【推荐1】How do people find their ways? At first, people did it by looking at the sun, the moon and stars. Later, we started to use the compass. Today, there are navigation(导航) satellite systems.

A navigation satellite system uses groups of satellites. They send information to a receiver, such as your smartphones. Then they can find where you are.

The earliest navigation system is the Global Positioning System (GPS) of the United States. The US has put 24 satellites into space to make sure GPS can locate a person correctly and globally. Russia’s GLONASS and European Union’s Galileo can also work globally.

The BeiDou Navigation Satellite System (BDS) is China’s homegrown navigation system. It was set up in 2000. With it, China became the third country to build a navigation system after the US and Russia.

BeiDou can find you wherever you are. It helps you go faster by finding shortcuts and using correct directions. When you are in trouble and call the police, they will know exactly where you are if you have a smartphone that uses BeiDou.

Today, there are more than 20 BeiDou satellites above our heads. And the system is able to offer open services to the Asia-Pacific area.

China plans to send more BeiDou-3 satellites into space. BeiDou-3’s position accuracy (精确度) is less than five metres. By 2020, BeiDou system has had 35 satellites and begun serving globally.

1. How did people find their ways at first according to this passage?

A．By looking at the sun, the moon, and stars.	B．By using the navigation satellite systems.
C．By looking at the compass.	D．By using private tools.

2. What does the underlined word “receiver” in the second paragraph mean?

A．评论家

B．接收器

C．听筒

D．管理人

3. How many navigation satellite systems are mentioned in the passage?

A．Two.

B．Three.

C．Four.

D．Five.

4. What do you know about the BeiDou system?

A．It was set up before GPS.	B．It started serving globally in 2020.
C．There are less than 20 BeiDou satellites today.	D．BeiDou can’t serve the Asia-Pacific area.

5. What’s the best title for this passage?

A．Beidou Lights up Sky	B．Better Beidou, Better Business
C．Navigation Systems of the World	D．Locating a Person Correctly

【推荐3】          Television is a relatively stable advertising medium. In many ways, the television ads today are almost the same to those two decades ago. Most television ads still feature actors, still run 30 or 60 seconds, and still show a product. However, the different medium of the Internet causes unique challenges to advertisers, forcing them to adapt their practices and techniques.
          In the early days of Internet marketing, online advertisers used banner (框式广告) and pop-up ads (弹出式广告) to attract customers. These techniques reached large audiences, led to many sales leads, and came at a low cost. However, a small number of Internet users began to consider these advertising techniques annoying. Yet because marketing strategies relying heavily on banners and pop-ups produced results, companies invested growing amounts of money into purchasing these ad types. As consumers became more complicated, frustration with these online advertising techniques grew. Independent programmers began to develop tools that blocked banner and pop-up ads.
          A major development in online marketing came with the introduction of pay-per-click ads. Unlike banner or pop-up ads, which originally required companies to pay every time a website visitor saw an ad, pay-per-click ads allowed companies to pay only when an interested potential customer clicked on an ad. More importantly, however, these ads are not affected by the pop-up and banner blockers. As a result of these advantages and the incredible growth in the use of search engines, which provide excellent places for pay-per-click advertising, a great number of companies began turning to pay-per-click marketing. However, as with the banner and pop-up ads, pay-per-click ads came with their shortcomings. When companies began pouring billions of dollars into this emerging medium, online advertising specialists started to notice the presence of what would later be called click fraud (欺诈): representatives of a company with no interest in the product advertised by a competitor click on the competitor’s ads simply to increase the marketing cost of the competitor. Click fraud grew so rapidly that marketers sought to diversify (摆脱) their online positions away from pay-per-click marketing through new mediums.
          Although pay-per-click advertising remains a common and effective advertising tool, marketers adapted yet again to the changing elements of the Internet by adopting new techniques such as pay-per-performance advertising. As the pace of the Internet’s evolution increases, it seems all the more likely that advertising successfully on the Internet will require a strategy that avoids constancy (持续性) and welcomes change.
1. What is the main idea of the passage?

A．The pace of the Internet’s evolution is increasing and will only increase in the future.

B．Internet advertising fails to reach Internet users, causing ads to be blocked.

C．The Internet has experienced dramatic changes in short periods of time.

D．Rapid development of the Internet calls for new advertising strategies and mediums.

2. As an advertising medium, the television and the Internet mainly differ in ________.

A．the type of individual each medium reaches

B．whether the medium is interactive

C．the pace at which the medium develops

D．the cost of advertising with each medium

3. According to the passage, which of the following is a typical click fraud?

A．Using software to block competitors’ advertisements.

B．Clicking on the pay-per-click ads of competitors.

C．Clicking on the banner advertisements of opponent companies.

D．Using search engine to attack the pages of competitors.

4. What does the author imply about the future of pay-per-performance advertising?

A．It will eventually become less popular just like other forms of Internet advertising.

B．It will not face shortcomings due to its differing approach to online marketing.

C．Internet users will develop free software to block its effectiveness.

D．Although it improves on pay-per-click advertising, it still suffers from click fraud.

【推荐1】In 2018, a severe drought brought Cape Town close to “Day Zero”, when it could have become the world’s first major city to run out of water. Dam levels in South Africa’s Western Cape fell to below a fifth of capacity and the province suffered its worst water crisis in 100 years.

“The water supply was dwindling and it just wasn’t raining,” recalls Thinus Booysen, a professor at Stellenbosch University, who had created a device in 2015 designed to help homeowners cut their power usage. Seeking to reduce water waste, Booysen figured he could adapt the device to measure water usage instead of electricity use.

Soon, Booysen launched a start-up, Bridging the Internet of Things (BridgloT), to develop his idea. Called Count Dropula, the device reports water usage once a minute while many conventional devices only record data once an hour. The system uses an app in the user’s cellphone and sends short messages in real time. “Within minutes, we would be able to tell the user, ‘Something has burst, or something is leaking,’” he says.

Then Booysen discovered that a key issue was maintenance (维修), with the poorest schools using by far the most water. Leaking toilets could waste 1,000 liters of water per day. “We found that the biggest problems are things like children not closing taps properly, but often that would be because the taps just don’t close,” Booysen explains. During the test, the invention saved one school more than three million liters of water in three months. Another reduced its water usage 55 percent in four months.

Businesses including Cape Talk radio station and Africa’s largest food company, Shoprite, became sponsors, partnering with the Western Cape Education Department to install (安装) test devices in 350 schools. They saved more than $2.7 million and almost 550 million liters of water in 17 months. Booysen has looked at expanding to government buildings, hospitals and hotels. There are plans to roll out the device across Africa.

1. What does the underlined word “dwindling” in Paragraph 2 probably mean?

A．Beginning	B．Continuing.
C．Expanding.	D．Decreasing.

2. Which words can best describe Booysen?

A．Proud and determined.

B．Cautious and friendly.

C．Creative and caring.

D．Ambitious but generous.

3. What do we know about Count Dropula?

A．It works smartly to help save water.

B．It was designed by Booysen in 2015.

C．It will soon be tested in 350 schools.

D．It cuts power usage efficiently.

4. What will Booysen probably do next?

A．He will become a member of Shoprite.

B．He will further promote his new invention.

C．He will stop water pollution in Cape Town.

D．He will travel around Africa for better ideas.

【推荐2】Imagine that you, a newly-graduated student were looking for a single apartment. You wandered into a housing agent and learnt that there were three apartments available. The three apartments were almost the same in every aspect except their distances to your workplace and street noise levels. Apartment A takes the longest to go to work, but it is also the quietest. Apartment C takes the least time, but sits near a busy, noisy street. Apartment B is moderate on distances and street noise. Assume that you value convenience as much as quietness. Which apartment will you take?

You may find the decision somehow difficult. After all, all apartments seem similarly desirable, and each apartment has its unique advantages and disadvantages. Unable to figure out whether you should give up convenience for quietness, you are likely to end up with Apartment B—the one with relatively moderate value on convenience and quietness. Researchers call this the “compromise effect”—under decision conflicts, consumers tend to take the middle route, a tendency that grows increasingly obvious as the number of available choices increases.

What exactly motivates consumers to choose a middle or compromise option? You choose the middle apartment because you are determined to look for the “best” apartment—one that takes the least time to your office and at the same time lies in the quietest neighborhood. Unfortunately, such a satisfying option doesn’t exist in a compromise choice set—a shorter distance requires you to give up some quality sleep, and quietness at night comes at the cost of hurry in the morning, particularly if you are late. It is a powerful psychological principle that losses can weigh twice as much as same sized gains. Unwilling to give up either benefit, you are likely to end up with a compromise option—you don’t gain, nor do you lose.

1. The example of a student looking for an apartment is to ________.

A．introduce the topic.	B．describe the situation
C．explain the problem	D．give the evidence

2. “Compromise effect” often occurs when people ________.

A．give up convenience	B．deal with decision conflicts
C．gain rather than lose	D．find satisfying options

3. What is the last paragraph mainly about?

A．Benefits of a compromise.	B．Importance of a compromise.
C．Ideas against a compromise.	D．Reasons for a compromise.

【推荐1】You have probably heard of the Mozart effect. It's the idea that if children or even babies listen to music composed by Mozart, they will become more intelligent. A quick Internet search reveals plenty of products to assist you in the task. Whatever your age is there are CDs and books to help you taste the power of Mozart's music, but when it comes to scientific evidence that it can make you more clever, the picture is more mixed.

The phrase “the Mozart effect” was made up in 1991, but it was a study described two years later in the journal Nature that sparked real media and public interest about the idea that listening to classical music somehow improves the brain. It is one of those ideas that sound reasonable. Mozart was undoubtedly a genius himself; his music is complex and there is a hope that if we listen to enough of it, we'll become more intelligent.

The idea took off, with thousands of parents playing Mozart to their children, and in 1998 Zell Miller, the Governor of the state of Georgia in the US, even asked for money to be set aside in the state budget so that every newborn baby could be sent a CD of classical music. It was not just babies and children who were exposed to Mozart's music on purpose, even an Italian farmer proudly explained that the cows were played Mozart three times a day to help them produce better milk.

I'll leave the debate on the impact on milk yield to farmers, but what about the evidence that listening to Mozart makes people more intelligent? More research was carried out but an analysis of sixteen different studies confirmed that listening to music does lead to a temporary improvement in the ability to handle shapes mentally, but the benefits are short－lived and it doesn't make us more intelligent.

1. What can we learn from Paragraph 1?

A．Mozart composed many musical pieces for children.

B．Children listening to Mozart will be more intelligent.

C．There are few products on the Internet about Mozart's music.

D．There is little scientific evidence to support the Mozart effect.

2. Why did many people believe in the idea of the Mozart effect?

A．Because a study described it in the journal Nature.

B．Because Mozart himself was a genius.

C．Because Mozart's music is enjoyable.

D．Because Mozart's music makes people relaxed.

3. The underlined sentence in Paragraph 3 suggests that ________.

A．people were strongly against the idea

B．the idea was accepted by many people

C．Mozart played an important part in people's life

D．the US government helped promote the idea

4. What is the author's attitude towards the Mozart effect?

A．Favorable.	B．Objective.
C．Doubtful.	D．Positive.

【推荐2】When you look at fashion shows or see the latest clothes for this year in a magazine, you might think you’ve seen it all before. It sometimes seems that most of the designers are just going back to ideas that have already been around at least once before. If you really want to know what the future of fashion is, you need to look at an area that is alwasys looking forward: technology. The meeting point of fashion and technology is where the really exciting new ideas are.

For several years now, people have been talking about “wearable technology” as the next big development. In fact, some products that fit this description are already in the shops. You can buy watches that do everything your smart phone can do, or glasses with computers in that follow your eye movements and feed information to you as you walk around. But there’s much more to wearable technology than that.

Sports clothing is one area where new ideas are developing very fast. Runners and other sports people already wear small computers on their wrists that give them continuous information about how fast they’re running, how hard their bodies are working and so on. Experts agree that it’s often sports people (ususally young men) who are the first to take up new fashion ideas. Others then follow.

Women, it seems, are usually more interested in what clothes look like than what they can do, and techology has a part to play here too. Designers are already making clothes that can change color with how you are feeling, or react to sound. And if you think that sound unlikely, just think of all the things we accept as quite normal today that seemed impossible or silly only ten years ago.

The main reason that things like this aren’t in normal shops is that they aren’t cheap. But, as with all technological products, the price will surely come down fast. In any case, technological clothing doesn’t have to be expensive.

1. What does the author intend to tell us in the first paragraph?

A．Technology develops faster than fashion.

B．The old fashion ideas are more popular.

C．Technology can bring new ideas to fashion.

D．Fashion keeps moving forward.

2. What does the underlined word “that” in Para 4 refer to?

A．The fact that women prefer the fashion style.

B．The truth that people’s feelings can be controlled by clothes.

C．Clothes that can answer questions.

D．Clothes that can change colors according to wearers’ feelings.

3. What can we learn from the text?

A．Technological clothing is not available on the market.

B．Sports people are the first to accept new fashions.

C．Women do not like technological clothing.

D．Technological clothing will be expensive.

4. What is the author’s attitude towards wearable technology’s future?

A．Doubtful	B．Optimistic
C．Negative	D．Objective

【推荐3】When international aid is given, steps must be taken to ensure (确保)that the aid reaches the people for whom it is intended. The way to achieve this may not be simple. It is very difficult for a nation to give help directly to people in another nation.             The United Nations Organization (UNO) could undertake to direct the distribution of aid. Here however rises the problem of costs. Also tied with this is time. Perhaps the UNO could set up a body of devoted men and women in every country who can             speedily distribute aid to victims of floods and earthquakes.
More than the help that one nation can give to another during a disaster; it would be more effective to give other forms of help during normal times. A common proverb says, “Give me a fish and I eat for day, teach me to fish and I eat for a lifetime.” If we follow this wise saying, it would be right to teach people from less developed nations to take care of themselves. For example, a country could share its technology with another. This could be in simple areas like agriculture or in more complex areas like medical and health care or even in building satellites. Even small country is able to help less developed nations. Sometimes what is take for granted, like the setting up of a water purification plant or the administration of a school, could be useful for countries which are looking about to solve common problems. It does not cost much to share such simple things. Exchange students could be attached for a number of months or years and learn the required craft while on the site. They can then take their knowledge back to their homelands and if necessary come back form time to time to clear doubts or to update themselves. Such aid will be truly helpful and there is no chance of it being temporary or of it falling into the wrong hands.
Many countries run extensive courses in all sorts of skills. It will not cost much to include deserving foreigners in these courses. Besides giving effective help to the countries concerned, there is also the build-up of friendships to consider. Giving             direct help by giving materials may be effective in the short run and must continue to be given in the event of emergencies. However, in the long run what is really effective would be the sharing of knowledge.
1. According to the author, how could international aid reach the victims in time?

A．By solving the cost problems

B．By solving the transportation problems

C．By setting up a body of devoted people in every country.

D．By relying on the direct distribution of the UNO.

2. What does the author try to express in the underlined sentence?

A．Providing food is vital

B．Learning to fish is helpful

C．Teaching skills is essential

D．Looking after others is important.

3. Which aid is likely to fall into the wrong hands?

A．A medical team.	B．An exchange program.
C．A water plant.	D．Financial support.

4. What can we infer about international aid from the passage?

A．It is facing difficulties

B．It is unnecessary during normal times

C．It should be given in the form of materials

D．It has gained support developed countries

【推荐1】Alex Elman runs a big business — something hard to imagine after she lost her sight in her twenties. But Elman says that losing her sight helped her focus on finding success.

Elman's father planted a hillside vineyard in western Massachusetts in 1981. It's where Elman fled during the darkest period of her life. When she was 27 years old, she went blind due to complications from Juvenile diabetes (青少年糖尿病)17 years ago. She recalled, "I hid in my home. I hid in the place, to me, that was the safest place in the world."

Elman is now the founder of Alex Elman Wines, a growing collection of organic wines from all around the world: Chianti from Italy, Torrontes from Argentina. Elman doesn't work alone. Her assistant, a guide dog named Hanley, is something of a wine taster, and quite a beggar. Hanley travels to all of the wineries that Elman does, from South America to Europe.

At first, Elman resisted the idea of a seeing-eye dog. Now it's hard to imagine her life, or her business, without him. She said, "When someone tells me something is organic and I don't really believe it because I taste something funny on it, I'll put it in front of his face and if he likes the wine, he'll actually go in and sniff it. If it's not right, he'll turn his head away ... He gets in the dirt with me. He scratches around. He makes sure that we see earthworms and butterflies. That's how we know that the soil is actually organic, that there are no chemicals."

Elman told CBS News she believes the loss of her vision was a gift. She said, "It allowed me to pay attention to what I thought was important and also to be able to teach people that the broken hang nail is not a big deal, you know what I mean? Don't sweat the small stuff. Don't sweat the big stuff either."

1. From Para.2, we know that Elman _____.

A．got through her hard days in the vineyard

B．liked playing hide-and-seek during her childhood

C．suffered from juvenile diabetes from 27 years old

D．lost her sight while helping with farm work in 1981

2. Hanley is described as "quite a beggar" because _____.

A．it is a guide dog	B．it is capable of drinking
C．it wins permission to be with Elman	D．it travels all over the world

3. Whenever Elman couldn't judge the wine exactly, she would _____.

A．make Hanley drink it	B．turn to Hanley for advice
C．order Hanley to head away	D．have another taste herself

4. According to the passage, which of the following will Elman most probably agree with?

A．There is no royal road to success.

B．A single tree does not make a forest.

C．The eye is blind if the mind is absent.

D．When life gives you lemons, make lemonade.

【推荐2】However urban life strikes you, cities worldwide have been growing ever more rapidly. Some of this growth has occurred in the developed world, but the most dramatic increase has been in the Third World. Almost all the world’s population growth over the next 30 years will take place in the cities of developing countries
By the year 2030, for the first time in history, 60 percent of the world’s people will be living in cities.
This is actually good news in some ways. “Cities are the fundamental building blocks of prosperity,” says Marc Weiss, chairman of the Prague Institute for Global Urban Development, “ both for the nation and for families.” Industrial and commercial activities in urban areas account for between 50 and 80 percent of the gross domestic product (GDP) in most countries of the world“ there’s the crazy notion that the way to deal with a city’s problems is to keep people out of them,”Weiss continued. “But the problems of the rural life are even more serious than those of the city.” For better or worse, urban-watchers are clear on one point: The quality of life for most people in the future will be determined by the quality of cities. Those cities will be bigger than ever. And yet, population numbers by themselves don’t determine a city’s prospects; after all, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, and Hamburg, Germany, have the same population. Nor is explosive growth necessarily the determining factor. “City problems,” one authority points out, “mostly have to do with weak, ineffective, and usually unrepresentative city governments.”
1. The passage mainly discusses ______________.

A．Big cities.

B．City life.

C．Population.

D．Gross Domestic Product.

2. According to the passage, in the year of 2030 _______.

A．there will be 21 cities having a population of more than 10 million.

B．rural area will be extinct.

C．most people will live in cities.

D．the third world will keep abreast with the developed world.

3. In the author’s opinion, _________.

A．better city, better life

B．both urban and rural areas have a larger population

C．the larger population, the faster a city develops

D．both urban and rural areas have larger gross domestic products

4. Which statement is NOT true according to the passage?

A．The developing countries develop faster than the developed countries.

B．Cities contribute more to the GDP than the villagers.

C．Some problems are more easily solved in cities than in country.

D．It’s impossible to solve urban problems by getting people out of cities.

5. The last paragraph implies that ____________.

A．Public services are ineffective.

B．Cities are increasing too fast.

C．Population is not linked with development.

D．Government should be responsible for the problems in the cities.

【推荐3】Waste sorting is a procedure that involves the separation of waste on purpose into different kinds as defined by the final use for the waste. That is to say, this separation of waste is usually aimed at different ends, including for recycling purposes, or even for producing power. As such, the waste sorting could fall into sorts like paper-based materials, plastic-based materials and organic materials. The process could also be started by hand. Indeed, some companies that manage waste have some sorts of waste sorting facilities in place for this aim.

An example of the type of waste sorting that could be observed at the individual level is the common type in cities where various waste bins are set out with clear indications of the type of waste that should be put into them. Some of the waste bins have pictures indicating that only paper should be put into the bins, some are meant for cigarette butts, others for plastics, and the rest could be for any other type of waste. Also, persons at home could begin the process of waste sorting by dividing the waste into various kinds before taking it out. Some companies and government organizations even offer incentives, such as offering some money to consumers in exchange for them bringing in used bottles and plastics.

Some companies have specifically created facilities that are only targeted toward the large-scale application of waste sorting for the purpose of separating the various collected waste into.

One of the purposes for the application of waste sorting could be for the sake of separating materials for recycling, such as plastics and paper. It could also be for the separation of the waste into the general categories of wet and dry waste. The process could also be for the purpose of sorting commercial waste. With the application, I'm sure it is becoming easier to separate waste.

1. What can we know about waste sorting?

A．It is aimed at producing paper.	B．Its process is started by hand.
C．Its kinds are decided by the final use.	D．Its aim is to recycle waste successfully.

2. What can help the residents sort waste easily?

A．Educating them to know common knowledge.

B．Laying out marked dustbins in the neighborhood.

C．Warning them not to drop rubbish everywhere.

D．Indicating only recycled waste can be collected.

3. What does the underlined word "incentives" mean in the passage?

A．Methods.

B．Suggestions.

C．Rewards.

D．Solutions.

4. What is the author's attitude towards the application?

A．Doubtful.

B．Worried.

C．Indifferent.

D．Positive.