My aunt bought me a bicycle on my ninth birthday. She told me to learn to ride by ___36___. But I really didn’t know___37___to ride a bike. What should I do? First, I watched the other people ride. Then I pushed out the bicycle from my house. I was ___38___ I'd fall down and hurt my knees. But I knew I had to get on it sooner or later. So I___39___ to get on just like what the other people did. But I fell off twenty___40___later. Just at that time, my aunt came out from the ___41___. She told me to practice again and again. So I got on the bike a second time, and fell off a second time. But I never gave up. I practiced a third time, a fourth time …. I could be on it ___43___every time I tried again then before, 5 minutes, ten minutes, half an hour… until I could.

Like anything in life that you want to learn how to do or to be good at, you have to practice to ___44___it happen. Diligent practice is the key to success___45___you really want to learn to do a thing. More practice helps you to improve on the skills that you learn and ingrains （使根深蒂固）them in you until you can do it.  

1.  A. herself           B. yourself            C. myself       D. himself

2.A. how             B. what             C. where          D. when

3.A. happy           B. surprised          C. interested      D. afraid

4.  A. had           B. tried                C. like          D. hate

5.A. seconds        B. minutes               C. hours        D. days

6.  A. school         B. house             C. farm          D. village

7.A. fifth           B. fourth             C. third          D. second

8.  A. shorter      B. longer            C.    safer         D. dangerous

9.A. practice        B. enjoy              C.   make         D. set

10. A. if             B. when               C. until         D. after

 

　

going to be home late, I asked him to go into the kitchen and get　　　 something to eat and drink.

Two hours later, my friend telephoned me from the house. At the

moment, he said, he was listening to music. He said he had helped

himself to some cold chicken from the fridge and he was now drinking a glass of orange. I asked him if he had reached the house without any

difficulty. He answered he had not been able to find the key under the

door-mat, but luckily the living-room window by the apple tree had been left open and he had climbed in. I was greatly surprised to hear all this. There is no apple tree in front of my living-room, but there is one in

front of my neighbor’s.

41.Which of the following is true?

A.The writer never knew his friend would come until his friend

called him.

B.The writer knew his friend would come before he arrived home.

C.The writer was at home waiting for his friend.

D.The writer would not like to see his friend.

42． The writer asked his friend to 　　　 .

A. put the key under the door-mat

B. come to his office first

C. go into the house by himself and get something to eat and drink

D. wait for him outside the house

43．The writer’s friend 　　　 .

A. found the key and opened the door with it

B. climbed into the writer’s house

C. got into the house when the writer was listening to music

D. thought the living-room was the writer’s

44.From the story we know 　　　　 .

A. the writer’s friend got a wrong room

B. there is an apple tree in front of the writer’s house

C. the writer didn’t close the window of his living-room when he left home

D. the writer forgot where he had put the key

45.Which is the best title of the story?

A. A strange Telephone Call

B. The Key under the Door-mat

C. My old Friend and the Trouble

D. My house and the Apple tree

One summer vacation in my college, my roommate Ted asked to me to work on his father’s farm in Argentina. The idea was exciting. Then I had second thoughts. I had never been far from New England, and I had been homesick my first few weeks at college. What about the language? The more I thought about it, the more the idea worried me.
Finally, I turned down the invitation. Then I realized I had turned down something I wanted to do because I was scared and felt depressed(沮喪). That experience taught me a valuable lesson and I developed a rule for myself: do what makes you anxious(焦慮); don’t do what makes you depressed.
In my senior year, I wanted to be a writer. But my professor wanted me to teach. I hesitated. The idea of writing was much scarier than spending a summer in Argentina. Back and forth I went, making my decision, unmaking it. Suddenly I realized that every time I gave up the idea of writing, that downhearted feeling went through me.
Giving up writing really depressed me. Then I learned another lesson. To avoid the depression meant having to bear much worry and concern.
When I first began writing articles, I often interviewed big names. Before each interview I would get butterflies in the stomach. One of them was the great composer Duke Ellington. On the stage and on television, he seemed very confident. Then I learned Ellington still got stage fright（害怕）. If Ellington still had anxiety attacks, how could I avoid them? I went on doing those frightening interviews. Little by little, I was even looking forward to the interviews. Where were those butterflies?
In truth, they were still there, but fewer of them. I had learned from a process psychologists（心理學家） call “extinction”. If you put an individual in an anxious situation often, finally there isn’t anything to be worried about, which brings me to a conclusion: you’ll never get rid of anxiety by avoiding the things that caused it.
The point is that the new, the different, is definitely scary. But each time you try something, you learn, and as the learning piles up, the world opens to you.
【小題1】We can infer from the passage that the author________. 

A．finds it difficult to make decision

B．has found out what causes anxiety

C．was encouraged by Duke Ellington’s stage fright

D．no longer feels anxious about new experiences

【小題2】What does the word “extinction” in Paragraph 6 means?

A．a person’s loss of confidence little by little

B．the natural development of a child’s abilities

C．the inborn ability to avoid anxious situations

D．the process of losing fear by keeping facing anxiety

【小題3】Which of the following opinions does the writer probably accept?

A．Anxiety can be a positive drive

B．Hesitation leads to depression.

C．Avoiding anxiety reduces depression.

D．Depression is a signal that one is growing up.

【小題4】What's the best title for the passage?

A．Confidence: Key to Success

B．Anxiety: Challenge by Another Name

C．Depression: A Psychological Appearance

D．Success: A Trip Through Anxiety and Depression