【推荐1】Gardening is popular in many parts of the world. This outdoor activity gives us beautiful plants, pleasant smelling flowers and fresh fruits and vegetables. But it also does a lot of good to our health.

Gardening connects people. When you are gardening, you are outdoors. So it is a perfect chance to meet and spend time with your neighbors. Most people love to talk about their hobbies, and gardeners are no different. They usually enjoy showing people what they are growing. And most enjoy sharing advice and stories about their gardens almost as much as sharing flowers and vegetables from their gardens.

Gardening is a great activity for children. It gets them outdoors and off computers, televisions and cell phones. Gardening is also a great teacher. It can teach a child about where food comes from and healthy eating. It also helps them to understand that the natural resources (资源) are not endless and the importance of using them carefully.

Then, when you garden, you must move around. All the different movements needed for gardening, like bending and lifting, work small muscles (肌肉) in the body. And you can easily get good exercise when you are digging holes or pulling grasses.

In a study, researchers looked at more than 2, 800 people over the age of 60. They studied their lifestyle habits, activities and health over a 16-year period. They found that gardening could lower the risk of future dementia (痴呆) by 36％. Gardening requires people do many repeated actions, such as picking off dying flowers. These actions have a calming influence on the brain. The brain is still active but not in the same way when we use computers. You’ll feel wonderful when what you grow in a garden looks, smells, feels and tastes good.

1. What do gardeners often like to talk about among neighbors?

A．How they kill time.	B．What habits they have.
C．What they grow in the garden.	D．Who they meet outdoors.

2. Why does the writer think it so good for children to do gardening?

A．Children will get much healthy food from gardening.

B．Children can use natural resources freely when gardening.

C．Children can do gardening with their computers or telephones.

D．Children may like going outdoors and get much knowledge from gardening.

3. What great effect does gardening have on the old?

A．It brings them a tiring life.

B．It makes them live longer and longer.

C．It helps the old enjoy more activities.

D．It can make their brain active in a different way.

4. What’s the purpose of the writer?

A．To show us how to garden.

B．To encourage people to garden.

C．To show the popularity of gardening.

D．To advise people to do outdoor activities.

【推荐3】B
A long-term American study shows the importance of early education for poor children. The study is known as the Abecedarian Project. It involved more than one-hundred young children from poor families in North Carolina.
Half of the children attended an all-day program at a high-quality child-care center. The center offered educational, health and social programs. Children took part in games and activities to increase their thinking and language skills and social and emotional development. The program also included health foods for the children.
The children attended the program from when they were a few weeks old until the age of five years. The other group of children did not attend the child-care center. After the age of five, both groups attended public school.
Researchers compared the two groups of children. When they were babies, both groups had similar results in tests for mental and physical skills. However, from the age of eighteen months, the children in the educational child-care program did much better in tests.
The researchers tested the children again when they were twelve and fifteen years old. The tests found that the children who had been in the child-care center continued to have higher average test results. These children did much better on tests of reading and mathematics.
A few years ago, organizers of the Abecedarian Project tested the students again. At the time, each student was twenty-one years old. They were tested for thinking and educational ability, employment, parenting and social skills. The researchers found that the young adults who had the early education still did better in reading and mathematics tests. They were more than two times as likely to be attending college or to have completed college. In addition, the children who received early education were older on average, when their first child was born.
The study offers more evidence that learning during the first months and years of life is important for all later development.
The researchers of the Abecedarian Project believe their study shows a need for lawmakers to spend money on public early education. They believe these kinds of programs could reduce the number of children who do not complete school and are unemployed.
1. The Abecedarian Project has lasted _______.

A．almost one year	B．about five years
C．more than 20 years	D．no more than 15 years

2. Those who had been in the child-care center _______ compared with those who hadn't.

A．have their children at later ages

B．get more help from other people

C．have no parenting or social skills

D．are poorer at reading and mathematics

3. What don't we know about the Abecedarian Project after reading the text?

A．What the children learned at the child-care center.

B．How important early education is for poor children.

C．How many children are involved in the Abecedarian Project.

D．Whether lawmakers will spend money on public early education.

4. The study of the Abecedarian Project shows that early education _______.

A．costs a lot of money

B．leads to a lower birthrate

C．can improve the life of poor children

D．is not important for later development

【推荐2】For years experts have argued that poor households are consuming less nourishing food than the rest of the population.
But a survey of some of the lowest earners in Britain shows the nutritional value of what they eat is little different to everyone else.
In fact, the same deficiencies in diet were shared by all the population and the findings suggest that poor eating choices are far more widespread than previously suspected - affecting many wealthier families.
These included low fruit and vegetable consumption, not eating enough oily fish and eating too much saturated fat and sugar.
“This is a large and significant study and it shows we are all eating just as bad a diet as each other,” said Tim Lang, professor of food policy at City University.
The poorest families were eating only slightly more sugar and slightly less fruit and vegetables, according to the study of 3,728 respondents in the bottom of the population.
Alison Tedstone, head of nutritional science at the Food Standard Agency, said: “Overall, people on low incomes have less than ideal diets, but their diets are only slightly worse than those of the rest of the population.”
The study also showed that low earners are choosing to eat unhealthily. Their food choices were not linked to their income, their access to shops or their cooking skills.
The findings appear to contradict assumptions that the poor cannot afford healthier foods or are too far away from shops that sell them.
The Low Income Nutrition and Diet Survey showed that like the rest of the population, the poor's daily fruit and vegetable intake on average is below the recommended five portions. Fewer than 10 per cent of respondents hit this target, while around 20 per cent ate less than a portion per day.
More than three quarters (76 per cent) of men and 81 per cent of women did less than one 30-minute session of moderate or vigorous exercise per week.
Some 45 per cent of men and 40 per cent of women were smokers.
This compares with 28 per cent of men and 24 per cent of women in the general population.
1. According to the passage, which of the following is true?

A．Whether the poor or the rich maybe have a bad diet.

B．Even the poor can enjoy enough fruit and fish consumption.

C．Only the poor have a bad diet.

D．The study was conveyed in both the rich and the poor.

2. What kind of persons maybe eat most sugar?

A．The rich.

B．Men.

C．The poorest.

D．Women

3. From the passage, we can learn __________.

A．the poor choose unhealthy food because of low income

B．having no access to shops also leads to the poor’s bad diet

C．the poor’s daily fruit intake is as much as general people

D．the number of smokers in the poor is bigger than that in general people

4. What’s the best title of the passage?

A．The poor’s healthy problem.	B．Keep off junk food.
C．How to have a good diet.	D．A diet survey.

【推荐3】Our planet is home to about seven billion people. Since the 1990s, population experts have predicted the number would grow to nine billion before it begins to slow down and possibly decrease.

But a new report predicts the world’s population is likely to increase to almost 11 billion by 2100. Based on the most modern statistical tools, the new report makes use of government records and considers expert predictions, including death rates, birthrates and international migration, or people moving across borders. The report says during the rest of this century, Africa’s population will grow from about 3.5 billion to 5.1 billion over the next 85 years.

John is director of the United Nations Population Division. He says that in the past, researchers thought population growth in Africa would be similar to that of other areas. They expected slower growth rates as birth control use became more widespread. But he says those ideas were wrong.

“The level of contraception use has continued to increase but slowly — more slowly than expected, and birthrate therefore has been falling less rapidly than expected, and the population therefore continues to grow somewhat more rapidly than we expected.

The new findings are based on a joint research project of the United Nations and the University of Washington,

The researchers believe the population of Asia will reach five billion by 2050. That is up from the current 4.4 billion. And then begin decline. The researchers also believe that North America, Europe, Latin America and the Caribbean area will have a total population of below one billion.

John says the pressure of feeding the rising population is likely to be less than that might be expected.

“The relatively good news is that the world has been winning the race between population growth and food production. If you look back historically over the last 50 years, certainly for the world as a whole and for many, most individual countries and regions, the increase in food production has outpaced the increase of population.”

1. Which area will experience the largest increase in population at the end of the century？

A．Asia.	B．Africa.
C．Europe.	D．North America.

2. “Contraception use” in the fourth paragraph refers to ________.

A．a method of expert predictions

B．a way of avoiding growth in population

C．a joint research into the rising population

D．a potential technology for food production

3. Why is the pressure of feeding the rising population less than expected according to John?

A．Expert predictions are not exactly like what the facts happen.

B．Birthrates have always been falling less rapidly than we expected.

C．The population grows less rapidly than population experts expected.

D．The increase in food production has outpaced the increase of population,

4. What can be inferred from the passage?

A．The world’s population will increase constantly.

B．The population of Asia will rise by 5 billion by 2050.

C．John is optimistic about feeding the rising population,

D．Population growth in Africa was much slower than expected.