A well-dressed man entered a famous jewelry shop. He explained that he wished to buy a pearl for his wife’ s birthday. The price didn’t matter, since business had been very good for him that year. After examining a nice black one that costs $5, 000, he paid for the pearl in cash, shook hands with the jeweler, and left.
A few days later the man returned and said that his wife liked the pearl so much that she wanted another one just like it. It had to be exactly the same size and quality as she wanted a pair of earrings made. "Can you give me any advice on how to get such a pearl?" said the man. The jeweler regretfully replied, "I would say it’s exactly impossible to find one exactly like that pearl."
The rich man insisted that the jeweler advertise in the newspapers, offering $25,000 for the matching pearl. Many people answered the advertisement but nobody had a pearl that was just right.
Just when the jeweler had given up hope, a little old lady came into his store. To his great surprise, she pulled the perfect pearl from her purse." I don’t like to part with it." she said sadly, I got it from my mother, and ,my mother got it from hers. But I really need the money.
The jeweler was quickly to pay her before she changed her mind .Then he called the rich man’s hotel to tell him the good news .The man, however, was nowhere to be found.
【小题1】The man said he wanted to buy a pearl for _____.

A.his wifeB.his mother-in-lawC.his own motherD.no one
【小题2】Many people answer the advertisement because they wanted______.
A.to see the perfect pearlB.to buy some beautiful pearl too
C.to get in touch with the rich manD.to sell their own pearl at a high price
【小题3】The jeweler couldn’t find the man anywhere because ______.
A.he died suddenly
B.he happened to be out
C.he got $20,000 by cheating and had run away with the money
D.he wouldn’t show up until the jeweler called him a second time

Franz Kafka wrote that “A book must be the ax(斧子)for the frozen sea inside us.” I once shared this sentence with a class of seventh graders, and it didn’t seem to require any explanation.
We’d just finished John Steinbeck’s novel Of Mice and Men. When we read the end together out loud in class, my toughest boy, a star basketball player, wept a little, and so did I. “Are you crying?” one girl asked, as she got out of her chair to take a closer look. “I am,” I told her, “and the funny thing is I’ve read it many times.”
But they understood. When George shoots Lennie, the tragedy is that we realize it was always going to happen. In my 14 years of teaching in a New York City public middle school, I’ve taught kids with imprisoned parents, abusive parents, irresponsible parents; kids who are parents themselves; kids who are homeless; kids who grew up in violent neighborhoods. They understand, more than I ever will, the novel’s terrible logic—the giving way of dreams to fate (命运).
For the last seven years, I have worked as a reading enrichment teacher, reading classic works of literature(文学) with small groups of students from grades six to eight. I originally proposed this idea to my headmaster after learning that a former excellent student of mine had transferred out of a selective high school—one that often attracts the literary-minded (有文学头脑的) children of Manhattan’s upper classes—into a less competitive school. The daughter of immigrants (移民), with a father in prison, she perhaps felt uncomfortable with her new classmates. I thought additional “cultural capital” could help students like her develop better in high school, where they would unavoidably meet, perhaps for the first time, students who came from homes lined with bookshelves, whose parents had earned Ph.D.’s.
Along with Of Mice and Men, my groups read: Sounder, The Red Pony, Lord of the Flies, Romeo and Juliet and Macbeth. The students didn’t always read from the expected point of view. About The Red Pony, one student said, “it's about being a man, it’s about manliness (男子气概).” I had never before seen the parallels between Scarface and Macbeth, nor had I heard Lady Macbeth’s soliloquies (独白) read as raps, but both made sense; the interpretations were playful, but serious. Once introduced to Steinbeck’s writing, one boy went on to read The Grapes of Wrath and told me repeatedly how amazing it was that “all these people hate each other, and they’re all white.” His historical view was broadening, his sense of his own country deepening. Year after year, former students visited and told me how prepared they had felt in their first year in college as a result of the classes.
Year after year, however, we are increasing the number of practice tests. We are trying to teach students to read increasingly complex texts, not for emotional punch (碰撞) but for text complexity. Yet, we cannot enrich the minds of our students by testing them on texts that ignore their hearts. We are teaching them that words do not amaze but confuse. We may succeed in raising test scores, but we will fail to teach them that reading can be transformative and that it belongs to them.
【小题1】The underlined words in Paragraph 1 probably mean that a book helps to________.

A.realize our dreams
B.give support to our life
C.smooth away difficulties
D.awake our emotions
【小题2】Why were the students able to understand the novel Of Mice and Men?
A.Because they spent much time reading it.
B.Because they had read the novel before.
C.Because they came from a public school.
D.Because they had similar life experiences.
【小题3】The girl left the selective high school possibly because ________.
A.she was a literary-minded girl
B.her parents were immigrants
C.she couldn’t fit in with her class
D.her father was then in prison
【小题4】To the author’s surprise, the students read the novels ________.
A.creativelyB.passively C.repeatedlyD.carelessly
【小题5】The author writes the passage mainly to ________.
A.introduce classic works of literature
B.advocate teaching literature to touch the heart
C.argue for equality among high school students
D.defend the current testing system

In this age of Internet chat, videogames and reality television, there is no shortage of mindless activities to keep a child occupied. Yet, despite the competition, my 8-year-old daughter Rebecca wants to spend her leisure time writing short stories. She wants to enter one of her stories into a writing contest, a competition she won last year.
As a writer I know about winning contest, and about losing them. I know what it is like to work hard on a story only to receive a rejection slip from the publisher. I also know the pressures of trying to live up to a reputation created by previous victories. What if she doesn’t win the contest again? That’s the strange thing about being a parent. So many of our own past scars and dashed hopes can surface.
A revelation(启示)came last week when I asked her, “Don’t you want to win again?” “No,” she replied, “I just want to tell the story of an angel going to first grade.”
I had just spent weeks correcting her stories as she spontaneously(自发地)told them. Telling myself that I was merely an experienced writer guiding the young writer across the hall, I offered suggestions for characters, conflicts and endings for her tales. The story about a fearful angel starting first trade was quickly “guided” by me into the tale of a little girl with a wild imagination taking her fist music lesson. I had turned her contest into my contest without even realizing it.
Staying back and giving kids space to grow is not as easy as it looks. Because I know very little about farm animals who use tools or angels who go to first grade, I had to accept the fact that I was co-opting(借用)my daughter’s experience.
While stepping back was difficult for me, it was certainly a good first step that I will quickly follow with more steps, putting myself far enough away to give her room but close enough to help if asked. All the while I will be reminding myself that children need room to experiment, grow and find their own voices.
【小题1】What do we learn from the first paragraph?

A.Many children find lots of fun in mindless activities.
B.Rebecca is much too occupied to enjoy her leisure time.
C.Rebecca collects online materials for her writing.
D.Rebecca is different from any other child of her age.
【小题2】What was the author's writing experience?
A.She did not quite live up to her reputation as a writer.
B.Her way to success was full of pains and frustrations.
C.She was constantly under pressure of writing more.
D.Most of her stories had been rejected by publishers.
【小题3】Why did Rebecca want to enter this year's writing contest?
A.She possessed real talent for writing.B.She wanted to win.
C.She wanted to share her stories with readers.D.She had won a prize already.

When Pat Jones finished college, she decided to travel around the world and see as many foreign places as she could while she was young. Pat wanted to visit Latin America first, so she got a job as an English teacher in a school in Bolivia. Pat spoke a little Spanish, so she was able to communicate with her students even when they didn’t know much English.

Once, A sentence she had read somewhere struck her mind: if you dream in a foreign language, you have really mastered it. Pat repeated this sentence to her students and hoped that some day she would dream in Spanish and they would dream in English.

One day, one of her worst students came up and explained in Spanish that he had not done his homework. He had gone to bed early and had slept badly.

“What does this have to do with your homework?” Pat asked.

“I dreamed all night, Miss Jones. And my dream was in English.”

“In English?” Pat was very surprised, since he was such a bad student. She was even secretly jealous (嫉妒的). Her dream was still not in Spanish. But she encouraged her young student, “Well, tell me about your dream.”

“All the people in my dream spoke English. All the newspapers and magazines and all the TV programs were in English.”

“But that’s wonderful,” said Pat. “What did all the people say to you?”

“I am sorry, Miss Jones. That’s why I slept so badly. I didn’t understand a word they said. It was a nightmare (噩梦)”.

1.Pat believed that ______.

A. people can learn foreign languages in their dreams

B. she already dreamed in Spanish so she has mastered Spanish 

C. one of her worst students had already mastered English

D. dreaming in a foreign language means a good command of it

2.Pat’s student didn’t finish his home work because______.

A. the home work was too difficult        

B. the student dreamed in English

C. the student didn’t sleep well           

D. the student didn’t know much English  

3.The writer wrote this story ______.

A. to show us how to learn a foreign language      

B. to show us how to teach a foreign language

C. to amuse us with an interesting story           

D. to encourage us to travel to foreign countries

4.From the passage we can infer that ______.

A. in Bolivia, people speak Spanish

B. Pat’s student who dreamed in English was actually good at English

C. Pat has already learned much Spanish

D. in Latin America, the newspapers and magazines are in English

 

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