School pupils in England will be grouped into “bubbles” when the new academic year starts in September, with mass activities such1 as assemblies (学校集会) discouraged under new regulations announced by Education Secretary Gavin Williamson.
Schools were shut down in March, 2020. Currently around 1.6 million of the country’s 9 million school-age children are back in the classroom, but the government says a proper return in September is “critical to our national recovery” and attendance will be compulsory.
Social distancing will not be applied in schools, and masks will not be worn, but instead so-called bubbles, based on avoiding contact between individual classes or year groups, will be applied. This will mean separate start and finish times, and also different times for lunch and playtime.
Pupils will be discouraged from using public transport, which could bring many other challenges. Mobile testing units (检测装置) will be sent to schools which have an outbreak, and schools will have testing kits (检测工具) to give parents if required, but if there are two confirmed cases in 14 days, potentially the whole school could be shut down.
Geoff Barton, the general secretary of the Association of School and CollegeLeaders, says, “It will be immediately apparent to anyone reading this guidance that it is enormously challenging to carry out this proposal. The logistics of keeping apart many different ‘bubbles’ of children in a full school, including whole-year groups comprising hundreds of pupils, is incredible.”
Meanwhile, before the much-anticipated next stage of casing lockdown in England takes place this weekend, the number of COVID-19 cases has risen in 36 local authorities across England. Easing measures have already had to be delayed in the East Midlands city of Leicester, but now other spikes (激增) in infection rate are being reported all across England. The areas with the largest increases are Knowsley and Bolton, both in the North West of the country, and the London borough of Hammersmith and Fulham. In Knowsley, close to the city of Liverpool, the rate of infection rose from 6 people out of every 100, 000 to 20.
1. What does Gavin group the students into “bubbles” for?| A．Calling on students to take a bus for school. |
| B．Asking all students to wear masks in class. |
| C．Keeping social distance among all students. |
| D．Setting different time for school activities. |
| A．Tolerant. | B．Ambiguous. | C．Hopeful. | D．Doubtful. |
| A．England has already ended the lockdown. |
| B．More reports are about the spread of COVID-19. |
| C．The number of COVID-19 infections is increasing in England. |
| D．COVID-19 is more serious in England than in other countries. |
相似题推荐
【推荐1】A century ago, the immigrants from across the Atlantic included settlers and travelers. Along with the many folks looking to make a permanent home in the United States came those who had no intention to stay, and 7 million people arrived while about 2 million departed. About a quarter of all Italian immigrants, for example, eventually returned to Italy for good. They even had an affectionate nickname, “uccelli di passaggio”, birds of passage.
Today, we place more restrictions on immigrants. We divide newcomers into two categories: legal or illegal, good or bad. We acknowledge them as Americans in the making, or identify them as aliens to be kicked out. That framework has contributed a great deal to our broken immigration system and the long political paralysis over how to fix it. We don’t need more categories, but we need to change the way we think about categories. We need to look beyond strict definitions of legal and illegal. To start, we can recognize the new birds of passage, those living and thriving in the gray areas. We might then begin to solve our immigration challenges.
Crop pickers, violinists, construction workers, entrepreneurs, engineers, home health-care aides and physicists are among today’s birds of passage. They are energetic participants in a global economy driven by the flow of work, money and ideas. They prefer to come and go as opportunity calls them. They can manage to have a job in one place and a family in another.
With or without permission, they straddle (跨越) laws, jurisdictions and identities with ease. We need them to imagine the United States as a place where they can be productive for a while without committing themselves to staying forever. We need them to feel that home can be both here and there and that they can belong to two nations honorably.
Accommodating this new world of people in motion will require new attitudes on both sides of the immigration battle. Looking beyond the culture war logic of right or wrong means opening up the middle ground and understanding that managing immigration today requires multiple paths and multiple outcomes, including some that are not easy to accomplish legally in the existing system.
1. What does the underlined phrase “birds of passage” in Paragraph One indicate?| A．People immigrating across the Atlantic. | B．People staying in a foreign country temporarily. |
| C．People leaving their motherland for good. | D．People finding permanent jobs overseas. |
| A．It needs new immigrant categories. | B．It has loosened control over immigrants. |
| C．It should be reformed to meet challenges. | D．It has been fixed through political means. |
| A．They should be treated with legal tolerance. | B．They should be treated with economic favors. |
| C．They should be treated as faithful partners. | D．They should be treated as powerful competitors. |
| A．Come and Go: Big Mistake | B．Living and Thriving: Great Risk |
| C．With or Without: Great Risk | D．Legal or Illegal: Big Mistake |
【推荐2】Cowboy or spaceman? A dilemma for a children’s party, perhaps. But also a question for economists, argued Kenneth Boulding, a British economist, in an essay published in 1966. We have run our economies, he warned, like cowboys on the open grassland: taking and using the world’s resources, confident that more lies over the horizon. But the Earth is less a grassland than a spaceship—a closed system, alone in space, carrying limited supplies. We need, said Boulding, an economics that takes seriously the idea of environmental limits. In the half century since his essay, a new movement has responded to his challenge. “Ecological economists”, as they call themselves, want to revolutionise its aims and assumptions. What do they say—and will their ideas achieve lift-off?
To its advocators, ecological economics is neither ecology nor economics, but a mix of both. Their starting point is to recognise that the human economy is part of the natural world. Our environment, they note, is both a source of resources and a sink for wastes. But it is ignored in conventional textbooks, where neat diagrams trace the flows between firms, households and the government as though nature did not exist. That is a mistake, say ecological economists.
There are two ways our economies can grow, ecological economists point out: through technological change, or through more intensive use of resources. Only the former, they say, is worth having. They are suspicious of GDP, a crude measure which does not take account of resource exhaustion, unpaid work, and countless other factors. In its place they advocate moreholistic(全面的) approaches, such as the Genuine Progress Indicator (GPI), a composite index(复合指标) that includes things like the cost of pollution, deforestation and car accidents. While GDP has kept growing, global GPI per person peaked in 1978: by destroying our environment we are making ourselves poorer, not richer. The solution, says Herman Daly, a former World Bank economist and eco-guru, is a “steady-state” economy, where the use of materials and energy is held constant.
Mainstream economists are unimpressed. The GPI, they point out, is a subjective measure. And talk of limits to growth has had a bad press since the days of Thomas Malthus, a gloomy 18th century cleric who predicted, wrongly, that overpopulation would lead to famine. Human beings find solutions to some of the most annoying problems. But ecological economists warn against self-satisfaction. In 2009 a paper in Nature, a scientific journal, argued that human activity is already overstepping safe planetary boundaries on issues such as biodiversity(生物多样性) and climate change. That suggests that ecological economists are at least asking some important questions, even if their answers turn out to be wrong.
1. Kenneth Boulding and the content of his essay at the beginning of this passage are meant to .| A．point out how ignorant of nature the cowboys are |
| B．blame human beings for their exploitation of nature |
| C．ask people to take seriously the environment limits |
| D．introduce ecological economists and ecologist economics |
| A．Ecology and economics are not mixed together |
| B．Human economy isn’t recognized as parts of nature |
| C．The environment has both resources and wastes |
| D．Diagrams connect firms, households and the government |
| A．GDP is crude measure that is not worth using |
| B．car accident should by all means include in GDP |
| C．we are gaining material wealth by destroying nature |
| D．resources and energy will one day be totally used up |
| A．the aims and assumptions of economics need to be revolutionized |
| B．GDP and GPI should be both accepted by mainstream economists |
| C．Human beings can always find solutions to all the annoying problems |
| D．Ecological economists’ concerns about the world are worth noticing. |
【推荐3】G-7 LEADERS READY TO HELP BATTLE AMAZON WILDFIRES
WITH“TECHNICAL AND FINANCIAL MEANS”
French President Emmanuel Macron announced this afternoon that the G-7 leaders had reached an agreement on how to help fight the record number of forest fires currently raging in the Amazon.
“There is real convergence(趋同性) to say we all agree to help the countries harmed by these fires as quickly as possible,” the host of the G-7 summit told reporters in French from the conference venue in Biarritz. He went on, listing all of the contacts being made, “With all the countries of the Amazon… so that we can finalize very concrete technical and financial commitments.”
On Friday, Macron threatened to block an important EU trade deal with Brazil and other South American countries, claiming that Brazil’s president Jair Bolsonaro had lied about his position on climate change.
Hours before the beginning of the annual meeting of word leaders on Friday, Macron released a video outlining his plan to mobilize all of the powers gathered in Biarritz to partner with Amazon countries “to invest first in fighting the fires and helping Brazil and the other impacted countries and then to invest in reforestation everywhere.”
Macron emphasized France’s stake in the fires, referencing French Guiana, a former prison colony and current overseas department of France located on the northeastern edge of the Amazon rainforest. Bolsonaro shot back, accusing Macron of having an “unacceptable” and “colonialist” mindset.
Over 75,000 fires have been recorded in the Amazon rainforest so far this year, more than double the 40,000 blazes recorded there in all of 2018, according to Brazil’s National Institute for Space Research. The fires can be caused by natural phenomena, like lightning strikes, but are often intentionally set by loggers and ranchers clearing land for cattle grazing of farming. Bolsonaro, a climate change skeptic, has encouraged farmers to exploit the land and weakened government agencies tasked with enforcing environmental regulations, NPR reported.
Smoke from the blazes has reached as far east as the Atlantic coast and blocked out the sun as far away as Saō Paulo, more than 2,000 miles to the south. Meanwhile NASA is tracking a carbon monoxide plume stretching across Brazil into the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans.
1. What did Emmanuel Macron announce?| A．They had contacted all the other countries. |
| B．They were ready to help battle Amazon wildfires. |
| C．They had decided the way of helping fight the fires. |
| D．They were confident to put out Amozon fires. |
| A．His attitude towards climate change. |
| B．The location of the terrible fires. |
| C．The severe situation of this country. |
| D．The direction of his future leadership. |
| A．urge more powers to help affected countries in need. |
| B．assess the damaging scale of the Amazon wildfires |
| C．prepare Brazil people for their better future life |
| D．attract more organizations to make donations. |
| A．Lightning strikes. |
| B．Being set for more farming land. |
| C．Demanding climate change. |
| D．Making land with grass for cattle. |
【推荐1】In contrast to the often-heard views that robots will replace human workers, researchers from Gartner predicts that artificial intelligence(AI)may actually create, more jobs than it’s expected to take away. By 2020, artificial intelligence has created 2. 3 million jobs, going beyond the 1. 8 million that it has replaced, the company said in a recent report. In the following five years to 2025, net (净得的)new jobs created in relation to AL will reach 2 million, according to the report.
The number of jobs affected will be different from industry to industry. The public sector(公共部门), health care and education are expected to get the most jobs, while manufacturing(制造业)and transportation may be hit the hardest, said Gartner’s research director, Manjunath Bhat.
“Robots are not here to take away our jobs, they’re here to give us a promotion”. “I think that’s the way we should start looking at AI” Bhat told reporters on Tuesday.
Gartner’s positive predictions contrast with the warnings on the dangers of AI sounded by top technology industry voices such as Kai-Fu Lee, the founder of venture capital firm Sinovation Ventures. He said robots are likely to replace 50 percent of all jobs in the next decade.
Gartner acknowledged in its report that AI would cut millions of middle-and low-level positions. But it stressed that more new jobs would be created, including highly-skilled jobs, management positions and even low-skilled jobs.
“IT leaders should not only focus on the projected increase of jobs,” the report said. “For the greatest value, focus on improving people with AI. Enrich people’s jobs, reimagine old tasks and create new industries. Change your culture to make it rapidly adaptable to AI-related opportunities or threats.”
1. What does research firm Gartner think of artificial intelligence?| A．Human workers will be out of work. | B．AI will create more jobs than it cuts. |
| C．AI will run out of human control. | D．New industries will replace old ones. |
| A．Teachers. | B．Dentists. |
| C．Bus drivers. | D．Social workers. |
| A．Uncertain. | B．Hopeful. |
| C．Worried. | D．Confused. |
| A．Take advantage of new industry opportunities. |
| B．Provide people with training programmes. |
| C．Stop the old business and turn to new business. |
| D．Welcome AI and adapt to changes brought by it. |
By A. A. Milne
Winnie-the-Pooh has been introduced and reintroduced to generation after generation as a model of a child’s best friend. However, not everyone has found Pooh is lovely. This classic has been banned in a variety of countries at one point. So why would anyone ever want to keep children from the joy of Milne’s classic? In the case of Russia, Winnie-the-Pooh was banned in 2009 because of alleged Nazi (纳粹党的) ties.
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz
By Frank Baum
Originally published in the year 1900, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz is one of the foundations of the fairytale genre. Who, then, would seek to ban a book that has become so important to the American experience?
America is that who. The Detroit Library banned The Wonderful Wizard of Oz in 1957 for having no value for children.
Charlotte’s Web
By E. B. White
White’s tale of the relationship between two unexpected creatures, a spider and a pig, has been drawing children in for over half a century. Published in 1952, this classic has been readily available on most library shelves for children to read. However, some people would like to make this book never see the light of day.
In one extreme case, a school in England banned Charlotte’s Web for fear that the pig Wilbur might be offensive (冒犯的) to Muslim students. Fortunately, the Muslim Council of Britain saw the foolishness of this ban, so the book was quickly restored to its right place on the shelves.
Where the Wild Things Are
By Maurice Sendak
Though its first copy was published fifty years ago, this book hasn’t always been readily available in libraries and in stores. After its release, Where the Wild Things Are was banned in libraries all across the U.S. for its dark tone and unruly leading characters. Nowadays, you’ll find far fewer libraries that still hold this ban.
1. The books which were once banned in the same country are ______.
| A．Charlotte’s Web and The Wonderful Wizard of Oz |
| B．Where the Wild Things Are and Winnie-the-Pooh |
| C．Where the Wild Things Are and The Wonderful Wizard of Oz |
| D．Winnie-the-Pooh and Charlotte’s Web |
| A．Charlotte’s Web. |
| B．The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. |
| C．Winnie-the-Pooh. |
| D．Where the Wild Things Are. |
| A．Parents. | B．Children. | C．Teachers. | D．Critics. |
【推荐3】The coronavirus pandemic (新冠疫情) has brought with it the rise of a new kind of single-use plastic in the form of personal protective equipment (PPE), like face masks and gloves. Experts warned that these sharply increasing single-use items could cause a new wave of plastic pollution and kill wildlife.
The charity Ocean Conservancy reported that volunteers had collected more than 100,000 PPE items from coasts and waterways during the last six months of 2020. They sent out a survey to more than 200 International Coastal Cleanup (ICC) coordinators and volunteers asking about their experience with PPE. The results show that it is a real problem. Volunteers collected 107,219 pieces of PPE in 70 of 115 participating countries. Of those surveyed, 94% reported seeing PPE at a clean-up, and 40% found five items or more. Further, 37% found the items had already sunk into the water.
“During one of our clean-ups in the canals of Leiden, our volunteers found a latex (乳胶) glove with a dead fish trapped in the thumb,” said Auke-Florian Hiemstra, a study coauthor from Leiden University. “Also, in the Dutch canals, we observed that a water bird was using face masks and gloves in its nests.” Other animals that have gotten trapped in face masks include a fox in the UK, a pufferfish in Florida, and two crabs in France. Numerous dogs and cats have been observed eating PPE as well.
The danger posed by PPE goes deeper than what the eye can see. Luckily, there are ways that all of us can be part of the solution to the problem of PPE pollution. Hiemstra suggested using reusable PPE instead of single-use products. In that case, we should deal with them properly by cutting the ear loops to prevent animal entanglements (缠绕物) and throwing them away in a bin that is not overstuffed. “We definitely think it is important for citizens to understand how much PPE is ending up in the environment and impacting animals,” Hiemstra said.
1. What can we infer from the numbers in paragraph 2?| A．The large amount of PPE in the environment. |
| B．Volunteers’ great efforts to protect the ocean. |
| C．The leading cause of ocean pollution. |
| D．Difficulties of cleaning up plastic waste in the ocean. |
| A．PPE is attractive to dogs and cats due to its smell. |
| B．PPE pollution has done harm to many animals’ lives. |
| C．Water birds may not be influenced by plastic pollution. |
| D．Litter makes it hard for boats to pass through the canals. |
| A．Raising the price of PPE items. |
| B．Cleaning the rubbish bin regularly. |
| C．Replacing single-use products with reusable ones. |
| D．Limiting the production of non-recyclable plastic. |
| A．The decline of wildlife due to overhunting. |
| B．The shortage of personal protective equipment. |
| C．The increasing number of coronavirus patients. |
| D．The plastic pollution caused by anti-pandemic products. |
【推荐1】Marcelo Toledo usually creates sculptures and jewelry out of metal. Now the Argentine artist is working with a new material: waste from the COVID-19 pandemic, such as masks, to create an exhibition exploring the painful impact of the virus.
Toledo, who has made jewelry for the musical “Evita” on Broadway and unique pieces for many famous people, was among the first in Argentina to be infected with COVID-19, which left him hospitalized for eight days. The experience had a great effect on his life and led to a series of artworks, including a 14-meter mask with the Argentine flag that he placed on the famous obelisk (方尖纪念碑) in Buenos Aires to raise awareness about organ donation during the pandemic.
For his new exhibition, the “Museum of the After”, Toledo is collecting recycled waste from the COVID-19 sent by hospitals, laboratories and strangers, including old medical parts and newspapers about the pandemic.
“I am excited to be able to turn pain into beauty and this exhibition is just recording everything that is happening to us as a society,” Toledo said. The artworks, which will go on show from September in a public space in downtown Buenos Aires, will all be made from waste materials or garbage that people send him. “It is the first time that I have done an exhibition in which I do not have to buy any of the elements,” he said.
In the exhibition, there will be a real ship that will symbolically cross a “storm” and recycling islands to raise awareness about the importance of caring for the environment. “The exhibition will tell the story of this ship that went sailing and was stranded (搁浅) by a storm, which is a great metaphor for what is happening to us. This pandemic is a great global storm,” Toledo said.
As with the huge mask, which was in countries such as the United States and Japan, the artist dreams of replicating (复制) the new exhibition in other cities around the world.
1. What inspired Toledo to make the 14-meter mask?| A．Organ donation. | B．His hospital stay. |
| C．The encouragement from his friends. | D．His Broadway experiences. |
| A．It was first exhibited in hospitals. |
| B．Toledo had to buy elements to make the artworks. |
| C．It was replicated in other countries around the world. |
| D．The artworks were made from rubbish about the pandemic. |
| A．People’s irresponsible behaviour leads to natural disasters. |
| B．People’s awareness of environmental protection is improving. |
| C．The COVID-19 pandemic is a big challenge for our human beings now. |
| D．People from all over the world should work together to defeat the pandemic. |
| A．A newspaper. | B．A history book. |
| C．A travel magazine. | D．A science magazine. |
【推荐2】The vaccine (疫苗) news continues to seem very encouraging. Britain started its mass vaccination effort and the U. S. isn't far behind. But there is still one dark cloud hanging over the vaccines that many people don't yet understand. The vaccines will be much less effective at preventing death and illness if they are introduced into a population where the coronavirus is still severe 一 as is now the case in the U. S.
A vaccine is like a fire hose (消防龙头). A vaccine that is 95 percent effective, as Moderna's and Pfizer's versions appear to be, is a powerful fire hose. But the size of a fire is still a bigger determinant of how much destruction occurs.
At the current level of infection in the U. S. (about 160, 000 confirmed new infections per day), a vaccine that is 95 percent effective 一 distributed at the expected pace 一 would still leave a terrible toll (伤亡人数) after it was introduced. Almost 36 million or so Americans have caught the virus, and more than 60, 0000 have died. This is far worse than the toll in a different situation where the vaccine was only 50 percent effective. However, it's worth pausing for a moment on this comparison. If the U. S. maintained its current infection rate and Moderna and Pfizer announced that their vaccines were only 50 percent effective. a lot of people would panic.
But the reality we have is actually worse. How could this be? No vaccine can get rid of a pandemic immediately, just as no fire hose can put out a forest fire. While the vaccine is being distributed, the virus continues to do damage.
There is one positive way to look at this: Measures that reduce the virus's spread 一 like mask - wearing, social distancing and rapid - result testing 一 can still have great consequences. They will save many lives in coming months.
1. How does the author mainly present his argument?| A．By giving definitions | B．By classifying facts |
| C．By drawing comparisons | D．By appealing to emotions |
| A．Critical | B．Optimistic | C．Worried | D．Neutral |
| A．Improving the effectiveness of the vaccines | B．Producing a greater variety of vaccines |
| C．Looking at the situation in a positive way | D．Wearing masks and practicing social distancing |
| A．fewer people will die if the infection rate is lower |
| B．the US have controlled the spread of the coronavirus |
| C．the death toll in the next months will be reduced a lot |
| D．the vaccines are less effective than expected |
【推荐3】It’s been well over a year since COVID-19 first appeared. Although the virus continues to be a problem in many parts of the world, things are starting to turn back in our favor with the help of vaccines(疫苗).
Vaccine development started in February 2020, when it became clear to scientists that a solution to the pandemic would need a global effort to vaccinate as many people as possible. The CO—VAX（COVID-19 Vaccines Global Access）mechanism was then created to ensure equal access to safe and effective vaccines for all countries and regions, according to Business World.
Of course，this would take great effort，since vaccines typically take years to develop. However，COVID—19 needed faster development. The first COVID vaccine—the Pfizer vaccine—was approved by UK health authorities on Dec 2, 2020, according to science journal Nature.
This was made possible through the use of mRNA (信使核糖核酸). Vaccines developed with mRNA use the virus' spike protein (棘突蛋白) to create antibodies (抗体) that can fight the virus. Companies like Moderna and Pfizer have created their own mRNA vaccines, according to the BBC.
However，these vaccines must be stored at very low temperatures, which is not possible everywhere. In response, Chinese companies like Sinopharm and Sinovac have developed vaccines using dead viruses instead of spike proteins. These vaccines can be kept at regular temperatures.
Although there have been rumors about vaccines being unsafe, the majority of people seem to realize the importance of vaccination for building mass immunity in order to stop the virus from spreading.
Zhang Wenhong，China’s leading expert on infectious diseases，said it’s good that the world has come to understand that the vaccines will protect us, according to Global Times. Zhang added that human beings belong to one family. Vaccines are a kind of medicine that we all must share in order to stay safe and healthy.
1. Why was COVAX created？| A．To create more COVID—19 vaccines. |
| B．To protect people with COVID—19. |
| C．To help countries produce their own vaccines. |
| D．To make sure more people can get vaccines. |
| A．Who made the first COVID—19 vaccine. |
| B．How to prevent COVID—19. |
| C．How mRNA vaccines work. |
| D．Why scientists use mRNA to make spike proteins. |
| A．Chinese vaccines use viruses from spike proteins. |
| B．Chinese vaccines can be kept at a normal temperature. |
| C．The Pfizer vaccine is based on a Chinese vaccine. |
| D．The Pfizer vaccine is suitable for children. |
| A．Medicine is the only way to deal with infectious diseases. |
| B．Some vaccines might be unsafe. |
| C．Mass immunity can't stop the virus from spreading. |
| D．Vaccines can keep all of us safe from COVID—19. |
