How old was I? I can’t remember. Maybe I was only 10. It was the first    16    without my father because he was away for something. He left me to fill that sad place in my mother’s heart. It was the Christmas when I stopped being a    17    and tried to play Father Christmas myself. I really wanted to make it happy and bright again. It was the Christmas of the    18   .

Mom first saw the coat at Tobias, a nice    19    shop in our town’s little shopping mall. It was dark green. And it was a    20   , heavy, wool dress coat. Mom pulled it out from the rack(架) and held it up. “Long enough,” she said in a low voice and    21   .

“I need a new coat,” Mom smiled before the mirror. She looked good on any clothes,       22    this coat suited her much better. She looked at the    23   , then hung the coat back on the rack, standing there once more to    24    

    Eighty-seven dollars. But I decided to buy it for her. As we moved on    25   the mall, I found some excuse to return and asked one of the Tobias ladies to    26    the coat.

I helped clean every yard(庭院) in our neighbourhood—some yards twice, and soon I got the coat. The store ladies helped me put it in their biggest    27    with bright blue paper and thick silver ribbon(丝带). I don’t remember    28    I got it home, but I can still feel the wonderful    29    and pride that filled me. I would imagine the big space which the box would take up under our tree. Here it was—joy, peace and    30   —all in the box, waiting for Mom’s surprise.

1.A. Easter         B. Christmas        C. Halloween    D. Thanksgiving

2.A. child          B. son          C. student      D. teacher

3.A. tree           B. bag          C. coat         D. ribbon

4.A. children’s    B. women’s     C. girl’s      D. men’s

5.A. big            B. wide         C. thin         D. long

6.A. tried it on    B. put it on    C. kept it on   D. turned it on

7.A. though         B. or           C. for          D. and

8.A. price          B. design       C. color        D. material

9.A. taste          B. feel         C. sound        D. smell

10.A. through       B. over         C. past         D. across

11.A. sell          B. send         C. keep         D. wash

12.A. tank          B. basket       C. bag          D. box

13.A. how           B. why          C. whether      D. when

14.A. development   B. excitement   C. improvement D. advertisement

15.A. courage       B. confidence   C. love         D. honesty

With a hat by his feet，a blind boy sat on the steps of a building. He held up a sign which said，" I ' m blind, please help. "
Only a few people put    1   in the hat. A man was walking by. He    2   some coins into the hat. He then turned the sign    3  . wrote some words, put the sign back and left.
Soon the hat began to fill up. A lot more people   4   to give money to the blind boy.　　That afternoon the man came to see    5  things were. The boy recognized his footsteps (脚步声) and asked, "Were you the one who    6  my sign this morning? What did you write?"
The man said, "I only wrote the truth. I said what you said but in a   7 way. "What he had written was," Today is a beautiful day,   8  I cannot see it. "
Both the   9  told people that the boy was blind. But the first sign simply 　10　people to help by throwing some money into the   11  . The second one, however, told people that they were able to enjoy the  12  of the day, but the boy couldn't    13   he was blind.
There are at least two lessons we can learn   14  this story. First, be thankful for what
you have. Someone else has less. Help them if you can.  15  , be creative. Think differently.
　There is always a better way !

Cars are an important part of life in the United States. Without cars most people feel that they are poor. And even though a person is poor, he doesn't really feel poor when he has a car.

Perhaps(可能) you have heard of Henry Ford. He first started making cars in large numbers. Perhaps he didn't know how much the car was going to be to American culture(文化). The car made the United States a nation on wheels(车轮). And it helped make the United States what it is now.

The car has become popular in the United States. The Americans like to move around in cars. With a car people can go to any place without spending a lot of money.

1.In the United States ____.

2.Who was Henry Ford? ____.

3.Henry Ford started making cars in large numbers because ____.

4.Which of the following do you think is true? ____.

A. There are too many people everywhere in the USA.  

B. There are a lot of cars everywhere in the USA . 

C. Car pollution(污染) is the biggest problem in the USA.  

D. Every family more or less has a car.

5.We can know from this passage(文章) that ____.

The iPhone is a line of smartphones designed and marketed by Apple Inc. It runs Apple's iOS mobile operating system, known as the "iPhone OS" until mid-2010, shortly after the release of the iPad. The first generation iPhone was released on June 29, 2007, the most recent iPhone, the seventh-generation iPhone 5S, on September 20, 2013. The user interface is built around the device's multi-touch screen, including a virtual keyboard. The iPhone has Wi-Fi and cellular connectivity (2G, 3G, 4G, and LTE).

An iPhone can shoot video (though this was not a standard feature until the iPhone 3GS), take photos, play music, send and receive emails, look through the web, send texts, and receive visual voicemail. Other functions—games, reference, GPS navigation, social networking, etc.— can be enabled by downloading apps; as of 2012[update], the App Store offered more than 775,000 apps by Apple and third parties.

There are six generations of iPhone models, each accompanied by one of the six major releases of iOS. The original 1st generation iPhone was a GSM phone, and established design precedents, such as a button placement that has persisted through all models and a screen size maintained until the launch of the iPhone 5 in 2012. The iPhone 3G added 3G cellular network capabilities and A-GPS location. The iPhone 3GS added a faster processor and a higher-resolution camera that could record video at 480p. The iPhone 4 featured a higher-resolution 960 × 640 "retina display", a VGA front-facing camera for video calling and other apps, and a 5-megapixel rear-facing camera with 720p video capture. The iPhone 4S upgrades to an 8-megapixel camera with 1080p video recording, a dual-core processor, and a natural language voice control system called Siri. IPhone 5 features the new A6 processor, increases the size of the Retina display to 4 inches, and replaces the 30-pin connector with an all-digital Lightning connector.

The resounding sales of the iPhone have been credited with reshaping the smart phone industry and helping make Apple one of the world's most valuable publicly trading companies in 2011–12. However, there has been criticism of the company's outsourcing and move of jobs from the US to China. Apple and its manufacturing contractor Foxconn have received criticism due to poor working conditions at the assembly plant in China.

1.An iphone is from __________.

A. the USA??? ???????????????????????????? B. South Korean

C. the UK?? ?????????????????????????????? D. Australia

2.What is the newest kind of iphone at present?

A. iphone 4??????? ?? B. iphone 4S ????????? C. iphone 5??? ??? D. iphone 5S

3.How many generations of iphone models are there now?

A. Five?? ?????????? B. Six???????????????? C. Seven?? ?????? D. Eight

4.What are the features of iphone 5?

A. The new A6 processor??? ??????????

B. increases the size of the Retina display to 4 inches

C. replaces the 30-pin connector with an all-digital Lightning connector?? ????????? ?????

D. A, B and C