Most painters discover a style of painting th...

Most painters discover a style of painting that is fit for them and stick to that, especially if people admire their pictures. But Picasso, the great Spanish painter, was like a man who had not yet found his own particular style of painting. He kept on struggling to find the perfect expression till his death in 1973.

Some of Picasso's paintings are rich, soft colored and beautiful. Others are ugly and cruel and strange. But such paintings allow us to imagine things for ourselves. They force us to say to ourselves, “What does he see that makes him paint like that?” And we begin to look under the surface of the things we see.

Picasso painted thousands of pictures in different styles. Sometimes he painted the natural look of things. Sometimes he seemed to break them apart and throw the pieces in our faces. He showed us what the mind knows as well as what the eyes see. At the age of 90,he remained as curious about the world as he had been when he was young. That is why people have called him “the youngest painter in the world.”

1.The ugly cruel and strange paintings by Picasso _______.

A. make us try to notice something hidden in the things

B. allow us to ask questions about them

C. force us to question anything we see

D. cause us to think what Picasso saw was different from what we see

2.The underlined sentence “Sometimes he seemed to break them apart and throw the pieces in our faces” means _____.

A. sometimes he tore his pictures into pieces

B. he broke something he was painting and threw them away

C. sometimes he showed some broken pictures to others

D. things in some of his pictures seem to be in disorder

3.Why have people called Picasso “the youngest painter in the world?”

A. Because he observed things with the eye and the mind.

B. Because he looked young when he was old.

C. Because he never stopped painting he was old.

D. Because he never gave up looking for something new.

高二英语阅读理解中等难度题查看答案及解析

Picasso experimented with different styles of painting,but was most famous for his work in Cubism,________

often uses acute angles and _______the world is represented as being constructed of cubes and rectangles.

A. what; where B. which; where

C. which; which D. that; which

高二英语单项填空困难题查看答案及解析

Mobile technology has created new ways for all types of learning styles to help discover new information．If you want to teach yourself things，here are some apps that will help you．

●Coursera

Perhaps one of the biggest advancements in the history of e﹣learning，Coursera has teamed up with top school like Duke，Stanford，and John Hopkins to bring you direct access to real college courses in psychology，computer science，business，and technology．Each course features pre﹣recorded videos，projects，and quizzes，just like you'd receive inside the classroom．

●Lumosity

This app features three﹣day sessions that target many different areas of brain activity：memory，speed，problem solving，and thinking flexibility．Each day you can participate in a timed session to sharpen mental intelligence and keep track of your progress over time．

●Duolingo

If you've ever wanted to learn a new language but didn't know where to start or couldn't afford expensive apps，you need to check out Duolingo．This app teaches more than a dozen languages by breaking up exercises into mini games．The developer of Duolingo claims that 34 hours of learning in this app equals a full term's worth of school．

●EarthViewer

Ever wonder what Earth looked like a million years ago？There's no better way to know than to look for yourself．Earth Viewer takes you on a digital journey to see how the landscape（地貌） and face of the planet has developed over the past 4.5 billion years，and view climate changes，sea level adjustments，or the evolution of famous cities．

1.Which app makes higher education courses available to its users？

A. Coursera．

B. Lumosity．

C. Duolingo．

D. EarthViewer．

2.What can be inferred about Lumosity？

A. It is the most effective app for language learning．

B. It guarantees you an admission to a key college．

C. It will save all your money upon brain training．

D. It can be helpful to our learning performance．

3.What is special about EarthViewer？

A. It offers wonderful journeys to us．

B. It shows us lots of beautiful city views．

C. It explains how the earth developed to us．

D. It warns us of the effects of climate changes．

高二英语阅读理解中等难度题查看答案及解析

No one knows for sure when advertising first started. It is possible that it grew out of the discovery that some people did certain kinds of work better than others did them. That led to the concept of specialization, which means that people would specialize, or focus, on doing one specific job.

Let’s take a man we’ll call Mr. Fielder, for example. He did everything connected with farming. He planted seeds, tended the fields, and harvested and sold his crops. At the same time, he did many other jobs on the farm. However, he didn’t make the bricks for his house, cut his trees into boards, make the plows (犁), or any of other hundreds of things a farm needs. Instead, he got them from people who specialized in doing each of those things.

Suppose there was another man we shall call Mr. Plowright. Using what he knew about farming and working with iron, Mr. Plowright invented a plow that made farming easier. Mr. Plowright did not really like farming himself and wanted to specialize in making really good plows. Perhaps, he thought, other farmers will trade what they grow for one of my plows.

How did Mr. Plowright let people know what he was doing? Why, he advertised, of course. First he opened a shop and then he put up a sign outside the shop to attract customers. That sign may have been no more than a plow carved into a piece of wood and a simple arrow pointing to the shop door. It was probably all the information people needed to find Mr. Plowright and his really good plows.

Many historians believe that the first outdoor signs were used about five thousand years ago. Even before most people could read, they understood such signs. Shopkeepers would carve into stone, clay, or wood symbols for the products they had for sale.

A medium, in advertising talk, is the way you communicate your message. You might say that the first medium used in advertising was signs with symbols. The second medium was audio, or sound, although that term is not used exactly in the way we use it today. Originally, just the human voice and maybe some kind of simple instrument, such as a bell, were used to get people’s attention.

A crier, in the historical sense, is not someone who weeps easily. It is someone, probably a man, with a voice loud enough to be heard over the other noises of a city. In ancient Egypt, shopkeepers might hire such a person to spread the news about their products. Often this earliest form of advertising involved a newly arrived ship loaded with goods. Perhaps the crier described the goods, explained where they came from, and praised their quality. His job was, in other words, not too different from a TV or radio commercial in today’s world.

1.What probably led to the start of advertisement?

A. The discovery of iron.

B. The specialization of labor.

C. The appearance of new jobs.

D. The development of farming techniques.

2.The writer makes up the two stories of Mr. Fielder and Mr. Plowright in order to __________.

A. explain the origin of advertising

B. predict the future of advertising

C. expose problems in advertising

D. provide suggestions for advertising

3.The last two paragraphs are mainly about __________.

A. the history of advertising

B. the benefits of advertising

C. the early forms of advertising

D. the basic design of advertising

高二英语阅读理解中等难度题查看答案及解析

______ is believed that morning exercise is one of the best ways for a person to keep fit.

高二英语单项填空简单题查看答案及解析

Grandma Moses is among the most famous twentieth-century painters of the United States, yet she did not start painting until she was in her late seventies. As she once said to herself: " I would never sit back in a rocking chair, waiting for someone to help me." No one could have had a more productive old age.

She was born Anna Mary Robertson on a farm in New York State, one of five boys and five girls. At twelve she left home and was in domestic service until, at twenty--seven, she married Thomas Moses, the hired hand of one of her employers. They farmed most of their lives, first in Virginia and then in New York State, at Eagle Bridge. She had ten children, of whom five survived; her husband died in 1927.

Grandma Moses painted a little as a child and made embroidery (刺绣) pictures as a hobby, but only changed to oils in old age because her hands had become too stiff to sew and she wanted to keep busy and pass the time. Her pictures were first sold at the local drugstore and at a market and were soon noticed by a businessman who bought everything she painted. Three of the pictures exhibited in the Museum of Modern Art, and in 1940 she had her first exhibition in New York. Between the 1930's and her death, she produced some 2,000 pictures: detailed and lively portrayals of the country life she had known for so long, with a wonderful sense of color and form. "I think really hard till I think of something really pretty, and then I paint it" she said.

1.According to the passage, Grandma Moses began to paint because she wanted to_______.

2.Grandma Moses spent most of her life ________.

3.The underlined word “portrayals ” means ________.

A. expressions       B explanations     C. descriptions  .  D. impressions

4.From Grandma Moses' description of herself in the first paragraph, it can be inferred that she was ________.

5.Which of the following would be the best title for the passage?

高二英语阅读理解中等难度题查看答案及解析

There is no doubt that the first day of school can be crazy for most of students. New kids wander (徘) around in circles, waiting for the opening of the school door. The school nurse needs your medical records. 1.. The freshmen are running in all directions, looking for their new classrooms.

How can you overcome the first-day chaos? If you will go to a new school, try to arrange a visit before classes begin. Explore any areas, such as the playground, library, or school labs.2..

Get one and read it before your school, starts-then keep it in your school bag until you’re familiar with your new surroundings. Your first day is also the time to bring in school supplies and books.

You should arrange your schoolbag well the night before you go to school so that you won’t look for what you need at the last minute.

Did you try on eight different coats before deciding on what to wear?3.. The best choice is to wear what makes you feel good, whether it is a new coat or an old sweater. If you plan to wear a pair of shoes, make sure they fit you well.

4.. Some start with a gathering, while others may jump right into the first-period class. You’ll meet your new teachers, and they will probably give you an overview of the courses, class rules, what the semester will be like, what supplies you’ll need, and expectations of your performance and behavior. Some teachers will jump into their first lesson, while others may have some activities.5..

A. Some schools even offer maps.

B. But you forget to bring it with you.

C. It all depends on the class and teacher.

D. Don’t depend on your parents any more.

E. Each school has different opening-days.

F. You can also try to ask the teachers for help.

G. Lots of students have difficulty deciding on what to wear on the first day of school.

高二英语七选五中等难度题查看答案及解析

For most city people, the elevator is an unremarkable machine that inspires none of the enthusiasm or interest that Americans afford trains, jets, and even bicycles. Dr. Christopher Wilk is a member of a small group of elevator experts who consider this a misunderstanding. Without the elevator, they point out, there could be no downtown skyscrapers or tall buildings, and city life as we know it would be impossible. In that sense, they argue, the elevator’s role in American history has been no less significant than that of cars. In fact, according to Wilk, the car and the elevator have been locked in a “secret war” for over a century, with cars making it possible for people to spread horizontally(水平地), and elevators pushing them toward life in close groups of towering vertical (垂直的) columns.

If we tend to ignore the significance of elevators, it might be because riding in them tends to be such a brief, boring, and even awkward experience one that can involve unexpectedly meeting people with whom we have nothing in common, and an unpleasant awareness of the fact that we’re hanging from a cable in a long passage.

In a new book, Lifted, German journalist and cultural studies professor Andreas Bernard directed all his attention to this experience, studying the origins of elevator and its relationship to humankind and finding that riding in an elevator has never been a totally comfortable experience. “After 150 years, we are still not used to it, ”Bernard said. “We still have not exactly learned to cope with the mixture of closeness and displeasure.” That mixture, according to Bernard, sets the elevator ride apart from just about every other situation we find ourselves in as we go about our lives.

Today, as the world’s urban population explodes, and cities become more crowded, taller, and more crowded, America’s total number of elevators—900,000 at last count, according to Elevator World magazine’s “2012 Vertical Transportation Industry”—are a force that’s becoming more important than ever. And for the people who really, really love them, it seems like high time that we looked seriously at just what kind of force they are.

1.What does the underlined word “this” in Paragraph 1refer to?

A. The particular interests of experts.

B. The general view of elevators.

C. The desire for a remarkable machine.

D. The enthusiasm for transport vehicles.

2.The author’s purpose in mentioning cars is　　　　　　 .

A. to emphasize the importance of elevators

B. to contrast their functions with elevators

C. to reveal their secret war against elevators

D. to explain people’s preference for elevators

3.According to Prof. Bernard, what has made the elevator ride different from other life experiences?

A. Vertical direction.

B. Little physical space.

C. Lack of excitement.

D. Uncomfortable conditions.

4.The author urges readers to consider

A. the exact number of elevator lovers

B. the serious future situation of elevators

C. the relationship between cars and elevators

D. the role of elevators in city development

高二英语阅读理解中等难度题查看答案及解析

All parents know that one of their most important tasks is to prepare their children for an independent life, but any parent can tell you that it’s hard to let go of your children. That balance between keeping your children safe and allowing them to learn from their own mistakes can be heartbreaking. Years of experience means that parents often do know best, but on the other hand, the young, being less bound by tradition, are often more creative, more able to find new solutions to old problems. Revolutions are led by the young.

Good teachers make the growth of critical (批判性的) thinking easier in their students, only to find that this can lead to a questioning of the teachers’ basic beliefs. Schools encourage parents to become involved, but are often embarrassed when parents have reservations about some of the educational methods being used. Governments encourage unimportant groups to empower themselves in order to participate fully in the development process. And they are often surprised when the new leaders of these groups turn around and attack the policies of that same government. The rebellions (叛逆的)young and the newly unimportant groups are important in social development. They are not necessarily representatives of those they want to represent or not realistic in their demands, but their voices must be heard.

Good parents know that just forbidding particular behaviors does not prevent their children from finding ways to engage in these forbidden activities. Indeed, sometimes the forbidden fruit is more inviting, just because it is not accepted by authority. Parents must work with their children to educate them on the facts, know as much as possible about the lives of their children, provide a good example, encourage more wholesome activities but also support their children when they don’t follow what is expected of them. But the most important point is that they also need to learn how to let go.

1.By saying “Revolutions are led by the young”, the author indicates that young people are more_____.

A．creative                              B．realistic

C．conventional                           D．heartbreaking

2. From the second paragraph we know ________.

A．teachers’ basic beliefs should be questioned by students

B．schools encourage parents to question their education methods

C．the government is satisfied with the new leaders’ attack on the policies

D．the voice of the rebellious young should be heard by the government

3. In order to educate children well, parents should ________.

A．forbid particular behaviors in their daily life

B．know them well and set a good example to them

C．educate them with facts and expect much of them

D．know as much as possible as their children

4.  From the passage we can learn that the author prefers ________.

A．free parenting                         B．traditional parenting

C．smart parenting                         D．critical parenting

5. What is the best title of the passage?

A．Letting Go – for Children’s Independent Life

B．Parents’ Tasks – in Children’s Development

C．Way of Growth – for the Young Groups

D．Teaching Methods – for Teachers and Schools

高二英语阅读理解中等难度题查看答案及解析

He is looking for a job, one　　　　　 he can make the most of his talent.

A. of which　　　　     B. which

C. where        　　 D. That

高二英语单项填空中等难度题查看答案及解析