Dear Volunteers，

The service you will provide to elderly individuals in Abilene as a Meals on Wheels volunteer is deeply appreciated. I want to take this opportunity to thank you for the many miles you will travel and all of the hours you will contribute to help make this one of the best programs in the entire state.

We have our staff members make a home visit before adding each person to the program and try to visit everyone at least once every year. That is hardly enough, and we depend on your contact a great deal! It is important that you report back when you do not get an answer to your knock on the door. The person inside may be hurt or ill. They may be in hospital or out of town and fail to inform us. If they are frequently absent, we may need to determine if they still need meals.

If you find someone with a medical emergency, please call 911 to request medical assistance, and then call the Meals on Wheels office. If you find someone who needs assistance other than for a medical emergency, please call the Meals on Wheels office at 6725050, and we will try to find the appropriate agency or individual to call.

Let us know when a certain person needs extra food. We have a food preparation room of shelf stable items to share with them. Please feel free to take a few magazines when you deliver meals. Many of those we serve cannot afford magazines and enjoy reading. If someone is interested in getting books from the Abilene Public Library, let us know. We can sign them up for the Books on Wheels program. Call if you smell gas strongly when you deliver meals, or if someone needs a space heater, a blanket, or an electric fan. Please convey all needs to us, and we will try to see that they are met. Some of the elderly people who we offer our service may have cancers, liver diseases, AIDS, etc. If you do not want to deliver meals to the people with certain types of health problems, such as these, please let us know.

Sincerely,

Betty L. Bradley, LBSW,

Executive Director

1.Why does the author write this letter?

A．To express great thanks to volunteers.

B．To explain how the old people get help.

C．To tell volunteers what they are tasked with.

D．To describe the life situation of the old people.

2.What can we learn about the volunteers from the passage?

A．They order books for needy people.

B．They design programs to help people.

C．They offer medical help to sick people.

D．They deliver food to the elderly people.

3.How does the author learn about the needs of the people served?

A．The volunteers report back the information to him.

B．His staff members call them to get the information.

C．He visits them now and then to get the information.

D．The family members send the information to his office.

 

阅读下面短文，从短文后各题所给的四个选项（A、B、C和D）中，选出可以填入空白处的最佳选项，并从答题卡上将该选项涂黑。

Each time I was feeling disappointed, my mother would say to me “ Tomorrow will be another day. If you can        on, some day something nice will happen. And you will come to know that it wouldn’t have happened if not for that previous         .”

What mother said was absolutely right, as I         after my graduation from college. I had made up my mind to try for a          in radio, then         my way up to sports announcer. I went to Springfield and knocked on the door of each station—and got        each time. In one studio, a warm-hearted woman told me that         stations couldn’t risk employing a(n)         person. “ Please go out to the faraway or lonely district and find a small station which will give you a         ,” she said. I came back home to St-Louis.

While there were no radio-announcing jobs in St-Louis, my father said Wards Holding Corporation had opened a store and wanted a local athlete to manage its         department. Since St-Louis was where I had played high school football, I         . The job sounded just         for me. But I wasn’t employed. My disappointment must have         . “Tomorrow will be another day,” Mom         me. I tried WOC in Fort Wayne, Indiana. The program director, Jack Green, told me they had already hired an         .

As I went away from his office, my frustration boiled over (爆发). I asked         , “How can a young man get to be a sports announcer if he cannot get a job in a radio station?” I was just patiently waiting for the elevator          I heard Jack Green calling, “What did you say about sports just now? You mean you know something about football?” Then he stood me         a microphone and told me to         an imaginary game.

On the way to my home, as I have many times since, I thought of my mother’s words. From time to time I         what direction my life might have taken if I had had the job at Wards Holding Corporation

1.A. take                            B. put                              C. move                             D. carry

2.A. concern                     B. doubt                             C. disappointment           D. amazement

3.A. recovered                 B. discovered                    C. recognized                    D. developed

4.A. job                              B. plan                      C. trip                                 D. research

5.A. come                          B. go                          C. push                               D. work

6.A. put off                                 B. broken away       C. turned down                D. fed up

7.A. no                               B. big                                  C. small                              D. famous

8.A. selfish                                  B. confident                      C. inexperienced             D. independent

9.A. tip                               B. reward                          C. challenge                         D. chance  

10.A. sports                      B. food                               C. clothes                          D. radio

11.A. hesitated B. applied                     C. refused                  D. agreed

12.A. right                                  B. important                      C. boring                            D. funny

13.A. disappeared                     B. hidden                           C. shown                            D. died

14.A. warned                    B. reminded                      C. recognized                    D. demanded

15.A. athlete                              B. actor                              C. announcer                    D. artist

16.A. aloud                                 B. secretly                         C. silently                  D. equally

17.A. while                                 B. where                            C. after                               D. when

18.A. within                                B. before                           C. beyond                 D. beneath

19.A. play                          B. perform                         C. broadcast                      D. present

20.A. say                            B. wonder                          C. dream                            D. learn

 

While success is surely sweeter than failure, it seems failure is a far better teacher, and organizations that fail spectacularly often flourish more in the long run, according to a new study by Vinit Desai, assistant professor of management at the University of Colorado Denver Business School. Researchers have found that people missing their goals perform much better in the long run. That is because they gain more knowledge from their failures than their successes and the lessons are more likely to stay longer in their minds.

“We found that the knowledge gained from success was often fleeting while knowledge from failure stuck around for years,” said professor Desai, who led the study. “But companies often ignore failure. Managers may fire people or turn over the whole workforce while they should treat the failure as a learning opportunity.”

Prof Desai compared the flights of the space shuttle Atlantis and the Challenger. During the 2002 Atlantis flight, a piece of insulation (绝缘体) broke off and damaged the left solid rocket booster (助推火箭) but didn’t influence the program. There was little investigation. The Challenger was launched next and another piece of insulation broke off. This time the shuttle and its seven–person crew were destroyed. The disaster led to a major investigation resulting in 29 changes to prevent future disasters.

The difference in response in the two cases came down to this: Atlantis was considered a success and the Challenger a failure.

“Despite crowded skies, airlines are extremely reliable,” he said. “The number of failures is extremely small. And past researches have shown that older airlines, those with more experience in failure, have a lower number of accidents.”

Prof Desai doesn’t recommend finding out failure in order to learn. Instead, he advises organizations to analyze small failures to collect useful information rather than wait for major failures.

1.Why did experts pay little attention to the problem of Atlantis?

A．Because it worked perfectly.

B．Because the right booster was still OK.

C．Because nothing serious happened then.

D．Because fewer people died in the flight.

2.Fewer accidents happen to older airlines in that _____.

A．their planes couldn’t fly high in the sky

B．they gained much from experience in failure

C．their planes were often checked by the experts

D．they were unpopular among passengers

3.The passage is written mainly to _____.

A．show failure is a better teacher than success

B．explain why Challenger failed

C．introduce something about Prof Desai

D．tell managers how to achieve success

4.Which writing strategy is NOT used in developing the passage?

A．Giving definitions.	B．Making comparisons.
C．Analyzing causes.	D．Providing different examples.

 

阅读下面短文并回答问题，然后将答案写到答题卡相应的位詈卜（请注意问题后的词数要求）。

[ l ]On the 15th of each month, a classroom at Pointers Run Elementary School in Maryland is packed with volunteers Students like Campbell Snoddy collect food         ____________by students, parents and teachers from each classroom．Then, the children check to make sure the food isn't too old．After that, they sort it by category and put the cans and boxes into bags to be delivered to low -income senior citizens in the community．

[ 2 ] “I wanted to teach my daughter about charity．” says Julie Rosenthal, Who started the nonprofit program six years ago． "And I wanted to teach other kids in the community, too．"

[ 3] Children make their deliveries around the 15th of the month when money from monthly Social

Security checks begins to run out and tough decisions between food and other needs have to be made．

[4 ] "I am on a fixed income and the food has helped me out considerably," says Linda Testennan, a food receiver．

[5 ] “ It was really fun, and it was great to make the senior citizens happy,” says Campbell． “ It was really cool．”

[6 ] Sofia Merkowitz, another Food on the 15th volunteer, agrees．"I really liked it because it made me feel really good that people were so happy that they got food．"

[7]Rosenthal says that is why she has children do more than fill a bag with donated food．        

[8 ] "We want the children to have firsthand experience delivering the food to the people so that they can get that feeling of really making a difference in somebody’s life, a positive difference．"

[ 9] The program started with one school delivering 30 bags of groceries． It has grown each year, and now involves 10 schools and several churches．Food on the 15th has delivered more than12, 000 bags so far．Rosenthal's goal is to expand Food on the 15th across the country and around the world．

1.What is the passage mainly talking about? （no more than 10 words）

                                                                                     

2.List three things that the students do with the food in the program "Food on the 15th" （ no more than 20 words）

                                                                                     

3.Fill in the blank in the first paragraph with proper words to complete the sentence．（ no more than 3 words）

                                                                                      

4.On what purpose did Julie Rosenthal start the non - profit program? （ no more than 15 words）

                                                                                             

5.What does the underlined word "it"  in Para 5 probably mean? （ no more than 6 words）

                                                                              

 

Using a Mobile Phone to Improve Mother and Child Health

People around the world are working to expand the uses for mobile technology in health care.

In the world, there are six billion mobile phone users in a population of seven billion people.

   1.     Africa has widespread adoption. Three or four years ago the penetration rates were 20 percent or 30 percent, and now they’re getting upwards of 60 percent in some countries.

    2.     Earlier research has been to look at mobile technologies and HIV and AIDS. And so we have some great evidence on the effectiveness of mobiles.

During the first week of December, 2012, more than 4,000 people from 50 countries met for the fourth annual mHealth Summit. It brought together experts from what the organizers call the mHealth ecosystem.

In 2011 Secretary of State Hillary Clinton started a public/private partnership called the Mobile Alliance for Maternal Action, or MAMA. There are about 800 women a day and about three million babies a year die from pregnancy and childbirth-related causes.      3.     The messages cover pregnancy and the first year of a baby’s life. These health messages may also be sent to a pregnant woman’s husband and mother-in-law.    4.    

Messages can be text or voicemail. You can have a pregnant woman in Bangladesh registered into a system that provides messages that help her know what to do and when to do certain things.

Simple text messages can be important sources of information to people without Internet

access.      5.     They have to be able to read through thousands of entries that come back to them on Google, for example, and then figure out what that information means to them. And that’s not something that someone in a poor and uneducated kind of situation can do.  

A．They have no access to the relevant information.

B．That way they too can understand what needs to be done.

C．Millions of messages about baby care are received every day.

D．A lot of work has been done to use mobile technology for health.

E. And the most rapidly growing markets are those in developing countries.

F. The program sends messages to women to educate them about their health.

G. Besides, online users may sometimes not understand all the information available.