Tom Brady, a Californian, was an excellent quarterback(四分卫)at Junipero Serra High School. But when he arrived at the University of Michigan, he didn’t see much playing time during his first three years on campus. He considered going back to a college in California, but he decided to stick it out. He didn’t become a starter until the second half of his senior year. After becoming a National Football League(NFL)player, he was not allowed to play as a starter. However, he kept improving his skills and preparing each week like he was the starter.
In 200l, his second season, he only got in on the act because the starter was injured. Fans though Tom would be just a fill-in. But Tom led his team New England Patriots to a victory in his first start, then they won four of five, and then finished the year with six victories. Each week he seemed to get a little better, and people began to recognize him as a dark horse. New England Patriots got into the Super Bowl, fighting against the defending(卫冕的)champions St.Louis Rams. Tom led a final-minute game-winning drive. He was no longer a nobody.
Today, Brady is considered perhaps the greatest quarterback ever. He’d become a superstar. Yet he had never lost that fire, that drive, and that sense that the world didn’t believe in him. At 37, he said that he would play until fifty if his body allowed him to do so. And he even told his teammates that he wanted to play forever if possible.
His teammates had dreamed of being him. Hogan was thirteen in February of 2002 when Brady and New England Patriots beat St.Louis Rams. Lengel was eleven at the time, watching with his grandfather in Kentucky. White was ten in Florida. Mitchell was nine in Georgia. These teammates were Tom’s big fans who since childhood had viewed from TV how he did the impossible. “He gave us the encouragement,” Hogan said.
He kept telling his teammates to keep going when the game wasn’t over. He isn’t the biggest, the fastest, and the strongest football player in the world. But he may be the most strong-minded.
【小题1】When did Brady start to become known?A.After he took the place of an NFL player as a starter. |
B.When he entered a team of a college in California. |
C.After he played for the University of Michigan. |
D.When he became an NFL player. |
A.He cares less about winning or losing. |
B.He has kept his strong liking for football. |
C.He spends more time improving his team. |
D.He has changed his style of playing football. |
A.To show his friendliness to others. |
B.To show he has a very strong will. |
C.To show he has the best teammates. |
D.To show his big influence on others. |
A.Never judge a book by its cover. |
B.The secret of success is to stick it out. |
C.To eat the fruit, you must climb the tree. |
D.In time of danger, one’s mind works fast. |
Not long ago, my wife and I tried a new diet—not to lose weight but to answer a question about climate change. Scientists have reported that the world is heating up even faster than they predicted just a few years ago. The consequences, they say, could be severe if we don’t keep reducing emissions of carbon dioxide (CO₂) and other greenhouse gases that are trapping heat in our atmosphere. But what can we do about it as individuals? And will our efforts really make any difference?
We decided to try an experiment: For one month we would track our personal emissions of CO₂ to see how much we could cut back. The average U.S. household produces about 80 kilos of CO₂, a day by doing commonplace things like turning on air conditioning or driving cars. This is more than twice the European average and almost five times the global average. But how much should we try to reduce?
I checked with Tim Flannery, author of The Weather Makers: How Man Is Changing the Climate and What It Means for Life on Earth. In his book, he challenged readers to make deep cuts in personal emissions to keep the world from reaching critical tipping points, such as the melting of the ice sheets in Greenland or West Antarctica. “To stay below that limitation, we need to reduce CO₂ emissions by 80 percent,” Tim Flannery said. “That sounds like a lot,” my wife said. “Can we really do that?”
It seemed unlikely to me, too. How close could we come to a lifestyle the planet could handle? Finally, we agreed to aim for 80 percent less than the U.S. average: a daily diet of about 13 kilograms of CO₂. Our first challenge was to find ways to convert our daily activities into kilos of CO₂ so that we could change our habits if necessary.
To get a rough idea of our current carbon footprint, I put numbers from recent bills into several calculators on websites. The results that came out were not very flattering. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) website figured our annual CO₂ emissions at 24,618 kilos, 30 percent higher than the average U.S. family with two people. Clearly, we had further to go than I thought.
【小题1】Why did the author try a new diet?A.He intended to lose pounds. |
B.He tried to lead a healthy life. |
C.He was devoted to saving the world. |
D.He decided to perform an experiment. |
A.melting points. | B.freezing points. |
C.burning points. | D.boiling points. |
A.fairly satisfied. | B.not very pleased. |
C.not very confident. | D.greatly enthusiastic. |
A.In a novel. | B.In a magazine. | C.In a biography. | D.In a diary. |
According to Guglielmo Cavallo and Roger Chartier, reading aloud was a common practice in the ancient world, the Middle Ages, and as late as the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Readers were “listeners attentive to a reading voice,” and “the text addressed to the ear as much as to the eye.” The significance of reading aloud continued well into the nineteenth century.
Using Charles Dickens' nineteenth century as a point of departure, it would be useful to look at the familial and social uses of reading aloud and reflect on the functional change of the practice. Dickens habitually read his work to a domestic audience or friends. In his later years he also read to a broader public crowd. Chapters of reading aloud also abound in Dickens' own literary works. More importantly, he took into consideration the Victorian practice when composing his prose, so much so that his writing is meant to be heard, not only read on the page.
Performing a literary text orally in a Victorian family is well documented. Apart from promoting a pleasant family relationship, reading aloud was also a means of protecting young people from the danger of solitary (孤独的) reading. Reading aloud was a tool for parental guidance. By means of reading aloud, parents could also introduced literature to their children and as such the practice combined leisure and more serious purposes such as religious cultivation in the youths. Within the family, it was commonplace for the father to read aloud. Dickens read to his children: one of his surviving and often-reprinted photographs features him posing on a chair, reading to his two daughters.
Reading aloud in the nineteenth century was as much a class phenomenon as a family affair, which points to a widespread belief that Victorian readership primarily meant a middle-class readership. Those who fell outside this group tended to be overlooked by Victorian publishers. Despite this, Dickens, with his publishers Chapman and Hall, managed to distribute literary reading materials to people from different social classes by reducing the price of novels. This was also made possible with the technological and mechanical advances in printing and the spread of railway networks at the time.
Since the literacy level of this section of the population was still low before school attendance was made compulsory in 1870 by the Education Act, a considerable number of people from lower classes would listen to recitals of texts. Dickens' readers, who were from such social backgrounds, might have heard Dickens in this manner. Several biographers of Dickens also draw attention to the fact that it was typical for his texts to be read aloud in Victorian England, and thus illiteracy was not an obstacle for reading Dickens. Reading was no longer a chiefly closeted form of entertainment practiced by the middle class at home.
A working-class home was in many ways not convenient for reading: there were too many distractions, the lighting was bad, and the home was also often half a workhouse. As a result, the Victorians from the non-middle classes tended to find relaxation outside the home such as in parks and squares, which were ideal places for the public to go while away their limited leisure time. Reading aloud, in particular public reading, to some extent blurred the distinctions between classes. The Victorian middle class defined its identity through differences with other classes. Dickens's popularity among readers from the non-middle classes contributed to the creation of a new class of readers who read through listening.
Different readers of Dickens were not reading solitarily and “jealously” to use Walter Benjamin's term. Instead, they often enjoyed a more communal experience, an experience that is generally lacking in today's world. Modem audiobooks can be considered a contemporary version of the practice. However, while the twentieth-and twentieth-first-century trend for individuals to listen to audiobooks keeps some characteristics of traditional reading aloud—such as “listeners attentive to a reading voice” and the ear being the focus—it is a far more solitary activity.
【小题1】How did the practice of reading aloud influence Dickens's works?A.He started to write for a broader public crowd. |
B.He included more readable contents in his novels. |
C.Scenes of reading aloud became common in his works. |
D.His works were intended to be both heard and read. |
A.2 | B.3 | C.4 | D.5 |
A.Working place. | B.His/ Her own house. |
C.Nearby bookstores. | D.Trafalgar Square. |
A.Different classes stated to appreciate and read literary works together. |
B.People from lower social classes became accepted as middle-class. |
C.The differences between classes grew less significant than before. |
D.A non-class society in which everyone could read started to form. |
A.New reading trends for individuals. | B.The harm of modern audiobooks. |
C.The material for modern reading. | D.Reading aloud in contemporary societies. |
Celestine Thompson left Mississippi when she was 14 years old and eventually settled in New York,where she spent more than 30 years of her life,according to WLOX 13News. After surviving a fire in 1992,Thompson was in a coma(昏迷)for two years and has since experienced memory loss. The 90-year-old found it difficult to recall details about her family.
But later she remembered the name of her nephew Clarence Woodway. Then another woman who knows Thompson in Mississippi was able to track Woodway down and help reunite Thompson with her large family.
“In our minds,my brother and I were talking that she wasn’t here anymore,because we hadn’t heard from her for a very long time,”Donald Davis,another one of Thompson’s nephews,told the media.“You know,we were overjoyed when we found out that we had gotten in contact with her.”
A few of Thompson’s relatives visited her in New York,and then arranged a larger reunion which was held this past Saturday in Gulfport,Mississippi,the Associated Press reported.
Thompson now lives in Greensboro,Alabama,with a caretaker,and,although she is yet to meet them all,she has regained quite a sizeable family of 23 nieces and nephews,64 grand nieces and nephews,66 great-grand nieces and nephews and 34 great-great-grand nieces and nephews,according to the Associated Press.
【小题1】What can we know about Thompson?
A.She suffered memory loss and forgot everything about herself. |
B.She lives with a caretaker and her relatives in Alabama at present. |
C.She’s lost contact with her family since she left her hometown |
D.She had a larger reunion with her family members in Mississippi. |
A.A woman who knows her. |
B.People from WLOX 13 News. |
C.The Associated Press. |
D.The caretaker she's living with. |
A."Three. | B.Four. | C.Five. | D.Six. |
A.Great hopes make a great woman. |
B.Time and tide wait for no man. |
C.Life wonders can really take place. |
D.Misfortune will tell what fortune is. |
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