【推荐1】Book reading is certainly one of the most absorbing habits. For young adults who love to read, finding some good books to read is very essential. Writing a book review can help you to improve your language and writing skills.

The Book Thief

Listed on The New York Times Children’s Best Seller List for over 100 weeks, The Book Thief by Markus Zusak is the story of a young girl in the Nazi camps set during World War Ⅱ. So, if you love history and wish to learn how the life was during Adolf Hitler’s time, read this historic book.

The Diary of Young Girl

Even Anne Frank can not have imagined that, her personal diary written during World War Ⅱ would become such a popular book. It’s a must read that describes the situation of a family in the evils of wars through the eyes of a teenager.

Animal farm

Animal Farm is one of the most popular books by George Orwell. It is just a reflection of the Stalin and World War I period that has been so creatively presented in this book. It is an interesting example of how literature can be used to present conditions common in the society.

Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is one of the great American novels in the history, and is certainly a great pick for young adults. Young Huck Finn and his mischief along with the colorful description of people around the Mississippi River make this novel a great book to read.

1. Who wrote Animal farm?

A．Markus Zusak.	B．Anne Frank.
C．George Orwell.	D．Mark Twain.

2. What do the first three books have in common?

A．All of them are diaries.

B．All of them are about wars.

C．All of them are about farms.

D．All of them are about animals.

3. The author’s main purpose of writing the passage is to ________.

A．instruct youngsters how to improve skills

B．introduce several good books to youngsters

C．tell youngsters some wonderful reading habits

D．give youngsters advice on writing a book review

【推荐2】Beloit Summer Language

If you’re serious about learning a language, come to one of the nation’s finest language summer camp programs, the Center for Language Studies (CLS) at beautiful Beloit College in Wisconsin. CLS is a four-or eight-week language program in Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, or Russian that is open to high school students and people who are studying or working at college.

Phone: 608-363-2500

Email: admiss@beloit.edu

Website: https://www.beloit.edu

Georgetown University: Summer Medical Program

If you’re a teen thinking about learning medicine in college, explore the medical summer camp program offered at Georgetown University. In this 20-day course, you will get a brief idea of the first-year medical school curriculum. The course includes lectures, laboratory work and fieldwork.

Phone: 202-687-7087

Email: highschool@georgetown.edu

Website: http://scs.georgetown.edu

Bard College at Simon’s Rock Young Writers Workshop

In the summer of 1983, Bard College at Simon’s Rock began offering a three-week writing workshop for high school students. Each year 84 academically motivated students are chosen to participate in the Simon’s Rock program. Former participants have gone on to such colleges as Bard, Harvard, Princeton, Yale and so on.

Phone: 413-528-7231

Email: jamieh@simons-rock.edu

Website: https://simons-rock.edu

Art: Summer at Penn

Each summer, the University of Pennsylvania’s School of Design offers an unparalleled four-week summer art program for artistically gifted high school students. This pre-college art program in Philadelphia prepares you for the college admissions process as you experience university life. Courses are held within the School of Design’s fine art studios and you can develop your technical skills and expand your styles of creative expression.

Phone: 610-265-9401

Email: imagine@jkcp.com

Website: http://www.jkcp.com

1. Which program accepts college students?

A．Bard College at Simon’s Rock Young Writers Workshop

B．Georgetown University: Summer Medical Program

C．Beloit Summer Language

D．Art: Summer at Penn

2. If you want to improve your writing skill, you can send an email to_________.

A．admiss@beloit.edu	B．imagine@jkcp.com
C．jamieh@simons-rock.edu	D．highschool@georgetown.edu

3. How can you learn more information about the art program?

A．By visiting http://scs.georgetown.edu	B．By visiting https://simons-rock.edu
C．By visiting https://www.beloit.edu	D．By visiting http://www.jkcp.com

【推荐3】Sydney Cultural Festival — What’s on today!

European Art Show

Location: Art Gallery of New South Wales. Today is the final day of the exhibition featuring 18th and 19th century paintings by some of the greatest European artists, such as Van Gough and Monet. Posters of these great works are available for purchase at the Visitors’ Centre.

Time: 8:30 am –7 pm

Cost: $12 adults; $7 children and students

Nature Walks

Location: Sydney’s Royal Botanic Garden. Come and celebrate our natural environment in one of the world’s only nature parks inside a major city. Join our hourly guided tours, starting at the Eastern Gate, and enjoy breathtaking forests, stunning city escapes and the magnificent Sydney Harbour.

Time: 9 am – 4 pm

Cost: Free

Sydney Symphony Orchestra Concert

Location: Sydney Opera House. Australia’s most famous orchestra is best known for its performances of classical French and German music. But in tonight’s concert, the world-famous Chinese pianist Lang Lang is the special guest artist and will perform a series of classic Chinese compositions including Yellow River.

Time: 8:30 pm –11:30 pm

Cost: $175 adults; $90 students and children

Moonlight Cinema

Location: Centennial Park. Sit on the grass and enjoy the latest movies or classics from the past under the stars at Australia’s best and largest outdoor cinema. Tonight features the wonderful Australian film Red Dog. Besides the movie, there will be a display of classic Australian film posters.

Time: 8pm – 10:30pm

Cost: $19 adults; $14 children and students

1. Where should people wishing to join a Nature Walk meet?

A．The Visitors’ Centre.	B．The Harbour Bridge.
C．The Eastern Gate.	D．The guides’ building.

2. What kind of music will be played at the Opera House this evening?

A．Australian.	B．German.
C．French.	D．Chinese.

3. How many of today’s festival activities take place outside?

A．1.	B．2.
C．3.	D．4.

【推荐1】Most city parks are places where you can escape from big, ugly structures of metal and stone. The Manhattan High Line is different. Raised 25 feet above the ground, this large metal structure once supported a rail line. The line opened in 1934 to bring trains directly into factories. It was hardly used after the 1960s, and much of it was torn down. However, one part remained in a region of Manhattan called Chelsea. Chelsea was becoming high-class as restaurants, art galleries and apartments were built, but the ugly railway structure remained as a dead weight. Everyone knew that at some time, it would have to be removed.

But the High Line was not destroyed. In fact, now the old rail line serves as one of the most peaceful places in the city, It holds an elevated park, with beautiful gardens and great views of the city. The idea to turn the rail line into a park came from Joshua David and Robert Hammond. In 1999, they attended a meeting to decide how to deal with the High Line. David and Hammond were the only people at the meeting interested in saving the historical structure. Later on, when they asked railway officials to take them up to look at the High Line, they saw a mile and a hall of wild flower growing in the middle of the city, and they realized that the High Line had potential to become a park. There was growing interest in improving city centers, and so the project quickly developed and money for construction was easily collected.

The first part of the High Line opened in 2009 and immediately became popular with tourists and locals alike. Each part of the park has a different atmosphere. Some areas are like balconies(阳台) with wonderful city views. Where the rail line goes between buildings, trees are thickly planed. Other sections have wide lawns(草坪) and walkways planed with wild flowers. Only the final section remains the way it has been for the last fifty years.

1. What is the text mainly about?

A．Closing a train line.	B．Improving city transport.
C．Protection of cultural relics.	D．An unlikely place for a park.

2. What does the underlined part “a dead weight” in paragraph 1 mean?

A．something with historical interest

B．something with potential to be better

C．something which is a danger to people

D．something useless which slows progress.

3. Why did David and Hammond originally want to save the High Line?

A．They wanted to reopen the train line.

B．They thought it had historical value.

C．They were interested in improving the city.

D．They thought it would become a good park.

4. Why were people easily persuaded by David and Hammond’s idea?

A．They wanted to make cities nicer places.

B．They wanted to see the wild flowers, too.

C．They knew the project would bring in much money.

D．They realized the High Line was historically important.

5. What can we learn about the High Line from the text?

A．Only part of the line remains.

B．The railway companies still use the line.

C．It began to become popular in the 1960.

D．It was designed by David and Hammond.

【推荐2】Many people quote the phrase from Jane Jacobs that “there must be eyes on the street” to emphasize the relationship between urban safety and design. Jacobs’ views on urban safety were, in truth, far more complex than this phrase suggests. Her book The Death and Life of Great American Cities has become the basis of a worldwide movement to foster safer cities.

Jacobs made an important contribution to our understanding of cities by linking the fear of crime and urban design. In a successful city district a person must feel personally safe on the street among all these strangers. It doesn’t take many incidents of violence on a city street to make people fear the street. And as they fear it, they use it less, which makes the street still more unsafe.

Jacobs widened her attention to urban safety in general, including parks and public housing projects. While most planners focus on the green benefits of parks, she argued against underused or dangerous parks. She observed that parks are successful when they encourage a range of activities and users.

She emphasized design and management policies to encourage interaction at public housing sites. She suggested combining public housing communities with existing street patterns and holding street activities by including businesses in the buildings. She opposed fencing and security guards, creating a sense of territory and isolating public housing residents from the wider community.

Jacobs wrote about her experience of daily life in the city and urged planners to pay attention to how ordinary people actually use urban space. From her experience as a wife, mother, and resident in New York, she arrived at a more human vision of the city than the experts of the day did. Her concern about urban safety was visionary (有远见的), and her manner of looking at the city still offers a critical viewpoint for evaluating crime prevention and community safety strategies today.

1. What purpose does paragraph 1 serve?

A．To make the phrase better known.

B．To attract readers’ attention to the phrase.

C．To introduce more Jacobs’ complex views.

D．To prove the popularity of Jane Jacobs’ book.

2. According to Jacobs, what is a proper way to foster a successful city?

A．Warning people of violence in the streets.

B．Encouraging different activities in parks.

C．Employing security guards in the buildings.

D．Introducing safety policies at public housing sites.

3. What does Jacobs say about urban design?

A．Good design and management can increase interaction.

B．The government should build more parks.

C．Crimes make the city insecure for people to live in.

D．Cities should improve public services.

4. What can we know from the text?

A．Creating a sense of territory is necessary.

B．It’s dangerous to walk on the street alone.

C．People in the city feel more disconnected now.

D．Various roles in life make Jacob have unique views

5. What is the passage mainly about ?

A．Jacobs’ views on urban safety and design

B．Jacobs’ Book “The Development of Great cities”

C．Jacobs’experience of daily life in the city

D．Jacobs’ design and management policies

【推荐3】Why you’re more creative in coffee shops

Some of the most successful people in history have done their best work in coffee shops     1    . Among them are Pablo Picasso, J. K. Rowling, Francois Voltaire and Bob Dylan.

A sweet spot of noise and crowds

Some of us stick in our earbuds as soon as we sit down to work in a public setting. But scientists have known for years that background noise can benefit our creative thinking. A study showed that a modest level of surrounding noise in a place like a cafe can actually promote your creative output.     2    . Therefore, this can lead to more creative idea generation.

Air of informality

The typical coffee-shop user might be a lone worker struggling with a creative effort. However, experts say these cafe settings can also benefit work groups who are brainstorming. There is a formal air when gathering on digital meeting platforms.     3    . All those audio and visual stimuli(刺激) help groups, too, compared to the meeting in a formal meeting room.

    4    

One thing that can make working from home or the office feel boring is the visual environment. Often we sit in the same chair and look at the same four walls all day long. In the coffee shops, people come and go. The daylight changes.

    5    . While we tend not to take conscious notice of these micro-stimuli, and likely don’t openly choose to work in this location because of them, these activities around us make our brains work a bit differently than at home.

A．Visual variety

B．The birthplace of countless great works

C．The pleasant smells of coffee and food vary

D．Not all kinds of noisy surroundings are bad for your creativity

E．By contrast, there is an informal atmosphere when meeting up at a bar or cafe

F．Whatever their careers, they have tapped into their creativity working at a table in a cafe

G．Because if you’re slightly distracted from the task at hand, it raises your abstract thinking ability

【推荐3】Popularly known as the “Oriental Hawaii,” Sanya in South China’s Hainan province is considered as one of the best diving resorts in the South Pacific Ocean. The followings are the top four places for diving in the city.

Wuzhizhou Island

Wuzhizhou Island is regarded as the best place in Hainan province for underwater diving. It is one of the few islands in the world without rocks. The island covers an area of 1.48 square kilometers and is in an irregular butterfly shape. The sea around the island is clear, providing a visibility of 6 to 27 meters.

Xidao Island

Xidao Island is shaped like a turtle living in the tropical area. It is also the largest of a series of islands in Sanya. Located 8 nautical miles off the coast, the island enjoys surroundings of sandy beaches and rocky caves. It also has clear waters with a wide variety of underwater animals to explore.

Dadonghai Bay

Dadonghai Bay, surrounded by hills on three sides, is a moon-shaped bay. The area enjoys agreeable weather all year round, with the water temperature keeping about 20℃ even in winter. Though the water here is not as clear as that in Yalong Bay and Wuzhizhou Island, this diving spot is easier to get to.

Fenjiezhou Island

Fenjiezhou Island is also called the Sleeping Beauty Island for what it looks like from afar. It is a national 5A scenic area in Lingshui Li autonomous county. It is the only site in the country that allows visitors to dive with dolphins. In addition to possessing a range of marine recreational programs, the island has the only sightseeing submarine in China, which is 18.6 meters long and can accommodate 46 people.

Regulations for underwater diving:

1. Applicants who are in good health and over 7 years old are allowed to dive.

2. People who are drunk or have heart disease or high blood pressure are not allowed to dive.

3. Be sure to travel with your diving instructor.

4. Several gestural languages must be mastered before diving: OK, going up, going down, uncomfortable, poisonous living creatures, and no touching.

Click here to enjoy the breath-taking scenery of these beautiful resorts.

1. Which is the largest among these four places?

A．Wuzhizhou Island	B．Xidao Island
C．Dadonghai Bay	D．Fenjiezhou Island

2. Which is TRUE according to the passage?

A．Wuzhizhou Island is the only island in the world without rocks.

B．The four places are all animal-shaped.

C．People are not permitted to dive alone without an instructor.

D．People can feel free to touch underwater animals when diving.

3. Which of the following people can get a chance of diving?

A．a drunk man	B．a child aged 6
C．a man with heart disease	D．a graduate in good health

4. You may find this passage from             .

A．a website	B．a travel brochure
C．a geography book	D．a newspaper

【推荐1】The M3 Challenge is a contest that gives high schoolers the chance to experience working as a team to deal with a practical problem within limited time. The challenge is meant to give high schoolers a sense of the kinds of problems faced by professional mathematicians working in the real world. Students who are gifted at coding (编程) might consider this competition since extra credit awards are available for teams who include outstanding code as part of their solution.

High school juniors and seniors from anywhere in the U. S. are welcome to participate in the M3 Challenge. Teams of students must consist of three to five people and at least one teacher-coach. Another cool thing? The M3 Challenge is. entirely online until the final round, and there are no participation fees !.

At the end of the M3 Challenge, six teams are identified and invited to present their work in New York City. The finalist teams are also eligible to receive cash awards, which are as follows:

◆ M3 Challenge Champions (Summa Cum Laude Team Prize) $ 20,000

◆ M3 Challenge Runner Up (Magna Cum Laude Team Prize) $ 15,000

◆ M3 Challenge Third Place (Cum Laude Team Prize) $ 10,000

◆ M3 Challenge Finalist (Meritorious Team Prize) $ 5,000 (3 teams)

In addition to these top prizes, there are also awards in the amount of $ 1,500 and $ 1,000 for semi-finalist and honorable mention teams respectively. Finally, Challenge finalists, semi-finalists, and honorable mention teams may be invited to submit applications for summer internships in STEM.

1. What's the purpose of the M3 Challenge?

A．To promote coding.

B．To select math professionals.

C．To solve difficult math problems.

D．To enrich high schoolers' knowledge.

2. Which of the following will lead to disqualification?

A．Having only one coach in a team.

B．Coming from a remote U. S. state.

C．Including eight students in a team.

D．Failing to pay the participation fees.

3. How much is the cash prize for honorable mention teams?

A．$ 1,000.

B．$ 1,500.

C．$ 5,000.

D．$ 10,000.

【推荐2】Most rain forests lie close to the equator(赤道),where the climate is often mild and there are long hours of sunshine.The warmth of the land heats the air above,causing it to rise and tiny drops of water to fall as rain.The rainfall can reach at least 98 inches a year.This wet,warm world with plenty of sunlight is perfect for plants to grow,so the trees grow fast with green leaves all the year round.The trees themselves also have an effect on the climate.They gather water from the soil and pass it out into the air through their leaves.The wet air then forms clouds,which hang over the treetops like smoke.These clouds protect the forest from the daytime heat and night-time cold of nearby deserts,keeping temperatures fit for plant growth.
Rain forests slightly farther away from the equator remain just as warm,but they have a dry season of three months or more when little rain falls.Tree leaves fall during this dry season and new leaves grow when the wet season or monsoon(雨季) begins.Thus these areas are known as the “monsoon forest”.
Another type of rain forest grows on tropical mountains.It is often called the “cloud forest” because clouds often hang over the trees like fog.
The rain forest is the ideal place for the growth of many different trees.Most of them depend on animals to eat their fruits and spread their seeds.When the fruits are eaten,the seeds inside them go undamaged through animals’ stomachs and are passed out in their droppings.The seeds lying on the forest floor then grow into new trees.
1. The climate of the rain forests near the equator is _______.

A．mild,wet and windy	B．hot,rainy and foggy
C．hot,wet and cloudy	D．warm,wet and sunny

2. We can learn from the passage that _______.

A．tree leaves are green all the time in the monsoon forest

B．there is a dry season in the cloud forest on tropical mountains

C．clouds help the plants in the rain forest near the deserts to grow

D．the formation of climate in the rain forest has little to do with the trees

3. According to the passage,_______ play the most important role in the spreading of seeds.

A．animals

B．droppings

C．fruits

D．winds

4. This passage is most likely to be found in _______.

A．a travel guide	B．a story book
C．a technical report	D．a geography book

【推荐3】How to Drop a Pant Size in a Week

Dropping one pant size in seven days is a difficult task, but with dedication, exercise and the right diet, you can make it happen.

Increase your water consumption. Thirst is often misinterpreted as hunger, and if you are drinking the right amount of water, you will find it much easier to avoid snacking. Look to drink at around eight or nine glasses of water every day.

Lower your calorie count. You can use a calorie calculator to determine how much you need to take in to maintain or lose weight. If you take in fewer calories than you burn each day, you will lose weight as a result. As a rule, an average-sized woman needs to take in less than 1, 300 calories per day for extreme weight loss, as you’ll naturally burn around 2,000. Exact measurements differ based on age, height, weight and activity level.

Cut the junk food. Chips, soda and candy seem harmless if taken as snacks, but can seriously affect your weight loss. Limit yourself to one or two snacks per day and switch your usual snack foods for baby carrots, apples and grapes.

Break up your meals. If you want to lose weight, try eating four or five small meals per day instead of two or three large ones. This makes it easier for your body to process what you are consuming. Divide your required calories by the number of meals you’ll be eating to determine how large each meal should be. Space your meals out two or three hours apart—try meals at breakfast, mid-morning, lunch, afternoon and dinner.

Doing intense aerobic (需氧的) exercise. You have to encourage your body to burn calories if you want to drop pounds and inches. Running is by far the fastest calorie burner, with the potential for 986 calories per hour. If you’re unable to run, use an elliptical machine (椭圆机), jump rope, or participate in a high-impact aerobics class.

1. When you are thirsty, you may mistake it as a sign ________.

A．to drink something	B．to eat something
C．to sleep for a while	D．to do some exercise

2. If you want to lose weight, you need to ________.

A．burn fewer calories	B．eat as much as usual
C．eat less than you burn	D．measure your weight first

3. Of the following, which might be beneficial for losing weight?

A．Fruits.	B．Hamburgers.
C．Steak.	D．Ice cream.