, been related to vision.
Taken together, the research into the differences between deaf people’s brains and hearing people’s brains shows there’s a lot of hope for ways we can train our brains. But humans haven’t developed super senses just yet.
1.Most people think people with one impaired sense _____.
A. experience great changes in their brains
B. tend to become a superman like Daredevil
C. generally have a super ability in other senses
D. should improve their other senses through training
2.According to Karns’s experiment, deaf people _____.
A. have a much better fovea than hearing people
B. have totally different brains from hearing people
C. have obvious illusions about light flashed in front of them
D. take advantage of their touch to improve visual accuracy
3.In Paragraph 8, the experiment with deaf cats is used to show _____.
A. the hearing cortex helps train our brains
B. deaf cats like using their improved peripheral vision
C. the ability of Daredevil can become a reality in our life
D. brain areas for other senses have a relationship with vision
4.What does the passage mainly talk about?
A. Whether deaf people have superhuman vision.
B. How deaf people use their other senses in life.
C. Experiments on the superhuman vision of the deaf.
D. Differences between deaf people and hearing people.
Ridgewood is a small town 20 miles from Manhattan, New York. It is a quiet town, perfect for raising children away from the rapid pace of the city. However, besides hours of homework, many Ridgewood children have too many after-school activities — from swimming to piano classes. Some kids compare their life to that of a New York general manager who has an 80-hour workweek.
Children's schedules filled with homework and activities made a lot of townspeople worried, so the town decided to start a movement called “Ridgewood Family Night — Ready, Set, Relax!” The mayor (市长) made a public statement, calling for a town-wide night for families to do nothing. And schools and clubs agreed to support the movement so families could relax and get together.
Some parents like to talk about their childhood, one without so many scheduled after-school activities. As kids, they just went out to play with neighborhood friends after school. However, almost all these parents take their children to their regularly scheduled activities. These fathers and mothers feel it is their duty to make sure their children are prepared to survive in today's high-pressure work environment. They are afraid that their children can't enter the “right” universities and won't succeed in a more and more competitive world.
However, it seems that Family Night worked, at least to a certain degree. Cars moved freely around Ridgewood's normally busy downtown streets. Some families ate supper together for the first time in months. One family watched home movies of when the children were little, baked cookies and played games together.
At first, some people were excited that they could take back their lives. But sadly, few families now believe that one night will change them. Nearly all of the townspeople are sure that they will fall back into the old habit.
1.How can people benefit from Family Night?
A. They can learn and share knowledge.
B. They can rest and enjoy family time.
C. They have more time to discuss family matters.
D. They have enough time to talk about schoolwork.
2.What can we learn about the movement?
A. It is held once a week.
B. It was partly successful.
C. It first started in Manhattan.
D. It needed the mayor's support.
3.How do most Ridgewood people look at Family Night?
A. It won't change their lifestyle.
B. It will help take back their lives.
C. It can't be accepted by the public.
D. It may help break kids' bad habits.
Gobblers Knob Hunting Preserve is one of the newest shooting (射击) clubs in Southwestern Pennsylvania. This club is open to the public and provides the sportsman with 350 acres (英亩) of farmland.
Gobblers Knob offers pheasant (野鸡) and rabbits hunting down on the farm. We can provide a professional guide service with dogs if needed. Training birds are available. Here at Gobblers Knob we hunt pheasants from September 1 through April.
Come on out, enjoy the Pennsylvania historic farmland and socialize in our club house. If you want to stay overnight and spend your weekend here, we are only minutes from hundreds of hotel rooms and many restaurants of your choice. The area has a lot of places of interest.
Guided Hunting Packages
Morning hunts start at 8:00 a.m.
Afternoon hunts start at 1:00 p.m.
Package 1 1 or 2 guns for one half day, 10 pheasants or 20 rabbits. $280.00
Package 2 1 to 4 guns for one half day, 15 pheasants or 30 rabbits. $405.00
Package 3 1 to 4 guns for one half day, 10 pheasants and 20 rabbits. $535.00
Package 4 1 to 4 guns for one half day, 20 pheasants or 40 rabbits. $550.00
Package 5 2 to 5 guns for one half day, 25 pheasants or 50 rabbits. $680.00
Package 6 2 to 5 guns all day, 20 pheasants and 20 rabbits. $910.00
Package 7 2 to 5 guns all day, 30 pheasants and 30 rabbits. $1160.00
Package 8 2 to 5 guns all day, 50 pheasants or 100 rabbits. $1195.00
All Guided Hunting Packages include:
A professional guide service with dogs
Training birds
Hunters with their own dogs are welcome
1.If you need 3 guns and hunt 15 pheasants for one half day, you will pay _____.
A. $280.00 B. $405.00
C. $680.00 D. $910.00
2.What type of writing is this passage?
A. A history paper.
B. A newspaper report.
C. An announcement.
D. An advertisement.
As this year comes to a close, I’m full of love and gratefulness in more ways than I can put into words. It’s not a list inside my ____ or written down on paper anywhere, but rather a ____ I have been carrying within me throughout the past few weeks. Just yesterday, I was ____ to my mom that I felt as if I had grown so much in the course of the year.
This year has been a strange year for me. It ____ with much hope and expectation, ____ there were a lot of open wounds that needed to be healed (治愈) before that could happen, even if I didn’t realize it at the time. Still, I was in a ____ place from the beginning and growth was inevitable (不可避免的) as I held a(n) ____ mind and a willingness to change.
It was really a year of ____ and personal development. I have ____ to forgive others, as well as myself, and realized that it’s often my own expectations that lead to ___. In the past few months I’ve been making great ____ to remove unrealistic expectations from my life. Though, I’ll admit it isn’t always ____. Still, I can say in confidence that I’m ____ this year full of love and gratefulness for all that I have in my ____.
The progress and growth I’ve made this year is just the ____ of the life I plan on leading in the next year and beyond. I spent so much time on ____, more than I have in years, and I feel that my efforts have ____ in so many ways. I’m ____ at a place where I’m excited to live life each day, and I’ve come to realize that ____ I’m not entirely living the life of my dreams at the moment, I’m working hard each day at making that life a ____.
1.A. head B. pocket C. drawer D. hand
2.A. talking B. feeling C. warning D. painting
3.A. saying B. complaining C. promising D. crying
4.A. turned out B. held out C. started out D. went out
5.A. or B. for C. but D. and
6.A. wrong B. bright C. high D. good
7.A. open B. young C. normal D. lively
8.A. relief B. growth C. panic D. pleasure
9.A. forgotten B. refused C. learned D. offered
10.A. improvement B. development C. encouragement D. disappointment
11.A. advances B. success C. progress D. efforts
12.A. enough B. certain C. easy D. common
13.A. ending B. missing C. sparing D. balancing
14.A. eyes B. life C. mind D. dreams
15.A. beginning B. lightning C. building D. thinking
16.A. herself B. it C. itself D. myself
17.A. put off B. kept off C. paid off D. given off
18.A. quickly B. finally C. simply D. quietly
19.A. because B. now that C. even if D. while
20.A. reality B. rule C. signal D. doubt
—I will go to Jane’s birthday party this evening. I have heard that there will be amazing performances.
—_____!
A. Have a good time B. What a pity
C. Thank you very much D. It’s all right
