Take a trip across America,by way of an advice column (專欄),and you'll find plenty worth
celebrating.I once asked my readers in the Chicago SunTimes,where I took the place of Ann
Landers,to name the person to whom they would say"I owe you one."Victor La Porte,45,wrote
to me from his hospital bed about his kid brother,Tony.
     For three years,Victor had been terribly sick,His arms were black and blue.He often passed
out.His kidneys(腎) had failed,and dialysis(腎透析) wasn't working.Victor was dying.
     Doctors said a transplant(移植) would help,and Tony kept offering his kidney,but Victor
refused.He didn't want to put his brother through the pain or the risk of living with one kidney.
Tony insisted."Hey,I love you,"he kept saying.Transplant doctors explained the reason God
gave us two kidneys is that we can offer one.It took a long time to persuade Victor,but finally
he agreed.Several times the brothers went to the hospital,only to have the operation put off
because of Victor's infections(感染)．But Tony never thought of backing out.After each
disappointment,he announced,"We're coming back!"He even got Victor a Tshirt that read I'M
NO QUITTER.
     Finally the operations were arranged.The one on Tony was harder.Doctors had to remove
part of his rib to get the kidney out.His recover took longer than Victor's, and he had more pain.
     Victor wrote:"Because of Tony's unselfishness,I have a chance to see my four children grow
up.I'll never know my brother's pain,fears and feelings.All I know is the love we share.How can
I tell him thanks?Maybe by letting everyone know I have the greatest brother in the world."

1．The writer tells us that if you want to find something worth celebrating,you can________.

A．read some newspapers
B．listen to the radio
C．travel around America
D．watch TV

2．Which of the following is TRUE?

A．Victor asked Tony to offer his kidney.
B．A transplant may be the only way to save Victor.
C．Tony gave his life to his brother.
D．Victor knew his brother's pain was not much more than his.

3．From this passage we know________.

A．a(chǎn) person can live without kidneys
B．God gives us each one kidney
C．a(chǎn) person can hardly live with one kidney
D．a(chǎn) person can live with one kidney

4．"I'M NO QUITTER." means________.

A．I'm not disappointed
B．I won't agree
C．I won't back out
D．I'm coming back

     I was hurrying to our basketball game one morning when Hillary Barnes,the most popular girl,in school,stopped me."Are you the twin who won the art competition?"she asked.
     "No,that's Christine.I'm Katie."I said.
     We were not identical twins；we looked quite different.She could defeat Snow White in a beauty
contest!Compared to Christine,I felt like one of Cinderella's stepsisters.
     One Saturday Christine gave me a painting lesson because I was always attempting to be artistic too.
But I knocked over the vase of flowers,spilling water onto Christine's painting.Instead of becoming angry,
though,she turned the whole mess into a dreamy masterpiece(杰作)．You could look at it five different
ways and see five different things.With this brilliant creation,she won First Prize in the art competition.I
really envied her,but I knew it wasn't her fault and I was the one with wild,unmanageable hair and no talent.
     Joining Christine's basketball team was my latest effort to be like her.
     On the way to the gym,I'd made up my mind to give my best performance in that day's game.I made
preparations with great enthusiasm."Christine,here!"I tossed her a ball.But it was too high,she leapt for it,it slipped through her fingers and crashed into the tape recorder that was used to play the national anthem
before each game.
     I muttered apologies as I picked up the broken pieces of the recorder.Coach looked at the mess and
asked,"How are we going to play the song now?"
     Christine suggested,"Let Katie sing it!She's always singing at home."
     Coach asked."Would you?"I found myself nodding.
     Coach announced the national anthem and everyone stood.Standing before a microphone,I looked up
to the flag.The notes seemed to flow from deep inside me,and my voice was steady and clear.When I
finished,the gym was silent Then it was filled with applause.As the game started.teammates patted my back and gave me the"thumbs up"sign.Laura Jamison said."You should try out for the school musical!"I Nodded and said that I might.
     The next morning Hillary Barnes stopped me in the hallway and asked,"Are you the twin who sings?"
     "Yes,that's me,"I answered,grining(露齒笑)as I walked to class.
1．The authur uses"Snow White"and"Cinderella's stepsisters"to show
A．how dissimilar the twins were in appearanee
B．why Christine could win the art competition
C．who was the most popular girl at school
D．what the twins characters were like
2．What can we learn from Paragraph 4?
A．Christine was unpleasant to her sister.
B．Katie showed a lot of ability in painting too.
C．The masterpiece was painted by the two sisters.
D．Katie took a reasonably balanced view of her sister.
3．Christine recommended Katie for the national anthem because _____.
A．she knew perfectly well what Katie had a gift for.
B．she wanted to repair the damage she had caused.
C．she thought Katie should be punished.
D．she would like to help the coach.
4．What is the message of the story?
A．Bad situations help become popular.
B．People are talented in different ways.
C．People should always be nice to others.
D．Unsuccessful attempts are well worth the effort.

     __1__ He had more money than he could ever spend,and he was admired and looked up to by his
community.__2__ He wasn't happy.All his life he had been pursuing happiness and striving(奮斗)for
happiness,but he had never been able to find it.
     Then one day he heard about a hidden temple in Nepal that had a special room that contained the
secret of happiness.__3__ After many years of searching and countless hardships he arrived there.He was tired and penniless,but he knew that none of that mattered now because he had found the temple.He asked a wise,smiling monk(和尚)if he could enter the special room.The monk agreed and showed him the stairs
leading to the room.__4__ He stared into the room with sunlight streaming through the window and saw
what he had come so far to find.There hanging on the wall was the secret of happiness.The man gazed at
his reflection in the mirror and laughed.
     __5__ Happiness is a choice that we can make.Don't spend the rest of your life searching the world for happiness then.Just look in the mirror and laugh.Just let the happiness flow from your heart,mind,and soul
until it fills your life and the lives of all those around you.
A．He immediately sold all that he owned and set out to find this hidden temple.
B．The man found the secret of happiness at last.
C．But he knew that something was missing in his life.
D．He climbed them with legs shaking with expectation and slowly opened the door.
E．There once was a very wealthy and successful man.
F．It is time that we all realized that we were the secret of our own happiness.
G．It was difficult to find the temple in Nepal.

     The Man of Many Secrets - Harry Houdini - was one of the greatest American entertainers in the
theater this century. He was a man famous for his escapes - from prison cells, from wooden boxes
floating in rivers, from locked tanks full of water. He appeared in theaters all over Europe and America.
Crowds came to see the great Houdini and his "magic" tricks.
     Of course, his secret was not magic, or supernatural powers. It was simply strength. He had the
ability to move his toes as well as he moved his fingers. He could move his body into almost any position
he wanted.
     Houdini started working in the entertainment world when he was 17, in 1891. He and his brother
Theo performed card tricks in club in New York. They called themselves the Houdini Brothers. When
Harry married in 1894, he and his wife Bess worked together as magician and assistant. But for a long
time they were not very successful. Then Harry performed his first prison escape, in Chicago in 1898.
Harry persuaded a detective to let him try to escape from the prison, and he invited the local
newspapermen to watch.
     It was the publicity(宣傳) that came from this that started Harry Houdini's success. Harry had fingers
trained to escape from handcuffs and toes trained to escape ankle chins. But his biggest secret was how
he unlocked the prison doors. Every time he went into the prison cell, Bess gave him a kiss for good
luck - and a small skeleton key, which is a key that fits many locks, pass quickly from her mouth to his.
     Harry used these prison escapes to build his fame. He arranged to escape from the local prison of
every town he visited. In the afternoon, the people of the town would read about it in their local
newspapers, and in the evening every seat in the local theater would be full. What was the result?
World-wild fame, and a name remembered today.

1. What did Houdini depends on when his success in prison escaped ?

A. his special tricks and supernatural powers  
B. his magic tricks and unhuman powers
C. his unusual ability and a skeleton key      
D. his wisdom and magic tricks

2. In the fourth paragraph, the underlined word "this" refers to _______.

A. the year 1898                  
B. his first prison escape
C. his failure escape  
D. Harry Houdini's success

3. It can be inferred from the passage that Houdini became famous _______.

A. in 1898
C. at the age of 23
B. before he died  
D. when he was about 24

4. Which of the following statement is right?

A. Someone gave him a key that fits many locks.
B. He made a key that could open every door.
C. Everyone hated him very much.
D. He was trained to escape again.

5. Which of the following is the best title for the passage?

A. How to escape from the prison.        
B. A Man of Many Secrets
C. World-wild Fame     
D. Great Escape  

     When I was younger, I wished for a Porsche and a big house. That was my idea of success. I took all the advanced classes possible and took the exams with my mind set on going to a key school. I just knew
that I would somehow become famous and be able to afford that car and the dream house. All the way
through junior year, my mind was planning this beautiful future.
     Then in the eleventh grade, many losses changed my mind. First, one of my friends died at the age of
16. Soon after, my great-grandmother passed away, and on the same day, my beloved fourth-grade
teacher. They left me not knowing what to do or where to go. Death had never touched me so closely.
      After a long period of emptiness, it finally struck me; life is not promised and neither is my future
success. While I was going through the actions in an attempt to achieve material success, I was not
enjoying my daily life. I was just existing. It occurred to me that life has more purposes than acquiring
possessions, which will only be yours until you can no longer keep up with the payments. I realized that
finding inner peace, purpose and happiness will stick with you forever and that is real success.
     Enjoying life's precious changes makes a person more successful than a wealthy person who is not
content and takes everything for granted. The summer before senior year, my attitude changed greatly.
Instead of memorizing facts, I began learning information. Instead of focusing on the future, I focused on
today and the blessings and successes that come with it.
     I still make excellent grades, but now I dedicate weeks to studying instead of preparing for exams,
and I think about the future with a deeper sense of meaning. Success, just like beauty, is in the eye of the
beholder(旁觀者). For me, being successful means truly living life each day, being thankful, and affecting
the world.

1.The main idea of the first paragraph is ____________.

A. the writer drew a beautiful picture for his future
B. the writer was an intelligent student at school
C. the writer was mad for success
D. the writer devoted himself to material success

2.Which of the following statements is TRUE according to the passage?

A..People can truly enjoy daily life by trying to achieve material success.
B.Success can only be measured with a Porsche and a big house.
C.People should concentrate on today and success will follow afterwards.
D.The pursuit of inner peace, purpose and happiness is a real success.

3.  The purpose of the writer is probably to ____________.

A..advise us to have a correct attitude towards success
B.inspire us to lead an active life each day
C.remind us to set a goal for our life
D.persuade us to work hard to achieve our success

     A newly-married Sweden couple on a four-month honeymoon were hit by a series of natural
disasters, such as the Australian floods, Christchurch earthquake and Japanese tsunami.
     Stefan and Erika Svanstrom left Stockholm, Sweden, on December 6 and were immediately
trapped in Munich, Germany, due to one of Europe's worst snowstorms. Traveling with their baby
daughter, they flew on to Cairns in Australia which was then struck by one of the most fierce
cyclones(龍卷風(fēng)) in the nation's history. From there, the couple were forced to shelter for 24 hours
on the cold floor of a shopping centre with 2500 others.
     "Trees were being knocked over and big branches were scattered across the streets," Mr
Svanstrom told Sweden's Expressen newspaper. "We escaped by the skin of our teeth. It was so
close an encounter with death."
     They then headed south to Brisbane but the city was experiencing massive flooding, so they
crossed the country to Perth where they narrowly escaped raging bush fires. The couple then flew
to Christchurch, New Zealand, arriving just after a massive magnitude(震級) 6.3 earthquake
destroyed the city on February 22.
     Mrs Svanstrom said, "When we got there the whole town was a war zone."
     "We could not visit the city since it was completely blocked off, so instead we traveled around
before going to Japan."
     But days after the Svanstroms arrived, Tokyo was rocked by Japan's largest earthquake since
records began. "The trembling was horrible and we saw roofs fly off the buildings," Mr Svanstrom
said. "It was like the buildings were shaking back and forth."
     The family returned to Stockholm on March 29 after a much calmer visit to their last destination
China. But Mr Svanstrom ---who also survived the destructive tsunami that hit southeast Asia in
2004 ---said the marriage was still going strong. He added, "I know marriages have to endure some
trials (考驗), but I think we have been through most of them. We've certainly experienced more than
our fair share of disasters, but the most important thing is that we're together and happy."

1. How many disasters in total did the couple experience during their honeymoon?

A.Three.      
B. Four.    
C. Five.    
D. Six.

2. Which of the following expressions can replace the underlined sentence?

A.We ran away in fear.
B.We narrowly escaped from the cyclone.
C.We escaped with others' help.
D.We ran away fortunately.

3. What is the real meaning of what Mr Svanstrom said after the honeymoon?

A.He regarded the disasters as the tests in their marriage and would face any difficulty without fear.
B.He felt fortunate that they survived the disasters but dared not travel again in a period of time.
C.He thought they should share the suffering and would provide disaster relief to the affected areas.
D.He believed the horrible experience a sign that they should not be together and they might break up.

4. Which of the following is the best title for the passage?

A.A Series of Natural Disasters
B.The Unforgettable Honeymoon From Hell
C.A Close Look at Disasters
D.An Indifferent Journey