高一英语下学期中考题高一英语下学期中考题.doc

2013-2014学年度高一第二学期期中考试英语试卷 第I卷（共85分） 第一节：阅读理解：（每小题2分，满分40分） A Mark Twain was the name used by Samuel Langhorne Clemens (1835-1910) when he wrote books. His father was a lawyer, but a poor one, who lived at Florida, Missouri. The family was so poor that Samuel did not receive much teaching. He had to learn all that he could from the people whom he met. His father died when he was very young, and then there was even less money than before. 　　Many of the men in this part of America worked in the ships on the great River Mississippi, and he did this himself at one time (1857). 　　Where did he find the name Mark Twain? It came from the great river itself. It was part of one of the cries used by men who worked in the ships. When a man called By the mark twain! he meant that the river was two marks deep there, that is to say, six feet deep ( Twain is an old form of the word Two.) Samuel Clemens often heard these words when he was young, and he used them as a penname all his life. 　　During his work on the Mississippi he met travelers of all kinds, and this helped him a great deal when he started to write. But the number of travelers became smaller when war started in America in 1861. Many of the great ships on the river stopped work. Samuel left then and went to Nevada with his brother, who was at that time Governor of Nevada. There, near the town of Carson, Samuel became a gold miner, but he never made much money at the time. He soon saw that life in the gold mines was not for him. He also tried writing for the newspapers in Nevada, and this seemed more hopeful. He found that he could write. 　　He went to Europe in 1867 and visited France and Italy. In 1870 he married Olivia Langdon, and two years later he was spending nearly all his time writing. Among his books is his own story (1908). 　　He is now always known as Mark Twain, and many people do not even know that his family name was Clemens. He traveled in America and in England, an