【推荐2】As is known to us, Washington University in St. Louis became the first college in the United States to ban   ( 禁 止 ) selling bottled water in 2009. Since then, more than a dozen small colleges and schools have done the same. The ban isn’t because the schools don’t want students to have easy access to water. Instead, the goal is to encourage students to bring reusable bottles to save money and, more importantly, to save the environment.

Many people believe that producing and using bottled water not only wastes money but also harms the environment. They say that bottled water is unnecessary because public water supplies in the U.S. are among the best in the world. These people believe that water fountains and reusable bottles with easy access to filling stations are a better choice.

But the makers of bottled water argue that plastic bottles make up a small portion of the nation’s total waste. They say it’s unfair to single out ( 单独挑出) their product when so many other items are packaged ( 包装) in plastic containers, and what’s more, water is a healthy choice compared to some sodas and juices that are also sold at school.

What do you think: Should sales of bottled water be banned from schools? We want to hear your opinion. Write a 200-word response. Send it to tfkasks4you@timeforkids.com. Your response may be published in a future issue of Time For Kids. Please include your grade level and contact information for your parent or teacher if you want your response to be published. The deadline (截止时间) for responding is December 31, 2019.

1. Some colleges and schools ban selling bottled water in order to ______.

A．save water	B．encourage students to bring water from home
C．reduce pollution	D．keep students away from bottled water

2. The main disadvantage of bottled water is probably that ______.

A．it is too expensive	B．it is not fresh
C．it’s not convenient to carry	D．its bottle can’t be reused

3. From the passage we can learn that the bottle used to hold water is made of ______.

A．glass	B．paper
C．plastic	D．metal

4. Which of the following is TRUE according to the passage?

A．Bottled water is healthier.

B．Sodas and juices are of great harm.

C．Students think it unfair to ban selling bottled water.

D．The makers of bottled water are against banning selling bottled water.

5. The purpose of the passage is to ______.

A．ask for students’ opinions

B．tell people a piece of news

C．call on students to save the environment

D．wish more schools to ban selling bottled water

【推荐1】Founded in 1764 by French traders, St. Louis today is the fifteenth largest urban area in the United States. There are many attractive destinations for tourists.

American Kennel Club Museum of the Dog

Dog lovers who visit St. Louis won’t want to miss this 14,000-square-foot museum. Inside are over 500 paintings, prints, watercolors, and a variety of other dog art objects.

The Museum is open year round, Tuesday through Saturday 10 AM to 4 PM, and Sunday 1 PM to 5 PM. Admission is $ 5 for adults, $ 2.50 for seniors, and $1 for children up to 14.

Anheuser Busch Brewery

The Anheuser Buxch Brewery tour is not just for beer lovers. The tour includes the historic Brew House. Then the tour continues to the modern Bevo Packaging Plant. The best will be the Budweiser Clydesdale stables. The tours are always free.

Gateway Arch

Designed by Eero Sarinen and Hannskari Bandel, it took over two years and 900 tons of stainless steel to build. It is the tallest of the country’s National Monuments. The Arch is part of the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial. About one million people per year come to the top of the Arch, where there is an observation platform providing a great view of the city.

St. Louis Zoo

First version of the St. Louis Zoo opened in 1904 at the St. Louis World’s Fair, but in the century since it has grown into one of the chief zoos in the world. The passenger train takes visitors around the Zoo, which contains over 9,000 animals of over 800 species.

The Zoo is open every day but Christmas and New Year, with summer hours of 8 AM to 7 PM, and hours the rest of the year of 9 AM to 5 PM. Admission to the Zoo is free.

1. If a senior high school student plans to visit American Kennel Club Museum of the Dog with his parents and his five-year-old brother, he has to pay ______.

A．$8.5	B．$12
C．$13.5	D．$16

2. Which of the following statements about Gateway Arch is TRUE?

A．It was built in three years

B．You can see the city clearly on the top of the Arch

C．It is the largest of the country’s National Monuments

D．President Jefferson was buried there

3. If you plan to visit the St. Louis Zoo, you can go there _____.

A．at 8:30 a.m. in summer	B．at 5:30 p.m. in winter
C．on Christmas	D．on New Year

【推荐1】A team of engineers at Harvard University has been inspired by Nature to create the first robotic fly. The mechanical fly has become a platform for a series of new high-tech integrated systems. Designed to do what a fly does naturally, the tiny machine is the size of a fat housefly. Its mini wings allow it to stay in the air and perform controlled flight tasks.
“It’s extremely important for us to think about this as a whole system and not just the sum of a bunch of individual components (元件),” said Robert Wood, the Harvard engineering professor who has been working on the robotic fly project for over a decade. A few years ago, his team got the go-ahead to start piecing together the components. “The added difficulty with a project like this is that actually none of those components are off the shelf and so we have to develop them all on our own,” he said.
They engineered a series of systems to start and drive the robotic fly. “The seemingly simple system which just moves the wings has a number of interdependencies on the individual components, each of which individually has to perform well, but then has to be matched well to everything it’s connected to,” said Wood. The flight device was built into a set of power, computation, sensing and control systems. Wood says the success of the project proves that the flying robot with these tiny components can be built and manufactured.
While this first robotic flyer is linked to a small, off-board power source, the goal is eventually to equip it with a built-in power source, so that it might someday perform data-gathering work at rescue sites, in farmers’ fields or on the battlefield. “Basically it should be able to take off, land and fly around,” he said.
Wood says the design offers a new way to study flight mechanics and control at insect-scale. Yet, the power, sensing and computation technologies on board could have much broader applications. “You can start thinking about using them to answer open scientific questions, you know, to study biology in ways that would be difficult with the animals, but using these robots instead,” he said. “So there are a lot of technologies and open interesting scientific questions that are really what drives us on a day to day basis.”
1. The difficulty the team of engineers met with while making the robotic fly was that __________.

A．they had no model in their mind

B．they did not have sufficient time

C．they had no ready-made components

D．they could not assemble the components

2. It can be inferred from paragraphs 3 and 4 that the robotic fly __________.

A．consists of a flight device and a control system

B．can just fly in limited areas at the present time

C．can collect information from many sources

D．has been put into wide application

3. Which of the following can be learned from the passage?

A．The robotic flyer is designed to learn about insects.

B．Animals are not allowed in biological experiments.

C．There used to be few ways to study how insects fly.

D．Wood’s design can replace animals in some experiments.

4. Which of the following might be the best title of the passage?

A．Father of Robotic Fly

B．Inspiration from Engineering Science

C．Robotic Fly Imitates Real Life Insect

D．Harvard Breaks Through in Insect Study

【推荐2】Occupational Licenses with the Biggest Bang for Buck

Some 1.8 million American were laid off or discharged from their jobs each month on average in 2019, according to data from the U. S. Bureau of Labor statistics. People who lose their jobs often confront a difficult choice: should they take a new job that pays less, or should they make a costly investment in gaining new skills so that they can compete for another similar job or an even better one?

If they do decide on retraining ,which programs and occupational licenses are worth their while? In general, the highest-paying jobs tend to have the most difficult education/ training and experience requirements. But that is not always the case. The following are five occupational licenses with the biggest bang for your buck.

Drone Pilots: If you want to become a drone pilot, all you need to do is be above 16 years old, pass the Federal Aviation Administration's Remote Pilot Certificate exam (which requires about 15 to 20 hours of studying), and pay a $ 150 licensing fee. Pay for drone pilots averages $ 56,426 per year, and jobs are growing rapidly across a range of industries. For example, companies like UPS are making substantial investments in drone delivery and will need to hire thousands of drone pilots in the coming years.

Home Inspectors: If you need a job that makes about $ 60K per year, you might want to consider becoming a Home Inspector. Both Home Inspectors and HVAC Contractors earn about $ 61K per year, on average, but getting a state HVAC Contractor license typically requires about 4,000 hours of training and experience (those systems are becoming even more complex), whereas a Home Inspector license only requires 360 hours of training and experience, and much of the training can be gained free of charge on the job.

Massage Therapists: On average, Manicurists/Pedicurists are required to complete more hours of training than Massage Therapists (700 hours versus 500 hours), but Massage Therapists earn almost twice as much, on average ($54,639 versus $ 32,509).

Radiologic Technologists: Licensing requirements for cosmetologists（美容师）have become so onerous that candidates now need 2,700 hours of training and experience on average. That's not much less than the requirement for becoming a Radiologic or MRI Technologist (3,300 hours), a job which is growing considerably faster than average, is more recession - proof, and pays twice as much ($ 56,162 versus $ 28,608).

Dental Hygienists: Among jobs that require a two-year associate's degree granted by a college or university, some pay substantially more than others. The average state licensing fee for becoming a Dental Hygienist is a hefty $ 1,600, but the pay bump you'll receive will likely make up for it ten times over in the first year.

1. The underlined expression "the biggest bang for your buck" in Paragraph 2 probably means ________.

A．the job loss for your hesitation to invest

B．a good income resulting from your skills

C．a good return for the money you have spent

D．the great efforts you'd make to change your life.

2. Which of the following statements is true according to the passage?

A．Among the drone operators, those who work for delivery services can earn the most.

B．Compared to a home inspector, being an HVAC Contractor is more cost-effective.

C．As an MRI technologist, you'd be less likely to be jobless during an economic crisis.

D．Higher education isn't a compulsory requirement if you want to be a dental hygienist.

3. Which of the following matching for the chart is correct according to the passage?

A．① Radiologic Technologist; ② Cosmetologist; ③General Contractor

B．① Drone Pilot; ② General Contractor; ③ Dental Hygienists

C．① Message Therapist; ② Radiologic Technologist; ③ Cosmetologist

D．① Drone Piolt; ② Cosmetologist; ③ Radiologic Technologist

【推荐3】Having a great collection of books at home doesn’t really mean that you are a person who loves reading. It may be got from your father or your father’s father, and it can just impress people around you with the fact that you are a person of culture.

From my point of view, reading is very important in our daily life. For example, reading is a way of gaining knowledge in different areas. It can help us have a great imagination, and it makes things easier when it comes to making compositions on different themes. It gives you the possibility to speak about science, even if you don’t work in this field. You can express your opinions about a political event because you have read something about that.

Secondly, reading gives us the possibility to enter the world of imagination. We can imagine what life will be like in the future. Sometimes, we compare ourselves with the people in the stories we read and they can give us some clues to solve the problems and tell us what to do in certain situations. Books are based on real life. Even if writers are considered to be somehow different from common people, they often face the same problems as we all do.

In short, I would like to say that literature is the perfect way of enriching our culture, expressing correctly, having a rich vocabulary, being able to understand different fields and really being considered to be a learned person.

1. Which of the following is NOT mentioned in the text?

A．Reading a lot is good for writing.

B．Reading can help us gain knowledge.

C．Reading can help us have a great imagination.

D．Reading helps us enter the field of politics easily.

2. We can learn from the third paragraph that ________.

A．people in stories are always unbelievable

B．books may help us solve problems

C．writers are good at dealing with problems in life

D．writers often have different experiences in life

3. What can be the best title for the text?

A．Why Is Reading Important in Our Life

B．How Can We Become a Learned Person

C．Different Reading, Different Functions

D．Having a Good Collection of Books Means a Lot

【推荐1】Earthworms (蚯蚓) often lay on sidewalks or streets after a heavy spring rain, but why do they do this? Researchers give several reasons why heavy rain storms bring earthworms out of their soil homes.

For years scientists seemed to think the only reason earthworms came to the soil surface after a good rain was to prevent drowning in their water-filled homes. “This is not true as earthworms breathe through their skins and actually require wet in the soil to do so,” said Dr. Chris Lowe, lecturer in the University of Central Lancashire in Preston, United Kingdom. Earthworms are unable to drown, and they can even survive several days fully in water.

Soil experts now think earthworms surface during rain storms for the purpose of moving to another place. “It gives them a chance to move greater distances across the soil surface than through soil,” said Dr. Lowe. “They cannot do this when it is dry because of their requirements of wet in the air. "Certain earthworms surface to mate (交配), but only a few of the 4, 400 existing types, making it unlikely that mating is a primary reason for widespread surfacing.

Another explanation is that rain drop vibrations (振动) on the soil surface are similar to mole (鼹鼠) vibrations. Earthworms often come to the surface to escape them. “Rain can set up vibrations on top of the soil like mole vibrations,” said Professor Josef Gorres of the University of Vermont’s Department of Plant and Soil Science. “Similar to how earthworms move upwards when mole vibrations are felt.” Similarly, humans create vibrations when catching earthworms. To cheat earthworms out of their homes, fishermen run a piece of steel or a saw across the top of a stick, which causes a sound as the stick vibrates. Earthworms then move to the surface, much to the fishermen’s delight.

1. What do we know about earthworms from Paragraph 2?

A．They will drown in water.	B．They can’t breathe in the rain.
C．They breathe through skins.	D．They can always live in water.

2. Why do earthworms surface when it rains according to Dr. Lowe?

A．Because they want to travel longer.

B．Because there is more water inside.

C．Because there are more suitable mates.

D．Because there are fewer dangers on the ground.

3. Why does the author mention the fishermen in the last paragraph?

A．To show that they treat earthworms badly.

B．To provide evidence of earthworms escaping.

C．To explain why we seldom see earthworms now.

D．To show how people's behavior affects earthworms.

4. Which of the following can be the best title for the text?

A．Why earthworms surface after rain.	B．All knowledge about earthworms.
C．How earthworms help people.	D．Why people love earthworms.

【推荐2】Your alarm goes off on your phone, and instead of turning it off and going on sleeping, you pick it up and stupidly say, “Hello?”

You are, to use the technical term, suffering sleep drunkenness (迷糊), those first few confused minutes people sometimes experience after waking, according to a just-published paper in Neurology (神经学). For the first time, the phenomenon has been studied in a general adult population.

In telephone interviews the researchers conducted with more than 19,000 healthy individuals, about 25 percent reported experiencing some sort of sleep-drunk episode (插曲) in the last year, and 12 percent said this happens to them at least once a week.

Most of their stories were actually pretty funny, said Stanford University School of Medicine psychiatrist (精神病学家) Maurice Ohayon. One man picked up his alarm clock and mistook it for his phone, holding a two-minute conversation on it. Another participant woke in the middle of the night and couldn’t find the bathroom in her own home. Other common examples are that foggy feeling you get when you first wake up with a start on a Saturday before realizing it’s the weekend, or when you wake up in a hotel room and can’t immediately figure out where you are.

Ohayon explains that a sudden awakening, to our poor, half-asleep brains, signals an emergency - a time for action, not reason.

“For most people, and especially if this only happens to you every once in a while, it’s nothing to worry about. But for people who experience sleep drunkenness once a week or more, you might as well refer to professional help to have a sound sleep.”

1. The intended readers of the passage are probably ___________.

A．adults who don’t sleep well

B．teenagers who don’t have enough sleep

C．people who suffer sleep drunkenness

D．researchers who are fond of sleep disorder

2. We can know from the first three paragraphs that ___________.

A．it’s stupid to leave the alarm on when sleeping

B．after waking all people struggled for awareness

C．there are many studies on adults’ sleep patterns

D．it’s common for adults to suffer sleep drunkenness

3. What do we know about sleep drunkenness from the fourth paragraph?

A．It leads to different reactions.

B．It comes without any reason.

C．It hits when people are working.

D．It attacks those who are depressed.

4. What will be talked about after the last paragraph?

A．Something to expand your sleep time.

B．Ways to improve your sleep pattern.

C．Methods of curing sleep drunkenness.

D．Tips on how to help you to sleep better.

【推荐3】US cosmologist (宇宙学家) Carl Sagan once said: “Across the sea of space, the stars are other suns.”

For centuries, human beings have dreamed of traveling into space, orbiting (围绕......运行) our little blue planet, and appreciating incredible views of sunrises and sunsets. And soon, it seems that our dream will finally come true, as US startup Orion Span announced on April 6 that it planned to launch the first hotel in space in 2021. It will be ready to welcome guests the following year.

The space hotel, Aurora Station, will orbit 320 kilometers above Earth, circling it every 90 minutes. It’s capable of housing two crew members and four guests. The crew members will likely be former NASA astronauts who worked on the International Space Station. However, there’s a catch: Each guest must pay at least $9.5 million (60 million yuan) for a 12-day stay at the hotel.

Once aboard the Aurora Station, guests will find many exciting things to do. According to Orion Span, guests can enjoy the excitement of zero-gravity as they fly throughout the space hotel. They can watch 16 sunrises and sunsets every day and view the northern and southern auroras (极光) through the many windows. They can take part in research experiments like growing food, and even take it home as a souvenir. And they can stay in touch with their families and friends via a high-speed internet connection.

But most importantly, the trip will offer a real sense of what it’s like to live in space. “The premise (前提) of Aurora Station is for guests to live, feel, and [breathe] what it’s like to be an astronaut,” Frank Bunger, founder of Orion Span, told the Robb Report. “The food and drinks are freeze-dried products. It’s not going to be five-star dining … Fire and gas don’t work the same way in space as they do on Earth.”

To better prepare guests for space travel, the company will require a health screening and provide a three-month training program that helps guests understand basic spaceflight, orbital mechanics (轨道力学) and life in the pressurized environment of space.

Some may have doubts about the project, but the company even has plans to turn part of Aurora Station into private apartments. “Future Aurora owners can live in, visit, or sublease (转租) their space [apartment],” Bunger said in a news release. “This is an exciting frontier (待开发的领域) and Orion Span is proud to pave the way.”

1. What can we learn about Aurora Station?

A．It will be open to guests in 2021.	B．It can only serve four guests at a time.
C．It costs every guest $9.5 million a week.	D．It will invite NASA to train the guests.

2. What can guests do on Aurora Station?

A．View beautiful auroras.	B．Fly outside the space hotel.
C．Buy various souvenirs.	D．Enjoy five-star meals.

3. According to Bunger, what is the main purpose of Aurora Station?

A．To help people learn more about space.

B．To offer comfortable space travel experiences.

C．To provide real experiences of living in space.

D．To prepare people for future space exploration.

4. What can be inferred about Aurora Station from the last two paragraphs?

A．It’s ready for guests to book their first trip.

B．Few people are optimistic about its future.

C．Its guests must have a basic knowledge of space travel.

D．Private apartments are the most popular choice among its guests.