英语阅读练习：记叙文一

记叙文
Passage 1
Every April I am troubled by the same concern—that spring might not occur this year. The landscape looks dull, with hills, sky and forest forming a single gray color, like the light color an artist paints on a canvas before the masterwork. My spirit ebbs, as it did during an April snowfall when I first came to Maine 15 years ago. "Just wait," a neighbor counseled. "You'll wake up one morning and spring will just be here." And look, on May 3 that year, I awoke to a green so startling as to be almost electric, as if spring were simply a matter of moving a switch. Hills, sky and forest revealed their purples, blues and greens. Leaves had unfurled, birds had arrived at the feeder and daffodils were fighting their way towards heaven.
Then there was the old apple tree. It sits on an undeveloped land in my neighborhood. It belongs to no one and therefore to everyone. The tree's dark, twisted branches stretch in unpruned abandon. Each spring it blossoms so freely that the air fills with the fragrance of apple. When I drive by with my windows rolled down, it gives me the feeling of moving in another world, like a kid on a water slide.
Until last year, I thought I was the only one aware of this tree. And then one day, in a fit of spring madness, I set out with a pruner and cut off a few unordered branches. No sooner had I arrived under the tree than neighbors opened their windows and stepped onto their porches. These were people I barely knew and seldom spoke to, but it was as if I had come unbidden into their personal gardens.
My mobile-home neighbor was the first to speak. "You're not going to cut it down, are you?" she asked anxiously. Another neighbor frowned as I cut off a branch. "Don't kill it, now," he cautioned.
Soon half the neighborhood had joined me under the apple tree. It struck me that I had lived there for five years and only now was learning these people's names, what they did for a living and how they passed the winter. It was as if the old apple tree was gathering us under its branches for the dual purpose of acquaintanceship and shared wonder. I couldn't help recalling Robert Frost's words:
The trees that have it in their pent-up buds
To darken nature and be summer woods.
One thaw led to another. Just the other day I saw one of my neighbors at the local store. He said how this recent winter had been especially long and complained not having seen or spoken to anyone in our neighborhood. And then, he looked at me and said, "We need to prune that apple tree again."
1. By saying that "my spirit ebbs" (Para. 1), the author means that ______.
A. he was relieved
B. he was gloomy
C. he was surprised
D. he was tired
2. The apple tree mentioned in the passage is most likely to ______.
A. be regarded as a delight in the neighborhood
B. have been abandoned by its original owner
C. have been neglected by everyone in the community
D. be attractive only to the author
3. In Para. 3, "neighbors opened their windows and stepped onto their porches"
probably because ______.
A. they were surprised that someone unknown was pruning the tree
B. they wanted to prevented the author from pruning the tree
C. they were concerned about the safety of the tree
D. they wanted to get to know the author
4. Not until last year did the author ______.
A. cease to worry about the tree
B. become aware of the apple tree
C. begin to appreciate the neighborhood
D. make acquaintance with the neighbors
5. The author's neighbor mentioned in the last paragraph most cared about ______.
A. when spring would arrive
B. how to pass the long winter
C. the neighborhood gathering
D. the pruning for the apple tree
Passage 2
It's 1 a. m., and I'm in Hong Kong for the first time, sitting in a bar in the Lan Kwai Fong district. I'm waiting for two girls I met on the Internet to show up and take me to their apartment, so my friend Harry and I can stay there for free for a few nights. Having been on flights for the past 24 hours, I am worn out and nervous when they don't arrive on time.
But my faith is restored when I hear a thick Chinese accent asking, "Are you Cody?" Even though Jess and Jin are as much strangers to me as anyone else in the bar, I trust them. It seems as natural as being set up by a mutual friend, and, in a sense, that is exactly what is happening.
I first learned about last fall from my mom's friend, who was planning on hosting travelers in her home to add a little excitement to life after her oldest son went to college. She recommended I use it for an upcoming trip to Europe.
That's how I became one of the millions of surfers who search hosts profiles and send requests—typically as much as a week or as little as a day before arriving in the hosts city—to sleep on those people's couches or on their floor or in a spare bedroom.
CouchSurfing requests are not always accepted, as my friend and I learned about seven hours before arriving at the bar in Hong Kong. During our stay in Tokyo, I found out via e-mail that the requests I had submitted that morning to two potential hosts had both been politely declined. One host, had relatives visiting, and the other, was in Macau for the weekend.
So, I quickly joined the forum "Last Minute Couch Requests: Hong Kong" and posted a message, which Jess saw. She got in touch with her friend Jin, who had room in her apartment to accommodate two guests. Jess sent us an e-mail, which we received after landing in Hong Kong, offering directions to a meeting place and a phone number. Harry and I could have dug through Jess's list of friends to read up on Jin, but instead we trusted that Jess would not lead us astray.
After the girls get to the bar, the four of us go to a rooftop bar, then a club, and finally head back to Jin's apartment. Over the next three days, the girls teach us how to use the public-transportation system and give us directions to popular tourist
destinations.
To outsiders like, say, my parents, it may be hard to understand why Jin would agree to have two strangers stay at her place, or why we are even trying to couch-surf when hostels are cheap and plentiful in this part of the world. It is because couch surfing isn't just a means of accommodation; it is an entirely new way to travel. You get to see the world through local residents, not hotel gatekeepers or guidebooks. You get to step outside your comfort zones. But what is most profound about the whole experience is the trust that naturally exists. Jin, for instance, gives us a key to her place upon arrival, a common CouchSurfing custom that helps explain why sociologists at Stanford University are now studying the site and its ability to efficiently create trust.
While cultural enrichment and adventure are almost a CouchSurfing guarantee, comfort is not. Jin's guest mattress is not quite a quarter of an inch thick, the shower is too complicated for Harry or me to figure out, and the apartment is an eighth-floor walk-up. But it's a tradeoff surfers like me are happy to make.
6. Which of the following is TRUE about the friend of the author's mother?
A. She got much help from CouchSurfing. com for her last trip.
B. She needed company to distract her from missing her son.
C. She became a member of last autumn.
D. She decided to accommodate travelers in her home for free.
7. Why did the author have to post a message on "Last Minute Couch Requests: Hong Kong"?
A. Two potential Tokyo hosts had declined his requests.
B. He had been rejected by two potential Hong Kong hosts.
C. He had stayed in Tokyo for too long a time.
D. His previous request had been sent out too late.
8. The author didn't examine the reliability of Jin because ______.
A. he had no way of contacting her
B. he couldn't find any other hosts
C. he had much confidence in Jess
D. he knew about Jess well enough
9. According to the passage, CouchSurfing provides travelers with all the following EXCEPT ______.
A. comfortable accommodation
B. adventurous experiences
C. exotic culture
D. a sense of trust
10. The author is most likely to feel that his CouchSurfing experiences are ______.
A. disappointing
B. worthwhile
C. filled with uncertainty
D. dangerous
Passage 3
I was born in Tuckahoe, Talbot Country, Maryland. I have no accurate knowledge of my age, never having seen any authentic record containing it. By far the larger part of the slaves know as little of their age as horses know of theirs, and it is
the wish of most masters within my knowledge to keep their slaves thus ignorant. I do not remember having ever met a slave who could tell of his birthday. They seldom come nearer to it than planting-time, harvesting, springtime, or fall-time. A lack of information concerning my own was a source of unhappiness to me even during childhood. The white children could tell their ages, I could not tell why I ought to be deprived of the same privilege. I was not allowed to make any inquiries of my master concerning it. He considered all such inquiries on the part of a slave improper and impertinent. The nearest estimate I can give makes me now between twenty-seven and twenty-eight years of age. I come to this, from hearing my master say, some time during 1835, I was about seventeen years old.
My mother was named Harriet Bailey. She was the daughter of Issac and Betsey Bailey, both coloured, and quite dark. My mother was of a darker complexion than either my grandmother or grandfather.
My father was a white man. He was admitted to be such by all I ever heard speak of my parentage. The opinion was also whispered that my master was my father; but of the correctness of this opinion, I know nothing; the means of knowing was withheld from me. My mother and I were separated when I was but an infant—before I knew her as my mother. It is a common custom, in the part of Maryland from which I ran away, to part children from their mothers at a very early age. Frequently, before the child has reached its twelfth month, its mother is taken from it, and hired out on some farm a considerable distance off, and the child is placed under the care of an older woman, too old for field labor. For what this separation is done, I do not know, unless it be to hinder the development of the child's affection towards its mother.
11. The author did not know exactly when he was born because
A. he did not know who his mother was.
B. there was no written evidence of it.
C. his master did not tell his father.
D. nobody on his farm knew anything about it.
12. In the mid-nineteenth century, slaves often
A. marked their birthdays by the season.
B. did not really care how old they were.
C. forgot the exact time when they were born.
D. pretended not to know each other's birthdays.
13. The author's mother told him
A. his father was black.
B. his father was white.
C. nothing about his father.
D. his master was his father.
14. According to the passage, when the author was very young his mother
A. ran away.
B. was light-skinned.
C. had several children.
D. was sent to work elsewhere.
A B C D
15. The author had not spent much time with his
A. mother.
B. master.
C. grandfather.
D. grandmother.
A B C D
Passage 4
Flying across the country the other day, I sat next to a retired Air Force colonel, and we had a pleasant conversation about love of flying, travel and grandchildren and for him, of retirement itself. "Yeah," he said, "there's only one thing that would make me give this up. "
"What's that?"
"If Hillary or Jan Fonda runs for president, I'm going to work full time to beat her."
I told him I knew Hillary. She doesn't even need a last name now. And she's no Jane Fonda.
"Well," I concluded before we began talking about planes and kids again, "I think you are going to get your chance. I think she's going to run. "
I once wrote, with total sincerity, that I thought Hillary Rodham Clinton had the political instincts of a stone. I also wrote that I thought she had marginalized her husband's chances of being an important president.
He blew that by naming his wife to head the task force to work out a national plan, and she decided to work in secret with battalions of "experts" who came up with a plan four times as long as the European constitution.
Then, after taking her lumps for that, she decided to run, as a Democrat, for the US Senate from New York, a state she had always thought was a nice place to visit.
She is now far and away the Democratic front-runner for president in 2008. Her national numbers are getting better, inch by inch, day by day. Now, a slight majority—52 percent in a couple of polls—say they are likely or very likely to vote for Hillary for president. True, 47 percent, including my friend the colonel, still say "Never." But her national approval-disapproval rate is now about 55 to 39, compared with 46 to 48 for President Bush.
The odds are still against her. So are most of the odds-makers, beginning with Joe Klein of Time Magazine, chronicler of the Clintons in fact and fiction. He believes a Hillary candidacy will polarize the country the way the reign of the Clintons polarized us in the 1990s.
16. One subject that the author and the colonel didn't talk about during their conversation is ______.
A. love of flying and travel
B. life after retirement
C. Hillary's running for presidency
D. popularity of President Bush
17. The writer implies in this passage that ______.
A. Jane Fonda is going to compete with Hillary in the presidential election
B. Hillary did so much for her husband to be an important president
C. Hillary is gaining more and more support despite the odds against her
D. the colonel will work for Hillary if she is to run for presidency
18. The word "polarize" in the last paragraph probably means ______.
A. personalize
B. popularize
C. unite into one group
D. divide into opposing sides
19. According to the passage, the author's attitude toward Hillary candidacy is ____.
A. neutral
B. ironical
C. approving
D. disapproving
20. The title that can best sum up the whole passage is ______.
A. The Rise and Rise of Hillary
B. Hillary's Political Career
C. People's Ambivalence Toward Hillary Candidacy
D. A Retired Colonel's View on Hillary's Running for Presidency
Passage 5
After breakfast the boys wandered out into the playground. Here the day—boys were gradually assembling. They were sons of the local clergy, of the officers at the depot, and of such manufacturers or men of business as the old town possessed. Presently a bell rang, and they all trooped into school. This consisted of a large, long room at opposite ends of which two under-masters conducted the second and third forms, and of a smaller one, leading out of it, used by Mr Watson, who taught the first form. To attach the preparatory to the senior school these three classes were known officially, on speech days and in reports, as upper, middle, and lower second. Philip was put in the last. The master, a red-faced man with a pleasant voice, was called Rice; he had a cheerful manner with boys, and the time passed quickly. Philip was surprised when it was quarter to eleven and they were let out for ten minutes' rest.
The whole school rushed noisily into the playground. The new boys were told to go into the middle, while the others stationed themselves along opposite walls. They began to play Pig in the Middle. The old boys ran from wall to wall while the new boys tried to catch them: when one was seized and the mystic words said—one, two, three, and a pig for me—he became a prisoner and, turning sides, helped to catch those who were still free. Philip saw a boy running past and tried to catch him but his limp gave him no chance; and the runners taking their opportunity, made straight for the ground he covered. Then one of them had the brilliant idea of imitating Philip's clumsy run. Other boys saw it and began to laugh; then they all copied the first; and they ran round Philip, limping comically, screaming with shrill laughter. They lost their heads with the delight of their new amusement, and choked with helpless merriment. One of them tripped Philip up and he fell, heavily as he always fell, and cut his knee. They laughed all the louder when he got up. A boy pushed him from behind, and he would have fallen again if another had not caught him. The game was forgotten in the entertainment of Philip's deformity. Philip was completely scared. He could not make out why they were laughing at him. His heart beat so that he could hardly breathe, and he was more frightened than he had ever been in his life. He stood still stupidly while the boys ran round him, mimicking and laughing; they shouted to him to try and catch them; but he did not move. He did not want them to see him run
any more. He was using all his strength to prevent himself from crying.
21. From the beginning of the passage we learn that ______.
A. the school had only three classes
B. the school only accepted day-boys
C. some pupils came from the local area
D. Philip's class was part of the senior school
22. What was Philip's reaction to his class?
A. He seemed to have enjoyed it.
B. He found his class surprising.
C. He thought class was too short.
D. He wanted to change class.
23. In the game Philip lost his ground because ______.
A. the game wasn't fit for new boys like him
B. the playground wasn't big enough for the game
C. he did not know the rules of the game
D. he could not run as quickly as other boys
24. What did the boys do after Philip lost his ground?
A. They continued with the game.
B. They stopped to make fun of" him.
C. They changed to another game.
D. They stopped and went inside.
25. How did Philip feel in the end?
A. He was ashamed of himself.
B. He was very nervous.
C. He was really horrified.
D. He felt himself stupid.。