【推荐1】One evening, author Neil’s son was angry. Neil had said one of those things that parents say, like “isn’t it time you were in bed.” His son looked up at him, angry and said, “I wish I didn’t have a dad! I wish I had … a goldfish!” That conversation gave birth to Neil’s book, “The Day I Swapped My Dad for Two Goldfish”. The book is a funny adventure of a son searching for the dad he swapped.

Whether they realize it or not, fathers play an important role in their children’s development. Roland Warren, Director of the National Fatherhood Initiative, says that, “The shape of their dads has a role in the kids’ soul.” I agree. We live in the best of times and the worst of times for fatherhood. We live in the best of times because fathers who are engaged in their child’s life spend more time than fathers of any previous generation. We live in the worst of times because there are still millions of children who continue to miss the regular presence of Dad.

What difference does a dad make? Are they really that important? For the most part, studies have proved clearly that fathers, whether they live with their children or not, matter in the lives of their children. When fathers are present, they provide economic support for their children and caregiving responsibilities. Well-fathered children are shown to be more emotionally intelligent and socially successful as adults. When fathers are absent, their absence may negatively influence children’s academic achievement, general behavioural adjustment and anger management, especially in males.

Yet just being physically present isn’t enough to be a great father. It is important that a dad be warm and emotionally available to his child. Author and researcher, John Gottman, describes this kind of father as an “emotion coaching father”. Emotion coaches are parents who listen to their children’s feelings, see the sharing of feelings as an opportunity for intimacy（亲密）. It is not just the mere presence of fathers that matters, but how they are present. Most children long for and need a loving, devoted and responsible father.

1. The author introduces his topic by ______.

A．presenting the results of studies	B．telling a story
C．making a comparison	D．interviewing some experts

2. What does the author mean in Paragraph 2 by saying “We live in the worst of times … ”?

A．Today’s fathers don’t care about their children’s emotions.

B．Lots of children’s fathers have to work every day.

C．Lots of children’s fathers are absent from their lives.

D．Today’s fathers don’t have care giving responsibilities.

3. According to the text, a well-fathered child is more likely to _______.

A．lose control of anger	B．obtain high academic achievement
C．have low emotional intelligence	D．have good social skills

4. We can learn from the text that an “emotion coaching father” is a father who ______.

A．gives economic support to his child	B．shares his child’s emotions
C．tries to change his child’s emotions	D．is always available to his child

【推荐2】When Dekalb Walcott III was just 8 years old, his father, a Chicago fire chief, let him tag along on a call. Dekalb says a lot of kids idolized basketball player Michael Jordan when he was growing up in Chicago in the 1990s. Not him.

“I wanted to be like Dekalb Walcott Jr.,” he says of his father.

So when his dad asked if he wanted to go on that call with him when he was 8, Dekalb was excited. I’m jumping up and down，saying, “Mom, can I go? Can I go?”

The experience changed Dekalb’s life, he tells his dad on a visit to StoryCorps.“My eyes got big from the moment the alarm went off.” the younger Dekalb says. “This is the life that I want to live someday.”

Now 27, the younger Dekalb is living that life. He became a firefighter at 21 and went to work alongside his dad at the Chicago Fire Department. Before his father retired, the pair even went out on a call together-father supervising (监督) son.

“You know, it’s everything for me to watch you grow,”his father says. But he also recalls worrying about one particular fire that his son faced.

“I received a phone call that night.” And they said, “Well, your son was at this fire.” I said, “OK, which way is this conversation going to go?” Dekalb Walcott Jr. recalls.

And they said, “But he’s OK. And he put it out all by himself. Everybody here was proud of him.”

And the word went around, “Who was out there managing that fire? Oh, that’s Walcott! That’s Walcott up there! So, you know. moments like that, it’s heaven on Earth for a dad.”

Dekalb Walcott Jr. retired in 2009. The younger Dekalb says he’s proud of being a second-generation firefighter. “You know, it makes me look forward to fatherhood as well, because I’m definitely looking forward to passing that torch down to my son.”

1. The underlined phrase tag along in Paragraph 1 is closest in meaning to ______．

A．put out fire

B．watch basketball

C．follow his father

D．ask his mother’s permission

2. Dekalb Walcott III determined to become a firefighter at the age of _________

A．8

B．21

C．27

D．35

3. What did Dekalb Walcott Jr want to do before he was told that the fire was put out?

A．Go on with the conversation

B．Put it out all by himself

C．Supervise his son

D．Go to the fire scene

4. What can we learn from the last paragraph?

A．Dekalb Walcott Jr is proud to be a second-generation firefighter.

B．Dekalb Walcott III wants his son to become a firefighter too.

C．Dekalb Walcott Jr wants to pass the torch to Dekalb Walcott III.

D．Dekalb Walcott III is proud that his son has become an excellent firefighter.

5. Which of the following is the best title of the passage?

A．Passing The Torch: A Firefighter Dad’s Legacy

B．Putting Out Fire: A Challenging Job for Father and son

C．Dekalb Walcott III: A Second-generation Firefighter

D．Dekalb Walcott Jr. : A Chicago Fire Chief

【推荐3】I’ve loved my mother’s desk since I was just tall enough to see above the top of it as mother sat doing letters. Standing by her chair, looking at the ink bottle, pens, and white paper, I decided that the act of writing must be the most wonderful thing in the world.

Years later，during her final illness, mother kept different things for my sister and brother. “But the desk”, she said, “is for Elizabeth”.

I never saw her angry, never saw her cry. I knew she loved me, she showed it in action. But as a young girl, I wanted heart-to-heart talks between mother and daughter. However, they never happened. And a gulf opened between us. I was “too emotional”. But she lived “on the surface”.

As years passed, I had my own family. I loved my mother and thanked her for our happy family. I wrote to her in careful words and asked her to let me know in any way she chose that she did forgive me.   I posted the letter and waited for her answer. But none came.

My hope turned to disappointment, finally, peace. It seemed that nothing happened. I couldn’t be sure that the letter had even got to mother. I only knew that I had written it, and I stopped trying to make her into someone she was not.

Now the present of her desk told me, as she’d never been able to, that she was pleased with that writing which was my chosen work. I cleaned the desk carefully and found some papers inside----a photo of my father and a one-page letter folded and refolded many times.

1. The writer began to love her mother’s desk_______.

A．after Mother died

B．before she became a writer

C．when she was a child

D．when mother gave it to her

2. The passage shows that_______.

A．mother wrote her daughter in careful words

B．mother cared much about her daughter in words

C．mother was too serious about everything her daughter had done

D．mother was cold on the surface but kind in her heart to her daughter

3. The word “gulf” in the passage means________.

A．part of the sea going far in land

B．free talks between mother and daughter

C．different ideas between mother and daughter

D．deep understanding between the old and the young

4. What did mother do with her daughter’s letter asking for forgiveness?

A．She had never received the letter.

B．She read the letter again and again till she died.

C．For years, she often talked about the letter.

D．She didn’t forgive her daughter at all in her life.

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

A．My letter to Mother

B．Mother and Me

C．My Mother’s Desk

D．Talks between Mother and Me

【推荐1】Summer's here and it won't be long before school -aged kids across America start complaining that they're tired of riding their bikes, playing at the park, swimming in the pool ..... and all the other awesome activities their parents hoped would keep them entertained for the next 10 weeks.

Such rapid—onset boredom could indicate that the kids have amazing powers of recall. Because a new study shows that the better your short—term memory is, the faster you feel sated and decide you've had enough. The findings appear in the Journal of Consumer Research. “Though satiation can be physical, like when you feel full after eating too much, we were interested in the psychological side of satiation. Like when you're just tired of something.” Noelle Nelson, assistant professor of marketing and consumer behavior at the University of Kansas School of Business. She and her colleague Joseph Redden at the University of Minnesota tried to think outside the lunch box. “Something that was interesting to me is that some people get tired of same things at very different rates. So if you think about pop songs on the radio, some people must still be enjoying them and requesting them even after hearing them a lot. But a lot of other people are really sick of those same songs.” The difference might have to do with memories of past consumption. For example, studies show that people push away from the dinner table sooner when they're asked to describe in detail what they ate earlier for lunch.

The findings suggest that marketers could use our desire for their products by figuring out ways to distract(使分心)us and keep us from fully remembering our experiences. We could also trick ourselves into eating less junk food by immersing(使浸没)ourselves in the memory of a previous snack. As for kids easily bored, just tell them to be fogged(模糊的)about it—it might help them have more fun.

1. Who may have a better short-term memory in the text?

A．Singers singing the same songs.

B．Customers who like to eat junk food.

C．Riders who are physically energetic.

D．Swimmers giving up swimming after a while.

2. What does the underlined word “sated” mean?

A．Full.	B．Energetic
C．Hungry.	D．Excited.

3. What should we do in our daily life according to the findings?

A．Talk less about previous snacks for eating less junk food.

B．Ask kids to eat more by sharing their feelings about food.

C．Recall activities details to improve kids' memorizing ability.

D．Keep consumers from remembering experiences to promote goods.

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

A．Bored Kids With Good Recalls

B．How to Invent Interesting Activities

C．Boring Activities Do Harm To Kids' Memory

D．Physical Satiation Affects Psychological Feeling

【推荐2】Being sociable looks like a good way to add years to your life. Relationships with family, friends, neighbours, even pets, will all do the trick, but the biggest longevity(长寿) boost seems to come from marriage or an equivalent relationship. The effect was first noted in 1858 by William Farr, who wrote that widows and widowers(鳏夫) were at a much higher risk of dying than their married peers. Studies since then suggest that marriage could add as much as seven years to a man’s life and two to a woman’s. The effect holds for all causes of death, whether illness, accident or self-harm.

Even if the odds are stacked against you (the conditions are not favourable), marriage can more than compensate. Linda Waite of the University of Chicago has found that a married older man with heart disease can expect to live nearly four years longer than an unmarried man with a healthy heart. Likewise, a married man who smokes more than a pack a day is likely to live as long as a divorced man who doesn’t smoke. There’s a flip side, however, as partners are more likely to become ill or die in the couple of years following their spouse’s death, and caring for a spouse with mental disorder can leave you with some of the same severe problems. Even so, the odds favour marriage. In a 30-year study of more than 10,000 people, Nicholas Christakis of Harvard Medical School describes how all kinds of social networks have similar effects.

So how does it work? The effects are complex, affected by socio-economic factors, health-service provision, emotional support and other more physiological mechanisms(机制). For example, social contact can boost development of the brain and immune system, leading to better health and less chance of depression later in life. People in supportive relationships may handle stress better. Then there are the psychological benefits of a supportive partner.

A life partner, children and good friends are all recommended if you aim to live to 100.The best social network is still being mapped out, but Christakis says: “People are interconnected, so their health is interconnected.”

1. Which one of the following is TRUE according to the passage?

A．The married men live seven years longer than the unmarried.

B．Marriage can help make up for ill health,

C．The unmarried are more likely to have heart disease than the married old men.

D．Unmarried people are likely to suffer in later life

2. It can be inferred from the context that the “flip side” in Paragraph 2 refers to________.

A．the disadvantages of being married

B．The emotional problems arising from marriage

C．The responsibility of taking care of one’s family

D．The consequence of a broken marriage

3. What does the author say about social networks?

A．They contribute a great deal to longevity.

B．They help develop people’s community spirit.

C．They provide timely support for those in need.

D．They help relieve people of their life’s burden

4. What can be inferred from the last paragraph?

A．It’s important that we develop a social network when young.

B．To stay healthy, one should have a proper social network.

C．Getting a divorce means risking a reduced life span.

D．We should share our social networks with each other.

【推荐3】The Fertile Rainforest Soils in Amazon

Low-level slash-and-burn(刀耕火种) farming doesn’t harm rainforest. On the contrary, it helps farmers and improves forest soils. This is the unorthodox(非正统的) view of a German soil scientist who has shown that burnt clearings in the Amazon, dating back more than 1,000 years, helped create patches of rich, fertile soil that farmers still benefit from today.

Most rainforest soils are thin and poor because they lack minerals and because the heat and heavy rainfall destroy most organic matter in the soils within four years of it reaching the forest floor. It means topsoil contains few of the ingredients needed for long-term successful farming.

But Bruno Glaser, a soil scientist of the University of Bayreuth, has studied unexpected patches of fertile soils in the central Amazon. These soils contain lots of organic matter.

Glaser has shown that most of this fertile organic matter comes from ''black carbon'', the organic particles from camp fires and charred(烧焦的) wood left over from thousands of years of slash-and-burn farming. ''The soils, known as Terra Preta, contained up to 70 times more black carbon than the surrounding soil, '' says Glaser.

Unburnt vegetation rots quickly, but black carbon persists in the soil for many centuries. Radiocarbon dating shows that the charred wood in Terra Preta soils is typically more than 1,000 years old.

''Slash-and-burn farming can be good for soils provided it doesn't completely burn all the vegetation, and leaves behind charred wood, '' says Glaser. ''It can be better than manure(粪肥). Burning the forest just once can leave behind enough black carbon to keep the soil fertile for thousands of years. And rainforests easily regrow after small-scale clearing. Contrary to the conventional view that human activities damage the environment, '' Glaser says: ''Black carbon combined with human waste is responsible for the richness of Terra Preta soils. ''

Terra Preta soils turn up in large patches all over the Amazon, where they are highly prized by farmers. All the patches fall within 500 square kilometers in the central Amazon. Glaser says the widespread presence of pottery confirms the soil’s human origins. The findings add weight to the theory that large areas of the Amazon have recovered so well from past periods of agricultural use that the regrowth has been mistaken by generations of biologists for ''virgin'' forest.

During the past decade, researchers have discovered hundreds of large earth works deep in the jungle. They are up to 20 meters high and cover up to a square kilometer. Glaser claims that these earth works, built between AD 400 and 1400, were at the heart of urban civilizations. Now it seems the richness of the Terra Preta soils may explain how such civilizations managed to feed themselves.

1. According to the passage, it is generally believed that _______.

A．slash-and-burn farming betters the forest soils

B．slash-and-burn farming reduces the black carbon in the soils

C．slash-and-burn framing does harm to the forest soils

D．slash-and-burn farming damages the minerals in the soils

2. Why are most rainforest soils thin and poor?

A．The topsoil contains a relatively small number of the ingredients.

B．Most organic matter is missing because of the heat and heavy rain.

C．A majority part of soils are likely to be washed away by heavy rain.

D．Black carbon and human waste negatively impact the soil to a great extent.

3. Glaser claims that rainforests will recover ________.

A．when the vegetation is burnt completely

B．if there is no slash-and-burn farming

C．at a slow rate after small-scale burning

D．readily after small-scale burning

4. Which of the following statement is probably true according to the passage?

A．Amazon rainforest soils used to be the richest in the world.

B．Human activities will do great damage to rainforests.

C．There once existed an urban civilization in the Amazon rainforests.

D．Farming is responsible for the destruction of the Amazon rainforests.

【推荐1】In the first days of space exploration, one concern was the possibility that astronauts or spacecraft might be hit by meteoroids. Scientists calculated that this possibility was extremely small because meteoroids are rare. Astronauts and spacecraft, on the other hand, would almost certainly encounter space debris, which poses a greater threat.

However, in the 60 years since the beginning of space exploration, large quantities of human-made orbital debris have accumulated. Much of the debris consists of satellites that have stopped functioning or rocket booster sections that separated from the main spacecraft. Some of the debris consists of items lost by astronauts. Still more of the debris is the result of collisions. such as when one satellite collides with another or with a large piece of debris.

NASA estimates there are millions of debris particles that are too small to be tracked. These circle Earth at a speed of up to 17, 500 miles per hour, making even the smallest particles dangerous. One scientist calculated that a chip of paint hitting the window of a spacecraft at orbital speeds will hit with the same amount of force as a bowling ball traveling at 60 mph. Such an impact occurred on the space shuttle Challenger's second flight.

Larger objects are even more dangerous, but they can be monitored and avoided. Many satellites have the ability to adjust their course slightly and can be remotely directed to avoid collisions with larger objects that would damage or destroy the satellites. NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA) have departments dedicated to cataloging, modeling, and predicting the movements of space debris.

To avoid adding to the amount of debris, obsolete satellites may need to be able to take themselves out of orbit as their usefulness comes to an end. Until a way to remove these remains is implemented. however. those 500, 000 pieces of large fragments, along with the millions of smaller pieces, will continue to orbit Earth.

1. According to the text, which of the following statements is TRUE?

A．Up to now, there is still no efficient way to clean the space debris.

B．Satellites should be monitored more to avoid being hit by space debris.

C．Most of the space debris consists of satellites that have stopped functioning.

D．To decrease space debris, the number of the satellites sent to space should be controlled.

2. What’s mainly discussed in Paragraph 2?

A．Problems caused by old satellites and equipment.

B．Better tracking of the space debris that is orbiting Earth.

C．The types of space debris that is causing problems.

D．Why space exploration was carried out in the beginning.

3. What does the underlined word "obsolete" in the last paragraph probably mean?

A．private.	B．artificial
C．useful	D．outdated.

【推荐3】Holding hands, people jumped into the water, and floated around in Boston’s Charles River recently. That is something that would not have been possible years ago because the river was so polluted. In the 1960s, the music group The Standells even sang about the river in their popular song, “Dirty Water.”

The swimmers were getting their once-a-year chance to cool off from the summer heat in the Charles River. It is called “City Splash.” For a few days each year, the state of Massachu-setts allows public swimming on Boston’s part of the nearly 130-kilometer Charles River.

The event is in its fifth year. It is a chance for the nonprofit Charles River Conservancy to show its efforts to build a “swim park.” Their idea is to build floating docks where swimmers can jump safely into the river—without touching the risky bottom. These docks would be in areas where the water quality would be tested repeatedly.

Boston is one of the cities hoping to follow the model of Copenhagen, Denmark. That city opened the first of its three floating harbor baths in the early 2000s. On sunny days, people swim in the harbor baths surrounded by tall buildings and cars on the highways. At night the area is filled with people enjoying music and food.

Just recently Paris opened public swimming in a once-polluted canal. New York London, Berlin and other cities are planning similar features for their waterways.

In Boston, the Charles River Conservancy still needs to raise several million dollars. It also needs to get approvals from city, state and federal agencies. The group’s spokeswoman, S. J. Port, said the biggest problem has already been taken care of: The Charles is now one of the cleanest city rivers in America.

The U. S. Environmental Protection Agency announced this month that the river earned a “B” grade for water quality last year—an “A” being the best grade. It means the Charles River met the requirement for swimming 55 percent of the time.

1. What is the function of floating docks?

A．They are places for swimmers to rest.

B．They let swimmers get into the river safely.

C．They surround swimmers in a safe area of the river.

D．They are used to test the water quality repeatedly.

2. Which of the following has set a good example for others in offering floating harbor baths?

A．Paris.	B．Boston.
C．Copenhagen.	D．Berlin.

3. What does the underlined part “the biggest problem” refer to?

A．The pollution of Charles River.

B．Lack of money to treat pollution.

C．Getting approvals from governments.

D．Meeting the requirement of “A” grade.

4. What can be inferred from the text?

A．The water in Charles River reaches drinking standard.

B．People can swim in Charles River at any time.

C．This summer is the hottest in Boston.

D．Charles River flows through Boston.