Electric cars are dirty. In fact, not only are they dirty, they might even be dirtier than their gasoline-powered cousins.
People in California love to talk about “zero-emissions vehicles”, but people inCalifornia seem to be clueless about where electricity comes from. Power plants mostly use fireto make it. Aside from the new folks who have their roofs covered with solar cells, we get ourelectricity from generators (发电机). Generators are fueled by something—usually coal, oil,but also by heat generated in nuclear power plants. There are a few wind farms andgeothermal (地热)plants as well, but by far we get electricity mainly by burning something.
In other words, those “zero-emissions” cars are likely coal-burning cars. It’s justbecause the coal is burned somewhere else, it looks clean. It is not. It’s as if the CaliforniaGreens are covering their eyes—“ If I can’t see it, it’s not happening.” Gasoline is anincredibly efficient way to power a vehicle; a gallon of gas has a lot of energy in it. But whenyou take that gas (or another fuel) and first use it to make electricity, you waste a nice partof that energy, mostly in the form of wasted heat—at the generator, through the transmissionlines, etc.
A gallon of gas may propel your car 25 miles. But the electricity you get from that gallonof gas won’t get you as far — so electric cars burn more fuel than gasoline-poweredones. If our electricity came mostly from nukes or geothermal, or hydro or wind or solar, thenan electric car truly would be clean. But for political, technical, and economic reasons, wedon’t use much of those energy sources.
In addition, electric cars’ batteries which are poisonous for a long time will eventuallyend up in a landfill. And finally, when cars are the polluters, the pollution is spread acrossall the roads. When it’s a power plant, though, all the junk is in one place. Nature is verygood at cleaning up when things are too concentrated, but it takes a lot longer when all thegarbage is in one spot.
1. What is the main idea of the text?| A．Electric cars are far from being clean. |
| B．Electric cars are better than gasoline-powered ones. |
| C．People cast doubts on electric cars’ batteries. |
| D．Gasoline is an efficient way to power a vehicle. |
| A．no less than 25 miles | B．as far as 50 miles |
| C．less than 25 miles | D．as far as 25 miles |
| A．are more environmentally friendly |
| B．burn more fuel than gas-powered ones |
| C．are very good at cleaning up when things are not too concentrated |
| D．are poisonous for a long time and will eventually end up in a landfill |
| A．being green is good and should be encouraged in communication |
| B．electric cars are the dominant vehicles compared with their gas-poweredcousins |
| C．zero-emissions vehicles should be chosen to protect our environment |
| D．electric cars are not clean because we get electricity mainly by burning something |
相似题推荐
【推荐1】South Baltimore is often thought of as a place to avoid—folks are taught to be careful of it. There was a mass shooting this past July, and another in early September.
“People think Curtis Bay is a dangerous place. It’s not. It’s just we’re surrounded by dangerous things,” says Taysia Thompson, 17.
Taysia, is one of the Free Your Voice members, a group of student activists fighting against a very different kind of danger in their neighborhood: air pollution and climate change. Now, the focus of their movement is the mountains of coal. Coal releases a fine, black dust small enough to get into people’s lungs. It makes respiratory (呼吸的) diseases worse, or can even cause disease and premature death. And there are the greenhouse gas emissions after the coal is burned.
The teens of Free Your Voice are taking on a big opponent: the massive goods transportation company CSX, which transported more than 8 million tons of coal through South Baltimore in 2021. The goal is to eventually get the state regulators to deny the permit that CSX needs to operate, or at least require the company to enclose all the coal, or at the very least put water onto all of it so there’s less dust blowing around.
This past summer, Taysia and three other students spent their time gathering evidence to try and get the coal pollution out of their neighborhood. They used sticky paper to gather samples of dust from all over the neighborhood to prove that the dust is from coal. They are also sending dust samples to a scientist in California, who uses an electron microscope to compare the dust that’s in this neighborhood to samples from the piles of coal at the terminal in South Baltimore to see if it matches.
The students now have support from their community. But the responses from officials have not been very satisfying. “Everyone is just breathing the air. And we will keep fighting.” says Taysia.
1. Why do the teens of Free Your Voice take CSX as an opponent?| A．To cure lung diseases. | B．To tackle air pollution. |
| C．To resist mass shootings. | D．To cut premature death rate. |
| A．Scientists will examine the dust samples. |
| B．Officials will refuse CSX the operation permit. |
| C．State regulators will keep fighting against pollution. |
| D．Locals in Curtis Bay will clear the mountains of coal away. |
| A．It isn’t all plain sailing. | B．It will definitely end in victory. |
| C．The teens lack solid evidence. | D．The teens work on it all by themselves. |
| A．Tourists Avoiding Dangerous South Baltimore |
| B．Teens Gaining Support in Environmental Protection |
| C．Student Activists Pushing back against Big Polluter |
| D．17-year-old Girl Combating Coal Pollution in Neighborhood |
【推荐2】I need a new phone. Like many of us with older model iPhones, my battery life is just a few hours and I’ve stopped updating the operating system to extend the phone’s life. But I’m having a tough time making the final decision. It’s not the cost. It’s not the inconvenience either. It’s the environment.
Making smartphones, laptops, and other tech products takes a lot of resources. This is partly due to the carbon emissions from the producing process. Still, the most negative impact comes from the mining of the rare earth metals that make your phone work. If you’re reading this on your phone right now, you’re holding about 0.034 grams of gold, 0.34 grams of silver, and smaller amounts of other rare elements. These are tiny amounts, but consider the demand for smartphones around the world.
All of these rare elements have to be mined from inside the Earth, in places like China and some African countries. Mining is hugely environmentally destructive: forests are destroyed, the ground is disturbed, and water quality in the area takes a dive.
Now take these environmental risks, and combine them with the fact that the average lifespan (使用寿命) of a smartphone is just two years, the length of your contract with your cell phone company. After that, if you’re lucky, you get a “free” upgrade. Awesome, right? Sure, if you ignore the fact that the environmental impact of a new phone is about the same as using your old one for a decade.
It’s nearly impossible to live in the 21st century without contributing to the destruction of the environment and climate change. I am guilty as well — eat meat and occasionally fly. But that doesn’t mean that we should stop trying to do better, or ignore the consequences of our actions. I urge you to think carefully about your next smartphone purchase no matter what those Black Friday ads may be trying to tell you.
1. What does the author’s final decision refer to?| A．Going ahead with getting a new phone. |
| B．Taking action to help reduce pollution. |
| C．Updating your phone’s operating system. |
| D．Raising money for anew smartphone. |
| A．To reveal the consequences of making smartphones. |
| B．To analyze the causes of making new smartphones. |
| C．To emphasize the huge demand for smartphones. |
| D．To provide solutions to cutting smartphone use. |
| A．It is economical to upgrade your device. |
| B．The lifespan of smartphones is narrowed. |
| C．The upgrade comes at the expense of the environment. |
| D．Signing a contract spares users from economic pressure. |
| A．To push for environmentally friendly smartphones. |
| B．To discourage businesses from making smartphones. |
| C．To advise readers not to change smartphones often. |
| D．To demonstrate the negative effects of smartphones. |
【推荐3】When Alex Lin was 11 years old, he read an article about e-waste. The article said that people were dumping (倾倒) their e-waste in places it should never go. This was dangerous, the article said, because e-waste contains poisonous chemicals. These harmful substances can get into crops, animals, water supplies — and people.
“I was really worried,” Alex remembers. He showed the article to a few of his classmates. They were worried, too. “What if it’s happening here? We could be poisoning the environment and not even know it.”
“Maybe we can help,” Alex said. They made this their next project. First, they had to find out what the situation was in their town. So they sent out a survey. What they found amazed them: Of the people who answered the survey, only one in eight even knew what e-waste was, let alone how to properly dispose of (处理) it. One man had dug a huge hole in his backyard and dumped about 50 old Mac computers inside it.
Alex and his friends went into action. They advertised in the local newspaper, asking residents to bring their unwanted electronics to the school parking lot. The drive lasted two days, and they collected over 21,000 pounds of e-waste.
The next step was to set up a permanent e-waste drop-off center for the town and to find a company to recycle the waste. That was when Alex and his friends learned another scary fact about e-waste — some recycling companies don’t dispose of e-waste safely themselves. Instead, they ship it overseas to countries where local environmental laws are not enforced (施行) and kids their age work at picking apart and burning e-waste with no protection. After a while, these kids get very sick. “We checked carefully online to make sure the company we chose didn’t do this,” Alex says.
Because of the work of people like Alex and his team, more and more people are getting the message about safe disposal of e-waste.
1. What concerned Alex and his classmates?| A．Their town was polluted on purpose. |
| B．People were ignorant of e-waste in their town. |
| C．Many good electronic devices were thrown away. |
| D．There were many low-quality electronic devices. |
| A．Comforting. | B．Amusing. | C．Misleading. | D．Alarming. |
| A．To find a safe e-waste disposal method. | B．To learn more about the danger of e-waste. |
| C．To select a responsible recycling company. | D．To interpret international environmental laws. |
| A．We might make a difference if we care. | B．We can start small but should dream big. |
| C．We should respect the wisdom of crowds. | D．We should borrow nothing from tomorrow. |
【推荐1】Given how well it performs, there are plenty of ways that ChatGPT could level the playing field for students and others working in a second language or struggling with composing sentences. Since ChatGPT generates new, original material, its text is not technically plagiarism (抄袭).
Students could use ChatGPT like a coach to help improve their writing and grammar, or even to explain subjects they find challenging. Educators could use ChatGPT to help generate lesson plans, activities or assessments—perhaps even personalized to address the needs or goals of specific students.
Xiaoming Zhai, an expert in science education at the University of Georgia in Athens, tested ChatGPT to see if it could write an academic paper. He was impressed with how easy it was to summarize knowledge and generate good writing using the tool. “It’s really amazing,” he says.
All of this sounds wonderful, but really big problems exist. Most worrying, ChatGPT and other similar tools can often get things very wrong. They don’t pull facts from databases. Rather, they are trained to generate new text that sounds natural. They remix language without understanding it, which can lead to glaring mistakes. In an early advertisement for the Bard chatbot, ChatGPT made a factual error about the James Webb Space Telescope, incorrectly claiming that it had taken the very first picture of an exoplanet. And ChatGPT said in a conversation posted on Twitter that the fastest marine mammal was the peregrine falcon (游隼). A falcon, of course, is a bird and doesn’t live in the ocean.
Most of ChatGPT’s training data come from before September 2021, and it does not provide sources for its information. If asked for sources, it makes them up, Fiesler, an expert in the ethics of technology, revealed in one video. Avani Rao, a sophomore in California University, discovered the exact same thing. When she asked ChatGPT for citations (引文), it gave her sources that looked correct. But they didn’t actually exist.
1. What’s Xiaoming Zhai’s attitude towards ChatGPT?| A．Doubtful. | B．Indifferent. | C．Favorable. | D．Objective. |
| A．Because it doesn’t understand the language it has created. |
| B．Because it is developed and trained in a wrong way. |
| C．Because it is still under research and development. |
| D．Because the databases it pull facts from are limited. |
| A．A teacher preparing for lessons. | B．A professor teaching paper-writing. |
| C．A student stuck on making sentences. | D．An author asking for information sources. |
| A．The Good and Bad of ChatGPT | B．ChatGPT and the Future of Writing |
| C．ChatGPT’s Academic Performance | D．Amazing Things You Can Do with ChatGPT |
【推荐2】It must have been a very clever human who looked at a sheep walking past and thought of the use its wool might have!
The oldest surviving textile (纺织品)made out of wool is around 3,500 years old. Wool was probably the first fiber to be woven into textiles. Because when humans stopped hunting and started raising animals, it was their first step from a wild life to a civilized one. Sheep became a convenience store for the new lifestyle of our ancestor during the Stone Age, a walking food supply that required little care. Sheep provided all — meat and milk for food, skin and bones for clothing, shelters and tools.
Some sheep were suitable to roast while others were to produce wool, as sheep fit for eating do not necessarily have high-quality wool. Early wild species of sheep had long outer hair protecting their short wool undercoats. It was this underlayer that was highly suitable for textile use, so they were selectively bred into modern sheep.
Great empires were built on the backs of sheep and their wool. Around 1800 BC, the civilization of Babylonia was famous for its wool. After the Romans conquered Spain, they developed a new breed (品种)that would come to be known as Spanish Merino, with the whitest, finest wool ever known. Today, the Merino is the most highly regarded breed in the world.
The Chinese held onto the secret of silk for thousands of years before Europeans even got an idea about how to put two threads together. With wool, they seem to have got their revenge.
1. What do we know about raising sheep in the Stone Age?| A．People made great efforts to raise sheep. |
| B．People exchanged sheep for what they needed. |
| C．Sheep led to the boom of ancient society. |
| D．Sheep met many basic needs of ancient people. |
| A．Economic value of sheep. |
| B．Features of sheep breeds. |
| C．Choice of suitable sheep breeds. |
| D．Development of the wool industry. |
| A．The wisdom of ancient people. |
| B．The aggression of ancient nations. |
| C．The link between their rise and wool. |
| D．The greatness of well-organized ancient society. |
| A．They lost their advantage of something. |
| B．They won and got rid of the shame of failure. |
| C．They did something harmful to their opponent. |
| D．They were taking pains to catch up with others. |
【推荐3】Remember your first day of school? How did your mom pick out your clothes the day before and how nervous did you feel when entering the classroom? Or what about the first time you rode a bike, with all of the excitement coursing through your blood? Some memories stick with us and we can remember them like scenes in a movie.These are known as episodic memories (情景记忆).
Recently, a new study has shown that certain cells, called time cells, make this type of memory possible.These cells help us form clear memories in time order.As memories are being formed, these time cells put a stamp on the memories.Later, this stamp helps us recount the exact sequence of events and experiences.
The 27 participants in the study had electrodes (电极）placed in their brains.This allowed scientists to measure cell activity in the hippocampus (海马体) and another area involved in the perception of time.The participants were shown sequences of 12 to 15 words on a computer screen in a period of about 30 seconds.Then they were asked to recall the words.
During this time, the scientists looked at the activity of different brain cells.They found specific cells that fired signals during each sequence of words.
Gyorgy Buzsaki, a professor at New York University, said the study is important, as it can explain memory problems found in people who suffered damage to their hippocampus.In one experiment, scientists compared the memories of people who had just taken a tour of a college campus.Those without damage to their hippocampus had similar stories.However, those who had suffered damage to this area of the brain were unable to recall the proper sequence of events.
The number of people suffering from memory disorders is increasing.As of September 2019, around 50 million people worldwide were suffering from dementia (痴呆), and the number will triple by 2050, according to the World Health Organization.Such studies will help scientists develop better treatment for people suffering from Alzheimer’s disease, the cause of 60 to 70 percent of dementia cases.
1. Why does the author mention the first day of school in the first paragraph?| A．To make comparison. | B．To introduce the topic. |
| C．To support the argument. | D．To provide examples. |
| A．Result. | B．Number. | C．Detail. | D．Order. |
| A．A medicine magazine. | B．A science fiction. |
| C．A guide book. | D．An autobiography. |
【推荐1】About five weeks ago, I noticed the skin of our pet lizard was growing dusty. It worried me. I reported the strange surface on the skin of the lizard to my husband and children the next morning. Seconds later, our lizard emerged from its tank with its old skin flowing behind it.
I didn't think about it much until a morning last week when I knocked my favorite teapot off the table. It burst into hundreds of pieces. As I swept up the mess, I wondered why we had been breaking so many things over the months.
The destruction started three months ago. It was my husband's birthday. He had just lost his job. The uncertainty was starting to wear on us, so I wanted to do something special.
“Let's make a cake for Dad!” I cried.
My kids screamed with joy. We baked, iced and sprinkled for most of the day. Candles on the cake! Balloons on the walls! Flowers on the table!
Two hours before my husband came back home from another job interview, my daughter climbed up to grab a glass vase from a high shelf. It fell and crashed beside the cake. Tiny pieces of glass were everywhere. She sobbed loudly as I threw the cake away. My husband had banana pudding for his birthday.
Three days ago, the light in our living room suddenly went out. After several frustrating hours of unsuccessful attempts to fix it, my husband suggested watching the Michael Jordan documentary series The Last Dance.
The poignancy of Jordan retiring from his beloved basketball to play baseball and what had pushed him to make such a tough decision took me by surprise. As I watched him take off his basketball uniform and replace it with a baseball uniform, I saw him leaving behind the layer that no longer served him, just as our lizard had. Neither of them chose the moment that had transformed them. But they had to live with who they were after everything was different. Just like us. I realized that we have to learn to leave the past behind.
Humans do not shed skin as easily as other animals. The beginning of change is upsetting. The process is tiring. Damage changes us before we are ready. I see our lizard, raw and nearly new.
Jordan said that no matter how it ends, it starts with hope. With our tender, hopeful skin, that is where we begin.
1. What can we learn about the pet lizard from Paragraph 1?| A．Its tank grew dirty. | B．Its old skin came off. |
| C．It got a skin disease. | D．It went missing. |
| A．The birthday cake was ruined. | B．The author made good puddings. |
| C．Pudding was his favorite dessert. | D．They couldn't afford a birthday cake. |
| A．To prove a theory. | B．To define a concept. |
| C．To develop the theme. | D．To provide the background. |
| A．letting go of the past | B．looking for a new job |
| C．getting rid of a bad habit | D．giving up an opportunity |
| A．Love of family helps us survive great hardships. | B．It's not the end of the world if we break things. |
| C．We should move on no matter what happens. | D．Past experiences should be treasured. |
【推荐2】Ed Jackson："I want to be the first quadriplegic（四肢瘫痪者）to climb Everest，"
Former Wasps player was told he would never walk again after an accident in 2017.
"It was a lovely day like this and we had a barbecue." Ed Jackson says as he remembers the accident which broke his neck，ended his rugby career and left him paralyzed（瘫痪）with a medical prediction that he would never walk again. "I walked to the edge of a feature pool with a waterfall at one end. I couldn't tell which was the deep end so I dived in，fell straight to the bottom，and hit the top of my head. When I tried to stand up I couldn't. Luckily my dad was in the pool. He's a retired doctor and he knew it was a spinal cord（脊柱）issue."
Jackson survived surgery but was told that his paralysis was almost certainly permanent. "After five days of trying to move my toes with nothing happening，I thought there's a good chance they're right."
"Every night on my own，I imagined what it would be like for my wife to look after me for the rest of my life. If this was going to continue all my life，I would never have forgiven myself." In the dark，his mind was at war with itself. "That fear of the unknown is terrifying. Every day I would stare at my toe and try to move it."
On day six his toe twitched（抽动）！The next few months became a series of his exciting moments. Jackson kept chasing those wins.
Once Jackson could walk he decided to climb Snowdon to coincide with the first anniversary of the accident. On 1 April 2018，with a heavy brace on his leg，Jackson reached the summit of Snowdon.
Climbing is exhausting and dangerous for a quadriplegic but，with his face lit by sunshine，Jackson uncovers a previously secret dream. "I want to be the first quadriplegic to climb Everest. I would love that to be where the story of my recovery ends. And then I just want to go on laughing and living.
1. What was Jackson doing when the accident happened？| A．Barbecuing. | B．Swimming. |
| C．Playing rugby. | D．Diving. |
| A．He was able to walk six days later. |
| B．Doctors' prediction had no effect on him. |
| C．The accident left him deadly injured. |
| D．He climbed Snowdon to repay his family's concern. |
| A．His father's first aid. | B．The successful surgery. |
| C．His affection for his wife. | D．His desire to climb. |
| A．An Accident to Change a Man | B．A Quadriplegic to Climb Everest |
| C．A Secret Dream to Success | D．A Man Crazy About Climbing |
【推荐3】WASHINGTON, D.C. — Hungry pandas don’t particularly care whether there’s a partial government shutdown. The Washington National Zoological Park’s most famous residents still need to be fed, as do thousands of other animals, even as the facility closed its gates Wednesday.
The zoo will remain closed to the public. On Wednesday, the normally bustling (熙熙攘攘的) Connecticut Avenue gateway was locked tight. Just behind the fence, a statue of a giant panda that would normally be covered in climbing children sat alone and neglected. The zoo’s animal care staff will use the downtime to conduct comprehensive medical checks on the animals.
The partial government shutdown began on December 22. President Donald Trump’s demand for money for a border wall with Mexico has been the sticking point in passing funding bills for several government departments. Trump said Wednesday that the shutdown will last "as long as it takes."
With no signs that the shutdown will end soon, Washington’s tourism officials are working to ensure that tourists don’t cancel their trips entirely. The mayor’s office and Washington’s tourism bureau (旅游局) have released a list of private museums and off-the-beaten-path attractions for visitors including the Newseum, the National Museum of Women in the Arts, the Museum of the Bible, Ford’s Theatre and DAR Constitution Hall.
“We know that federal government shutdowns cause many disruptions for both residents and visitors, but we want to remind everyone that while the federal government might be closed, D.C. is open for business,” said Mayor Muriel Bowser.
The pandas were not available for comment.
1. Why are the animals waiting to be fed?| A．Because the government has been closed by Donald Trump. |
| B．Because the zoo makes a profit not enough to support the animals. |
| C．Because people’s interest in animals gradually declines. |
| D．Because the government has limited the budget of the zoo. |
| A．Most Americans do not support the president’s plan to build a wall on the border. |
| B．It might take a long time for lawmakers and the president to agree on a budget. |
| C．Lawmakers are working with the president to reopen the government quickly. |
| D．The government shutdown has caused many people to lose their jobs. |
| A．To attract more visitors from other countries. |
| B．To reduce the effect of government shutdown. |
| C．To keep people away from the bustling zoo. |
| D．To call on citizens to learn about the country’s history and culture. |
| A．The pandas’ needs were not as important as building the border wall. |
| B．The pandas were busy with cleaning up their own mess. |
| C．The pandas were innocent and the victims of the political fight. |
| D．The pandas were ignored and unavailable for visitors. |
In order to make this adjustment, you need to pay special attention to your sleep environment and your preparation for sleep. If shift work is a necessary part of your work life, here are some suggestions that may help.
Arrange to sleep uninterrupted in a quiet, dark room. This means you may have to turn off or unplug your phone, hang darkening curtains on the windows or wear a sleep eye mask, and train your family and friends to leave you alone while you sleep.
Fit in a nap（小睡）. When your daytime sleep period is too short, taking a short nap of less than 30 minutes just before work or on a break has been shown to improve alertness and enhance performance.
Develop and follow a sleep routine. It's best if you go to sleep and wake up at the same time every day. Try not to vary this too much on weekends. Your body likes routine.
Take extra care to make healthy choices. You may be tempted to reach for unhealthy foods or nicotine to stay awake or alcohol to try to sleep. But ultimately these choices are more harmful than helpful.
If you have tried all these things and are still having problems getting enough quality sleep during the day, talk to your doctor or a sleep specialist. Sometimes medications（药物治疗）may be helpful and safe. In other cases, there may be an underlying sleep disorder that needs to be addressed.
1. The purpose of the text is to .| A．persuade workers to have a god sleep. |
| B．advise night workers to keep healthy |
| C．encourage workers to do day work |
| D．help night workers to sleep well |
| A．A suitable account of alcohol to help sleep. |
| B．A regular life on weekday’s and weekends. |
| C．A dark room without phoebes to sleep in. |
| D．A break for sleeping anytime during the day. |
| A．If he suffers from a sleep disorder for the first time. |
| B．If a good sleep environment is greatly needed for him. |
| C．If he falls to get quality sleep through his own efforts. |
| D．If he has the problem of bailing to sleep in the daytime. |
| A．night workers need a long time to fall asleep |
| B．constant breaks at work help to improve performance |
| C．it is difficult to create a good sleep environment |
| D．night work requires people to adjust their body clocks |
【推荐2】With schools close in the UK during the COVID-19 outbreak, most children must now be homeschooled. Parents have found themselves not only having to balance work and having the children at home but also having to try and teach them. How can you keep your children focused while learning?
Nicola Anderson--Head of Customer Support at the UK’s leading online tutoring service MyTutor, provides new, up-to-date tips to hearten parents at this difficult time and advises how they can structure their children’s days.
One is to keep to a regular timetable so it still feels like your child is taking part in the school day. Ms Anderson said: “Children of all ages do well on routine and boundaries; schools providethisin abundance and it will most children feel secure and happy if they can follow a similar timetable for their homeschooling.”
Another tip is to create an environment which is favorable to learning. She said:” The environment should be free from distractions and ideally near to an open window, to provide them with appropriate levels of fresh air and natural light. Some children find it comfortable and helpful to have quiet, instrumental music playing in the background to help them to focus, but this isn’t for everyone.”
Using technology to help with your child’s learning is also advised. Many schools are offering online classes and resources to help and companies are reducing or even not charging their fees during this time.
It is also important to keep physical exercise as a part of your routine. Joe Wicks, otherwise known as The Body Coach, has been keeping kids healthy with daily 10 minute workouts for children on his Youtube channel. Ms Anderson said:” It can be anything from running around the garden, walking the dog, a game of football or dancing around your living room!”
1. Who is the text intended for?| A．Student. | B．Teachers. |
| C．Coaches. | D．Parents. |
| A．Homeschooling. | B．Tutoring service. |
| C．A regular timetable. | D．Difficult time: |
| A．To allow children to adjust schedule freely. |
| B．To offer children peaceful study environment. |
| C．To recommend high-tech to online schools. |
| D．To combine routine with kids' mental health. |
| A．How to improve homeschooling efficiency. |
| B．How to obtain online learning resources. |
| C．How to study attentively at home. |
| D．How to design a proper schedule. |
【推荐3】In the 2006 film version of The Devil Wears Prada, Miranda Priestly, played by Meryl Streep, scolds her unattractive assistant for imagining that high fashion doesn’t affect her, Priestly explains how the deep blue color of the assistant’s sweater descended over the years from fashion shows to departments stores and to the bargain bin in which the poor girl doubtless found her garment.
This top-down conception of the fashion business couldn’t be more out of date or at odds with the feverish world described in Overdressed, Elizabeth Cline’s three-year indictment of “fast fashion”. In the last decade or so, advances in technology have allowed mass-market labels such as Zara, H&M, and Uniqlo to react to trends more quickly and anticipate demand more precisely. Quicker turnarounds mean less wasted inventory, more frequent release, and more profit. These labels encourage style-conscious consumers to see clothes as disposable-meant to last only a wash or two, although they don’t advertise that-and to renew their wardrobe every few weeks. By offering on-trend items at dirt-cheap prices, Cline argues, these brands have hijacked fashion cycles, shaking an industry long accustomed to a seasonal pace.
The victims of this revolution, of course, are not limited to designers. For H&M to offer a $5.95 knit miniskirt in all its 2,300-plus stores around the world, it must rely on low-wage overseas labor, order in volumes that strain natural resources, and use massive amounts of harmful chemicals.
Overdressed is the fashion world’s answer to consumer-activist bestsellers like Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma. “Mass-produced clothing, like fast food, fills a hunger and need, yet is non-durable and wasteful,” Cline argues. Americans, she finds, buy roughly 20 billion garments a year—about 64 items per person—and no matter how much they give away, this excess leads to waste.
Towards the end of Overdressed, Cline introduced her ideal, a Brooklyn woman named Sarah Kate Beaumont, who since 2008 has made all of her own clothes-and beautifully. But as Cline is the first to note, it took Beaumont decades to perfect her craft; her example can’t be knocked off.
Though several fast-fashion companies have made efforts to curb their impact on labor and the environment—including H&M, with its green Conscious Collection line—Cline believes lasting change can only be affected by the customer. She exhibits the idealism common to many advocates of sustainability, be it in food or in energy. Vanity is a constant; people will only start shopping more sustainably when they can’t afford not to.
1. Priestly criticizes her assistant for her _____________.| A．poor bargaining skill. | B．insensitivity to fashion. |
| C．obsession with high fashion. | D．lack of imagination. |
| A．accusation. | B．enthusiasm. | C．indifference. | D．tolerance. |
| A．Vanity has more often been found in idealists. |
| B．The fast-fashion industry ignores sustainability. |
| C．People are more interested in unaffordable garments. |
| D．Pricing is vital to environment-friendly purchasing. |
| A．Satire on an extravagant lifestyle. | B．Challenge to a high-fashion myth. |
| C．Criticism of the fast-fashion industry. | D．Exposure of a mass-market secret. |
