题型：阅读表达 题类：常考题 难易度：困难
北京市海淀区2020-2021学年高二下学期英语期中考试试卷
The signs appeared practically overnight. They'd been planted anywhere and everywhere—in front of homes, along sidewalks, around the neighborhood. Each featured just a few uplifting words in simple black type: "Don't Give Up", "You Are Not Alone", "We Will Get Through". The residents in Newberg, Oregon, had suffered huge loss from a major tornado this year, so the town of 25,000 instantly understood the messages. For days, what no one could figure out was who had planted them.
Amy Wolff had. At first, she didn't want anyone to connect her to them. For one thing, the 36-year-old mother of two didn't really feel it was her place to weigh in. However, losing her brother in an accident several years earlier had led her to do so. She planted the signs anonymously because she wanted them to be about their message, not any one person. It was compassion(同情) for compassion's sake. "I couldn't just do nothing," says Wolff.
Yet as Wolff saw the deep chord her signs struck with her neighbors, she decided to step forward to share her message publicly. Instantly, her inbox was flooded with requests for more signs.
That was in May 2017.Since then, the Don't Give Up Movement has spread from Newberg to the hearts and yards of people in every state and several countries. The signs have morphed(变化) into wristbands, bumper stickers, pins, stamps, etc. One of the most heartening elements of the movement is that it has gone viral in a remarkably human way. More and more people have taken action, planting the signs in their lawns, taking selfies, and then posting them to share.
Aware of the added emotional challenges isolation brings under the cloud of COVID-19, the Don't Give Up Movement has since offered to send letters of support to anyone in quarantine who needs it. The group received about 400 requests in just 24 hours. A young woman wrote that she struggled with mental illness and that shelter-in-place rules were especially hard on her and her family; she asked whether the Don't Give Up group could send her relatives a cheerful note. Wolff's message is about to grow yet again.
Reading the world in 195 books
In 2012, I set myself the challenge of trying to read a book from every country of all 195 UN-recognized states in a year. {#blank#}1{#/blank#}. I created a blog called A Year of Reading the World and put out an appeal for suggestions of titles that I could read in English.
The response was amazing. Before I knew it, people all over the planet were getting in touch with ideas and offers of help. Some posted me books. Others did hours of research on my behalf. {#blank#}2{#/blank#}. Even with such an extraordinary team behind me, however, sourcing books was no easy task.
But the effort was worth it. As I made my way through the planet's literary landscapes, extraordinary things started to happen. Far from simply armchair travelling, I found I was inhabiting the mental space of the storytellers. I discovered, bookpacking offered something that a physical traveller could hope to experience only rarely: it took me inside the thoughts of individuals living far away and showed me the world through their eyes. More powerful than a thousand news reports, these stories not only opened my mind to basic information of life in other places, but opened my heart to the way people there might feel. {#blank#}3{#/blank#}. Through reading the stories shared with me by bookish strangers around the globe, I realized I was not an isolated person, but part of a network that stretched all over the planet.
One by one, the country names on the list that had begun as an intellectual exercise transformed into places filled with laughter, love, anger, hope and fear. {#blank#}4{#/blank#}. At its best, I learned, fiction makes the world real.
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A. Lands that had once seemed foreign and remote became close and familiar to me. B. And that in turn changed my thinking. C. With no idea how to find publications, I decided to ask the planet's readers for help. D. No matter how long your life is, you will be able to read only a few of all the books that have been written. E. You'll find yourself enlightened by the thoughts and observations of the most gifted writers in history. F. In addition, several writers, like Turkmenistan's Ak Welsapar, sent me unpublished translations of their novels. |
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