Why do many people take vacations frequently? We need to take time out from work to relax, and just be ourselves. 1. We should all be allowed to leave our jobs behind us—at least for a few weeks each year—and just have fun. This might be something as simple as reading a good book in front of a warm fireplace through to traveling to the most interesting places on our planet. Whatever we fancy doing is worth taking time out for.

As we know, workplace stress is on the rise. 2. These include disease, depression and even death. We all seem to be running from one place to the next, never finding out where we want to go in the first place. I intend to break that trend in the coming days. 3. I will sleep late, write, watch movies, drink the occasional glass of wine, and eat to my heart's content, ignoring calorie counting. My plan is to just enjoy the fleeting(飛逝的) moments of being alive. 4. Spend your next vacation the way you want; Do what will restore your mental health. You're very valuable to the people who are close to you, and to those who depend on it. Like it or not, we are all interdependent（互相依存的）in this great life of ours. There's no doubt that you are valuable. Just remember that the next time you look at a mirror and take a deep breath. Remind yourself that there will never be anyone like you ever on this earth again. 5. 1you have to do is just ask yourself what you want to do.

A. Draw up a detailed plan so that you can see more.

B. With it come many health problems.

C. When you finally get home you'll be greatly refreshed.

D. Life is not all about work, or at least it shouldn't be.

E. And only you know how to take a vacation in your way.

F. I challenge each one of you to do the same.

G. For my next holiday, I will do all the things that I love doing.

Across the street from where we live, there stands a big hospital. To earn some money, we rented the rooms upstairs to patients. One evening, there was a(n) ________ at the door. I opened it and saw a short old man who was hardly ________ than my eight-year-old son. But the worst thing was his face—it was ________ ugly. He told me he'd been ________ a room since that noon but no one seemed to have one. For a moment I hesitated, not ________ to rent him a room, but his next words convinced me. He said,“I could ________ on this chair. My bus leaves early in the morning." I told him we would find him a ________.

It wasn't a long time before I found that this old man had a ________ heart in that tiny body. He fished for a living to ________ his daughter, his daughter's children, and her disabled husband. He didn't tell it by way of complaint. Instead, he was ________ that no pain was caused by his disease and that he still had strength to keep going. At ________, we put a camp cot(吊床) in my children's room for him. ________ he left the next morning, he asked, “Could I please come back and ________ when I see the doctor next time? Grown-ups are bothered by my ________, but children don't seem to ________. ”I told him he was welcome to come again.

On his next trip, he brought a big fish and a bag of the largest oysters（牡蠣）I had ever seen. Other times we received ________ in the mail. There were oysters, fish or some fresh vegetables. ________ how little money he had and that he must walk three miles to ________ these made these gifts much more precious. And from him we ________ what it was to accept the bad without complaint and the good ________ gratitude.

1.A. bellB. answerC. knockD. call

2.A. tallerB. healthierC. betterD. stronger

3.A. hardlyB. usuallyC. reallyD. finally

4.A. searchingB. looking at

C. hunting forD. checking in

5.A. knowingB. refusingC. fearingD. wanting

6.A. waitB. sitC. hideD. sleep

7.A. bedB. seat

C. tableD. living room

8.A. funnyB. beautifulC. smallD. normal

9.A. pleaseB. surpriseC. supportD. exchange

10.A. interestedB. scaredC. gratefulD. worried

11.A. midnightB. suppertimeC. bedtimeD. noon

12.A. ifB. onceC. beforeD. after

13.A. visitB. stayC. payD. chat

14.A. actionB. voiceC. faceD. manner

15.A. noticeB. requireC. mindD. escape

16.A. cardB. lettersC. greetingsD. packages

17.A. BelievingB. KnowingC. DoubtingD. Telling

18.A. mailB. getC. findD. make

19.A. rememberedB. explainedC. learnedD. showed

20.A. forB. withC. inD. under

Clever student as Dongfang Liang is. He was badly addicted 1. online games a year ago. He often slipped to cybercafes at night, 2. (feel) very sleepy in class in the daytime. 3. (need) to say, he got poor marks in all subjects. No matter what I advised, no matter 4. I punished him, he still broke the rule. Later I 5. (arrange) his parents to rent a small house near our school to keep him company, or exactly speaking, to supervise him. But only a week later, I noticed him fall asleep constantly again. He must have played other tricks secretly. This time I demanded that his father 6. (sleep) with him in the same bedroom and watch him 7. (close). Following my advice, his father did 8. .Hardly has Dongfang Liang felt sleepy in class ever since, and he has made great progress in study.

Last week, believe it 9. not, he sheepishly(難為情地) admitted having read some e-books under his quilt while he was lying 10. bed before his father slept in his room. It is online games that poison our teenagers' minds deeply.

短文改錯

假定英語課上老師要求同桌之間交換修改作文，請你修改你同桌寫的以下作文。文中共有10處語言錯誤，每句中最多有兩處。每處錯誤僅涉及一個單詞的增加、刪除或修改。

增加：在缺詞處加一個漏字符號（∧），并在下面寫出該加的詞。

刪除：把多余的詞用斜線(＼)劃掉。

修改：在錯的詞下劃一橫線，并在該詞下面寫出修改后的詞。

注意：1．每處錯誤及其修改均僅限一詞；

2．只允許修改10處，多者（從第11處起）不計分。

Volunteer travel, that is familiar to foreigners, has nowadays become more and more popular in China. Young travelers volunteer to work for youth hostels so that they can eat and live there for something. At the same time, they can enjoy the local scenery on their spare time.

As far as I am concern, volunteer travel has some advantages and benefits from you a lot. It can save you lot of money by providing free accommodations, which makes it possible for you to travel to much more places and experience different cultures. Meanwhile, volunteer travel enrich your life by offer different jobs in youth hostels, which also can change your way of life. All in all, it was meaningful.

假如你是李華，收到澳大利亞表弟(Harry)的電子郵件，郵件中提到他父母想看他的微信朋友圈(We Chat Moments)，他對是否同意和父母分享微信感到猶豫。

請你給他回信，要點如下：1．說明贊成或反對的觀點；2．主要理由；3．提出個人的建議。

注意：詞數(shù)100左右；可適當增加細節(jié)，以使行文連貫；開頭語已為你寫好，不計入總詞數(shù)。

Dear Harry,．

How surprised and pleased to receive your email today! You told me that ______

_______________________________________________________________________________

_______________________________________________________________________________

_______________________________________________________________________________

_______________________________________________________________________________

_______________________________________________________________________________

_______________________________________________________________________________

_______________________________________________________________________________

_______________________________________________________________________________

_______________________________________________________________________________

Yours,

Li Hua

The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen

Amazon Best Books of 2015: Top 10 Literature & Fiction #5

Amazon Best Books of 2015: Top 100 Editors’ Picks #16

Publisher’s Weekly Best Books of 2015: Fiction #1

New York Times 100 Notable Books of 2015 #6

Library Journal Best Books 2015: The Top Ten #1

2016 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction: Winner

Book Description

A profound, startling, and beautifully crafted debut novel, The Sympathizer is the story of a man of two minds, someone whose political beliefs clash with his individual loyalties.

It is April 1975, and Saigon is in chaos. At his villa, a general of the South Vietnamese army is drinking whiskey and, with the help of his trusted captain, drawing up a list of those who will be given passage aboard the last flights out of the country. The general and his compatriots start a new life in Los Angeles, unaware that one among their number, the captain, is secretly observing and reporting on the group to a higher-up in the Viet Cong. The Sympathizer is the story of this captain: a man brought up by an absent French father and a poor Vietnamese mother, a man who went to university in America, but returned to Vietnam to fight for the Communist cause. A gripping（扣人心弦的） spy novel, an astute exploration of extreme politics, and a moving love story, The Sympathizer explores a life between two worlds and examines the legacy of the Vietnam War in literature, film, and the wars we fight today.

Viet Thanh Nguyen Award Statistics

Major Prize Nominations(提名) 3

Unique Books Nominated for a Major Prize 1

Pulitzer Prize Wins 1(The Sympathizer)

PEN/Faulkner Award Wins 0

PEN/Faulkner Award Nominations 1 (The Sympathizer)

1.In what kind of honor was the book ranked highest?

A. Amazon Best Books of 2015: Top 10 Literature & Fiction

B. Amazon Best Books of 2015: Top 100 Editors’ Picks

C. New York Times 100 Notable Books of 2015

D. Library Journal Best Books 2015: The Top Ten

2.Who does “a man of two minds” in the text refer to ?

A. The captain mentioned.

B. The general mentioned.

C. Viet Thanh Nguyen.

D. The captain’s mother.

3.What can be learned about the book The Sympathizer?

A. It belongs to a science fiction.

B. It is set in the Vietnam War.

C. It is no more than a loving story.

D. It won PEN/Faulkner Award once.

Children grow quickly, especially their feet, but many families cannot buy new shoes each time a child needs them. As a result, about 300 million children around the world go barefoot. Those children risk picking up diseases and parasites from the soil.

An American man may have a solution for those barefoot kids — a shoe that grows with the child. Kenton Lee is the creator of The Shoe That Grows. He explains how the shoe works and how it is able to last so long.

“It grows in three places: the front; it can also grow on the side with Velcro; and on the back with our buckle. It can last up to five years. The bottom is compressed rubber like tire rubber. The top is just high-quality leather.” The shoe comes in two sizes: small that fits children aged 4 to 9 and large for children aged 9 to 14.

Lee says he got the idea for the shoe while working as a volunteer in an orphanage in Kenya. “… and there was a little girl in a white dress walking next to me. And I just remember looking down and seeing how small her shoes were. They were just way too small for her feet. They were so small that she had to cut open the front of her shoes to let her toes stick out. And I just remember thinking, wouldn't it be nice if there were a pair of shoes that could grow with her feet?”

However, Lee says it was not easy to turn his idea into a reality. “I kept writing down I should do this because of this or because of that. All these reasons why it really was important for me to try to make the shoes that could grow and try to help.” Finally, in 2009 Lee founded a non-profit organization called Because International. In the office of Because International, Lee keeps a pair of his own shoes to help him remember his promise. “I told myself I would not get new shoes until the idea was done. So, those are the shoes that I wore for a little over five years.”

1.Which of the following is the characteristic of the newly invented shoes?

A. They are more expensive.

B. They are not so comfortable.

C. They can grow with a child.

D. They come in different sizes.

2.Who is this kind of newly invented shoes intended for?

A. All the teenagers.

B. Children aged 4 to 14.

C. Middle-aged women in Africa.

D. Senior citizens with low income.

3.What does Para. 4 mainly talk about?

A. How the shoes work.

B. How Lee got his inspiration.

C. How to make the new shoes.

D. Where to order this kind of shoes.

4.Why does Kenton Lee keep a pair of his own shoes in the office?

A. To remind him of his promise.

B. To copy the design of them.

C. To get a change conveniently.

D. To use them as an example.

A college student has turned the act of telling someone off into an art form. Lama Ali, who attend school in Virginia, had three final assignments due on the same day for her fashion drawing class. Exhausted after working on painting for seven hours straight, the 20-year-old decided to include a message in American Sign Language to her professor:

When your drawing teacher assigns 3 finals so you secretly write “you got me fucked up” in sign language on your final piece.

——Shawty Arabia(@LemAli23) December 7,2016

“You got me fucked up,” a bunch of hands in the painting spell out in ASL, in a form of sign known as finger spelling(聾啞字母表), which uses signs for each letter, rather than for the words themselves.

“Honestly the idea just came to me while I was finishing up the piece,” Ali told The Huffington Post.” I was looking at it and thought, ‘This could really use something else’. And then the idea struck me: Why not secretly express how I was feeling while struggling at the library at 4 a. m.?”

Once the fashion design major had finished her masterpiece, she posted it to Twitter on Dec. 7, where it has received over 113,000likes and 48,000 retweets (轉(zhuǎn)發(fā)).

Ali, who does not know ASL, told HuffPost she taught herself a little bit just for this particular assignment.

“You know it’s bad when you have to learn a whole other language to express how done you are,” she said. “I remembered seeing a post on Tumblr long ago with a similar phrase by the post, she decided to look up the letters in ASL to spell out the message. Someone on Twitter even did the good work of circling them in the painting.

Ali told HuffPost that when she finally presented the piece to her professor in her class, he absolutely loved it.

“Most of my friends in class actually knew about the secret message, so I was really surprised when no one laughed or blew my cover during critique(評論).” She also admits that her professor still doesn’t know about the message, despite her post getting so much attention.

1.Which of the following is closest in meaning to “You got me fucked up”?

A. I was greatly astonished.

B. You really worn me out.

C. I felt much appreciated.

D. You left me impressed.

2.What was it that gave Ali the inspiration to use ASL to express her feeling?

A. Her professor’s assignment.

B. Being too exhausted.

C. A post on Tumblr with ASL.

D. Her classmates’ encouragement.

3.Which of the following can be inferred from the last paragraph?

A. Her professor is not so clever as her classmates.

B. Her professor pretended not to understand.

C. Her professor is still in the dark about the message.

D. Her professor had been informed by her classmates.

4.How did Ali know about American Sign Language?

A. She learned it in middle school.

B. She majored in it at college.

C. She taught herself when prepared for the assignment.

D. Someone taught her on Twitter.

A trip across the Pacific will guarantee you a different experience with a tipping(給小費) culture you’ve never come across in China.

In the US,giving a little extra money to service workers on top of your bill is a common practice.

Though US national law requires that businesses pay workers at least $7.25 (45 yuan) per hour,employees receiving tips—often waiters and waitresses—are the exceptions.They usually only receive at least $2.13 an hour,and tips make up the difference.As The Wall Street Journal put it:“The American system of tipping holds the promise of great rewards for waiting staff.”

So how should you tip if you are in the US?

Normally you pay tips as a percentage of the bill.Offering an extra 15 percent of the bill to the waiter or waitress in a restaurant and to the delivery man or woman is customary and expected.You can offer more for great service and less for poor service.

Yet there is an exception.For take-out food,you don’t have to provide tips,though some people say that filling an order still requires work and time that deserve a little extra—but maybe a little less.

Tips are not expected at fast food restaurants,pizza parlors,cafés or ice cream shops either,though a tip jar might be right by the cash register (收銀機).Don’t feel obligated to throw some money in,but also remember that it doesn’t hurt.Those workers do not rely on tips.

Other service workers also receive tips.For taxi drivers,15 percent is the norm (標準),more if they help with your bags.Hairdressers often receive about 15 percent of the bill.The same goes for spa therapists(理療師) and tour guides.

Today,you can even pay tips on a credit card.When receiving a copy of the bill to sign,you are free to fill in how much you’d like to tip.

Though thinking about when to tip and how much you should tip causes a big headache for many Chinese people,it’s important to bear in mind that as long as you show respect and use your reasoning,things will be just fine.

1.What is the article mainly about?

A. How tipping culture started in the US.

B. How to give tips properly in the US.

C. New ways to give tips in the US.

D. The different attitudes that Chinese people and Americans have toward tipping.

2.Which of the following is said to be against the norm of tipping in the US?

A. Paying waiters and waitresses less than $7.25 per hour.

B. Ignoring the tip jar at fast food restaurants,cafés,or ice cream shops.

C. Tipping taxi drivers less than 15% because of poor service.

D. Refusing to give tips to your tour guide.

3.The underlined word “obligated” in Paragraph 7 probably means 　　　.

A. being forced to do something B. being grateful for something

C. being surprised at something D. being embarrassed about something

4.According to the author,Chinese consumers 　　　.

A. don’t necessarily have to follow the tipping rules in the US

B. should use their credit cards to give tips

C. must argue about the amount of tip they have to pay

D. should take it easy and give the correct tips for different occasions

Anger can feel like its eating you up inside as it practically ruins your entire day 1. Let's cool it a little shall we?

2. Effectively, to constantly water it would mean you've created the habit of anger. You're probably even addicted to it. To stop being so angry, you've to break out of anger. Stop watering the angry seed within, live your life and start planting other seeds!

Anger is not a primary emotion. It's secondary. 3. What is it? Fear? Rejection? Sadness? Guilt? It's going to be terrifying, but you've to be honest with yourself and start asking the bigger questions in order to overcome anger.

For every minute you are angry you lose sixty seconds of happiness. It's only logical. Getting angry is not allowing other positive emotions to come in and that is time and space you'll never get back. And life is way too short to be pissed off(使生氣) all the time. 4.

Happiness cannot come from hatred or anger. Nobody can say, “Today I am happy because this morning I was angry.” 5. They can say “Today I am not very happy, because I lost my temper this morning.” This is so straight-forward. Anger in the end, cannot sustain(維持) you. It can perhaps propel you with energy, but if you use it to create more anger, then happiness will never come to you.

A. On the contrary, people feel uneasy and sad.

B. You’re responsible for your anger.

C. You’ve found the root cause of your anger.

D. People will find a way to make you angry.

E. while filling your head with a bunch of angry, negative thoughts.

F. and it states how easy it is to be angry.

G. You're going to die eventually, so be smart about it!