— Mum, when can we eat?

— Dinner ready in two minutes.

A.is B.was C.has been D.will be

China national women’s volleyball team the world champion for many times.

A.wins B.won C.has won D.will win

—Could you please tell me ?

—It makes me happy and relaxed.

A.why do you like photography B.why you like photography

C.why did you like photography D.why you liked photography

Our 4-year-old hero’s story started this past February. Austin and his father were watching a program about a mother panda leaving her babies. “I told him that the baby pandas would be homeless for a while,” his father says, “Austin didn’t know what homelessness meant, but he was sad and wanted to know more.”

Seeing this as a____ moment, Austin’s father took him to a local shelter (避难所) that provides housing, food, and other services for homeless men. They saw some homeless men standing on the street corner. “Dad, they look sad,” Austin said. “Can we take them some food and make them____?” Then Austin used his pocket money to buy each man a sandwich and_____ out the food himself. Seeing what their presence (出现) meant to the homeless, Austin and his father returned the next week. After they came back every week for five weeks, word of Austin’s acts of kindness___ through social media. Burger King jumped aboard, agreeing to give $1,000 a month for a year. Soon, other shelters began inviting Austin to come and give out food in other poor areas. But Austin isn’t just filling bellies ( 胃 ). He is___ the lives of those he meets. The respect Austin gave to 41-year-old Raymont touched the man. He shared with Austin’s father just how grateful he was to be treated so______by a four-year-old stranger. Austin’s father helped Raymont to get a driver’s license, which helped Raymont get a job. And he was finally able to have his own apartment. All that was made possible because a little boy took the time to care.

Austin’s love for the homeless has now become his family’s_____. Austin’s mother founded an organization to fight homelessness. Austin’s father left his job to oversee public relations for the organization. The couple plan to build their own shelter, which would___ medical and mental health care.

As for Austin, he continues to give out food, smiles, and his love. “It makes me feel like I’m saving the day.”

1.A.likeable B.moveable C.teachable D.readable

2.A.shout B.smile C.cry D.talk

3.A.found B.put C.handed D.sold

4.A.got B.broke C.spread D.run

5.A.creating B.protecting C.controlling D.improving

6.A.simply B.proudly C.hopefully D.thoughtfully

7.A.feeling B.calling C.greeting D.gathering

8.A.offer B.affect C.test D.reduce

Misadventure in English

Last week, our forum ( 论 坛 ) asked if you had any funny or strange stories about using English. Here are some of our favourite posts.

1.Who posted the story about buying shoes?

A.Sophie. B.Yancy. C.Julien. D.Zheng Xu.

2.What happened to Maggie?

A.She ate a frog.

B.She had a dry throat.

C.She lost her penfriend.

D.She got a bad comment.

3.What does Julien think of his penfriend’s grandfather?

A.Strange. B.Funny. C.Strict. D.Nice.

Dog’s Best Friend

Jarrett Little was road testing his mountain bike outside of Columbus, Georgia, when his riding partner, Chris Dixon, stopped suddenly. Something nearby moving among the trees had caught her attention. It turned out to be a sandy-colored five-month-old dog.

“He was really thin, and had a broken leg,” Little told CBS News. The cyclists fed the friendly dog and shared their water. They also quickly realized that the dog was coming with them, although they had no idea how. They were more than seven miles from downtown and riding bikes. “We couldn’t leave him,” Little said. “Out there next to the Oxbow Meadows, he was going to end up as alligator (短吻鳄) food.”

Little, a 31-year-old business owner, had an idea. He carefully picked up his new friend and put the 38-pound dog’s back legs into the pockets of his cycling shirt. Then he placed the dog’s front legs over his shoulders.

“He was hurt, so he wasn’t trying to fight,” Little says. “He was also happy that we were there, touching him, and hadn’t taken off on him.”

Their 30-minute ride into town ended at a bike store, where they got more water and food for the dog. “That was when Andrea Shaw, a company worker, happened by. The dog went straight to her, smelling and “loving on her,” says Dixon. Shaw was touched and, after learning what had happened, decided to keep the dog.

Shaw called him Columbo after the town where they’d met and planned an operation on his leg. Today, Columbo is living the high life on a farm with a horse and a six-year-old boy to keep him company. As Dixon said, “He is really the luckiest dog alive.”

1.Why did Dixon stop suddenly during the road testing?

A.She noticed something moving among the trees.

B.She had cycled seven miles and wanted to rest.

C.She met some other riding partners by chance.

D.She wanted to share some water with Little.

2.What can we learn about the dog?

A.He is unfriendly to people.

B.He is kept happily on a farm.

C.He weighed about 31 pounds.

D.He ended up as alligator food.

3.According to the passage, the dog’s best friend is .

A.the alligator B.the human C.the horse D.CBS News

An example of VR technology

Have you ever wanted to sing on stage with Taylor Swift, or go to Mars? With the rise of virtual reality (虚拟现实), you might be able to do these things without even leaving your home. Unlike real reality, virtual reality means completely imaginary worlds, using high-performance computers and special glasses and gloves.

Virtual Reality (VR) has been with us for many years – at least as an idea. Although it’s hard to tell the father of this amazing technology, history suggests that it could have been the fruit of not one but five key people. First, Morton Heilig introduced users to 3D films. Then, there’s Jaron Lanier, the first person to use the term “Visual Reality”. Douglas Engelbart invented the computer mouse. Ivan Sutherland is the inventor of the first HMD and Myron Krueger, the audio wiz. Thanks to these inventors, the technology has now come of age. Users can virtually experience things they could only dream of. Virtual reality is changing the way we communicate experiences in the same way the Internet has changed the way we communicate information. Indeed, VR has become a worldwide reality, with different types of applications ( 应 用 ) from computer games to medicine, engineering, scientific research, and so on. For example, medical learners are able to train through VR in order to deal with all kinds of injuries. Designers can check every corner of their buildings and make preparations. And if you are heading to Mars, a trip in virtual reality can help you “see” what you will find before you get there.

One recent example was a doctor who practiced an operation on a little baby’s heart. This enabled him to plan out his surgery ahead of time, and helped to save the baby.

VR will make the world even smaller than it is now. It’s definitely going to bring us closer together. Like any technology, however, virtual reality has its negative effects. The first big danger is disconnection from the real world. Apart from this, too much use of VR equipment can create obvious physical and even mental (精神的) dangers. Loss of one’s sense of direction and position, sea sickness and headaches are among the signs of illness some experience after using virtual-reality equipment for long periods.

This is an ongoing topic that people are arguing about.

1.We can learn from Paragraph 2 that .

A.VR is the result of a series of inventions and ideas

B.VR is changing the way we communicate information

C.it has taken many years to come up with the idea of VR

D.it is likely to discover what people dream about with VR

2.According to the passage, VR can be used to .

A.connect with real reality well

B.observe other planets in space

C.help doctors practice operations

D.build houses without preparations

3.The writer probably agrees that .

A.VR is a door to the real world

B.VR is like a coin with two sides

C.VR is responsible for increasing mental problems

D.it is easier to communicate information through VR

4.Which would be the best title for the passage?

A.To keep it or to lose it?

B.How can you imagine?

C.Have you ever wanted?

D.To agree or to disagree?

Most of us fear failure. However, without failure, progress would be impossible. In fact, the word success comes from the Latin succedere, meaning “to come after.” And what does success usually come after? Failure. It seems that one cannot exist without the other.

Every failure – even the worst ones – helps us learn to do things differently in the future. “Learning from the past mistakes and making changes helped me to reach the top of Everest successfully,” says mountaineer Pete Athans, who has now reached the world’s highest peak (山峰) seven times. Failure also reminds us that things can go wrong – sometimes with terrible results.

Austrian Gerlinde Kaltenbrunner is the first woman to reach the top of all 14 of the world’s 8,000-meter peaks without extra oxygen (氧气). In 2007, while climbing in Nepal, she was in an avalanche ( 雪 崩 ). She survived, but two nearby Spanish climbers died. The experience taught Kaltenbrunner that no matter how prepared a person is, bad things can still happen. But Kaltenbrunner decided she had to learn from her experience and move on.

Accepting failure is not easy for many, though. We are often reluctant to tell people that we are failures because our good name depends on success. However, things are slowly changing. In the past ten years, some scientific magazines – mostly in medicine – have published reports of failed experiments. The belief is that the science community can also learn from “negative” results and that this can finally lead to positive outcomes.

The business world already understands the value of negative results. Eli Lilly and Company has failure parties to study data about medicine that doesn’t work. In fact, one of the business world’s most famous failures became one of its biggest successes. In the early 1990s, Apple Corporation created the Apple Newton. It was one of Apple’s biggest failures. However, Apple’s CEO, Steve Jobs, believed the product had potential (潜力) and he began to improve it. In time, this led to the creation of the iPhone and the iPad, two of the company’s most successful products.

The story of the Apple Newton can teach us another important lesson about failure. There is a lot we can learn by studying mistakes. Perhaps the most important lesson is that failure and success are two sides of the same coin. One truly cannot exist without the other.

1.The writer writes Paragraph 2 and 3 mainly to .

A.show how bad things can become important lessons

B.tell us that it’s possible for anyone to be successful

C.prove how bad things can happen in any situation

D.teach us what not to do when climbing mountains

2.The underlined word “reluctant” in Paragraph 4 probably means “ ”.

A.unable B.unsure C.unwilling D.uninterested

3.What is the passage mainly about?

A.An attitude towards failure.

B.The experience of success.

C.A difficult way to success.

D.The rewards of failure.

Chinese Fancy Knots

Chinese Fancy Knot

Chinese fancy knots, also called Chinese knots, refer to the traditional decorative knots in Chinese culture. They began as a form of traditional art in the Tang and Song Dynasties in China, and became popular in the Ming Dynasty. Long ago, they found their way to Japan and other Southeast Asian countries, and were well received there. Now they are taken as one of the most classic symbols (标志) of Chinese culture.

As for the name itself, it is surely meaningful. The Chinese word for “knot”, jie, means “connection”. It is related to lots of cultural ideas – marriage, brotherhood, reunion, etc. Meanwhile, the pronunciation of the Chinese word jie is very close to that of ji, “good luck”. As a result, Chinese knots perfectly serve as a way to express people’s strong wishes for good things like joy, love and good luck.

Besides, the knots, widely existing in the everyday life of the Chinese culture, come in different sizes. Small ones are connected to jewellery (珠宝), clothes, gift-packages and furniture in order to attract people’s attention, while large ones are used to decorate a living room or study. Whether large or small, there are over a dozen basic knot patterns ( 图 案 ), named according to their shapes, usages or origins. For example, Double Coin Knots are called shuangqian Jie because they are in the shape of two ancient Chinese coins, meaning “good things come in pairs”. However, almost all the main styles of Chinese fancy knots are made up of two exactly similar parts, and the patterns on the front and the back sides are also similar in every detail.

In addition, Chinese knots are famous for their bright colours. Each of the Chinese knots is made of a single string of cotton, silk, gold or silver. But the colours of the strings are rich and have different traditional cultural meanings. Among the most commonly used base colours, red means good luck and happiness, green means health, and yellow, which was once known as a emperor’s colour, may means wealth and honour.

In brief, the famous Chinese fancy knots fully reflect (反映) the depth of Chinese culture. These brightly coloured knots of different patterns, with their endless chains of knots, mean that life on earth will continue forever.

1.When did Chinese fancy knots become popular?

_______________________________________________________________________

2.What does the Chinese character for “knot” mean?

_______________________________________________________________________

3.Why do people express strong wishes with Chinese knots?

_______________________________________________________________________

4.What are the main points about Chinese knots in Paragraph 3?

_______________________________________________________________________

5.What do Chinese fancy knots fully reflect?

_______________________________________________________________________

书面表达1

学农是中学生的社会实践课程之一。假如你是李华，你校将在北京农学院 (Beijing University of Agriculture)开展学农(farming experience)课程，请通知你校的美国交换生Peter 参加，一起感受劳动的快乐。请你用英语写一封邮件，告诉 Peter 你们学农的时间、地点和活动内容，以及他需要做哪些准备。

提示词语： next week, cook, plant, camera, clothes

提示问题： ● When and where are you going to take a farming experience course?

●What are you going to do there?

●What do you advise Peter to prepare?

Dear Peter,

How is it going?

I’m writing to tell you something about the farming experience course.

__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

I’m looking forward to your early reply.

Yours,

Li Hua