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C. She and Hatchet.
D. Ball Don’t Lie and Crackback.
24. The underlined word \ A. explore B. meet C. create D. miss
B
An 8-year-old southeast Kansas girl is being praised for her quick, calm thinking. She grabbed the
steering wheel(方向盘) and drove the family’s SUV when her mother fell unconscious on their highway ride to school.
Abby Porter and her mom, Shelly, were heading for her school in Riverton when Shelly had a medical emergency. She passed out(昏倒) behind the wheel.
Abby is a second-grader whose father sometimes lets her drive their tractor. With her mother falling down heavily, Abby leaned over and took the wheel. At some point, Abby even successfully performed a U-turn on the four-lane highway, because she was going home to her daddy, according to Galena Police Chief Larry Delmont.
“That was at 8:37 in the morning, and there was a lot of traffic,” Delmont said. Officer Jimmy Hamilton noticed the SUV going about 20 mph and weaving a bit between the two lanes. He suspected someone was driving under the influence. As he got closer, he noticed the woman fell over in the driver’s seat and saw Abby at the wheel.
Hamilton tried to get in front of Abby’s car to slow her down, but she kept switching lanes to avoid bumping into his car. Hamilton got alongside her and told Abby to stop the vehicle, but she didn’t know how. He then told her she needed to bump into him to stop the car, but Abby said she didn’t want to because she was afraid. He convinced Abby bumping into his car was OK.
‘‘I never saw her cry,” Hamilton said. “From just the expression on her face and the tone of her voice, you could tell she was scared. But she stayed with it.”
Emergency crews got Abby’s mother to the hospital, but Delmont said he didn’t know what caused her to lose consciousness.
The police department in Galena, a town of about 3,000 residents about 150 miles south of Kansas City, planned to present Abby with a plaque(匾牌) for “outstanding bravery in a life-threatening situation”.
25. People praise Abby Porter mainly because at such a young age, she can ______. A. drive an SUV
C. take good care of her mother
B. go to school regularly
D. react quickly and calmly in an emergency
26. What is the right time order of the following events? a. Abby leaned over and took the wheel. b. Shelly fell over in the driver’s seat. c. Abby bumped into Hamilton’s car. d. Hamilton noticed the SUV. e. Shelly drove Abby to school.
A. b, a, d, e, c B. c, b, a, d, e C. e, a, b, c, d D. e, b, a, d, c 27. Why was Abby able to drive her family’s car at that time? A. Jimmy Hamilton was telling her what to do． B. She had learned to drive her father’s tractor before. C. Her mother had told her how to drive a car before. D. She was clever enough to do some unexpected things.
C
That little “a” with a circle around it that is found in e-mail addresses is most commonly referred to as the “at” symbol. Surprisingly though, there is no official, universal name for this sign. There are lots of strange terms to describe the @ symbol.
Before it became the fixed symbol for e-mail, the symbol was mostly used to represent the cost or weight of something. For instance, if you bought 6 apples, you might write it as 6 apples @ $1.11 each.
With the introduction of e-mail came the popularity of the @ symbol. The @ symbol separates a person’s online user name from his mail server address, for instance joe@uselessknowledge.com. Its widespread use on the Internet made it necessary to put this symbol on keyboards in countries that had never seen or used the symbol before. As a result, there is really no official name for this symbol.
The actual origin of the @ symbol remains unknown. History tells us that the @ symbol came from the tired hands of the monks(僧侣) in the Middle Ages. During the Middle Ages when there were no printing presses, every letter of a word had to be copied by hand for each copy of a published book. The monks that performed these long and boring copying duties looked for ways to reduce the number of strokes (笔划) per
word for common words.
Although the word “at” is quite short, it was such a common word in texts and documents that monks in the Middle Ages thought it would be good idea to shorten the word “at” even more. As a result, the monks left out the “t” and created a circle — getting rid of two strokes.
28. Before becoming a symbol for e-mail, the @ symbol was most commonly used ______. A. when people referred to the cost or weight of something B. to represent the word “at” in computer languages C. to represent the word “at” on keyboards D. when people wrote business documents 29. Why did the @ symbol become popular? A. Because it looked interesting. B. Because e-mail appeared. C. Because it was used by monks. D. Because it was officially used in texts.
30. We can know from the passage that in the Middle Ages ______. A. monks were hard-working B. the printing press was invented C. the @ symbol was seldom seen in texts
D. the work of copying books needed to be done all by hand
31. Monks in the Middle Ages replaced the word “at” with the @ symbol mainly to ______. A. make the word look better B. save their effort and time C. keep some information secret D. make it easier to understand
D
There is a beautiful story I heard once about a child playing with a vase(花瓶) his mother had left on the table for a few moments. When the mother turned at the sound of her son crying, she saw that his hand was in the vase and was apparently stuck. She tried to help him and pulled and pulled until the child cried
out in pain. But the hand was stuck fast. How would they get it out? The father suggested breaking the vase but it was quite valuable and the child’s hand might be cut in the process. Yet he knew that if all else failed, there would be no other alternative. So he said to the boy, “Now, let’s make one more try. Open your hand and stretch your fingers out straight, like I’m doing, and then pull!” “But Dad,” said the boy, “if I do that, I’II lose my penny!”
The boy had had a coin in his hand all the time and was holding it securely in his tight little fist. And he wasn’t prepared to open his hand and lose the penny. But once he opened his hand, it came out of the vase easily.
I used to hold on to things in my life that I thought were so important to me. Early in my marriage, all I cared about was becoming the best volleyball player in the state of Wisconsin. One year, when Kristi was working shifts at General Motors, I played in 1,400 games, competing four nights a week and 40 out of 52 weekends. My team won over 1,000 games. Success on the volleyball court, but a huge loss in my relationship with my Kristi.
When I finally let go, I looked back at what I had done and was ashamed. Not only did I show my wife she wasn’t the most important thing to me, but I missed out on a lot of relationship building time. My life is so much richer now that I am not a slave to that drive to be the best player I could be.
32. Which of the following could be the best title for the passage? A. The Beautiful Vase in Your Life B. The Way of Keeping Balance in Life
C. My Dream of Becoming the Best Volleyball Player D. Holding On to What Is Important
33. The author tells the story about the boy and the vase to show ______. A. how naughty a little boy can be
B. we need to drop the unimportant things in our life C. a little boy may do something silly D. money is not the most important for us 34. Why did the boy get his hand stuck in the vase? A. He had a coin in his hand.
B. He didn’t know how to stretch his fingers.