When I was growing up, I had an old neighbor named Dr. Gibbs. He didn’t look like any doctor I’d ever known. He never yelled at us for playing in his yard. I remember him as someone who was a lot nicer than most of the adults in our community.

  When Dr. Gibbs wasn’t saving lives, he was planting trees. His house sat on ten acres, and his life’s goal was to make it a forest.

  The good doctor had some interesting theories concerning plant care and growth. He never watered his new trees, which flew in the face of conventional wisdom. Once I asked why. He said that watering plants spoiled them so that each successive tree generation would grow weaker and weaker. So you have to make things rough for them and weed out(淘汰) the weaker trees early on.

He talked about how watering trees made for shallow roots, and how trees that weren’t watered had to grow deep roots in search of moisture. I took him to mean that deep roots were to be treasured.

  So he never watered his trees. He planted an oak and, instead of watering it every morning, he’d beat it with a rolled-up newspaper. Smack! Slap! Pow! I asked him why he did that, and he said it was to get the tree’s attention.

Dr. Gibbs passed away a couple of years after I left home. Every now and again, I walked by his house and looked at the trees that I’d watched him plant some twenty-five years ago. They’re extremely tall, big and robust since they have deep roots now. However, the trees in my garden trembled in a cold wind although I had watered them for several years.

It seems that adversity(逆境) and suffering benefit these trees in ways comfort and ease never could. I stood there deep in thought.

  Every night before I go to bed, I check on my two sons. I stand over them and watch their little bodies, the rising and falling of life within. I often pray for them. Mostly I pray that their lives will be easy. But I think it’s time to change my prayer(祷词) because now I know my children are going to encounter hardship..

According to Dr. Gibbs’ theories, trees will become weaker if they______

    A. are lack of care   B. are watered   C. are weeded out    D. are beaten

.According to Para.3 and Pare.4, we can infer that Dr. Gibbs’moto(座右铭)may be_____

     A. “seeing is believing”        B.“Put everything in proper use”

     C. ”Practice makes perfect”     D. “No pains, no gains”

.The underlined word robust in Para.5 most probably means______

      A. strong         B. strange         C. deep        D. old

Which of the following may be the author’s best prayer for his two sons now ?

  A. I wish them strong wings, with which they can fly higher and touch the sky.

  B.I wish them nice fortune so that they can meet people like Dr. Gibbs in the future.

  C.I wish them deep roots into the earth since the rains fall and the winds blow often.

  D.I wish them great shades under the tree since the sunlight is always sharp and bitter.

Which of the following can be the best title of the passage?

   A. A Nice Doctor                      B. The Deep Roots  

C. Adversity and Suffering              D. My Childhood Memory

Recently, scientists have developed a wireless brainmachine interface that help restore communication to people who can no longer speak by reading brainwaves using electrodes(电极) stuck on their heads. Unfortunately, these have proved very slow, at roughly one word typed per minute, making normal conversations and social interactions virtually impossible.

    Scientist Frank Guenther and his colleagues reveal a brainmachine interface that uses electrodes implanted directly into the brain for research into real time speech.

"It should soon be possible for extremely paralysed individuals who are incapable of speaking to produce speech through a laptop computer, " said Guenther.

The scientists worked with a 26-year- old male volunteer who experience near-total paralysis due to a stroke he suffered when he was 16. They implanted an electrode that had two wires into a part of the brain that help plan and execute movements related to speech. The electrode recorded brain signals when the volunteer attempted to talk and the wires spread them across the scalp(头皮)to help drive a speech synthesizer (合成器). The delay between brain activity and sound output was just 50 milliseconds on average, roughly the same with regular speech.

"He was quite excited, particularly on the first few days we used the system, as he got used to its properties, " Guenther recalled." I am sure the work proceeds slowly from his perspective, as it does from ours. Nonetheless, he was very excited about getting real-time audio feedback of his intended speech and happy to work very hard with us throughout the experiments."

"The current system uses data from just two wires. Within a year it will be possible to implant a system with 16 times as many." Guenther said." This will allow us to tap into neurons(神经元),which in the end means better control over a synthesizer and thus better speech."

In the study of Guenther, electrodes are _______.

fixed on the heads                  B. put into the heads

C. tied to the heads                        D. separated from the heads

   The underlined word "them" in Paragraph 4 refers to _______.

movements           B. wires        C. brain signals        D. Scientists

   What might be the best title for the passage?

 Wireless Device Are Used to Read Words in the Brain.

 New Equipment Helps you read others’ mind.

 Virtual tongue can make you speak fluently.

 It is no secret what you are thinking in mind.

完形填空(共20小题;每小题1分,满分20分)

My grandmother became a widow in 1970. Shortly after that, we went to the  21  shelter to pick out a dog to keep her  22  . Grandma decided on a little dog with a reddish-brown spot above each eye.  23  these spots, the dog was named Penny.

Grandma and Penny quickly became very  24  to each other, but that attachment grew much stronger about three years later  25  Grandma had a stroke(中风). Grandma could no longer  26  , so when she came home from the hospital, she and Penny were  27  companions.

After her stroke, it became a real  28  for Grandma to let Penny in and out because  29  was at the bottom of a flight of stairs. So a mechanism(机械装置)using a rope and pulley(滑轮)was   30  from the door to a handle at the top of the stairs. Grandma just had to pull the handle to open and close the door. If the store was   31  Penny’s favorite dog food, Grandma would make one of us  32  Penny browned beef with potatoes in it. I can remember   33  my grandmother by saying that she loved that dog better than she loved her family.

As the years passed, it was not  34  for Grandma and Penny to separate each other. If Grandma went to take her nap(打盹), Penny stayed by her side until she  35  . As Penny aged, she could no longer jump up on the bed, so she   36  on the rug (垫子)beside the bed. If Grandma went into the   37  , Penny would walk along beside her, wait outside the door and accompany her   38  to the bed or chair. Grandma never went anywhere without her   39  companion by her side.

The time came when both my grandmother’s and Penny’s   40  were failing fast. After fifteen years of loving companionship, Grandma and Penny passed away within a few hours of each other.

A.animal  B.toy  C.fish D.bird

A.business    B.firm C.company  D.friend

A.In spite of B.Because of   C.Instead of   D.In front of

A.linked  B.fastened C.attached D.tied

A.before  B.while    C.until    D.when

A.think   B.speak    C.work D.study

A.contrary    B.content  C.confident    D.constant

A.problem B.question C.practice D.rule

A.the door    B.Grandma  C.the window   D.Penny

A.repaired    B.fixed    C.bought   D.loaded

A.    out of  B.ahead of C.away from    D.apart from

A.show    B.hand C.borrow   D.cook

A.drawing attention to    B.making use of   

    C.breaking away from   D.making fun of

A.necessary   B.possible C.important    D.convenient

A.recovered   B.awoke    C.slept    D.screamed

A.rolled  B.stood    C.waited   D.lay

A.reading room    B.bedroom  C.shop D.bathroom

A.back    B.up   C.off  D.down

A.splendid    B.remote   C.faithful D.legal

A.smell   B.health   C.habit    D.living

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