Your children’s teacher will be providing extra time for test preparation. This school year’s test will be held on January 8 and 9. The test preparation time is open to all students, and we strongly encourage your children to attend.
This year we are changing the time for our test preparation: it will be on Thursday mornings from 8:10 to 8:50. This helps children who ride the bus and cannot stay for the after-school period. It also helps avoid conflicts with after-school activities.
Danielle and Marina will be working with the recent new test takers 6 days on the following Thursdays: 15^th, Nov; 29^th, Nov; 6^th, Dec; 13^th, Dec.; 20^th, Dec. and 3^rd, Jan.
Besides the test preparation lectures on these dates, teachers are already putting test preparation into their usual courses. We are finding that we can help our students to be both skillful and whole-hearted readers and test takers — after all, we all know that the best test preparation is good reading and writing training.
What can you do at home? Again, the best and most effective test preparation for the ELA test is reading and more reading. The research is quite clear — students who do well in the tests are those who are good readers. Reading not only builds reading ability, it also helps build confidence — important for successful test taking! But do discourage your children from spending too much time on books that are too hard or even a bit too hard. Children best develop comprehension skills when they are reading books just right for them (too easy doesn’t hurt here either).
Finally, on Friday, December 7, we will have a morning lecture on the ELA. Please pay attention!
【小题1】The text is mainly about ________.

When you meet someone for the first time, you will form an impression in your mind of that person in the first moment. Your reactions to other people, however, are really just barometers (晴雨表) for how you perceive(理解) yourself. Your reactions to others say more about you than they do about others. You cannot really love or hate something about another unless it reflects something you love or hate yourself. We are usually drawn to those who are most like us and tend to dislike those who display those aspects of ourselves that we dislike.

Therefore, you can allow others to be the mirror to illuminate (阐明;照亮) more clearly your own feelings of self-worth. Conversely（相反地）, you can view the people you judge negatively as mirrors to show you what you are not accepting about yourself.

To survive together peacefully with others, you will need to learn tolerance. A big challenge is to shift your perspective from judgment of others to a lifelong exploration of yourself. Your task is to assess all the decisions, judgments you make onto others and to begin to view them as clues to how you can heal yourself and become whole.

Several days ago I had a business lunch with a man who displayed objectionable table manners. My first reaction was to judge him as rude and his table manners as annoying. When I noticed that I was judging him, I stopped and asked myself what I was feeling. I discovered that I was embarrassed to be seen with someone who was chewing with his mouth open and loudly blowing his nose. I was astonished to find how much I cared about how the other people in the restaurant perceived me.

Remember that your judgment of someone will not serve as a protective shield against you becoming like him. My judging my lunch partner as rude does not prevent me from ever looking or acting like him. In the same way, extending tolerance to him would not cause me to suddenly begin chewing my food with my mouth open.

When you approach life in this manner, those with whom you have the greatest dissatisfactions as well as those you admire and love can be seen as mirrors, guiding you to discover parts of yourself that you reject and to embrace your greatest quality. 

1.We can know from the passage that the author advises people to _____________.

A. avoid inappropriate manners.

B. learn tolerance towards others.

C. pay attention to others’ needs and feelings.

D. judge others favorably in any case.

2.The underlined word “objectionable” in Paragraph 4 has the closest meaning to ____________.

A. discouraging          B. satisfying          C. unpleasant           D. acceptable

3.According to the passage, the following statements are all true except _____________.

A. You can’t really love or hate others if they are similar to you.

B. We are easily attracted by someone who is similar to us.

C. Our first judgment of a person mostly comes from our personal opinion.

D. The moment we see a stranger, our mind forms an impression of that person.

4.Throughout the entire story, the last paragraph serves as a(n) ______________.

A. explanation            B. example         C. background         D. conclusion

5.It can be implied from the text that ___________.

A. the writer’s first reaction to the man was to judge him as offensive

B. we will need to learn tolerance to coexist with others

C. we shouldn’t focus on judging others but should constantly reflect on our own

D. the writer didn’t care about other people’s view of him

On June 17, 1774, the officials from Maryland and Virginia held a talk with the Indians of the Six Nations. The Indians were invited to send boys to William and Mary College. In a letter the next day they refused the offer as follows:
We know that you have a high opinion of the kind of learning taught in your colleges, and that the costs of living of our young men, while with you, would be very expensive to you. We are sure that you mean to do us good by your proposal（提议）; and we thank you heartily. But you must know that different nations have different ways of looking at things, and you will therefore not be offended（冒犯） if our ideas of this kind of education happen not to be the same as yours. We have had some experience of it. Several of our young people were formerly brought up at the colleges of the northern provinces: they were taught all your sciences; but when they came back to us, they were bad manners, ignorant（无知的）of every means of living in the woods–they were totally good for nothing.
　We are, however, not the less thankful by your kind offer, though we refuse to accept it; and, to show our grateful sense of it, if the gentlemen of Virginia will send us a dozen of their sons, we will take care of their education, teach them in all we know, and make men of them.
【小题1】The tone(语气) of the letter as a whole is best described as________.

Friendships are some of the most important relationships that we will ever have in our lives. But how to build a solid friendship? Here are five tips for you.
Tip 1. _____
True friendships can only be built in honesty. This is more than just telling the truth. Being real and open about who you are and your thoughts and feelings are a part of building a solid friendship. If your “friends” don’t even really know you, who are they really friends with?
Tip 2. Shared Experiences
As you build your friendship, you will share many experiences together. Some of these may be great adventures or hard times that the two of you go through together. These shared experiences are things that you will laugh about, talk about, and cry about no matter how much time passes.
Tip 3. Sacrificial（牺牲精神的）love
Love is the basis（基础）of all solid relationships. I am not referring to the emotion（情感） of love, but to the action of love. Love is what will cause a friend to get out of bed in the middle of the night to help another. Love is what will put aside someone’s own wants to make sure that their friend is alright.
Tip 4. Understanding
When a friendship is solid, it will be based on each other’s understanding. You may not agree with everything that a friend says or does, but you will be able to put yourself into his or her shoes to begin to understand. Offering understanding to a friend is very important, as it allows them to feel that they have someone in their corner that they can talk to and who will offer advice and suggestions, without having to worry that if they don’t always follow it, the friendship will be lost.
Tip 5. Acceptance
A solid friendship is one in which two people accept one another, faults and all, for just who they are. There is no having to build up false excuses, or hide away the “dark secrets” from one another. We accept each other as whole, complete, and totally unique people.
【小题1】What’s the best title of Tip 1?

阅读下面的短文，然后按要求写一篇150词左右的英语短文。
There are all kinds of stress in our daily lives such as stress from work, stress from study and stress from examinations. How to manage stress is thus a very important problem that we have to deal with properly. I think stress itself doesn’t exist. It’s only because we consider things to be bad and regard all of them as our own fault and won’t forgive ourselves. As we all know, there is nothing you can do without error. So it’s impossible to expect everything to be perfect. If we have done our best,  although not successfully, there is nothing to regret. And we don’t need to blame ourselves continuously. In fact we have done a quite good job. Then we will feel the stress less. We will stay healthy and do well in the future. Eventually we will be successful.
[写作内容]
1．概括短文内容要点，该部分的字数大约30词左右；
2．就“如何化解心理压力”这个主题发表你的看法，至少包括以下的内容要点，该部分的字数大约120词左右。
a）简述你生活学习中遇到过造成较大心理压力的困难；
b）你是如何化解心理压力的；
c）谈谈你对化解心理压力的体会。
[写作要求]
你可以参照阅读材料的篇章结构、有关内容，但不得直接引用原文中的句子。
[评分标准]
概括准确、语言规范、内容合适、篇章连贯。
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