My mother was a household servant. Through her work, she observed that successful people spent a lot more time reading than they did watching television. She announced that my brother and I could only watch two to three pre-selected TV programs during the week. With our free time, we had to read two books each from the Detroit Public Library and write book reports. She would mark them up with check marks. Years later we realized her marks were a ruse. My mother had only received a third-grade education. Although we had no money, between the covers of those books, I could go anywhere, do anything and be anybody.
When I entered high school, I was an A-student, but not for long. I wanted the fancy clothes. I wanted to hang out with the guys. I went form being an A- student to a B- student to a C-student, but I didn’t care.
One night my mother came home and I complained about not having enough shirts. She said, “Okay, I’ll give you all the money I make this week cleaning floors and bathrooms, and you can buy the family food and pay the bills. With everything left over, you can have all the shirts you want.”
I was very pleased with that arrangement but once I got through allocating(分配) money, there was nothing left. I realized my mother was a financial genius to be able to keep a roof over our heads and any kind of food on the table, much less buy clothes.
I also realized that immediate satisfaction wasn’t going to get me anywhere. Success required intellectual(理智的) preparation. I went back to my studies and became an A-student again. I dreamed of becoming a doctor when I was just a kid. And now I have achieved my dream.
Over the years my mother’s changeless faith in God has inspired me, particularly when I found myself faced with my own medical illness. A few years ago I discovered I had a very serious cancer; I was told it might have spread to my spine(脊柱). My mother believed in God very much. She never worried. She said that God would never throw me away forever; there was no way that this was going to be a major problem. The abnormality in spine turned out to be not bad; I was able to have surgery and am cured.
My story is really my mother’s story -a woman little formal education or worldly goods who used her position as a parent to change the lives of her children.
【小题1】 The underlined word “ruse” in the first paragraph probably means           .

A.discoveryB.successC.trickD.pleasure
【小题2】When the author asked his mother to buy him shirts, she           .
A.advised him to earn money by himself
B.asked him to try to manage their money
C.persuaded him not to buy them patiently
D.agreed to buy them for him immediately
【小题3】 What do we learn about the author?
A.He now works as a doctor.
B.He disliked watching TV as a kid.
C.He received little formal education.
D.He often did housework when young.
【小题4】The underlined word “this” in the last but one paragraph refers to        .
A.God’s throwing me away
B.my own medical illness
C.the operation on my spine
D.my mother’s changeless faith in God
【小题5】In writing the passage, the author mainly shows us         .
A.the happy relationships in his family
B.the benefits of reading for young children
C.the importance of formal education for adults
D.his mother’s great influence on his development

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请阅读下面的学习者信息,然后匹配符合他们要求的学习课程:
【小题1】John, a fourteen-year-old young boy, is poor at math and physics and has to improve them in order to pass the final exam at school.
【小题2】Mr. Black Smith, a labor worker on dock who would like to change to some technological job since he is already 43 and a bit too old for hard labor work. He has to work from Monday to Saturday but is free after 5:00 in the afternoon.
【小题3】Chen Hua, a Chinese middle school student who has just moved to the USA. She will have to finish the course all in English at school there but her English is not good enough.
【小题4】Tim, a graduated college student who wanted to quit his job and go on his study for M. A. He planned to take the MBA courses and would have to improve his math because he majored in Art at college.
【小题5】Mrs. Tumer, a working mother with two young kids. She thinks education is a race and it's better to prepare kids more and earlier. Her neighbors, several other families share the same opinion and they are all thinking about sending their young kids to some pre-school education program.

She may have lacked a home, but now this teen has top honors.

    A 17-year old student who spent much of high school living around homeless shelters and sometimes sleeping in her car-today graduated and spoke on behalf of her class at Charles Drew High School in Clayton County, Ga.,just outside of Atlanta.

    Chelsea Fearce, who held a 4.466 GPA and scored 1,900 on her SATs despite having to use her cellphone to study after the shelter lights were turned off at night.

    "I know I have been made stronger. I was homeless. My family slept on cushions on the floor and we were lucky if we got more than one full meal a day. Getting a shower, food and clean clothes was an everyday struggle,” Fearce said in a speech she gave at her graduation ceremony. Fearce overcame her day-to-day struggles by focusing on a better day. "I just told myself to keep working, because the future will not be like this anymore, she told WSBTV.

    Fearce,one of five children, grew up in a family that sometimes had an apartment to live in, but at other times had to live in homeless shelters or even out of their car, if they had one. "You're worried about your home life and then worried at school. Worry about being a little hungry sometimes and go hungry sometimes. You just have to deal with it, You eat what you can, when you can.”

    To our surprise, Fearce overcame the difficulties and even tested high enough to be ad- mitted into college halfway through her high school career. She starts college next year at Spelman College as a junior where she is planning to study biology, pre-"med(医学预科),"Don't give up. Do what you have to do right now so that you can have the future that you want,”Fearce said.

1.Which of the following is the best title of the passage?

A. So Many Homeless Students in America

B. How Does a Homeless Student Live in Society?

C. The Hardship of  Fearce and Her Family in America

D. Homeless Teen Graduates as a Speaker of High School Class

2.How did Fearce go on with her study without access to lights?

A. By the car light.        B. By her cellphone.

C. By lights out of shelters.  D. By moonlight.

3.When Fearce starts college at Spelman College, she will___.

A. have graduated earlier from high school than normal

B. be a 17-year-old student from a poor family

C. have a home without sleeping in her car or shelters

D. have raised enough money to go to college

4.From the passage, we can learn that___.

A. SAT is easy for the students of high schools

B. Fearce's parents have six children to support

C. Fearce often had to struggle with starvation

D. Fearce gave a speech at a ceremony of Spelman College

5.What can we learn from Fearce's experience?

A. Knowledge can change your fate.

B. Don't give up, and tomorrow will be better.

C. Whatever is worth doing is worth doing well.

D. He that will not work shall not eat.

 

Collecting information about pre-employment and filling out an application form are closely connected, However, filling out an application form is much easier because you have total control and have enough time to think and plan.

  That you are given a form to fill out does not necessarily mean that you have to answer all the questions in it. If the form contains unclear questions or terms and conditions, you can make some changes before signing(签约)it, or refuse to answer some of the questions. What you must realize is that those terms and conditions have been written by highly paid lawyers. Each word is important, or it would not be there; and you can be sure that there is not anything there that is written with your interests in mind.

  I know what I speak of because, as a lawyer for Litton Industries. I wrote the terms and conditions that were printed on the back of order forms, I wrote the most tiring terms and conditions anyone has ever seen. Still, 90 percent of the buyers would just sign on them without questioning anything. If anyone questioned them, we would reach an agreement on something that was acceptable to both sides.

  So when you see a preprinted application that contains questions or terms and conditions, read it all and read it slowly. If you don’t like something, you can simply change the parts you don’t like, Remember that everything can be settled by discussion. To what degree it can be settled depends on your position, of course, and that is something only you can determine.

1.Filling out application forms is much “easier” because_______.

A. everything connected with application forms is easier

B. you can control the form filling with enough time

C. you can plan and have control of the needed time

D. it is easier to collect information about pre-employment

2.We can learn from the underlined part “Each word is important” that _______.

A. questions in a form must be answered

B. everything in a form must be read carefully

C. the conditions that interest you are changeable

D. something of your interests is most important

3.It can be inferred from the 4th paragraph that_______.

A. you must change a preprinted application before it is discussed

B. questions in a form are more important

C. you have little right to determine the conditions you like most

D. it depends on yourself to settle things in a form

 

请认真阅读短文,并根据所读内容在文章后表格中的空格里填入一个最恰当的单词。每个空格只填一个单词。

Back to School: Why Grit(毅力) Is More Important than Good Grades?

The back-to-school season is upon us, and once again, parents across the country have loaded their kids’ backpacks up with snack packs and school supplies. It’s a good moment to reflect on what else we should be giving our kids as they head off to school.

American parents are feeling particularly anxious about that question this year. The educational process feels more than ever like a race, one that starts in pre-school and doesn’t end until your child is admitted to the perfect college. Most parents are more worried than they need to be about their children’s grades, test scores and IQ. And what we don’t think about enough is how to help our children build their character—how to help them develop skills like perseverance, grit, optimism, conscientiousness, and self-control, which together do more to determine success than S.A.T. scores or I.Q.

There is growing evidence that our anxiety about our children’s school performance may actually be holding them back from learning some of these valuable skills. If you’re concerned only with a child’s G.P.A., then you will likely choose to minimize the challenges the child faces in school. With real challenge comes the risk of real failure. And in a competitive academic environment, the idea of failure can be very scary, to students and parents alike.

But experiencing failure is a critical part of building character. A recent research by a team of psychologists found that adults who had experienced little or no failure growing up were actually less happy and confident than those who had experienced a few significant setbacks in childhood. “Overcoming those obstacles,” the researchers assumed, “could teach effective coping skills, help engage social support networks, create a sense of mastery over past adversity, and foster beliefs in the ability to cope successfully in the future.”

By contrast, when we protect our children from every possible failure—when we call their teachers to get an extension on a paper; when we urge them to choose only those subjects they’re good at—we are denying them those same character-building experiences. As the psychologists Madeline Levine and Dan Kindlon have written, that can lead to difficulties in adolescence and young adulthood, when overprotected young people finally confront real problems on their own and don’t know how to overcome them.

In the classroom and outside of it, American parents need to encourage children to take chances, to challenge themselves, to risk failure. In the meantime, giving our kids room to fail may be one of the best ways we can help them succeed.

       Back to School: Why Grit Is More Important than Good Grades?

Common phenomena       ◆Parents throughout America(1)     their kids’ backpacks up with snacks and school supplies.

                       ◆Many American parents don’t(2)    enough importance to their kids’ character building.

The writer’s(3)             ◆Parents should pay more attention to their kids’ character building.

 

(4)    and research findings   ◆Parents’ anxiety about their kids’ performance may(5)                        them from learning some valuable skills.

                       ◆Parents concerned only with a kid’s G.P.A. are (6)    to minimize the challenges the child faces.

                       ◆Adults who have experienced a few significant setbacks in childhood are (7)    and more confident than those who haven’t.

                       ◆Denying kids character-building experiences can(8)    in difficulties in adolescence and young adulthood.

The writer’s suggestions    ◆(9)    kids to be risk-takers.

                       ◆Give kids room to experience(10)    .

 

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