牛津英语八年级下学期期中英语阅读训练

牛津版八年级下期中英语阅读训练10篇

1

Joanne Rowling was born in Bristol in England. Joanne always wanted to write and she wrote her first story when she was only five or six. At school her favorite subject was English and she used to make up stories with her friends. When she left school, she went to a university and studied French. While there she studied in Paris for a year, and after leaving university, she had many different jobs. However, most of all, she wanted to write! One day, during a long train journey, she got the idea of writing about a boy who is a wizard(男巫), but doesn’t know it.

In 1992, she left England to go to Portugal to teach English. While she was there she got married to a Portuguese journalist and she had a daughter, Jessica. The marriage ended in divorce and Joanne went back to live in Edinburgh in Scotland. She had very little money and she lived in a very small house, which was often cold. She could not afford the heating(供热). It was there that she finished her first book about Harry Potter, a young boy who is a wizard. At first, no one wanted to publish(出版) it. Then, one day, in 1997, she found a publisher. She was very excited and happy!

Much to her surprise, her book was a great success! It sold in millions! It won many prizes! It made Joanne very rich and it made her very famous. Everybody wanted to read about Harry Potter. Adults and children now read her books. Her stories have been put into many languages, and they can now be read all over the world. Her first several novels have been made into films. Joanne Rowling has written more books about Harry Potter and all of them have sold millions of copies. Some of these later books are also being made into films.

1. When did Joanne study in Paris?

2. Why was her house small and cold When Joanne lived in Edinburgh?

3. When she finished her first book about Harry Potter, was the book published at once?

4.Are her books about Harry Potter very popular all over the world?

5.When did she write her first story?

2

One day, I happened to meet an Englishman in the street and soon we began to talk. As I was talking about how I was studying English, the foreigner seemed to be very surprised, gently shaking his head and saying, "You don't say! You don't say!" I was puzzled (困惑的), and I thought, "Perhaps this is not a right thing to talk about." So I said to him, "Well, shall we talk about the Great Wall? Have you ever been there?"

"Certainly, everyone back home will laugh at me if I leave here without seeing it. The Great Wall is "wonderful!" "Yes, it is one of the wonders in the world. And people of many countries have come to visit it." As I went on telling him more about it, he stopped me again, "You don't say!"