一、 “Are you crying?” one girl asked, as she got out of her chair to take a closer look. “I am,” I told her, “and the funny thing is I’ve read it many times.”
But they understood. When George shoots Lennie, the tragedy is that we realize it was always going to happen. In my 14 years of teaching in a New York City public middle school, I’ve taught kids with imprisoned parents, abusive parents, irresponsible parents; kids who are parents themselves; kids who are homeless; kids who grew up in violent neighborhoods. They understand, more than I ever will, the novel’s terrible logic—the giving way of dreams to fate (命运).
For the last seven years, I have worked as a reading enrichment teacher, reading classic works of literature with small groups of students from grades six to eight. I originally proposed this idea to my headmaster after learning that a former excellent student of mine had transferred out of a selective high school—one that often attracts the literary-minded children of Manhattan’s upper classes—into a less competitive setting. The daughter of immigrants, with a father in prison, she perhaps felt uncomfortable with her new classmates. I thought additional “cultural capital” could help students like her develop better in high school, where they would unavoidably meet, perhaps for the first time, students who came from homes lined with bookshelves, whose parents had earned Ph. D.’s.
Along with Of Mice and Men, my groups read: Sounder, The Red Pony, Lord of the Flies, Romeo and Juliet and Macbeth. The students didn’t always read from the expected point of view. About The Red Pony, one student said, “it’s about being a man, it’s about manliness.” I had never before seen the parallels between Scarface and Macbeth, nor had I heard Lady Macbeth’s soliloquies (独白) read as raps (说唱), but both made sense; the interpretations were playful, but serious. Once introduced to Steinbeck’s writing, one boy went on to read The Grapes of Wrath and told me repeatedly how amazing it was that “all these people hate each other, and they’re all white.” His historical view was broadening, his sense of his own country deepening. Year after year, former students visited and told me how prepared they had felt in their first year in college as a result of the classes.
Year after year, however, we are increasing the number of practice tests. We are trying to teach students to read increasingly complex texts, not for emotional punch (碰撞) but for text complexity. Yet, we cannot enrich (充实) the minds of our students by testing them on texts that ignore their hearts. We are teaching them that words do not amaze but confuse. We may succeed in raising test scores, but we will fail to teach them that reading can be transformative and that it belongs to them. 66. The underlined words in Paragraph 1 probably mean that a book helps to __________.
A. realize our dreams B. give support to our life C. smooth away difficulties D. awake our emotions
67. Why were the students able to understand the novel Of Mice and Men?
A. Because they spent much time reading it. B. Because they had read the novel before. C. Because they came from a public school. D. Because they had similar life experiences.
68. The girl left the selective high school possibly because__________..
A. she was a literary-minded girl B. her parents were immigrants
C. she couldn’t fit in with her class D. her father was then in prison 69. To the author’s surprise, the students read the novels__________..
A. creatively B. passively C. repeatedly D. carelessly 70. The author writes the passage mainly to__________..
A. introduce classic works of literature
B. advocate teaching literature to touch the heart C. argue for equality among high school students D. defend the current testing system
第四部分: 任务型阅读(共10 小题;每小题1 分,满分10 分)
请认真阅读下列短文,并根据所读内容在文章后表格中的空格里填入一个最恰当的单词。 注意:请将答案写在答题卡上相应题号的横线上。每个空格只填一个单词。
“Happiness Advantage” Effect
In July 2018 Burt’s Bees, a personal-care products company, was going through enormous change as it began a global expansion into 19 new countries. In this kind of high-pressure situation, many leaders bother their assistants with frequent meetings or flood their in-boxes with urgent demands. In doing so, managers lift everyone’s anxiety level, which activates the part of the brain that processes threats and steals resources from the prefrontal cortex ( 大脑皮层), which is responsible for effective problem solving.
Burt’s Bees’s then-CEO, John Wolfgang, took a different approach. Each day, he’d send out an e-mail praising a team member for work related to global marketing. He’d interrupt his own
presentations to remind his managers to talk with their teams about the company’s values. He asked me to further a three-hour session with employees on happiness in the course of the expansion effort. As one member of the senior team told me a year later, Wolfgang’s emphasis on developing positive leadership kept his managers actively involved and loyal as they successfully transformed the company into a global one.
That outcome shouldn’t surprise us. Research shows that when people work with a positive mind-set (思式), performance on nearly every level—productivity, creativity, involvement—improves. Yet happiness is perhaps the most misunderstood driver of performance. For one, most people believe that success comes before happiness. “Once I get a promotion, I’ll be happy,” they
think. Or, “Once I hit my sales target, I’ll feel great. ”But because success is a moving target—as soon as you hit your target, you raise it again—the happiness that results from success does not last long.
In fact, it works the other way around: People who have a positive mind-set perform better in the face of challenge. I call this the “happiness advantage”—every business outcome shows
improvement when the brain is positive. I’ve observed this effect in my role as a researcher and lecturer in 48 countries on the connection between employee happiness and success. And I’m not alone: In an analysis of 225 academic studies, researchers found strong evidence of cause-and-effect relationship between life satisfaction and successful business outcomes.
Another common misunderstanding is that our genetics, our environment, or a combination of the two determines how happy we are. To be sure, both factors have an impact. But one’s general sense of well-being is surprisingly unstable. The habits you form, the way you interact with colleagues, how you think about stress—all these can be managed to increase your happiness and your chances of success.
第五部分: 书面表达(满分25 分)
81. 生活中冲突时有发生。假设你班同学苏华和李江打篮球时发生争执,导致关系紧张。请 你结合此事,并根据以下提示,用英语写一篇短文,向学校英文报“Happy Teens冶专栏投稿。
简要描述事情的经过 打篮球、碰撞、争执,等等
分析发生冲突的原因 1. 遇事不够冷静
2. ……
谈谈避免冲突的做法 (请考生根据自己的经历或感想,提出至少两种做法) 注意: 1. 对所有要点逐一陈述,适当发挥,不要简单翻译。 2. 词数150 左右。开头已经写好,不计入总词数。
3. 作文中不得提及有关考生个人身份的任何信息,如校名、人名等。
Conflicts with others are common in everyday life. _______________________________________________________
参考答案
第一部分(共20 小题,每小题1 分,共20 分)
1. C 2. A 3. B 4. C 5. A 6. C 7. B 8. B 9. C 10. C
11. A 12. B 13. B 14. A 15. C 16. B 17. A 18. A 19. C 20. A 第二部分(共35 小题,每小题1 分,共35 分)
21. C 22. B 23. D 24. A 25. A 26. D 27. B 28. C 29. A 30. C 31. B 32. D 33. A 34. C 35. D 36. C 37. C 38. B 39. C 40. D 41. A 42. B 43. D 44. B 45. A 46. A 47. C 48. D 49. B 50. C 51. B 52. A 53. D 54. A 55. D
第三部分(共15 小题,每小题2 分,共30 分)
56. C 57. B 58. A 59. A 60. D 61. C 62. C 63. B 64. D 65. C 66. D 67. D 68. C 69. A 70. B
第四部分(共10 小题,每小题1 分,共10 分)
71. bother/ annoy 72. anxiety/ concern/ worry
73. considerate/ aware/ conscious 74. loyal/ faithful/ devoted/ committed 75. difference 76. positively 77. success/ achievements 78. strongly
79. determined/ decided 80. chances/ possibilities/ opportunities 第五部分(满分25 分)
81.
Conflicts with others are common in everyday life. During the basketball game yesterday afternoon, Su Hua and Li Jiang bumped into each other, trying to catch the ball. Then they started shouting and yelling, and it turned into a horrible quarrel.
To be honest, it was Su爷s fault but Li was also to blame—they were not calm enough and both said some really mean things. They cared too much about winning and losing. As a matter of fact, blocking, pushing and bumping are just part of a tough game.
To avoid such conflicts, we should be kind to one another, which is essential to enjoying a harmonious life. It is also a virtue to forgive and forget, especially in such a competitive and stressful society. Instead of blaming each other, we should communicate more and put ourselves in others’ place.
Don’t be self-centered and try to be considerate. We must learn to handle conflicts calmly and wisely.
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