【推荐1】LEGO has been working on the way to make bricks out of recycled plastic. The bricks aren’t ready yet, but the company says it’s going ahead.

Many people are familiar with LEGO, whose plastic building toys have been around since the 1950s. The toys connect firmly, allowing users to build things that don’t fall apart easily. The company calls this ability “clutch power”. Since about 1960, LEGO bricks have been made from a kind of plastic called ABS. ABS plastic makes the bricks very tough, which gives them great clutch power. Sadly, the plastic takes an extremely long time to break down. And LEGO makes about 110 billion bricks every year. That’s a big problem.

But since 2015, LEGO has been stepping up an effort to make its products more earth-friendly. Three years ago, the company began making some LEGO parts, like trees, out of plastic made from sugar cane (甘蔗). Recently, LEGO started using paper bags instead of plastic to reduce packaging. The goal is to make bricks out of PET plastic, which is softer than ABS plastic and can be found in things like bottles and clothing.

Now, LEGO says it has already found a way to make a good brick from PET. One important step was adding things to PET plastic to make it tougher and give it better clutch power. The company is also working to find a way to add color to the bricks – right now, they’re white. It will also work on making them into other shapes.

LEGO’s goal is to make all of its main products out of sustainable materials by 2030. “My kids care about the environment,” said Mr. White, a regular consumer of LEGO toys, “Even though it will be a while before they will be able to play with bricks made from recycled plastic, all of us are willing to embrace the change.”

1. LEGO company has used ABS plastic to make bricks for over ________ years.

A．60

B．70

C．80

D．90

2. The company added things to PET plastic because ________.

A．it has no color	B．it is a little soft
C．it has no clutch power	D．it’s hard to break down

3. Which word can best describe Mr White’s attitude to LEGO’s efforts?

A．Negative.

B．Uncaring.

C．Supportive.

D．Critical.

4. According to the passage, which of the following statements is TRUE?

A．ABS plastic makes mass production impossible.

B．Toys made from PET have been on the market now.

C．The company once used paper bags to make LEGO parts.

D．Bricks made from PET will have more colors and shapes in the future.

【推荐2】To take the apple as forbidden fruit is the most unlikely story the Christians (基督徒) have ever cooked up. For them, the forbidden fruit from Eden is evil. So when Columbus brought the tomato back from South America, a land mistakenly considered to be Eden, everyone jumped to the obvious conclusion. Wrongly taken as the apple of Eden, the tomato was shut out of the door of Europeans.

What made it particularly terrifying was its similarity to the mandrake, a plant that thought to have come from Hell. What earned the plant its awful reputation was its roots which looked like a dried-up human body occupied by evil spirits. Though the tomato and the mandrake were quite different except that both had bright red or yellow fruit, the general population considered them one and the same, too terrible to touch.

Cautious Europeans long ignored the tomato, and until the early 1700s most of the Western people continued to drag their feet. In the 1880s, the daughter of a well-known plant expert wrote that the most interesting part of an afternoon tea at her father’s house had been the “introduction of this wonderful new fruit — or is it a vegetable?” As late as the twentieth century some writers still classed tomatoes with mandrakes as an “evil fruit”.

But in the end tomatoes carried the day. The hero of the tomato was an American named Robert Johnson, and when he was publicly going to eat the tomato in 1820, people journeyed for hundreds of miles to watch him drop dead. “What are you afraid of?” he shouted. “I’ll show you fools that these things are good to eat!” Then he bit into the tomato. Some people fainted. But he survived and, according to a local story set up a tomato-canning factory.

1. The tomato was shut out of the door of early Europeans mainly because __________.

A．it made Christians evil

B．it was the apple of Eden

C．it came from a forbidden land

D．it was religiously unacceptable

2. What is the main reason for Robert Johnson to eat the tomato publicly?

A．To make himself a hero.

B．To remove people’s fear of the tomato.

C．To speed up the popularity of the tomato.

D．To persuade people to buy products from his factory.

3. What is the main purpose of the passage?

A．To challenge people’s fixed concepts of the tomato.

B．To give an explanation to people’s dislike of the tomato.

C．To present the change of people’s attitudes to the tomato.

D．To show the process of freeing the tomato from religious influence.

【推荐3】A study of a million UK women, published today in The Lancet, has shown that happiness itself has no direct effect on mortality, and that the widespread but mistaken belief that unhappiness and stress directly cause ill health came from studies that had simply confused cause and effect. Life-threatening poor health can cause unhappiness, and for this reason unhappiness is associated with increased mortality. In addition, smokers tend to be unhappier than non-smokers. However, after taking account of previous ill health, smoking, and other lifestyle and socio-economic factors, the investigators found that unhappiness itself was no longer associated with increased mortality.
The lead author, Dr Bette Liu, now at the University of New South Wales, Australia said: "Illness makes you unhappy, but unhappiness itself doesn't make you ill. We found no direct effect of unhappiness or stress on mortality, even in a ten-year study of a million women."
As in other studies, unhappiness was associated with deprivation, smoking, lack of exercise, and not living with a partner. The strongest associations, however, were that the women who were already in poor health tended to say that they were unhappy, stressed, not in control, and not relaxed.
The main analyses included 700 000 women, average age 59 years, and over the next 10 years these women were followed by electronic record linkage for mortality, during which time 30 000 of the women died.
After allowing for any differences already present in health and lifestyle, the overall death rate among those who were unhappy was the same as the death rate among those who were generally happy. The study is so large that it rules out unhappiness being a direct cause of any material increase in overall mortality in women.
This was true for overall mortality, for cancer mortality, and for heart disease mortality, and it was true for stress as well as for unhappiness.
1. The word “mortality” in the passage means   .

A．richness	B．relaxation
C．death	D．morality

2. According to the passage, which of the following statements is true?

A．Unhappiness will definitely make a person ill.

B．Unhappiness doesn’t necessarily make you ill.

C．Unhappiness is not associated with lack of exercise.

D．The death rate among those unhappy people is greater.

3. It’s wrongly believed that ________.

A．unhappiness itself is not associated with increased mortality

B．there is no direct link between unhappiness and mortality

C．ill health directly causes unhappiness and stress

D．ill health directly results from unhappiness and stress

4. The writer’s attitude towards the result of the study is __________.

A．disappointing	B．indifferent
C．subjective	D．objective

【推荐2】Idema,a Dutch Sinologist（汉学家）,has served as the director of the Chinese Languages and Cultures Department at Leiden University of the Netherlands and was also director of Harvard's Fairbank Center for East Asian Research.He has studied ancient Chinese plays,novels and literature,and has authored or translated a number of influential books published in English and other languages.

The 70-year-old Dutch Sinologist recalled his half-century-long romance with Chinese culture during a recent visit to Beijing.As a child,the vivid descriptions of China in Nobel and Pulitzer Prize-winner Pearl S.Buck’s books sparked Idema's interest in the country.He later read classic Chinese literature and spent whole days pouring through works at the National Library of China.

While many other experts on China focused on the country's economic transformation,Idema continued to study traditional Chinese literature."There were scholars studying law,religion and society,but not traditional Chinese literature,which was my personal interest,"Idema explains.

Finding reference books for his research,especially regional publications,used to be a huge challenge,and Idema used to spend a lot of time collecting books and other materials during visits to China.Now it is much more convenient with the Internet.

Idema usually chooses less-known subjects for his research and tries to get firsthand materials.In recent years, he has devoted himself to translating Chinese folk tales and writing about Chinese folk society and folk culture.

"Traditional Chinese culture is a passion.I have been studying it for 50 years and will continue to do so,"says the retired professor.

1. What does the underlined word "sparked" in Paragraph 2 mean?

A．Increased.	B．Broke.
C．Performed.	D．Aroused.

2. Idema concentrated on traditional Chinese literature because     .

A．he wanted to show he was different from others

B．he was interested in traditional Chinese literature

C．traditional Chinese literature is easier to study than other fields

D．he could benefitted a lot from the traditional Chinese literature

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

A．A Passion for Chinese Culture	B．The Life of Idema
C．Idema's Visit to China	D．The Personal Hobby

【推荐3】Arthur Miller (1915—2005) is universally recognized as one of the greatest dramatists of the 20th century.Miller’s father had moved to the USA from Austria—Hungary，drawn like so many others by the“Great American Dream”.However，he experienced severe financial hardship when his family business was ruined in the Great Depression of the early 1930s.

Miller’s most famous play，Death of a Salesman，is a powerful attack on the American system，with its aggressive way of doing business and its insistence on money and social status as indicators of worth.In Willy Loman，the hero of the play，we see a man who has got into trouble with this system.Willy is “burnt out” and in the cruel world of business there is no room for sentiment：if he can’t do the work，then he is no good to his employer，the Wagner Company，and he must go.Willy is painfully aware of this，and at a loss as to what to do with his lack of success.He refuses to face the fact that he has failed and kills himself in the end.

When it was first staged in 1949，the play was greeted with enthusiastic reviews，and it won the Tony Award for Best Play，the New York Drama Critics’ Circle Award，and the Pulitzer Prize for Drama.It was the first play to win all three of these major awards.

Miller died of heart failure at his home in Roxbury，Connecticut，on the evening of February 10,2005，the 56th anniversary of the first performance of Death of a Salesman on Broadway.

1. Why did Arthur Miller’s father move to the USA？

A．He suffered from severe hunger in his home country.

B．He was attracted by the “Great American Dream”.

C．He hoped to make his son a dramatist.

D．His family business failed.

2. The play Death of a Salesman ________.

A．exposes the cruelty of the American business world

B．discusses the ways to get promoted in a company

C．talks about the business career of Arthur Miller

D．focuses on the skills in doing business

3. After it was first staged，Death of a Salesman ________.

A．achieved huge success

B．won the first Tony Award

C．was warmly welcomed by salesmen

D．was severely attacked by dramatists

4. What is the text mainly about？

A．Arthur Miller and his family.

B．The awards Arthur Miller won.

C．The hardship Arthur Miller experienced.

D．Arthur Miller and his best­known play.