When your dream is to become a footballer and play for Barcelona, nothing should get in your way―even if you have no feel.
An 11-year-old schoolboy Gabriel Muniz, who was born without feel, will fly from his home in Brazil to take part in the Spanish club’s summer training camp. Although he is disabled, Muniz is one of the top players at the school and captain of his gym class. He can run, dribble, pass and strike the ball as well as any of his able-bodied teammates. He spends all his spare time on the football pitch.
His best friend Lucas Santos spoke about his abilities on a video for the Sun, “He is skillful, he goes after it, he is fearless and he knows how to organize plays. He also makes good passes.” Mum Sandra was thrilled that her son would achieve his dreams. She said, “He started walking before he was one. We would go after him, expecting him to keep falling, but he never fell.” Muniz’s gym teacher added, “He is challenging the social norms. When he arrived there, no one believed in him.” But he showed to everyone that he could play as well as any other boy. So he was invited to go to Spain to show his talent.
The Spanish La Liga soccer club has offered to fly Muniz to Spain in September, where he’ll be able to show off his “fancy footwork” and meet his idol, Barca soccer player Lionel Messi.
Muniz wears a prosthetic ankle and foot to keep him get around in rainy weather. He knows that his disability means he’ll never be able to play for a professional football team, so Muniz is hoping that football will one day become a Paralympic sport.
1. What did Lucas Santos think of Muniz’s football abilities?| A．Just so-so. | B．Excellent. | C．Very bad. | D．Skilled. |
| A．He has a hope that playing football will be part of Paralympic Games. |
| B．His biggest dream is to play for a professional football team. |
| C．He has great difficulty in living a normal life. |
| D．He is going to play football for the Spanish La Liga soccer club. |
| A．A good beginning is half done. | B．All is well that ends well. |
| C．Never put off tomorrow what we can do today. | D．Where there is a will, there is a way. |
相似题推荐
【推荐1】A researcher at Ben-Gurion University conducted the first study of hand-clapping songs, uncovering a direct link between those activities and the development of important skills in children and young adults, including university students.
“We found that children in the first, second and third grades who sing these songs prove skills absent in children who don’t take part in similar activities,” explains Dr. Idit Sulkin. “We also found that children who naturally perform hand-clapping songs in the yard during break have neater handwriting, write better and make fewer spelling errors.” As part of the study, Sulkin went to several elementary school classrooms and engaged the children in either a board of education conducting music appreciation program or hand-clapping songs training — each lasting a period of 10 weeks.
“Within a very short period of time, the children who until then hadn’t taken part in such activities caught up in their cognitive abilities to those who did,” she said. But this finding only surfaced for the group of children undergoing hand-clapping songs training. The result led Sulkin to conclude that hand-clapping songs should be made a necessary part of education for children aged 6 to 10, for the purpose of motor and cognitive training.
During the study, Dr. Sulkin interviewed school and kindergarten teachers, visited their classrooms and joined the children in singing. Her goal was to figure out why children are fascinated by singing and clapping up until the end of third grade, when these entertainments are abruptly abandoned and replaced with sports. “This fact explains a developmental process the children are going through,” Dr. Sulkin observes. “The hand-clapping songs appear naturally in children’s lives at the age of 7, and disappear at the age of 10.”
Sulkin says that no in-depth, long-term study has been conducted on the effects that hand-clapping songs have on children’s motor and cognitive skills. However, the relationship between music and intellectual development in children has been studied extensively, causing countless parents to obtain a “Baby Mozart” CD for their children.
1. What conclusion does Dr. Sulkin make?| A．Hand-clapping songs training is short. |
| B．Kids with hand-clapping songs training write well. |
| C．Kids with hand-clapping songs training are smarter. |
| D．Hand-clapping songs should be part of kid education. |
| A．At the age of 6. | B．At the age of 7. |
| C．At the age of 8. | D．At the age of 10. |
| A．To help their kids develop better. | B．To support their kids’ dream. |
| C．To satisfy their kids’ hobby. | D．To let their kids sleep well. |
| A．Hand-clapping songs’ effect on adults. | B．Shortcomings on hand-clapping songs. |
| C．Sulkin’s growth in the musical home. | D．Songs from “Baby Mozart” CDs. |
【推荐2】When a leafy plant is under attack, it doesn't sit quietly. Back in 1983,two scientists,Jack Schultz and Ian Baldwin, reported that young maple trees (枫树) getting bitten by insects send out a particular smell that neighboring plants can get. These chemicals come from the injured parts of the plant and seem to be an alarm. What the plants send through the air is a mixture of chemicals known as volatile organic compounds,VOCs for short.
Scientists have found that all kinds of plants give out VOCs when being attacked. It's a plant's way of crying out. But is anyone listening? Obviously. Because we can watch the neighbors react.
Some plants give out smelly chemicals to keep insects away. But others do double duty. They give out smells designed to attract different insects who are natural enemies to the attackers. Once they arrive, the tables are turned. The attacker who was launching now becomes lunch.
In study after study, it appears that these chemical conversations help the neighbors. The damage is usually more serious on the first plant, but the neighbors, relatively speaking,stay safer because they heard the alarm and knew what to do.
Does this mean that plants talk-to-each-other? Scientists don't know. Maybe the first plant just made a cry of pain or was sending a message to its own branches, and so in effect,was talking to itself. Perhaps the neighbors just happened to "overhear” the cry. So information was exchanged,but it wasn’t a true, intentional back and forth.
Charles Darwin, over 150 years ago,imagined a world far busier, noisier and more intimate (亲密的) than the world we can see and hear. Our senses are weak. There's a whole lot going on.
1. What does a plant do when it is under attack?| A．It makes noises. | B．It stands quietly. |
| C．It gets help from other plants. | D．It sends out certain chemicals. |
| A．The attackers will get attacked |
| B．The insects will gather under the table. |
| C．The plants will get ready to fight back. |
| D．The attackers will give out smelly chemicals. |
| A．talk to one another on purpose |
| B．warn people of a coming danger |
| C．protect themselves against insects |
| D．help their neighbors who are under attack |
| A．The world is changing faster than ever. |
| B．People have stronger senses than before. |
| C．We don't fully understand the world. |
| D．People in Darwin's time were more imaginative |
【推荐3】Using the power of artificial intelligence (AI), scientists have revealed new insights into the creation and destruction of mass extinction. Contrary to conventional knowledge, their study suggests that larger extinctions are not always a form of “creative destruction” that allows new organisms to radiate (向周围辐射出去) and evolve. Instead, it suggests that mass extinction is rarely associated with new species of radiation.
Dr. Hoyal Cuthill, the lead study author from the University of Essex in the UK and the Tokyo Institute of Technology, said in a statement, “Some of the most challenging things to understand the history of life are the vast timelines involved and the number of species. New machine learning applications can help us understand the information in human-readable form. This means that we can, so to speak, hold the evolution of half a billion years in the palm of our hand and gain new insights from what we see.”
They concluded that mass extinction and later radiation were not connected as previously thought. Within 5 percent of the most significant periods of disruption (中断), AI detected “big five mass extinctions, seven more mass extinctions, two mass extinction-radiation events and 15 mass radiations. Most importantly, it discovers that massive radiation and extinction rarely occurred with each other, changing the view that greater extinction leads to a kind of deep cycle-like species radiation of nature. It appears that larger extinctions are certainly not the engine of evolutionary radiation. Take the Cambrian Explosion for example and it was about 41 million years ago when a large group of animals first appeared on the first fossil record and the dawn of a high mobile animal equipped with modern physical features.
This new study found that a handful of other notable explosions of biodiversity, including the Cambrian Explosion, usually occurred at a time when they were largely isolated (孤立的) from extinction. Dr. Nicholas Guttenberg, a study co-author from the Tokyo Institute of Technology explained, “Ecosystems are dynamic and you don’t need anything to exist to allow something new to appear.”
1. What’s the function of the first paragraph?| A．To analyze the cause of creative destruction. |
| B．To tell us the result of the new study. |
| C．To explain the power of artificial intelligence |
| D．To present the conventional idea of mass extinction. |
| A．New AI machines learn applications better. |
| B．It’s difficult to understand the history of life. |
| C．New species appear before mass extinction. |
| D．AI contributes a lot to the study of evolution. |
| A．To provide knowledge of history. |
| B．To highlight the importance of AI. |
| C．To support the new study. |
| D．To prove the previous view is right. |
| A．A new understanding of mass extinction. |
| B．The processes of biological evolution. |
| C．Animal species with modern physical features |
| D．The relationship between mass extinction and radiation |
【推荐1】So far during her television career, Julia Louis-Dreyfus has been nominated (提名) for 26 Emmy Awards and has won 11. And at 62, her dance. card remains full. “I actually have to pinch (掐) myself because it’s incredible that so much is happening right now and that I’m able to do it,” said Louis-Dreyfus.
Leaning into life’s big lessons is what inspired Louis Dreyfu s to create Wiser Than Me, her recently launched hit podcast devoted to interviewing successful women over a certain age group about what they’ve learned in both their personal and professional lives. “I want to talk to older women and get their wisdom, get their sort of tips from the front-lines of life,” the star said to NPR’s Fresh Air. “I’m finding it very inspiring. I’m enjoying it.”
Apart from seriously employing it to her career, Louis-Dreyfus has packed plenty into her personal life that gives her tools to inspire and instruct, including the fact that she’s been happily married to a writer and actor Brad Hall since 1987. The couple has celebrated several happy milestones over the years, including raising sons Henry, 30, and Charlie, 26, who are both following their parents’ footsteps into the entertainment business.
In 2017, Louis-Dreyfus was diagnosed with breast cancer, one day after winning her sixth continuous Emmy for her role on Veep. “Not that it’s funny, but it is funny in terms of juxtaposition (并置). It’s kind of unbelievable.”
Sharing her life and continuing to tell stories that matter in both her on-screen and podcast work have become a priority for the comedy star, who refuses to fade into the background as she ages. “Older women are very much made invisible in our culture and that’s sad. I want to have my health, keep doing really cool jobs, and make new friends along the way.”
1. What can we infer from Louis’s words in paragraph 1?| A．She felt tired of the stressful life. |
| B．She was proud of her achievements. |
| C．She hardly believed she could make it. |
| D．She was so busy that she forgot herself. |
| A．Drawing. | B．Teaching. | C．Dropping. | D．Ignoring. |
| A．How her family support her career. |
| B．What a happy family she is blessed with. |
| C．What a balance she’s made between work and life. |
| D．How the acquired wisdom benefits her personal life. |
| A．Adventurous and respectful. |
| B．Open and supportive. |
| C．Devoted and positive. |
| D．Brave and creative. |
【推荐2】When Johannes Fritz, an Austrian biologist, was born 56 years ago, the northern bald ibis had disappeared completely from the wild and could only be found in zoos. But Mr. Fritz has spent his working life reintroducing the birds into the wild, and an extremely important part has been teaching the young the migration (迁徙) path.
When Mr. Friz decided to lead the migration in a plane, he was laughed at. But in 2004, three years after some experiments, Mr. Fritz flew an ultralight plane slowly enough for his winged students to catch up, and led the first group from Austria to Italy. He has since led 15 such migrations. Over that time, he has rewilded 277 young ibises, many of which then started to pass the path on to their own young.
But the path he taught the ibises before is no longer workable. With climate change warming the lakes where the birds summer, they now delay (推迟) their migration to November, one month later than they did just a decade ago. And they are now reaching the Alps too late to make it over the peaks (山峰) because the rising warm air flows were too weak by November to allow the birds to fly over the mountains.
Determined to save them, Mr. Fritz decided he would teach the birds a new, safer migration path. The new path is about three times as long as their former 800 miles one directly south to Tuscany, Italy. Flying at a highest speed of 25 miles per hour, the trip is expected to take about six weeks, instead of the two to reach Tuscany.
At Lake Constance this summer, humans and birds were practicing for their long journey. Soon, they’ll fly to Andalusia in Spain, dealing with unpredictable weather along the way. But the risks are “necessary,” Mr. Fritz said. “It’s not so much a job,” he added, “but my life’s purpose.”
1. What happened to the ibises when Mr. Fritz was born?| A．They had been trained to fly. | B．They had been rewilded in Italy. |
| C．They were migrating naturally. | D．They were no longer seen in the wild. |
| A．They have forgotten the old path. |
| B．The path they took before is longer. |
| C．The Alps is impassable for the delayed migration. |
| D．The changing climate has warmed the mountains. |
| A．It is higher than before. | B．It takes about two weeks. |
| C．It leads directly to Tuscany. | D．It is about 2,400 miles long. |
| A．Inspiring but inexperienced. | B．Responsible but emotional. |
| C．Determined and creative. | D．Observant and outgoing. |
【推荐3】On November 11, a woman from the United Kingdom set out to explore Antarctica, in an attempt to become the first female explorer to cross the continent alone and unsupported.
Preet Chandi aims to cover more than 1,100 miles in a journey that will likely take 70 to 75 days. Pulling all her supplies on a sled(雪橇) called a pulk, which weighed more than 250 pounds at the start of her journey, the 33-year-old will battle temperatures of minus 58 degrees Fahrenheit and wind speeds up to 60 miles per hour.
Chandi—also called“Polar Preet”—set a record last year as the first woman of color to complete an unsupported expedition(探险) to the South Pole. She finished the journey in 40 days—just two days longer than Joanna Davidson of Sweden, who holds the female world record.
“A lot of people tell me I don’t look like a polar explorer,”Chandi told BBC News’ Sandish Shoker last year before the trek. “It’s considered out of the norm for an Asian woman to do this—it’s different. And that’s part of the reason why I wanted to do this—for people who don’t fit a certain image.”
Chandi grew up in an Indian Sikh community in England and joined the Army Reserve at age 19. In 2012, she graduated from college, becoming the first in her family to earn a degree.
After running her first half-marathon at 20 years old, Chandi’s appetite for greater challenges started to grow. She has been on hiking and climbing trips across the world, including in Kenya, Morocco, Mexico, Peru, Iceland and Nepal. Earlier this year, she completed the Marathon des Sables, a week-long, 156-mile ultramarathon in the Sahara Desert.
She currently serves in the British Army, organizing training for injured soldiers.
“We are extremely proud to have such a remarkable ambassador, “the General Staff Sharon Nesmith says. ”Captain Chandi has the qualities we seek of all who serve—courage, commitment and the desire to be the best we can be. ”
1. What made Chandi decide on the trip to Antarctica?| A．Seeking financial support. | B．Sticking to a promise. |
| C．Setting an example for soldiers. | D．Trying challenging things. |
| A．Interview. | B．Adventure. | C．Graduation. | D．Ride. |
| A．Honest. | B．Knowledgeable. | C．Committed. | D．Talented. |
| A．Setting a world record. | B．Challenging oneself. |
| C．Travelling around the world. | D．Seeking a suitable ambassador. |
