I arrived at my mother’s home for our Monday family dinner. The smells of food flew over from the kitchen. Mother was pulling out quilt(被子)after quilt from the boxes, proudly showing me their beauties. She was preparing for a quilt show at the Elmhurst Church. When we began to fold and put them back into the boxes, I noticed something at the bottom of one box. I pulled it out. “What is this?” I asked.

“Oh?” Mom said, “That’s Mama’s quilt.”

I spread the quilt. It looked at if a group of school children had pieced it together; irregular designs, childish pictures, a crooked line on the right.

“Grandmother made this?” I said, surprised. My grandmother was a master at making quilts. This certainly didn’t look like any of the quilts she had made.

“Yes, right before she died. I brought it home with me last year and made some changes,” she said. “I’m still working on it. See, this is what I’ve done so far.”

I looked at it more closely. She had made straight a crooked line. At the center of the quilt, she had stitched(缝) a piece of cloth with these words:  “My mother made many quilts. She didn’t get all lines straight. But I think this is beautiful. I want to see it finished. Her last quilt.”

“Ooh, this is so nice, Mom,” I said. It occurred to me that by completing my grandmother’s quilt, my mother was honoring her own mother. I realized, too, that I held in my hands a family treasure. It started with the loving hands of one woman, and continued with the loving hands of another.

1.Why did the author go to mother’s home?

2.The author was surprised because      .

3. The underlined wood “crooked” in the passage most probably means       .

4. Which of the following would be the best title for the passage?

I start to wonder what else had changed since I’d been gone. My parents are in an awkward puzzle, wondering how to treat me now----whether to treat me—still their daughter—as one of them, an adult, or as the child they feel they sent away months earlier.

I run into two of my best friends from high school; we stare at each other, expressionless. We ask the simple questions and give simple answers. It’s as if we have nothing to say to each other. I wonder how things have changed so much in such a small amount of time. We used to laugh and promise that no matter how far away we were, our love for each other would never change. Their interests don’t interest me anymore, and I find myself unable to relate my life to theirs.

I had been so excited to come home, but now I just look at it all and wonder: Is it me? Why hadn’t the world stood still here while I was gone?  My room isn’t the same, my friends and I don’t share the same promise, and my parents don’t know how to treat me—or who I am, for that matter.

I get back to school feeling half-satisfied, but not disappointed. I sit up in my bed in my dorm room, surrounded by my pictures, dolls. As I wonder what has happened, I realize that I can’t expect the world to stand still and move forward at the same time.  I can change and expect that things at home will stay the same. I have to find comfort in what has changed and what is new; keep the memories, but live in the present.

A few weeks later, I’m packing again, this time for winter break. My mom meets me at the door. I have come home accepting the changes, not only in my surroundings, but most of all in me.

What can we infer about the writer?

       A. She is a high school student.    B. She is a college student.

       C. She is a clerk in a school.       D. She is a traveler.

What surprises the writer most?

       A. The living conditions of her parents.       B. The decorations in her room.

       C. The meeting with her best friends.   D. The things still staying the same.

What is this passage mainly about?

       A. The writer’s curiosity about the changes.

       B. The changes in the writer’s surroundings and in herself.

       C. The writer’s disappointment about the changes.

       D. The writer’s refusal to accept the changes.

信息匹配 

阅读下列材料，从所给的六个选项(A、B、C、D、E、F)中，选出符合各小题要求的最佳选项。选项中有一项是多余选项。

首先，请阅读以下某理财论坛提供的几条省钱建议：

A

Use cash. Instead of paying things with credit cards, use cash for non-bill spending such as eating out, gas and groceries. Spending cash makes the spending more real, and there’s an added advantage of knowing when you’re out of cash.

B

Small weekly savings transfers. I got this idea from my friend, who automatically deducts(扣除) $20 a week from his check to savings. I decided that I could live with the deduction of $40/week without really feeling it — it’s a relatively small transfer that I barely notice, and I save about $2,000 a year!

C

Stay at home. Going out makes you spend money unnecessarily. You eat at restaurants, go to the mall, and stop at the gas station for snacks. It’s hard to avoid spending when you’re on the road. Instead, stay at home and find free entertainment. It’s also a great way to bond with your family.

D

Don’t get catalogs(商品宣传册). Their announcements of sales or cool new products make it very tempting(引诱人的) to buy something you don’t need. Instead, stop getting the catalogs, and you’ll spend less.

E

Keep a 30-day list. If you have an impulse(冲动) to buy something you don’t absolutely need, put it on a 30-day list. You can’t buy anything but necessities — everything else goes on the list. When the 30 days are up, you can buy it — but most likely, the strong urge to buy it will be gone, and you can evaluate it more calmly.

F

Cook at home. I know it seems more difficult than eating out. But it doesn’t have to be hard. Make home-made pizza with a ready-made crust, some sauce, cheese and veggies. Put some spices on something and throw it in the oven while you cook some brown rice. Not only is this much cheaper than eating out, but it’s healthier.

阅读下面几位消费者的情况介绍，并为他们匹配合适的建议。

1. Mr. And Mrs. Brown are a newly-married couple who work in the same company. They don’t earn much in their work, but they have to spend a larger part of their income to pay for their rent and daily necessities. Furthermore, they seldom eat at home because neither of them cooks well. Therefore, they have to pay a lot more extra money for food.

2. Mrs. Wang enjoys shopping very much because she is free all day long. Whenever she is wandering in the shops or stores, she will have a strong impulse and find it difficult for her to get back home with her hands empty. But it is quite often that she will find what she has bought is almost useless when she gets home.

3. Tony is a university student in New York, who is far away from his parents. He pays everything with his credit card. He finds it very cool for him to purchase with his credit card. However, he often finds his money has already run out in the middle of the month.

4. Miss Betty is a high school girl whose parents give her some money every week. As her parents don’t earn much money, she wants to save some money secretly so that she can buy a digital camera.

5. Miss Catherine is a young girl who is easily to be persuaded into buying something useless. She will get encouraged to buy something when she sees an advertisement. Her parents have warned her many times against doing such stupid things, but it doesn’t work much.

E

Almost every day we come across situations in which we have to make decisions one way or another. Choice, we are given to believe, is a right. But for a good many people in the world. In rich and poor countries, choice is a luxury, something wonderful but hard to get, not a right. And for those who think they are exercising their right to make choices, the whole system is merely an illusion, a false idea created by companies and advertiser, hoping to sell their products.

The endless choice gives birth to anxiety in people’s lives. Buying something as basic as a coffee pot is not exactly simple. Easy access to a wide range of everyday goods leads to a sense of powerlessness in many people, ending in the shopper giving up and walking away, or just buying an unsuitable item(商品) that is not really wanted. Recent studies in England have shown that many electrical goods bought in almost every family are not really needed. More difficult decision-making is then either avoided or trusted into the hands of the professionals, lifestyle instructors, or advisors.

It is not just the availability of the goods that is the problem, but the speed with which new types of products come on the market. Advances in design and production help quicken the process Products also need to have a short lifespan so that the public can be persuaded to replace them within a short time. The typical example is computers, which are almost out-of-date once they are bought. This indeed makes selection a problem. Gone are the days when one could just walk with case into a shop and buy one thing; no choice, no anxiety.

1. What does the author try to argue in Paragraph 1?

2. Why do more choices of goods give rise to anxiety?

3.By using computers as an example, the author wants to prove that    .

4. What is this passage mainly about?

完形填空

　　DC Hilton was one of the first American to find out that there was money to be made in the middle of the night. 42 years ago be bought a small __1___on US highway 69, in Oklahoma. His___2___customers were truck drivers and___3___salesmen who drank coffee and ate cheese-burgers when they stopped to___4___their journey.

　　It was they who first tried to____5____Hilton to remain open all night. He thought about it for a while, and then suddenly made up his___6____. He took the door key and threw it across the road. He hasn't closed the door____7___.

　　Over the years his simple cafe expanded into a 24-hour roadside ____8___,with a 100-seat restaurant, a petrol station, a mini shopping market, a car ___9___for mobile homes and all-night selfhelp laundry（洗衣店）.

　　Hilton was a ___10__in a 24-hour working trend which has now ___11___ around the world. Today not only restaurants but also hanks, supermarkets, mail-order ___12___and many other businesses are___13___to be open all night. But is this really a good thing?

　　A lot of ____14____has been done in America on the effect of 24-hour working and there is growing ___15____about the long term dangers of society that doesn't sleep.

　　Americans are said to be___16___20％ less than they did 100 years ago, and 55％ claim to __17___at least occasionally from overtiredness. ___18____of the worst man-made accidents happened in the last few hours before ___19___, when even the most experienced night-worker has difficult____20____awake.