【推荐1】Castles(城堡)and temples wear away after hundreds of years, but the symbols and E-books came from the development of words on the stone often survive.    1     science and technology, and can be read online. Many people believe that regular books will be one day replaced by e-books.

Books and e-books share lots of similarities. They are both items created by great minds,    2     You can draw lines or highlight some details on books or e-books as notes. The notes can be kept for a long time.

    3    Firstly, books don’t have to be charged, while e-books need electricity if we want to read them. Meanwhile, spending too much time reading e-books may do harm to our eyes. Moreover, e-books don't share the same weight when held in the hand as regular books, nor do they give that sense of fulfillment that comes from finishing a thick book. However，e-book devices(设备)are easy to carry.    4    

A disadvantage of e-book devices is that people tend to get distracted(分心)when they’re using one, as many devices often have apps or games on them.    5    

Whichever you prefer, both books and e-books are just a way to help us gain knowledge and get to know other people 's experiences. They are both necessary, so it's too early to say one will disappear.

A．But they have diferences as well

B．They take less space than books

C．Indeed our lives are formed by what books we read

D．This is similar to how the words in books manage to live on

E．They all have an index to introduce the main topic of each book

F．But with a regular book, your mind is always absorbed in the words

G．Each individual can decide which reading method is best for them based on their own needs

【推荐2】Can you imagine being paid millions for playing in a sports team? That you were able to fill stadiums with people coming to see you play? That you could attract fans crazily like a superstar? ESports have made all that possible and more. The fever for video games has had a great influence on the sports industry.

To what degree ESports, or electronic sports can be considered a sport remains a question. If we stick to the meaning in the dictionary, sport is understood to be any physical activity, whether a game or competition, that requires training and following rules. A second meaning is: all kinds of physical activities are done for health or for fun.

Spending hours and hours in front of a computer or with a mobile phone in hand playing video games is not a physical activity. But when the voices that defend it belong to famous athletes, and when the International Olympic Committee itself is, seriously thinking about the possibility of introducing eSports in the 2020 Olympic Games, it is at least worth considering the argument.

It is clear that eSports has had a big influence on the sports industry and its fans are increasing all the time. Athletes, sports teams, sponsors(赞助商) inside and outside the sport, and the media support the industry greatly, which attracts and satisfies the young generation. Professional video game competitions have made nearly $900 million over the past three years thanks to sponsorship and advertising. The industry is expected to make over $1.1 billion and reach 215 million users in 2019, according to a study by the consultant Newzoo.

The big players in the eSports leagues have turned their ‘hobby’ into a profession which offers a chance to gain fame or become famous. Those guys who distance themselves from the world, shutting themselves up for up to 12 hours a day in a dark room to connect with people from all over the planet through a video game, now fill large stadiums and compete for prizes that are over one million dollars. They are the envy of half the planet!

As a famous NBA superstar, Shaquille O’Neal says “the fans themselves are the ones who opened my eyes. ESports are a great business chance and the industry cannot be left out.”

While millions of dollars are paid around the world for these new idols, we can continue to argue whether they are sports or not. If only for fun…

1. Which is right according to the passage?

A．ESports attract all people for the prizes.

B．ESports have no clear effect on business.

C．ESports have little influence on the sports industry.

D．ESports are different from the sports people traditionally consider.

2. Why do the big players in the eSports become the envy of half the planet?

A．They shut themselves up for up to 12 hours a day, playing video games.

B．They have turned their ‘hobby’ into a profession, earning fame and wealth.

C．They can connect with people from all over the planet through a video game.

D．They have got support from famous athletes and the International Olympic Committee.

3. What’s the best title of the passage?

A．Esports: a way to wealth	B．Esports: sport or business
C．Esports: a meaningful sport	D．Esports: a great opportunity

【推荐3】This summer, when earthquakes rocked Southern California on back-to-back days, it was a close-to-home reminder that we may one day experience the “Big One,” a quake with the power to kill and destroy. A few people, however, saw something else: a photo opportunity. Tourists poured to a large crack in a highway to see evidence of the damage for themselves and, of course, take a quick selfie.

    1     It feeds so many of the weakest parts of ourselves: our born attraction to images of human faces instead of landscapes or objects, our interest in capturing memories, and yes, our need for social approval. Yet, it is easy to feel uncomfortable with selfies and even laugh at them, especially when they are risky or in bad taste. So why do we take selfies?

Selfies have become so common that my grandma does them when we get together.     2     Instead, selfies are a way for us to connect and communicate, and feel a more personal connection with people all around the world.

In one example, researchers developed a #ScientistsWhoSelfie campaign studying how scientists posting photos of themselves with their work on social media influenced public opinion of the profession.     3     “Those scientists in general were described as warmer, but no less competent,” said Paige Jarreau, the lead author on the study.

While some scientists refused at first, fearing that their colleagues would consider them self-centered or think they take their work less seriously, those concerns disappeared once researchers explained that it could help build public trust. “This is not just me taking a duck-faced (嘟嘟嘴) selfie or trying to look cute on camera,” said Dr Jarreau. “This is me being able to better tell the story about my science in a way that helps people trust me.”

    4     Dr Jarreau recalled a road trip she made to national parks, where she witnessed so many people taking selfies, she began taking photos of the selfie-takers themselves. “Ask yourself: Why are you posting that picture?” she said. “If there was a platform that didn’t enable likes, would you post it?” After all, there are other ways to develop a social connection. You could send the photo to a private group. You could put it in a frame at home. You could be mindful in the moment by not taking it at all.     5    

A．But if you do, watch your step.

B．There is no denying the draw of the selfie.

C．With each like, we feel better about ourselves.

D．The thought that selfie is the symbol of self-love is outdated.

E．However, most of us post mechanically, even madly, in our daily lives.

F．After all, people have been making self-portraits for long, in remarkably similar ways.

G．They found that photos with human faces helped improve impressions in a field that is often subject to negative stereotypes.

【推荐1】A man may usually be known by the books he reads as well as by the company he keeps, for there is the companionship of books as well as of men.    1    

A good book may be among the best of friends. I's the same today that it always was, and it will never change. It is the most patient and cheerful of companions.    2    It always receives us with the same kindness, amusing and instructing us in youth, and comforting and supporting us in age.

    3    They do so just as two persons sometimes discover a friend by the admiration which they both have for a third. There's a proverb, “Love me, love my dog.” But there is more wisdom in this: “Love me, love my book.” The book is a truer and higher bond of union. Men can think , feel , and sympathize with each other through their favorite author.

Books introduce us into the best society.    4    We hear what they said and did; we see them as if they were really alive; we sympathize with them, enjoy with them; their experience becomes ours, and we feel as if we were actors or actresses with them in the scenes which they describe.

There is a story of two men: one was a king, who dreamed every night that he was a beggar; the other was a beggar, who dreamed every night that he was a prince , and lived in a palace.    5    But when we read, we : may not only be kings and live in palaces, but, what is far better, we may transport ourselves to the mountains or the seashore, and visit the most beautiful parts of the world, without tiredness ,inconvenience or expense.

A．Imagination is sometimes more vivid than reality.

B．Books are to mankind what memory is to a man.

C．Nothing in books can long survive but what is really good.

D．It doesn't turn its back upon us in times of difficulty or hardship.

E．They bring us into the presence of the greatest minds that have ever lived.

F．And one should live in the best company whether it may be of books or men.

G．Men discover their liking for each other by the love they each have for a book.

【推荐2】Edgar Alan Poe was and is an abnormal figure among the major American writers of his period. It seems to have been true of Poe that no one could look at him without seeing more than they would wish.

Poe published The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket in 1838,his only novel. Its importance is suggested by the fact that his major work comes after it. The Narrative’s shortcomings are sometimes considered to be the fact that it was written for money, as it surely was, and as almost everything else Poe wrote was also. This is not exceptional among writers anywhere, though in the case of Poe it is often treated as if his having done so were disgraceful. Be that as it may, the Narrative makes its way to a peak as strange and powerful as anything to be found in his greatest tales.

The word that reoccurs most importantly in Poe's fictions is horror. His stories are often shaped to bring the narrator and the reader to a place where the use of the word is reasonable, where the word and the experience it arouses are explored or by implication defined. Perhaps it is because Poe's tales test the limits of mental health and good manners that he is both popular and criticized.

The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym has the grand scale of the nineteenth-century voyage of discovery, and a different and larger scale in the suggestions that appear as the voyage goes on. The Narrative is frequently compared with Moby-Dick, published thirteen years later, after Poe’s death. Poe uses whiteness as a highly ambiguous symbol, by no means to be interpreted as purity or holiness or by association with any other positive value. There is blackness, too, in The Narrative, specifically associated with the populations that live in the regions nearest the South Pole. The native people in Tasmania, the island south of Australia, were said by explorers and settlers to be black, and were in any case, with the word “black,” swept into the large category of those related to displacement, exploitation, and worse.

Something very like the occupation of Kentucky by white settlers lies behind the events that bring Pym to the far-sighted conclusion of his narrative. In the early years of the nineteenth century the British began what made the native people of Tasmania die out, who had tried to resist white invasion of their island. Such occupations were, of course, a major business of Europeans, or whites, almost everywhere in the world at the time Poe wrote. They, were boasted of as progress. It would have required unusual sensibility in Poe to have taken a different, very dark view of the phenomenon. But he was an unusual man. And the horror that fascinated him and gave such dreadful unity to his tales is often the unavoidable, conflict of the self by a perfect justice, the exposure of a guilty act in a form that makes its reveal a falling back of the mind against itself.

Young Pym is simply telling a story of a kind popular at the time, a voyage adventure lived out beyond the farthest reaches of exploration. The story is disturbed by its own deeper tendencies, the rising through this surface of the kind of recognition that must find expression in another form of literature. As his ship approaches the region of the South Pole, Pym notes the mildness of the climate, coolly listing the resources of the islands, which were assumed by such voyagers to be there for the taking.

If The Narrative were a conventional story, the immense roar and the towering flames might attract the notice of a passing sail—and there would be no need for a note explaining its lacking an ending. But the force of the narrative carries it beyond the fate of individuals, toward an engagement with a reality beyond any temporary human drama.

1. What does the underlined part in Paragraph 1 mean?

A．Allan Poe was a famous America writer of his period.

B．People expect too much of the American writer—Alan Poe.

C．Unlike other writers, Allan Poe is a unique and unusual writer.

D．People think Poe is a popular novelist like other famous writers.

2. Where is the novel The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym probably set?

A．In the South Pacific.	B．In Australia.
C．At the South Pole.	D．In Kentucky.

3. Which of the following can describe the characteristic of The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym?

A．Poverty is the main theme of the novel.

B．The novel is full of justice elements.

C．Blackness can possibly be felt in the novel.

D．Whiteness is the obvious symbol of the novel.

4. Which of the following might be taken from the novel The Narrative?

A．“One of these adventures was related by way of introduction to a longer narrative.”

B．“Gordon Pym’s father was a respectable trader at Nantucket, where Pym was born.”

C．“The wind, as I before said, blew freshly from the southwest. The night was very cold.”

D．“Pym at length hit upon the idea of working on the terrors and guilty conscience of the mate.”

5. Which of the following statements is True according to the passage?

A．The Narrative is an adventurous story written in a conventional way.

B．The Narrative is considered one of Alan Poe's famous novels.

C．Allan Poe was misunderstood to write The Narrative for money.

D．Readers might not understand why The Narrative ended so abruptly.

【推荐1】A block chain is a data structure that stores time-ordered data in an ever-growing list, like an accounting ledger (分类账簿). The block chain data structure is maintained using a distributed, peer-to-peer network of computers with no central “master”. As with many new concepts, block chain technology generates much optimism and also a huge amount of interest and excitement. Just what is it good for?

In short, block chains may improve any process where people need to access, confirm, send or store information securely. This information could be a person’s identity, a product’s shipment history or digital property like money.

Typical databases, spreadsheets (电子数据表), and ledgers store information about objects, people, and the interactions between them. Much of the world’s information, from credit card transactions to medical and financial records, is stored in these types of systems.

These types of systems have considerable, well-documented weaknesses that arise from their being centralized. A centralized record is hard to understand and is exposed to unauthorized access or distribution. It is also, because it is a ‘master’ copy, exposed to permanent changing or deletion.

Block chains are also used to store information. Crucially, however, they differ in two ways.

First, information is parceled up into blocks and sealed. Bitcoin, for example, which is the most famous practical example of a production block chain, stores all transactions across the network every ten minutes or so in a single, newly formed block. Each block is then added to the previous one to form a chain.

Second, this “chain of blocks” is not stored centrally. Instead, each block is copied and distributed around an entire network of peers - be they individuals, public institutions, or businesses - using distributed ledger technology. (The terms “block chain” and “distributed ledger” are often used interchangeably; for the sake of clarity, block chain technologies tend to employ distributed ledger technology.)

Each time someone adds a new block to the chain, meanwhile it is added to everyone’s copy.

1. What is the biggest strength of a block chain?

A．It promotes people’s enthusiasm about new technology.

B．It strengthens the security of processing information.

C．It enables people to store more data in time order.

D．It stores a large part of world’s information.

2. The typical systems used to store information are weak in that ________.

A．they are difficult to operate	B．they can be accessed easily
C．they have a central “master”	D．they store considerable documents

3. The passage is developed mainly by ________.

A．making comparisons	B．giving examples
C．making a list	D．showing the effect and causes

4. What’s the author’s purpose in writing the passage?

A．To analyze the weaknesses of typical systems.

B．To encourage the popularity of the block chain.

C．To introduce the new concept of the block chain.

D．To compare the two different data structures.

【推荐1】The outstanding biography — from the same author who brought us Steve Jobs and Einstein — portrays the life of the complicated Renaissance (文艺复兴时期的) artist with details. We come to see da Vinci as not only an inventor of musical instruments and early flying machines, but also a notebook keeper and vegetarian (素食者), who had trouble finishing many of the projects and paintings he started.

Yet what is most thrilling is getting to know da Vinci the scientist. Isaacson explains how loving science and applying the scientific method to observing the world was really what made da Vinci a great artist and, Isaacson argues, a genius.

Da Vinci was fascinated with observing and understanding phenomena in nature, from the proportions of the human body to how the muscles of the lips moved. He wanted to know about everything around him, in minute detail, Isaacson writes. He wondered about questions “most people over the age of ten no longer puzzle about”— for instance, how the tongue of a woodpecker works.

To learn about the world, da Vinci combined his own observations with experimentation. Never formally schooled, “he preferred to induce from experiments rather than deduce from theoretical principles,” Isaacson explains. He recorded his observations, looked for patterns among them, and then tested those patterns through additional observation and experimentation.

“When he became fascinated with the idea that he could invent flying machines, three and a half centuries before the Wright brothers flew the first airplane, he observed various birds and filled notebooks with the function and speed at which their wings flapped. That’s why lsaacson calls da Vinci an exemplar of this scientific method.” He goes on: “Galileo, born 112 years after Leonardo, is usually credited with being the first to develop this kind of approach and is often regarded as the father of modern science,” the historian Fritjof Capra wrote. “There can be no doubt that this honor would have been bestowed (赐予) on Leonardo da Vinci had he published his scientific writings during his lifetime, or had his notebooks been widely studied soon after his death.”

Da Vinci’s emphasis on empirical observation also helped him improve his art. First, he was able to use what he learned from looking at nature to paint and draw. His studies of the body, animals, motion, shadow and light, perspective and proportion helped him better understand what he was seeing in front of him, and render it in art more accurately and finely than anyone else of his time. He also used his observations of nature to make connections among phenomena. A recorder (竖笛) was like a larynx (喉管) in the throat. Here’s Isaacson again: What Leonardo probably began as four distinct elements ended up woven together in a way that illustrates a fundamental theme in his art and science: the interconnectedness of nature, the unity of its patterns, and the similarity between the workings of the human body and those of the earth.

Most importantly, his curiosity-driven explorations, and ability to connect art and science, helped him innovate in his work. They helped him think differently, Isaacson argues. Da Vinci made surprisingly diverse series of discoveries, including conceptualizing the helicopter and solar power and advancing knowledge about everything from the reproductive organs to botany. This genius is also what drew lsaacson to Albert Einstein and Steve Jobs as subjects: They’re all innovators who were inspired by and drew connections between art and science.

“Leonardo da Vinci is the ultimate example of the main theme of my previous biographies: how the ability to make connections across disciplines — arts and sciences, humanities and technology — is a key to innovation, imagination, and genius,” Isaacson writes. And this wonderful book is a reminder, in a time of increasingly narrow specialization and focus, that the methods of Renaissance men like da Vinci are as relevant as ever.

1. What made da Vinci’s thinking different from others?

A．He was used to skipping school.

B．He kept his childhood’s sense of curiosity.

C．He was filled with ambition to become an artist and inventor.

D．He developed a fascination with historical novels.

2. Why does Isaacson mention Galileo in the book?

A．To introduce his important findings.

B．To memorize the father of modern science.

C．To show the prejudice faced by da Vinci during his lifetime.

D．To illustrate the significance of da Vinci' s research method.

3. The underlined word “render”in Paragraph 6 can be replaced by “______”

A．express

B．mix

C．confirm

D．associate

4. What does Isaacson think of the methods of Renaissance men?

A．They are too complicated to understand.

B．They focus on the workings of the human body.

C．They are more accurate than modern methods.

D．They still apply to contemporary scientific research.

5. What might be the best title for the passage?

A．How a Genius Changed the World

B．The Features of Renaissance Art

C．How Science Shaped His Art

D．The Comparison between Induction and Deduction

【推荐2】Teachers say the digital age has had a good influence and a not-so-good influence on this generation of American teenagers. More than 2,000 middle and high school teachers took an online survey. Researchers also spoke with teachers in focus groups.

Three-quarters of the teachers said the Internet and digital search tools have had a "mostly positive" effect on their students research habits and skills. But 87 percent agreed that these technologies are creating an "easily distracted generation with short attention spans (持续时间) " .And 64 percent said the technologies "do more to distract students than to help them academically(学业上) " . Many students think "doing research" now means just doing a quick search on Google.

The Pew Internet Project did the survey with the College Board and the. National Writing Project. Most of the teachers came from Advanced Placement classes, which provide college-level work for high school students.

Judy Buchanan is director of the National Writing Project and a co-author of the report. Ms. Buchanan says digital research tools are helping students learn more, and learn faster. Teachers really welcome these tools because they are ways to make some of learning exciting and engaging.Young people welcome these tools. And the goal is to really help them become creators of content,and meaningful content, and not just sort of consumers.

But one problem the survey found is that many students are lacking in digital literacy. In other words, they trust too much of the information they find on the Internet. Another problem the survey found is blamed on something that might not seem like a problem at all: being able toquickly find information online.

Teachers say the result is a reduction in the desire and ability of their students to work hard to find answers. They say students are depending too much on search engines and do not makeenough use of printed books or libraries. Many teachers are also concerned that the Internet makes it easy for students to copy work done by others instead of using their own abilities.

1. The purpose of the online survey is to____

A．convince teachers of the Internet good influence

B．spread knowledge about the Internet search tools

C．influence teachers viewpoints towards the digital age

D．get teachers opinions about the digital age influence on youngsters

2. What negative effect did the teachers think the Internet search has on students?

A．It results in students bad research habits and skills.

B．It brings too much negative information to the students.

C．It distracts students attention instead of helping them academically.

D．It develops their interest in doing research through the technologies.

3. What's Judy Buchanans attitude towards the use of the digital research tools?

A．Supportive.

B．Negative.

C．Critical.

D．Doubtful.

4. What can be inferred from the passage?

A．The Internet is changing everybody's life.

B．Teachers welcome the digital age in general.

C．The Internet has more disadvantages than advantages.

D．Solutions to the lack of digital literacy should be found.