初中英语 课文Reading 七年级上册

Dear Li Jie

Hi! Your name and address are in Penfriends magazine. I would like to be your penfriend. My name is Simon. My Chinese name is Li Peichun. I’m twelve years old. How old are you? I’m 163cm. I have short black hair and brown eyes. My hobby is playing chess.

I live with my parents in the UK. They are from Beijing. My parents own a Chinese restaurant in Newcastle. We live in a house near our restaurant. I can speak Chinese, but I cannot write it very well. I have a brother. His name is Edwin. He is 23. He works as an accountant in London. How many people are there in your family? What do they do?

I’m in Year 7 at Walker School. It is near my house, and I can walk to school. I like my school. The teachers are very friend ly.

I am keen on sports. I enjoy playing rugby and badminton in winter, and tennis in summer. My best subject at school is maths.

I want to be an engineer.

Here is a photo of myself and some school friends, I am in the middle. Li Jie, please tell me all about yourself.

Best wishes

Simon

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Dear Kelly

Do you like this photograph of me with my school friends? I am in glasses. Can you see me? On the right is Sally. She is British. She is my best friend at school. She is always happy to help everyone. On the left is Li Jie. I play table tennis with her every afternoon.

The boys stand behind us. Sun Fei wears glasses too. He is a painter. His paintings are very beautiful. He is also a basketball player on the school team. Our school team often wins the Middle School Championship in the city. Wang Gang is a very good swimmer. He practices every morning and night. He wants to be one of the best swimmers in the world. He is the boy next to Chen Yu. Chen Yu is the tallest boy in the class. He is good at tennis. His favourite tennis player is Roger Federer. Li Ming is the boy on the right. He is not very good at sports, but he is very friendly to everyone around him. We all like him a lot.

Love

Liu Mei

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Cheng Na, 15, is one of the top students in Guangzhou. She writes computer games and all of her family work in her business. She is still at school!

6 a.m.

I get up at six o’clock, wash and put on my school uniform. I have breakfast with my parents. Every morning we discuss business at breakfast.

7:30 a.m.

Every day, my driver drives me to school in my own car. I sometimes make phone calls to clients on the way to school.

8 a.m.

I start school. I enjoy seeing my school friends. I usually get A grades in all my subjects.

12:30 p.m.

About twice a week my driver picks me up from school. I go and have lunch with a client. Then I come back to school.

4:15 p.m.

After school I usually go to a club. On Fridays we have Computer Club meetings. On Mondays and Thursdays I play basketball. Once a week I have piano lessons. I do my homework for an hour or two before dinner.

7 p.m.

I always have dinner with my parents. We discuss our business. Then I go to my office and continue working on my games. I usually go to bed at 11 p.m.

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Zhen Hui’s daily life

Zhen Hui studies at a middle school i n Guangzhou. Every day, she wakes up at six o’clock in the morning. She quickly brushes her teeth and washes her face. Then she reads English for half an hour. She has breakfast at seven o’clock. She

usually has two pieces of bread and a glass of milk.

After breakfast, Zhen Hui goes to school. She lives near school and always walks there. She usually gets to school at eight o’clock, and usually has six lessons. Zhen Hui loves English very much, and always gets an A. She usually gets a B in her other subjects.

After school, Zhen Hui usually walks home at four o’clock in the afternoon. Her favourite sport is table tennis. She plays table tennis with her classmates at school once a week.

Zhen Hui often has an early dinner. She begins to do her homework at six o’clock and completes it in one or two hours. She usually goes to bed at nine o’clock.

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Friday, 28 September

Today my father and I waited for the ferry. Suddenly, two women and a man began arguing. The man held out a bag and showed it to the women. There was nothing in it. Everyone looked at the three people. My father went up and asked one of the women, “Is something wrong?”

“He stole my purse,” said the women. “We were in the bookshop and three young men were behind us. Then I couldn’t f ind my purse. The other two men ran away, and we followed this man here.”

Then the gates opened. The man hurried aboard, and the two women went after him.

“Wait,” said my father. “Let’s take the next ferry.” Then he hurried to an ice cream shop, picked up the phone and quickly called 110.

“I want to report a theft. A man stole a purse from a woman. He has a green shirt and a blue bag. He’s on the NO.3 ferry now. It left a few minutes ago. Please meet it on the other side of the river.”

We took the next ferry. When we got off, we saw six policemen standing around the man. He was in handcuffs.

“Well done, Dad,” I said. “You are so great!”

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When Chen Yu woke up, it was already six o’clock. “Oh no! ” he said. Last night he stayed up late to wor k on his science project, but he did not complete it. It was due today. Chen Yu was worried. The science teacher was sure to be angry with him.

Chen Yu put on his clothes quickly and ran out of the door. It was very cold outside. He rode his bike quickly to keep warm. He thought carefully about his project—he wanted to finish it this morning. Suddenly, he saw an old lady fall over and hurt her leg. It was Mrs Li. She lived next door to Chen Yu.

“What should I do?” thought Chen Yu. “I want to help her b ut I do not have time. I have to complete the project before school.”

“She should not walk round on her own in this cold weather without her walking stick,” thought Chen Yu, but he felt guilty not to stop and help her.

Suddenly, he had an idea. He rode quickly to the telephone booth on the side of the road and called an ambulance. Five minutes later, an ambulance picked up Mrs Li, and Chen Yu got on his bike and happily rode to school.

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When I was about eight, I got a book about stars. That was the beginning of my life’s work. When I was young, I did not use to have much money. I could not buy expensive things, but I had my eyes. I used to go outside every night to look at the stars.

There are billions of stars in the sky—but you can only see about 3,000 with your own eyes.

Get a map of the stars and begin to find your way through the sky. In different seasons, you can see different groups of stars. The shapes of these groups never change. It is easy to learn the name of each group. When you know these, you may start to look at the stars inside each group. Not all stars are the same. Some are big, and some are small. Some look white, some look red and some look blue.

Sometimes, you may see a star move. However, if you see it move from one group to another, then it is not a star but a planet. You are able to see Venus and Jupiter easily. They are both very bright. It is easy to see Mars, too. It looks red. You will soon begin to learn more and more about the stars. Then you will want to find out even more about them.

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A photographer can have a very interesting life. Norman Parkinson was a famous English photographer. He liked traveling to interesting places and taking photographs. It was his hobby as well as his job.

Taking photographs is a favourite hobby of many people all over the world. It can help us remember things. We all love to take photographs of each other, especially when we travel to new places. We also like to have a photograph of everybody in the group together. When we want to be in the picture, we need to ask someone to take the photograph for us.

Having photographs is important because people and places always change. It is very sad, for example, if children cannot look at photographs of their parents or grandparents. What did Grandfather look like? Where did he use to live? If we do not have photographs, children may not know the answers to these questions. Photographs help us know and understand our history.

This picture is more than fifty years old. Guangzhou later held the Chinese Export Commodities Fair in this building. DO you think the old picture helps us remember life in the past?

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DINOSAURS

Dinosaurs lived on Earth more than sixty million years before human beings. They lived everywhere. Some dinosaurs were as small as chickens. Others were as big as ten elephants. Some dinosaurs could even fly.

Many dinosaurs were gentle and ate plants. Others were harmful and ate meat.

Dinosaurs all died out suddenly. Nobody knows the reason. However, people can learn about the lives of dinosaurs from fossils of their skeletons, eggs and footprints. (See Earth History)

DISNEY, WALT

Disneyland is a famous amusement park in the USA. Its founder was Walt Disney (1901-1966). He is famous for his cartoon characters such as Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, Goofy and Snow White.

Disney was born in the USA. After leaving school, he sold newspapers and delivered letters. At the same time, he studied art at night. Finally, he got a job drawing cartoons for films.

Sometimes a mouse sat on Walt’s desk when he was at work. He drew the mouse and put it in a cartoon. This became Disney's most famous cartoon character—Mickey Mouse. Mickey soon became a star and Disney became rich and famous. (See Cartoons)

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Jean Champollion (1790-1832) was very good at languages. He learnt twelve languages in his life. When he was eighteen, he began teaching history at university. He was younger than many of his students!

Jean was very interested in ancient Egypt and in 1821 he began to study the Rosetta Stone. A group of soldiers found this stone at Rosetta when Jean was still a young boy. It was under the sand for hundreds of years before they dug it up. There was a lot of strange writing on the stone. The writing was in three languages. One of the languages was ancient Egyptian. No one could read it at that time. But Jean worked out its secret.

Ancient Egyptian was not a language with letters and words like English. It was full of signs. According to many experts, these signs showed things and ideas. Jean did not completely agree. He thought that some of them showed sounds. He found fifteen signs of this kind in his study of the Rosetta Stone. Today, it is possible to understand ancient Egyptian from 4,000 years ago because of Jean's discovery.

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Towards evening, we landed on an unknown planet. Lam, our pilot, brought us down gently in a valley. We left the ship and saw a cave. We went into the cave. It was someone’s home and everything inside was huge!

"Let's get out of here," Peters, our navigator, said. "This is the home of a monster'."

"Maybe it's a friendly monster," I said. "We'll wait."

Suddenly, the door opened and some animals jumped out. They looked like kangaroos. Behind them was a huge monster. The kangaroos shouted, "Good night, Gork." Then they jumped away.

Then Gork saw us. He gave a roar, "Aliens! Aliens in my cave. How did you get in here?"

I thought fast, and said quietly, "Good evening, Mr Gork. My name is Nobody and ..."

Gork roared again, "You're aliens and we kill all aliens in this valley. Tomorrow morning, you are going to die! All of you." Then he pressed a button on the wall. Steel bars rose suddenly from the ground round us and closed over our heads.

"Well, Captain," Lam asked, "why did you name yourself 'Nobody'?"

"I have a plan and 'Nobody' is part of it," I replied. "You'll see."

I turned to Gork and said, "We come in peace, Mr Gork."

Gork said, "You come in peace, but tomorrow you'll be in pieces."

Peters turned towards me, and his voice shook. "We're all going to die, sir."

"No, we're not," I said. "We're all going to live, Peters! Trust me."

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Kelly always wanted to be a scientist. She was interested in maths and physics. She hoped to work in space one day. “I will disc over something important in the future,” she often told herself.

Every evening, Kelly went out with her dog to look at the stars. One night, she saw a strange, coloured light moving across the sky.

"It can't be a star," she thought. "It's too bright. It must be a spaceship! I am going to see it!"

She walked quickly towards the light.

"The people in the spaceship will want to talk to me. Can they speak our language? Will I be able to understand them? Are they lost?"

The spaceship landed a few metres in front of Kelly and the door slowly opened. Suddenly, Kelly's dog ran towards the spaceship. Kelly cried, "This can't be true!” Two huge dogs stood at the door of the spaceship. The visitors from space were dogs! They said a few words to Kelly's dog, Kelly's dog looked at Kelly and then turned and ran into the spaceship. Then the spaceship was gone.

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After his dinner, Gork fell asleep on his bed right way.

"Listen, everyone," I said. "Here's my plan. We'll use this small powerful laser torch to get out of the cage. First, I'll melt the bars and then ..."

Peters interrupted me, "I know, Captain. Then you'll use the torch to kill Gork."

"No," I said. "If we kill him, we won’t be able to open the huge door."

I melted the bars on the cage and we all got out of the cage. I went up to the bed, beside Gork's head. I shouted, “Gork, this is Nobody!”

Gork woke up. I aimed the torch at his eye and the laser beam hit the eye.

Gork roared, "My eye! I can't see!” The noise brought his kangaroo friends to his door. They opened it, and asked, "What's wrong, Gork?"

Gork shouted, "Nobody attacked me. Nobody hurt my eye."

The kangaroos laughed and said, "Nobody attacked you. You just had a bad dream! Let's go back to bed. Good night, Gork."

My crew and I secretly climbed into the huge kangaroos' pockets and they carried us out. A few seconds later, we all jumped out to freedom.

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In 1897, HG Wells wrote a science fiction book about spaceships coming to Earth. Its name was The War of the Worlds. The book was still very popular in the 1930s. On 30 October, 1938, a man named Orson Welles put out a radio programme from the book. The programme was different from the book in one important way: in the programme the actors talked like reporters and it sounded like a news report to the listeners.

The actors said, “Space people from the planet Mars are going to attack Earth. Huge things like snakes will come out of spaceships and kill people and people’s guns cannot hurt any of them.” When people heard this, they were very afraid. Some even left their homes and tried to hide.

Orson Welles waited 40 minutes and later he told the listeners the truth. However, many listeners really believed the news report. They were afraid at first and then they became angry.

In face, 30 October is the day before a famous holiday in the USA and some other countries. On this holiday, people play jokes on other people. The holiday is Halloween.

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