1 . “There may be no more powerful method of learning than through music, and no more important lessons for children than those that focus on character and social and emotional skills,” according to clinical psychologist (临床心理学家) and author Don MacMannis, Ph.D., who is a music director and songwriter for the hit children’s series Jay Jay the Jet Plane.
MacMannis has developed over 40 songs in a variety of types that help kids with everything from being confident and managing their feelings to respecting others and understanding responsibility.
To test the 40 songs’ effects on school kids, a study involved 320 first and secondgrade students from 16 classrooms at schools in Santa Barbara and Goleta, California. Kids were given a CD, and then received nine lessons using songs and activities from trained college students. The themes were: Friendship and Reaching Out, Respect and Caring, Celebrating Differences, Expressing and Managing Feelings, Communication and Conflict, Positive Thinking, Dealing with Fears, Best Effort, and Manners and Review.
To test the efficiency of the intervention (介入), teachers completed the Behavioral and Emotional Screening System (BESS) for each child four times in one year along with other assessments about the classroom. The college students who taught the lessons, the school’s principal and the children’s parents all provided feedback as well.
Both first and second graders showed a variety of improvements, including “approaching peers, understanding and using the Golden Rule, settling conflicts by talking out feelings, staying on tasks and having a positive attitude,” according to MacMannis. Second graders also “showed improvements on concentration and selfcontrol.”
Music is a great way to engage your kids in powerful lessons, such as teaching them social and emotional skills. “Music makes complex concepts more accessible and enjoyable. It assists the progress of language learning. Cheerful or inspirational music also may improve cognitive (认知的) abilities. Music appears to light up various regions of the brain related to language, hearing and motor control,” MacMannis said.
1. What do we know about MacMannis?| A．He shows great musical talent. |
| B．He often plays music for patients. |
| C．He has published many children’s books. |
| D．He works as a parttime elementary teacher. |
| A．They generally belong to the same type. |
| B．They will be played in children’s series. |
| C．They aim to improve children’s music skills. |
| D．They will benefit children’s emotional development. |
①writing songs for the kids
②giving lessons with songs to the kids
③recording the teaching process on the CD
④providing information about the kids’ performance
| A．①② | B．②③ | C．③④ | D．②④ |
| A．It’s a valuable teaching tool. | B．It’s a skill requiring much effort. |
| C．It benefits primary students most. | D．It relies on language development. |
2 . Two years ago, I set foot in Tanzania for the first time as a volunteer. And now, I’m writing this at my home in the middle of a village in Tanzania. I never thought that a six-week volunteer program could change my life so greatly, but it did!
My volunteer task was in Moshi.Of course I was nervous when I got my task, but on my first day, I quickly fell in love with my students. They were some of the sweetest and most hard-working kids I had ever met. Each day, I’d have them write in their journals on a new topic. One of my favorite days was when I asked the kids to write about their own life stories. Some of them shared theirs with everyone, and it was great. They had all been through so many difficult times, but no one had ever asked them to tell their stories before. To be able to offer these wonderful kids a safe environment to share such personal stories was amazing. And I couldn’t have created that environment without what I had learned from Cross-Cultural Solutions(CCS)．
I completely fell in love with Tanzania during my time with CCS.I loved it so much that when I left in 2014, I knew that I had to return. So after I left college in 2015, I moved back to Tanzania and have been working at a school for Maasai children for almost one year now.
The experience that I had with CCS changed my career goals and my life greatly. I now plan to go into public health so that I can continue to help people around the world for the rest of my life.
1. The writer went to Tanzania for the first time to .| A．do research with CCS |
| B．completely change her lifestyle |
| C．take part in a volunteer program |
| D．write something about the country |
| A．Sweet but lazy. |
| B．Nervous but sweet. |
| C．Sweet and hard-working. |
| D．Hard-working and perfect. |
| A．Telling stories to her students. |
| B．Writing about her personal stories. |
| C．Helping kids make up interesting stories. |
| D．Asking kids to write their personal stories. |
| A．wonderful | B．difficult |
| C．relaxing | D．boring |
3 . Fifteen years earlier, I was a single mom with two children, a
I was excited to see my
Wayne Dyer once talked about the power of kindness. He said studies showed that not only do the giver and receiver of an act of kindness
| A．routine | B．demanding | C．well-paid | D．miserable |
| A．As usual | B．Seldom | C．Occasionally | D．For once |
| A．reported | B．explained | C．commented | D．suggested |
| A．classic | B．crowded | C．special | D．quiet |
| A．customer | B．mother | C．parent | D．driver |
| A．simply | B．deliberately | C．proudly | D．politely |
| A．warn | B．discourage | C．hurt | D．remind |
| A．just | B．still | C．ever | D．even |
| A．defeated | B．alone | C．stubborn | D．warm-hearted |
| A．children | B．husband | C．friends | D．neighbors |
| A．rode | B．drove | C．walked | D．escaped |
| A．clean | B．excellent | C．elegant | D．empty |
| A．Luckily | B．Obviously | C．Fortunately | D．Sadly |
| A．ordering | B．parking | C．eating | D．packing |
| A．benefit | B．interest | C．understand | D．learn |
4 . A new study establishes that environmental damage caused by corn production results in 4,300 premature deaths annually in the United States, representing cost of $39 billion.
The paper, published in the peer-reviewed journal Nature Sustainability, presents how researchers have estimated for the first time the health damages caused by corn production using detailed information on pollution emissions, pollution transport by wind, and human exposure to increased air pollution levels.
The study also shows how the damage to human health of producing a litre (升) of corn differs from region to region and how, in some areas, the health damages of corn production are greater than its market price.
“The deaths caused per litre in western corn belt states such as Minnesota, Iowa, and Nebraska tend to be lower than in eastern corn belt states such as Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio,” said lead researcher Jason Hill.
It’s important for farmers to have this information so that they can carry out practices that reduce the environmental influence of the crops they grow. Farmers can greatly improve the environmental profile of their corn by using precision agriculture tools and switching to fertilizers that have lower ammonia (氨) emissions. The study’s results also suggest potential benefits from improving nitrogen use efficiency, switching to crops requiring less fertilizer, and changing the location where corn is grown.
Aware that changes in practices can take time and planning, Hill suggests farmers could be offered motivation to switch to crops that demand less applied nitrogen while still offering market and nutritional benefits.
Hill said, “The number of deaths related to corn production could be reduced through these key strategies”.
1. Which of the states has the lowest death rate caused by corn production?| A．Nebraska. | B．Illinois. |
| C．Indiana. | D．Ohio. |
| A．Improve nitrogen use efficiency. |
| B．Plant crops with no fertilizer. |
| C．Change the corn’s location. |
| D．Using precision agriculture tools. |
| A．Indifferent. | B．Optimistic. |
| C．Pessimistic. | D．Neutral. |
| A．Health and lifestyle. |
| B．Art and design. |
| C．Science and environment. |
| D．Fashion and business. |
5 . Growing up in Conway, South Carolina, I was always athletic and competitive. One afternoon, my brother grabbed me in the yard, and I felt some kind of pop. About an hour later, I couldn’t get up from a chair. Over the weekend, my joints (关节) swelled up. My mother took me to the hospital. It took nearly six months to check what was wrong with me. Then I was put on treatment. But I had so much joint damage that I couldn’t run like I used to.
My dad was a serious golfer. One day he said, “Let’s try golf.” He carried me onto the course. Seeing him hit those good shots made me want to do it too.
It wasn’t easy at first, because I had a lot of pain in my hands. I’d played golf, but it had never really caught my interest — it was too quiet for me. But I was happy to be outside, to have a chance of competing again, and I fell in love with it.
Later I made the high school team, but I got frustrated when I didn’t win, so I worked harder. Golf was the most challenging game I’d ever played.
I got a golf scholarship to the University of South Carolina and turned professional after I graduated. I still take medication, and I’m stiff and in pain sometimes. But I’ve got used to that.
I probably wouldn’t be a professional athlete if I hadn’t got sick. The experience taught me patience, and I learned to take nothing for granted. I know how happy I am to do what I do.
1. What do we know about the author from Paragraph 1?| A．He was born with swelled joints. |
| B．His joints healed very quickly. |
| C．He completely recovered after the treatment. |
| D．The cause of his disease was found out six months later. |
| A．His love for golf. | B．His interest in sports. |
| C．His father’s good performance. | D．His unwillingness to stay indoors. |
| A．It was the author’s brother who first became aware that he had a disease. |
| B．Suffering a lot of pain in his hands, the author wasn’t interested in playing golf at first. |
| C．After founding a high school team, the author played harder and became professional. |
| D．The author thought he should cherish everything he had, even his disease. |
| A．Playing through pain | B．The burden lifted |
| C．A bitter fight | D．Standing tall |
6 . Recently, a growing body of research suggests that gaming could be an unbelievably useful educational tool which offers a perfect learning environment to language learners. In theory, there are just enough challenges, just enough support, and just enough room for players to be themselves. Most importantly, students have enough freedom to decide the learning process.
Learners in general have a high level of outside motivation when they game. In other words, when students really want to get a level rise and rewards, they may force themselves to become better at communicating so they can level up quicker. Gamers are often encouraged to repeat levels several times so that they can perform better.
This is important because if the commonly held theory that many students learn languages just for graduation is correct, then they may only be pushed to study just enough to pass exams. On the other hand, if success in the language classroom is combined with success in gaming space, then making use of this drive may be a powerful way to increase the learners’ interest in language learning and develop their language skills. Video games may also have the ability to help learners develop more complex (复杂的) social skills. This happens a lot in a video game as players try to find their roles. But what matters most for players is that they try to find some connections with other players in the process — the shared meaning and a sense of belonging. A study done in Japan found that players seemed to play MMOs mainly for the purpose of forming social connections.
So will schools in the future all be learning languages through gaming? This remains to be seen, but given that the study results suggest gaming can encourage social skills and teamwork — as well as amazing opportunities to share ideas and build knowledge, there may be a good argument for dropping the textbooks and entering into another world for a while.
1. What will happen to language learners in gaming space according to Paragraphs 2 and 3?| A．They will face challenges confidently. |
| B．They will become better at planning their time. |
| C．They will force themselves to repeat their tasks. |
| D．They will get a strong desire to perfect their language ability. |
| A．The video game MMOs is very popular in Japan. |
| B．Learners should have good teamwork in video games. |
| C．Video games can help improve the players’ social skills. |
| D．People in games try to play roles different from those in reality. |
| A．Worried. | B．Objective. |
| C．Confident. | D．Doubtful. |
| A．How to learn languages easily? |
| B．How does gaming benefit students? |
| C．The connection between learning and relaxation. |
| D．The advantages and disadvantages of video games. |
7 . Good news, coffee lovers: Your daily cup of Joe might be doing good to your heart, namely by helping to reduce the risk of heart failure, suggest the findings of a new study. In an analysis of data from three large studies on the topic, researchers found that those who reported drinking one or more cups of caffeinated (含咖徘因的) coffee a day had “a related decreased long-term heart failure risk”.
For the report published in Circulation: Heart Failure, researchers used machine learning to examine data from a large study from the Framingham Heart Study, referencing this data against two other studies. “Each study included at least 10 years of follow-up, and altogether the studies provided information on more than 21,000 U.S. adult participants,” researchers said.
When analyzing the Framingham Heart Study, researchers noted that when compared to non-coffee drinkers, coffee drinkers’ risk of heart failure decreased by 5% to 12% for each cup they drank each day. As for decaffeinated coffee, researchers noted that it did, not have the same benefits as caffeinated coffee, with one study suggesting that decaffeinated coffee may have an opposite effect.
Dr. David Kao, senior study author, said in a statement, “The relation between caffeine and heart failure risk reduction was surprising. Coffee and caffeine are often considered by the general population to be ‘bad’ for the heart because people relate them to health problems like palpitations, high blood pressure, etc. The relationship between increasing caffeine consumption and decreasing heart failure risk turns that thought on its head.”
“However, there is not yet enough clear evidence to prove that increasing coffee consumption can decrease the risk of heart disease with the same strength and certainty as stopping smoking, losing weight, or exercising,” Kao noted. The researchers also warned that the findings only focused on black coffee, that is, plain coffee, without added sugar and high-fat dairy products such as cream.
1. What’s the finding of the new study?| A．The number of heart failure cases has decreased gradually. |
| B．Coffee can help lower the possibility of heart failure. |
| C．Caffeine does harm to people’s health. |
| D．Coffee helps cure heart disease. |
| A．By searching online for detailed information. |
| B．By interviewing experts about their opinions. |
| C．By conducting surveys among young adults. |
| D．By comparing data from long-term studies. |
| A．The brand of coffee. |
| B．The age of the subjects. |
| C．The addition of caffeine to coffee. |
| D．The amount of coffee consumption. |
| A．Indifferent. | B．Positive. | C．Curious. | D．Careful. |
8 . A balanced diet comprising of diverse and healthy foods is the key to promoting good health. After all, we are what we eat — research continues to prove that eating healthy food promotes good health and unhealthy food habits lead to a diseased body. Foods contain vital nutrients that aid our body’s metabolic function. However, a lack of consumption of these nutrients or feeding upon the wrong kinds of food leads to an accumulation of toxins within the body, resulting in chronic (慢性的) diseases in the long run.
A nutritious diet while ensuring overall well being, helps to maintain a healthy Body Mass Index (BMI), reduces the risk of several debilitating diseases like cancer, cardiovascular ailments, diabetes, osteoporosis and stroke. Thus a nutritious & healthy diet is important in the prevention and cure of various diseases.
There are several health conditions that can be caused or aggravated (加重) by the food we eat. However, there are also several foods that you can include in your diet to help prevent or treat diseases. It is simplest to draw up a balanced diet chart as this will ensure that you get all the nutrients you require on a regular basis. A nutrition diet chart is a diet chart that helps you to keep a track of your nutritional diet requirements and is a very useful tool when drawing up a personalized diet plan.
However, it must be noted that allopathic medicine treats the symptoms rather than the root cause of the disease, which is usually caused by wrong eating habits leading to an accumulation of toxins within the system. Whereas a nutritious healthy diet can rectify underlying causes of diseases and restore one to wholeness of mind and body. Once we realize the connection between a wholesome balanced diet and good health, our food will be our medicine and maintaining good health will be a matter of making the right food choices and leading a healthy lifestyle.
1. How do you understand “we are what we eat” in the first paragraph?| A．We will become something we eat. |
| B．We are no different from what we eat. |
| C．Healthy food can promote good health. |
| D．Healthy food won’t lead to a diseased body. |
| A．Curing diseases promptly. |
| B．Eating more nutritious food. |
| C．Drawing a nutrition diet chart. |
| D．Drawing a personalized diet plan. |
| A．A constant lack of consumption of nutrients can lead to chronic diseases. |
| B．A balanced diet chart can help you carry out a personalized diet plan to mainly lose weight. |
| C．A nutritious diet can cure cancer, diabetes, osteoporosis and stroke. |
| D．A nutritious & healthy diet is the key to preventing and curing diseases. |
| A．A nutritious diet. |
| B．A healthy lifestyle. |
| C．A nutrition diet chart. |
| D．A personalized diet plan. |
9 . “5 pm, ma’am.”
“What? My baby can no longer wait for that！”
My 3 montholdbaby was very
But it was not a simple dehydration as I
I was relived
“Ms Lucero, please fetch your money remittance(汇款) through...”
And one after another, I received different
| A．smart | B．weak | C．naughty | D．humorous |
| A．admission | B．sale | C．free | D．goods |
| A．danger | B．process | C．importance | D．gesture |
| A．steps | B．patients | C．customers | D．dealings |
| A．doubted | B．held | C．expected | D．appreciated |
| A．stable | B．popular | C．impossible | D．uncertain |
| A．canceled | B．suspected | C．recovered | D．prepared |
| A．success | B．survival | C．winning | D．tour |
| A．informed | B．stressed | C．admitted | D．criticized |
| A．and | B．so | C．but | D．because |
| A．always | B．just | C．still | D．also |
| A．broke | B．crashed | C．slowed | D．rang |
| A．messages | B．thanks | C．previews | D．comments |
| A．as with | B．instead of | C．less than | D．more than |
| A．responses | B．needs | C．reaction | D．environment |
10 . The idea of robot rulers, friends and lovers has been a topic of science fiction novels for years.
But according to one mathematical model of how our brains create consciousness, emotions machines will never exist.
“This is because computers can’t handle any process that completely integrates (整合) information, so they cannot be conscious or feel, ”one expert says.
A mathematical model for consciousness, developed by Giulio Tononi at the University of WisconsinMadison, says that the ability to integrate information is a key feature of consciousness.
He believes that integrated information can’t be broken down into smaller pieces in conscious minds, because the brain contextualizes (将……置于背景中考虑) information.
For example, when we see a red circle our brains don’t see the shape as a colourless circle plus a shapeless coloured area, New Scientist reported. Instead we see it as a whole—a red circle；we understand the “wider picture”．
It’s easy enough for machines to edit a collection of individual images (图像), but memories are made up of a bank of intertwined (相互交织的) images and experiences and cannot be changed in the same way.
Researchers have used mathematics to show that computers cannot handle the complex processes needed to fit pieces of information together perfectly.
Therefore, if consciousness is based on the integration of lots of pieces of information, computers can’t be conscious and can’t experience emotions like humans.
Professor Phil Maguire of the National University of Ireland in Maynooth says that consciousness cannot be created in a physical machine in limited time using limited memory.
“It doesn’t necessarily mean that there is some magic going on in the brain that involves some forces that can’t be explained physically.It is just so complex that it’s beyond our abilities to change it, ” he said.
His research may mean that lonely humans will not find love with a robot；they are unlikely to be made their slaves either.
1. Why do experts think emotional machines won’t exist?| A．Machines can’t solve problems. |
| B．Machines can’t handle information. |
| C．Machines can’t integrate information. |
| D．Machines can’t communicate with people. |
| A．machines cannot feel |
| B．the brain has consciousness |
| C．the brain can contextualize information |
| D．machines can recognize shapes and colours |
| A．machines can edit intertwined images |
| B．the idea of robot lovers won’t come true |
| C．robots can fit pieces of information together perfectly |
| D．computers can experience emotions like humans one day |
| A．How do Robots Work? |
| B．Robots Will Never Have Feelings |
| C．Will Robots Become People’s Friends? |
| D．What Will Robots Be Like in the Future? |
