Since I was a child, I called my father my Kong, after King Kong. I believed that he was just as strong as the giant ape(猿猴). As he faced death, I did my best to help release him to the next life.
Two months after he passed away, my sister called to ask if I would like to go see Lisa Williams, a well-known witch（巫婆）. I was familiar with Lisa from her show on Lifetime, and since I was eager to get a sign from my father, I agreed to go.
I took my father’s gold watch and listened as Lisa helped audience members communicate with their loved ones. “I have a grandfather-like figure with me and he is speaking about his granddaughter Jilly,” she announced. The audience was quiet; no one raised a hand. I nudged（用肘輕推） my sister and whispered to her that this was Dad ,for my third child and my father had a deep bond(關系，紐帶) and he called her Jilly.
Although I sensed his presence, I wasn’t confident enough to raise my hand. I needed something a bit more concrete, something undoubted.
“This man is letting me know he had cancer,” she continued. I nudged my sister harder and assured her this was our father. Lisa went on to say that this person died in June (my father had died June 8th). There was swelling of the legs.
“Important information,” she called out. My heart beat fast . I jumped up when she asked, “Who is holding his watch?” I waved the watch in the air.
“He wishes you congratulations.” My fourth child was born three weeks after my father died. I was in shock and could not believe I was getting a chance to hear from him, yet I knew our bond was strong enough that he could come to the world. She banged on her chest like an ape and apologized, saying, “I don’t know why but he wants me to do this like Tarzan.” It didn’t resonate（共鳴） with me until my sister called out “King Kong!” I was convinced. No way could this woman have ever known a detail unless Dad was communicating through her.
Each bit of information she gave us was just as meaningful. She ended our session by informing us that he would send us coins. The very next day I found six coins in various places; they seemed to have come out of nowhere. Even in death he is my Kong, and he remains important in my life.
【小題1】What’s the best title of the passage?

Sandra Cisneros was born in Chicago in 1954 to a Mexican American family. As the only girl in a family of seven children, she often felt like she had “seven fathers,” because her six brothers, as well as her father, tried to control her. Feeling shy and unimportant, she retreated(躲避) into books. Despite her love of reading, she did not do well in elementary school because she was too shy to participate.
In high school, with the encouragement of one particular teacher, Cisneros improved her grades and worked for the school literary magazine. Her father encouraged her to go to college because he thought it would be a good way for her to find a husband. Cisneros did attend college, but instead of searching for a husband, she found a teacher who helped her join the famous graduate writing program at the University of Iowa. At the university’s Writers’ Workshop, however, she felt lonely―a Mexican American from a poor neighborhood among students from wealthy families. The feeling of being so different helped Cisneros find her “creative voice.”
“It was not until this moment when I considered myself truly different that my writing acquired a voice. I knew I was a Mexican woman, but I didn’t think it had anything to do with why I felt so much imbalance in my life, but it had everything to do with it! That’s when I decided I would write about something my classmates couldn’t write about.”
Cisneros published her first work, The House on Mango Street, when she was twenty-nine. The book tells about a young Mexican American girl growing up in a Spanish-speaking area in Chicago, much like the neighborhoods in which Cisneros lived as a child. The book won an award in 1985 and has been used in classes from high school through graduate school level. Since then, Cisneros has published several books of poetry, a children’s book, and a short-story collection.
【小題1】 Which of the following is TRUE about Cisneros in her childhood?

Most Chinese people these days know what it is like to have an “English teacher”, since almost all pupils study English from their third year. Usually that first English teacher will be a young and lovely lady in primary school. But my first English teacher is no other than my father. Looking back, I can see that, when I was only a little girl, he created an English environment by providing me with flashcards，fun English- language toys and even dolls which can sing English songs! My interest in English had certainly been awakened (喚起) when I began to learn English at school. Just imagine, he went a step further and asked me to learn New Concept English by myself! I was puzzled and even angry. I could not understand why a father could be so strict with his little girl. All the same, he never gave up and he gently insisted that I follow through with his idea. At first, I read stories with tears and I actually hated them because they were too difficult for me. In the end, I came to love the funny stories and, to be honest, my father was always there with a helping hand. I am sure that my English would never have got so far without his support. And that’s why my father is not only my first English teacher but also my lifelong teacher. He is one who awoke my interest, and who gave me much confidence .
【小題1】Most pupils in China begin to learn English________.

Vivi Mac, an amazing artist from France, can use nearly any kind of food to create detailed celebrity portraits（名人肖像）．Although she has yet to display her short-lived work of arts in a proper art gallery, Vivi Mac has already made a name for herself online.
We've seen some amazing food artists in the past, but none are quite like this one .Karen Eland is a master coffee painter, Elisabetta Rogai uses wine as her medium(媒介），Kelly McCollam uses food colouring(食用色素）to recreat classic paintings, but the self-taught Vivi Mac can take anything from chewing gum to milk and turn it into a fantastic portrait  When working with liquids, Mac uses a simple plastic straw and her hands to guide the unusual .mediums around a plastic plate which acts as a painting. Just how she manages to capture the finest facial features  is still a mistery  to me, and I've seen videos of her doing it many times，
Vivi Mac has never attended art school. She only used online resources like blogs and facebook to learn the basics of drawing and painting. She started out working with pens and paper, but soon realized drawing wasn't just creative enough for her. She got into speed  painting and body painting, posting videos of her works on You Tube, but it wasn't until she began experimenting with different kinds of foods that her art got serious coverage. Photos and videos of her eatable celebrity portraits, like Bruce Lee in milk  Ice Cube in crushed ice or Amy Winehouse in wine, became popular on the French inter-webs and changed Vivi Mac into an online celebrity.
【小題1】What does the underlined word "display" in the first paragraph mean?

My day began on a definitely sour note when I saw my six-year-old wrestling with a limb of my azalea（杜鵑花）bush. By the time I got outside, he’d broken it. “Can I take this to school today?” he asked. With a wave of my hand, I sent him off. I turned my back so he wouldn’t see the tears gathering in my eyes.
The washing machine had leaked on my brand-new linoleum. If only my husband had just taken the time to fix it the night before when I asked him instead of playing checkers with Jonathan.
It was days like this that made me want to quit. I just wanted to drive up to the mountains, hide in a cave, and never come out.
Somehow I spent most of the day washing and drying clothes and thinking how love had disappeared from my life. As I finished hanging up the last of my husband’s shirts, I looked at the clock. 2:30. I was late. Jonathan’s class let out at 2:15 and I hurriedly drove to the school.
I was out of breath by the time I knocked on the teacher’s door and peered through the glass. She rustled through the door and took me aside. “I want to talk to you about Jonathan,” she said.
I prepared myself for the worst. Nothing would have surprised me. “Did you know Jonathan brought flowers to school today?” she asked. I nodded, thinking about my favorite bush and trying to hide the hurt in my eyes. “Let me tell you about yesterday,” the teacher insisted. “See that little girl?” I watched the bright-eyed child laugh and point to a colorful picture taped to the wall. I nodded.
“Well, yesterday she was almost hysterical. Her mother and father are going through a nasty divorce. She told me she didn’t want to live, she wished she could die. I watched that little girl bury her face in her hands and say loud enough for the class to hear, ‘Nobody loves me.’ I did all I could to comfort her, but it only seemed to make matters worse.” “I thought you wanted to talk to me about Jonathan,” I said.
“I do,” she said, touching the sleeve of my blouse. “Today your son walked straight over to that child. I watched him hand her some pretty pink flowers and whisper, ‘I love you.’“
I felt my heart swell with pride for what my son had done. I smiled at the teacher. “Thank you,” I said, reaching for Jonathan’s hand, “you’ve made my day.”
Later that evening, I began pulling weeds from around my azalea bush. As my mind wandered back to the love Jonathan showed the little girl, a biblical verse came to me: “...these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.” While my son had put love into practice, I had only felt anger.
I heard the familiar squeak of my husband’s brakes as he pulled into the drive. I snapped a small limb bristling with hot pink azaleas off the bush. I felt the seed of love that God planted in my family beginning to bloom once again in me. My husband’s eyes widened in surprise as I handed him the flowers. “I love you,” I said.
【小題1】Why did the woman cry when seeing her son had broken the azalea bush?

Is there anything more important than health? I don’t think so. “Health is the greatest wealth.” wise people say. You can’t be good at your studies or work well when you are ill. If you have a headache, toothache, backache, earache or bad pain in the stomach, if you complain of a bad cough, if you run a high temperature and have a bad cold, or if you suffer from high or low blood pressure, I think you should go to the doctor. The doctor will examine your throat, feel your pulse, test your blood pressure, take your temperature, sound your heart and lungs, test your eyes, check your teeth or have your chest X-rayed. After that he will advise some treatment, or some medicine. The only thing you have to do is to follow his advice.
Speaking about doctor’s advice, I can’t help telling you a funny story. An old gentleman came to see the doctor. The man was very ill. He told the doctor about his weakness, memory loss and serious problems with his heart and lungs. The doctor examined him and said there was no medicine for his disease. He told his patient to go to a quiet place for a month and have a good rest. He also advised him to eat a lot of meat, drink two glasses of red wine every day and take long walks. In other words, the doctor advised him to follow the rule: “Eat with pleasure, drink with pleasure and enjoy life as it is.” The doctor also said that if the man wanted to be well again, he shouldn’t smoke more than one cigarette a day. A month later the gentleman came into the doctor’s office. He looked cheerful and happy. He thanked the doctor and said that he had never felt a healthier man.“ But you know, doctor,” he said, “it’s not easy to begin smoking at my age.”
【小題1】 The writer thinks that_____.

Nelson Mandela is respected and admired across the world. And to South Africans he is a superstar. He is a hero who shocked the world by fighting for peace between races, despite the 27 years he spent in the prison of the South Africa’s white, racist regime(政權)
Mandela, who won the nation’s first all-race elections after the fall of apartheid(種族隔離) in 1944,retired in 1999. But he remains as popular as ever.
“He’s loved by all people, whether you’re white or black, whether you’re young or old,” said Ali Bacher, South Africa’s former cricket(板球) chief.
His popularity has inspired an entire national industry. His portrait has appeared at many places, including on some goods. His face has appeared on a South African coin, a metropolitan(首都)area was named in his honor and some business leaders hope to build a massive, rotating statue in his likeness---- the Statue of Freedom. It would stand taller than New York’s Statue of Liberty.
His popular appeal is similar to that of John F. Kennedy wth US or Winston Churchill in Britain, but few politicians in his times have achieved his level of admiration, said Tom Lodge, head of the political science department of the University of the Witwatersrand.“ Sometimes it isn’t completely appreciated what a skilled performer Mandela has been throughout his political career. He is a very ,very clever man,”However , he is far from perfect.
Most articles for his birthday, which appeared in every major South African newspaper on the day, briefly mentioned that Mandela did have his shortcomings. Then they returned to their flowing praises. “Through the ages, the human race has had its icons（偶像）---- men and women who rose above ordinary people to inspire their generation,” The Mail and Guardian Weekly said. “In our generation, the gods presented us Nelson Mandela.”
【小題1】Nelson Mandela is loved by all the people of South Africa because_____________.

Three men were travelling across the desert when their car broke down. There were no other traffics, so their only hope was to walk.
Before they set off, they looked around in the car for useful things to take with them. One of the men took a bottle of whisky. Another took an umbrella. The third unscrewed a door from the car and carried that.
After they had been walking for almost a day, they came across a camel caravan travelling towards them.
“Let’s try to join the caravan,” one of the men said. “It’s going the wrong way but we’ll be safer than if we keep on alone across the desert.”
The other s agreed, so they asked the leader of the caravan for permission to join it.
“You can join the caravan only if you answer three questions,” he said. He pointed to the first man’s bottle. “What is that and why are you carrying it?” he asked.
“It’s a bottle of whisky. I decided to carry it with me so that if I feel miserable and want to give up, I can get drunk, cheer myself up and then keep on walking.”
“Very sensible,” the leader of the caravan said. Then he pointed to the next man and his umbrella.
“It hasn’t rained in the desert for many years,” he said. “Why are you carrying an umbrella?”
“I don’t want to get heat exhaustion,” he replied. “The umbrella will give me shade from the sun.”
“Very sensible,” the leader of the caravan said. He pointed to the third man and his car door. “And why are you carrying a car door?” he asked him.
“I thought that if I got too hot I could open the window and let some air in,” he explained.
【小題1】What happened to the three men’s car?

閱讀下面短文，按照句子結構的語法性和上下文連貫的要求，在空格處填入一個適當?shù)脑~或使用括號中詞語的正確形式填空。
Everyone had a childhood. And childhood experiences are often very funny. Children often make us    【小題1】(laugh). It’s true    【小題2】children brighten up a home. They never turn off the lights.
I often recall my childhood, the years   【小題3】   many interesting things happened. When I was a two-year-old child, both my parents were always very busy with their work. My mother worked   【小題4】   a sales manager in a company while my father served in    【小題5】  army. So I lived with my grandma in a village. I was always waiting for my parents at home. Once my father    【小題6】  (send) us a photo of his in a soldier’s uniform,    【小題7】  was posted on the table reminding me of him.
Once my mother came to see me and we went   【小題8】  (shop) together. On the way we saw a group of soldiers. And when I saw them, I became very    【小題9】 (excite). I said in a ringing voice pointing to    【小題10】  , “This is my father, and this is my father, and that is my father, too!”
My mother said she would remember that moment all her life.

When I was young, I went looking for gold in California. I never found enough to make a rich strike. But I did discover a beautiful part of the country called Stanislau. Like Heaven on Earth, it had bright green hills and deep forests where soft winds touched the trees. By the time I arrived, the charming paradise had been deserted because miners’ good luck didn’t last.
Then, I realized I was not alone after all.
A man was smiling at me as he stood in front of his little house. Its front yard was full of blue and yellow flowers. White curtains hung from the windows and floated in the soft summer wind.
Still smiling, the man invited me inside. My spirit seemed to come to life again. I saw a bright rug(地毯) on the shining wooden floor. And on little tables there were seashells, books and china vases full of flowers. A woman had made this house into a home. The joy in my heart showed on my face. The man read my thoughts. “All her work.” He said affectionately, “Nothing here hasn’t felt the touch of her hand.”
One picture on the wall was not hanging straight. He went to fix it. He stepped back several times to make sure the picture was straight. Then he gave it a gentle touch. “She always does that,” he explained, “It is like the finishing pat a mother gives her child’s hair after she has brushed it. I don’t know why I do it. I just do it.”
As he talked, I went to a little black-walnut shelf that held a small picture of the most beautiful creature I had ever seen. There was a sweetness and softness in the woman’s expression. The man stared at the picture. “Nineteen her last birthday. That was the day we married. When you see her...ah, just wait until you meet her!” “Where is she now?” I asked. “Oh, she is away visiting her parents. This is Wednesday,” he said slowly. “She will be back on Saturday, in the evening.”
That night, I stayed. The man told me his name was Henry.
Thursday evening we had two visitors, Tom and Joe. “We just drop over to ask when little madam is coming home. Any news from her?” “Oh yes,” the man replied. “A letter.” He took a yellowed letter out of his wallet and read it. It was full of loving messages. While reading, he glimpsed his friends and cried out, “Oh no, you are doing it again, Tom! Take your hands away and let me see your eyes. I’m going to tell her this time!” “No, you mustn’t do that, Henry,” the grey-haired miner said. “I am getting old. And any little sorrow makes me cry. Lord, we miss her so.”
Saturday finally came.  
I was glad to see his two friends, Tom and Joe, with guitars, coming down the road as the sun began to set. They put the flowers they brought in vases and began to play some fast and lively songs.
Henry’s friends kept giving him glasses of whiskey. When I reached for one of the two remaining glasses, Tom stopped my arm. “Drop that! Take the other.” he whispered. I did so. Henry was served last. He had hardly swallowed his drink when the clock struck midnight. His face grew paler and paler. “Boys,” he said, “I am sick with fear. Help! I want to lie down.” Henry was asleep almost before the words were out of his mouth.
In a moment, those handy men had his clothes off and tucked him into his bed. They seemed to be getting ready to leave. So I said, “Please don’t go, gentlemen. She won’t know me. I am a stranger.” They glanced at each other. Then Joe said, “She? Poor thing, she’s been dead nineteen years!” “Dead?” I whispered. “That or worse.” he said.
“She went to see her folks half a year after she got married. On her way back, on a Saturday evening in June, when she was almost here, the Indians captured her. She’s never been heard of since. Henry went insane. He thinks she is still alive. When June comes, he thinks she has gone on her trip to see her parents. Then he begins to wait for her to come back. We drop in here, three days before she’s due, to encourage him up and listen to him read the letter. On Saturday we all come and get everything ready for a dance. We’ve done it for nineteen years. The first Saturday there were twenty-seven of us, but only two now. We drug him to sleep through the night. Then he’s all right for another year.”
The two old men opened the door and disappeared into the darkness of Stanislau.
【小題1】You can sense the existence of a woman from the following sentences EXCEPT “______”.