My school stood in a big square playground in southeastern South Dakota. One teacher taught all grades, first through eighth. Most grades had only two or three students.

    Our school day started with the flag pledge(宣誓). Then the teacher called one grade at a time to the recitation bench beside her desk. She'd check our work, explain the new lesson, and dismiss us to go back to our own desks and do our new work, all in less than ten minutes per grade.

    At noon we ate lunches we had brought. Our lunches consisted of homemade sandwiches and if we were lucky, dessert. My favorite dessert was a fresh pear, and a piece of Mom's delicious sour cream chocolate cake.

    The annual Christmas program was the most exciting part of the year. We hurried through our lessons during December to allow time to practise poems, songs, and plays.

    A few days before the performance, the school board members borrowed equipment from the town and set up a stage across one side of the classroom. We hung bed sheets for curtains.

    On the evening of the performance, petrol lanterns hanging along the walls cast a warm, though not very bright, light over the gathering crowd. We could hardly contain our excitement as we looked from behind the curtains to wave at our parents.

    On a spring Sunday in a new term, just before the last day of the school term, everyone in the neighborhood gathered for a picnic. Our moms set fried chicken, bowls of salads, and desserts on the teacher's desk and the library table. After the dinner, we played games. One of the school board members brought big buckets of ice cream in the afternoon to top off the picnic. How we looked forward to that treat!

    I was just nineteen years old when I started my first teaching position in a country school with thirteen students. I felt excited, nervous and happy as I prepared my lunch bucket the first morning of the term. I can't remember what kind of sandwiches I packed, but I do remember I put in a fresh pear and a piece of chocolate cake for dessert!

    You have probably been told by your high school instructor that writing is an important and practical skill. However, you may not be convinced that the ability to write will be important in your own future. If so, you will be surprised at the results of a recent survey by the National Institute of Education. More than four thousand working men and women who had graduated fifteen years earlier were asked to name the courses they would have taken in college if they had known better. The designer of the survey expected people to name courses in computer science, mathematics, or business. But the course most often mentioned was writing.

    If you already have a job, you are probably not surprised at their answers. Many jobs require the ability to write. Despite the increasing use of the telephone and the computer, much information must be communicated in writing.Some ten million people—managers, engineers, sales representatives, and many others— write regularly as part of their jobs. Summaries, reports, reports, letters and speeches are required in today's work world. The ability to write, therefore, is an important skill. The successful individual is almost always the one who can communicate successfully in writing.

    Writing communicates your thoughts and feelings to others; it also tells you something about yourself. Maybe this is what Eldridge Cleaver had in mind in his autobiography, “I started to write... to save myself...I had to seek out the truth... I had to find out who I am and what I want to be ,what type of man I should be ,and what I could do to become the best of which I was capable.”

阅读下列短文，从每题所给的四个选项 （A 、B 、C  和 D ）中，选出最佳选项。

    George Bernard Shaw，the greatest and funniest British dramatist(剧作家)of the first half of the 20th century，was born in Dublin，Ireland，on July 26,1856.His early life was not happy. His father was a selfish man who drank too much and could not support his family properly. His mother was a disappointed，unhappy woman who found more pleasure in studying music than in her children. Bernard and his two sisters received little love and attention from their mother while they were young. At the age of ten Shaw entered school. At first he was the best student，but soon he was at or near the bottom of his class.

    Although he did not like school，Bernard was a good，bright，curious student. His lifelong interest in everything from music and art to machines and medicine began from school life. The interests of this tireless schoolboy were literature and music. He often entertained(使快乐)his classmates with stories he read.

    Early at the age of fifteen，he went to work in an office. He did well as an office clerk，but after five years he decided that he wanted to be a writer. He left Ireland and went to London，where he began to write seriously. Seventy-four years later the great dramatist died.

    Crystal Cruises（乘船浏览）-Luxury Every Day

    What do you plan to do this winter vacation? Do you want to travel over the sea, experience the ocean wave and enjoy the wonderful sea views? If that's what you want, come and sail on a Crystal Cruise ship. We have three ships: The Crystal Queen, The Crystal Princess, The Crystal Palace.

Come and sail in luxury（奢侈）on cruises around the Caribbean Sea for 7 or 14 days.

    Our seven-day cruise costs $2,000 and our two-week cruise is $3,500.

A typical one week cruise:

    Day One—set off from Miami

    Day Two—free day in Nassau, in The Bahamas

    Day Three—near Haiti

    Day Four—visit Puerto Rico and Antigua

    Day Five—free day in Barbados

    Day Six—free day in Port of Spain, Trinidad

    Day Seven—travel to Caracas, Venezuela

    Day Eight—fly home.

    All food and drink is included in the price of your cruise (except for wines). Our cruise ships all have a cinema, a five-star restaurant, a theatre, a library and a gym. However, you have to pay extra money to enjoy the films and plays.

    If you prefer to go on a cruise in another part of the world, we also organize cruises in the Baltic Sea and the Mediterranean.

    Our ships carry over 2,000 passengers and we have nearly 600 crew members in all.

    So come on board today for the holiday of a lifetime!

Call immediately: 020-4455832

    I'm sure you will enjoy your luxury cruise ship journey very much!

    There are about 5,000 different kinds of ladybugs(瓢虫)in the world. They are also known as lady beetles or ladybird beetles. They come in many different colors and patterns, but the best-known in North America is the seven-spotted ladybug, with its shiny, red-and-black body.

    In many cultures, ladybugs are thought to be good luck. Most people like them because they are pretty, lovely and do no harm to human beings. But farmers love them because they eat aphids and other plant-eating pests. One ladybug can eat up 5,000 insects in its lifetime!

    Most ladybugs have dome-shaped bodies with six short legs. Depending on the kind, they can have spots, stripes, or nothing at all. Seven-spotted ladybugs are red or orange with three spots on each side and one in the middle. They have a black head. Ladybugs are colorful for a reason. They tell the enemy: "Eat something else! I taste terrible." When threatened, they may play dead. Birds are ladybugs' main predators(天敌), but they are also eaten by frogs, spiders, and dragonflies.

    Ladybugs are happy in many different places, including grasslands, forests, cities, suburbs, and along rivers. Seven-spotted ladybugs are native to Europe but were brought to North America in the mid-1900s.

    Ladybugs are most active from spring until fall. When the weather turns cold, they look for a warm place to hibernate, such as in rotting logs, under rocks, or even inside houses. These hibernating places can have thousands of ladybugs.

    The name "ladybug" was given by European farmers who prayed to the Virgin Mary when pests began eating their crops. After ladybugs came and wiped out the invading insects, the farmers named them "beetle of Our Lady". This later was shortened to "lady beetle" and "ladybug".

As the school year barely(刚刚) starts in Denver, French teacher Melanie is filled with worry that her students are always absent-minded. Yet, the problem isn't messaging, enjoying video games or delivering notes. Surprisingly, the problem is about the ongoing heat wave in Denver.

"Today was a little bit hot, so I noticed that kids were very sleepy and they had to get up to drink water quite often." said Melanie, who works at Denver East High School. "If you lose too much water, you have to keep going to the water fountain, which can take away from their classroom experience." While nodding off in class on a warm day may seem acceptable for average teens, Melanie's observation carries a bigger result than dry lips.

There have been quite a few media reports about teachers noticing that students were not able to focus on hotter days," said RJisung Park, a researcher. "Does a hotter climate during the school year actually affect the rate of learning?" The drop in academic achievements couldn't be explained by hotter weekends or hotter summers, but the trend was connected to higher temperatures on school days alone.

The connection between lost learning and a greater number of hot days is one more example of how climate change is already affecting our lives, and it's an alarm bell for what we stand to lose in the future.

Humans still have time to lessen the global warming. Without any important changes in the next 10 years, the globe will be trapped in heat waves that might be too much for human beings.