【推荐1】Growing up in England with a British father and a Chinese mother, I’ve enjoyed food from both countries ever since I was able to hold a knife and fork and chopsticks!

Mum has sweet memories of the food from her home town in Sichuan, and often cooks spicy dishes. Thanks to this, Dad has come to love hot pot! But there are still some dishes that Dad dare not try even after many years of marriage to my mother. Even today he still does not take to eating things like chicken feet. But I enjoy that sort of food myself.

Last week, I went to the butcher’s and asked, “Do you have pigs’ ears?” “No,” the butcher said, pulling at his own ears, “just these ordinary ones.” He must have thought I was joking. Dad can cook a super “full English breakfast” of bacon, eggs, beans, sausages and toast with butter. Mum and I just have to find a way to get him into the kitchen! He also does a typical Sunday roast. We all love roast beef and vegetables.

I’ll never forget my first visit to China. Mum encouraged me to try different kinds of food. But just when I thought I could deal with all Chinese food, I came across stinky tofu, a horrible grey thing that looked and smelt like a burnt sports shoe. I gathered all my courage to take a bite and was amazed to find it wasn’t so bad. It reminded me of blue cheese, a similarly strong smelling type of food you either love or hate. Maybe I’ll fall in love with stinky tofu, someday.

People say that one man’s meat is another man’s poison, but I feel at home with food from both my cultures.

1. What can we learn from this passage?

A．I have enjoyed the food from two cultures since a little child.

B．Because of my Mum, Dad loves all kinds of Chinese food.

C．We all like roast beef and vegetables except Mum.

D．I have fallen in love the stinky tofu now.

2. What is the character of the butcher?

A．Generous.

B．Mean.

C．Humorous.

D．Serious.

3. What does the author mean by saying “one man’s meat is another man’s poison”?

A．It means what one person likes may not be liked by someone else.

B．It means that one person likes it very much.

C．It means that one person cannot get satisfaction from it.

D．It means that one person’s food causes another man’s death.

4. What’s the main purpose of this passage?

A．To introduce two different cultures.

B．To advise the readers to try some different food.

C．To show the different eating habits between China and Britain.

D．To tell a story about a child of his eating experience.

【推荐2】These days a green building means more than just the color of the paint. Green buildings can also refer to environmentally friendly houses, factories, and offices.

Green building means “reducing the effect of the building on the land”, Taryn Holowka of the U.S. Green Building Council(评议会) in Washington, D.C., said. According to Holowka, building accounts for 65 percent of total U.S. electricity use.

But green buildings can reduce energy and water use. Also, the buildings are often located near public transportation such as buses and subways, so that people can drive their cars less. That could be good for the environment, because cars use lots of gas and give off pollution. Green buildings are often built on developed land, so that the buildings don’t destroy forests.

Marty Dettling is project manager for a building that puts these ideas into action. The Solaire has been called the country’s first green high-rise building. According to Dettling, “We’ve reduced our energy use by one-third and our water by 50 percent.”

The Solaire cuts energy in part by using solar power. “On the face of the building we have solar panels(光板) which change the sun’s energy into electricity,”Dettling explained.

The Solaire also has lights that automatically turn off when people leave the room. In addition, the building has lots of windows, allowing people to use the sun for light during the day. The Solaire cuts water by reusing it.

Not everyone is eager to move into a green building, however. Some people think that things like solar panels cost more money than more traditional energy sources. Anyhow, Holowka said, “It’s going to be big.”

1. A green building means ________.

A．a building that uses no electricity

B．a building that saves energy and water

C．a building occupying less land

D．a green-colored building

2. A green building is often built on an area of land________.

A．which has already been for buildings

B．which has thick forests around

C．where people of high income live

D．where traveling around by car is most convenient

3. When Holowka says in the last paragraph, “It’s going to be big”, she means that green buildings________.

A．will be more comfortable

B．will be more environmentally friendly

C．will become popular in future

D．will take the place of traditional buildings

4. Which is the main idea of the passage?

A．Dettling designed the first green building in the U.S.

B．Energy shortage calls for buildings of new design.

C．The Solaire serves as a model of high buildings.

D．Green buildings help save the environment.

【推荐3】In the flood of innovative solutions that have emerged in the last several years to save the world from plastic pollution, Tom Szaky’s solution may be one of the most audacious (大胆的). Szaky has presented a concept that dates to the turn of the last century-returnable, refillable containers. The idea was introduced to the world by Coca-Cola in the early 1920s, when coke was sold in expensive glass bottles that the company needed to be returned. They charged a two-cent deposit (押金), roughly 40 percent of the full cost of the soft drink, and got about 98 percent of their bottles back to be reused 40 to 50 times. Bottle deposit programs remain one of the most successful methods ever invented for recovering packaging.

Szaky launched Loop, an online delivery service that uses serviceable, reusable containers. The bold part of his venture-or risk, if you are one of his financial backers-is that Loop pushes far beyond the common returnable beverage bottles and sells more than 300 items, from food to laundry liquid, in containers of various sizes and made from various materials. His signature product is Häagen- Dazs ice cream that is packed inside a smooth, heat-barrier stainless steel bucket guaranteed to prevent its contents from melting.

Slightly messy in jeans and a coat, Szaky looks every bit the common entrepreneur. He dropped out of Princeton University 17 years ago to become an innovator in the garbage business. Then, he founded TerraCycle, a company near his college. He figured out a way to recycle cigarette ends, and a long list of other non-recyclable things. Then, he became more interested in restoring the circularity of that earlier era and eliminating the disposability from packaging altogether.

Loop is part of the recovery of refillable things as a serious option for plastic waste. The beverage industry is expanding its use of returnable bottles; an Oregon brewery claims to have started the United States’ first state-wide refillable beer system. More significantly, efforts like Loop’s to reinvent packaging for products that don’t fit easily into the refillable category have attracted startups and some of the world’s largest corporate players.

1. How is the Coca-Cola’s bottle deposit program?

A．It’s costly.	B．It’s effective.
C．It is a complex process.	D．It remains questionable to many people.

2. What can we know about Loop launched by Szaky?

A．It struggles to get financial support.

B．It covers a wider range of businesses.

C．It mainly gains profits from Häagen-Dazs ice cream.

D．It was the first to propose using steel containers to store beverages.

3. Which of the following can best describe Szaky?

A．Creative and ambitious.	B．Self-disciplined and outgoing.
C．Hardworking and careful.	D．Responsible and kind-hearted.

4. What’s the purpose of Szaky’s founding TerraCycle ?

A．To make good use of the waste.	B．To cover his college fees.
C．To cooperate with more corporate players.	D．To expand his influence in his college.

【推荐1】Art and science may seem like polar opposites. One involves the creative flow of ideas, and the other cold, hard data. In fact, the two have much in common. Both require a lot of creativity. Mariale Hardiman, an education specialist at Johns Hopkins University, teamed up with other Johns Hopkins researchers and six local schools and researched into this. The study finds art can help students remember better what they learn in science class.

The researchers worked with teachers in 16 fifth-grade classrooms. They took the traditional science lessons and created art-focused versions of them. In a traditional science classroom, for instance, students might read aloud from a book. In the art-focused class, they might sing or rap the information instead. Another example: traditional science classes often use charts and graphs(图表). The art-focused classrooms instead had students create collages(拼贴画) and other types of art.   Everyone would get the same information—just learn it in different ways.

The team then randomly assigned each of the 350 students to either a traditional science classroom or an art-focused one. Students then learned science using that approach for the entire unit about three weeks. When they switched to a new topic, they also changed to the other type of class. Every unit was taught both ways to different groups of students.

Before and after each phase of the experiment, researchers tested students on how much they could remember what they had learned. The test result indicated students who started off in regular classes performed better after they moved into an art-focused class. But those who started in an art-focused class did well even when they switched back to a regular science class. These students appeared to use some of the art techniques after switching back to a traditional class. Some continued to sketch or sing to help them remember information. Researchers and teachers also find there’s a broader benefit to using art in the classroom. Students in art-focused classes develop more creativity and learn to collaborate(协作) better skills.

1. What method does a teacher often apply to traditional science lessons?

A．Creating collages.

B．Using charts and graphs.

C．Switching between topics.

D．Singing the information of the textbook.

2. What happened in the research?

A．Researchers assigned students different learning tasks.

B．Teachers coached students on choosing learning styles.

C．Experiments were conducted among different age groups.

D．Each student had both an art-focused class and a traditional one.

3. How was the research carried out?

A．By sorting data.

B．By making comparisons.

C．By analyzing cause and effect.

D．By testing solutions to a problem.

4. Which of the following is a suitable title for the text?

A．Art Helps Collaborate Skills

B．Art and Science Have Much in Common

C．Art Can Make Science Easier to Remember

D．Art Education Should Be Taken More Seriously

【推荐3】Human speech contains more than 2,000 different sounds, from the common “m” and “a” to the rare clicks of some southern African languages. But why are certain sounds more common than others? A ground-breaking, five-year study shows that diet-related changes in human bite led to new speech sounds that are now found in half the world’s languages.

More than 30 years ago, the scholar Charles Hockett noted that speech sounds called labiodentals, such as “f” and “v”, were more common in the languages of societies that ate softer foods. Now a team of researchers led by Damián Blasi at the University of Zurich, Switzerland, has found how and why this trend arose.

They discovered that the upper and lower front teeth of ancient human adults were aligned (对齐), making it hard to produce labiodentals, which are formed by touching the lower lip to the upper teeth. Later, our jaws changed to an overbite structure (结构), making it easier to produce such sounds.

1. Which aspect of the human speech sound does Damián Blasi’s research focus on?

A．Its variety.

B．Its distribution.

C．Its quantity.

D．Its development.

2. Why was it difficult for ancient human adults to produce labiodentals?

A．They had fewer upper teeth than lower teeth.

B．They could not open and close their lips easily.

C．Their jaws were not conveniently structured.

D．Their lower front teeth were not large enough.