题目内容
Everyone in the class is expected to ______________（参加）actively in these discussions.
After my brother died in an accident, my mother was in deep sadness. I was only a four-year-old girl at the time, but I still understood the sudden shift in my mom’s attitude towards safety. Suddenly everything around us was potentially dangerous. Overnight, the world had gone from a playground to a dangerous zone. I grew up with a lot of limits and rules. I couldn’t walk home from school by myself, even though everyone I knew already did. I couldn’t go to summer camp because what if something happened to me?
As I got older, the list of things of fear got longer. My whole life was divided into “things you should avoid”, and “things you needed to do in order to have a good, long life.” I became a natural worrier. I worry about things like getting cancer, losing my wallet, car accidents, earthquakes, and losing my job — disasters big and small, real and imagined.
The funny part is that you’d never know it by looking at my life. In fact, I’ve developed a rule for myself: If it scares me, then I have to do it at least once. I’ve done lots of things that my mom would have worried about: I’ve ridden a motorcycle; I’ve traveled —a lot. I’ve performed stand-up comedy, and I’m planning my second wedding.
There’s something else I don’t usually talk about, but it’s a cornerstone in my belief: When I was 14, my mother died suddenly in a car accident. At my mom’s funeral I remember making a choice. I could either live out the rest of my life trying to be “safe” or I could be brave enough to live out a fulfilling, exciting and, yes, sometimes dangerous life.
I worry that I may have betrayed(背叛) my mother by writing her in this light, but she has been a driving force in my life and, in the end I think she would have been proud of me. Courage isn’t a natural character of human beings. I believe that using courage is like developing a muscle. The more often I do things that scare me or that make me uncomfortable, the more I realize that I can do a lot more than I originally thought I could do.
Even though I inherited (继承) my mother’s cautious nature. I’ve also come to believe that fear can be a good thing, if we face it. Believing that has made my world a less scary place.
【小题1】In the writer’s childhood, the limits and rules were used to ______.
| A．improve her behavior | B．develop her independence |
| C．be in memory of her dead brother | D．protect her from possible danger |
| A．She just ignores them. | B．She faces up to them. |
| C．She turns to her mother for help. | D．She does them with her friends. |
| A．the writer failed in her first marriage |
| B．nothing can make the writer afraid now |
| C．frightening things made the writer lose her self-confidence |
| D．the writer’s mother felt annoyed with her |
| A．Mothers influence their children much. |
| B．Fear is in fact not a bad thing. |
| C．Facing fear bravely produces courage. |
| D．The world is not as scary as people expect. |
MySpace, the social networking website, is different from other websites which only provide stories about other people. MySpace is a place that allows you to broadcast your own stories and personal information to as many people as you like. Started two years ago, it is a big source of information for and about American kids.
Teenagers and their parents feel very differently about it. Teens are rushing to join the site, not sharing their parents' worries. It signals yet another generation gap in the digital era.（数字时代）
For teenagers, it is reliable network to keep in touch with their friends. They will often list their surnames, birthdays, afterschool jobs, school clubs, hobbies and other personal information.
“MySpace is an easy way to reach just about everyone. I don't have all the phone numbers of all my acquaintances （熟人）. But if I want to get in touch with one of them, I could just leave them a message on MySpace.” said Abby Van Wassen. She is a sixteen year old student at Woodland Hills High of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
Parents on the other hand are seriously concerned about the security problems of MySpace.
“Every time we hold a parents meeting, the first question is always about MySpace，” said Kent Gates, who travels the country doing Internet safety seminars (研讨会)．The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children has received at least 288 MySpace related complaints, according to Mary Beth Buchanan, a lawyer in Pittsburgh.
“Your profile on MySpace shows all your personal information to anyone on the Web. And MySpace even lists this information by birthplace and age. It's like a free checklist（清单）for troublemakers and it endangers children，” Buchanan said.
【小题1】From the passage we can learn that MySpace ________.
| A．brings about the generation gap |
| B．is very careful about people's privacy |
| C．encourages you to list your personal information |
| D．lists the telephone numbers of your friends |
| A．Because MySpace has a bad influence on their children. |
| B．Because they don't want to pay so much money for MySpace. |
| C．Because it takes up too much of their children's spare time. |
| D．Because troublemakers can easily approach their children through the site. |
| A．negative | B．positive | C．optimistic | D．objective |
| A．Internet safety | B．MySpace | C．Generation gap | D．The digital era |
She was dancing. My lame grandmother was dancing. I stood in the living room doorway, looking at her beautiful movements, absolutely shocked. She was the pet of the dancing world. And then she’d had her accident and it was all over. I had read that in an old newspaper article.
‘‘So… Your leg? I mean, how did your leg heal (恢复健全)?”
“To tell you the truth — my legs have been well all my life,” she sighed.
“But I don’t understand!” I said, “Your dancing career (事业)… You pretended all these years?”
‘‘Very much so, and for a very good reason.”
She thought for a while and then continued. “We were talking about engagement (订婚) when your grandfather had to go to war. I was so afraid of losing him that the only way I could stay normal was to dance. I put all my energy and time into practicing and I became very good. Critics praised me, the public loved me, but all I could feel was the ache in my heart, not knowing whether the love of my life would ever return. Then one day a letter came. There were only three sentences: ‘I have lost my leg. I am no longer a whole man and now give you back your freedom. It is best you forget about me.’’’
“I made my decision there and then. I traveled away from the city. When I returned I had bought myself a stick. I told everyone I had been in a car crash and that my leg would never completely heal again. My dancing days were over. No one doubted the story — I had learned to limp (一瘸一拐地走) convincingly before I returned home. And I made sure the first person to hear of my accident was a reporter I knew well. Then I traveled to the hospital. They had pushed your grandfather outside in his wheelchair. I took a deep breath, leaned on my stick and limped to him.”
“I showed him newspaper articles of my accident. ‘There is a whole life waiting for us out there! But I am not going to carry you. You are going to walk yourself.’”
“I limped a few steps toward him and showed him what I’d taken out of my pocket. ‘Now show me you are still a man.’ I said. He bent to take his stick from the ground and struggled out of that wheelchair. He managed it on his own and walked to me and never sat in a wheelchair again in his life.”
“What did you show him?” I had to know. Grandma looked at me and smiled. “Two engagement rings, of course. I had bought them the day after he left for the war and I was not going to waste them on any other man.”
1.What does the underlined word “it” in the first paragraph refer to?
|
A．Her accident. |
B．Her pet. |
C．Her leg. |
D．Her dancing career. |
2.Which is the correct order of the following events according to the passage?
a. Grandfather lost his leg in the war.
b. Grandmother bought two engagement rings.
c. Grandfather was inspired to stand up on his own.
d. Grandmother pretended she was lame.
e. Grandmother became an excellent dancer.
f. Grandfather had to go to war.
|
A．e-f-b-a-d-c |
B．f-e-a-c-b-d |
|
C．f-b-e-a-d-c |
D．e-b-f-a-c-d |
3.Which of the following words can best describe grandmother?
|
A．Thoughtful and determined. |
B．Unselfish but stubborn. |
|
C．Courageous but unreliable. |
D．Sensitive and dishonest. |
4.What’s the main idea of the passage?
|
A．The love of a disabled couple. |
B．The grandmother’s unconditional love. |
|
C．The meaning of an engagement. |
D．The grandfather’s brave story. |