Short and shy, Ben Saunders was the last kid in his class picked for any sports team. "Football, tennis Cricket — anything with a round ball, I was useless." he says now with a laugh. But back then he was the object of jokes in school gym classes in England's rural Devonshire.

It was a mountain bike he received for his 15^th birthday that changed him. At first the teen went biking alone in a nearby forest. Then he began to cycle along with a runner friend. Gradually, Saunders set his mind building up his body, increasing his speed, strength and endurance. At age 18, he ran his first marathon.

The following year, he met John Ridgway, who became famous in the 1960s for rowing an open boat across the Atlantic Ocean. Saunders was hired as an instructor at Ridgway's school of Adventure in Scotland, where he learned about the older man's cold-water exploits (成就). Intrigued, Saunders read all he could about Arctic explorers and North Pole expeditions, then decided that this would be his future. Journeys to the Pole aren't the usual holidays for British country boys, and many people dismissed his dream as fantasy. "John Ridgway was one of the few who didn't say, 'You are completely crazy,'" Saunders says.

In 2001, after becoming a skilled skier, Saunders started his first long-distance expedition toward the North Pole. He suffered frostbite, had a closer encounter (遭遇) with a polar bear and pushed his body to the limit.

Saunders has since become the youngest person to ski alone to the North Pole, and he's skied more of the Arctic by himself than any other Briton. His old playmates would not believe the transformation.

This October, Saunders, 27, heads south to explore from the coast of Antarctica to the South Pole and back, an 1800-mile journey that has never been completed on skis.

1.The turning point in Saunders' life came when ________.

2.We can learn from the text that Ridgway ________.

3.What do we know about Saunders?

4.The underlined word "Intrigued" in the third paragraph probably means ________.

5.It can be inferred that Saunders' journey to the North Pole ________.

One night I was sitting in my room half-listening as my 15-year-old brother Tommy fought with my 12-year-old brother Kevin. I didn’t pay attention when Kevin rushed up the stairs with the hurt on his face.

About 20 minutes later, as I was walking upstairs I heard Kevin crying inside the bathroom. I knocked on the door and asked, “Hey Kevin, do you want to talk?”

No answer.

I tried again, “Why don’t you come out of there?”

Again, no answer.

So, joking around, I grabbed a stack of （一摞）cards and a pencil and wrote, “If you don’t want to talk, we can write notes to each other.”

An hour later I was still sitting on the floor outside the bathroom with two stacks of cards in front of me. One was blank and one was cards from Kevin on which he had translated all his yucky feelings into words for me. As I read one of Kevin’s notes, tears came to my eyes. It said, “Nobody in this family cares about me. I’m not the youngest, and I’m not the oldest. Tommy thinks I’m silly and Dad wishes he had the other Kevin as a kid because he’s better at basketball. And you’re never around to even notice me.”

Tears came to my eyes as I wrote back to him. “You know Kevin, I really do love you and I’m sorry I don’t always show it. I am here for you and you are loved in this family.”

There was no answer for a while, but then I heard a tearing sound coming from inside the bathroom. Kevin, who had run out of cards wrote on a torn paper cup. “Thanks.”

I wrote back “For what?” it returned to me with “Loving me” on it.

Since then, I try my best to never only half-notice my family members any more. Kevin and I have a closer relationship now. And sometimes when one of us notices that the other is upset, we’ll smile and say “Write it on a paper cup.”

1.The underlined word “yucky” most probably means ____.

     A. upset     B. exciting     C. terrible     D. amazing

2.What could be the reason that Kevin’s Dad doesn’t like him?

A.Kevin is not as clever as his brother.

B.He is neither the youngest nor the oldest.

C.Kevin doesn’t like to make friends with others.

D.Kevin is not good at playing basketball.

3.What do we know about the writer?

A.She has two children in her family.

B.She didn’t pay enough attention to Kevin before.

C.She used to show her love to Kevin.

D.She has a closer relationship with Tommy after that.

4.What does the writer want to tell us?

A.Everyone should show how they love their family members.

B.It’s hard to get on well with family members.

C.It’s important to keep peace in the family.

D.We should try our best to stop our children from fighting.

No one knows how man learned to make words. Perhaps he began by making sounds like those made by animals. Perhaps he grunted like a pig when he lifted something heavy. Perhaps he made sounds like those he heard all round him—water splashing, bees humming, a stone falling to the ground. Somehow he learned to make words. As the centuries went by, he made more and more new words. This is what we mean by language.

People living in different countries made different kinds of words. Today there are about fifteen hundred different languages in the world. Each contains four or five hundred thousand words. But we do not need all these. Only a few thousand words are used in everyday life. The words you know are called your vocabulary. You should try to make your vocabulary larger. Read as many books as you can. There are plenty of books written in easy language. Your dictionary is your most useful book.

1. What do we mean by language?

A. Sounds made by man.???????

B. All the words made by man.

C. Different kinds of sound.?????

D. The way man learns.

2. Form the passage we know that long long ago________.

A. no one learned how to make sounds or words

B. animals taught man to learn the language

C. man learned the language by lifting heavy things, falling to the ground,and so on

D. man followed a lot of things in nature to make sounds and words

3. What is the number of languages spoken in the world today?

A. 500. ????????????? ????????????? B. 5,000.????????????? ????????????? C. 1,500.????????????? ????????????? D. 15,000.

4.In which sentence can the word "contain(s)" be put so that it is a right one?

A. I________ several dictionaries. ????????????? B. Sea water________ salt.

C. A dog _______ four legs.????? ????????????? D. Mr. Smith _____ glasses on his nose.

5. Which of the followings is the best if we want to make our vocabulary larger?

A. To read more books.????????????? ????????????? ???

B. To use the words in everyday life.

C. To use the words in class.????? ?????????????

D. To write the words.