What does home really mean? Is it the people around you who make a place familiar and loved, or is it the tie to land that's been in your family for generations? Anna Quindlen's new novel investigates both, seen through the eyes of Mimi Miller, who narrates the story of her life—and of the strike to the people and to the land she loves—her 1960s girlhood to the present day.
The book begins with the summer Mimi is 11 and everything around her is about to change in Miller's Valley. She lives with her parents, her older brothers—rakish Tommy and practical Eddie—and her Aunt Ruth, her mother's sister, who keeps a terrible secret, and who never leaves the confines of her small house behind Mimi's. The farm has been in their family for almost 200 years, and Mimi can't imagine life beyond it.
The land has always been wet, it seems to Mimi. There's always a sump pump running in Mimi's house, and when it storms, mud comes right up to the front porch. But then, the government steps in, deciding to flood “6, 400 acres of old family farms and small ramshackle homes and turn it into a reservoir by using the dam to divert the river,” transforming corn fields into strip malls, drowning the valley under water, along with a way of life that has been perpetuating itself for generations. They'll buy up homes and resettle everyone, insisting that new is so much better than old. At first the town stubbornly resists, except for Mimi's mother who announces, “Let the water cover the whole damn place.”
But Mimi is desperate to stay. She has no idea what else there is to want, or where else she could possibly live or who else she could possibly be other than a girl on a farm with her family. Her father, too, is tied to the land he loves, and Ruth balks at even stepping outside her house. But as the river is allowed in, dampening the ground, loosening ties, it seems to drown people little by little, forcing secrets to float up to the surface and change things in ways you might never expect.
Quindlen makes her characters so richly alive, so believable, that it's impossible not to feel every doubt and dream they harbor, or share every tragedy that falls on them. Mimi's mother is mysteriously bitter toward Ruth, and closemouthed about why. Eddie grows into an efficient man, more like a "friendly visitor" than a brother, who sees and seizes opportunity, becoming an engineer and building new homes for the displaced, as if the future were like a bright, shiny penny. Tommy, the sibling Mimi adores, gets by working odd jobs, car repair, and later selling drugs and going off to war and prison, a man who just tragically never found his place.
But what's Mimi's place? “I knew there was a world outside,” she says. “I just had a hard time imagining it.” When she gets highest honors in school, her mother insists, “This is your road to something better than this.” And then to Mimi's astonishment, she gets a full scholarship to medical school. She doesn't want to leave, but finally, slowly, she begins to move toward her future, to gather ambition and purpose, and to truly see beyond the confines of her life.
If there is a weak link at all, it's Donald, a childhood friend of Mimi's who moves away, but hasn't made more effort to visit more often. Still, the novel is overwhelmingly moving. We experience how the land changes through the “foggy mist of summer” to “the dry-ice mist of winter.” And the floodwaters channel in, “so that on the evening of the third day the people in town thought Miller's Valley was having its first earthquake."
The ending fast-forwards like a tide, carrying all these lives we've come to deeply care for into middle age and beyond, as people marry, birth children, move on and, yes, die. Family bonds are restructured, and secrets are revealed that either wedge people apart or bind them together. But Quindlen also allows her characters mystery —and some of what's unknown stays unknown, which polishes her story with a kind of haunting grace and truthfulness.
1.Anna Quindlen investigates the meaning of home through the following EXCEPT .
A.Mimi Miller and her life experiences B.the offence to the people in Miller's Valley
C.the invasion to the land in Miller's Valley D.different outlooks on leaving the family farm
2.The underlined word “perpetuating” in Paragraph 3 means .
A.existing B.preserving C.involving D.keeping
3.What does the sentence “Ruth balks at even stepping outside her house.” in Paragraph 4 mean？
A.Ruth is reluctant to depart from her house.
B.Mimi's Aunt is greatly attached to the family farm.
C.Mimi's Aunt has a personality of natural reserve.
D.Ruth cannot resist walking around her house.
4.The characters in Quindlen's novel are .
A.full of ambition and purpose B.weakly linked interpersonally
C.strikingly lifelike and impressive D.clearly revealed to the public in the end
5.What might Mimi's future fortune be like？
A.She is admitted to medical school through a full scholarship.
B.She seizes opportunity to become a female engineer.
C.She eventually finds her place beyond the confines of her life.
D.She steps into the road to something other than highest honors in school.
6.What could the passage most probably be classified into？
A.A biography. B.A book review. C.A news report. D.An argumentative essay.
高三英语阅读选择中等难度题
What does home really mean? Is it the people around you who make a place familiar and loved, or is it the tie to land that's been in your family for generations? Anna Quindlen's new novel investigates both, seen through the eyes of Mimi Miller, who narrates the story of her life—and of the strike to the people and to the land she loves—her 1960s girlhood to the present day.
The book begins with the summer Mimi is 11 and everything around her is about to change in Miller's Valley. She lives with her parents, her older brothers—rakish Tommy and practical Eddie—and her Aunt Ruth, her mother's sister, who keeps a terrible secret, and who never leaves the confines of her small house behind Mimi's. The farm has been in their family for almost 200 years, and Mimi can't imagine life beyond it.
The land has always been wet, it seems to Mimi. There's always a sump pump running in Mimi's house, and when it storms, mud comes right up to the front porch. But then, the government steps in, deciding to flood “6, 400 acres of old family farms and small ramshackle homes and turn it into a reservoir by using the dam to divert the river,” transforming corn fields into strip malls, drowning the valley under water, along with a way of life that has been perpetuating itself for generations. They'll buy up homes and resettle everyone, insisting that new is so much better than old. At first the town stubbornly resists, except for Mimi's mother who announces, “Let the water cover the whole damn place.”
But Mimi is desperate to stay. She has no idea what else there is to want, or where else she could possibly live or who else she could possibly be other than a girl on a farm with her family. Her father, too, is tied to the land he loves, and Ruth balks at even stepping outside her house. But as the river is allowed in, dampening the ground, loosening ties, it seems to drown people little by little, forcing secrets to float up to the surface and change things in ways you might never expect.
Quindlen makes her characters so richly alive, so believable, that it's impossible not to feel every doubt and dream they harbor, or share every tragedy that falls on them. Mimi's mother is mysteriously bitter toward Ruth, and closemouthed about why. Eddie grows into an efficient man, more like a "friendly visitor" than a brother, who sees and seizes opportunity, becoming an engineer and building new homes for the displaced, as if the future were like a bright, shiny penny. Tommy, the sibling Mimi adores, gets by working odd jobs, car repair, and later selling drugs and going off to war and prison, a man who just tragically never found his place.
But what's Mimi's place? “I knew there was a world outside,” she says. “I just had a hard time imagining it.” When she gets highest honors in school, her mother insists, “This is your road to something better than this.” And then to Mimi's astonishment, she gets a full scholarship to medical school. She doesn't want to leave, but finally, slowly, she begins to move toward her future, to gather ambition and purpose, and to truly see beyond the confines of her life.
If there is a weak link at all, it's Donald, a childhood friend of Mimi's who moves away, but hasn't made more effort to visit more often. Still, the novel is overwhelmingly moving. We experience how the land changes through the “foggy mist of summer” to “the dry-ice mist of winter.” And the floodwaters channel in, “so that on the evening of the third day the people in town thought Miller's Valley was having its first earthquake."
The ending fast-forwards like a tide, carrying all these lives we've come to deeply care for into middle age and beyond, as people marry, birth children, move on and, yes, die. Family bonds are restructured, and secrets are revealed that either wedge people apart or bind them together. But Quindlen also allows her characters mystery —and some of what's unknown stays unknown, which polishes her story with a kind of haunting grace and truthfulness.
1.Anna Quindlen investigates the meaning of home through the following EXCEPT .
A.Mimi Miller and her life experiences B.the offence to the people in Miller's Valley
C.the invasion to the land in Miller's Valley D.different outlooks on leaving the family farm
2.The underlined word “perpetuating” in Paragraph 3 means .
A.existing B.preserving C.involving D.keeping
3.What does the sentence “Ruth balks at even stepping outside her house.” in Paragraph 4 mean？
A.Ruth is reluctant to depart from her house.
B.Mimi's Aunt is greatly attached to the family farm.
C.Mimi's Aunt has a personality of natural reserve.
D.Ruth cannot resist walking around her house.
4.The characters in Quindlen's novel are .
A.full of ambition and purpose B.weakly linked interpersonally
C.strikingly lifelike and impressive D.clearly revealed to the public in the end
5.What might Mimi's future fortune be like？
A.She is admitted to medical school through a full scholarship.
B.She seizes opportunity to become a female engineer.
C.She eventually finds her place beyond the confines of her life.
D.She steps into the road to something other than highest honors in school.
6.What could the passage most probably be classified into？
A.A biography. B.A book review. C.A news report. D.An argumentative essay.
高三英语阅读选择中等难度题查看答案及解析
Are you likely to suffer from loss of memory from time to time? Smart cameras can now remind you.
Khai Truong at the University of Toronto in Canada and his colleagues have created a smartphone app that records interactions with household objects. The system involves barcode-like (像条形码的) markers that the user sticks to objects whose use they would like to track.
With the smartphone worn around your neck, the app automatically records a short video clip (片段) when a marked object comes into view. “The user is able to look through the application and see the last time they interacted with it,” says Truong. The app can help people track the state of objects - such as whether they locked a door or switched a light off - as well as routine actions. Ai present, it successfully records about 75 percent of interactions, but only works for fixed objects.
A similar but separate system can solve the problem. E. Akin Sisbot and Jonathan Connell at IBM Research in New York have invented a ceiling-mounted (安装在天花板上的) camera that monitors objects and people. It continuously watches an area, such as a tabletop in your home, tracking the placement of objects in relation to one another. It also remembers who first brought an object into the field of view as well as if anyone moved it afterwards. When asked, “Where is my wallet?” the system might respond, “It is next to the vase, under the magazines.”
The camera could also be used in factories or operating theatres to track vital tools, says Sisbot For now, the camera uses a depth sensor to spot things. It is limited to detecting objects thicker than 3 centimetres, meaning that it has trouble with thin objects such as a closed laptop placed flat on a table.
The accuracy of such smart camera systems may need to improve before they are widely adopted. “You've got to trust the technology for it to be of any comfort or reassurance” says Geoffrey Ward at the University of Essex in the UK.
1.How does the smartphone app mentioned in paragraph 2 work?
A.By recording the movement of marked objects.
B.By informing owners of potential dangers.
C.By switching off electricity automatically.
D.By scanning barcodes of household objects.
2.What is the limitation of the ceiling-mounted camera?
A.It hardly senses objects without barcode-like makers.
B.It fails to find objects thinner than 3 centimetres.
C.It is unlikely to make a sound.
D.It is unable to recognize movable objects.
3.What's Geoffrey Ward's attitude towards the smart camera systems?
A.Supportive. B.Ambiguous.
C.Concerned. D.Sceptical
4.What's the best title for the text?
A.New Smartphones Make Life Easier
B.Smart Cameras Help Increase Home Security
C.New Systems Help People with Memory Problems
D.Camera Designers Face New Challenges
高三英语阅读选择中等难度题查看答案及解析
In modern society there is a great deal of argument about competition. Some value it highly , believing that it is responsible for social progress and prosperity . Others say that competition is bad ; that it sets one person against another ; that it leads to unfriendly relationship between people .
I have taught many children who held the belief that their self-worth relied (依赖)on how well they performed at tennis and other skills . For them, playing well and winning are often life-and-death affairs. In their single-minded pursuit ( 追求)of success , the development of many other human qualities is sadly forgotten .
However ，while some seem to be lost in the desire to succeed , others take an opposite attitude .In a culture which values only the winner and pays no attention to the ordinary players , they strongly blame competition . Among the most vocal are youngsters who have suffered under competitive pressures from their parents or society. Teaching these young people . I often observe in them a desire to fail . They seem to seek failure by not trying to win or achieve success . By not trying , they always have an excuse : “I may have lost . but it doesn’t matter because I really didn’t try . “What is not usually admitted by themselves is the belief that if they had really tried and lost, that would mean a lot . Such a loss would be a measure of their worth . Clearly, this belief is the same as that of the true competitors who try to prove themselves . Both are based on the mistaken belief that one’s self-respect relies on how well one performs in comparison with others . Both are afraid of not being valued . Only as this basic and often troublesome fear begins to dissolve (缓解) can we discover a new meaning in competition .
1.What does this passage mainly talk about?
A.Competition helps to set up self-respect.
B.Opinions about competition are different among people
C.Competition is harmful to personal quality development.
D.Failures are necessary experiences in competition
2.Why do some people favor competition according to the passage?
A.It pushes society forward. B.It builds up a sense of duty.
C.It improves personal abilities. D.It encourages individual efforts
3.The underlined phrase “the most vocal” in Paragraph 3 means .
A.those who try their best to win
B.those who value competition most highly
C.those who are against competition most strongly
D.those who rely on others most for success
4.Which point of view may the author agree to?
A.Every effort should be paid back.
B.Competition should be encouraged.
C.Winning should be a life-and-death matter.
D.Fear of failure should be removed in competition.
高三英语阅读选择中等难度题查看答案及解析
阅读短文，按照题目要求用英语回答问题。
Reading with Rover is a reading program where children read to dogs. In addition to Reading with Rover, which is based on Washington state, there are many such reading programs around the country. The goal of all these programs is to improve the reading skills of children with reading problems by having children read to dogs.
When reading aloud in the classroom, many children with reading problems and poor reading skills feel frightened. They have little confidence in themselves and are afraid of being laughed at. They may also feel that reading is difficult, boring and stressful. However, when children read to dogs, reading becomes a fun and non-stressful experience for both the children and the dogs. Dogs don’t criticize, judge or laugh at the children’s reading ability.
Reading with Rover and other programs like it have been a huge success, resulting in improved reading skills for a significant number of participating children with reading problems. In addition to making learning enjoyable, when children read to dogs, it increases their sense of worth and self-confidence.
As part of the Reading with Rover program, the children read to dogs that are registered therapy dogs. These are dogs that have been trained and tested. Along with their owners, these dogs have become registered therapy teams.
A recent research study was conducted by the University of California, which concluded that when children read to dogs, it can increase their reading skills by thirty percent.
Children who took part in this study remarked, “I feel relaxed when I am reading to a dog because I am having fun.” “The dogs don’t care if you read really badly so you just keep going.”
When children read to dogs and improve their reading skills, it becomes just another example of how wonderful dogs are and how important they are to our society.
1.What’s the aim of Reading with Rover?(no more than 10 words)
2.Why does reading become a fun and non-stressful experience when children read to dogs?(no more than 12 words)
3.What’s Paragraph 3 mainly about?(no more than 12 words)
4.What does the underlined word “conducted” mean in the fifth paragraph?(no more than 2 words)
5.What do you think of Reading with Rover and other programs like it? Please explain.(no more than 25 words)
高三英语阅读表达中等难度题查看答案及解析
Do what you love and love what you do, and success will come? Well, we wish. 1.It takes more than just passion to succeed in anything.
Passion is just emotion; care is an action.
Wishing hard and wanting something really badly won’t give you anything. Passion is a barely controllable emotion, and emotion is not always reliable. 2.
In today’s world where people always talk about finding your passion, it still seems vague (模糊的) to many. On the other hand, if you’re asked to find something you care about, it’s easier for you to take action.
3.
There’s a lot of work to do besides being enthusiastic. For example, you can be enthusiastic about painting, but if you don’t have any art sense and painting skills, you can hardly become an expert in painting. 4.The belief that you’ll do it well anyway as long as you like it is just an illusion.
Learn not just what you care about, but what’s around that too.
When you’ve got your focus, try to map out the skills you need to get better at that. When you have the learning plan ready, apply that course you need, get yourself the tools required and start learning and practicing.
Success is a way to go, but you can start right now.
5.But if you’ve already got your passion, it will be good enough to make that your foundation and motivation to keep moving. Start mapping out the skills you need and take actions, Instead of passively letting your passion wander around, be active and do something that will push you forward.
A.Care is different, it implies actions.
B.“Like it” doesn’t mean “Good at it”.
C.Passion alone doesn’t guarantee success.
D.However, reality is not as simple as we want it to be.
E.You are good at something and you need the world to know.
F.Desire to make a difference in the world with your strengths.
G.To become an expert, you need to be always learning and improving your skill.
高三英语七选五中等难度题查看答案及解析
I am a good mother to three children. I have tried never to let my profession stand in the way of being a good parent.
I no longer consider myself the center of the universe. I show up. I listen. I try to laugh. I am a good friend to my husband. I have tried to make marriage vows mean what they say. I am a good friend to my friends, and they to me. Without them, there would be nothing to say to you today.
So here's what I wanted to tell you today: Get a life. A real life, not a desire of the next promotion, the bigger paycheck, the larger house.
Get a life in which you are not alone. Find people you love, and who love you. And remember that love is not leisure, it is work. Pick up the phone. Send an e-mail. Write a letter. And realize that life is the best thing and that you have no business taking it for granted.
It is so easy to waste our lives, our days, our hours, our minutes. It is so easy to exist instead of to live. I learned to live many years ago. Something really, really bad happened to me, something that changed my life in ways that, if I had my choice, it would never have been changed at all. And what I learned from it is what, today, seems to be the hardest lesson of all.
I learned to love the journey, not the destination. I learned to look at all the good in the world and try to give some of it back because I believed in it, completely and totally. And I tried to do that, in part, by telling others what I had learned.
By telling them this: Read in the backyard with the sun on your face. Learn to be happy. And think of life as a deadly illness, because if you do, you will live it with joy and passion as it ought to be lived.
1.The best title of this passage probably is
A.Love your friends B.Live a real life
C.Don't waste time D.Be a good mother and wife
2.How did the author form her view of life?
A.Through working and social experience. B.By learning from her friends.
C.Through an unfortunate experience. D.From her children and husband
3.By the underlined sentence "It is so easy to exist instead of to live" in the fifth paragraph, the author really means that people tend to .
A.make a living rather than live a real life B.work rather than enjoy life
C.waste a lot in life D.forget the most important lessons in life
4.What's the author's attitude toward work?
A.Do it well to serve others. B.To earn enough money to make life better.
C.Try your best to get higher position and pay. D.Don't let it affect your real life.
高三英语阅读选择中等难度题查看答案及解析
Roughly the size of a soda can, sitting on a bookshelf, a relatively harmless gadget (小装置) may be turning friends away from your home. The elephant in your living room is your Internet-connected security camera, a device people are increasingly using for peace of mind in their homes. But few stop to think about the effect these devices may have on house guests. Should you tell your friends, for instance, that they’re being recorded while you all watch the big game together?
“It’s certainly new territory, especially as home security cameras become easier to fix,” says Lizzie Post, president of the Emily Post Institute, America’s foremost manners advisors. “I think it will be very interesting to see what etiquette (礼仪) emerges in terms of whether you tell people you have a camera or not, and whether guests have a right to ask that it be turned off, if it’s not a security issue.”
Post wants to make clear that she’s not talking about legal rights, but rather personal preferences. She also wants to explain that there are no right or wrong answers regarding manners on this front yet, because the technology is just now becoming mainstream. Besides, the Emily Post Institute doesn’t enforce manners.
When it comes to security cameras, Post says it’s a host’s responsibility to make sure guests feel comfortable within their home. “I am always a fan of being open and honest.” For instance, if the host casually acknowledges that there is a camera in the room by telling a story about it, that may be enough to provide an opening for a guest to say if they are uncomfortable.
However, if a contractor (承包商) is working in your home, you don’t need to tell them that there are cameras watching. Then again, the air of responsibility that the camera generates can also work in contractors’ favor. “If anything does go wrong while they’re in the house, they don’t want to be blamed for it,” she says. “In fact, the camera could be the thing that proves that they didn’t steal the $20, or knock the vase off the table.”
1.For what reason may your friends feel unwilling to visit your home?
A.They don’t want their photos to be circulated on the Internet.
B.The security camera fixed may invade their privacy.
C.The security camera may turn out to be harmful to their health.
D.They may not be willing to interact with your family members.
2.What does Lizzie Post say is new territory?
A.Etiquette around home security cameras.
B.The effect of manners advice on the public.
C.Cost of applying new technologies at home.
D.The increasing use of home security devices.
3.What is Lizzie Post mainly discussing regarding the use of home security cameras?
A.Moral standards and immoral issues.
B.Likes and dislikes of individuals.
C.Legal rights and duties of guests.
D.The possible impact on manners.
4.In what way can the home security camera benefit visitors to your home?
A.It can satisfy their curiosity.
B.It can help them learn new technology.
C.It can make their visit more enjoyable.
D.It can prove their innocence.
高三英语阅读选择中等难度题查看答案及解析
When you're a teen you start being more aware of what other people think. There seems to be a “right” thing to wear, or say, or do. There also seem to be things that you shouldn’t do-things that could be embarrassing, or lose your points with friends. This can lead to social anxiety.
Some kids feel so anxious that they develop something called social anxiety disorder (障碍), which is diagnosed (诊断) when you worry so much about how you appear to others that you stop doing things you need to and want to do for fear of embarrassing yourself.
Kids with social anxiety disorder aren't just nervous when they’re at parties or giving a speech in class. Even small interactions (互动), like answering a question in class or eating with friends in the cafeteria can feel extremely scary to kids with social anxiety disorder. That's because they fear they might accidentally do something embarrassing or offensive, and it will make others judge or even reject them.
And while kids who are just shy will gradually warm up to new people and situations over time, kids with social anxiety don't. Shyness might hold you back to some degree from doing things, but it won't deeply influence your ability to do your job as a teenager, which is to function in school, function in your family, and to have friends and be a part of your peer-related community. But social anxiety will.
Many teens experience anxiety disorders. Being brave and telling someone how you feel might seem scary, but if you can get over that obstacle, someone will want to listen. Asking for help can be hard, but it really is important.
1.What is the main cause of social anxiety?
A.Lack of friendship. B.One's appearance.
C.School performance. D.Other’s judgment.
2.Who is most likely to be diagnosed with social anxiety?
A.Alice, who skips school to avoid answering questions in class.
B.David, who always thinks he can't do as well as his classmates.
C.Chris, who feels nervous every time he gives a speech in public.
D.Jenny, who has been in low spirits since she failed the last exam.
3.Social anxiety disorder differs from shyness in that .
A.it influences people around you
B.it only makes your grades suffer
C.it greatly affects your normal life
D.it is related to your study or work
4.What is the best title for the text?
A.What Is Social Anxiety Disorder
B.How Social Fear Ruins Relationships
C.Why Teens Suffer from Social Anxiety?
D.When Anxiety Disorders Go Unnoticed
高三英语阅读选择中等难度题查看答案及解析
In today's fast paced，high stress world people are working longer hours than ever，and often exhaust themselves at day's end in front of the television to relax enough to begin again in the morning. However，television watching，for most people，does not really lower stress. Studies show that TV viewing more than an hour or so actually creates stress and，especially in women，may lead to the blues. Most individuals are unaware that doing some exercise after work makes them more energetic since it increases energy levels.
Wise use of free time does not mean getting an advanced degree，although the mental encouragement gained through education is unbeatable in keeping your mind active. Learning new things nearly always adds a spark to your daily life，especially if it is a favorite topic，such as sport，fashion，or art. Also，look through your bookstore or library to find books on your interests. Try to replace a half hour TV watching with reading.
It is reported that in the United States recently，many individuals have as few as two good friends. Long work hours and car commute act to separate people from each other. This separation is deadly. Find ways to meet people at the end of the day and on weekends. Often this can be best done by combining activities，such as by joining a walking group to get both exercise and companionship. Taking a class will lift your spirits and allow you to meet others with similar interests. Hobbies are great for reducing stress and provide another opportunity for social interaction.
Using your free time to aid your health may include these elements and many more，such as going to concerts and spending time with family. Overall，the key is to spend less free time being passive. The best ways to use free time are to be mentally and physically active，spend some time outdoors，and interact with other people on a regular basis.
1.What can we learn from the passage?
A.Watching television may cause women to feel depressed.
B.Finding interests and hobbies in common means taking a class.
C.Going to concerts is the best way to make you mentally active.
D.Getting an advanced degree in education always lights up your life.
2.What does the underlined word “commute” in Paragraph 3 probably mean?
A.The arrangement to work every day.
B.The journey to work every day.
C.The communication between people.
D.The separation between people.
3.Which would be the best title for the passage?
A.Live a Happy and Healthy Life
B.Relax Yourself in Various Ways
C.Spend Your Free Time Wisely
D.Interact With Others Outdoors
高三英语阅读选择中等难度题查看答案及解析
Some people will do just about anything to save money. And I am one of them. Take my family’s last vacation or example. It was my six-year-old son’s winter break from school, and we were heading home from Fort Lauderdale after a weeklong trip. The flight was overbooked, and Delta, the airline, offered us $400 per person in credits to give up our seats and leave the next day. I had meetings in New York, so I had to get back. But that didn’t mean my husband and my son couldn’t stay. I took my nine-month-old and took off for home.
The next day, my husband and son were offered more credits to take an even later flight. Yes, I encouraged - okay, ordered them to wait it out at the airport, to “earn” more Delta Dollars. Our total take: $1,600. Not bad, huh?
Now some people may think I’m a bad mother and not such a great wife either. But as a big-time bargain hunter, I know the value of a dollar. And these days, a good deal is something few of us can afford to pass up.
I’ve made a living looking for the best deals and exposing the worst tricks. I have been the consumer reporter of NBC’s Today Show for over a decade. I have written a couple of books including one titled Tricks of the Trade: A Consumer Survival Guide. And I really do what I believe in.
I tell you this because there is no shame in getting your money’s worth. I’m also tightfisted when it comes to shoes, clothes for my children, and expensive restaurants. But I wouldn’t hesitate to spend on a good haircut. It keeps longer, and it’s the first thing people notice. And I will also spend on a classic piece of furniture. Quality lasts.
1.Why did Delta give the author’s family credits?
A.They had early bookings. B.They took a later flight.
C.Their flight had been delayed. D.Their flight had been cancelled.
2.What can we learn about the author?
A.She rarely misses a good deal. B.She seldom makes a compromise.
C.She is very strict with her children. D.She is interested in cheap products.
3.What does the author do?
A.She’s a housewife. B.She’s a writer.
C.She’s a media person. D.She’s a business woman.
4.What does the author want to tell us?
A.How to expose bad tricks. B.How to reserve airline seats.
C.How to make a business deal. D.How to spend money wisely.
高三英语阅读选择中等难度题查看答案及解析