2018年初中英语牛津版（深圳·广州）八年级下册期末模拟试卷（10）

— My head hurts.

—She is always in pink. Don't you know?

    The world outdoors is full of secrets. They are so attractive that quite a lot of people are busy 1 them. All 2 us are birds, animals, trees and flowers. The facts about how they live and grow are as interesting as anything could be.

    Do you know that one of the great presidents of the USA spent hours and hours studying birds? A businessman who lives near New York City became so interested in insects that he began to 3 them. He now has over one thousand different kinds of insects carefully kept in glass boxes.

    Come with me and I will help you find some of the 4 secrets. Let's go quickly 5 the woods and fields. Here we shall find how a rabbit 6 the other rabbits that there is danger. We shall follow a mother bear and her young ones as they search for food and get ready for their long winter 7. We shall watch bees dancing in the air to let the other bees know where they can find food. I will show you many other 8 things. But the best thing that I can teach you is to keep your eyes 9 when you go out. Nature tells her secrets only to people who look and listen 10.

If you enjoy reading, don't miss Shakespeare and Company when you visit Paris. It's a famous English-language bookstore. An American, Sylvia Beach, opened the first Shakespeare and Company in history in 1919. She did more than selling books. Her bookstore was also a library, and she even had beds for writers visiting there. Ms Beach was not only kind to people but also good at choosing books, so her bookstore was often visited by writers like Ernest Hemingway and James Joyce. But in 1941, after the Germans took power in Paris, Ms Beach had to close her bookstore.

  In 1951, another American, George Whitman, opened another English-language bookstore, Librairie Mistral, in Paris. Since then, just as Ms Beach did, Mr Whitman had also made his bookstore a library for people to borrow books, and a free hotel for writers to stay in. To remember Ms Beach, Mr Whitman changed the name of his bookstore to Shakespeare and Company in 1964, two years after Ms Beach died.

Next time when you are in Paris, don't forget to visit this nice bookstore and see if you can spend a night there.

C

A driver stopped his car on a street side to have a rest. As he lay down in the seat and closed his eyes, a person came up and knocked at the window to ask the time. The driver opened his eyes and looked at his watch. “It's 8:05,” he said. Then he went to sleep again. But soon he was awoken again because a second person was knocking at the window. “Sir, do you know the time?” he asked. The driver looked at his watch again, and told him it was half past eight. In this way, the driver thought he could not have a good rest, so he wrote a short note and stuck it on the window for all to see. It said, “I don't know the time.” Again, he lay down in the seat to sleep. A few minutes later, a third person came and began to knock at the window. “Hey, sir,” he said, “It's a quarter to nine.”

Birds are becoming popular as pets. But some owners of birds don't know how to communicate with their pets. Therefore, they don't know what their pets need or want. Owners can learn how to read the body language of a bird, including movements of the wings, the tail and the beak(喙).

  Wings

  A bird can communicate with others through the use of its wings. A bird may lift or open its wings as a sign of happiness. But if the bird starts to open and to close its wings, it may express anger or pain. If a bird fails to fold its wings against its body, and instead lets them hang by its side, it may be ill.

  Tail

  Birds often use their tail feathers to communicate, so an understanding of this behavior will help the owners. Happiness is expressed by tail movements, such as up and down. However, if a bird fans its tail feathers out, it is usually a way to show anger.

  Beak

While a bird's beak is used mainly for eating, the bird may also communicate by using beak movements. For example, a bird may click its beak once as a greeting, and several clicks can be taken as a warning. Birds may sometimes bite, but it is often difficult to find out the reason behind this — birds bite as a way to protect their homes, to show anger or to express fear.

A

Charles Chaplin was born in London on April 16, 1889. His parents were music hall actors. The Chaplin family were very poor, and life was difficult in London. Charlie, as he was called, used to do his mother's job in the theatre when she was ill.

When he was only 17 years old, Chaplin got his first real job as an actor. What he did was to do silly things to make people laugh in the theatre. Seven years later he went to the USA. And over the next four years, he formed his own way of art. He developed the character(角色) of a homeless gentleman which became very popular.

From the 1920s to the 1950s, Chaplin made his most famous films. The film Modern Times (1936) shows his care about the modern industry workers. Many of his films describe the poor life and hard time of the working people during that period.

Although Charlie Chaplin was British, he lived in the USA until 1953. But he never got US nationality. Then Chaplin, his wife and his five children had to move to Switzerland where he lived until he died. When he was 83 years old, he won his only Oscar for the music he wrote for the film Limelight. He was named Sir Charles Chaplin at the age of 85. Charlie Chaplin died in Switzerland on December 25th, 1977.

微笑是一种态度。请你以“Learn to Smile”为题，为你校《英语园地》写一篇文章。

内容要点包括：

①  学会对自己微笑；

②  学会对他人微笑；

③微笑是一种语言。

参考词汇：态度attitude；自信心confidence