【推荐2】A city in Netherlands is planning to construct a pretty bike path made of recycled wood.

The first of its kind in the world, the path near the city of Emmen will be surfaced not with the usual asphalt（沥青） but with wood chips packed together with organic resin(有机树脂).

The idea behind the path is to cut the use of conventional, less eco-friendly materials such as concrete, which is very difficult to recycle.And the creation of the wood chips will require no direct cutting down of trees; the company leading the experiment, Grontmij, plans to use waste products from sawmills(锯木厂).

The idea of creating a permanent road from a material that is celebrated for its biodegradability(生物降解性)might seem ridiculous. But the engineers working on the path insist that the wood and resin surfacing will stay in good condition for a long time, with a working life at least as long as concrete or asphalt. Rudi van Hedel, project manager of bio-based economy at Grontmij, explained that the light weight of the material also makes it far easier to move.

However, van Hedal said, “At present, the material costs of the path are higher than those of traditional paths made of asphalt or concrete, but the construction costs are comparable or perhaps slightly cheaper. We expect that as production ability increases, the costs will go down. In the future, we hope to use bio-fibres(生物纤维)that are cheaper than the wood fibres we’re currently experimenting with, and we expect that biodegradable materials will be able to compete with asphalt and concrete.”

1. What can we learn about the path?

A．It uses some asphalt.	B．It aims to protect trees.
C．It is a pioneering project.	D．It is being built by a sawmill.

2. What do the engineers stress about the path in Paragraph 4?

A．Its material is heavy in weight.	B．It can stay in service for long.
C．Its length may break a record.	D．It is environmentally friendly.

3. According to van Hedal, what is a disadvantage of wood fibres?

A．Their production process is complex.	B．They are not as hard as asphalt.
C．They are not always available.	D．Their costs are relatively high.

4. Where is the text most likely from?

A．A diary.

B．A novel.

C．A magazine.

D．A guidebook.

【推荐1】The word listen, as is shown in Longman Dictionary, means paying attention to what someone is saying or to a sound that you can hear. Listening is definitely an important skill in communication. “When people talk, listen completely.” Those words of Ernest Hemingway might be a pretty good guiding principle for many managers. After all, people like being listened to.

Some firms use a technique known as a “listening circle”. In such a circle, only one person can talk about the issues they face at a time and there is no interruption. A study cited in the Harvard Business Review found that employees who had taken part in a listening circle subsequently suffered less social anxiety and had fewer worries about work-related matters than those who did not.

Listening has been critical to the career of Richard Mullender, who was a hostage (人质) negotiator, dealing with everything from suicide interventions to international kidnaps (绑架). He defines listening as “the identification, selection and interpretation of the key words”. It is crucial to all effective communication.

Plenty of people think that good listening is about nodding your head or keeping eye contact. But that is not really listening, Mr Mullender argues. A good listener is always looking for facts, emotions and indications of the other person’s values. Another important point to bear in mind is that, when you talk, you are not listening. The listener’s focus should be on analysis.

Of course, a listener needs to speak occasionally. One approach is to make an assessment of what the other person is telling you and then check it with them. For example, you can check with the other person by saying “It seems to me that what you want is…”. That gives the other party a sense that they are being understood. The fundamental aim is to build up a relationship so the other person likes you and trusts you, Mr Mullender says.

1. What can we learn about a “listening circle”?

A．A listening circle focuses on personal issues.

B．In a listening circle, a speaker won’t be interrupted.

C．A listening circle increases worries about work-related matters.

D．Employees get rid of social anxiety by taking part in a listening circle.

2. What’s Mr Mullender’s attitude to speaking occasionally when listening?

A．Critical.

B．Opposed.

C．Cautious.

D．Favorable.

3. Why should we be good listeners?

A．To be liked and trusted by the other person.

B．To check our assessments with the other person.

C．To make assessments of what the other person is saying.

D．To have a sense of being understood by the other person.

4. What’s the best title of the text?

A．The Analysis of a Listening Circle

B．The Tricks of Successful Listening

C．The Misunderstanding of Listening

D．The Necessity of Effective Listening

【推荐2】Books to Read in Your 20s

The Kite Runner

By Khaled Hosseini

As a Middle Eastern and North African Studies student, I have a great interest in books about what takes place in this area. I first read this book in high school and really enjoyed it because of its accurate language. If any of you is interested in reading this book and hasn't yet, I highly recommend it.

Firefly Lane

By Kristin Hannah

This is my favorite book. It is a story about friendship, love and life lessons. The story covers the lives of two best friends, Tully and Kate, from childhood to adulthood. I learned so much about friendship and life. So, read Firefly Lane!   You'll laugh, you'll cry, and then you'll share this book to your best friend.

Half the Sky

By Nicholas D. Kristof

For any person of any age, Half the Sky is a must-read. It describes the struggle of women and the most pressing human rights problems of our time:   the common oppression of women and girls.

The Little Prince

By Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

This children's book is simple. It might seem like a wrong book to recommend to someone in their twenties but perhaps that's what makes it a good choice. It sings praises to exploration and shows the importance of making friends.

1. Who is the writer of the book The Kite Runner?

A．Khaled Hosseini.

B．Kristin Hannah.

C．Nicholas

D．Kristof.

2. What can you learn from Firefly Lane?

A．It's written by Tully and Kate.

B．It's about friendship, love and life lessons.

C．It's a simple book for children.

D．It's a book written for any person of any age.

3. Which book will you read if you want to know about human rights problems?

A．The Kite Runner.	B．Firefly Lane.
C．Half the Sky.	D．The Little Prince.

4. Which book sings praises to exploration and shows the importance of making friends?

A．The Kite Runner.	B．Firefly Lane.
C．Half the Sky.	D．The Little Prince.

【推荐1】I took a job as a receptionist for a vet(兽医)almost five decades ago. As a crazy animal lover, I accepted the position on the condition that I wouldn't have to assist with any wounded animals. I couldn't bear to see any creature in pain.

At the end of my first week, we were closing the office for the day when a young man ran up to us holding a severely injured Doberman pinscher puppy in his arms and begging us to save his life. The four-month-old pup had been hit by a car.

The doctor and I ran back into the operating room. The only place the skin was still attached to this poor little animal's body was around one shoulder. The vet worked tirelessly for what seemed like hours, sewing him back together again. That was the easy part. The puppy had broken multiple bones, including his spine. If he survived the next few days, we were quite sure he would never walk again.

That day forever changed my life. One of my first jobs was to give that Doberman puppy daily physical treatment. I remember moving his tiny legs to try to keep his muscles from weakening.

Weeks went by until one day, I felt this little fighter push back ever so slightly. And he continued to push back till he could finally use his legs.

Fast-forward about a year. I walked into the clinic's crowded waiting room and called the name of the next client. Suddenly, a huge Doberman who had been standing quietly with his owner on the opposite side of the room broke loose and rushed toward me. I found myself pinned against the wall with this huge dog standing on his back legs, his front paws on my shoulder, washing my face with abundant and joyful kisses.

I still tear up in amazement at the display of love and gratitude the dog had for me that day all those years ago.

1. The author didn't want to assist with wounded animals because

A．she didn't have relevant experience to treat animals.

B．she couldn't stand watching animals suffering from pain.

C．she showed no sympathy for wounded animals.

D．she saw no reward if she helped wounded animals.

2. What happened to the dog in the end?

A．The dog survived, but he couldn't walk again.

B．The dog was still a great fighter after recovery.

C．The dog would never know who saved his life.

D．The dog finally got back to his feet again.

3. Which of the following best describe the dog when he met the author?

A．frightened and aggressive

B．joyful and grateful

C．joyful and nervous

D．excited and aggressive

【推荐2】Beijing is a rather strange city to many western people. One of my foreign friends told me that when he came to Beijing, at first he couldn't understand why most people wear masks when spring comes to Beijing. He thought people wanted to keep their appearance a secret. Well, one of the symbols of spring coming to Beijing is that more and more people start wearing masks. The reason for it is the arrival of so called “sandstorms”.

It is said that each year sandstorms hit Beijing 4 to 5 times. The sand is brought to Beijing by wind from the western part of China. Tons of soil and dust travel hundreds of miles and blanket Beijing's streets, parked cars and apartment buildings. You would be amazed to see the ground has turned yellow overnight. The storm is so violent that you do not want to have a conversation with your friend on the road. If you open your mouth and then you close it, you may have the raw taste of sand in your mouth.

People in Beijing hate those storms. Sandstorms make the traffic jam in rush hours even more unpredictable, because the drivers have to drive slowly in order to have a clear view of the road conditions. Young students also hate sandstorms because whenever there is a sandstorm, they are not allowed to have any activities outside the classroom. It is so boring to sit in the classroom all day and the youngsters are so eager to go out and do some sports.

It is said that the closest desert is only 80 kilometers away from the city center.There is definitely much more to do for the local government to deal with the environmental problem.

1. Why do people in Beijing wear masks in the spring?

A．Because they are rather strange.

B．Because there are serious sandstorms.

C．Because their appearance are not beautiful.

D．Because they want to keep their face a secret.

2. What does the underlined word “blanket” mean ?

A．Dry.

B．Cross.

C．Destroy.

D．Cover.

3. What do people have to do when the storm comest?

A．Drivers clean the road.	B．They hold some activities.
C．Youngsters go out to do sports.	D．Students stay in the classroom.

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

A．People in Sandstorms	B．How to Prevent Sandstorms
C．Sandstorms in Beijing	D．What to Do in a Sandstorm

【推荐3】It doesn’t kill germs better than cooler water, but turning tap temperatures high, the US burns carbon equal to the emissions of Barbados.

People typically wash their hands seven times a day in the United States, but they do it at a far higher temperature than is necessary to kill germs, a new study says. The energy waste is equivalent to the fuel use of a small country.

It’s cold and flu season, when many people are concerned about avoiding germs. But forget what you think you know about hand washing, say researchers at Vanderbilt University. Chances are good that how you clean up is not helping you stay healthy; it is helping to make the planet sick.

Amanda R. Carrico, a research assistant professor at the Vanderbilt Institute for Energy and Environment in Tennessee, told National Geographic that hand washing is often “a case where people act in ways that they think are in their best interest, but they in fact have inaccurate beliefs or outdated perceptions.”

Carrico said, “It’s certainly true that heat kills bacteria, but if you were going to use hot water to kill them it would have to be way too hot for you to tolerate.”

She explained that boiling water, 212°F (99.98°C), is sometimes used to kill germs - for example, to clean drinking water that might be polluted with germs. But “hot” water for hand washing is generally within 104°F to 131°F (40°C to 55°C.) At the high end of that range, heat could kill some germs, but the sustained contact that would be required would scald the skin.

Carrico said that after a review of the scientific literature, her team found “no evidence that using hot water that a person could stand would have any benefit in killing bacteria.” Even water as cold as 40°F (4.4°C) appeared to reduce bacteria as well as hotter water, if hands were scrubbed, rinsed(冲洗) and dried properly.

In fact, she noted that hot water can often have an unfavorable effect on hygiene. “Warmer water can harm the skin and affect the protective layer on the outside, which can cause it to be less resistant to bacteria,” said Carrico.

Using hot water to wash hands is therefore unnecessary, as well as wasteful, Carrico said, particularly when it comes to the environment. According to her research, people use warm or hot water 64 percent of the time when they wash their hands. Using that number, Carrico’s team calculated a significant impact on the planet.   

“Although the choice of water temperature during a single hand wash may appear minor, when multiplied by the nearly 800 billion hand washes performed by Americans each year, this practice results in more than 6 million metric tons of CO2 equivalent emissions annually,” she said.

That’s roughly equal to the emissions of two coal-fired power plants, or 1,250, 000 passenger vehicles, over the course of a year. It’s higher than the greenhouse gas emissions of small countries like El Salvador or Armenia, and is about equivalent to the emissions of Barbados. If all US citizens washed their hands in cooler water, it would be like eliminating the energy-related carbon emissions of 299,700 US homes, or the total annual emissions from the US zinc or lead industries.   

The researchers found that close to 70 percent of respondents said they believe that using hot water is more effective than warm, room temperature, or cold water, despite a lack of evidence backing that up, said Carrico. Her study noted research that showed a “strong cognitive(认知的) connection” between water temperature and hygiene in both the United States and Western Europe,compared to other countries, like Japan, where hot water is associated more with comfort than with health.

The researchers published their results in the July 2013 issue of International Journal of Consumer Studies. They recommended washing with water that is at a “comfortable” temperature, which they noted may be warmer in cold months and cooler in hot ones.

1. What does the writer mainly focus on when writing this passage?

A．Whether hot water helps kill germs effectively in hand washing.

B．How hot water contributes to the serious worsening of our planet.

C．Why the consumption of hot water is unnecessary and wasteful.

D．What the advantages and disadvantages of using hot water are.

2. The underlined word scald in paragraph six probably means        .

A．burn

B．improve

C．soften

D．wrinkle

3. According to the passage, all the following share roughly the same CO2 emissions yearly EXCEPT        .

A．two coal-fired power plants	B．US zinc or lead industries
C．1,250, 000 passenger vehicles	D．El Salvador or Armenia

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

A．Boiling water at 212°F (99.98°C) works effectively in killing germs.

B．Warmer water can damage the protective layer of the outside skin.

C．There is much difference between cold water and hot water in reducing bacteria.

D．Americans have inaccurate beliefs or outdated perceptions in hand washing.

【推荐1】Cowboy or spaceman? A dilemma for a children’s party, perhaps. But also a question for economists, argued Kenneth Boulding, a British economist, in an essay published in 1966. We have run our economies, he warned, like cowboys on the open grassland: taking and using the world’s resources, confident that more lies over the horizon. But the Earth is less a grassland than a spaceship—a closed system, alone in space, carrying limited supplies. We need, said Boulding, an economics that takes seriously the idea of environmental limits. In the half century since his essay, a new movement has responded to his challenge. “Ecological economists”, as they call themselves, want to revolutionise its aims and assumptions. What do they say—and will their ideas achieve lift-off?

To its advocators, ecological economics is neither ecology nor economics, but a mix of both. Their starting point is to recognise that the human economy is part of the natural world. Our environment, they note, is both a source of resources and a sink for wastes. But it is ignored in conventional textbooks, where neat diagrams trace the flows between firms, households and the government as though nature did not exist. That is a mistake, say ecological economists.

There are two ways our economies can grow, ecological economists point out: through technological change, or through more intensive use of resources. Only the former, they say, is worth having. They are suspicious of GDP, a crude measure which does not take account of resource exhaustion, unpaid work, and countless other factors. In its place they advocate moreholistic(全面的) approaches, such as the Genuine Progress Indicator (GPI), a composite index(复合指标) that includes things like the cost of pollution, deforestation and car accidents. While GDP has kept growing, global GPI per person peaked in 1978: by destroying our environment we are making ourselves poorer, not richer. The solution, says Herman Daly, a former World Bank economist and eco-guru, is a “steady-state” economy, where the use of materials and energy is held constant.

Mainstream economists are unimpressed. The GPI, they point out, is a subjective measure. And talk of limits to growth has had a bad press since the days of Thomas Malthus, a gloomy 18th century cleric who predicted, wrongly, that overpopulation would lead to famine. Human beings find solutions to some of the most annoying problems. But ecological economists warn against self-satisfaction. In 2009 a paper in Nature, a scientific journal, argued that human activity is already overstepping safe planetary boundaries on issues such as biodiversity(生物多样性) and climate change. That suggests that ecological economists are at least asking some important questions, even if their answers turn out to be wrong.

1. Kenneth Boulding and the content of his essay at the beginning of this passage are meant to .

A．point out how ignorant of nature the cowboys are

B．blame human beings for their exploitation of nature

C．ask people to take seriously the environment limits

D．introduce ecological economists and ecologist economics

2. According to ecological economists, what is the mistake existing in conventional textbooks?

A．Ecology and economics are not mixed together

B．Human economy isn’t recognized as parts of nature

C．The environment has both resources and wastes

D．Diagrams connect firms, households and the government

3. The comparison between GDP and GPI data in 1978 has warned us that     .

A．GDP is crude measure that is not worth using

B．car accident should by all means include in GDP

C．we are gaining material wealth by destroying nature

D．resources and energy will one day be totally used up

4. Which in the following will the author probably agree?

A．the aims and assumptions of economics need to be revolutionized

B．GDP and GPI should be both accepted by mainstream economists

C．Human beings can always find solutions to all the annoying problems

D．Ecological economists’ concerns about the world are worth noticing.

【推荐3】Last weekend, I was talking about winter vacation plans with a friend when I suddenly realized that this year I should start up an old plan of learning how to skate again.

I’ve always wanted to learn skating. But I didn’t have a proper chance to learn it. When I was young, the small coastal city where I lived had no ice rink (溜冰场). My parents signed me up for classes at a skating school out of town, but I had to catch the early bus on weekends to get there, and it took two hours to go and come back, so I gave it up pretty quickly.

Now is my chance to fulfill my childhood dream! Excited, I started calling skating rinks in Beijing, hoping to sign up for lessons. But some said they only had classes for children. Some said it was too much trouble to teach adults. One receptionist paused after my question and said strangely, “You never learned this as a child?”

I understand if they don’t get many adult learners, but to say that adults are harder to teach than children is such a slap in the face. I thought I lived in a society that encourages people to take on lifelong learning. Is there some unspoken rule that says after one reaches a certain age, he or she is not allowed to learn systematically with a trainer anymore? Are adults not allowed to pursue new hobbies?

There were many things I didn’t have time to properly learn when I was young. I failed to see how important hobbies were, and I was sick of my parents nagging (唠叨) me to do after-school activities. Today, when I want to go out with friends, I find I have so few activities to do with them. And now I’m being told that I can’t even make up for my childhood mistake. It seems that I’ve missed my chance. I missed it 20 years ago. Now, I can only go on being ordinary.

1. The author gave up learning skating when she was young because _____________.

A．she wasn’t interested in it

B．her parents didn’t allow her to learn it

C．her parents couldn’t find any skating schools

D．it was inconvenient for her to take the lessons

2. How did those skating rinks the author called respond to her request?

A．Positively.	B．Anxiously.
C．Flexibly.	D．Disappointingly.

3. Which could be the author’s opinion?

A．It’s never too late to learn.

B．It’s understandable that adults don’t like learning.

C．Adults are harder to teach than kids.

D．Adults had better not pursue new hobbies.

4. The passage is written to express the author’s ___________.

A．fear of going on being ordinary

B．determination to learn skating well

C．regret for losing the chance of pursuing hobbies

D．blame on her parents’ nagging her to do after-school activities