When I was six years old, my mom told me that I could find anyone's number in the phone book. I used to look through the phone book for hours trying to find Michael Jordan's phone number. When I couldn't find it, I just dialed seven numbers. When someone answered, I'd ask, "Is that Michael Jordan?" Obviously, I always had the wrong number.

A year later I started playing basketball at my local recreation center. It was very big. I never thought in my wildest dreams that a basketball court could be inside a building. The recreation center had a special smell in it, sort of like hot rubber. I guessed it was from the shoes hitting the floor so fast and hard. The atmosphere on the court was carefree. Our biggest excitement of the day was when we actually made a shot. We celebrated wins over ice cream at a fast food restaurant.

I got good at it, and my confidence grew. I played it all the time until the sixth grade. As soon as junior high school came, I stopped playing basketball and focused on school. When senior high school started, I tried out for the school team and made it. We worked hard. Every week we did 300 push-ups and 300 sit-ups on our own. Our coach encouraged the sit-ups to keep stomach power, because it gave us so much control when we were playing basketball. If we didn't want to do the sit-ups and push-ups, we could practice dribbling (????) and shooting more. It's just us, the ball, the court and the net. But don't take my word for it. See for yourself. After all, I'm just one kid playing the game.

1.From Paragraph 1 we know that ____.

A. the author's mother gave him some wrong phone numbers

B. the phone book contained everyone's phone number except Michael Jordan's

C. the author wanted to contact Michael Jordan very much

D. the author didn't know how to use a phone at that time

2.What is Paragraph 2 mainly about?

A. The days of the author playing basketball at a recreation center.

B. The author's excitement of making shots when playing basketball.

C. The days before the author went to senior high school.

D. The author's happy childhood with his teammates.

3.What surprised the author most at the recreation center?

A. That it was very near to his home.

B. That there was a basketball court inside the building.

C. That there was a special smell in it.

D. That there was a fast food restaurant in it.

4.The author's coach encouraged them to do sit-ups because ____.

A. it is the basic preparation to play basketball

B. it is more useful than dribbling and shooting

C. it is the only way to make people stronger

D. it helps keep stomach power

5.What's the author's purpose in writing this passage?

A. To introduce some skills in playing basketball.

B. To tell us about his dream of becoming a basketball star.

C. To introduce his own experience of playing basketball.

D. To tell us how to balance playing basketball and studying.

 

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.

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 teaching literature to touch the heart

C．argue for equality among high school students

D．defend the current testing system

 

第二节：语法和词汇知识（共15小题；每小题1分，满分15分）

从A、B、C、D四个选项中，选出可以填入空白处的最佳选项。

6. _________ the website of our school, and you ‘ll get loads of information on how to get ready for the college life.

A. Visiting        B. To visit        C. Visit       D. Having visited

 

Wang Feng’s _________ our school at the English speech contest proved to be a success.

  A.will represent          B. to represent     C. representing     D. represented

 

When he thought of the past, my grandfather would sometimes show us photographs of himself at school．They were brown and faded, and it was hard to believe that the blurred figure of the little boy in the short trousers and socks could ever have been Grandfather．Besides, he wore a cap—and the boys in the photographs wore caps pulled so far forward that half of their faces were obscured．When Grandfather asked us to pick him out from the group, we would surely point to the wrong boy．

On one such occasion my younger sister, aged six, burst into tears when Grandfather proudly guided her finger to the right boy．"How could that boy be you?" she cried．"He should have a beard．” We were, of course, all convinced that grandfathers should have beards , preferably white and bushy, like our own grandfather's．

"I was a good scholar ,”Grandfather would say, wagging his beard over the photographs．" I should have been top of the c1ass if I hadn't had to get up at six every morning to milk the cows and chop the wood, and again when I came home from school．”

"But Saturdays? What did you do on Saturdays?"

"Saturdays, if it was fine, I’d be out all day in the fields with the men," replied Grandfather．"And if it was wet, I’d be helping my mother with odd jobs round the house．There wasn't much time for studying．"

We all tried hard to imagine what it would have been like to have been Grandfather getting up at crack of dawn and never, obviously, having a moment for himself．It seemed we had learnt something from what Grandfather had said about his childhood．

1．In the first paragraph of this passage, what the author really tells us is that______．

       A ．his grandfather used to wear short trousers, socks and a cap as well

       B．it was difficult to tell which of the boys in the photographs was Grandfather

       C．he didn't believe Grandfather wore a cap pulled forward when he was at school

       D．it was fun to watch boys in the photographs wearing caps pulled forward

2．The author's sister burst into tears because______________．       

       A．she did not get a chance to pick out Grandfather in the photographs

       B．she was told which was the right boy before she herself could pick him out

       C．other children did not agree with her that Grandfather should have had a beard

       D．she found Grandfather in the photographs did not have a beard

3．When Grandfather said, "I should have been top of the class…．", he meant____________．

       A if he had had more time for studying, he would have been the best in his class

       B．he should have spent more time studying rather than playing ball games

       C．his school days should not have been so hard and miserable

       D．he could have never been the best student even if he had studied still harder

4．In the last paragraph the author said, "We all tried hard to imagine…"because__________．

       A．the figures of the boys in the photographs were small and blurred

       B．the children had never experienced life like that of Grandfather

       C．the photographs Grandfather showed them were brown and faded

       D．Grandfather failed to tell them about his childhood in detail