【推荐1】This is a true story about a boy who, the world might say, was a terrible underachiever. While in the eighth grade, he failed subjects repeatedly. High school wasn’t much better; he flunked Latin, algebra, English, and received a grade of zero in physics. The boy managed to make the school golf team, but he lost the most important golf match of the season.

It’s not that his peers (同龄人) disliked this boy; it’s just that they never really seemed to notice him much. Even “Hellos” in the hall were a rarity. Out of all the failures in his life, there was something that did hold great importance to this boy, his love of drawing. Although in high school, the cartoons he submitted to the yearbook were rejected, once out of school, the boy was so sure of his artistic talent that he approached Walt Disney Studios with drawing works. I wish I could say the studios loved his work and immediately hired him, but such was not the case; another huge rejection.

Despite his lack of successes, this boy did not give up. He then decided to write his own autobiography in cartoons, about a little boy who was regarded as a loser and a nobody.

The name of this boy was Charles Schulz, the creator of the famous Charlie Brown and comic dog Snoopy.

In life, it is sometimes easy to feel like a nobody. We pass hundreds of people on the street on our way to work, or walk through a faceless crowd in a mall, and no one seems to notice or care. Deep inside, we may know we are special and unique and have lots to offer, but unless someone takes the time to look our way and give us a chance, we may feel worthless, just like Charlie Brown who couldn’t even manage to fly a kite or kick a football properly.

Just as Charles Schulz had faith in his artistic talent, so too, we must realize that nobody is a nobody. We all have special gifts and talents, and every human being is deserving and capable of being loved and appreciated.

1. The underlined word “flunked” in Paragraph 1 is closest in meaning to ________.

A．failed	B．learned
C．achieved	D．misunderstood

2. What can we infer about the boy in Paragraph 2?

A．He was hated by his peers.

B．He achieved great success in drawing in high school.

C．His work was refused by Walt Disney Studios.

D．He earned the praise from Walt Disney Studios.

3. When the boy suffered many defeats, he ________.

A．gave up his dream finally

B．wrote some articles in magazines

C．he turned to others for help

D．he wrote himself as a loser in cartoons

4. In the last two paragraphs, we are advised _______.

A．to open up our eyes

B．to believe we can make some difference

C．to learn more skills for development

D．to ask for more appreciation and love

5. Which of the following is the best title of the passage?

A．Nobody Is a Nobody.

B．A Hard-working Boy Is Successful.

C．We Should Turn Failure into Success.

D．One Cannot Succeed without Talents.

【推荐2】As each semester begins, my colleague greets his students wearing a jacket and tie.

“You make only one first impression, " he says. So, while the rest of the semester he teaches class in his usual, more casual clothes, the first week he presents a different image.

His thought is that students will remember their encounter positively and more readily think highly of him as the semester goes on because that favorable first impression has an influence on them. The big influence of first impressions is related to the halo effect, where the perception of the positive qualities in one thing or part gives rise to the perception of similar qualities in related things or in the whole.

Here is an example: You meet a friendly person at a party and later are asked to collect money for a worthy cause. You call that person because you think she will make a contribution. In reality, there is no connection between being pleasant and being generous. Yet the halo effect leads you to think that the two are related.

The halo effect is powerful, but is it questionable whether it matters much in long-term relationships, such as that between teachers and students? While dressing up may make students think the teacher must know his subject matter because he creates a professional first impression, the effect wears thin if the person turns out to be a poor teacher after all.

First impressions matter but they don't have the final word. Facts speak louder. If you had never seen or heard of Einstein, the first time you saw him your impression would most likely be negative. Now his face is connected with genius, not madness because he is the person who has come to define what genius is.

The problem is that few of us are Einstein and we often don't get the chance to change a negative first impression.

1. In the author's eyes, the halo effect_________.

A．is surprisingly powerful	B．may affect our judgment of others
C．matters more in the long run	D．makes some teachers irresponsible

2. The author uses the example of Einstein to show the importance of________.

A．appearance

B．impressions

C．truth

D．fairness

3. The author seems to advise readers________.

A．to mind their first impressions	B．not to judge a book by its cover
C．not to follow others’ judgment	D．to pay no attention to the halo effect

【推荐3】When a tornado touched down in a small town nearby, many families were left completely destroyed. Afterward all the local newspapers carried many human-interest stories featuring some of the families who suffered the hardest.
One Sunday, a particular picture especially touched me. A young woman stood in front of an entirely shattered mobile home, a depressed expression twisting her features. A young boy, seven or eight years old, stood at her side, eyes downcast. Clutching   (紧握)   at her skirt was a tiny girl who stared into the camera, eyes wide with confusion and fear.
The article that went with the picture gave the clothing sizes of each family member. With growing interest, I noticed that their sizes closely matched ours. This would be a good opportunity to teach my children to help those less fortunate than themselves. I taped the picture of the young family to our refrigerator, explaining their difficulty to my seven-year-old twins, Brad and Brett, and to three- year-old Meghan.
“ We have so much. And these poor people now have nothing,” I said.“We’ll share what we have with them.”
I brought three large boxes down from the room upstairs and placed them on the living room floor. Meghan watched seriously, as the boys and I filled one of the boxes with canned goods and foods.
While I sorted through our clothes, I encouraged the boys to go through their toys and donate some of their less favorite things. Meghan watched quietly as the boys piled up discarded toys and games.
“I’ll help you find something for the little girl when I’m done with this,” I said.
The boys placed the toys they had chosen to donate into one of the boxes while I filled the third box with clothes. Meghan walked up with Lucy, her worn, faded, much-loved rag doll hugged tightly to her chest. She paused in front of the box that held the toys, pressed her round little face into Lucy’s flat, painted-on-face, gave her a final kiss, then laid her gently on top of the other toys.
“Oh, Honey,” I said.“You don’t have to give Lucy. You love her so much.”
Meghan nodded seriously, eyes glistening with held-back tears. ‘”Lucy makes me happy, Mommy. Maybe she’ll make that other little girl happy, too．”
_______, I stared at Meghan for a long moment, wondering how I could teach the boys the lesson she had just taught me. For I suddenly realized that anyone can give their cast-offs away. True generosity is giving that which you value most.
Honest benevolence   (善行)   is a three-year-old offering a valuable, though shabby, doll to a little girl she doesn’t know with the hope that it will bring this child as much pleasure as it brought her. I, who had wanted to teach, had been taught.
The boys had watched, open-mouthed, as their baby sister placed her favorite doll in the box. Without a word, Brad rose and went to his room. He came back carrying one of his favorite action figures. He hesitated briefly, clutching the toy, then looked over at Meghan and placed it in the box next to Lucy.
A slow smile spread across Brett’s face. Then he jumped up, eyes twinkling as he ran to fetch some of his prized Matchbox cars.
Astonished, I realized that the boys had also recognized what little Meghan’s gesture meant. Swallowing back tears, I pulled all three of them into my arms.
Taking the cue from my little one, I removed my old jacket from the box of clothes. I replaced it with the new hunter green jacket that I had found on sale last week. I hoped the young woman in the picture would love it as much as I did.
It’s easy to give that which we don’t want any more, but harder to let go of things we cherish, isn’t it? However,___________________________.
1. Why does the author give a detailed description of a particular picture in the Sunday newspaper?

A．To create an atmosphere of fear and depression brought by the tornado.

B．To appeal to unconcerned people to donate for the poor families.

C．To show the helplessness and hopelessness of the family mentioned in the paper.

D．To stress what touched her and made her decide to help the hopeless family.

2. Why did Brad and Brett also donate their favorite things finally?

A．They were encouraged to donate some valuable things by the mother.

B．Meghan’s decision inspired them to donate their favorite things.

C．They also wanted to show generosity by giving away their valuable things.

D．Meghan’s gesture reminded them to replace their favorite things with new ones.

3. By “ swallowing hard”, the writer means that _ _ .

A．she was deeply puzzled by what the little girl did

B．she had trouble persuading Meghan not to give away Lucy

C．she was greatly moved by Meghan’s unexpected decision

D．she was uncertain what consequences Meghan’s action would bring about

4. It is suggested in the sentence “the true spirit of giving is to give with your heart” that ______.

A．sincere donation means offering help to others whole-heartedly

B．true giving means giving others what you treasure most

C．true generosity means helping others at the cost of your own benefit

D．honest benevolence means devoting yourself to the career of donation

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

A．The Greatest Love	B．A Beautiful Heart
C．True Generosity	D．A Precious Gift

【推荐1】Failure is probably the most exhausting experience a person ever has. There is nothing more tiring than not succeeding.

We experience this tiredness in two ways: as start-up fatigue (疲惫) and performance fatigue. In the former case, we keep putting off a task because it has either too boring or too difficult. And the longer we delay it, the more tired we feel.

Such start-up fatigue is very real, even if not actually physical, not something in our muscles and bones. The solution is obvious though perhaps not easy to apply: always handle the most difficult job first.

Years ago, I was asked to write 102 essays on the great ideas of some famous authors. Applying my own rule, I determined to write them in alphabetical order, never letting myself leave out a tough idea. And I always started the day’s work with the difficult task of essay-writing. Experience proved that the rule works.

Performance fatigue is more difficult to handle. Though willing to get started, we cannot seem to do the job right. Its difficulties appear so great that, however hard we work, we fail again and again. In such a situation, I work as hard as I can—then let the unconscious take over.

When planning Encyclopedia Britannica( 《大英百科全书》), I had to create a table of contents based on the topics of its articles. Nothing like this had ever been done before, and day after day I kept coming up with solutions, but none of them worked. My fatigue became almost unbearable.

One day, mentally exhausted, I wrote down all the reasons why this problem could not be solved. I tried to convince myself that the trouble was with the problem itself, not with me. Relived, I sat back in an easy chair and fell asleep.

An hour later, I woke up suddenly with the solution clearly in mind. In the weeks that followed, the solution which had come up in my unconscious mind proved correct at every step. Though I worked as hard as before, I felt no fatigue. Success was now as exciting as failure had been depressing.

Human beings, I believe, must try to succeed. Success, then, means never feeling tired.

1. People with start-up fatigue are most likely to           .

A．work hard

B．delay tasks

C．seek help

D．accept failure

2. On what occasion does a person probably suffer from performance fatigue?

A．Before starting a difficult task.

B．After finding a way out.

C．If the job is rather boring.

D．When all the solutions fail.

3. According to the author, the unconscious mind may help us          .

A．find the right solution

B．get some nice sleep

C．gain complete relief

D．ignore mental problems

4. What could be the best title for the passage?

A．Success Is Built upon Failure

B．How to Handle Performance Fatigue

C．Getting over Fatigue: A Way to Success

D．Fatigue: An Early Sign of Health Problems

【推荐2】"Why do we have to learn all this dumb stuff?"

Of all the complaints and questions I have heard from my students during my years in the classroom, this was the one most frequently asked. I would answer it by telling the following legend.

One night a group of nomads(游牧民) were preparing to retire for the evening when suddenly they were surrounded by a great light. They knew they were in the presence of a godly being. With great expectation, they awaited a heavenly message of great importance that they knew must be especially for them.

Finally, the voice spoke, "Gather as many pebbles (鹅卵石) as you can. Put them in your bags. Travel a day's journey and tomorrow night will find you glad and it will find you sad."

The nomads shared their disappointment and anger with each other. They had expected the

inspiration of a great universal truth that would enable them to create wealth, health and purpose for the world. But instead they were given a silly task that made no sense to them at all. However, the memory of the brilliance of their visitor caused each one to pick up a few pebbles and store them in their bags while voicing their displeasure.

They traveled a day's journey and that night while making camp, they reached into their bags and discovered every pebble they had gathered had become a diamond. They were glad they had diamonds. They were sad they had not gathered more pebbles.

It was an experience I had with a student, whom I shall call Alan, early in my teaching career that illustrated the truth of that legend to me.

When Alan was in the eighth grade, he majored in "trouble" with a minor in "suspensions (停学)". He had studied how to be a bully and was getting his master's degree in "thievery".

Every day I had my students memorize a quotation from a great thinker. As I called roll, I would begin a quotation. To be counted present, the student would be expected to finish the thought.

"Alice Adams--- 'There is no failure except..."'

"'In no longer trying.' I'm present, Mr. Schlatter."

So, by the end of the year, my young pupils would have memorized 150 great thoughts.

"People nowadays know the price of everything and the value of nothing."

"No pains, no gains."

"If you can conceive it, and believe it, you can achieve it."

No one complained about this daily routine other than Alan - right up to the day he was expelled(开除) and I lost touch with him for five years. Then one day, he called. He was in a special program at one of the neighboring colleges and had just finished parole（假释）.

He told me that after being sent to juvenile hall (少管所) and finally being shipped off to the

California Youth Authority for his wrong doings, he had become so disgusted with himself that he had taken a razor blade and cut his wrists.

He said, "You know what, Mr. Schlatter, as I lay there with my life running out of my body, I

suddenly remembered that quote you made me write 20 times one day." There is no failure except in no longer trying." Then it suddenly made sense to me. As long as I was alive, I wasn't a failure, but if I allowed myself to die, I would most certainly die a failure. So with my remaining strength, I called for help and started a new life."

At the time he had heard the quotation, it was a pebble. When he needed guidance in a moment of crisis, it had become a diamond. And so it is to you I say, gather all the pebbles you can, and you can count on a future filled with diamonds.

1. What does the underlined sentence "it will find you sad" mean?

A．The God told the nomads to gather pebbles that made no sense to them.

B．The pebbles won't enable the nomads to create fortune.

C．The God didn't give the nomads the message they expected.

D．The nomads regretted not having gathered as many pebbles as possible.

2. Which of following sentences from the passage brings out the author's sense of humor?

A．They were given a silly task that made no sense to them at all. (Para. 5)

B．He majored in "trouble" with a minor in "suspensions. (Para. 8)

C．People nowadays know the price of everything and the value of nothing. (Para. 13)

D．You can count on a future filled with diamonds. (Para. 19)

3. Which of the following is FALSE according to the passage?

A．Not all the nomads gathered and stored some pebbles in their bags.

B．Students who finished the half-sentence quotation were counted present.

C．All students don't like the daily routine of finishing the half-sentence quotation.

D．It was the strong faith of never dying a failure that saved Alan's life.

4. Why did Alan commit suicide after being shipped off to the California Youth Authority?

A．He hated the hard life in the juvenile hall.

B．He was expelled by the school in the end.

C．He was badly treated at the California Youth Authority.

D．He felt so disappointed and hopeless about himself and his future.

5. According to the passage, we can conclude that Mr. Schlatter is an educator of _____.

A．sympathy and kindness	B．wisdom and patience
C．generosity and creativity	D．faith and devotion

6. Which of the following may probably be the best title?

A．A naughty trouble-marker.	B．Pebbles and nomads.
C．The magic pebble.	D．A quotation that saved life.

【推荐3】It was an autumn day, and 1 was standing in the kitchen, hanging my head over the counter and trying to figure out how many calories were in a bowl of homemade yogurt and fruit. And I felt annoyed.

I was 16, and my best friend and I had gone to our first Weight Watchers meeting. It was the trend in the mid-1980s，and even though I was an athlete, like many teen girls, I didn't necessarily like what I saw in the mirror. But after a week or so of recording every meal and snack and calculating the calories, I had had enough. I went back to my routine of chowing whatever I wanted, running and skiing, and let that be that. And it's still pretty much what I do; as long as the workouts are regular and the food is whole and balanced, my body's set point hasn't varied for years.

The weight loss trend of three decades ago−full of scales and counting calories−has fallen away. Now fasting is popular. The ways to keep fit vary: on the 5:2 diet a person eats for five days and fasts for two days each week, while the 18:6 refers 10 fasting for 18 hours and then eating within a six-hour window each day.

In this issue, Associate Editor Mark Barna tries to understand the science behind the fasting plans. Researchers have found that animals like monkeys age more slowly after years of eating less, and in the lab in humans, they saw improvements in a number of signs that indicate risk of some hard to cure diseases. The hope for healthy weight loss isn’t over yet, but at least now the calculators don’t have to be out at every meal.

1. What made the author annoyed?

A．Her body was not as strong as an athlete’s.

B．There were too many calories in the yogurt and fruit.

C．The Weight Watches meeting was not necessary for her.

D．She had to work out the calories in every meal and snack.

2. Which of the following can replace the underlined word “chowing”?

A．Eating.

B．Doing

C．Cooking.

D．Choosing.

3. How do people keep fit now?

A．They limit the calories they take in.

B．They lose weight only.

C．They fast daily or weekly.

D．They eat enough every day.

4. What do we know about the researchers’ finding in this passage?

A．People grow more slowly if they eat less.

B．People are healthier if they eat less.

C．People have stopped losing weight now.

D．People calculate their food for every meal.

【推荐1】Setting goals is common in our life. We look ahead, predict what may make us happy in the future, and then narrow down the things to something specific. For the most part, having goals is better than not having any, but there are also problems that come with spending an entire life living from goal to goal.

For one thing, we try to predict an unpredictable future. Who is to say that what you want next year is the same thing you want right now? What if what you want right now isn't in the right direction over the long term?

Secondly, and just as importantly, you only confine your expectations of happiness and satisfaction to the goal you have set so that you often forget that other things in your life can also add just as much joy to your experience. This creates a strange problem.

To solve this problem, we have to move towards something more unclear. Going after interestingness. I think, is what we should do.

Interestingness doesn't mean looking for pleasure only. It’s deeper than that. It's doing that random (随机的) project you had no plan to do because you have a feeling that you might just learn something you didn't know about yourself. It's seeing a person you just met not as a possible partner or someone who can do something for you but simply as someone who may open a new, unknown and unique world for you.

Goals incorrectly assume (假设) that we already know what we want. Interestingness is more modest. It makes up its mind as it moves, slowly blowing from one thing to another, until it catches something that lies beyond prediction at last.

1. Setting goals is to predict an unpredictable future because __________.

A．it ignores possible changes in our life

B．it proves meaningless in the long run

C．it may lead us to the opposite direction

D．it fails to reach our true possibilities

2. What does the underlined word “Confine” probably mean in the third paragraph?

A．Devote.

B．Limit.

C．Deliver.

D．Compare.

3. What's the benefit of going after interestingness?

A．Bringing us self satisfaction at once.

B．Improving our relationship with others.

C．Making us gain something unexpected.

D．Helping us successfully predict the future.

4. What's the purpose of the text?

A．To ease our worry about the future.

B．To express a new thought on setting goals.

C．To point out disadvantages of an aimless life.

D．To recommend a new way of achieving success.

【推荐2】Over 400 human footprints preserved in volcanic sediment （沉淀物）provide a sign at social life among ancient hunter-gatherers. The impressions, found in northern Tanzania, add up to Africa's largest collection of ancient human footprints, say evolutionary biologist Kevin Hatala of Chatham University in Pittsburgh and colleagues. People walked across a muddy layer of volcanic ashes dating to between 19,100 and 5,760 years ago, the researchers reported on May 14 in Scientific Reports. Dating of a thin rock layer that partly overlaps （重 叠）the sediment narrows the footprints' age to about 12,000 to 10,000 years ago.

Hatala's team analyzed footprint sizes, distances between prints and which way prints pointed. One collection of tracks was made by 17 people walking southwest. Comparisons with modern prints suggest that this group consisted of fourteen women, two men and one young boy. The women may have been searching for foods while a few males visited or accompanied them, the researchers infer. Some present-day hunter-gatherers form lately female food-gathering groups.

The study is "a nice piece of work”, although it's hard to specify what people were doing, says geologist Matthew Bennett of Bournemouth University in Poole, England.

Many more sets of footprint tracks would be needed to argue convincingly that hunter-gatherers at that time had female food-gathering groups, Bennett says. And it would still be unknown if the women were gathering plants or hunting prey. Other footprint sites present especially promising opportunities for studying ancient behavior, he says. He is involved in work in New Mexico that has uncovered tens of thousands of footprints of humans and other creatures from more than 10,000 years ago. Early results suggest that humans there hunted giant sloths （树 獭）.Bennett expects those prints will yield more insights into Stone Age hunting.

1. What does the underlined word "impressions” in the first paragraph mean?

A．Thoughts about people or things.	B．Collections of volcanic ashes.
C．Marks left by creatures or something.	D．Behaviors of imitating someone-

2. What do the newly-discovered footprints suggest?

A．Ancient hunters were socially organized.

B．Ancient male hunters were admired by females.

C．Female food-gathering groups were obviously formed.

D．Males played a more important role in finding food than females.

3. What can we learn according to the last paragraph?

A．The females gathered plants or hunted prey in the Stone Age.

B．The footprint tracks have proved female food-gathering groups existed.

C．The footprint sites provide a good chance to further study ancient behavior

D．The footprints will hardly influence our understanding of Stone Age hunting.

4. What's the best title of the text?

A．How Ancient Hunters Gathered Food

B．What Ancient Hunan Footprints Were Like

C．What Ancient Human Footprints Tell Us

D．How Ancient Food-Gathering Groups Cooperated

【推荐3】I don't realize that I've been at college for nearly one and half year until now. Looking back into the last year, what shall I say? It consisted of both happiness and sadness. Life always goes like this, up and down, as is so exciting. Now when I recall the past, no matter how I felt at that time, they are all treasures for me.

That was the moon festival last year, which was also the first time we went out after we entered the college. It was said that the sea in Dalian was well-known and was also a wonderful place to watch the moon. After getting all the food and drinking ready, we four girls set off for the seaside. There were many people and we picked up a less crowded beach. At first, we enjoyed ourselves by drinking and eating. When the moon turned brighter, we played with the seawater. As a result, we were all drenched with water. Bathing in the moonlight, we ran and laughed. We seemed to land on another world, where was full of fresh air, laughter and love. The laughter is still echoing on my mind so far.

Life doesn't stay the same, occasionally having a particular taste. That is sadness. What impressed me deeply is a failure in a singing competition. It was the first time I had given a performance on such a large stage in front of so many people. I was so nervous that the whole song was performed out of tune. As you could imagine, I was greeted with boos from the audience. I still remembered how dismal I felt that moment and I sat alone crying at the seaside. After that, I talked to mother about it. She told me that it was not a failure; at least, I was brave enough to show myself publicly.

Everything has passed. I’ve stored them at the bottom of my heart. I am in the second grade already. Yet much needs me to challenge. On the way, there's both happiness and distress. However, I will go ahead just all the same.

1. The underlined word ''drenched'' in the second paragraph has a similar meaning with _______.

A．dried	B．wet
C．frozen	D．washed away

2. Life, according to the author, is       .

A．full of happiness	B．filled with sadness
C．made up of laughter and tears	D．not worth living

3. How did the audience feel the author's singing?

A．It was wonderful	B．It was disappointing
C．The passage doesn’t say	D．It was perfect

4. Which of the following shows the author's attitude towards future?

A．A friend in need is a friend indeed.

B．Do wrong once and you’ll never hear the end of it.

C．Where there is a will, there is a way.

D．Time and tide wait for no man.

【推荐1】“All puppies are cute,” explains Clive Wynne, the head of Arizona State University’s canine-science laboratory. “But not all puppies are equally cute." Indeed, recent research indicates that peak puppy cuteness serves   important purposes and might play an important role in binding dog and owner together.

In a study，Wynne and his colleagues sought to pin down, scientifically, the timeline of puppy cuteness. Their finding was: People consistently considered dogs most attractive when they were six to eight weeks old. This age, Wynne says, is an important developmental period: Mother dogs stop nursing their young around the eighth week, after which puppies rely on humans for survival. Peak cuteness, then, is no accident.

Humans seem to be especially vulnerable (脆弱的) to cute things. Research dating back to the 1940s shows that almost any creature with babylike features — large eyes, a bulging forehead, short limbs — is able to draw our liking. But puppy cuteness is uniquely human-directed. Other research makes clear just why dogs seek to command our attention. Oxytocin, the so-called love hormone, has been found to suddenly increase in dogs and their owners after they look in each other’s eyes. In other words, the more dogs get us to look at them, the more tightly bonded (联系) to them we grow.

Born blind and basically deaf, puppies aren’t interactive (互动的) in their first weeks of life, and Wynne notes that many people find animals in this stage alien and unattractive. A recent study focused on humans showed that, similar to six-week-old puppies, six-month-old babies are seen as significantly cuter than newborns, which inspires a flood of social interactions, such as petting, playing, and baby-talking. These acts are developmentally fundamental to both babies and puppies.

1. From Wynne’s research we can learn that cuteness is something____.

A．puppies are born with	B．that helps puppies survive
C．that increases steadily as puppies grow	D．that helps puppies to defend against danger

2. What can-we learn about Oxytocin from the passage?

A．Oxytocin is a hormone that will inspire love.

B．Oxytocin is a hormone that only exists in dogs.

C．Oxytocin can be increased by constant touch.

D．Oxytocin will increase greatly when dogs stare at us.

3. The underlined word "alien" in Paragraph 4 probably means____.

A．unique

B．lovely

C．strange

D．dangerous

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

A．From ugly to cute	B．Man’s best friend
C．Survival of the cutest	D．Loveliest animals: puppies

【推荐2】City trees grow faster and die younger than trees in rural forestry, a new study finds. Over their lifetimes,then, urban trees will likely absorb less CO2 from the air thah forest trees.

As we all know, the earth would be freezing or burning hot without CO2. However, CO2 is a greenhouse gas, meaning it traps energy from the sun as/heat. That makes temperatures near the ground rise. Human activities, especially the widespread burning-of fossil(化石）fuels，have been sending extra greenhouse gases into the air. This has led to a rise in average temperatures across the globe.

Studies had shown forests readily absorb CO2，but there hadn’t been much data on whether city trees grow， die and absorb CO2 at the same rate as forest trees do. So some researchers decided to find out.

To figure out how quickly trees were growing, researchers tracked their diameters (the width of their trunks) between 2005 and 2014. A tree’s diameter increases as it grows, just as a person’s waist size increases as they gain weight. About half the weight of a tree is carbon, research has shown. Most of the rest is water. Over the nine years’ tracking, the researchers found city trees absorbed four times as much carbon from the air as forest trees. However, they were twice as likely to die. So over the lifetime of each type of tree, forest trees actually absorbed more CO2.

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

1. What can he known about CO2 from paragraph 2?

A．It is one of the side effects of greenhouses.

B．It greatly accelerates the process of global warming.

C．It results from the widespread burning of fossil fuels.

D．It prevents the earth from becoming unsuitable to live on.

2. Why did researchers track the diameters of trees?

A．To know about their growth rates.

B．To find out how much they weigh.

C．To check whether they were healthy.

D．To assess the carbon amounts in them.

3. What advantage do city trees have over forest trees?

A．They are more likely to access growth promoters.

B．They can enjoy more water coming from the air.

C．They can enjoy more shade from neighbors.

D．They are better at competing for light.

4. What will probably be talked about if the passage is continued?

A．How urban trees can live longer.

B．Why city living makes trees die young.

C．How trees respond to dry soil conditions.

D．Why faster-growing trees absorb more CO2.

【推荐3】When it comes to eating, most of us don’t have to go very far. But for many bird species, finding food may mean traveling hundreds of thousands of kilometers.

A team of researchers from institutions in the UK and Ireland spent five years tracking (追踪) four species of seabird to monitor their travel patterns. It was discovered that over the five years, the species covered an area of 1.5 million square kilometers when hunting for food-almost four times the size of Japan.

The findings were published recently in the journal Ecological Applications. As part of the study, over 1,300 birds were fitted with GPS tags to track their movements. It was discovered that most of them search for fish in the same place-waters off the coast of Scotland.

As a result of this, organizations such as the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) will spend more time trying to preserve coastal Scotland.

“For the first time, this study provides us with a full map for each breeding colony (繁殖群体) of the feeding areas for some of our most important seabird species,” wrote the study’s lead author Ewan Wakefield, from the University of Glasgow.

“That means we can now protect the places these birds catch the fish they need to feed their hungry chicks.”

The findings could also affect the future building of offshore wind turbines (满轮机). Although wind turbines help to fight climate change by providing a green source of energy, their huge blades (刀片) are blamed for the deaths of thousands of birds each year, as they often fly into them.

Stuart Housden, director of RSPB Scotland, said in a news release that although climate change is a huge threat to both humans and nature alike, we should “invest in an energy system that works for both people and our natural heritage.”

To protect both nature and the environment, the RSPB supports the building of turbines in areas that won’t have “significant adverse (不利的) impacts on important bird populations or their habitats,” it wrote on its website.

1. What did the scientists from the UK and Ireland find about the four species of seabird?

A．They have totally different travel patterns.

B．They prefer to catch fish in places near their nests.

C．Climate change has influenced their hunting distance.

D．They can travel a very long distance to find food.

2. According to the article, why is the research important?

A．It shows what a perfect living environment for seabirds is.

B．It was the first to use GPS technology to track seabirds.

C．It could guide people on how to better protect seabirds.

D．It provides more information about the diet of seabirds.

3. Wind turbines are a threat to seabirds because ________.

A．they produce noise that could disturb seabirds

B．their strong airflow could influence the flight of seabirds

C．their big blades may kill the seabirds that fly by

D．they force seabirds to move away from their habitats

4. According to the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, ________.

A．no more wind turbines should be built in the future

B．we should think of more measures to protect the climate

C．the government should invest more money to protect seabirds

D．we should consider wildlife when we build turbines in the future