Bringing a giraffe into the world is a tall order. A baby giraffe is born 10 feet high and usually lands on its back. Within seconds it rolls over its legs under its body. Then the mother giraffe rudely introduces its children to the reality of life.

In his book, A View from the Zoo, Gary Richmond describes how a new-born giraffe learns its first lesson.

The mother giraffe lowers her head long enough to take a quick look. Then she puts herself directly over her child. She waits for about a minute, and then she does the most unreasonable thing. She throws her long leg and kicks her baby, so that it’s sent sprawling(四脚朝天).

When it doesn’t get up, the process is repeated again and again. The struggle to rise is important. As the baby giraffe grows tired, the mother kicks it again. Finally, it stands for the first time on its shaky legs. Then the mother giraffe kicks it off its feet again. Why? She wants it to remember how it got up. In the wild, a baby giraffe must be able to get up as quickly as possible to stay with its group, where there’s safety.

Another writer named Irving Stone understood this. He spent a lifetime studying greatness, writing stories about such men as Michelangelo, Vincent van Gogh, Sigmund Freud, and Charles Darwin.

Stone was once asked if he had found something that runs through the lives of all these great people. He said, “I write about people who sometime in their life have a dream of something. They’re beaten over the head, knocked down and for years they get nowhere. But every time they stand up again. And at the end of their lives they’ve realized some small parts of what they set out to do .”

1.What does the underlined part “a tall order” in Paragraph 1 mean?

A．A happy thing.                          B．A difficult task.

C．A big dream.                           D．A beautiful scene.

2.Which of the following statements is True according to the passage?

A．This passage is a description of giraffes’ living habits.

B．Baby giraffes can’t stand up until three months old.

C．Irving Stone spent a lifetime studying and writing stories about great people.

D．The great people can’t stand up after they’re knocked down for years.

3.What would be the best title for the passage?

A．How to keep a baby giraffe.

B．Learning to Get Back Up.

C．Stories about the great people.

D．A mother giraffe and its baby giraffe.

Steven Jobs, the CEO of Apple, was not a good student when he was in school. At that time, he always got into trouble with his schoolmates. When he went to college, he didn’t change a lot. Then he dropped out(退学). But he was full of new ideas.
After that, Steven Jobs worked as a video game designer in a company. He worked there only for a few months and then he went to India. He hoped that the trip would give him some new ideas and a new chance to change his life.
Steven Jobs lived on a farm in California for a year after he returned from India. In 1975, he began to make a new type of computer. He designed the first Apple Computer with his friend in his garage. He chose the name“Apple”just because it reminded him of a happy summer he once  spent in an apple orchard.
His first Apple Computer was a great success. Because of this, Steven Jobs soon became famous all over the world.
【小题1】Steven Jobs always got into trouble with         in school.

Jimmy spent most of his time in the bedroom when he was in university. With his aunt’s help, the young man found a job in a park after his graduation. There’re all kinds of flowers in the gardens and he has to look after them. He thinks it’s easy and often stays in bed.

One morning the head of the park found some of the flowers were dead. He called Jimmy there and asked him the reason. The young man studied for a long time but couldn’t answer. Just at that moment an old gardener passed by and the head asked him for help. The old man studied it for a while and said,” A mole(鼹鼠)is eating their roots(根).”

“I don’t think it has something to do with the dead flowers,” said the young man, “People appreciate(欣赏)not the roots, but the flowers!”

1. What did Jimmy like doing when he was in university?

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2. Where did he work?

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3. Did he work hard there?

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4. What made some of the flowers dead?

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5. Who knew the answer?

______________________________.

Martin had just finished high school. He would go to college at the far end of the city. He didn’t want to live there, and he didn’t want to take the bus either. So his father agreed to buy him a car.

His father spent all his summer teaching him how to drive, from the ABC to the XYZ. Thinking of the great feeling of driving a new car, Martin learned very quickly, and received his driver’s license just before his eighteenth birthday.

The second day, all the family, and their dog, went to a car shop. Martin spent almost all the morning going from one car to another. Finally he saw a red Blue Bird. He had a test drive on the open ground, and called out, “This is what I want, Dad!” When everything was done, they were ready to leave.

Martin climbed into the front seat. He said excitedly, “It’s my first day driving alone. Dad, Mom, and Poo! Enjoy it!”

His dad immediately took the back seat, right behind the new driver. Martin wondered why his father chose that seat, for his father always enjoyed looking in front.

So he said, smiling, “I’m sure you’re back there to have a change after all those weeks of sitting in the front seat teaching me how to drive.”

“No,” Dad replied, “Do you remember what you did to me all those years when I took you to and from school? I am sitting here to hit and kick the back of your seat all the way!”

1.Which of the following is NOT the reason why Martin’s father agreed to buy him a car?.

A．Martin would go to college and it was far from home.

B．Martin preferred living at home to living at college.

C．Martin didn’t want to take the public transport.

D．Martin was able to learn how to drive very quickly.

2.In which order did Martin do the following things?

a. He finished his high school.               b. He test-drove driving the new car.

c. He got his driver’s license.                d. He decided to buy the Blue Bird.

e. He kicked the front seat while his father was driving.

A．e—a—c—b—d     B．a—c—b—d—e     C．e—c—a—b—d     D．a—c—d—b—e

3.How would the whole family probably feel on their way back home?

A．Angry            B．Sad              C．Cheerful          D．Shocked

When he was a teenager, Hunter Adams was very unhappy, and he spent many years in the 1960s and 1970s in a special hospital for people with mental health problems.
When he left hospital, Adams decided to become a doctor, so he went to a medical school in Virginia, in America. But when he was there, he did things in different ways. For example, he didn’t like the doctors’ white coats, so he wore shirts with flowers on them when he visited his patients, and he tried to make them laugh. The doctors at the medical school didn’t like Adams very much because he was too different.
Adams believed that people in hospital need more than just medicine. He saw unhappy and lonely people, and he tried to help them, not just as patients, but as people too. He spent a lot of time with children in hospital, and often put a special red nose on his face so he looked like a clown and made the children laugh.
When he finished medical school and became a doctor, Adams opened his own hospital, called The Gesundheit Institute, with some other doctors. They wanted it to be a place with a different way of working with sick people.
Hunter Adams became famous during the 1980s, and in 1998, Universal Pictures made a film about his life. It was very successful. In the film, Robin Williams played Adams. Williams said, “Hunter is a really warm person, who believes that patients need a doctor who’s a friend. I enjoyed playing him”
根据短文内容回答下列问题：
【小题1】Was Hunter Adams a doctor?
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【小题2】Where was the medical school?
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【小题3】How did Hunter Adams make children in the hospital laugh?
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【小题4】What did Hunter Adams do after he finished medical school and became a doctor?
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【小题5】In Hunter Adams’ opinion, what was a good doctor like?