【推荐1】School News

Welcome back to school! Have you signed up for an after-school activity yet? Here are some of the activities you can try.

SPORTS TEAMS

Do you like sports? How about joining the football team? It has try-outs next Tuesday at 3:00. Many of our best players have moved up to college. So now the team needs new players. For more information, meet our sports advisors, Ms. Matte or Mr.Stergis.

GOOD AT ART?

This year, your classmates in the school art club plan to paint a mural(壁画)on the wall by the office. So they need new members to help create it! Are you interested in drawing, painting or taking photographs? This club is for you. The first meeting of the school year is next Wednesday at 3:15 in Room 221. Please see Ms. Greenway for more information.

NEW THIS YEAR

There are some new activities you can have a try. Try the new after-school science club! It has plans to enter the national Senior Robotics competition this year. So if you want to try building a robot, this club is for you. See Mr. Larson in Room 105 for more details. The club meets every Thursday at 3:30.

Do you like acting? Are you good at singing? The school play this year is a musical—The Sound of Music. Come and try out next Monday at 3:10 in Room 125.

For a list of all the after-school activities this year, click here. Or pick up a membership form from the advisor’s office, Room 107.

1. When are the try-outs for the football team?

A．Next Monday at 3:10.	B．Next Wednesday at 3:15.
C．Next Tuesday at 3:00.	D．Next Thursday at 3:30.

2. What does the art club plan to do this year?

A．To paint a mural.	B．To put on a musical.
C．To offer photography courses.	D．To enter a national competition.

3. Where can you get more information about the science club?

A．In Room 221.	B．In Room 125.
C．In Room 107.	D．In Room 105.

【推荐2】It was my first day at school in London and I was half-excited and half-frightened. On my way to school I wondered, what questions the other boys would ask me and practiced all the answers, “I am nine years old. I was born here but I haven’t lived here since I was two. I was living in Farley. It’s about thirty miles away. I came back to London two months ago.” I also wondered if it was the rule for boys to fight strangers like me, but I was tall for my age. I hoped they would decide not to risk it.

No one took any notice of me before school. I stood in the centre of the playground, expecting someone to say “hello”, but no one spoke to me.

My teacher was called Mr Jones. There were 42 boys in the class, so I didn’t stand out there, either, until the first lesson of the afternoon. Mr Jones was very fond of Charles Dickens, so he asked several boys if they knew Dickens’ birthplace, but no one guessed right. A boy called Brian, the biggest in the class, said, “Timbuktu”, and Mr Jones went red in the face. Then he asked me. I said, “Portsmouth”, and everyone stared at me because Mr Jones said I was right. This didn’t make me very popular, of course. “He thinks he’s clever,” I heard Brian say.

After that, we went out to the playground to play football. I was in Brian’s team, and he obviously had Dickens in mind because he told me to go in goal. No one ever wanted to be the goalkeeper.

“He’s big enough and useless enough,” Brian said when someone asked him why he had chosen me.

As the boy kicked the ball hard along the ground to my right, I threw myself down quickly and saved it. All my team crowded round me. My bare knees were grazed and bleeding. Brian took out a handkerchief and offered it to me.

“Do you want to join my gang (team)?” he said.

At the end of the day, I was no longer a stranger.

1. Which question didn’t the writer prepare to answer?

A．How old are you?	B．Where are you from?
C．Do you want to join my gang?	D．When did you come back to London?

2. We can learn from the passage that           .

A．boys were usually unfriendly to new students	B．the writer was not greeted as he expected
C．Brian praised the writer for his cleverness	D．the writer was glad to be a goalkeeper

3. The underlined part “I didn’t stand out” in Paragraph 3 means that the writer was not         .

A．reliable

B．nervous

C．important

D．noticeable

4. The writer was offered a handkerchief because         .

A．he was in Brian’s team	B．he was no longer a new comer
C．he was beginning to be accepted	D．he pushed a player in the other team

【推荐3】Before the exams began, God told me in my mind several times, “Don’t cheat.” But I did not listen because I knew it was not easy for me to get good marks in exams. Taking out my notebook, I copied the answers from it and passed the exams with very good marks.

I felt guilty and ashamed and asked God to forgive me, which I thought was all I needed to do to give me peace. Using my good exam results I went on further with my education. Studying in Kwara State College of Education, I could not have peace in my mind, thinking, “You have done wrong. The result is not yours.”

At last I went to the leaders of my church to ask for help, who told me that it is not enough to say sorry to God. I must show that I am sorry by putting right what I did wrong. For me, that meant telling the principal of the college that I cheated in the exams and that I should not have got into the college. I wrote a letter to him, telling him what I had done and took the letter to the principal’s office and gave it to his secretary, who read it first. “If this gets to the principal you will go to prison, ” she said, “Go away and think about it.”

I went back to the church leaders and told them what the secretary said and they said I must still go to the principal. So the next day, I went back to the secretary, who took me to see the principal this time. To my surprise, he told me not to be afraid but to go to the person who was in charge of the exams. I did as required and that person let me take the exams again. I passed! Now I am back at the college, but, more important, God has taken away the feelings of guilt and I have peace in my mind.

1. What does the writer tell us with the story?

A．Why he cheated in a exam.

B．Why he wrote to the principal.

C．How he recovered a peaceful mind.

D．How he prepared for the college entrance exam.

2. What played the most important part in correcting what the writer did wrong?

A．Working hard at his lessons.	B．Doing as the church leaders said.
C．Going to the church to say sorry to God.	D．Communicating with the school leaders.

3. How did the principal react when the writer saw him?

A．He was good to him.	B．He was angry with him.
C．He refused to accept his apology.	D．He thought he had done nothing wrong.

4. What finally helped the writer feel good again?

A．His generosity.

B．His tolerance.

C．His hard work.

D．His honesty.

【推荐2】Our lifestyles today are very busy. We have family, school, sports, entertainment and social activities to fit into a time that seems never enough. We need to be healthy to meet the demands of daily life. But what does it mean to have a healthy lifestyle?

To have a healthy lifestyle, we need to:

◆eat different kinds of healthy food most of the time

◆do exercise often

◆have time to relax

◆get enough sleep to give our bodies time to grow healthy and strong

Read about a normal day in the lives of two children.

Abbey gets up at 7:00 a.m., feeds the dog, and has cereal(谷类食物)and a glass of juice for breakfast. She walks to school with her friend, Julia. She has a bag of chips for a morning snack, drinks water, and has a chicken and lecture sandwich with a banana for lunch. She likes to play soccer with her friends at lunch and morning break time. She walks home with Julia, and plays with a dog for a while. She plays computer games for an hour or two before dinner, then has a shower and does her homework. She watches her favorite television show for an hour, and then usually goes to bed at about 9:30 p.m.

Carl gets up at 8:30 a.m. and has two pieces of bread with jam and a glass of milk for breakfast. His mother drives him to school on her way to work. He eats cookies with juice for a morning snack and a pot pie ordered from the school lunch room with juice for lunch. He likes to play card games with his friends at lunchtime and climb the fixed equipment at morning break time. He catches the bus home, has a cereal bar and a can of soda for an afternoon snack, and then watches television. He has a shower before dinner, and then plays on the computer for an hour or two. He goes to bed at about 10:30 p.m.

No matter which kind of lifestyle you agree on, just remember it’s important to balance all aspects of life.

1. About a healthy lifestyle, the writer doesn’t talk about ______.

A．diet

B．exercise

C．medicine

D．relaxation

2. Which can be the best title of this passage?

A．Abbey’s daily life at school.

B．How to have a healthy lifestyle.

C．People with different lifestyle.

D．Grow healthy and strong.

3. Where is the passage probably from?

A．A travel advertisement.	B．A clothing website.
C．A sports guidebook.	D．A health magazine.

【推荐3】Once upon a time, researchers dreamed of building a robot storyteller. It would not only entertain young children, but also help them learn well. This dream has come true. The robot is called Tega. It is cute and appears to be useful in increasing young children’s language skills. Developed by a team at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology(MIT), Tega sounds like a child, makes its body and face full of energy while storytelling and explains the tales on a screen with pictures.

In an eight-week experiment, Tega read picture books to 67 children aged from 4 to 6 in weekly meetings lasting an hour. During the meetings, Tega asked questions to have knowledge of the listeners’ language skills, tested them on a word’s meaning or asked them to draw conclusions about a character. For example, Tega asked, “What do you think will happen to the boy?” Tega also recorded the facial expressions and body positions of the children to see how interested they were. For example, leaning forward was considered a good sign. After the book was finished, the children retold the story to Tega in their own words.

One group of kids played with a personalized version(版本) of the robot, which improved each time it interacted with the kids, learning about their language skills from the conversations they had. For this group, Tega chose which book to read based on what it thought would be most suitable and informative for the children’s language level. Every second time, Tega would replace several words in the story for these children with more difficult words with similar meanings, such as “clamour” in place of “noise”.

A second group interacted with a non-personalized Tega that remembered the children each week, but chose stories to read at random (随机的) from its library of 81 picture books. For this group, the story difficulty increased every two weeks. A third group of kids didn’t interact with Tega at all.

Several weeks after the last meeting, the team found that all the children who played with Tega had increased their vocabularies(词汇), but the personalized group learned the most words. Their error rate on a vocabulary test dropped by 23 percent, almost double that of the non-personalized group. The stories that the children told back to the personalized robot were also longer and more wonderful, says team member Hae Won Park.

1. What do we know about Tega?

A．It has a voice of an adult.

B．It is connected to the Internet.

C．It can tell stories in a lively way.

D．It is mainly designed to entertain kids.

2. Why did Tega ask questions during the meetings?

A．To keep the kids interested.

B．To help kids better understand a story.

C．To know about the kids’ language skills.

D．To encourage the kids to think independently.

3. What do the results of the experiment show?

A．Young kids really love interacting with others.

B．The robot needs to be improved to work better.

C．Children can increase their vocabularies quickly.

D．The personalized version of the robot helps kids most

4. What is the text mainly about?

A．A new invention for kids.

B．A personalized teaching method.

C．A new way to increase kids’ vocabularies.

D．A study carried out by researchers recently.

【推荐1】Hi, Dave Gieber here. Are you seriously thinking about starting a comic book(连环漫画册)collection yourself? Then “Comic Book Collecting, a Starting Point” was written just for you. This book was designed to help you jump-start your collection using Internet resources!

See what others are saying!

Dave,

As a layperson totally green about comic book collecting, the information provided in your book would allow someone like me to basically start a collection from the very beginning. The steps defined on what to look for and where to look when starting a collection are invaluable to a beginner. In addition, you provide information that not only appeals to those starting out but for those collecting for a long time as well. Great job.

Lorraine Cote

Dave,

I'm thinking it's a little long on history, but I am so impressed by all it presents. Wow! Quite an interesting read. I found the pieces on the Artists particularly interesting.

This is a great piece of work! I love artwork, and did a lot of watercolor work myself and was often fantasizing about comic book penciling myself someday.

If I have one negative thing to say about it…It has to be that I wish I had written it! Congratulations. Dave. This is a real winner.

James D. Tyler

Dear Dave,

Congratulations on a fine book. It is essential reading for people who want to turn their hobby into a money-making venture. I Only wish that I had had this information 40 years ago when I took 6 empty pop(汽水)bottles into the corner store and purchased my first comic book.

I'm amazed at the fact that 40 years ago 10 cents could buy a loaf of bread or the very first issue of The Fantastic Four. Today, 10 cents cannot buy you anything, but a near mint(未损坏的)copy of that comic book could bring you up to$35,000! Thanks for the good read.

Ian McBride

1. What do we know about Lorraine Cote?

A．She is inexperienced in comic book collecting.

B．She has been collecting comic books for years.

C．She asks for information about comic book collecting.

D．She knows nothing about comic book collecting.

2. What is the main reason James D. Tyler writes to Dave?

A．He enjoys reading.	B．He wishes to write a book.
C．He is interested in history.	D．He is interested in artwork.

3. What can be inferred about Ian McBride's first comic book he bought 40 years ago?

A．He bought it with the money for pop.	B．He bought it after he got six bottles of pop.
C．He made a lot of money by selling it later	D．He didn't realize its economic potential then.

【推荐2】Maybe you are familiar with scenes in movies where a pilot has encountered(遇) an issue mid-flight and you hear him shout “Mayday，mayday，mayday”.

But what does “mayday” mean? “Mayday” is an internationally recognized distress call（求救信号），mostly used by pilots and boat captains. The signal can be sent out by any channel by radio communication.

This emergency call originated in the 1920s. At that time, the standard distress call was “SOS” and was typically used by navy captains. The message was sent in Morse code by telegraph. In Morse codes,“SOS”is three dots（点），three dashes（线）and three dots. The signal was unmistakable. However, aircraft pilots use radio calls, so sending out “SOS”could be misheard as other letters, such as “F”.

Frederick Stanley Mockford, a radio officer at Croydon Airport in London, was asked to think of a word that would indicate distress. Because of the amount of the flights that flew between Croydon and Paris, he chose mayday, as it sounds similar to the French word “m’aider”, which means “help me”.

Facing a threatening situation, pilots are required to repeat the signal three times in case of radio interference（干扰）or loud background noise. If the pilots don’t get a reply within two minutes, they should repeat it. Once they receive a reply, more information, including the code of the flight, their current situation and the number of people on board should be reported. Sometimes pilots are directed to a nearby airport or location where they can make an emergency landing. While mayday signals indicate a life-threatening situation, they do not always end in fatalities（死亡）.

Despite dangers, air travel is still the safest means of transport.

1. What does the article tell us about“mayday”？

A．It is a signal mainly used in European countries.

B．It is only used by pilots and boat captains.

C．It was invented by a radio reporter in the 1920s.

D．It was sent by telegraph in the beginning.

2. How is “SOS” written in Morse code?

A．---…---	B．------…
C．…….---	D．…---…

3. “Mayday”was chosen as a distress call because___.

A．“SOS”was easily misheard by navy captains.

B．it sounds similar to “m’aider”,the French word for “help me”

C．its pronunciation is similar to“distress”in French

D．it had something to do with the flight at Croydon Airport

4. What does the second to last paragraph mainly talk about?

A．When to use mayday signals.

B．What makes mayday signals useful.

C．How mayday signals were recognized.

D．How to use mayday signals to call for help.

【推荐3】When it's five o'clock, people leave their office. The length of the workday, for many workers, is defined by time. They leave when the clock tells them they're done.

These days, the time is everywhere, not just on clocks or watches, but on cell-phones and computers. That may be a bad thing,particularly at work.New research shows that clock-based.work schedules hinder (阻碍) morale and creativity.

Clock-timers organize their day by blocks of minutes and hours. For example: a meeting from 9 a.m. to 10 a.m.,research from 10 a.m. to noon, etc. On the other hand, task - timers have a list of things they want to accomplish. They work down the list, each task starts when the previous task is completed. It is said that all of us employ a mix of both these types of planning.

What, then, are the effects of thinking about time in these different ways? Does one make us more productive? Better at the tasks at hand? Happier? In experiments conducted by Tamar Avnet and Anne-Laure Sellier, they had participants organize different activities-from project planning, holiday. shopping,to yoga-by time or to-do list to measure how they performed under "clock time" vs "task time". They found clock timers to be more efficient but less happy because they felt little control over their lives. Task timers are happier and more creative, but less productive. They tend to enjoy the moment when something good is happening,and seize opportunities that come up.

The researchers argue that task-based organizing tends to be undervalued and under-supported in the business culture. Smart companies, they believe, will try to bake more task-based planning into their strategies.

This might be a small change to the way we view work and the office, but the researchers argue that it challenges a widespread characteristic of the economy: work organized by clock time. While most people will still probably need, and be, to some extent, clock-timers, task-based timing should be used when performing a job that requires more creativity. It'll make those tasks easier, and the task-doers will be happier.

1. What does the author think of time displayed everywhere?

A．It makes everybody time-conscious.

B．It is a convenience for work and life.

C．It may have a negative effect on creative work.

D．It clearly indicates the fast pace of modern life.

2. How do people usually go about their work according to the author?

A．They combine clock-based and task-based planning.

B．They give priority to the most urgent task on hand.

C．They set a time limit for each specific task.

D．They accomplish their tasks one by one.

3. What did Tamar Avnet and Anne-Laure Sellier find in their experiments about clock timers?

A．They seize opportunities as they come up.

B．They always get their work done in time.

C．They have more control over their lives.

D．They tend to be more productive.

4. What do the researchers say about today's business culture?

A．It does not support the strategies adopted by smart companies.

B．It does not attach enough importance to task - based practice.

C．It places more emphasis on work efficiency than on workers' lives.

D．It aims to bring employees' potential and creativity into full play.

5. What do the researchers suggest?

A．Performing creative jobs tends to make workers happier.

B．It is important to keep a balance between work and life.

C．Task-based timing is preferred for doing creative work.

D．A scientific standard should be adopted in job evaluation.

【推荐1】British birdwatcher are used to bad news. House sparrow numbers have fallen from an estimated 30m to 10m since 1966. Curlews （杓鹬）have become a rare sight, their numbers sharply declining by 50% in 15 years. Cuckoos（布谷鸟）， once-frequent visitors from Africa, have decreased by 63% in the south-east in the past two decades. Earlier springs that confuse migrant birds, more efficient farming and the transformation of ruined buildings (good for nesting) into modern homes have all contributed to these woes.

But data released by the British Trust for Ornithology(BTO), a research charity, suggest some are rising. Tracking bird populations by means of regular surveys, the figures give the clearest picture of 49 species across Britain.

Blackcaps（黑顶林莺）, small woodland birds native to Germany and eastern Europe, are unwilling to return after their summer short visits: Since 1967 numbers have increased by 177%. The little egret（小白鹭）, a white heron-like bird, arrived from continental Europe in 1989 and now numbers over 5,000. Wood pigeons（斑尾林鸽）, once found shyly singing in forests, have bravely moved into cities and suburbs.

Environmental and agricultural changes have helped as well as confused birds. Modern farming techniques allow grain to be planted in the autumn rather than the spring; that helps wood pigeons feed in winter. Warmer winters mean rivers and ponds are less likely to freeze, providing the little egrets with food. James Pearce-Higgins of the BTO says that blackcaps benefit particularly from the increasing popularity of berry bushes in people’s gardens.

Birders complain nonetheless. Some of the species booming, such as carrion crows（食腐乌鸦）and buzzards（秃鹰）, are disliked. And migrant birds that extend their visits may provide competition for some bird natives. They are “muscling in and getting the first claim on breeding sites”, says Richard Cowser of the Sussex Ornithological Society.                                        I like their human counterparts（同行）, residents of a small island stricken by global winds, British birds will have to learn to compete.

1. The underlined word “woes” in Paragraph 1 probably means____________.

A．Tragedy

B．construction

C．damage

D．migration

2. What might not be the reason for the increase of birds?

A．The access to people’s gardens.	B．Modern farming methods.
C．The different environmental patterns.	D．Rebuilding of abandoned houses.

3. Which of the following statements is correct according to the passage?

A．All bird lovers are satisfied with the situation of birds increasing.

B．Migrant birds lengthening their stays cause threat to the local birds.

C．Black caps whose home is Germany and eastern Europe refuse to stay in Britain.

D．More than 5000 little egrets arrived in Britain from continental Europe in 1989.

4. Where might this article come from?

A．A travel brochure.	B．An annual report.
C．A personal journal.	D．A magazine article.

【推荐2】Languages are important. But how they appeared is largely mystery（谜）. It is interesting to see how deaf people can create novel sign languages immediately. Observations have shown that when deaf strangers are brought together in a community, they come up with their own sign language in a considerably short amount of time. However, how exactly this happened has not been recorded, as Manuel Bohn describes, “We know relatively little about how social interaction becomes language. This is where our new study comes in.”

In a series of studies, researchers attempted to recreate exactly this process. But there was a problem: how to make children communicate with each other without them returning to talking to each other? The solution came up in Skype conversations between the two researchers from Germany and their colleague Michael Tomasello in the US. In the study, the children were invited to stay in two different rooms and a Skype connection was established between them. After a brief familiarization with the set-up, the researchers turned off the sound and watched as the children found new ways of communicating that go beyond spoken language.

The childrens' task was to describe an image with different meanings in coordination（协调）game. With concrete things like fork, children quickly found solution by copying the action（e. g. eating） in a gesture. But the researchers repeatedly challenged the children with new, more abstract pictures. In the course of the study, the images to be described became more and more complex, which was also reflected in the gestures that the children produced. In order to communicate, for example, an interaction between two animals, children invented separate gestures for actors and actions and began to combine them.

The studies show that communication cannot be reduced to words alone. When there is no way to use conventional spoken language, people find other ways to get their messages across. This phenomenon forms the basis for the development of new languages.

1. What is basically unknown to us?

A．The origin of languages.	B．Normal people's interaction.
C．When sign languages are used.	D．The importance of languages.

2. Why did the researchers turn off the sound?

A．To make the children think in quiet environment.

B．To evaluate the children's potential modeling skills.

C．To let the children imagine how the deaf communicate.

D．To know how the children communicate without speaking.

3. What were the children required to do in the experiment?

A．Draw pictures of some objects.	B．Invent a couple of new words.
C．Describe something in their way.	D．Express their own true feelings.

4. From which is the text most probably taken?

A．A biology textbook.	B．A science magazine.
C．A science fiction book.	D．A travel brochure.

【推荐3】Madagascar lies in the Indian Ocean off the east coast of Africa. The island is perhaps best known as the unique home of the lemur (狐猴）. But those lemurs live among some of the most rich and varied flora (植物群）in the world. And so threatened is that flora that British and Malagasy scientists were involved in a project to collect seeds from the island to be stored in a British seed bank. The project is being done by the Royal Botanic Garden in London. The botanist Steward Cable is head of the conservation center there and a frequent visitor of the island.

I mean Madagascar is well known as one of the top biodiversity hot spots in the world. It has perhaps 13,000 plant species. 90% of those are unique to the country, i.e. found nowhere else in the world. But also many species, many of those species are only found in small areas.        And I would say that probably about 80% of the population are dependent on farming.

And a lot of their farming is slash and burn，shifting cultivation (耕作）where farmers have to move to a new patch of forest every year. They cut it and they burn it and they can grow dry rice or cassava for a year or so or two years at most.And the nutrients are gone and they have   to move to a new patch of forest .And for centuries that would not have been a problem with the low population and with long periods of no farming but people returning after three or five years something like that ,then the forest became grassland. So we are losing many of those species in Madagascar, those unique species.

1. which of the following is the habitat of the lemur?

A．Madagascar	B．Britain
C．An Indian island.	D．The coast

2. Why do scientists collect seeds from Madagascar?

A．The lemur will die out without them.

B．The flora on Madagascar is in great danger.

C．The island will sink to the bottom of the ocean.

D．The British seed bank wants to make money from them.

3. What is the result of the way people farm?

A．Many farmers have lost their homes.	B．The population is becoming smaller.
C．Some rare species are gone.	D．The crops are poor in nutrition.

4. How does the author sound?

A．Hopeless.

B．Enthusiastic.

C．Optimistic.

D．Worried.