【推荐1】Sharks are now at the edge of extinction. Numbers of oceanic sharks have declined by an alarming 71 percent over the past 50 years, according to research published in Nature on Jan 27. “Such steep declines are shocking even to experts, especially when compared to land animal statistics,” Sonja Fordham at Shark Advocates International, a US-based nonprofit, told New Scientist magazine. This alarming data may be an underestimate of reality due to unreported fish catches, Nathan Pacoureau, the study researcher, noted.

The study analyzed 31 species; 24 now risk extinction, and three shark species are now classified as critically endangered, including the oceanic white-tip shark (远洋白鳍鲨) and great hammerhead (锤头鲨). The study found the decline hit the largest species first before impacting smaller ones over time, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). It also revealed that shark finning and fishing worldwide have driven the decline. “The Indian Ocean is the worst. There is almost no (fisheries) management at all,” said Pacoureau.

“Overfishing of sharks and rays endangers the health of entire ocean ecosystems as well as food security for some countries,” said Nicholas Dulvy, a professor of Simon Fraser University in British Columbia, Canada. The researchers are calling on immediate action to secure a brighter future for these “extraordinary, irreplaceable animals”, according to the BBC.

Although the situation looks gloomy, the future of sharks is not doomed (劫数难逃的) yet. Twenty-five species have recovered, due to long-term conservation campaigns in the past decades. A couple of shark species, including the great white, have started to recover through science-based fishing limits, Fordham said. These examples “provide living proof that the world can set, and meet, ambitious biodiversity targets”, Jane Smart, global director of the International Union for Conservation of Nature, said in a statement.

1. What can we know from paragraph 1?

A．Sharks are raised for their meat.	B．Sharks are nearly going extinct.
C．Sharks were well protected 50 years ago.	D．Human activities will make them extinct quickly.

2. What causes sharks to become fewer mostly?

A．Climate change.

B．Water pollution.

C．Ocean accidents.

D．Fishing pressure.

3. What attitude does the author hold to the sharks’ future?

A．Optimistic.

B．Unconcerned.

C．Worried.

D．Pessimistic.

4. What can be a suitable title for the text?

A．Threat to the Survival of Sharks	B．Effect of Human Activities on Sharks
C．Research on Extinction of Sharks	D．Measures to Protect Sharks

【推荐3】Antecedent (先前的) carbon emissions are greenhouse gases released during the making of a product. Most manufacturers or customers pay little attention to them. In fact, operating emissions is important in a fossil-fuel-powered world.

An expert, Annika Ramskold, summarized the problem and said, “Going fossil free isn’t just about how things are powered. It’s about removing fossil fuels from how things are sourced, made, transported and assembled. While electric vehicles are a great start, we need to go further. Fossil fuel free vehicles mean greenwash (环保幌子) until the entire production part has been decarbonized (使环保).”

One manufacturer paying much attention is a Swedish electric motorcycle company. It plans to build the world’s cleanest motorcycle. But it may have trouble visualizing carbon dioxide. The company came up against the problem. It said, “As the Cleanest Dirt Bike Ever project involves global suppliers. it is difficult to get primary data, due to the complex global supply chain. It is also difficult to clean up that global supply chain. We investigated the possibility of treating each component separately. This needed to track the entire supply chain of each individual part. We eventually didn’t focus on the end product, but dealt with the materials used to make said parts.”

So instead, they are concentrating on the four main materials in the bikes—aluminum. steel, plastic and rubber. But some parts of the bike, including motor. battery, controller, brakes and suspension. are made by outside suppliers located globally. The company will have much trouble making much of a dent in that.

Ultimately, the answer is how much stuff goes into your vehicle. The motorcycle is said to have a twentieth of the antecedent carbon of an electric car. This is why the company’s work is so important. When people finally understand the effect of antecedent carbon emissions. they may realize that the most important choice they can make is not to drive a car as much as possible.

1. What does Annika Ramskold want to stress?

A．People should stop producing fossil fuel free vehicles.

B．Electric vehicles can solve environmental issues well.

C．It’s important to make production environmentally friendly.

D．Customers should pay little attention to operating emissions.

2. Which one can best describe the Swedish company’s project?

A．Fruitful.

B．Challenging.

C．Meaningless.

D．Conventional.

3. What does the author advise people to do?

A．Know the reasons for emissions.	B．Make some important choices.
C．Buy the company’s motorcycles.	D．Adopt greener means of travel.

4. What may be the best title for the text?

A．Sweden Is Trying to Go Green

B．Making Production Green Is Really Green

C．Global Companies Reject Carbon Emissions

D．Choosing Electric Vehicles to Reduce Emissions

【推荐1】One hot night last July, when our new baby wouldn’t or couldn’t sleep, I tried everything I could think of a warm bottle, songs gentle rocking. Nothing would settle him down. Guessing that I would have a long night ahead of me, I brought a portable (便携式)TV into his room, figuring that watching the late movie was as good a way as any to kill off the hours till dawn. To my surprise, as soon as the TV lit up, the baby quieted right now, his little eyes focused brightly on the tube. Not to waste an opportunity for sleep, I then walked out of the room, leaving him to watch the actors celebrate John Bellushi’s forty-fifth birthday.

My wife and I heard no more of the baby that night, and the next morning when I went into his room, I found him still watching TV himself. I found in my baby’s a metaphor(启示)for the new generation. My wife and I had given him some books to examine, but he merely spit upon them. When we read to him, he did not feel comfortable. And so it is in the schools. We find that our students don’t read, that they look down upon reading and scold those of us who teach it. All they want to do is watching TV.

After this experience with the baby, however, I have reached a conclusion: “Let them watch it!” If television is that much more attractive to children than books, why should we fight it? Let them watch all they want!

1. Father brought a TV set into his son’s room____.

A．to stop his son crying	B．to let him learn something
C．to make him frightened	D．to let his son spend a good night

2. To the couple’s surprise the boy ___after they brought a TV set into his room.

A．soon fell asleep	B．cried all that night
C．became quiet and silent	D．slept quite well that night

3. From the last paragraph we know that the writer thinks it____.

A．terrible for children to watch so many TV programs

B．useless for parents to blame their children

C．necessary for TV stations to improve their TV programs

D．favorable for children to watch the programs they like

【推荐2】

Franz Kafka wrote that “A book must be the ax (斧子) for the frozen sea inside us.” I once shared this sentence with a class of seventh graders, and it didn't seem to require any explanation.

We’d just finished John Steinbeck’s novel Of Mice and Men. When we read the end together out loud in class, my toughest boy, a star basketball player, wept a little, and so did I. “Are you crying?” one girl asked, as she got out of her chair to take a closer look. “I am,” I told her, “and the funny thing is I’ve read it many times.”

But they understood. When George shoots Lennie, the tragedy is that we realize it was always going to happen. In my 14 years of teaching in a New York City public middle school, I’ve taught kids with imprisoned parents, abusive parents, irresponsible parents; kids who are parents themselves; kids who are homeless; kids who grew up in violent neighborhoods. They understand, more than I ever will, the novel's terrible logic — the giving way of dreams to fate.

For the last seven years, I have worked as a reading enrichment teacher, reading classic works of literature with small groups of students from grades six to eight. I originally proposed this idea to my headmaster after learning that a former excellent student of mine had transferred out of a selective high school — one that often attracts the literary-minded children of Manhattan's upper classes — into a less competitive school. The daughter of immigrants, with a father in prison, she perhaps felt uncomfortable with her new classmates. I thought additional “cultural capital” could help students like her develop better in high school, where they would unavoidably meet, perhaps for the first time, students who came from homes lined with bookshelves, whose parents had earned Ph.D.’s.

Along with Of Mice and Men, my groups read: Sounder, The Red Pony, Lord of the Flies, Romeo and Juliet and Macbeth. The students didn’t always read from the expected point of view. About The Red Pony, one student said, “it's about being a man, it’s about manliness.”I had never before seen the parallels between Scarface and Macbeth, nor had I heard Lady Macbeth's speech read as raps, but both made sense; the interpretations were playful, but serious. Once introduced to Steinbeck's writing, one boy went on to read The Grapes of Wrath and told me repeatedly how amazing it was that “all these people hate each other, and they’re all white.” His historical view was broadening, his sense of his own country deepening. Year after year, former students visited and told me how prepared they had felt in their first year in college as a result of the classes.

Year after year, however, we are increasing the number of practice tests. We are trying to teach students to read increasingly complex texts, not for emotional punch but for text complexity. Yet, we cannot enrich the minds of our students by testing them on texts that ignore their hearts. We are teaching them that words do not amaze but confuse. We may succeed in raising test scores, but we will fail to teach them that reading can be transformative and that it belongs to them.

1. The underlined words in Paragraph 1 probably mean that a book helps to________.

A．realize our dreams

B．give support to our life

C．smooth away difficulties

D．awaken our emotions

2. Why were the students able to understand the novel Of Mice and Men?

A．Because they were bred in a violent society.

B．Because they had read the novel many times.

C．Because they got the explanation from the teacher..

D．Because they had similar life experiences.

3. The girl left the selective high school possibly because________.

A．she was a literary-minded girl

B．her parents were immigrants

C．she couldn't fit in with her class

D．her father was then in prison

4. The author writes the passage mainly to ________.

A．suggest reading classic works of literature creatively

B．advocate teaching literature to touch the heart

C．argue for equality among high school students

D．criticize the current education system bitterly

【推荐3】“There’s a mistake.   Moonlight you guys won best picture. ”

And with those words, producer Jordan Horowitz of La La Land,   told the cast and crew of a competing film that it had won the Oscars’ biggest award. Presenters Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway were given the wrong category’s envelope before they went on stage.

Beatty was clearly confused about what he saw when he opened the envelope, but Dunaway read the name of the film listed below Stone’s name. The actors and producers from La La Land left their seats and filled the stage to accept their Oscar statues. They gave many speeches before Horowitz interrupted. “This is not a joke. Moonlight has won best picture, ”he said. He took the card from Beatty and held it up for the cameras. “Moonlight. Best Picture, ”he said as the camera moved closer.

The show’s host, Jimmy Kimmel, made the best of the situation. He went up to Beatty, and exclaimed “Warren. What did you do? ” Kimmel also said, “Personally, I blame Steve Harvey. ”That was in reference to the mistake Harvey made in 2015 at the Miss Universe pageant. He announced the wrong winner, first saying it was the contestant from Colombia, and then realizing the correct winner was actually from the Philippines.

Once order had been restored, Beatty tried to explain what happened, saying he had been given the wrong envelope. Barry Jenkins is the writer and director of Moonlight.   Once he reached the stage, he said “Even in my dreams, this cannot be true. ” Stone, happy to have won the best actress award, later said,   “Is that the craziest Oscar moment of all time? Cool! ”

Many people are wondering how the mistake was made. The accounting firm Pricewaterhouse Coopers has been handling Oscar votes for over 80 years without any problems. The firm apologized to all of the people who were made uncomfortable by the mistake. It promised to investigate what caused the error.

Horowitz is being credited for staying calm and stopping the show to correct the error. People are calling him “gracious, ” “a great producer, ” and “classy. ”Even Jenkins said “much respect to that dude. ”

1. What can we know from the words of Horowitz?

A．La La Land won the best picture.

B．Beatty and Dunaway made a mistake.

C．The Oscars’ biggest award belongs to Moonlight.

D．Horowitz was given the wrong envelope.

2. How did Jimmy Kimmel deal with the situation?

A．He was confused and opened the envelope.

B．He saved the embarrassing occasion.

C．He made fun of the situation.

D．He pointed out Warren’s mistake.

3. It can be inferred from the text ________.

A．Beatty made the mistake

B．Barry Jenkins suspected the result

C．The fault is due to Pricewaterhouse Coopers

D．Horowitz is being respected for his reaction

4. The best title of the text should be “________”.

A．Who made the mistake?

B．The Oscars’ biggest award

C．A mix-up in the Academy Award

D．Pricewaterhouse takes the responsibility

【推荐2】Throughout history scientists have risked their health and their lives in their search for the truth.

Sir Isaac Newton, the seventeenth century scientist, was very smart, but that didn't stop him from doing   some pretty stupid things. In his laboratory in Cambridge he often did the strangest experiments. Once, while testing how light passes through lenses, he put a long needle into his eye, pushed it to the back, and then moved it around just to see what would happen. Luckily, nothing long-lasting did. On another occasion he stared at the sun for as long as he could bear, to discover what effect this would have on his sight. Again he escaped suffering permanent damage, though he had to spend some days in a darkened room before his eyes recovered.

In the 1750s the Swedish chemist Karl Scheele was the first person to find a way to produce phosphorus. He in fact discovered eight more chemical elements including chlorine , though he didn't get any praise for them. He was a very clever scientist, but his one failing was a curious habit of tasting a little of every substance he worked with. This risky practice finally caught up with him, and in 1786 he was found dead in his laboratory surrounded by a large number of dangerous chemicals, any of which might have been responsible for his death.

Eugene Shoemaker was a respected geologist. He spent a large part of his life studying craters on the moon, and how they were formed, and later did research into the comets of the planet Jupiter. In 1997 he and his wife were in the Australian desert where they went every year to search for places where comets might have hit the earth. While driving in the Tanami desert, normally one of the emptiest places in the world, another vehicle crashed into them and Shoemaker was killed on the spot. Some of his ashes were sent to the moon aboard the Lunar Prospector spacecraft and left there — he is the only person who has had this honor.

1. Which word is similar to the underlined word “permanent” in Paragraph 2?

A．Brief.

B．Lasting.

C．Slight.

D．Ordinary.

2. What do we know about Karl Scheele according to this text?

A．He was killed by tasting phosphorus.

B．He killed himself with some dangerous chemicals.

C．His habit of tasting chemicals might account for his death.

D．He got a large number of honors for discovering many chemical elements.

3. Which statement about Shoemaker is true?

A．He was knocked over and died in a desert.	B．All of his ashes were placed on the moon.
C．One comet of Jupiter was named after him.	D．A spacecraft carrying him traveled around Jupiter.

4. What does the text mainly talk about?

A．Three great scientists' famous experiments.	B．Three great scientists' great achievements.
C．Three great scientists' sacrifice for the truth.	D．Three great scientists' special honors.