【推荐1】While many countries love their tea, UK citizens are particularly proud of being “tea people”. The average UK citizen consumes nearly 2 kilograms of tea each year.

Tea only made its way to England in large quantities in the first years of the 17th century. Tea from China and a few other Asian countries was being sold more widely in England at that time. Then tea was getting more and more popular among different social classes.

There are many varieties of tea. Black tea mixtures are still the most common type drunk in the UK. Black tea is dark in colour, because the leaves have been allowed to oxidize (氧化) before drying. This is why we usually serve it with milk, although it is not uncommon to drink it black or with lemon. You may still find tea made with loose tea leaves, served up in a pot, and poured into the best china cups with saucers (茶托) for visitors.

Tea is still a large part of daily life in the UK today, but it seems to be on the decrease. The amount of tea sold in the UK fell by more than 10% in the five years leading up to 2012, and has been dropping ever since. Tea sales fell by 6% in 2018 alone, and most restaurants report selling more than twice as many cups of coffee as they do tea. More than ￡1 billion was spent on coffee in high street stores in 2017, more than twice what was spent on tea bags.

Still, what goes around comes around; it’s sure to become fashionable again.

1. Which of the following is true according to the first three paragraphs?

A．Tea made its way to England in the early years of the 16th century.

B．The UK usually serves black tea with lemon.

C．Tea from China was being sold more widely in England now.

D．UK citizens take pride in being “tea people”.

2. What can we infer from the fourth paragraph?

A．Tea sales fell by 6% in 2018 alone.

B．Since 2012, the sales of tea has been on the decrease

C．In 2017, the money spent on tea was ￡3 billion

D．Most restaurant like selling tea than coffee.

3. What does the underlined sentence mean in the last paragraph?

A．It can never succeed again	B．The tea can become popular again
C．Coffee is more popular than tea	D．The tea is becoming less popular

4. What is the author’s purpose in writing the text?

A．To introduce tea in the UK

B．To show the author’s preference for tea

C．To introduce the functions of tea

D．To compare tea in China and UK

【推荐2】七选五。根据短文内容，从短文后的选项中选出能填入空白处的最佳选项。选项中有两项为多余选项。

The First Americans

There was a time long ago when a land bridge connected Asia and North America. The first settlers in North America crossed this land bridge from what is now Siberia to Alaska. The people who made this initial crossing were probably following the animals they used for food. Finally, the oceans rose and the land bridge between the continents disappeared. The settlers, who I shall call the “First Americans”, could not return to their homeland.     1    For the next few thousand years, the First Americans moved south and east throughout North and South America. They made the journey all the way from Alaska to the southern tip of South America, a distance of more than 10,000 miles.     2    In the far north, above the Arctic Circle, the First Americans became hunters of the ocean.     3     In the summer, they gathered berries and other plants. In the winter, they stayed in lodges much of the time preparing for the next summer. It was a hard life, but they learned to survive in these terrible conditions. Farther south, in what is now Arizona, Utah, Colorado, and New Mexico, the First Americans became cliff dwellers. They began by living in caves that already existed in the cliffs.     4     The dwellings they built in many ways resembled today’s apartment buildings.    5     They built a system of dams and canals so they could store and use water almost any time of the year. They were so successful that they could raise fruits and vegetables that were not found naturally in the desert.

A．They also discovered foods like corn and potatoes.

B．Along the way, they established many different civilizations.

C．They discovered how to add to the caves by building structures of wood and stone.

D．People living near each other tended to share similar environments and customs.

E．They built boats of animal skins and hunted or fished for their food.

F．They would have to survive in the New World they had discovered.

G．The First Americans of the Southwest learned to water the desert.

【推荐3】Did you know that money is not worth the paper it is printed on? Money is really just a symbol.     1    

Long ago, people did not use money. They made or grew food, clothes, and other things they needed. Later, people started trading. They would trade what they made to someone else in order to get different foods and goods. To trade like this is to barter（物物交换）.

The barter system was a good system. Bakers could trade bread for wheat. Weavers could trade cloth for meat. Trading not just let people work at certain jobs.     2    

But one problem with bartering was that not everyone agreed on prices. People had to work out a price each time they wanted to trade. Another problem was that the goods might be too heavy to carry. What if the cow farmer wanted to trade a cow for a horse with the horse farmer? They would have to carry their animals with them.     3     What if the cow farmer wanted to trade a cow for a chicken? A cow is worth more than a chicken. The farmer should get “change.” But how can you make change from a cow?

    4     People used to use all kinds of small things for money. They used shells, beads, feathers, seeds, and even salt. A group of people would decide the worth of a kind of shell. Other kinds of shells would be worth more or less. Then people had money that was worth a certain amount. It was easy to carry. It was easy to make change.

With time going by, we finally have the money that we use today.     5    

A．This is where money comes in.

B．That means it stands for something else.

C．They made clothes from wool from their sheep.

D．Bartering did not have a way to make change, either.

E．It also gave people a way to buy things they needed.

F．With money, we don’t have to travel with chickens, cows, or clay pots!

G．When people traded, they no longer had to make everything they needed.

【推荐1】It used to be that a "green classroom" referred to the color of paint on the wall. But today's green classrooms are greener than that! New "green" classrooms help schools save money and provide clean environments where students learn better.

Many classrooms are going green by adding solar panels（太阳能电池板）to their roofs. The solar panels collect energy from the sun and use it to power lights and computers. The panels help make green classrooms grid-neutral, which means the panels create at least as much electricity as the classrooms use. In addition, new lighting and air systems can be programmed to lower energy costs and water use.

Many new "green" classrooms are built using recycled materials. Some even use pieces of material from blue jeans to insulate（使隔热）walls and roofs. The old-jean insulation cuts heat and air conditioning bills.

Green schools feature many other new ideas. Some classrooms are painted using special odor-free paints that help improve indoor air. Some use no glues that add chemical smells to the air. Others use triple-pane windows（三层玻璃）and skylights to help keep classrooms warm in cold weather and let in lots of natural daylight.

Experts say the benefits of building greener classrooms go beyond cost savings. Studies show that a healthful environment with good air quality can cut colds and flu by more than 50 percent. That means fewer sick days for students and teachers. Studies have shown that natural light and other green features improve student learning and test scores too.

1. What do we know about the present green classroom?

A．Its paint is green.	B．It has many plants.
C．Its furniture is green.	D．It is environmentally friendly.

2. Which of the following can cool classrooms according to the text?

A．Solar panels.	B．Triple-pane windows.
C．Material from jeans.	D．Lighting and air systems.

3. The underlined phrase "odor-free paints" in paragraph 4 means that the paints_________.

A．save money	B．have no smell
C．cost nothing	D．have no color

4. Building greener classrooms has all of the following benefits except_________.

A．bettering air quality	B．getting natural light
C．Curing flu and colds	D．improving test scores

5. What is the best title for the text?

A．Classrooms Are Growing Greener

B．Make Your Classroom Green Now

C．Greener Classrooms Benefit Students

D．Green Is the Best Choice for Classrooms

【推荐2】Throughout the history of the arts, the nature of creativity has remained constant to artists. No matter what objects they select, artists are to bring forth new forces and forms that cause change-to find poetry where no one has ever seen or experienced it before.

Landscape (风景) is another unchanging clement of art. It can be found from ancient times through the 17th century Dutch painters to the 19h-century romanticists and impressionists. In the 1970s Alfred Leslie, one of the new American realists, continued this practice. Leslie sought out the same place where Thomas Cole, a romanticist, had produced paintings of the same scene a century and a half before. Unlike Cole who insists on a feeling of loneliness and the idea of finding peace in nature, Leslie paints what he actually sees. In his paintings, there is no particular change motions and he includes ordinary things like the highway in the background. He also takes advantage of the latest developments of colour photography (摄影术) to help both the eyes and the memory when he improves his painting back in his workroom.

Besides, all art begs the age-old question: What is real? Each generation of artists has shown their understanding of reality in one form or another. The impressionists saw reality in brief emotional effects, the realists scenes, and the Cro-Magnon cave people in their naturalistic drawings of the animals in the ancient forests. To sum up, understanding reality is a necessary struggle for artists of all periods.

Over thousands of years, the function of the arts has remained relatively constant. Past or present, Eastern or Western. the arts are a basic part of our immediate experience. Variety and diversity are the faces of art, and together they express the basic need and hope of human beings.

1. The underlined word “poetry“ in Paragraph 1 most probably means ”__________.

A．an object for artistic creation	B．a collection of poems
C．an unusual quality	D．a natural scene

2. What is the author’s opinion of artistic reality?

A．I will not be found in future works of art.	B．It does not have a long-lasting standard.
C．It is expressed in a fixed artistic form.	D．It is lacking in modern works of art.

3. Which of the following is the main topic of the passage?

A．History of the arts.	B．Basic questions of the arts.
C．New developments in the arts.	D．Use of modern technology in the arts.

【推荐3】【课本原文】

ART & TECHNOLOGY

Think “art”. What comes to your mind? Is it Greek or Roman sculptures in the Louvre, or Chinese paintings in the Palace Museum? Or maybe, just maybe, it’s a dancing pattern of lights?

The artworks by American artist Janet Echelman look like colourful floating clouds when they are lit up at night. Visitors to one of her artworks in Vancouver could not only enjoy looking at it, they could also interact with it—literally. They did this by using their phones to change its colours and patterns. Exhibits such as these are certainly new and exciting, but are they really art?

Whatever your opinion, people have been expressing their thoughs and ideas through art for thousands of years. To do this，they have used a variety of tools and technologies. Yet Michelangelo and others have been labelled as “artists” rather than “technicians”. This means that art and technology have always been seen as two very separate things.

Today, however, technological advances have led to a combination of art and technology. As a result, the art world is changing greatly. Now art is more accessible to us than ever before. Take for example one of China’s most famous paintings from the Song Dynasty, Along the River During the Qingming Festival. As this artwork is rarely on display, people have sometimes queued up to six hours for a chance to see it. Once in front of the painting, they only have limited time to spend taking in its five metres of scenes along the Bian River in Bianjing. Thanks to technology however, millions more people have been able to experience a digital version of this painting. Three­dimensional(3D) animation means that viewers can see the characters move around and interact with their surroundings. They can also watch as the different scenes change from daylight into nighttime.

The art-tech combination is also changing our concepts of “art” and the “artist”. Not only can we interact with art, but also take part in its creation. With new technological tools at our fingertips, more and more people are exploring their creative sides. The result has been exciting new art forms, such as digital paintings and videos.

However, the increase in the amount and variety of art produced has also raised questions^⑰ over its overall quality.Can a video of someone slicing a tomato played in slow motion really be called “art”?

Similarly, such developments are making the line between art and technology less distinct. Can someone unfamiliar with traditional artists’ tools really call themselves an “artist”? And is the artist the creator of the art itself, or the maker of the technology behind it? A recent project used technology and data in the same way that Rembrandt used his paints and brushes. The end result, printed in 3D, was a new “Rembrandt painting” created 347 years after the artist’s death. These advances are perhaps bringing us closer to a time when computers rather than humans create art.

Where technology will take art next is anyone’s guess. But one thing is for sure—with so many artists exploring new possibilities, we can definitely expect the unexpected.

1. What’s the function of the first paragraph?

A．To explain the art.

B．To introduce the topic.

C．To give the background.

D．To give a definition.

2. Why is “Michelangelo” referred to in the third paragraph?

A．To show he is a famous artist.

B．To show he is an artist rather than a technician.

C．To show art is different from technology.

D．To show people express their thoughts through art and technology.

3. Which of the following is NOT true according to the text?

A．We have more access to art than ever before.

B．People can take part in art creation by some tools.

C．Anyone can become an artist at present time.

D．We can’t expect where the art­-tech combination will go.

4. What’s mainly talked about in the passage?

A．The history of technology and art.

B．The relation of technology and art.

C．The future of technology and art.

D．The examples of technology and art.