【推荐1】Where do you think the world’s happiest people live? Somewhere hot with sandy beaches? A country with a tradition of the fine food and culture? Not according to a recent study by the university of Leicester. Who are the happiest people on Earth?     1     Surprised? Well you’ll be more surprised when you hear that the Danes pay some of the highest taxes in the world. So what is the secret of their success?

Let’s start with all that tax they pay. The Danish government provides its people with one of the finest education and health systems in the world. It spends more on children and elderly people per capital than other country.

And there’s another advantage to those high taxes. Because a shop assistant’s final salary is not that much less than someone who works in a bank, for example, Danes don’t choose their careers based on money or status as people in other countries do. They choose the job they want to do. There’s a philosophy in Denmark known as “Jante-lov”, which translates as “you’re no better than anybody else”     2     But workers in other countries are not used to looking at life in this way.

Money doesn’t seem as important in Denmark. It has been called a “post consumerist” society.     3     What is more important is the sense of society and it’s no surprise that Danes are very used to socializing. 92% of Danes belong to some kind of social club and these clubs are even paid for by the government.

    4     They also show an amazing amount of trust in each other and their government. You can see signs of this all over the country.     5     You take what you want and leave the money in a basket.

Perhaps the bike is a good symbol for Denmark. The Danes can afford cars but they choose bikes-simple, economical, non-polluting machines that show no status and help keep people fit.

A．In a list ranking countries by the happiness of their citizens, it put tropical Fiji 50 places below freezing Iceland.

B．The street sweeper can hold his head up high as he proudly does his job.

C．Danish people aren’t as suspicious as many other nations.

D．Most Danes are used to seeing between 50-70% of their salary going to the goverment！

E．Those 5.5 million people who call Denmark their home.

F．People have nice things in their houses, but they’re not mad about shopping and spending.

G．You’ll find vegetable stalls with no assistant.

【推荐2】请认真阅读下面短文，并根据所读内容在文章后表格中的空格里填入一个最恰当的单词。注意：每个空格只填一个单词。

By the logic（逻辑）of geography, the continent of Australia should have been populated with Asians. Instead, by an accident of history, Australia has been mainly populated with Westerners.

Sadly, no major Australian newspaper or expert commented. This made me aware that Australians are reluctant to face Australia's painful new geopolitical realities.

Against this background, the release of the Asian Century White Paper is timely. It should provide a sharp wake-up call to the Australian population that Australia's destiny（命运）is now firmly tied to Asia. Julia Gillard is right in saying, "The transformation of the Asian region into the economic powerhouse of the world is not only unstoppable, it is gathering pace."

One truly impressive part of the paper is the data it provides on Asia's rise. It notes, for example, that "in the past 20 years, China and India have almost tripled（增三倍）their share of the global economy and increased their economic size almost six times over. By 2025, the region as a whole will account for almost half the world's output."

In this Asian century, as Western power gets weak steadily, Australia will be left "beached" alone as the only Western country （together with New Zealand） in Asia. Twenty-two million Australians will have to learn to deal with 3.5 billion Asians with great care and sensitivity.

Ignorance（无知）about Asia could prove to be fatal（致命的）for Australia's long-term future. This is why the report is right in focusing on Australian misunderstanding of Asia.

Sadly, this kind of terrible ignorance may be a result of Australian education. The report says, “Only a small proportion of Year 12 students study anything about Asia in the subjects of history, literature, geography, economics, politics and the arts under existing state-based curriculums." Worse, only 5 per cent of each Australian groups study any kind of Asian language.

Learning Asian languages would open windows to Asian cultural and political sensitivities. The time for Australians to think deeply about their Asian destiny has arrived. The sooner Australia adjusts to its new Asian destiny, the less painful the adjustment will prove to be.

Title: It's     1     to accept our place in Asian region
2	3     speaking, Australia is close to Asia, yet few Australians are willing to face Australia's new geopolitical     4    .
Release of the white paper	Aim: To tell Australians that their    5     definitely has much to do with Asia. Cause: Asia has    6     the economic powerhouse of the world.     7    : China and India have tripled their share of the global economy and the region will account for half the world's output by 2025.
Writer's opinions	Australians will be lonely if they don't learn to deal with 3.5 billion Asians. Australian    8    , in part, is responsible for their ignorance about Asia. It's right for the paper to     9     on Australian misunderstanding of Asia. It's high time that Asia languages were     10     to Australian children.

【推荐3】Carnival (狂欢节) is the most famous holiday in Brazil. It is not about an important time in history or about a famous person, but it is important for the people because it’s a time of friendship, freedom, and almost a whole week without work. People can have parties or have a rest, and most people choose parties, day after day, night after night. It starts forty days before Easter (复活节). It lasts four days and four nights. It starts on Saturday and finishes on Wednesday. People wear their colourful clothes and go out into the streets or to the clubs. There are also groups of people who make a parade (游行) showing their music and cars. Every year the parade tells a different story. Each city has at least one group like this.

In the south, life returns to normal by Wednesday. However, it is not accepted by the church in the northwest, where Carnival is more common. There people don’t respect its end and continue to have parties until the next Sunday.

I like Carnival, but I don’t agree that the party should keep going on for so many days. Unfortunately, some people aren’t responsible and give it a bad name, and that makes people remember the bad things about this. However, it is the only national holiday that brings together the whole country and its different people and cultures.

1. Why is Carnival important for the people in Brazil?

A．Because it’s a time of friendship and freedom.

B．Because it’s about an important time in history.

C．Because it’s a time of almost a whole month without work.

D．Because it’s a time to remember a famous person.

2. People choose ways to celebrate Carnival EXCEPT_____________.

A．having parties	B．having a rest
C．making a parade	D．going shopping

3. In the following descriptions of Carnival, which one is NOT true?

A．It starts forty days before Easter.

B．It starts on Saturday and finishes on Thursday.

C．There are groups of people who make a parade showing their music and cars.

D．Every year the parade tells a different story.

4. What does the author think of Carnival?

A．The author doesn’t care for Carnival.

B．The author never joins in Carnival.

C．The author does not like Carnival.

D．The author likes Carnival, but he doesn’t agree the party goes on so many days.

【推荐1】Though only just 21 when diagnosed with the disease ALS, Hawking was perhaps the most famous scientist in the world when he died in 2018 at age 76. His 1988 book, A Brief History of Time, sold ten million copies and made him an unlikely superstar even to people who sweated through high school science.

Humor was always a big part of Hawking’s effort to bring physics to the masses. In his 2010 book, The Grand Design, for instance, he recounts how, in 1277, the Catholic Church declared scientific laws such as gravity to be wrong, since they seemed against God's idea. “Interestingly,” the text adds jokingly, “Pope John was killed by the effects of the law of gravity a few months later when the roof of his palace fell in on him.”

“He loved adventure and fun,” says Mlodinow, who once took Hawking on a punt-boat trip down the fiver Cam in Cambridge, England, despite the obvious danger of the boat turning over. “You know about when he went on the Vomit Comet? It’s a plane that flies in a parabolic path so you are weightless, like you are in space. A lot of people vomit, but he loved that sort of thing.” And he was 65 at the time.

Hawking’s greatest hit, humor-wise, was probably the cocktail party he threw in 2009. It was a “ welcome reception for future time travelers,” he said, so naturally, he sent out the invitations the day after the party. No one showed up yet. “Maybe one day someone living in the future will find the information and use a wormhole time machine to come back to my party, proving that time travel will one day be possible,” Hawking explained. And if that happens, don’t be surprised if Hawking is there too. After all, he never missed a chance to have fun.

1. What does the text mainly tell us about Hawking?

A．He related physics to humor closely.	B．He made great contributions to physics
C．He went through many funny experiences.	D．He was optimistic about the future of science.

2. What can learn about Pope John?

A．He was not in favor of God.	B．He was a scientist like Hawking.
C．He was opposed to the law of gravity.	D．He was killed due to the discovery of gravity.

3. What drove Hawking to go on the Vomit Comet?

A．His fondness of adventure.	B．The invitation from his friend.
C．The requirements of his work.	D．His desire for recovery from ALS.

4. What can be inferred from the last paragraph?

A．The cocktail party was a great success.

B．The possibility of time travel was not proved.

C．Hawking was a man who enjoyed holding parties.

D．The wormhole time machine was used at that time.

【推荐1】After spending a year in Brazil on a student exchange program, her mother recalled, Marie Colvin returned home to find that her classmates had narrowed down their college choices. “Everyone else was already admitted to college,” her mother, Rosemarie Colvin, said from the family home. “So she took our car and drove up to Yale and said , ‘You have to let me in .’ “

“Impressed--she was a National Merit ( 英才) finalist who had picked up Portuguese in Brazil—Yale did, admitting her to the class of 1978, where she started writing for the Yale Daily News and decided to be a journalist,” her mother said.

On Wednesday, Marie Colvin, 56, an experienced journalist for The Sunday Times of London, was killed as Syrian forces shelled( 炮击) the city of Homs. She was working in a temporary media center that was destroyed in the attack.

“She was supposed to leave Syria on Wednesday”, Mrs. Colvin said. “Her editor told me he called her yesterday and said it was getting too dangerous and they wanted to take her out. She said she was doing a story and she wanted to finish it.”

Mrs. Colvin said it was pointless to try to prevent her daughter from going to conflict zones. “If you knew my daughter,” she said, “it would have been such a waste of words. She was determined, she was enthusiastic about what she did, it was her life. There was no saying ‘Don’t do this.’ This is who she was , absolutely who she was and what she believed in :cover the story, not just have pictures of it, but bring it to life in the deepest way you could.” “So it was not a surprise when she took an interest in journalism,” her mother said.

1. From the underlined sentence in Paragraph 1, we can infer that .

A．Yale was her last choice

B．Marie Colvin was confident of herself

C．Yale must keep its promise to Marie Colvin

D．Marie Colvin was good at persuading

2. Which of the following is the correct order to describe Marie Colvin’s life ?
a. She was doing a story in Syria and got killed. b. She was admitted to Yale University.
c. She studied in Brazil as an excellent student.
d. She was hired by The Sunday Times of London. e. She began to take an interest in journalism.

A．d→e→c→a→b	B．b→c→d→e→a
C．e→d→c→b→a	D．c→b→e→d→a

3. From the last paragraph, we can know that Mrs. Colvin .

A．dislikes the choice of her daughter.

B．cares little about her daughter.

C．knows her daughter very well.

D．doesn’t fully appreciate her daughter.

4. What can be the best title of the text ?

A．Covering Stories in a Dangerous Conflict Area.

B．Applying for Top Universities, a Successful Case

C．Choosing Lifelong Careers Based on Your Own Interest.

D．Recalling Her Daughter, a Journalist Killed in Syria.

【推荐2】Blue Planet II's latest episode(一集) focuses on how plastic is having a disastrous effect on the ocean and slowly poisoning our sea creatures. Researchers recently also found that sea creatures living in the deepest place on Earth, the Mariana Trench，have plastic in their stomachs. Indeed, the oceans are drowning in plastic．

Though it seems now that the world couldn't possibly function without plastics， plastics used by consumers are a remarkably recent invention. The first plastic bags were introduced in the 1950s; the same decade that plastic packaging began gaining in popularity in the United States. This growth has happened so fast that science is still catching up with the change. Plastics pollution research, for instance, is still a very early science．

We put all these plastics into the environment and we still don't really know what the outcomes are going to be. What we do know, though, is disturbing. Ocean plastic is estimated to kill millions of marine animals every year. Nearly 700 species，including endangered ones, are known to have been affected by it. One in three leatherback turtles, which often mistake plastic bags for jellyfish, have been found with plastic in their bellies. Ninety percent of seabirds are now eating plastics on a regular basis. By 2050, that figure is expected to rise to 100 percent．

And it's not just wildlife that is threatened by the plastics in our seas. Humans are consuming plastics through the seafood we eat. I could understand why some people see ocean plastic as a disaster, worth mentioning to the same degree as climate change. But ocean plastic is not as complicated as climate change. There are no ocean trash deniers （否认者）, at least so far. To do something about it, we don't have to remake our planet energy system．

This is not a problem where we don't know what the solution is. We know how to pick up garbage．Anyone can do it．We know how to dispose （处理） of it. We know how to recycle. We can all start by thinking twice before we use plastic products. Things may seem ordinary, like using a reusable bottle or a reusable bag. But when taken collectively, these choices really do make a difference．

1. Why is plastics pollution research still a very early science?

A．The plastics pollution research is too difficult．

B．Plastics have produced less pollution than coal．

C．The world couldn't possibly function without plastics．

D．Plastics have gained in popularity too fast for science to catch up．

2. How did the author support his opinion in Paragraph 3?

A．By statistics．

B．By quotations from leading experts．

C．By using examples from his own experience．

D．By comparison and contrast．

3. What can we infer about climate change ?

A．Climate change is caused by human activities．

B．Climate change is not as simple as ocean pollution．

C．Climate change is less important than ocean pollution．

D．Ocean plastic is more complicated than climate change．

4. What is the main idea of this passage?

A．Ocean pollution is a global issue．

B．The oceans become choked with plastic．

C．Blue Planet II has left viewers heartbroken．

D．Plastics gain in popularity all over the world

【推荐3】Go to college or university in Ontario, Canada

Come and learn the relevant information about Ontario’s 20 public universities, 24 colleges or 400+ registered private career colleges.

Admissions standards and what to offer

In most cases, you need a high school diploma to go to college or university in Ontario. If you are 19 or older without a diploma, you can still apply to most, if not all schools.

Colleges offer certificate programs, diplomas, and degrees. Universities offer under-graduate and graduate degrees and other professional programs. All programs vary in length and preconditions—the pre-work or qualifications you need to be eligible (符合条件) for a program.

Check a school’s website or contact them directly for specific information about admissions.

How to apply

The process depends on where you want to go to school and your personal situation. If you live in Ontario, anywhere else in Canada or abroad, you apply through 1 of 2 places:

Colleges: www.ontariocolleges.ca

Universities: www.ouac.on.ca (the Ontario Universities’ Application Centre)

You will need to apply directly through a school if you are:

● planning to study part time

● a mature student (generally of a certain age and away from formal education for some time)

● an international student

● applying for graduate studies (e.g., a Masters or Doctoral degree)

● planning to attend a private career college

Loans, grants (补助金), scholarships

Canada Student Loans, Grants and Scholarships are open to all Canadians.

Canadian citizen and Ontario resident for at least 12 months: you could be eligible for OSAP (the Ontario Student Assistance Program) and other financial aid programs.

Canadian students living outside of Ontario: you can apply for financial aid through your home province or territory.

International students: you can apply for scholarships offered through the federal (联邦的) government, community agencies and colleges and universities directly.

1. What do universities in Ontario offer students?

A．Honors degrees.	B．Associate degrees.
C．Certificate programs.	D．Professional programs.

2. Where can international students apply for scholarships?

A．Through community agencies.	B．Through their home governments.
C．Through other provinces in Canada.	D．Through the Ontario Student Assistance Program.

3. From which is the text probably taken?

A．A scientific journal.	B．A research paper.
C．A travel brochure.	D．An official website.