1 . As the school year barely starts in Denver, French teacher Melanie is filled with worry that her students are always absent-minded. Yet, the problem isn’t messaging, enjoying video games or delivering notes. Surprisingly, the problem is about the ongoing heat wave in Denver.
“Today was a little bit hot, so I noticed kids were very sleepy and they were having to get up to drink water quite often.” said Melanie, who works at Denver’s East High School. “If you lose too much water, and you have to keep going to the water fountain, that can take away from their classroom experience.” While nodding off in class on a warm day may seem acceptable for the average teen, Melanie’s observation carries a bigger consequence than dry lips.
“There have been quite a few media reports about teachers noticing that students weren’t able to focus on hotter days,” said R Jisung Park, a researcher, “Does a hotter climate during the school year actually affect the rate of learning?” The drops in academic achievement couldn’t be explained by hotter weekends or hotter summers, but the trend was connected to higher temperatures on school days alone.
The connection between lost learning and a greater number of hot days is one more example of how climate change is already affecting our lives — and it’s an alarm bell for what we stand to lose in the future. Humans still have time to lessen the worst consequences of continued global warming. Without the unlikely important changes in the next 10 years, the globe will be trapped in an unavoidable era of heat waves that were unprecedented (前所未有的) for human beings.
1. What may cause students absent-minded according to the text?| A．Video games. | B．Text messages. |
| C．Heat waves. | D．Classroom notes. |
| A．Kids often go to the water fountain for lack of water. |
| B．Extreme heat may lower a kid’s ability to learn. |
| C．Nodding off in class is a sign of respecting teachers. |
| D．Kids are more interested in drinking water than sleeping. |
| A．Optimistic. | B．Uncertain. | C．Worried. | D．Indifferent. |
| A．The way that global warming continues. |
| B．The reasons why kids are absent-minded in class. |
| C．The hotter it grows, the more focused kids become. |
| D．The hotter it grows, the harder it will be for kids to learn. |
2 . In life，once on a path，we tend to follow it，for better or worse.What's sad is that even if it's the latter，we often accept it anyway because we are so used to the way things are that wed don't even recognize that they could be different This is a phenomenon psychologist call functional fixedness.
This classic experiment will give you an idea of how it works and a sense of whether you may have fallen into the same trap: People are given a box of tacks (大头钉) and some matches and asked to find a way to attach a candle to a wall so that it burns properly.
Typically, the subjects try tacking the candle to the wall or lighting it to fix it with melted wax. The psychologists had, of course, arranged it so that neither of these obvious approaches would work. The tacks are too short, and the paraffin (石蜡) doesn't stick to the wall. So how can you complete the task? The successful technique is to use the tack box as a candle-holder. You empty it, tack it to the wall. and stand the candle inside it. To think of that, you have to look beyond the box's usual role as a receptacle just for tacks and re-imagine it serving an entirely new purpose. That is difficult because we all suffer to one degree or another from functional fixedness.
The inability to think in new ways affects people in every corner of society. The political theorist Hannah Arendt coined the phrase“frozen thoughts”to describe deeply held ideas that we no longer question but should. In Arendt's eyes, the self- content reliance on such accepted “truths”also made people blind to ideas that didn't fit their worldview, even when there was plenty of evidence for them.
Frozen thinking has nothing to do with intelligence, she said,“It can be found in highly intelligent people.”
1. What does the underlined word“it”in paragraph 2 refer to?| A．The experiment. | B．Functional fixedness. |
| C．The path. | D．The thinking. |
| A．Tacking the candle to the wall. |
| B．Fixing the candle with melted wax. |
| C．Using the tack box as a candle-holder. |
| D．Lighting the candle to stand it. |
| A．People should question. |
| B．We should be used to the way things are. |
| C．People shouldn't accept the idea that doesn't fit their worldview. |
| D．The smarter people are，the more open to the new things they are. |
| A．An interesting experiment |
| B．A psychological phenomenon. |
| C．A theory to be proved. |
| D．The opinion of Hannah Arendt. |
3 . Have you ever wondered why certain pop songs just make you feel so good? Researchers studying the question found that uncertainty and surprise give listeners the most pleasure. The study included 80,000 chords (和弦) in 745 pop songs between 1958 and 1991.
Each song was stripped of its melody (旋律) and lyrics (歌词) so that only chords were left and the results couldn’t be misunderstood by other imaginations of the songs that listeners might have had.
They found two things. Listeners got great pleasure from unexpected chords when they knew what would happen. However, they still found it pleasant to hear familiar chords when they did not know what would follow.
Vincent Cheung, the lead researcher, said, “Pleasant songs are likely those which keep a good balance (平衡) between knowing what is going to happen next and surprising us with something we did not expect. Understanding how music starts our pleasure system in the brain could explain why listening to music might help us feel better when we are feeling blue.”
Cheung told CNN that pleasure in music is connected to expectation. The study before had looked into the effects of surprise on pleasure, but his team’s study also paid attention to the uncertainty of listeners’ expectations.
1. What does the underlined word in Paragraph 2 mean?| A．Taken. | B．Added. |
| C．Played. | D．Recorded. |
| A．Expected music is exciting. | B．Unexpected chords bring pleasure. |
| C．Familiar music is boring. | D．Unfamiliar chords are hard to follow. |
| A．They can explain human nature. | B．They can improve our pleasure system. |
| C．They make some people feel blue. | D．They balance expectation and surprise. |
| A．To introduce a scientific study’s finding. | B．To show music’s importance in our life. |
| C．To compare different studies on music. | D．To experiment music in science. |
4 . Cities usually have a good reason for being where they are, like a nearby port or river. People settle in these places because they are easy to get to and naturally suited to communications and trade. New York City, for example, is near a large harbour at the mouth of the Hudson River. Over 300 years its population grew gradually from 800 people to 8 million. But not all cities develop slowly over a long period of time. Boom towns grow from nothing almost overnight. In 1896, Dawson, Canada, was unmapped wilderness (荒野). But gold was discovered there in 1897, and two years later, it was one of the largest cities in the West, with a population of 30,000.
Dawson did not have any of the natural conveniences of cities like London or Paris. People went there for gold. They travelled over snow-covered mountains and sailed hundreds of miles up icy rivers. The path to Dawson was covered with thirty feet of wet snow that could fall without warming. An avalanche (雪崩) once closed the path, killing 63 people. For many who made it to Dawson, however, the rewards were worth the difficult trip. Of the first 20,000 people who dug for gold, 4,000 got rich. About 100 of these stayed rich men for the rest of their lives.
But no matter how rich they were, Dawson was never comfortable. Necessities like food and wood were very expensive. But soon, the gold that Dawson depended on had all been found. The city was crowded with disappointed people with no interest in settling down, and when they heard there were new gold discoveries in Alaska, they left Dawson City as quickly as they had come. Today, people still come and go — to see where the Canadian gold rush happened. Tourism is now the chief industry of Dawson City — its present population is 762.
1. What attracted the early settlers to New York City?| A．Its business culture. | B．Its small population. |
| C．Its geographical position. | D．Its favourable climate. |
| A．Two-thirds of them stayed there. |
| B．One out of five people got rich. |
| C．Almost everyone gave up. |
| D．Half of them died. |
| A．They found the city too crowded. |
| B．They wanted to try their luck elsewhere. |
| C．They were unable to stand the winter. |
| D．They were short of food. |
5 . The managing editor is usually the person in charge of the daytoday editorial process of a newspaper. He or she makes sure that the newspaper comes out on time each day and that costs are kept within a budget (预算). He or she is usually responsible for hiring and firing news room staff, and serves as the spokesperson for the newspaper. The managing editor may also be involved in story, photo and graphics (图形) selection, assignments, laying out pages, and editing copy and writing headlines.
The news editor is in charge of the news pages of the newspaper. He or she makes decisions on which stories are used and which are not. The news editor and his or her assistants also lay out pages of the paper.
The copy editor edits wire and local stories and writes headlines. The copy editor is often the last person to see a story before it actually appears in print.
The city editor makes sure that the news in the city is covered and that as many local stories as possible get into each edition.The city editor supervises (监督) the local general assignment, beat and speciality reporters.
The state editor supervises reporters who cover communities and areas outside the city but still within the circulation (流通) area of the newspaper.
The national editor supervises reporters in bureaus in cities outside the circulation area of the newspaper. Most newspapers rely on the wire services for national news, but some have correspondents who work in other cities and report to the national editor.
1. If you want to apply for a job in a newspaper news room, you are likely to be interviewed by ________.| A．the news editor | B．the national editor |
| C．the city editor | D．the managing editor |
| A．the managing editor is mainly responsible for laying out pages of the paper |
| B．the news editor determines which stories are used |
| C．the copy editor is often the first person to see the story |
| D．the national editor supervises the local general assignment, beat and speciality reporters |
| A．reporters | B．postmen |
| C．writers | D．messengers |
| A．How newspapers are made. | B．People in a newspaper news room. |
| C．How news is collected and edited. | D．People in charge of the newspaper industry. |
6 . Some of the greatest scientists of all time are women who have made important discoveries in a variety of fields in science. Several of their contributions throughout history are even more than men’s contributions. Our list of the most famous female scientists below are organized in order of popularity so you can read about the advancements that they made.
Marie Curie (1867-1934)
Famous For: Work on radioactivity
Marie Curie was the first woman to win the Nobel Prize and the only woman to win this award in two fields: Physics and Chemistry. She discovered polonium and radium and her work helped with the creation of X-rays.
Jane Goodall (1934)
Famous For: Primate (灵长类) studies
Jane Goodall is known world-wide for her groundbreaking studies on primates. She is considered as the top expert on chimps in the world and is perhaps best known for her 45-year study on the social lives of these animals in Tanzania.
Rita Levi-Montalcini (1909-2012)
Famous For: Nerve growth studies
Rita Levi-Montalcini was a neurologist (神经病学家) who won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1986 for her findings in Nerve Growth Factor (NGF). She was the first Nobel Prize winner to live past her 100th birthday.
Lise Meitner (1878-1968)
Famous For: Work on radioactivity and nuclear physics
Lise Meitner was a key member of a group that discovered nuclear fission (裂变). One of her colleagues, Otto Hahn, was given the Noble Prize for this work. That Meitner didn’t get the award is considered to be a huge error by the Nobel committee.
1. Who is still contributing to the world?| A．Marie Curie. | B．Jane Goodall. |
| C．Rita Levi-Montalcini. | D．Lise Meitner. |
| A．Nerve growth. | B．The wildlife. |
| C．Nuclear explosion. | D．Radioactivity. |
| A．She was awarded the Nobel Prize. |
| B．She made a big mistake in her work. |
| C．She did lots of studies about nerve growth. |
| D．She made great contributions to nuclear physics. |
7 . Craziest Food Festivals sounds like a joke topic, but once you start looking into it, you’ll realize they’re everywhere — the crazier, the better.
1. Bibimbap Festival
In the South Korean town of Jeonjuloves, their “mixed rice” dish is a hearty serve of rice topped with raw beef, a rainbow of vegetables, a raw egg and gochujang sauce so much. They take four days out of October to celebrate it.
Like any festival there’s music, entertainment and magic, but making it that little bit different is the bibimbap that’s whipped (搅拌) up in a big bowl by dozens of chefs and served to over 400 people.
2. Waikiki Spam Jam
Who knew this canned meat had so much love? Well, it turns out that a can of Spam is the go-to item in Hawaii, along with a grass skirt and garland (花环). The people of Hawaii love Spam so much that they even spend a day in May giving out the best Spam, a type of cheap canned meat made mainly from pork.
3. Bessieres Easter Egg Festival
At Easter time, for those in the French town of Bessieres it’s all about an egg far less sweet.
Here they celebrate the holiday by getting dozens of chefs to make one large omelette (煎蛋卷) — 15,000 eggs strong — for the townsfolk (市民).
4. Potato Days Festival
This festival actually takes place in Barnesville, Minnesota, the US. Over the last Friday and Saturday in August the town celebrates its potato-growing skills by hosting potato picking and peeling contests, as well as a Miss Tater Tot pageant (盛典) for five- and six-year-old girls.
1. What makes Bibimbap festival special?| A．They take four days to celebrate it. |
| B．The mixed rice is rich in many vegetables. |
| C．There’s music, entertainment and magic during the festival. |
| D．The rice dish needs to be mixed in one big bowl by dozens of chefs together. |
| A．The spam is the most favorite for Hawii people. |
| B．People spend one day to prepare the Jam. |
| C．The Jam isn’t affordable for the plain townsfolk. |
| D．The Jam is mainly made from raw beef. |
| A．Bibimbap Festival | B．Waikiki Spam Jam |
| C．Bessieres Easter Egg Festival | D．Potato Days Festival |
8 . For a herder (放牧人) in Africa, the hardest part of the job is searching for cattle lost in the bush. But for Andrew, a herder at a farm in Zimbabwe, it's not a problem. Once he spots Toro, he knows the rest of the herd is nearby. That’s because Toro isn’t an ordinary member of the herd. He's a giraffe. In hot weather, cattle rest in the shade under his belly. And because of his height, Toro can spot lions long before they come close to the herd.
Toro's unusual situation came about after his mother was killed by lions. Toro survived the attack, but he was left with no one to protect him or give him milk. About two days later, some herders spotted and rescued him. With the permission of the Department of Wildlife, the herders moved Toro to Andrew's farm. Since giraffes and cattle are both plant-eating animals that live in groups, their behaviors are much the same. Toro was accepted into the herd and wandered among the cattle as they ate grass.
Toro doesn't always behave like the other members of his new herd. Like many kinds of animals, cattle compete for dominance (支配). Standing more than 13 feet tall, Toro is more than three times taller than the biggest bull, But Toro never tries to be ''the boss. ''He is very used to their company, '' Andrew said. When the herd enters the kraal (家畜栏), the cows and bulls push each other. ''But thanks to his height, Toro does not need to join the mess, '' said Andrew.
When asked if Toro would ever be returned to the wild, Munetsi, an officer of the Department of Wildlife said no. ''In the wild, he would find it difficult to be accepted into another herd or defend himself from predators (猎食者),'' he added. ''He seems very much at home and is respected by the cattle.''
1. What was Toro like when the herders found him?| A．He was left alone. | B．He was seriously ill. |
| C．He was lost in the bush. | D．He was fighting with lions. |
| A．He has fought to be the leader. |
| B．He gets along well with the herd. |
| C．He is pushed around by the bulls. |
| D．He stays away from the herd most of the time |
| A．He will be sent back to the wild. |
| B．He will be put into another herd of giraffes. |
| C．He will continue to live together with Andrew. |
| D．He will be trained to fight with the big animals. |
| A．Giraffes under threat in the wild |
| B．A surprising new family for a giraffe |
| C．A new way of herding appearing in Africa |
| D．Moments showing friendship between animals |
9 . Life affects (影响) friendships. As we grow, marry, fight in wars, move across the country or change jobs, old friendships fall away and new ones form. As long as we live, the things around us change, and as long as things change, friendships are affected.
When we were children, we had best friends. No matter what happened we were still friends. We live our lives, however, and do what life calls for us to do, and as we got older, memories fade, faces blur, and even friend’s names from childhood are forgotten.
Do you have a question about friendship? Do you wonder what to do with a friend who is no longer friendly? Perhaps you will see that you can’t control others. If someone wants to be your friend, it is their choice. All you can do is treat them well and do the best for them when you are with them. Then you wish them well when they leave.
You can talk to old timers (老前辈) and they will tell you that life is full of joy and sorrow, and that what bothers you today will one day becomes a memory and the pain will be gone. Seniors might tell you that you will learn more as you get older. They will tell you that friendships come and friendships go. Sometimes when they go, it will hurt, but you will be okay with it. It’s the way life works, after all.
1. What doe the text tell us about friendship?| A．It may change with time. |
| B．It affects our life deeply. |
| C．It is easy to build a friendship. |
| D．It is wrong to forget a friend. |
| A．Get recognized more easily. |
| B．Become less clear. |
| C．Turn less attractive. |
| D．Grow more beautiful. |
| A．Make good choices about friends. |
| B．Stop old friends from leaving. |
| C．Learn to accept new friends. |
| D．Take good care of friends. |
| A．They have a positive attitude to life. |
| B．They believe friends hurt each other. |
| C．They regard friendship as a treasure. |
| D．They stress the importance of memory. |
10 . Welcome to the 4-Day Wonderful Life Experience
This 4-day sightseeing tour covers the most famous elements（元素）of China: the historical sites, natural scenery, unique culture, and lovely giant pandas.
Day 1 Beijing ArrivalYour guide will meet you at the arrivals hall. An experienced driver will transfer you to your hotel. Your guide will help you to check-in.
You may start your first day wandering through Tian'anmen Square and arrive at the Forbidden City to have a little adventure in the previous home to emperors. After lunch at a local restaurant, you'll explore the centuries-old hutongs to get a taste of the locals' lifestyle: making dumplings in a local family's home, trying your hand at Chinese writing brush, or applying Peking Opera facial makeup.
Day 2 The Summer Palace and the Great WallFreshen up in the morning and start your day at Summer Palace, enjoying the 300-year-old royal garden. Take a pleasant boat ride on the lake and take a walk in the long corridors（走廊）to view the beautiful paintings on the ceilings.
After enjoying some Beijing Roast Duck for lunch, we'll go on our tour to visit the Great Wall at Mutianyu. Walk through the watchtowers, enjoying a wonderful view of the wall winding across the mountains. The cable car to a good section of the Great Wall is included.
Day 3 The Terracotta Army（兵马俑）At 7 in the morning, you will be driven to the airport for your flight to Xi'an. Your guide will be waiting for you and will transfer you to your hotel.
Everything in Xi'an is about history. The Terracotta Army, with each figure being unique, has guarded Emperor Qin Shi Huang's tomb since 210 BC.
After lunch, you'll visit the 600-year-old ancient city wall. Walking along Xi'an City Wall provides a good view of the city.
Day 4 One-Day Panda Keeper ProgramIn the morning, you'll get onto a high-speed train to Chengdu, where you can get close to giant pandas. You will get very close to them and learn more about them during the Panda Keeper Program in Dujiangyan Panda Base. Under the guidance of an English-speaking member of staff, you will clean the panda enclosures, feed a panda by hand and make cakes for them.
After the tour, the driver will transfer you to the airport at 9 pm, and take you all the way to the security gate for your convenience.
China visas provided PLUS a free dinner or snack tour
Valid: Nov.20, 2019-Dec.2, 2020
Please click here for more detailed information.
1. The passage is mainly introducing ___________.| A．the culture and history of China | B．a sightseeing program in China |
| C．some famous buildings in China | D．some special experiences in China |
| A．the sceneries are beautiful | B．they are symbols of China |
| C．their buildings are world famous | D．their culture and history are famous |
| A．parents | B．researchers |
| C．historians | D．foreigners |
