【推荐1】The world celebrates Earth Day every year on April 22. But one school in Potomac, Maryland tries to honor Earth Day every day. Very young children are learning about the environment and taking action to show their love for the Earth.

A child’s world is the world of playing. They love being outside in the open air, playing hide-and-seek, sliding and swinging on playground equipment. But children at St. James Children’s school also add to that fun by picking up rubbish in the school yard. Inside, they learn to save water and electricity. They also recycle and reuse the waste. And every spring they get the soil ready to plant flowers and vegetables in the school garden.

The children at St. James range from six weeks to six years old. The environmental study begins at age two. Rebecca Boker teaches the children the importance of inking care of the Earth. Boker says every day at St, James is Earth Day. She mentioned some books, which contain Materials that ask children to do something to help the environment and protect the Earth.

In St. James, children observe (观察) the growth of plants from seeds to sprouts in cups kept in the classroom. Then they watch the plants continue to grow after placing then in the garden. The students also observe the life cycle of insect. After that, they know it is their job to respect the Earth just like they want others to respect their home.

But do these young children really get the message that their teachers try to communicate? Ms. Boker says yes. A few days later, the kids at St. James will go out to the school garden for the yearly clean-up. But for them, Earth Day will continue for the School days ahead as well.

1. The children at St. James Children’s School ______.

A．learn to save water and electricity at home

B．often go out to pick up rubbish in the street

C．are not allowed to use playground equipment

D．can help prepare the soil to plant flowers and vegetables

2. By observing the growth of plants and insects, the school mainly wants to ______.

A．teach the children the importance of respecting the Earth

B．enrich the children’s knowledge of agriculture

C．help the children write better reports

D．let the children enjoy the growth of life

3. What’s Ms. Boker’s attitude towards the way of teaching children at St. James?

A．Unconcerned.	B．Anxious.
C．Unsatisfied.	D．Positive.

4. Which would be the best title for the passage?

A．The celebration of Earth Day in schools

B．The protection of the environment

C．Earth Day at St. James Children’s School

D．Children’s love and respect for life

【推荐2】New bio-plastics are being made in laboratories from straw, wood chips and food waste, with researchers aiming to replace oil as the source of the world’s plastic.

The new approaches include genetically modifying bacteria to eat wood and produce useful chemicals. But the bio-plastics are currently significantly more expensive to make than fossil fuel-based plastics.

Land and seas around the world, from high mountains to deep oceans, have become polluted with plastic, prompting major public concern. The world has produced 8bn tons of plastic since the 1950s and demand is still rising.

While some waste plastic is recycled, much of it is burnt to produce electricity, resulting in carbon emissions that drive climate change. In contrast to plastic made from oil, plastics made from plant-based materials only release the carbon the plants absorbed from the air as they grew. Bio-plastics will also give more options for products that biodegrade (生物降解) in the environment, although they can be made very long-lasting if required.

“Plastics are an incredible enhancement to our daily lives,” said Paul Mines, CEO of Biome Technologies in the UK, which has spent t5m in the last five years on bio-plastics research. “But we can’t go on using fossil fuel-based materials. About 6-7% of every barrel (桶) of oil is used to make plastics.”

“Using plant materials is feasible,” said professor Simon, at the University of York. “Replacing half of the nation’s plastic bottles could be done using just 3% of the sugar beet crop, 5% of wheat straw or 2.5% of food waste,” he said.

Currently, just a few thousand tons of bio-plastic are used in the UK each year, compared to millions of tons of conventional plastic. Mines said this could rise to about 20,000 tons in the next five years.

1. Why are high mountains and deep oceans mentioned in Paragraph 3?

A．To display the range of plastic pollution.	B．To show the widespread use of plastic.
C．To present a reason of wide use of plastic.	D．To stress the increasing demand for plastic.

2. What is one advantage of bio-plastics over fossil fuel-based plastics?

A．Producing electricity.	B．Being eco-friendly.
C．Driving climate change.	D．Biodegrading other plastic.

3. What does the underlined word “feasible” mean in Paragraph 6?

A．Possible.

B．Troublesome.

C．Original.

D．Costly.

4. What is the main idea of the passage?

A．Plastics arc necessary in daily life.	B．Oil is the source of the world’s plastic.
C．Bioplastic making is a promising industry.	D．Scientists are researching bioplastic making.

【推荐1】B
Graph can be a very useful tool for conveying information especially numbers， percentages, and other data . A graph gives the reader a picture to interpret. That can be a lot more pages and pages and pages explaining the data .
Graphs can seem frightening, but reading a graph is a lot like reading a story. The graph has a title ,a main idea ,and supporting details .You can use your active reading skills to analyze and understand graphs just like any other text .
Most graphs have a few basic parts: a caption or introduction paragraph, a title , a legend or key, and labeled axes. An active reader looks at each part of the graph before trying to interpret the data. Captions will usually tell you where the data came from (for example, a scientific study of 400 African elephants from 1980 to 2005). Captions usually summarize the author's main point as well. The title is very important. It tells you the main idea of the graph by stating what kind of information is being shown. A legend, also called a key ,is a guide to the symbols and colors used in the graph. Many graphs, including bar graphs and line graphs, have two axes that form a corner, Usually these axes are the left side and the bottom of the graph .Each axis will always have a label. The label tells you what each axis measures.
Bar Graphs

A bar graph has two axes and uses bars to show amounts. In Graph 1 ,we see that the x-axis shows grades that students earned, and the y-axis shows bow many students earned each grade .You can see that 6 students earned an A because the bar for A stretches up to 6 on the vertical measurement. There is a lot of information we can get from a simple graph like this(See Graph 1).
Line Graphs

A line graph looks similar to a bar graph ,but instead of Bars, it plots points and connects them with a line .It has the same parts as a bar graph – two labeled axes –and can be read the same way .To read a line graph, it’s important to focus on the points of intersection rather than the line segments between the points, This type of graph is most commonly used to show how something changes over time.
Here is a graph that charts how far a bird flies during the first Five days of its spring migration (See Graph 2).
The unit of measurement for the x-axis is days. The unit of measurement for the y-axis is kilometers. Thus we can see that ,on the first day, the pipit flew 20 kilometers. The line segment goes up between Day 1 and Day 2,which means that the bird flew farther on Day 2.If the line segment angled dawn, as between Day 4 and Day 5,it would mean that the bird flew fewer   kilometers than the day before. This line graph is a quick, visual way to tell the reader about the bird’s migration.
Pie Graphs

A typical pie graph looks like a circular pie. The circle is divided into sections, and each section represents a fraction of the data. The graph is commonly used to show percentages; the whole pie represents l00 percent, so each piece is a fraction of the whole.
A pie graph might include a legend，or it might use icons or labels within each slice. This pie graph shows on month’s expense, (See Graph 3 ).
Food $ 25
Movies $ 12
Clothing $ 36
Savings $ 20
Books $ 7
1. When used in a graph，a legend is_____

A．a guide to the symbols and colors

B．an introduction paragraph

C．the main idea

D．the data

2. What is the total number of students who earned a C or better ?

A．4.

B．6.

C．10.

D．20 .

3. The bird covered the longest distance on _____

A．Day 1

B．Day 2

C．Day 3

D．Day 4

4. Which of the following cost Amy most ?

A．Food.

B．Books

C．Movies

D．Clothing.

【推荐3】Directions: Read the following passage. Fill in each blank with a proper sentence given in the box. Each sentence can be used only once. Note that there are two more sentences than you need.

A Different Type of Phone Book

Although books are still popular with teenagers, most of them spend more of their leisure time staring at their phone than reading a paperback. And the more versatile phones become, the more reasons young people have for looking at them.     1     Instead of publishing whole book at once, they produce very short chapters, which they send once a week to their readers by text message. Some even claim that this style of writing represents a new literary genre: the ‘cell phone novel’.

Although the idea originated in Japan, cell phone novels have also sprung up in the rest of East Asia, Europe and Africa. Many are written by high school or university students who are very familiar with the topics that teenagers are interested in. Common themes are love, tragedy and betrayal, and the stories often deal with difficult or controversial issues. Twenty-one-year-old Rin said that she started her novel If You during her final year at high school and explained that was the tragic love story of two childhood friends.

Rin wrote her novel over a six-month period in spare moments, often while commuting on the train.     2    Readers then voted her novel the best that year and she was offered book contract. Her book sold 40,000 copies and was number five in the Japanese bestseller list. Rin said that her mother had had no idea that she had been writing a novel and was therefore very surprised when she saw a book with her daughter’s name on it.

The style of cell phone novels has evolved to suit the medium. Chapters have no more than 200 words, and often just 50-100 words.     3     The text mostly consists of dialogue and the language is direct, conveying a lot in a few words. Many cell phone novelists had never written fiction before and many of their readers have never read normal novel. Other rules have evolved; for example, authors only have one name and that is a pseudonym or pen name.

In 2009, a young Japanese writer called Takatsu, who lives in Canada, began writing the first English language cell phone novel, Secondhand Memories. Each instalment appeared on textnovel.com, a website dedicated to cell phone stories. Takatsu had read an English translation of Rin’s story If You and had been impressed by its simple and emotional language. It was a feature he deliberately copied when he started writing Secondhand Memories.     4     He now believes that, in English, cell phone novels have a powerful and poetic identity of their own. Takatsu sees himself, and the other writers who contribute to textnovel.com, as part of a literary movement which blends drama, technology, pop culture and social media. Cell phone novels encourage young people to engage in fiction, even those who would not normally pick up a book. They could be described as teen novels for the 21st century.

A．Books are sometimes regarded as old-fashioned and difficult to read.

B．In response to this trend, some smart young authors have changed the way they write.

C．However, as the story progressed, the style gradually evolved into something different.

D．She typed out installments on her phone and uploaded them onto a popular website for cell phone authors.

E．No money is made from cell phone novels unless they are published as books.

F．Sentences are short and there are no descriptions of anything or anybody because there isn’t space.