【推荐1】Have you ever seen a car without a driver? It sounds crazy, but these computer —driven driverless cars will soon be filling roads near you. Companies like Google and Tesla have been designing and testing these cars, and they just need to see if they value for money, work out insurance（保险）issues, and run final tests to check if they can run alongside human driven cars on the road.

So how do they work? The cars have sensors(应器）all around which can find other cars and objects in the road. Sensors on the wheels also help when parking, so the cars know how far it is from the outside of the road or other parked cars. Road signs are read by by cameras, and satellite navigation systems are used, so the cars know how to get where you want to go. All you have to do is type in the address! Finally, a central computer system takes in all the information that it receives from the sensors and cameras and works out when to speed up, stop, and turn.

Sound like your idea of heaven（天堂）? Sitting back, looking out of the windows and even watching a film or reading a book while “driving” would be possible with this new technology. You wouldn’t have to worry about remembering directions to where you are going. In addition, computers would be better drivers than humans —they would obey the speed limit and have quicker action times when in dangerous situations. However, there are many disadvantages of driverless cars. Computers would have difficulties making ethical（道德的）decisions: if a child ran into the road, would the computer choose to hit the child or change the direction suddenly and potentially kill the car’s passengers? Moreover, I personally find driving fun —I’d miss driving a car myself. There would also be many other decisions to be made —should children, or drunk people, be allowed in a driverless car by themselves? Or would there need to be a person with a driving license in the car at all times?

Although being driven around by a machine would perhaps mean that no one needs a driving license, and saving money for everyone, many people would be put out of a job when driverless cars appear. Bus, taxi and train drivers as well as driving instructors would be made unnecessary. I’m not certain if I’d want a driverless car —but it’s only a matter of time before they’ll become more affordable and common on our roads.

1. When using a driverless car, you need only ________.

A．read the road signs carefully

B．check the cameras

C．put the address into the computer

D．remember the directions

2. What can we know from the passage?

A．The writer is eager to have a driverless car.

B．Driverless cars will cause more accidents.

C．Driverless cars can know where to go and stop and make ethical decisions.

D．More things should be thought about before driverless cars go on roads.

3. The underlined word “potentially” in Paragraph 3 means _________

A．probably.

B．successfully.

C．especially.

D．naturally.

4. Which of the following would be the best title for the passage?

A．Driverless cars: Are you ready for them?

B．Driverless cars: Are they your favorite?

C．Driverless cars: A model of science.

D．Driverless cars: Just enjoy them

【推荐3】

Are you interested in the idea of space travel? More than ever before, it is becoming a reality.

In July 2021, Richard Branson, the founder of Virgin Galactic, and Jeff Bezos, the founder of space company Blue Origin, flew into space aboard spacecraft developed by their own respective companies.

When explaining the importance of space travel, Branson told Daily Mail that many people are not “fully educated as to what space does for Earth”. He said that “we need more rocketships going into space because they can help us to know more about things like climate change”.

“We have to build a road to space so that the younger generation and their kids can build a future,” Bezos told MSNBC. He added that space tourism is the first step toward moving people (and heavy industry) into space to prevent an energy crisis on Earth.

But some people have different opinions. They think it is part of the so-called “billionaire space race”, which offers what’s seen by some as “joyrides” for the super-wealthy.

According to Forbes, one open seat on the Blue Origin rocket was sold for $28 million (181 million yuan) at auction (拍卖会) in June.

“A lot of people believe there is a market for space tourism, but right now it’s at the very high end,” Howard McCurdy, a space policy expert at American University in the US, told the website Technology Review. “If we’re going into space, who’s the ‘we’? Is it just the top 1 percent of the top 1 percent?”

So with the sky-high prices, should ordinary people give up their dream of space exploration?

Maybe not. US flight engineer Bobak Ferdowsi said that we are at the point at which space tourism is a privilege (特权) preserved for the super-rich, but that doesn’t mean the trend will last forever. He predicts that the price will come down. “Maybe in 10 to 15 years, it’s a decision between do I buy a new car, or do I go into space? We should invest (投资) in a future that allows us to live somewhere else.”

1. What does the underlined word “crisis” mean in this passage?

A．A big chance.

B．A bad situation.

C．A special type.

D．A power station.

2. What do Branson and Bezos think of space tourism?

A．It is too dangerous for humans.

B．It is meaningful to the future generations.

C．It is a privilege for the super-wealthy.

D．It may cause problems like climate change.

3. If there will be, what might be the next timeline according to the passage?

A．2030s Space tourism: Joyrides for all.

B．2020s Space tourism: Joyrides for private citizens.

C．2030s Not only super-rich went into space.

D．2020s The public enjoyed space exploration.

4. Which of the following is NOT mentioned in the passage?

A．The first non-government astronaut from the US went into space in the late 20th century.

B．People with different opinions think the market for space tourism is at the very high end.

C．Blue Origin plans to cut down the price so that ordinary people can go into space.

D．Virgin Galactic and Blue Origin sent their founders into space with their own spacecraft.

【推荐1】

Deep Green Bush School is New Zealand’s newest and most unusual school with just eight students. The weather is so beautiful that the school day will start with fishing. After, the kids will eat lunch cooked on an open fire. Homework and classes? Canceled. Students spend most of the day outdoors exploring nature. They also learn about the plants and animals of their home. Students learn to read and write, but they do so at their own pace, when they begin getting interested, not when the teacher decides it is time to learn.

“We are called a school but we look nothing like any school out there,” says Joey Moncarz, who had been a teacher in more common schools for five years before he helped start the school more than a year ago. Being worried that common schools were not preparing children for the problems of the future, he began thinking about a very different kind of education, teaching kids the skills of survival.

Some parents saw their kids were unhappy and stressed in mainstream education and began to question whether it is normal or right for kids to come home stressed and unhappy. People have asked Moncarz to open similar “bush schools” around New Zealand, and as far away as Europe and China.

David Berg is a learning expert. He said schools like Moncarz’s are becoming more popular. However, he says, these schools need to be careful. Children need to learn traditional subjects so they can find jobs in the modern world. Berg said many people still feel it is important to spend more time in nature. People in the modern world need to have many skills and some of those can be developed outside.

Moncarz insists that the school isn’t an experiment( 试 验 ). For two million years, parents   have brought up their kids with nature, he said. “We don’t want to be one of a kind, we want to take the place of mainstream schools,” he said. “We are using the same method parents have used to teach their kids for millions of years. Locking kids in a classroom and driving them to learn just causes a lot of problems.”

1. Paragraph 1 is mostly about ________.

A．how many kids learn outside	B．where the school building is
C．what the bush school is like	D．why there is no homework

2. According to Paragraph 2, Mr. Moncarz started Deep Green Bush School because he thought ________.

A．learning about the nature is less helpful

B．normal schools do not teach the right things

C．normal schools teach things in the future

D．everything should not be taught in schools

3. Which of the following is the closest to the meaning “mainstream education” in Paragraph 3?

A．the most acceptable education	B．public education
C．the most important education	D．private education

4. Which of the following is NOT true according to Paragraphs 3—5?

A．Parents wish their kids to get education in China.

B．David Berg doesn’t totally agree with Moncarz.

C．Moncarz hopes bush schools will be main education.

D．Moncarz believes the bush school pattern is not new.

5. What is the author’s purpose for writing the article?

A．To make more kids choose outdoor schools.

B．To describe and explain an outdoor school.

C．To tell parents that outdoor schools are bad.

D．To see how weather means to bush schools.

【推荐3】

Many people think of the brain as a mystery. They don’t know much about intelligence and how it works. When they do think about what intelligence is, many people believe that a person is born smart, average, or dumb—and stays that way in the whole life. But new research shows that the brain is more like a muscle（肌肉）—it changes and gets stronger when you use it. And scientists have been able to show just how the brain grows and gets stronger when you learn.

Everyone knows that when you lift weights, your muscles get bigger and you get stronger. A person who can’t lift 20 pounds when he/she starts exercising can get strong enough to lift 100 pounds after working out for a long time. That’s because the muscles become larger and stronger with exercise. And when you stop exercising, the muscles shrink（收缩）and you get weaker. That’s why people say “Use it or lose it!”

But most people don’t know that when they practice and learn new things, parts of their brain change and get larger a lot like muscles do when they exercise. Inside the cortex（皮层）of the brain are billions of tiny nerve（神经元）cells（细胞）,called neurons. The nerve cells have branches connecting them to other cells in a complicated（复杂）network. Communication between these brain cells is what allows us to think and solve problems. When you learn new things, these tiny connections in the brain actually multiply and get stronger. The more you challenge your mind to learn, the more your brain cells grow. Then, things that you once found very hard or even impossible to do —like speaking a foreign language or doing algebra（代数）—seem to become easy after learning them for a period of time. The result is a stronger, smarter brain.

Scientists started thinking that the human brain could develop and change when they studied animals’ brains. They found out that animals that lived in a challenging environment were more “perspicacious”—they were better at solving problems and learning new things.

1. According to the first paragraph,              .

A．the function（作用）of our brain is like that of the muscle

B．until now it’s impossible to explain the brain’s mystery

C．many people believe one’s intelligence is naturally determined（决定）

D．one’s brain grows stronger as the age increases

2. What is Paragraph 3 mainly about?

A．The complicated structure of the brain.

B．How changes in the muscles affect the brain.

C．The importance of the brain.

D．How the brain becomes stronger by learning new things.

3. What does the underlined word “perspicacious” in the last paragraph probably mean?

A．Strong.

B．Smart.

C．Popular.

D．Active.

4. The paragraph that follows the passage will most probably talk about             .

A．the differences between animals’ brains and humans’ brains

B．the relation between human brains and muscles

C．scientists’ findings about animals’ brains

D．how to make your brain smarter through self-development