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 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 children of Manhattan’s upper classes—into a less competitive setting. The daughter of immigrants, 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. Ds.

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.”I had never before seen the parallels between Scarface and Macbeth, nor had I heard Lady Macbeth’s soliloquies (独白) read as raps (说唱), 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 (充实) 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.

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

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.

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

4.To the author’s surprise, the students read the novels__________.

A．creatively         B．passively          C．repeatedly        D．carelessly

5.The author writes the passage mainly to__________.

A．introduce classic works of literature

B．advocate(倡导) teaching literature to touch the heart

C．argue for equality among high school students

D．defend the current testing system

Think of some of your favorite singers. When you listen, they can make you happy or sad, peaceful or angry. They can make you relax or want to get up and dance. Gifted singers have the power to affect us in many ways—emotionally, physically and mentally.
But becoming a great singer isn’t as easy as listening to one. It takes practice, devotion and strong lungs! Just ask the well-known American opera（歌剧）star Carol Vaness.
At the Metropolitan Opera in New York City where she often sings, Carol’s voice must be loud enough to be heard by four thousand people. It must reach every person in the theater, without a microphone, even when she’s singing softly. The reason Carol can project her voice that far is the way she breathes.
“When you breathe, it’s like a swimmer taking a deep breath before going underwater,” Carol explains. “You have to take a lot of air into your lungs.”
According to Carol, the main difference between pop singing and opera is “how you breathe, how much air you take in, and how you control it coming out. Regular singing is more like speaking, and it’s lot softer. When I sing for children, they’re often surprised by how the vibrations strike their ears—like waves on a beach, ”Carol says. “In opera, the air doesn’t just go out of your mouth—it vibrates in your chest，the way a guitar vibrates when it’s played.”
Ever since she started piano lessons at the age of ten, Carol has loved music. As she got older, she decided to become a music teacher. When she went to college, she took singing lessons as part of her studies. Her voice teacher discovered that nineteen-year-old Carol had an exceptionally beautiful soprano voice-the highest singing voice for women.
Carol decided to make opera her goal, not only because she loved to sing but also because she loved the drama. Opera is a play in which the characters sing the words instead of speaking them. The stories of opera can be tragic or comical. They can be personal stories about two people falling in love or grand stories about kings and queens who lived long ago. As the characters in an opera sing, the emotions（情感）expressed by words and music come to life.
Today, Carol performs throughout the United States and Europe and she has song for almost twenty years. But she has never forgotten where she started singing in the first palace.
“Put your heart into your singing and enjoy it,” says Carol, “because singing is a great joy. That’s why I sing. In fact, that’s why everybody sings.”
【小题1】According to the passage,  the Metropolitan Opera in New York City     .

When Han Duan started her professional career at 16, China’s national women’s football team was defeated in the final of the World Cup by the US. While she was asked to play in her first World Cup in 2003, she largely remained on the bench after the first match.
But things have changed. Now, Han is one of the most important players in China’s team. “I can’t wait to play. Life is short. You must make the most out of it,” Han always says like that. 
Han wants every possible honor that a football player can get — an Asian Cup, a World Cup and an Olympic medal. She has always been good at sports, especially swimming and horizontal bars. At school, she was the fastest in the 60m and 100m.
But the reason she picked football was that she wanted to get more compliments (称赞). “Football is for boys. But I feel more fulfilled when I can do better than them and win more compliments,” she said. Later, when she entered a football school, the coach always asked Han to show others what to do.
However, nobody can be good at everything. Han described her singing as “howling” and the only school subject she was good at was Chinese. “I was very happy every time my essay was posted on the wall for my schoolmates to read.” But Han still has some regrets about her school years. Her handwriting was terrible at school. She ever wanted to improve her handwriting but didn’t achieve much.
“My fans ask for my signature (签名), so I’d better practice and practice. It’s not too late,” she says.
【小题1】In the World Cup in 2003, Han Duan was a(n) ______.

When you visit America, you will see the word Motel on signs and notice boards. It is made up of “motor” and “hotel” and it is really a hotel for people who arrive by car (how-ever, you don’t need a car to stay at one). You have to pay when you arrive for your room, which usually has a bath. Meals are not provided, but there will certainly be a cafeteria (自助餐馆). Americans eat a lot of salads and sandwiches. Along the main roads there are a lot of motels. Each tries to offer more than next. Some provide television in every bedroom; others have swimming pools; and so on. Motels are especially useful when you are in the country, far from a town or city. You will also find them in the big National Parks.

In these great National Parks, you may meet guests you don’t expect to see. An American friend told me a little story. In the middle of a moonless night she heard strange noises outside her motel window in the Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming. Thinking it might be a thief, she jumped out of bed, opened the door and crept towards a dark shadow. As she got close, she saw the thief. She was dreadfully frightened: it wasn’t a human thief — it was a big black bear. The bear was turning over some empty tins with its paw, looking for tasty bits of food. My friend decided to leave that particular thief alone!

There are also, of course, places called “rooming houses”,  where they receive lodgers (房客). You will see such signs as Tourists or Rooms Rent, and you could try one of these. A word of warning — looking for a room in New York during the tourist season is like looking for gold on the moon!　

1.Which of the following is TRUE about motels?

2.Which of the following is NOT provided by motels?

3.The underlined word “crept” in the second paragraph probably means “______”.

4.The second paragraph mainly tells us ______.

5.From the last paragraph, we can learn that in New York during the tourist season ______.

四、阅读理解（共40分）

A

Linda Evans was my best friend －like the sister I never had. We did everything together: piano lessons, movies, swimming, and horseback riding.

When I was 13, my family moved away. Linda and I kept in touch through letters, and we saw each other on special time －like my wedding and Linda’s. Soon we were busy with children and moving to new homes, and we wrote less often. One day a card that I sent came back, stamped “Address Unknown”. I had no idea how to find Linda.

Over the years, I missed Linda very much, I wanted to share stories of my children and then grandchildren. And I needed to share my sadness when my brother and then mother died. There was an empty place in my heart that only a friend like Linda could fill.

One day I was reading a newspaper when I noticed a photo of a young woman who looked a lot like Linda and whose last name was Wagman－ Linda’s married name. “There must be thousands of Wagmans,” I thought, but I still wrote to her.

She called as soon as she got my letter. “Mrs. Tobin!” she said excitedly, “Linda Evans Wagman is my mother.”

Minutes later I heard a voice that I knew very much, even after 40 years, laughed and cried and caught up on each other’s lives. Now the empty place in my heart is filled, and there’s one thing that Linda and I know for sure: we won’t lose each other again!

56. The writer went to piano lessons with Linda Evans_______.

A. at the age of 13                 B. before she got married

C. after they moved to new homes     D. before the writer’s family moved away

57. They didn’t often write to each other because they_______.

A. got married                   B. had little time to do so

C. didn’t like writing letters        D. could see each other on special time

58. There was an empty place in the writer’s heart because she______.

A. was in trouble                

B. didn’t know Linda’s address

C. received the card that she sent    

D. didn’t have a friend like Linda to share her happiness or sadness

59. The writer was happy when she_________.

A. read the newspaper       

B. heard Linda’s voice on the phone 

C. met a young woman who looked a lot like Linda

D. wrote to the woman whose last name was Wagman