English Club
April 20
Earlier this year, I moved into a suburb of Atlanta. I decided to
I’ve since found six sites of these free book
Since the pandemic began, Little Free Libraries have become a lifeline for many. They don’t
| A．explore | B．search | C．measure | D．clean |
| A．district | B．setting | C．development | D．architecture |
| A．promised | B．explained | C．thought | D．proved |
| A．Secretly | B．Fortunately | C．Naturally | D．Cautiously |
| A．exchanges | B．giveaways | C．reservations | D．publications |
| A．corrected | B．learned | C．improved | D．satisfied |
| A．appearance | B．expression | C．health | D．personality |
| A．standard | B．ordinary | C．varying | D．new |
| A．go on with | B．strike up | C．break in on | D．act out |
| A．require | B．permit | C．deserve | D．guarantee |
| A．leave | B．order | C．edit | D．write |
| A．fancy | B．traditional | C．private | D．temporary |
| A．subjects | B．burdens | C．forms | D．risks |
| A．inform | B．persuade | C．surprise | D．divide |
| A．balancers | B．indicators | C．testers | D．separators |
Frane Selak, a music teacher in Croatia, was born in 1929. He is probably the unluckiest and luckiest man in the world, whose story is so incredible that it will leave you speechless.
The first time he was on the verge of death was on a cold January day in 1962, when he was traveling by train to Dubrovnik. The train suddenly derailed in a frozen river, killing 17 passengers. He managed to escape with only a broken arm, a few scratches, and bruises. A year later, he was flying from Zagreb to Rijeka, when suddenly a door came off and the teacher flew out of the plane. We don’t usually hear much about survivors when it comes to plane crashes, as evidenced by the 19 people who lost their lives in the crash. With one exception — Frane Selak, who was lucky enough to land on a haystack and woke up a few days later in hospital with minor injuries.
The series of unfortunate events did not stop here. Or are they fortunate? In 1966, Frane Selak was traveling in a bus that crashed and fell into a river. There were four casualties, but Selak cheated death again. In 1970, Selak was driving when suddenly his car caught fire. He was lucky to get out of the car just before it exploded. Three years later, another of Selak’ scars caught fire. He lived moments of horror, caught fire, and lost almost all his hair, but again he survived without major injuries.
In 1995 he was in Zagreb and one day he was hit by a bus, but miraculously survived and was left with only a few injuries. The following year, Frane Selak drove into a parapet to avoid a truck coming from the opposite direction. He was thrown out of the car and left hanging from a tree, only to see his car explode 100 meters below.
To make the picture complete and the character’s luck unquestionable, in 2003, Selak won 1 million dollars in the Croatian lottery. In 2010, the 81-year-old retiree decided that “money can’t buy happiness”, and decided to live a modest life with his fifth wife.
Frane Selak is now world-famous for escaping death.
1．What is the text mainly about?| A．How to survive when you are in a traffic accident. |
| B．Courage is a weapon against death. |
| C．A man with fabulous good luck. |
| D．Plane crashes can be deadly. |
| A．6. | B．7. | C．8. | D．9. |
| A．He wanted a peaceful retirement. |
| B．He was involved in three plane crashes. |
| C．He was proud of his fortunate experiences. |
| D．He suffered serious injuries all over his body in 1973. |
| A．He fled just before the car exploded in 1970. |
| B．He was the only survivor of a plane crash in 1963. |
| C．He was hit by a bus but almost uninjured in 1995. |
| D．He won 1,000,000 dollars in the Croatian lottery in 2003. |
Terracotta Warriors exhibition opens in Spain
The Archaeological Museum of Alicante opened on Tuesday
The exhibition
The exhibition is divided into three galleries
Curator of the exhibition Marcos Martinon-Torres, an archaeologist and professor at the University of Cambridge, said the exhibition would provide an “unforgettable experience” for thousands of visitors.
The exhibition is part of a series of activities intended
At the opening ceremony on Tuesday, Carlos Mazon, president of Alicante provincial council, called the exhibition “a
My middle child, Jake, was smart and good-looking, but he always sees the cup of life as half empty. Every day when he came home from school, Jake would list everything bad that happened that day!
On his ninth birthday, we saved enough money to take the family to Disneyland for two days. His dad and I didn’t make much then, so it cost a considerable amount, but we felt Jake’s birthday was worth it. After doing Disneyland to death (玩够了), we returned to our hotel room, all exhausted. And I asked the birthday boy, “Did you have fun today, Jake?”
All my fault-finding son could say to me was “Pirates (海盗) of the Caribbean was closed!” “Jake Marshall,” I was clearly unable to contain my anger, “we stood in line for an hour and a half to see The Haunted Mansion. We rode Space Mountain three times. We spent two days playing in the park, and all you can say is, Pirates of the Caribbean was closed?” Clearly, something had to be done about his negative attitude and I was going to be the one to do it!
I was determined to help him. I read every article and bought every book. With the help of great resources, I found my son had the tendency to see the worst in every situation. My research told me that people with negativity have an emotional need for order and sensitivity. That meant I needed to listen to my son’s daily pessimistic reports. My usual reaction was to try to talk Jake out of his negativity, but that wouldn’t satisfy his need for sensitivity, so I had to let him finish his complaints and ask what good things happened. Then I needed to wait until he could tell me. This would help Jake realize that good things really were happening to him.
Technology seems to discourage slow, immersive reading. Reading on a screen, particularly a phone screen, tires your eyes and makes it harder for you to keep your place. So online writing tends to be more skimmable and list-like than print. The cognitive neuroscientist Mary Walt argued recently that this “new norm” of skim reading is producing “an invisible, game-changing transformation” in how readers process words. The neuronal circuit that sustains the brain’s capacity to read now favors the rapid absorption of information, rather than skills developed by deeper reading, like critical analysis.
We shouldn’t overplay this danger. All readers skim. Skimming is the skill we acquire as children as we learn to read more skillfully. From about the age of nine, our eyes start to bounce around the page, reading only about a quarter of the words properly, and filling in the gaps by inference. Nor is there anything new in these fears about declining attention spans. So far, the anxieties have proved to be false alarms. “Quite a few critics have been worried about attention span lately and see very short stories as signs of cultural decline,” the American author Selvin Brown wrote. “No one ever said that poems were evidence of short attention spans.”
And yet the Internet has certainly changed the way we read. For a start, it means that there is more to read, because more people than ever are writing. If you time travelled just a few decades into the past, you would wonder at how little writing was happening outside a classroom. And digital writing is meant for rapid release and response. An online article starts forming a comment string underneath as soon as it is published. This mode of writing and reading can be interactive and fun. But often it treats other people’s words as something to be quickly harvested as fodder to say something else. Everyone talks over the top of everyone else, desperate to be heard.
Perhaps we should slow down. Reading is constantly promoted as a social good and source of personal achievement. But this advocacy often emphasizes “enthusiastic”, “passionate” or “eager” reading, none of which adjectives suggest slow, quiet absorption.
To a slow reader, a piece of writing can only be fully understood by immersing oneself in the words and their slow comprehension of a line of thought. The slow reader is like a swimmer who stops counting the number of pool laps he has done and just enjoys how his body feels and moves in water.
The human need for this kind of deep reading is too tenacious for any new technology to destroy. We often assume that technological change can’t be stopped and happens in one direction, so that older media like “dead-tree” books are kicked out by newer, more virtual forms. In practice, older technologies can coexist with new ones. The Kindle has not killed off the printed book any more than the car killed off the bicycle. We still want to enjoy slowly-formed ideas and carefully-chosen words. Even in a fast-moving age, there is time for slow reading.
1．What is the author’s attitude towards Selvin Brown’s opinion?| A．Favorable. | B．Critical. | C．Doubtful. | D．Objective. |
| A．advocacy of passionate reading helps promote slow reading |
| B．digital writing leads to too much speaking and not enough reflection |
| C．the public should be aware of the impact skimming has on neuronal circuits |
| D．the number of Internet readers is declining due to the advances of technology |
| A．Comprehensive. | B．Complicated. | C．Determined. | D．Apparent. |
| A．Slow Reading Is Here to Stay |
| B．Digital Technology Prevents Slow Reading |
| C．Screen vs. Print: Which Requires Deep Reading? |
| D．Reading Is Not a Race: The Wonder of Deep Reading |
Once upon a time, we were all question-asking experts. We started asking our parents numerous questions as kids. By preschool, our inquiries even reached the depths of science, philosophy, and the social order. Where does the sun go at night? Why doesn’t that man have a home like we do? Why do rocks sink but ice floats?
Why does the child’s urge to ask questions grow inactive in so many adults? An important factor is how the social environments surrounding us change as we age. Schools transform from a place for asking questions to one funded by our ability to answer them.
When it comes to how we phrase questions, we are advised to open with less sensitive questions, favor follow-up questions, and keep questions open-ended. We can also practice asking questions of and for ourselves by keeping a running list of questions in a journal.
In the world that does not look much as it did years ago, we must ask questions.
| A．Then, at some point, our inquiring desires disappear. |
| B．It is a high-payoff behavior especially in times of change. |
| C．The questions we ask depend on our attitudes as well as the situations. |
| D．But as we grow up, asking questions fills us with worry and self-doubt. |
| E．As such, one way to renew our inquiring spirit is to change the atmosphere. |
| F．We learn to sell ourselves on the job market by what we know, not what we don’t. |
| G．It not only removes the publicity from question asking, but offers us a place to experiment. |
Yours,
Li Hua
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