（甲卷）高考英语提前冲——阅读理解 话题2 人物故事类

Terri Boltonis a dab hand when it comes to DIY(do-it-yourself). Skillde at putting up shelves and piecing together furniture, she never pays someone else to do a job she can do herself.

She credits these skills to her late grandfather and builder Derek Lloyd. From the age of six, Terri, now 26, accompanied Derek to work during her school holidays. A day's work was rewarded with £5 in pocket money. She says: "I'm sure I wasn't much of a help to start with painting the rooms and putting down the flooring throughout the house. It took weeks and is was backbreaking work, but I know he was proud of my skills."

Terri, who now rents abhouse with friends in Wandsworth, South West London, says DIY also saves her from losing any deposit when a tenancy(租期)comes to an end. She adds: "I've moved house many times and I always like to personalise my room and put up pictures. So, it's been useful to know how to cover up holes and repaint a room to avoid any charges when I've moved out"

With millions of people likely to take on DIY projects over the coming weeks, new research shows that more than half of people are planning to make the most of the long, warm summer days to get jobs done. The average spend per project will be around £823. Two thirds of people aim to improve their comfort while at home. The fifth wish to increase the value of their house. Though DIY has a traditionally been seen as male hobby, the research shows it is women now leading the charge.

Alena Analeigh Wicker had an incredibly impressive list of accomplishments. She studied biological sciences at two separate universities. She is a former NASA intern and went to a medical school. At the young age of 13, she was well on her way to achieving her dreams and ambitions. She also supplied support to other young girls like her, who were interested in science and technology, and hoped that her story would serve as a source of inspiration.

Alena's mother, McQuarter, claimed that her daughter had always been exceptional and superior. She offered to be educated at home. So McQuarter homeschooled Alena during elementary school. Even after Alena returned to school in the fifth grade, she continued studying high school subjects based on a course carefully designed by her mother.

"I was bored," Alena explains. "The high school work was so easy for me that I ended up graduating from high school when I was 12. I love school; I love learning; I love reading. I have a desire to learn, and that has just always been me."

After graduation, Alena went to two separate universities, earning degrees in biological sciences from both Arizona State University and Oakwood University. And while studying for the accelerated degrees, Alena started the Brown STEM Girl Foundation, in honor of Katherine Johnson, who had been a pioneering African-American mathematician at NASA. The Foundation's target is to engage and educate girls in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM).

Alena has promoted her foundation online, "It feels amazing to be able to create a path for girls that look like me." Alena shares her tips. She says, "It doesn't matter how old you are. You can do it. Don't let anybody tell you no. I would say to any little girl out there that's reading this: Never give up on yourself and never let anyone tell you that you can't do something."

As the world has changed, so has education. Since 2018, Nelly Cheboi and her non-profit TechLit Africa have been bringing computer technology into schools in Kenya, helping students join the digital world, and unlock their potential. With its own software programs, curriculum（课程）and teacher training programs, this non-profit hopes to change Africa.

In 2012, Cheboi received a scholarship to College in Illinois that changed her life. She grew up in poverty in rural Kenya, watching her mother struggle to support her family alone. Cheboi had no experience with computers before moving to the US to study. She hand wrote papers and then struggled to type them out on a laptop computer. Somehow she fell in love with computer science and began a career in the field. But she did not lose sight of her origins. "As an undergraduate, I invested all of my income from various campus jobs into my community back in Kenya, "she said on the TechLit Africa website. But soon she wanted to do more for it and that is how TechLit Africa began.

Cheboi recalled how her background helped her understand how important technological knowledge could be for children living in poverty. She built a school with the idea of bringing computer science as part of kids' curriculum growing up. But she found that it was going to be really hard to impact as many people as possible, because it was so hard to fund raise. Then in order to reach more students, she introduced computer training to existing schools. Cheboi physically dragged over 40 recycled computers that had been donated to them by various tech companies to Kenya in suitcases.

Now, since the non-profit has grown, it works with various companies that help them clean the donated computers of data and send them to Africa. TechLit Africa runs its own curriculum with its own software programs in 10 Kenyan schools, and the hope is to increase to 100 throughout Africa by next year. The students love learning about computers, and in turn are gaining skills that will help them make use of their talents into a way out of poverty.

Abandoned outside an orphanage（孤儿院）as a baby and adopted at the age of three by a family in the Netherlands, 16-year-old model Abbing has become known around the world, as a model who has appeared in fashion magazines-but also as an inspiring representative of the albino（白化病人） community.

When it comes to modelling, Abbing has found her difference more of a blessing: she is represented by the Zebedee Talent agency, which aims to make people who have disabilities more visible in the world of fashion.

"I want to help people to see that being different is good, and definitely not some curse（诅咒）, as they believe in countries like Tanzania and Malawi, "said Abbing. "Some companies try to include models who are different, but sometimes for the wrong reason, because they want to say:'Hey, look at us! We are also including people with differences or people of different color'. "

But Abbing welcomes what she sees as a shift. People now want to learn about and accept differences. "They should alsotalk with people with differences directly, ask them questions and listen to what they have to say, "she urged.

When not in front of the camera, Abbing loves climbing and swimming, and used to love competitive sports. It's important for her to focus on what is possible, rather than what isn't. " At school, teachers tend to look at the things you cannot do. I really didn't like that, although they meant well. I would rather they had focused on the things I can do instead. "

Abbing loves the world of travel and meeting new people, which her modelling has opened up, and particularly working with artists and on artistic projects. The teen also pours her creativity into decoration artwork. "Because I see the world from a different angle, my artwork turns out a little different as well, "she said.

Many artists draw with pens and brushes, but few "paint" with knives. Wang Jing, a woman from Shenyang city in northeast China's Liaoning Province, has been engaged in this art form for 27 years.

In 1995, Wang was inspired by an accidental cut by a knife on a piece of red paper, which left a white line, and believed that she may have created something out of the ordinary. Using knives and paper, she then completed a painting of a pair of peacocks that later became a source of motivation for her 27-year endeavor.

Unlike traditional paintings, onto which colors are "added", "knife painting" requires the painter to use blades (刀锋) to take away colors on specially made coated paper. "Knife painters" apply varied pressure on the paper in different directions to create different colors and tones. "Painting on paper with knives is a delicate art and each line in the painting is as thin as a hair," said Wang, adding that once the marks are left on the paper, they cannot be covered, so it requires the painter to be completely absorbed in the work.

The novel art form was known to few people just after Wang created it. Even Wang herself was not expecting to make it something big at the beginning. But thanks to her huge enthusiasm for the art form, she has persisted with it for the past 27 years. So far, she has completed hundreds of paintings about auspicious Chinese culture, figures, landscape, flowers and birds, of which her favorite is a 2.8-meter-long painting that depicts 20 lifelike egrets (白鹭). Wang said she will continue working in the craft and make it known across the world.

Edmund Halley was an English scientist who lived over 200 years ago. He studied the observations of comets(彗星) which other scientists had made. The orbit of one particular comet was a very difficult mathematical problem. He could not figure it out. Neither could other scientists who dealt with such problems.

However, Halley had a friend named Newton, who was a brilliant mathematician. Newton thought he had already worked out that problem, but he could not find the papers on which he had done it. He told Halley that the orbit of a comet had the. shape of an ellipse(椭圆).

Now Halley set to work. He figured out the orbits of some of the comets that had been observed by scientists. He made a surprising discovery. The comets that had appeared in the years 1531, 1607, and 1682 all had the same orbit. Yet their appearances had been 75 to 76 years apart.

This seemed very strange to Halley. The different comets followed the same orbit. The more Halley thought about it, the more he thought that there had not been three different comets, as people thought. He decided that they had simply seen the same comet three times. The comet had gone away and had come back again.

It was an astonishing idea! Halley felt certain enough to make a prediction(预言) of what the comet would happen in the future. He decided that this comet would appear in the year 1758. There were 53 years to go before Halley's prediction could be tested. In 1758 the comet appeared in the sky. Halley did not see it for he has died some years before. Ever since then that comet has been called Halley's cornet, in his honour.