When I was fourteen, I earned money in the su...

When I was fourteen, I earned money in the summer by cutting lawns（草坪）, and within a few weeks I had built up a body of customers. I got to know people by the flowers they planted that I had to remember not to cut down, by the things they lost in the grass or struck in the ground on purpose. I reached the point with most of them when I knew in advance what complaint was about to be spoken, which request was most important. And I learned something about the measure of my neighbors by their preferred method of payment: by the job, by the month—or not at all.

Mr. Ballou fell into the last category, and he always had a reason why. On one day, he had no change for a fifty, on another he was flat out of checks, on another, he was simply out when I knocked on his door. Still, except for the money apart, he was a nice enough guy, always waving or tipping his hat when he’d seen me from a distance. I figured him for a thin retirement check, maybe a work-related injury that kept him from doing his own yard work. Sure, I kept track of the total, but I didn’t worry about the amount too much. Grass was grass, and the little that Mr. Ballou’s property comprised didn’t take long to trim (修剪).

Then, one late afternoon in mid-July, the hottest time of the year, I was walking by his house and he opened the door, mentioned me to come inside. The hall was cool, shaded, and it took my eyes a minute to adjust to the dim light.

“I owe you,” Mr Ballou said, “but…”

I thought I’d save him the trouble of thinking of a new excuse. “No problem. Don’t worry about it.”

“The bank made a mistake in my account,” he continued, ignoring my words. “It will be cleared up in a day or two. But in the meantime I thought perhaps you could choose one or two volumes for a down payment.

He gestured toward the walls and I saw that books were stacked (堆放) everywhere. It was like a library, except with no order to the arrangement.

“Take your time,” Mr. Ballou encouraged. “Read, borrow, keep, or find something you like. What do you read?”

“I don’t know.” And I didn’t. I generally read what was in front of me, what I could get from the paperback stack at the drugstore, what I found at the library, magazines, the back of cereal boxes, comics. The idea of consciously seeking out a special title was new to me, but, I realized, not without appeal--- so I started to look through the piles of books.

“You actually read all of these?”

“This isn’t much,” Mr. Ballou said. “This is nothing, just what I’ve kept, the ones worth looking at a second time.”

“Pick for me, then.”

He raised his eyebrows, cocked his head, and regarded me as though measuring me for a suit. After a moment, he nodded, searched through a stack, and handed me a dark red hardbound book, fairly thick.

“The Last of the Just,” I read. “By Andre Schwarz-Bart. What’s it about?”

“You tell me,” he said. “Next week.”

I started after supper, sitting outdoors on an uncomfortable kitchen chair. Within a few pages, the yard, the summer, disappeared, and I was plunged into the aching tragedy of the Holocaust, the extraordinary clash of good, represented by one decent man, and evil. Translated from French, the language was elegant, simple, impossible to resist. When the evening light finally failed I moved inside, read all through the night.

To this day, thirty years later, I vividly remember the experience. It was my first voluntary encounter with world literature, and I was amazed by the concentrated power a novel could contain. I lacked the vocabulary, however, to translate my feelings into words, so the next week. When Mr. Ballou asked, “Well?” I only replied, “It was good?”

“Keep it, then,” he said. “Shall I suggest another?”

I nodded, and was presented with the paperback edition of Margaret Mead’s Coming of Age in Samoa (a very important book on the study of the social and cultural development of peoples—anthropology (人类学) ).

To make two long stories short, Mr. Ballou never paid me a cent for cutting his grass that year or the next, but for fifteen years I taught anthropology at Dartmouth College. Summer reading was not the innocent entertainment I had assumed it to be, not a light-hearted, instantly forgettable escape in a hammock (吊床) (though I have since enjoyed many of those, too). A book, if it arrives before you at the right moment, in the proper season, at an internal in the daily business of things, will change the course of all that follows.

1.Before his encounter with Mr. Ballou, the author used to read _____________.

A．anything and everything                  B．only what was given to him

C．only serious novels                      D．nothing in the summer

2.The author found the first book Mr. Ballou gave him _____________.

A．light-hearted and enjoyable               B．dull but well written

C．impossible to put down                   D．difficult to understand

3.From what he said to the author we can guess that Mr. Ballou _______________.

A．read all books twice                     B．did not do much reading

C．read more books than he kept             D．preferred to read hardbound books

4.The following year the author _______________.

A．started studying anthropology at college

B．continued to cut Mr. Ballou’s lawn

C．spent most of his time lazing away in a hammock

D．had forgotten what he had read the summer before

5.The author’s main point is that _____________.

A．summer jobs are really good for young people

B．you should insist on being paid before you do a job

C．a good book can change the direction of your life

D．books are human beings’ best friends

高二英语阅读理解中等难度题查看答案及解析

When I was fourteen, I earned money in the summer by cutting lawns (草坪), and within a few weeks I had built up a body of customers. I got to know people by the flowers they planted that I had to remember not to cut down, by the things they lost in the grass or stuck in the ground on purpose. I reached the point with most of them when I knew in advance what complaint was about to be spoken, which particular request was most important. And I learned something about the measure of my neighbors by their preferred method of payment: by the job, by the month—or not at all.

Mr. Ballou fell into the last category, and he always had a reason why. On one day, he had no change for a fifty, on another he was flat out of checks, and on another, he was simply out when I knocked on his door. Still, except for the money, he was a nice enough guy, always waving or tipping his hat when he’d seen me from a distance. I figured it was a thin retirement check, or maybe a work-related injury that kept him from doing his own yard work. Surely, I kept record of the total, but I didn’t worry about the amount too much. Grass was grass, and Mr. Ballou’s property didn’t take long to trim (修剪).

Then, one late afternoon in mid-July, the hottest time of the year, I was walking by his house and he opened the door, mentioned me to come inside. The hall was cool, shaded, and it took my eyes a minute to adjust to the dim light.　

“I owe you,” Mr. Ballou, “but…”

I thought I’d save him the trouble of thinking of a new excuse. “No problem. Don’t worry about it.”

“The bank made a mistake in my account,” he continued, ignoring my words. “It will be cleared up in a day or two. But in the meantime I thought perhaps you could choose one or two volumes for a down payment (首期付款).

He gestured toward the walls and I saw that books were stacked (堆放) everywhere. It was like a library, except with no order to the arrangement.

“Take your time,” Mr. Ballou encouraged. “Read, borrow, keep. Find something you like. What do you read?”

“I don’t know.” And I didn’t. I generally read what was in front of me, what I could get from the paperback stacked at the drugstore, what I found at the library, magazines, the back of cereal boxes, comics. The idea of consciously seeking out a special title was new to me, but, I realized, not without appeal-- so I started to look through the piles of books.

“You actually read all of these?”

“This isn’t much,” Mr. Ballou said. “This is nothing, just what I’ve kept, the ones worth looking at a second time.”

“Pick for me, then.”

He raised his eyebrows, cocked his head, and regarded me as though measuring me for a suit. After a moment, he nodded, searched through a stack, and handed me a dark red hardbound (精装本) book, fairly thick.

“The Last of the Just,” I read. “By Andre Schwarz-Bart. What’s it about?”

“You tell me,” he said. “Next week.”

I started after supper, sitting outdoors on an uncomfortable kitchen chair. Within a few pages, the yard, the summer, disappeared, and I was thrown into the aching tragedy of the Holocaust, the extraordinary clash of good, represented by one decent man, and evil. Translated from French, the language was elegant, simple, impossible to resist. When the evening light finally failed I moved inside, reading all through the night.

To this day, thirty years later, I vividly remember the experience. It was my first voluntary encounter (接触、遇到) with world literature, and I was stunned (震惊) by the concentrated power a novel could contain. I lacked the vocabulary, however, to translate my feelings into words. So the next week when Mr. Ballou asked, “Well?” I only replied, “It was good.”

“Keep it, then,” he said. “Shall I suggest another?”

I nodded, and was presented with the paperback (平装本) edition of Margaret Mead’s Coming of Age in Samoa ( a very important book on the study of the social and cultural development of peoples-- anthropology (人类学)).

To make two long stories short, Mr. Ballou never paid me a cent for cutting his grass that year or the next, but for fifteen years I taught anthropology at Dartmouth College. Summer reading was not the innocent entertainment I had assumed it to be, not a light-hearted, instantly forgettable escape in a hammock (吊床) (though I have since enjoyed many of those, too). A book, if it arrives before you at the right moment, in the proper season, at an internal in the daily business of things, will change the course of all that follows.

1.The author found the first book Mr. Ballou gave him _________.

A. light-hearted and enjoyable            　　　　　　

B. dull but well written

C. impossible to put down                　　　　　　

D. difficult to understand

2.From what he said to the author, we can infer that Mr. Ballou _________.

A. read all books twice            　　　　　　　　　　　

B. did not do much reading

C. read more books than he kept            　　　　　　

D. preferred to read hardbound books

3.The following year the author _________.

A. started studying anthropology at college　　     　　　

B. continued to cut Mr. Ballou’s lawn

C. spent most of his time lazing away in a hammock　　

D. had forgotten what he had read the summer before

4.The author’s main point is that _________.

A. summer jobs are really good for young people　　　

B. you should insist on being paid before you do a job

C. a good book can change the direction of your life　　

D. a book is like a garden carried in the pocket

高二英语阅读理解中等难度题查看答案及解析

In almost all the colleges in our country now, college students sometimes earn enough money by ______ of part time job to support themselves.

高二英语单项填空中等难度题查看答案及解析

In the old days, his father was not able to earn enough money to ______ his family.

A. raise　　　 　　　　 B. bring up

C. make　　　　 　　　　 D. support

高二英语单项填空中等难度题查看答案及解析

In the 1990s, when an area of Brazilian rainforest the size of Belgium was cut down every year, Brazil was the world’s environmental villain (反派角色) and the Amazonian jungles the image of everything that was going wrong in green places. Now, the Amazon ought to be the image of what is going right. Government figures show that deforestation fell by 70% in the Brazilian Amazon region during the past decade. If clearances had continued at their rate in 2005, an extra 3.2 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide would have been put into the atmosphere. That is an amount equal to a year’s emissions from the European Union. Arguably, then, Brazil is now the world leader in addressing climate change.

But how did it break the vicious cycle (恶性循环)? The answer, according to a paper is that there was no silver bullet but instead a three-stage process in which bans, better governance in frontier areas and consumer pressure on companies worked.

The first stage ran from the mid-1990s to 2004. This was when the government put its efforts into bans and restrictions. The Brazilian Forest Code said that, on every farm in the Amazon, 80% of the land had to be set aside as a forest reserve. As the study observes, this share was so high that the code could not be followed --- or enforced. This was the period of the worst deforestation. Soybean prices were high and there were a vast expansion of soybean farming on the south-eastern border of the rainforest.

During the second stage, which ran from 2005 to 2009, the government tried to boost its ability to police the Amazon. Brazil’s president made stopping deforestation a priority, which resulted in better co-operation between different bits of the government. The area in which farming was banned was increased from a sixth to nearly half of the forest.

The third stage, which began in 2009, was a test of whether a system of restrictions could survive as soybean expansion continued. The government shifted its focus from farms to counties (each state has scores of these). Farmers in the 36 counties with the worst deforestation rates were banned from getting cheap credit until those rates fell.

By any standards, Brazil’s Amazon policy has been a success, made the more remarkable because it relied on restrictions rather than rewards, which might have been expected to have worked better. Over the period of the study, Brazil also turned itself into a farming superpower, so the country has shown it is possible to get a huge increase in food output without destroying the forest. Moreover, the policies so far have been successful among commercial farms who care about the law and respond to market pressures. Most remaining deforestation is by small holders who care rather less about these things, so the government faces the problem of persuading them to change their ways, too. Deforestation has been slowed, but not yet stopped.

1.Brazil is considered to play a leading role in dealing with climate change because ________.

A.it has rainforest as large as Belgium.

B.it has cut down too much rainforest.

C.it has taken action to reduce deforestation.

D.it sent 3.2 billion tons of carbon dioxide into the air.

2.The underlined phrase “silver bullet” in Paragraph 2 most probably refers to _______.

A.a powerful weapon. B.an effective solution.

C.an intelligent device. D.a golden opportunity.

3.What can we infer from the last paragraph?

A.Brazil has successfully eliminated deforestation.

B.All the farmers care much about forest protection.

C.Small farm holders are a headache for the Brazilian government.

D.Both the food output and the forest in Brazil have greatly increased.

4.What can be the best title of the passage?

A.Cutting Down on Cutting Down. B.Brazil, the World Leader in Farming.

C.Restrictions Outperforming Rewards. D.Former Awareness Working Wonders.

高二英语阅读理解困难题查看答案及解析

（题文）Jack ________ in the lab when the power cut occurred.

A. works　　 B. has worked

C. was working　　 D. would work

高二英语单项填空中等难度题查看答案及解析

In some places, women earn money ________ men work at home and raise their children.

A. and       B. when        C. while   D. though

高二英语单项填空中等难度题查看答案及解析

—Why did you drop the chance of earning big money?

—     ，You know, I don’t want to get rich by taking risks.

高二英语单项填空简单题查看答案及解析

The first time I went abroad was when I went to London. It was in the summer holidays about five or six years ago and I went with my friends.　 1.　 , so we decided to travel by coach. We left at five in the morning and the journey to London took about sixteen hours.

We stayed in London for three days, in a youth hotel not far from the centre.　 2.　 . the beds were not very comfortable and the bedroom was very small but it had a wonderful view overlooking the Thames.

　 3.　 . First, we went to see all the famous sites: Big Ben, Piccadilly Circus, and Buckingham Palace. Then we went shopping in Oxford Street. On the last day my friends and I went to Camden market. You can buy all kinds of jewelry and clothes there.　 4.　 . it was really sunny in the afternoon, so we went to watch a football game. Unfortunately, I think the ring fell out of my pocket during the game, and I had to buy another one.

　 5.　 although the youth hotel was not perfect. Next time, I will stay at the Ritz but I will never feel as excited as I did that first time.

A. I really enjoyed visiting London

B. I bought a silver ring for my sister

C. We were all very excited on the coach

D. The plane and train were quite expensive

E. While we were in London we walked a lot

F. My friends and I had a big room on the top floor

G. I’ve been back to London several times since then

高二英语七选五中等难度题查看答案及解析

The first time I went abroad was when I went to London. It was in the summer holidays about five or six years ago and I went with my friends. 　 1.　 , so we decided to travel by coach. We left at five in the morning and the journey to London took about sixteen hours.

We stayed in London for three days, in a youth hotel not far from the centre. 　　 2.　 . The beds were not very comfortable and the bedroom was very small but it had a wonderful view overlooking the Thames.

　　 3.　　 . First, we went to see all the famous sites: Big Ben, Piccadilly Circus, and Buckingham Palace. Then we went shopping in Oxford Street. On the last day my friends and I went to Camden market. You can buy all kinds of jewelry and clothes there. 　 4.　 . It was really sunny in the afternoon, so we went to watch a football game. Unfortunately, I think the ring fell out of my pocket during the game, and I had to buy another one.

　 5.　 , although the youth hotel was not perfect. Next time, I will stay at the Ritz but I will never feel as excited as I did that first time.

A. I really enjoyed visiting London

B. I bought a silver ring for my sister

C. We were all very excited on the coach

D. The plane and train were quite expensive

E. While we were in London we walked a lot

F. My friends and I had a big room on the top floor

G. I’ve been back to London several times since then

高二英语七选五中等难度题查看答案及解析