【推荐1】As cultural symbols go, the American car is quite young. The Model T Ford was built at the Piquette Plant in Michigan a century ago, with the first rolling off the assembly line（装配线） on September 27, 1908. Only eleven cars were produced the next month. But eventually Henry Ford would build fifteen million of them.

Modern America was born on the road, behind a wheel. The car shaped some of the most lasting aspects of American culture: the roadside diner, the billboard, the motel, even the hamburger. For most of the last century, the car represented what it meant to be American—going forward at high speed to find new worlds. The road novel, the road movie, these are the most typical American ideas, born of abundant petrol, cheap cars and a never-ending interstate highway system, the largest public works project in history.

In 1928 Herbert Hoover imagined an America with “a chicken in every pot and a car in every garage.” Since then, this society has moved onward, never looking back, as the car transformed America from a farm-based society into an industrial

The cars that drove the American Dream have helped to create a global ecological disaster. In America the demand for oil has grown by 22 percent since 1990.

The problems of excessive（过度的）energy consumption, climate change and population growth have been described in a book by the American writer Thomas L. Friedman. He fears the worst, but hopes for the best.

Friedman points out that the green economy（经济）is a chance to keep American strength. “The ability to design, build and export green technologies for producing clean water, clean air and healthy and abundant food is going to be the currency of power in the new century.”

1. Why is hamburger mentioned in paragraph 2?

A．To explain Americans’ love for travelling by car.

B．To show the influence of cars on American culture.

C．To stress the popularity of fast food with Americans.

D．To praise the effectiveness of America’s road system.

2. What has the use of cars in America led to?

A．Decline of economy.	B．Environmental problems.
C．A shortage of oil supply.	D．A farm-based society.

3. What is Friedman’s attitude towards America’s future?

A．Ambiguous.	B．Doubtful.
C．Hopeful.	D．Tolera

【推荐2】Directions: Read the following passage. Fill in the numbered blanks by using the information from the passage
Write NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS for each answer.
Since the earliest civilizations, people have controlled rivers to meet society's demands. Today, rivers are controlled for many reasons, primarily to maintain reliable water supplies for daily, agricultural and industrial needs, for power generation, for navigation (航行), and to prevent flooding.
River control is achieved by channelization, a term that covers a range of river engineering works, including widening, deepening, straightening and stabilization of banks, and by the construction of dams.
An important period of channelization took place in Europe during the l9'th century, when many large rivers were straightened and their beds deepened. One of the most dramatically changed was the Tisza River, a branch of the Danube that flows through Hungary. The controlling of the Tisza, designed to reduce flooding and make land for agriculture, included cutting off more than 100 meanders (河曲), shortening the river's length by nearly 400 kilometers.
One of the most common ways in which people control rivers is by damming them. The past 50 years or so has seen an increase in dam construction worldwide, and at the beginning of the 21^st century, there were about 800,000 dams globally, some towering more than 200 meters in height.
Despite their successes, many dams also cause significant environmental changes that prove harmful. Some particularly deep reservoirs (水库) can bring about earthquakes due to the stress on their bottom rocks caused by huge volumes of water. Downstream of a reservoir, the river is certainly influenced in many ways: water volume, speed and quality are all affected, leading to changes in the landscape and among plants and animals.

1. _______
2. _______
3. _______
4. _______
5. _______
6. _______
7. _______
8. _______
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10. _______

【推荐3】Back in Brisbane, Australia, for the Christmas break, I found myself in a public transport dead zone. Bikeless, 7 kilometers from where I was meeting friends and unwilling to get a taxi, I decided to borrow an electric scooter. The trip took far longer than it would have by bike, mainly because of a major spill halfway there. A rock, hit at speed, is a terrible thing: weeks later, I still had the red knees of a primary schooler.

E-scooters have appeared in Brisbane like a rash. In the UK, they are legal only on private land, but the Department for Transport is discussing how to regulate them on public roads and pathways, with the potential for legalisation later this year.

Other cities that have e-scooter rental programs have had teething problems. In Paris, mayor Anne Hidalgo described the situation last year as messy. She has announced that the city is reducing its number of e-scooters to 15,000 and plans to create laws banning them from pavements (人行道). France has put into force laws limiting e-scooter speeds to 25 kilometres per hour.

Similar to dockless (无桩的) hire bicycles, e-scooters are parked on pavements and people leave them up trees or throw them into rivers. Rough handling shortens their lifetime, which is bad for both profitability and the environment. Analysis suggests that the average e-scooter’s lifetime is just three months.

I think e-scooters are an essential part of the effort to make city transport greener. They are seen as a solution to the “last mile” problem — a potential way to reduce transport jam by rapidly getting someone to their final destination. Cars can take up 28 times the space of a person riding a bicycle.

As far as the environmental effect goes, recent research suggests that e-scooters are not as green as walking or cycling, but they are still better than cars. And despite numerous reports of serious accidents, scooting is about as safe as cycling.

Stephen Gossling at Lund University in Sweden has suggested we build car-free “micromobility” streets, where cyclists, pedestrians (行人) and e-scooters could share the road. He thinks this will reduce accident risks and invite more vulnerable (易受伤害的) traffic participants, such as children, to become active transport users.

If more e-scooters mean fewer cars on roads, an improvement in local air quality is also a likely outcome. When 20 kilometers of roads in central London closed for World Car-Free Day last September, a temporary air quality monitor in Regent Street reportedly registered a 60% drop in nitrogen dioxide.

1. What does the underlined part “a major spill” in Paragraph 1 probably mean?

A．A serious fall.	B．A sudden illness.
C．A legal defense.	D．A terrible breakdown.

2. What do we know about e-scooters in Paris?

A．They are illegal on pavements.	B．They are already out of fashion.
C．They are facing more restrictions.	D．They are more common on private land.

3. What is the author’s opinion of e-scooters?

A．They are not as safe as cycling.

B．They stand up to rough handling.

C．They are as green as cycling or walking.

D．They play a big role in the “last mile” problem.

4. What is Stephen Gossling’s suggestion?

A．To set up more care-free days.

B．To invite more cyclists to use e-scooters.

C．To get vulnerable pedestrians off the road.

D．To separate cars from e-scooters on the road.

【推荐2】Turtles have a habit of eating plastic objects floating in the sea, which may kill them. Many believe that it is because floating plastic bags look similar to jellyfish, which many types of turtles love to eat. However, lots of plastic objects that turtles eat do not look like jellyfish at all. Joseph Pfaller of the University of Florida doubts that the smell of sea micro-organisms（微生物） which live on floating plastic objects attract turtles to eat.

The kind of idea first appeared in 2016. Researchers at the University of California, Davis, noticed that certain chemicals, especially dimethyl sulphide（二甲基硫）, which can be found on plastics where micro-organisms live, are those which many seabirds sniff（嗅）to find food. These birds are more likely to eat plastics.

Since turtles usually appear above the sea surface and sniff the air when going to their feeding areas, Dr. Pfaller believed that they are following these same chemicals like those seabirds and mistakenly think that floating plastic objects are edible.

To test that idea, he and his team did an experiment using loggerhead turtles. They exposed 15 turtles to four smells: the smell of clean water; the smell of turtle-feeding food; the smell of a clean plastic bottle; and the smell of a bottle that had been kept in the ocean for five weeks to allow micro-organisms to grow on it. When sniffing both the smell of turtle-feeding food and that of five-week-old bottles, turtles kept their noses out of the water more than three times as long, and took twice as many breaths as they did when sniffing the smell of fresh bottle-plastic or clean water.

Though they have not yet tested whether dimethyl sulphide on the five-week-old bottles cause turtles to eat plastic objects, Dr. Pfaller and his team think it is highly possible.

1. Which of the following is closest in meaning to the underlined word "edible"?

A．pleasing the eyes	B．suitable for use as food
C．holding the attention	D．concerned with actual use

2. Why is the research on seabirds mentioned?

A．Seabirds prefer the smell of the plastic bottles.

B．Seabirds feed on the food similar to the turtles'.

C．Seabirds produce a certain micro-organism.

D．Seabirds break up the plastics without difficulty.

3. What is the purpose of the passage?

A．To suggest a new way to study turtles.

B．To stress the importance of sea protection.

C．To introduce the findings on the cause of turtles' death.

D．To discuss the overusę of the plastic bottles.

4. In which section of a newspaper may the passage appear?

A．Education.	B．Entertainment.
C．Science.	D．Health.

【推荐3】Humankind has tried to improve its standard of living since the very beginning of civilization (文明). Back then, and today, providing food was the basic task for a person.     1     People feel the need for not only some primary things, such as bread and shelters, but also for various facilities and luxuries. Providing humanity (人类) with these things is connected to the use of natural resources, which requires energy. In turn, the common sources of energy we use today cause pollution, so economic growth is almost inevitably connected with environmental damage.

    2     The first of these is the fact that in order to produce more goods and products, at a faster rate, the construction of large industrial plants is required. These plants produce a lot of waste, which may cause negative long-term health effects to nearby populations of animals, or people.

The traditional energy sources, which are commonly used nowadays, are considered to be the greatest polluters to the environment. There also exist so-called eco-friendly sources of energy.     3     Of course, during this time people have to make some sacrifices to support these undertakings (企业) .

In order to produce practical energy, a transformation of the natural site is often inevitable (不可避免的).     4     Application of wind energy would block airflow’s natural speed. Consequently, the pressure balance that is brought about by this current will be affected, and it is important to remember that the environment and weather conditions are directly affected by atmospheric pressure.     5     This is the embarrassment mankind has to deal with. A good balance between economic development and sustainability is forever what humankind has to keep in mind

A．There are certain aspects of economic growth which affect the environment.

B．Clean energy has always been on the priority list for a better environment.

C．For these reasons, bringing about economic growth without any resulting environmental damage is impossible.

D．However, nowadays the range of required goods has expanded significantly.

E．So humankind began to make exploration to satisfy themselves economically and mentally.

F．They are sometimes preferred but replacing the traditional sources with them also requires time.

G．This is expensive and, has harmful effects on the environment.