【推荐1】Mum, it’s me. Hopefully, this Mothering Sunday you will get to hear those three words. I will, of course, try to phone you. I hope we will be able to speak for the allowed 10 minutes. But I suspect many inmates will be using the phone, so if I don’t call and if we don’t speak, then this is what I would have said:
It’s not your fault that I am here. I know that deep in your heart you have questioned whether my current circumstance is somehow your fault, if the reckless stupidity of my past is somehow a failure on your part. It is not. Only one person is to blame, only one person should hurt — me. You have always taught me that when the room goes dark, you can wait for the lights to be switched back on or you can search in the dark and turn the light on yourself. You are my light. You always have been and always will be. There is nobody I admire more, nobody I have strived harder to please in my life, which is why my current failure hurts me so much.
I am so sorry that I will not be there to see you, but I want you to know that now, as always, you are here with me. In my darkest hours, and in the coldest loneliness of my past few months, my mind has so often wandered to the past, to when it was you and me — and I have been able to smile. Yours is the strength that I draw upon.
A parent’s job is to make sure that they pass on the best of themselves to their children. You have done that. It is the inner you in me that will get me through this.
I have failed you so epically, but you have never failed me. If I think back to the tears I shed when Dad left, all those years ago, I see you through their misty glaze. You holding me and you telling me we’d be OK, and we will be. We are and always will be the best team.
Childhood heroes such as footballers, actors and rock stars are clichéd. If the job’s done right, a child’s heroes should be their parents — you are mine. The strength you showed after the divorce from Dad to find your biological parents, to go to university and get your teaching qualifications, to begin your life again, is the strength that I draw on now. It is the belief in myself, it is the belief you have in me, that tells me that once I am released I can and will rebuild my life. I will make you proud again. I will make you happy to have me as your son. Yours is the will that gets me through every day.
I don’t believe you can judge a person for the mistakes they make, as we all make them, but you can judge them for what they do afterwards. And after this, when it is all over, you will still have a son with the same hopes and dreams. They have not diminished. If you can dream it, then you have to believe it can happen — right?
So this Mothering Sunday, please think back to that morning in the 80s, the first Mother’s Day without Dad, when a six-year-old me got up early and made breakfast for you. Do you remember it? Could you ever forget? A slice of bread a doorstep thick and a wedge of cheese equally dense. You didn’t have to eat it, but you did, chewing every dry mouthful. I know now why you forced yourself — because it had been made with love. Well, things don’t change this year — this letter is that bread and cheese (it sure has plenty of the cheese!).
I love you so much. I am sorry I have let you down, but you have taught me that we will always pick ourselves up and become better than we were before. Thank you for everything and this year, more than ever:
Happy Mothering Sunday.
Love, your son
1. According to the passage, what made the author most upset at present?

A．Losing his freedom temporarily.

B．Being unable to phone his mother.

C．Failing to live up to his mother’s expectations.

D．Having no chance to spend the weekend with mother.

2. What does the underlined word “this” in Paragraph 4 refer to?

A．Mothering Sunday.	B．Dark time.
C．His mistake.	D．Near future.

3. What did the author do in the loneliness of his past months？

A．He summed up the causes of the failure in his life.

B．He planned to help his mother find her birth parents.

C．He recalled the fond memories of being with his mother.

D．He prepared himself to go to university for further studies.

4. Which of the following is closest in meaning to the underlined word “clichéd” in Paragraph 6?

A．Ridiculous.	B．Liberal.
C．Explicit.	D．Common.

5. Which of the following can best describe the author’s mother?

A．Selfless but stubborn.	B．Guilty but determined.
C．Selfish but responsible.	D．Caring but envious.

【推荐2】The family of a 6-year-old adopted Chinese girl who badly needs a bone marrow transplant (骨髓移植) believes they have found a match in China.

Kailee Wells suffers from a serious aplastic anemia (再生障碍性贫血), which prevents bone marrow from producing new blood cells. She has taken courses of treatment but has shown little sign of recovery.

The best help for such patients is a transplant of healthy marrow or blood cells from a suitable donor. Certain tissue of the patient and the donor must match.

Kailee’s mother, Linda Wells, made her second trip to China earlier this month to find a donor. Her husband, Owen Wells, said that his wife believed doctors there had found a match.

“For these last 22 months, we’ve been living in fear that Kailee would take a turn for the worse and there would be nothing we could do about it,” he said. “Now we have something we can use and save our little girl. We are just about ready to start jumping up and down and rejoicing.”

Wells said a Chinese girl who is about a year old has a blood sample that matches Kailee’s perfectly. The next step, he said, would be to make sure the sample is safely harvested and protected for transplant, the details of which have yet to be worked out.

Linda Wells first traveled to China in February to try to locate the girl’s birth mother, who is likely to be a match. But she found no relatives and decided to try again this month.

“This gives us so much encouragement because now we found what we thought we would never be able to find for Kailee,” Owen Wells said. “We’re going to continue our blood donor drive to try to continue to help as many people as we possibly can. We’re just so happy.”

1. What do we know about Kailee Wells?

A．She was adopted by a Chinese family.

B．She has a one-year-old sister in China.

C．She was recovering from aplastic anemia.

D．She is unable to produce new blood cells.

2. The underlined word “rejoicing” in Paragraph 5 can be best replaced by “_____”.

A．waving	B．moving
C．cheering	D．crying

3. What can we infer from the text?

A．Linda Wells has found the girl’s birth mother.

B．Owen and Linda tried every means to cure Kailee.

C．Doctors have worked out plans to protect the sample.

D．Owen and Linda visited China twice to find a perfect match.

4. What would be the best title for the text?

A．Long and deep friendship between two families.	B．Faith leads to hope.
C．Match found for a bone marrow transplant.	D．The journey to China.

【推荐2】It has always been assumed that noise is a problem unique to animals. But a new study by Ali Akbar has revealed that plants suffer too.

That plants can be damaged indirectly by noise pollution has never been in doubt. Since most flowering species depend upon pollinators (授粉者) and most fruit-bearing species need animals to spread around their seeds, it is obvious that if these animal partners are harmed by noise then their botanical counterparts will do badly, too. What has remained unknown is whether or not plants themselves suffer directly from noise pollution.

Scientists have previously assumed that plants may be able to sense sound waves as they are struck by them. A number of experiments have confirmed this in recent years — plants heavily exposed to ultrasound in the lab have shown a range of negative responses including the expression of stress-related genes, slowed growth and reduced development of seeds.

Yet attacking plants with ultrasound is not the same as growing them in the presence of actual traffic noise. To this end, Ali Akbar decided to set up an experiment to study precisely this questions.

Working with a team of colleagues, he grew marigolds (孔雀草) and sage (鼠尾草) in his lab that are commonly found in urban environments. The plants were divided into two groups after getting mature. One group was exposed to 73 decibels of traffic noise. The other group was left to grow in silence. After 15 days had passed, samples were taken from the youngest fully expanded leaves on every plant in the experiment and studied.

None of the plants exposed to the traffic noise did well. Analysis of their leaves revealed that all of them were suffering. The team found that a range of hormones(荷尔蒙) normally associated with healthy growth and development in plants were present at significantly reduced levels in the plants exposed to the noise. Two stress hormones, which are normally produced to prevent insect attacks and deal with salty soil or very cold temperatures, were elevated.

Ali Akbar’s findings make it clear that though plants lack ears, the noise of traffic still bothers them enough to trigger dramatic stress responses that are not much different to those that would be found in plants exposed to drought, highly concentrated salt or heavy metals in their soil.

The next question is whether all noise pollution affects all species in the same way. The natural world is by no means silent. Whether some plant species have evolved coping mechanisms, which might one day be collected and transferred into urban-living species, is a mystery worth exploring.

1. What did scientists believe in the past?

A．Noise is a problem directly facing both animals and plants.

B．Plants can be affected by noise in an indirect way.

C．Animal partners can do harm to their botanical partners.

D．Sound waves can damage plants because they have senses.

2. What did Ali Akbar want to confirm in their experiment?

A．Ultrasound is similar to traffic noise in that it doesn’t harm plants.

B．Plants exposed to ultrasound exhibit negative signs of growth.

C．Traffic noise causes plants to grow unhealthily and slowly.

D．Plant leaves contain hormones dealing with a harsh environment.

3. Which of the following statements is true?

A．Plants growing in silence have a reduced level of hormones

B．Plants exposed to noise respond differently from those in drought.

C．Different noise pollution has the same effect on all species.

D．An increase in stress hormones in plants means they are in hardship.

4. What can we infer from the passage?

A．Some plants may not necessarily be harmed by the sound in nature.

B．Some plants have surely developed a method to cope with traffic noise.

C．Unban-living species can be engineered to grow well in the natural world.

D．The silence in nature promotes the development of noise coping mechanisms.

【推荐3】Have you ever noticed there is some difference between city trees and forest trees? A new study finds city trees grow faster but die younger than trees in rural forestry.

As we all know, the earth would be freezing or burning hot without carbon dioxide. However, carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas, meaning it traps energy from the sun as heat. That makes temperatures near the ground rise. Human activities, especially the widespread burning of fossil fuels, have been sending extra greenhouse gases in to the air. This has led to a rise in average temperatures across the globe.

Studies had shown forests readily absorb carbon dioxide, but there hadn’t been much data on whether city trees grow, die and absorb carbon dioxide at the same rate as forest trees do. So some researchers decided to find out.

To figure out how quicky trees were growing, researchers tracked their diameters (the width of their trunks) between 2005 and 2014. A tree’s diameter increases as it grows, just as a person’s waist size increases as they gain weight. The research has shown about half the weight of a tree is carbon, while most of the rest is water. Over the nine years’ tracking, the researchers found city trees absorbed four times as much carbon dioxide from the air as forest trees. However, they were twice as likely to die. So over the lifetime of each type of tree, forest trees actually absorbed more carbon dioxide.

City trees grew faster because they have less competition for light from their neighbors. In a forest, trees tend to grow close together, shading their neighbors. Street trees also benefit from higher levels of nitrogen (氮) in rainwater. Nitrogen helps plants grow. Waste gases from gas-burning cars also contain nitrogen, thus enriching city air with nitrogen. Later, rainwater may wash much of it to the ground. Some street trees may also have better access to water than trees in the country because the underground water pipes can leak.

1. What is Paragraph 2 mainly about?

A．The greenhouse gas does harm to the earth.

B．Carbon dioxide plays apart in keeping the earth’s temperature.

C．Carbon dioxide can heat the earth.

D．Only human act iii es make the temperature rise.

2. What information can a tree diameter tell?

A．How a tree is transplanted.	B．How long a tree is.
C．How old a tree is.	D．How much water a tree contains.

3. How do city trees differ from forest trees of the same type over the lifetime in the research?

A．They could live twice longer than forest trees.

B．They took in less carbon dioxide than forest trees.

C．They could absorb more carbon dioxide than forest trees.

D．They weighed heavier than forest trees.

4. What advantage do city trees have?

A．They have no competition.	B．They grow closer together.
C．They get more nutrition like nitrogen.	D．They have better access to rainwater.

【推荐1】Going back centuries. people have developed techniques of bending living trees into new shapes. For the most part, these techniques developed independently；only now are tree shapers learning from each other and trying to grow trees into more impressive and giant forms. All tree shapers seem to discover the same basic principle：To train trees, it helps to attach. them to existing frames（结构）.

Older tree-shaping skills often served simply practical purposes. For example, by planting trees in a straight line and training their branches to weave together, gardeners could create thick hedges（树篱）.

In the 20th century, a few inventive people independently imagined new ways to shape trees. In the early 1900s. John Krubsack, a banker, planted 32 trees in his backyard to grow a chair stronger than any made in usual ways.

It took him Il years to bend and grow the trees together into a large chair. In the 1920s, Axel Erlandson, a Californian farmer, began trying to shape trees into archways（拱门）and other designs no one had imagined trees could make.

In more recent decades, tree shapers have worked to learn and further these techniques to grow artistic（艺术的）designs, objects, and even buildings. In Australia, Peter Cook developed techniques for shaping trees into figures of people, as well as mirror frames.

Beautiful as these works can be, they can also be discouraging and difficult to create. Many tree shapers have had the experience of showing their designs to experts and being told that they shouldn't be possible. They're asking trees to act in ways they normally wouldn't. A design that looks good on paper can be impossible to carry out. "You're dealing with unpredictable natural forces, "says Gale, a gardener. "It can be a flunking experience"

1. Which usually contributes to the success of tree shaping?

A．Ready-made frames.	B．The big size of the trees.
C．Designs drawn on paper.	D．Good living environment.

2. Why do people bend living trees into new shapes?

A．To achieve practical and decorative purposes.

B．To show their tree shaping techniques.

C．To challenge the rules of nature.

D．To protect trees from bending.

3. Which of the following can replace the underlined word “flunking” in the last paragraph?

A．exciting

B．boring

C．frightening

D．failing

4. What’s the best title of the text?

A．Tree shaping—a modern hobby	B．Ways to grow trees as you wish
C．The history of tree shaping	D．Influence of tree shapers

【推荐3】Grandparents who help out occasionally with childcare or provide support for others in their community tend to live longer than seniors who do not care for other people, according to a study

from Berlin, Germany.‘Having no contact with grandchildren at all can negatively impact grandparents’ health. This link could be deeply rooted in our evolutionary past when help with childcare was important for the survival of the human species,” said Sonja Hilbrand, one of the researchers. However, having full-time custody of grandchildren may harm their health.

The findings are drawn from data on more than 500 people over age 70 in the Berlin aging Study. The participants completed interviews and medical tests every two years. Overall after considering grandparents age and general state of health, the risk of dying was one-third lower for grandparents who cared for their grandchildren, compared with grandparents who didn’t provide any childcare.

Half of the grandparents who cared for grandchildren were still alive ten years after the initial interview. The same was true for participants who did not have grandchildren but supported their adult children in some way, such as helping with housework. In contrast about half of the participants who did not help others died within five years after the start of the study.

“Caregiving may be thought also as an activity that keeps caregivers physically and mentally active, said Professor Arpino, adding that previous studies suggest that caregiving may improve cognitive functioning, mental and physical health.

Arpino noted, however, that caregiving is not the only activity that can improve health, and too many caring responsibilities can take away benefits from other activities like working, being in social clubs, or volunteering.

“Children should take into account their parents' needs, willingness, and desires and agree with them on the timing and amount of childcare," Arpino suggested.

1. What is the caregiving study based on?

A．Data on elderly people.

B．Medical tests on children.

C．Human evolutionary history.

D．Interviews on local community.

2. What does the underline word“ participants”in paragraph 2 probably mean?

A．Researchers	B．Attendants
C．Care-givers	D．Specialists

3. Which statement about childcare may Arpino agree with?

A．Childcare is bound to be beneficial to grandparents.

B．Grandparenting is meant to become a growing trend.

C．Proper amounts of childcare make grandparents live longer.

D．More childcare can provide grandparents with more health.

【推荐1】On a BA flight from Johannesburg, a middle-aged South African lady found herself sitting next to a black man. She called the cabin crew attendant over to complain about her seating.

“What seems to be the problem, Madam?” Asked the attendant.

“Can’t you see?” She said, “You’ve sat me next to a black. I can’t possibly sit next to this dirty disgusting human. Find me another seat!”

“Please calm down, Madam,” the attendant replied, “The flight is very full today, but I’ll tell you what I’ll do—I’ll go and check to see if we have any seats available in club or first class.”

A few minutes later, the attendant returned with the good news, which she delivered to the lady, who cannot help but look at the people around her with a smug and self-satisfied grin.

“Madam, unfortunately, as I guessed, economy is full. I’ve spoken to the cabin services director, and club is also full. However, we do have one seat in first class.”

Before the lady had a chance to answer, the attendant continued.

“It’s most extraordinary to make this kind of upgrade, however, and I have had to get special permission from the captain. But, according to this special situation, the captain felt that it was unbelievable that someone should be forced to sit next to such an obnoxious(讨厌的) person.”

Having said that, the attendant turned to the black man sitting next to the lady, and said, “So if you’d like to get your things, sir, I have your seat ready for you.”

At that moment, the surrounding passengers stood and gave a long-lasting ovation (欢呼) while the black man walked up to the front of the plane…

1. What made the white South African lady angry?

A．She had to find the attendant to complain.	B．She couldn’t find another seat to sit down.
C．The passenger next to her is dirty.	D．She sat next to a black man.

2. Who will fly in first class?

A．The attendant.

B．The white woman.

C．The black man.

D．The captain.

3. How many types of seats are there in the plane?

A．2

B．3

C．4

D．5

4. What was the “special situation” that the attendant mentioned in Paragraph 8?

A．The woman was obnoxious.

B．The black man was obnoxious.

C．The white woman can’t sit next to a black man.

D．The passengers around can’t stand the woman any longer.

5. From the passage, we can make a conclusion that __________.

A．people don’t like those who look down on others

B．the attendant aboard is unfriendly

C．the white lady was refused to go on the plane at last

D．many passengers aboard don’t like to sit next to the black man.

【推荐2】Last year my summer holiday was spoiled by my bringing along a modern convenience that was too convenient for my own good: the iPad．Instead of looking at nature, I checked my e-mail．Instead of paddling a small boat, I followed my Twitter feed（推特简讯）．Instead of reading great novels, I stuck to reading four newspapers each morning．I was behaving as if I were still in the office．My body was on vacation, but my head wasn’t．
So this year I made up my mind to try something different: withdrawal from the Internet．I knew it wouldn’t be easy, since I’m bad at self-control．But I was determined．I started by giving the iPad to my wife．
The cellphone signal at our house was worse than in the past, making my attempts at cheating an experience in frustration （沮丧）．I was trapped, forced to go through with my plan．Largely breaking away from e-mail, Twitter and my favorite newspaper websites, I had few ways to connect to the world except for the radio—and how much radio can one listen to, really? I had to do what I had planned to do all along: read books．
This experience has had a happy ending．With determination and the strong support of my wife, I won in my vacation struggle against the Internet, realizing finally that it was I, not the iPad, that was the problem．I knew I had won when we passed a Starbucks and my wife asked if I wanted to stop to use the Wi-Fi．“I don’t need it,” I said．
However, as we return to post-vacation life, a harder test begins: Can I continue when I’m back at work?
There are times when the need to know what’s being said right now is great．I have no intention of giving up my convenience completely．But I hope to resist the temptation to check my e-mail every five minutes, which leads to checking my Twitter feed and a website or two．
I think a vacation is supposed to help you rest your brain to become more productive．Here I hope this one worked．
1. What do we know about the author’s last summer vacation?

A．He was determined to enjoy the beautiful view．

B．His iPad ruined his plan of finishing a great novel．

C．He hated himself for acting as if he were working on vacation．

D．He felt satisfied that he had stuck to his usual timetable．

2. What did the author do to keep away from the Internet this year?

A．He cut off his cellphone signal．

B．He handed his iPad to his wife．

C．He refused to cheat in his house．

D．He listened to the radio most of the time．

3. When back at work, the author will probably choose to ________．

A．keep control of when and how to use the Internet

B．continue to road more and more books

C．stay away from the Internet for ever

D．stop checking what is being said right now completely

4. What is the author’s opinion of a great vacation in the passage?

A．A vacation is having nothing to do but read all day．

B．A vacation proves that a life of pleasure is overvalued．

C．A vacation means a change of pace to make one more creative．

D．A vacation is a period of time to do whatever one wishes to．

【推荐3】Zoos have traditionally been built in a certain way: Animals on the inside, humans on the outside, peering in. This separation is good in theory—humans and animals need to be protected from one another—but terrible in practice, as animals end up living in an environment far from a natural habitat. A new plan for a Zoo in Denmark wants to reverse those roles, giving animals more freedom in captivity while effectively placing humans inside protective barriers.

Called Zootopia, the conceptual design has the goal of turning the safari(野外观兽旅行)style zoo into a place where animals determine interaction—not humans. “Try to imagine if you asked the animals what they would like. What would they decide?” says the director of the project. “They want their nature back, so to speak, and we are going to try to create that”.

In Zootopia, animals will wander free around the perimeter while humans observe, hidden away from view in underground passageways and naturalistic architecture structures. Visitors can watch lions through an underground enclosure disguised as a hill. They'll peek out at giraffes through windowed houses built into the side of a hilly plains. Outside of the main circular entrance, there will be no traditional buildings. “We want to take away human influence,” said Zootopia's designers.

The main challenge, of course, is to design the zoo in a way that the enclosure is still there but it's not visible. The two-phase plan, which will cost around $200 million, is still in the improving and approval phase; it'll be at least five years until we see any work finished on the park, and it's likely to take upwards of 10 years before it opens. Can the animals wait that long?

1. Why does a zoo in Denmark plan to create Zootopia?

A．to protect animals from humans.

B．to provide animals with a natural habitat.

C．to provide humans with more freedom in the zoo.

D．to protect humans and give animals enough freedom.

2. Different from traditional zoos, in Zootopia         .

A．animals enjoy full freedom.	B．there will be no conventional buildings.
C．humans watch animals without being noticed.	D．humans can interact with animals at their will.

3. What can we infer from the last paragraph?

A．It’s tricky to design the enclosure.

B．Zootopia is now under construction.

C．There is a long way to go before Zootopia operates.

D．Zootopia arouses people’s concern about animals.

4. What is the passage mainly about?

A．the future of Zootopia	B．the development of Zootopia
C．the fall of traditional zoos	D．the concept of a cage-free zoo