【正文】 life. The Circuit describes the importance of hard work much better than my dad described it. When you won a prize for your butterfly drawing, it made you feel like you were rushing out of your cocoon(繭 ) and you were flying away on your wings to bee noticed. Before, your classmates had not paid attention to you. My dad told me that when he had just e to the US, he won a math prize. Now I understand how he must have felt. I think he is pushing me to work extra hard because he wants me to feel the same way. Your book made me feel a lot better about my dad. I am now sure that he cares about me and he is just trying to help me bee a better person. The Circuit has helped me understand my dad and realize his good intentions. Thank you for sharing your childhood memories with me. With appreciation, Lara Bagdasarian 54. Which of the following is TRUE according to the passage? A. The author’s father doesn’t like her. B. The author may work harder after reading the book C. The author had to do extra homework arranged by her father. D. The author understood her father better before reading the book. 55. What may be the function of the underlined sentence in the fourth paragraph? A. To show the author’s puz zles about what her father does. B. To describe the feeling of achieving success. C. To show the author’s success in drawing. D. To explain the importance of hardworking. 56. The author wrote the letter to ______. A. show her anger to her father B. help sell the book, The Circuit C. express her thanks to Francisco D. express her thanks to her father C Last week, my granddaughter started kindergarten, and I wished her every success. But part of me didn’t. I actually wanted her to fail in some ways because I believe that failure can be good for our learning process. Success is proving that you can do something that you already know you can do, or doing something correctly the first time, which can often be a problematic (存在問題的 ) victory. Firsttime success is usually a fluke (僥幸 ). Firsttime failure, however, is supposed to be the natural order of things. Failure is how we learn. In Africa they describe a good cook as “She who has broken many pots.” If you’ve spent enough time in the kitchen to have broken a lot of pots, probably you know a fair amount about cooking. I once had dinner with a group of cooks, and they spent time paring knife wounds and burn scars. They knew how much credibility (可信 ) their failures gave them. I earn my living by writing a daily newspaper column. Each week I know that one column I write is going to be the worst column. I try my best every day. I have learned to love that column. A successful column usually means that I am discussing my familiar topic, writing in a style I am used to or saying the same things as anyone else but in a better way. My younger daughter is a trapeze artist (蕩秋千演員 ). She spent three years practising a show, and she did it successfully for years. There was no reason for her to change it but she did anyway. She said she was no longer learning anything new and she was bored. And if she was bored, there was no point in subjecting (使 ??服從于 ) her body to all that stress. She risked failure and great public embarrassment in order to feed her soul. My granddaughter is a perfectionist. She will feel her failures, and I will want to fort her. But I will also, I hope, remind her of what she learned, and how she can do better next time. I hope I can tell her, though, that it’s not the end of the world. Indeed, with luck, it is the beginning. 57. Why did the author want his granddaughter to fail? A. Success is boring though good. B. He wanted her to be strong enough to face hardships. C. It’s impossible to do everything successfully. D. She would learn more from failure. 58. What’s the author’s attitude toward his daughter changing her show? A. Negative B. Worried C. Positive D. Anxious 59. The author develops the article mainly by _______. A. following the time order B. paring different opinions C. giving examples D. giving a cause and analyzing its effects 60. The writer talked about his own experience to show that . A. the thought of failure will make you work even harder B. we should try every possible way to avoid failure C. past failures made