As kids, my friends and I spent a lot of time out in the woods. “The woods” was our part-time address, destination, purpose, and excuse. If I went to a friends house and found him not at home, his mother might say, “Oh, he’s out in the woods, ” with a tone(语气) of airy acceptance. It is similar to the tone people sometimes use nowadays to tell me that someone I’m looking for is on the golf course or at the gym, or even “away from his desk.” For us ten-year-olds, “being out in the woods” was just an excuse to do whatever we feel like for a while.
We sometimes told ourselves that what we were doing in the woods was exploring(探索). Exploring was a more popular idea back then than it is today. History seemed to be mostly about explorers. Our explorations, though, seemed to have less system than the historic kind: something usually came up along the way. Say we stayed in the woods, throwing rocks, shooting frogs, picking blackberries, digging in what we were briefly persuaded was an Indian burial mound.
Often we got “lost” and had to climb a tree to find out where we were. If you read a story in which someone does that successfully, be skeptical: the topmost branches are usually too skinny to hold weight, and we could never climb high enough to see anything except other trees. There were four or five trees that we visited regularly—tall beeches, easy to climb and comfortable to sit in.
It was in a tree, too, that our days of fooling around in the woods came to an end. By then some of us had reached seventh grade and had begun the rough ride of adolescence(青春期). In March, the month when we usually took to the woods again after winter, two friends and I set out to go exploring. We climbed a tree, and all of a sudden it occurred to all three of us at the same time that we really were rather big to be up in a tree. Soon there would be the spring dances on Friday evenings in the high school cafeteria.
【小题1】The author and his friends were often out in the woods to _______.

A.spend their free time
B.play golf and other sports
C.avoid doing their schoolwork
D.keep away from their parents
【小题2】What can we infer from Paragraph 2 ?
A.The activities in the woods were well planned.
B.Human history is not the result of exploration.
C.Exploration should be a systematic activity.
D.The author explored in the woods aimlessly.
【小题3】The underlined word “skeptical” in Paragraph 3 is closest in meaning to ______.
A.calmB.doubtfulC.seriousD.optimistic
【小题4】How does the author feel about his childhood?
A.Happy but short.
B.Lonely but memorable.
C.Boring and meaningless.
D.Long and unforgettable.

I’ve often had difficulty remembering names. Proper nouns seldom found easy purchase in my brain unless I consciously repeat them over and over again. Needless to say, when people leave my life their names are often soon forgotten. This can have some embarrassing consequences.
Five or six years after high school graduation, I was reading carefully the shelves of a local auto supply shop when I noticed someone familiar enter the store. I knew him. He was in my graduation class and although he was not a good friend of mine, we had shared many classes and knew each other well. I began to feel an increasing sense of foreboding(预感)and quickly hid behind the nearest shelving unit. I should have known his name. How many times had I heard it during class role call? How many conversations had we had in the hallways?
I easily remembered his surname, “Ricca”. His was a large, well know family in the town of my childhood. I couldn’t have just acknowledged him using his surname. I might as well have admitted forgetting his name, which was not a choice. One’s name is important to every person’s identity. Not remembering an old acquaintance’s name is similar to forgetting your wife’s favourite flower, an embarrassing mistake of the highest order.
I quickly ran through the alphabet (字母表), a strategy I developed for just such an occasion. Abe? No, Adam, Andy, Bob? No, Bill? Yes! Bill sounded right. Of course, his name is Bill. I confidently made my way around the shelves and spoke to him as he was studying some cans of motor oil.
“Bill, how are you doing?”, I said offering him my hand which he took with a friendly shake. We talked a bit, some amusing remarks about our college experiences and such. I took his hand again, said how good it was to see him and gave him a happy wave, calling him by name again, as I left.
I was so pleased that I avoided yet another awkward encounter(相遇) that I could feel a big smile on my face as I paid the cashier and exited the store. As I marched merrily across the parking lot, an awful thought came into my mind. John, his name is John! Where did Bill come from? Was that one of my brothers? The sudden realization of what I did made me stop in my tracks. My head dropped when I realized my mistake. There was no way Mrs. Ricca would name one of her sons “Bill”. “Billerica” was the name of a town just north of Boston.
【小题1】Which one can show the charge of the writer’s feelings?
a. guilty   b. anxious   c. embarrassed   d. happy   e sure

A.a-d-b-e-cB.d-e-b-a-cC.c-b-e-d-aD.b-c-d-e-
【小题2】According to the passage, which statement is NOT sure?
A.Forgetting your wife’s favourite flower is a very serious mistake.
B.It is common to call an old acquaintance his given name.
C.The writer was in his twenties when he met John in the store.
D.John and the writer studied in the same college.
【小题3】The underlined word “acknowledge” probably means “      ” here.
A.acceptB.greetC.thankD.admit
【小题4】We can infer from the passage that _______.
A.The writer must have experienced such embarrassment many times
B.The writer had difficulty remembering names because he was getting old
C.Running through the alphabet was always an effective way of remembering an acquaintance’s name for the writer
D.Mrs. Ricca would have named one of her sons “Bill” if Billerica was not the name of a town north of Boston

The sun is shining when I get on No. 151 bus. We passengers sit jammed together in heavy clothes. No one speaks. That’s one of the unwritten rules of Chicago commuting. Although we see the same faces every day, we prefer to hide behind our newspapers. The phenomenon is striking: people who sit so close together are using those thin sheets of newsprint to keep their distance.
As the bus approaches the Magnificent Mile, a voice suddenly rings out: “Attention! Attention!” Papers rattle (发出细小声). Necks crane (伸长). “This is your driver speaking.”
We look at the back of the driver’s head. His voice has authority.
“All of you put your papers down.”
The papers come down, an inch at a time. The driver waits. The papers are folded and placed on our laps.
“Now, turn and face the person next to you. Go ahead.”
Amazingly, we all do it. Still, no one smiles.
I face an older woman, her head wrapped tightly in a red scarf. I see her nearly every day. Our eyes meet. We wait, unblinking, for the next order from the driver.
“Now, repeat after me…” It is a command, delivered in the tones of a drill sergeant (操练军士). “Good morning, neighbor!”
Our voices are weak and timid. For many of us, these are the first words we have spoken today. But we say them at the same time, like schoolchildren, to the strangers beside us.
We smile and can’t help it. We have said it; the barrier has been broken. Good morning, neighbor. It is not so hard after all. Some of us repeat it. Others shake hands. Many laugh.
The bus driver says nothing more. He doesn’t need to. Not a single newspaper goes back up. I hear laughter, a warm sound I have never heard before on bus No. 151. This day is starting off better than most.
【小题1】On hearing the sudden utterance of “Attention!”, the passengers ___________.

A.stopped reading and put down their newspapers immediately
B.sat still without response
C.looked up from the newspapers to see who was speaking
D.were frightened
【小题2】The underlined word “commuting” in Paragraph 1 most probably means ___________.
A.long-distance ride
B.daily traveling between home and work
C.communication technology
D.behavior patterns
【小题3】Which of the following is true according to the passage?
A.The passengers on the crowded bus were so absorbed in reading their newspapers that no one spoke.
B.When the bus driver said nothing more, the passengers picked up and read their newspapers again.
C.The passengers didn’t follow the driver’s instruction at first.
D.The passengers were physically close together but mentally they kept each other at a terrible distance.
【小题4】What would be the best title for the text?
A.The Warmth of Communication
B.The Exchange of Information
C.The Power of Observation
D.The Attitude to Loneliness

As kids, my friends and I spent a lot of time out in the woods. “The woods” was our part-time address, destination, purpose, and excuse. If I went to a friends house and found him not at home, his mother might say, “Oh, he’s out in the woods, ” with a tone(语气) of airy acceptance. It is similar to the tone people sometimes use nowadays to tell me that someone I’m looking for is on the golf course or at the gym, or even “away from his desk.” For us ten-year-olds, “being out in the woods” was just an excuse to do whatever we feel like for a while.

We sometimes told ourselves that what we were doing in the woods was exploring(探索). Exploring was a more popular idea back then than it is today. History seemed to be mostly about explorers. Our explorations, though, seemed to have less system than the historic kind: something usually came up along the way. Say we stayed in the woods, throwing rocks, shooting frogs, picking blackberries, digging in what we were briefly persuaded was an Indian burial mound.

Often we got “lost” and had to climb a tree to find out where we were. If you read a story in which someone does that successfully, be skeptical: the topmost branches are usually too skinny to hold weight, and we could never climb high enough to see anything except other trees. There were four or five trees that we visited regularly—tall beeches, easy to climb and comfortable to sit in.

It was in a tree, too, that our days of fooling around in the woods came to an end. By then some of us had reached seventh grade and had begun the rough ride of adolescence(青春期). In March, the month when we usually took to the woods again after winter, two friends and I set out to go exploring. We climbed a tree, and all of a sudden it occurred to all three of us at the same time that we really were rather big to be up in a tree. Soon there would be the spring dances on Friday evenings in the high school cafeteria.

1.The author and his friends were often out in the woods to _______.

     A. spend their free time

         B. play golf and other sports

     C. avoid doing their schoolwork

         D. keep away from their parents

2.What can we infer from Paragraph 2 ?

     A. The activities in the woods were well planned.

     B. Human history is not the result of exploration.

     C. Exploration should be a systematic activity.

     D. The author explored in the woods aimlessly.

3.The underlined word “skeptical” in Paragraph 3 is closest in meaning to ______.

               A. calm  B. doubtfu  C. serious  D. optimistic

4.How does the author feel about his childhood?

     A. Happy but short.  B. Lonely but memorable.

     C. Boring and meaningless  D. Long and unforgettable.

 

 

Sports shoes that workout whether their owner has enough exercise to warrant(许可) time in front of the television have been invented in the UK.

The shoes — named Square Eyes — contain an electronic pressure sensor and a tiny computer chip to record how many steps the wearer has taken in a day. A wireless transmitter passes the information to a receiver connected to a television, and this decides how much evening viewing time the wearer deserves, based on the day’s efforts.

The design was inspired by a desire to fight against the rapidly ballooning waistlines among British teenagers, says Gillian Swan, who developed Square Eyes as a final year design project at Brunel University to London, UK. “We looked at current issues and childhood overweight really stood out,” she says. “And wanted to solve that with my design.”

Once a child has used up their daily allowance gained through exercise, the television automatically switches off. And further time in front of the TV can only be earned through more steps.

Swan calculated how exercise should translate to television time using the recommended daily amounts of both. Health experts suggest that a child take 12,000 steps each day and watch no more than two hours of television. So, every 100 steps recorded by the Square Eyes shoes equals precisely one minute of TV time.

Existing pedometers (计步器) normally clip onto a belt or slip into a pocket and keep count of steps by measuring sudden movement. Swan says these can be easily tricked into (诱骗,欺骗)recording steps through shaking. But her shoe has been built to be harder for lazy teenagers to cheat. “It is possible, but it would be a lot of effort,” she says. “That was one of my main design considerations.”

1.According to Swan, the purpose of her design project is to ________.

A.keep a record of the steps of the wearer 

B.deal with overweight among teenagers

C.enable children to resist the temptation of TV

D.prevent children from being tricked by TV programs

2.Which of the following is true of Square Eyes shoes?

A.They regulate(控制) a child’s evening TV viewing time.

B.They determine a child’s daily pocket money.

C.They have raised the hot issue of overweight.

D.They contain information of the receiver.

3.What is stressed by health experts in their suggestion?

A.The exact number of steps to be taken.

B.The precise number of hours spent on TV.

C.The proper amount of daily exercise and TV time.

D.The way of changing steps into TV watching time.

4.Compared with other similar products, the new design ________.

A.makes it difficult for lazy teenagers to cheat

B.counts the wearer’s steps through shaking

C.records the sudden movement of the wearer

D.sends teenagers’ health data to the receiver

5.Which of the following would be the best title for the text?

A.Smart Shoes Decide on Television Time

B.Smart Shoes Guarantee (担保,保证)More Exercise

C.Smart Shoes Measure Time of Exercise

D.Smart Shoes Stop Childhood Overweight

 

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