I live in a very over populated beach area in the Los Angeles, and I love the beautiful scenery! But because of many people, lots of things are easy to be out of order, and sometimes it’s also easy to lose your cool. Today was a day I wish I did not get out of bed. I mean that if I did not have to wake up and deal with all the things that I deal with on a daily basis, it would have been wonderful.

I had a cup of coffee this morning and that was my meal for breakfast, not healthy I know. Anyway, my stomach was sounding like a truck. So, I jumped in my car and decided to buy some food.

I was in line at Taco Bell (一家墨西哥速食店) and the line was like a long snake! Finally I got to place my order, but a young girl in nice clothes pulled in and was stuck in such a way that unless I moved for her, she wouldn’t be able to get out. So I backed up and waved her into my place in the front of the line.

To my surprise, this young girl did not say thanks. I was cool with it because I thought that I had done something nice for a change. After the girl received her food and pulled away, I pulled into the ordering spot, not mad, but hungry, and the employee said, “Hi, that girl just paid for your food.”

That food was the most satisfying nourishment (营养品) my body had ever taken! If just by chance you are that person who bought my food, I should say “Thank you!”

1.The underlined part in the first paragraph probably means “_____”.

A．be friendly to others                     B．become angry

C．get warmer                            D．remain calm

2.What happened to the author according to the passage?

A．He remained lying in bed all the morning.

B．He didn’t feel well after drinking a cup of coffee.

C．He made room for a girl who jumped the queue.

D．He had a quarrel with a girl who didn’t stand in line.

3.How did the young girl show her thanks to the author?

A．She got out of her car and said thanks.

B．She drove away with her own food.

C．She received her food and waved goodbye.

D．She paid for the author’s food without him knowing.

4.The best title for the passage might be _____.

A．Kindness is spreading

B．Being patient wins respect

C．Being calm is important in accidents

D．Being polite can change the world

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________.

Peggy Hilt wanted to be a good mother. But day after day, she got out of bed feeling like a failure. No matter what she tried, she couldn’t connect with Nina, the 2-year -old girl she’d adopted from Russia as an infant （幼儿). The preschooler （学龄前儿童）pulled away whenever Hilt tried to hug or kiss her. Nina was physically aggressive with her 4-year-old sister, who had been adopted from Ukraine, and had violent tantrums（发脾气). Whenever Hilt wasn’t watching, she destroyed the family’s furniture and possessions. “Every day with Nina had become a struggle,” she recalls now.

As the girl grew older, things got worse. Hilt fell into a deep depression. She started drinking heavily, something she’d never done before. Ashamed, she hid her problem from everyone, including her husband.

On the morning of July 1, 2005, Hilt was packing for a family vocation, all the while swallowing one beer after another and growing increasingly angry and impatient with Nina’s deeds. “Everything she did just got to me,” Hilt said. When Hilt caught her reaching into her diaper（尿布）and smearing feces（粪便）on the walls and furniture, “a year and a half of frustration came to a head,” Hilt says. “I snapped（崩溃). I felt this uncontrollable rage.”

Then Hilt did something unthinkable. She grabbed Nina around the neck, shook her and then dropped her to the floor, where she kicked her repeatedly before dragging her up to her room, punching her as they went. “I had never hit a child before,” she says. “I felt horrible and promised myself that this would never happen again.” But it was too late for that. Nina woke up with a fever, and then started throwing up. The next day she stopped breathing. By the time the ambulance got the child to the hospital, she was dead.

Hilt is now serving a 19-year sentence for second-degree murder in a Virginia prison. She and her husband divorced, and he is raising their other daughter. She realizes the horror of her crime and says she isn’t looking for sympathy. “There is no punishment severe enough for what I did,” she told NEWSWEEK in an interview at the prison.

1. This story mainly tells us __________.

2.How did Hilt let out her depression at the beginning?

3. What does the underlined sentence in Para.4 mean?

4.“NEWSWEEK” in the last sentence of this text refers to a __________.

5. Why do some adoptions go so wrong？

 My wife and I had just finished the 150-mile trip home from our daughter’s college. It was the first time in our life that we would __36__ for any length of time. We wondered how other people had __37__ it.

Later in bed, I __38__ the time I started college. My father had driven me, too. My mother had to stay home to keep the __39__ from getting into the crops. I, the fourth in a line of brothers, was the first to __40__ college.

The truck was slow, and I was glad. I didn’t want to get to the city __41__. I shook hands with my father in the truck and he didn’t say a word. But I knew he was going to make a little __42__. He finally said, “I never went to college and __43__ of your brothers did. I can’t say don’t do this or that, because everything is __44__ and I don’t know what is going to come up, but I think things will __45__. When you get a job, be sure to be honest and work hard.” I knew that soon I would be __46__ in the big town and I would be __47__ the life home.

Then my father __48__ the Bible that he had read so often. I knew that he would miss it but I must __49__ it. He just said, “This can help you __50__ you will let it.”

When I finished school I took the Bible __51__ to my father. But he said he wanted me to __52__ it.

Now, too often, I remember. It would have been so __53__ to give it to my daughter when she got out of the car. But I didn’t. My father could give me only a Bible, but now I don’t really believe that I gave her half as __54__ as my father gave me. So the next morning I __55__ up the book and sent it to her. I wrote a note “This can help you.” I said, “if you will let it.”

1. A. worry         B. separate         C. stay             D. travel

2. A. left              B. stood                C. enjoyed          D. tried

3. A. wasted            B. spent                C. remembered       D. killed

4. A. policemen     B. workers          C. cattle               D. birds

5. A. graduate from B. go away to           C. set out              D. set up

6. A. very late     B. far away         C. too soon         D. once again

7. A. speech            B. living               C. promise          D. progress

8. A. some          B. one              C. none             D. all

9.A. impossible     B. different            C. difficult            D. favorite

10. A. work out     B. die out              C. hold out         D. break out

11. A. happy            B. alone                C. free             D. lost

12. A. losing           B. spending         C. missing          D. living

13. A. brought about    B. brought out          C. brought up           D. brought down

14. A. refuse           B. mark             C. follow               D. take

15. A. if               B. unless               C. but              D. though

16. A. down         B. up               C. back             D. away

17. A. keep         B. return               C. post             D. sell

18. A. popular          B. strange          C. ready                D. nice

19. A. much         B. many             C. far              D. good

20. A. set              B. turned               C. gave             D. wrapped