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Have you collected anything since you were young? These people have!
Tony from Germany has collected more than 290,000 pens from 140 countries. He has collected pens for more than 10 years. The most expensive pen in his collection is made of gold! He also started a pen collecting club.
Angelika from the UK has collected Barbie dolls since she was a child. She has collected 1,125 dolls. She changes the dolls' clothes once a month and often brushes their hair! She also collects dolls of Barbie's boyfriend.
Ron from the US likes collecting key rings（钥匙扣）. He has collected twenty-four thousand key rings since he was young. His key rings are all different－that means no two key rings are the same! He has been a world record holder for 13 years.
Zhu Yue from China has collected erasers for 20 years. At the age of 11, she visited Shenzhen with her parents. For the first time Zhu Yue was fascinated（使着迷）by erasers after she saw them in a shop. Ever since then she has collected every new kind of erasers. Now she has collected 100,000 erasers.
1.What does Tony collect?
A.Dolls. B.Key rings. C.Pens. D.Erasers.
2.Who collects Barbie dolls?
A.Tony. B.Angelika. C.Ron. D.Zhu Yue.
3.How many key rings has Ron collected?
A.290,000. B.100,000. C.24,000. D.1,125.
难度: 简单查看答案及解析
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Giving a Hand
Jaime, a new immigrant（移民）of the USA, was going to watch his daughter's first show in a school play. His daughter, Carol, was five years old. She was a student at the local public school. Carol did not have a very big role in the school play. She was just playing a rain cloud in a play about the drought in California. Carol had just one line. Her line was, "I am sad enough to cry about how dry the state is."
Jaime and his wife made sure to arrive early so that they could get a good seat to watch the show. They found seats in the front row. Before the show began, the schoolmaster made an introductory speech. The speech was about how hard the students and teachers worked together to make the play possible. At the end of the speech, the schoolmaster said, "Let's give the school staff a hand".
Jaime, whose English was not very good, stood up when the schoolmaster said this. He knew that when people said "to give someone a hand" they meant they needed help. Jaime always wanted to help, especially at his daughter's school. Jaime thought maybe they needed help backstage.
Jaime's wife put her arm in front of her husband. "Where are you going?" she asked in a low voice. "They need a hand," Jaime replied. His wife explained that "to give someone a hand" could also mean to applaud（鼓掌）someone. When you applaud someone you clap your hands（拍手）after their performance. You are not supposed to stand up and try to help others. "They don't need help. They just want us to clap," Jaime's wife explained. Jaime felt a little embarrassed. He sat back down and began clapping along with the rest of the audience.
Jaime thought to himself that someone needed to give the English language a hand. How could one phrase mean two different things? He meant the English language needed help.
1.Why did Jaime and his wife arrive at the play early?
A.To talk to other parents. B.To wish their daughter good luck.
C.To get good seats to watch the show. D.To listen to the speech of the schoolmaster.
2.Jaime thought "giving someone a hand" meant __________.
A.helping someone B.clapping your hands
C.holding someone's hand D.giving your hand to someone
3.What can we learn from the passage?
A.Jaime stood up to applaud. B.Jaime is a warm-hearted man.
C.Jaime was better at English than his wife. D.Jaime's daughter played an important role in the show.
难度: 中等查看答案及解析
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Money is what people use to buy things they need or want. A long time ago, people didn't use money. So how did they get the things they wanted? Well, there is a long and interesting story about this.
At first, they would exchange something they had for something they needed. For example, if the shoemaker needed some bread, he would give the baker shoes and the baker would give him bread. This was called "bartering". Bartering worked fine for a while. But after the baker had too many shoes, the shoemaker still needed more bread. What could they do? The solution to this problem was money.
Money is basically an agreement among people. People agree that some metal or paper will be worth a certain amount of bread or a certain number of shoes. There were many earlier forms of money, such as cattle, salt, grain（谷物）and shells. But it was not easy to move them or store them.
So coins began to take the place of things. Coins had a set value and could be stored long. A coin says right on it how much it is worth. Different coins are worth different amounts. It became possible for people to trade in a standardized（标准）way.
About three hundred years ago, paper money came into wider use. Paper money is cheaper to make than coins. It is also easier to carry around. Now people use paper money and coins in most countries. We call these kinds of money cash.
Cash has been popular for hundreds of years. But these days, things seem to have changed. Cashless payment（无现金支付）has come into our lives and changed our world.
China was the first country in the world to use paper money. Now, centuries later, analysts（分析家）believe that China may soon become the first cashless society. Cashless payment apps such as Alipay and WeChat Pay are becoming more common in China. The buyer just scans（扫描）the quick-respond code（二维码）of the seller, or the other way around. Then they can get the things they want. No physical money is needed in this process. Is tomorrow already here?
1.Which is the correct order of the development of money?
①Coins
②Bartering
③Paper money
④Cashless payment
⑤Cattle, grain and shells
A.②⑤①③④ B.⑤③②①④ C.②⑤①④③ D.⑤④③②①
2.What can we learn from the passage?
A.Coins are the earliest form of money in the world.
B.People cannot buy things by showing the quick-respond code.
C.Both coins and paper money are very popular around the world.
D.Paper money costs more to make than coins because they are worth more.
3.What does the author want to tell us in the last paragraph?
A.China is the first cashless country in the world.
B.People will start using cashless payment tomorrow.
C.People won't use any physical money in the future.
D.Cashless payment is the new stage of money development.
难度: 中等查看答案及解析
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Superhero movies and TV shows are very popular today. A new study shows something is missing from superhero stories, though. Most popular superheroes are men. The new study says kids want to see more superheroes who are women.
The study was done by two groups. One is the Women's Media Center. The other is BBC America. The Women's Media Center is a charity（慈善）group. It fights for fair treatment（待遇）of women in things like TV and movies. BBC America is a TV channel.
More than 2,000 people took part in the study. Some were kids aged from 10 to 19. Others were the parents of younger children.
Not Enough Strong Woman Characters
The study shows that most girls feel there are not enough female role models in entertainment（娱乐）. They think there should be more strong female characters. They want to see superheroes that look like them. Boys answered questions in the study, too. Most agreed with the girls. They want to see more female superheroes, like Wonder Woman.
Julie Burton runs the Women's Media Center. She said TV and movies had to make changes. They must provide more role models for girls. Female characters should reflect（反映）girls of all different backgrounds, she said. It is important for all to see people who look like them in entertainment.
Helping Girls Feel More Brave and Confident
Burton said seeing strong female characters is important for girls. It helps them build confidence. These characters give girls someone to look up to, she explained. This can inspire girls. It can also help them to feel brave.
Sarah Barnett agrees. She runs BBC America. "If you can't see her, you can't be her," Barnett said.
The study asked girls how they feel when they see powerful female characters on screen. The results were interesting. They showed that seeing female characters has a big effect on girls. Boys like seeing male superheroes on screen. But the study showed the effect on boys was smaller. Maybe that is because seeing male superheroes is pretty common. Female superheroes are rarer. Seeing them is more exciting.
More Women in Entertainment
The report is a part of a new plan at BBC America. It is called #Galaxy Of Women. The goal is to improve how women are shown in entertainment.
The study came out the day after BBC America started a new season of "Doctor Who". It is a popular science fiction show. The Doctor is an alien（外星人）who can travel through time and change bodies. Twelve different actors have played the Doctor since the show started in 1963. This season, the Doctor is a woman, played by Jodie Whittaker. This is the first time the Doctor has been played by a woman.
1.What can we learn from the passage?
A.The study was done by Men's Media Center and BBC.
B.There are enough women superheroes in entertainment.
C.Julie Burton believes TV and movies need to make changes.
D.More than 2,000 kids aged from 10 to 19 took part in the study.
2.What do the underlined sentences mean? Maybe that is because _________.
A.male superheroes are strong, and female superheroes are pretty.
B.there are more chances to see male superheroes compared to female ones.
C.seeing male superheroes is more exciting than seeing female superheroes.
D.it is less likely to see male superhero characters than female ones on screen.
3.Why did BBC America start the #Galaxy Of Women?
A.To make sure there was a woman Doctor on screen.
B.To better the way women appeared on TV and films.
C.Because BBC America had a new plan and it was a part of it.
D.Because the new season of science fiction "Doctor Who" was popular.
4.What's the best title for the passage?
A.Is It Good to See Superheroes? B.More Superheroes, More confidence
C.More Strong Female Characters or Not? D.Science Fiction and Women Characters
难度: 困难查看答案及解析
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阅读理解
Google is a company's name, but it has also grown into a verb that means, "to do an Internet search." Now everyone and their grandma know what it means to Google it. You know that you're doing something big when your company name becomes a verb.
Google wasn't the first company to invent their product. Lycos released their search engine in 1993. Yahoo! came out in 1994. AltaVista began serving results in 1995. Google did not come out until 1998. That is a major head start in the fast moving world of tech. So how did Google overtake（超过）their competitors who had such huge leads in time and money? Maybe one good idea made all the difference.
There are millions of sites on the Internet. How does a search engine know which ones are relevant to your search? This is a question that great minds have been working on for decades. To understand how Google changed the game, you need to know how search engines worked in 1998. Back then most websites looked at the words in your query（查询）.They counted how many times those words appeared on each page. Then they might return pages where the words in your query appeared the most. This system did not work well and people often had to click through pages of results to find what they wanted.
Google was the first search engine that began considering links. Links are those blue underlined words that take you to other pages when you click on them. Larry Page, cofounder of Google, believed that meaningful data could be drawn from how those links connect. He was right. Google's search results were much better than their rivals'（对手）.They would soon become the world's most used search engine.
It wasn't just the great search results that led to Google becoming so well liked. It also had to do with the way that they presented their product. The home pages of most other search engines were filled with all kinds of things. But Google's homepage was, and still is, clean. There's nothing on it but the logo, the search box, and a few links. In fact, when they were first testing it, users would wait at the home page and not do anything. When asked why, they said that they were "waiting for the rest of the page to load". But the fresh design grew on people once they got used to it.
These days Google has its hands in everything from self-driving cars to helping humans live longer. Though they have many other popular products, they will always be best known for their search engine. Not only is Google search engine a fantastic product, it is a standing example that one good idea（and a lot of hard work）can change the world.
1.Which might be a reason why Google became so popular?
A.Google's homepage was clean.
B.Google's homepage loaded quickly.
C.Google provided a lot of information on their homepage.
D.Google counted the times of the words appeared in query.
2.What is the author's purpose in writing this article?
A.To explain how Google overtook its rivals.
B.To compare Google and other search engines.
C.To persuade readers to use Google for Internet searches.
D.To discuss how companies can influence language over time.
3.What is the main idea of the fourth paragraph?
A.Links allow people to surf from one website to the next.
B.Google is a website that serves important links to users.
C.Larry Page contributed to the Internet by inventing the link.
D.Larry Page's ideas about links helped Google get to the top.
4.What is the best title for the passage?
A.A Short History of Search Engines
B.A Better Way: How Google Rose to the Top
C.Yahoo! vs Google: War of the Big Companies
D.How Search Engines Work and Why They're Important
难度: 困难查看答案及解析