----- Dad, look! I can reach the vase on the shelf.

------__________ you’ll break it.

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 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 children of Manhattan’s upper classes—into a less competitive setting. The daughter of immigrants, 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. ”I had never before seen the parallels between Scarface and Macbeth, nor had I heard Lady Macbeth’s soliloquies (独白) read as raps (说唱), 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 (充实) 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.
【小题1】The underlined words in Paragraph 1 probably mean that a book helps to __________.

Have you got a Facebook account? Are you thinking of getting one? Jamie Simmonds has just signed up. Let’s see how she’s getting along.
My Diary
MONDAY: I’m officially a Facebooker. I find a few people I used to know and I’ve soon got seven friends. I’ve never felt so popular! I wonder if my old university flatmate Steve is on here…What do you know! He is! Maybe Facebook has its uses.
TUESDAY: I’ve received lots of nice welcoming messages on my wall. Later, I meet up with Steve for a drink after not seeing him for five years. We get on really well! Then, he uses his Facebook app for iPhone to suggest me as a friend to some other former classmates. Some of them even come to the pub and it’s just like old times – possibly a bit too much like old times. During the night, photos are uploaded to Facebook.
WEDNESDAY: Disaster! My mum’s on Facebook! Has she seen the photos of me dancing on the table from last night? Has she shown them to dad? Oh. And I have a friend request – mum again!
THURSDAY: There’s a message from my boyfriend, “so, it’s over then, ;is it?” Evidently I haven’t changed my settings to show I’m “in a relationship”, and I haven’t even added him as a friend. Ah, well, I wonder what my ex-boyfriend is doing… Whoops! I accidentally type his name into my status box instead of the search ‘ and now every one can see it on their news feed.’
FRIDAY: Time to update my status:“Work is boring. Can’t wait for the weekend!” Yeah, that about sums it up. Oh, look, I’ve received a comment! Someone must feel the same way. Lots of my friends now“like” this status.
SATURDAY: Good news! I’ve got 100 friends But wait! Someone’s “un-friended” me! I look through my “friend list” to try to work out who it was. Why did they do that? Am I really such a terrible person? I never knew Facebook could be this cruel.
SUNDAY: Wake up. Check my Facebook page. Make coffee. Check my Facebook page again. Get ready to leave. Change my mind and check my Facebook page … again. I am becoming addicted to it! I think it’s time to end it all before it takes over my life. I delete my account. Back to good, old, simple e-mails. Oh, look, I’ve got a message: A friend invited you to join Twitter. . .
In July 2010, Facebook had more than 500 million active users. The average Facebook user has 130 friends. Facebook is translated into more than 70 different languages. The world spends 700 billion minutes a month on Facebook. Facebook creator Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook page says he’s a Harvard graduate, even though he actually dropped out to focus on Facebook. The site is valued at between $7.9 and $11 billion.
【小题1】 Why did Jamie’s boyfriend ask her whether she had broken up with him?

My elder brother Steve, in the absence of my father who died when I was six, gave me important lessons in values that helped me grow into an adult.

    For instance, Steve taught me to face the results of my behavior. Once when I returned in tears from a Saturday baseball game, it was Steve who took the time to ask me what happened. When I explained that my baseball had soared through Mrs. Holt’s basement window, breaking the glass with a crash, Steve encouraged me to confess to her. After all, I should have been playing in the park down Fifth Street and not in the path between buildings. Although my knees knocked as I explained to Mrs. Holt, I offered to pay for the window from my pocket money if she would return my ball.

    I also learned from Steve that personal property is a sacred thing. After I found a shiny silver pen in my fifth-grade classroom, I wanted to keep it, but Steve explained that it might be important to someone else in spite of the fact that it had little value. He reminded me of how much I’d hate to lose to someone else the small dog my father carved from a piece of cheap wood. I returned the pen to my teacher, Mrs. Davids, and still remembered the smell of her perfume as she patted me on the shoulder.

Yet of all the instructions Steve gave me, his respect for life is the most vivid in my mind. When I was twelve, I killed an old brown sparrow in the yard with a BB gun. Excited with my accuracy, I screamed to Steve to come from the house to take a look. I shall never forget the way he stood for a long moment and stared at the bird on the ground. Then in a dead, quiet voice, he asked, “Did it hurt you first, Mark?” I didn’t know what to answer. He continued with his eyes firm, “The only time you should ever think of hurting a living thing is if it hurts you first. And then you think a long, long time.” I really felt terrible then, but that moment stands out as the most important lesson my brother taught me.

31. What is the main subject of the passage?

A. The relationship between Mark and Steve.

B. The important lesson Mark learned in school.

C. Steve’s important role in Mark’s growing process.

D. Mark and Steve’s respect for living things.

32. In the story about the pen, which of the following lessons did Steve teach his brother?

   A. Respect for personal property.                         B. Respect for life.

   C. Sympathy for people with problems.                D. The value of honesty.

33. According to the writer, which was the most important lesson Steve taught his young brother?

   A. Respect for living things.                  B. Responsibility for one’s actions.

   C. The value of honesty.                       D. Care for the property of others.

34. The underlined word “knocked” in the second paragraph means ______.

   A. tapped            B. beat          C. struck            D. trembled

35. From the passage, we can infer the following statements EXCEPT that ______.

   A. Mark benefited a lot from Steve after their father passed away.

   B. Mark was not as excellent as his elder brother Steve.

   C. The small wood dog carved by his father meant a lot to Mark.

   D. Mark used to be a naughty boy in his childhood.

第三节：完型填空（共20小题；每小题1.5分，满分30）
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，选出可以填人空白处的最佳选项，并在答题卡上将该项涂黑。
Eleven-year-old Angela was attacked by a rare    36   involving her nerve system．She was unable to walk and her movement was   37   in other ways as well．The doctors did not hold much   38   of her ever recovering from this illness．They   39   she'd spend the rest of her life in a wheelchair．They said that few, if any, were able to come back to    40   after suffering from this disease．The little girl was   41  ．There, lying in her hospital bed, she would swear that she was   42   going to be walking again someday．
She was moved to a specialized   43   hospital in the San Francisco Bay area．Whatever   44   could be applied to her case were used．The doctors were attracted by her undefeatable spirit．They taught her about imaging about seeing herself walking．If it would do   45   else, it would at least give her hope and something   46   to do in the long waking hours in her bed． Angela would work as hard as possible in physical treatment, and in exercise sessions．But she worked just as hard lying there faithfully doing her   37   , visualizing herself moving, moving, moving ！
One day,   48   she was attempting, with all her might, to imagine her legs moving again, it seemed as though something   49   happened: the bed moved! It began to move around the room! She   50   out, "Look what I'm doing! Look'．Look! I can do it'．I moved! I moved!"
Of course, at this very moment everyone else in the hospital was screaming, too, and running for   51   People were screaming, equipment was   52   and glass was breaking．You see, it was the recent San Francisco earthquake．   53   don't tell that to Angela．She's   54   that she did it．
And now only a few years later, she's back in school, on her own   55  ．No crutches, no wheelchair．You see, anyone who can shake the earth between San Francisco and Oakland can defeat a little disease, can't they?
36．A．problem   B．disease         C．accident    D．error
37．A．reduced    B．avoided       C．restricted  D．forced
38．A．thought    B．idea          C．opinion     D．hope
39．A．predicted  B．prepared      C．admitted   D．decided
40．A．active       B．normal        C．alive     D．confident
41．A．fearless     B．peaceful       C．patient      D．stainless
42．A．probably   B．approximately  C．sincerely   D．certainly
43．A．recovery   B．experiment       C．practice    D．exercise
44．A．schedules  B．instructions      C．supports    D．treatments
45．A．something B．anything      C．nothing     D．everything
46．A．admirable B．interesting     C．optimistic D．appropriate
47．A．training    B．imaging       C．expectation      D．performance
48．A．however   B．after         C．just      D．as
49．A．useful       B．regretful      C．surprising D．disgusting
50．A．screamed  B．laughed       C．spoke       D．sang
51．A．ground     B．cover         C．ceiling      D．bed
52．A．accelerating     B．running    C．appearing  D．falling
53．A．For      B．So            C．But      D．Or
54．A．convinced B．supposed      C．realized    D．accepted
55．A．parts     B．legs          C．body     D．role