1 . We have most friends at the age of 26 after having spent the first quarter of our lives building up our friendship circle, new research has claimed.
The research into friendship shows that our social circle peaks at 26 years and 7 months, at which we typically have five close friends.Women are most popular at 25 years and 10 months, with men hitting the highest friendship point a little later at 27 years and 3 months.
The research, by Forever Friends, shows that about a third of adults meet their closest friends while at school，with about a fifth saying they meet them at work.
Social networks such as Facebook and Twitter now also play a major role in building new friendship.The research points out that 25 to 34yearolds make 22 friends via Facebook, compared to 18 to 24yearolds who make 12, and 35 to 44yearolds who make just four.
Forever Friends' relationship coach Sam Owen says, “It is no coincidence that over a third of us meet our best friends at school. It is a key time in our lives when friendship is growing through sharing notes，giving gifts, seeing each other regularly and laughing a lot. As adults we can often forget how powerful these small things are and how the little things can make a difference.”
Later in life we find ourselves losing friends. Over half of us lose friendship through moving, while 36% say that over time they grow apart from close pals. Having children also causes 19% to drift away from childhood friends.
With growing pressure being put on friendship these days，it's important to make time for our friendship.
1. How many friends can a 20yearold college student make via Facebook?| A．4. | B．12. |
| C．18. | D．22. |
| A．how important making friends is |
| B．that friendship is not easy to keep |
| C．how much has been done to keep friendship |
| D．School time is an important period to develop friendship. |
| A．make sense of | B．lose touch with |
| C．feel sorry for | D．make up with |
| A．Facebook or Twitter | B．an advertisement |
| C．a textbook | D．a newspaper |
2 . This is my son Matthew's last night at home before college. I know that this is good news. I feel proud that Matthew will go to a great school. I know that this is the finest hour. But looking at the suitcases on his bed sends me out of the room to a hidden corner where I can't stop crying.
Through the sorrow, I feel a rising embarrassment. “Pull yourself together!” I tell myself. There are parents sending their kids off to battle zones. How dare I feel so shocked and upset?
One of the great gifts of my life has been having my boys, Matthew and John. Through them, I have explored the mysterious, complicated bond between fathers and sons. As My wife and I raised them, I have discovered the love and loss between my father and me. After my parents' divorce，I spent weekends with my dad in Ohio. By the time Sunday came around, I was unable to enjoy the day's activities because I was already afraid of the goodbye of the evening.
Now, standing among Matthew’s accumulation of possessions, I realize it's me who has become a boy again. All my sadness and longing to hold on to things are back, sweeping over me as they did when I was a child.
His bed is tidy and spare. It already has the feel of a guest bed. In my mind I replay wrapping him in his favorite blanket. That was our nightly routine until one evening he said,” Daddy，I don't think I need a blanket tonight.” I think of all the times we lay among the covers reading. I look at the bed and think of all the recent times I was annoyed at how late he was sleeping. I’ll never have to worry about that again, I realize.
For his part, Matthew has been a rock. He is treating his leaving as just another day at the office. And I'm glad. After all, someone’s got to be strong. I’m proud that he is charging into the first chapter of his adult life with such confidence.
1. What does the writer mean by “Pull yourself together!”?| A．Cheer up. | B．Get up. |
| C．Pull up. | D．Wake up. |
| A．the writer is used to sleeping early |
| B．Matthew is ready for his new life |
| C．Matthew doesn't get on well with his father |
| D．the writer wasn't brave enough to face his parents' divorce |
| A．Bittersweet. | B．Grateful. |
| C．Pleasant. | D．Worried. |
3 . Reading instruction in the classroom is a key concern for all teachers and there are many ways to go about it. However, is our determination to achieve excellence in reading skills in our children killing their love and enjoyment of a good book?
In my work with parents, I am frequently asked the best ways to encourage reluctant readers to be engaged with books. Parents report that their children return home from school with no inclination to pick up a book and read.
Any eager reader will gladly talk about the joy with a good book to read away the hours on a cold, rainy afternoon. Reading a good book is one of life’s greatest pleasures. We need to share these experiences with our children in order to assist them in developing into strong readers. But the use of boring, mass-produced home reading texts in children’s early years at school can be seen as the beginning of this negative cycle.
As children progress through their schooling life, there are many other instances of learning reading skills that don’t help reading development. Frequently, teachers feel the pressure to give their students “just enough” in terms of reading strategies to be able to achieve the test, which leaves little time to focus on reading for pleasure.
Kelly Gallagher, a high school teacher, outlines the term “Readicide” in his book. He says it’s: the systematic killing of the love of reading, often worsened by foolish, boring practices found in schools.
Recent research shows that many teachers tend to follow the traditional literacy practices that they have experienced in their own education, which can often have negative intentions for their students.
While teaching children key concepts for analyzing and evaluating texts is important, the manner in which it is done and time that is spent on this can lead to unexpected results. Schools aren’t to blame when it comes to not arresting students’ lack of interest in reading, but they have an important role to play in fostering reading enjoyment.
1. What does the underlined word “inclination” mean?| A．Energy | B．Task |
| C．Intention | D．Requirement |
| A．To develop reading habits | B．To read for pleasure |
| C．To learn reading skills | D．To kill a love for books |
| A．focus on teaching reading strategies |
| B．ignore key concepts for analyzing texts |
| C．are to blame for students’ poor reading |
| D．fail to follow the traditional reading practices |
| A．Reading books is to experience pleasure |
| B．Learning to love books is even more important |
| C．Teaching reading helps reluctant readers |
| D．Getting pleasure from books makes capable readers |
4 . To me, life without music would not be exciting. I realize that this is not true for everybody. Many people get along quite well without going to the concert, and listening to the record. But music plays an important part in everyone's life, whether he realizes it or not. Try to imagine, for example, what films or TV plays would be like without music. Would the feelings, the moving plot, and the greatest interests, be so exciting or dramatic? I'm not sure about it.
Now, we have been speaking of music in its more common meaning----the kind of music we hear in the concert hall. But if we look at some parts of music more closely, we discover them in our everyday life too----in the rhythm of the sea, the melody of a bird in the woods and so on. So music surely has meaning for everyone, in some way or other. And, of course, it has special meaning for those who have spent all their lives working on playing or writing music.
It is well said, “Through music a child enters into a world of beauty, expresses himself from his heart, feels the joy of doing things alone, learns to take care of others, develops his mind and makes his body strong.”
1. What does the writer say more about in the text?| A．Life full of music. | B．The importance of music. |
| C．Life without music. | D．The development of music. |
| A．go to the concert instead of enjoying music |
| B．get along quite well without music |
| C．don't realize the importance of music |
| D．think music would be less exciting than films |
| A．flying | B．living |
| C．looking | D．singing |
| A．is very necessary for our everyday life |
| B．is very important, especially for children |
| C．can make our life exciting and dramatic |
| D．can enter another beautiful world |
5 . The third-generation hybrid rice（杂交水稻）which was developed by Yuan Longping, the "father of hybrid rice", and his team ran its first public yield（产量）monitoring from Monday to Tuesday and achieved high output. The final yield of the tested variety, G3-1S/P19, came to1046.3 kg per mu（about 667 square meters）, based on two pieces of land in Qingzhu Village under the city of Hengyang in central China's Hunan Province.
"Some previous high-yielding hybrid rice varieties in China took 160 to even 180 days from sowing（播种）to harvesting, while the figure was shortened to around 125 days for the new variety. This is one of the most important features（特征）of the third-generation hybrid rice that can reduce the use of pesticides（杀虫剂）and fertilizers（化肥）, thus reducing cost and improving production efficiency." said Qian Qian, the deputy director of the China National Rice Research Institute.
Unlike the previous two generations that required a large amount of water and fertilizers as well as demanding growing conditions and technological support, the third-generation hybrid rice is easier to be cultivated（种植）by ordinary farmers. So the soil, altitude and climate of the test site were not "ideal conditions" carefully selected beforehand but were close to the paddies（稻田）of ordinary farmers.
Nowadays. China's average yield of rice is about 500 kg per mu. Ordinary farmers can produce 600 kg to 700 kg of rice per mu by growing some excellent second-generation hybrid rice varieties. However, under the same planting conditions and environment, the yield of the third-generation hybrid rice could reach 800 kg per mu. China now feeds around 20 percent of the world's population with less than 9 percent of the world's arable（可耕种的）land.
At present, Yuan's team has nine third-generation hybrid rice combinations under trial, which are expected to achieve commercial seed production in the following three to four years and hope to apply the technology into the research of sea rice. The third-generation hybrid rice has the comprehensive strength to promote a greener and more sustainable development of China's rice production with higher quality and yield.
1. What feature of the new hybrid rice does Qian Qian mainly talk about?| A．It saves a lot more water. | B．It achieves a higher yield. |
| C．It saves much more farmland. | D．It has a shorter growing period. |
| A．The ordinary farmers master planting technology. |
| B．The researchers want to reduce the experiment cost. |
| C．The growing conditions the new hybrid rice needs are simple. |
| D．The previous rice farming provides researchers with experience. |
| A．The high output of the third-generation hybrid rice. |
| B．The future of the new hybrid rice variety. |
| C．The advanced technology of the research on hybrid rice. |
| D．The differences between the three hybrid rice varieties. |
| A．A guide book. | B．A news report. |
| C．An advertisement. | D．A fashion magazine. |
6 . Florence Nightingale was born in a rich family. When she was young, she took lessons in music and drawing, and read great books. She also travelled a great deal with her mother and father.
As a child, she felt that visiting sick people was both a duty and a pleasure. She enjoyed helping them.
At last, her mind was made up. “I’m going to be a nurse,” she decided.
“Nursing isn’t the right work for a lady,” her father told her.
“Then I will make it so,” she smiled. And she went to learn nursing in Germany and France. When she returned to England, Florence started a nursing home for women.
During the Crimean War in 1854, she went with a group of thirty-eight nurses to the front hospitals. What they saw here was terrible. Dirt and death were everywhere to be seen and smelled. The officer there did not want any women to tell him how to run a hospital, either. But the brave nurses went to work.
Florence used her own money and some from friends to buy clothes, beds, medicines and food for the men. Her only pay was the smiles from the lips of dying soldiers. But they were more than enough for this kind woman.
After the war, she returned to England and was honoured for her service by Queen Victoria. But Florence said that her work had just begun. She raised money to build the Nightingale Home for Nurses in London. She also wrote a book on public health, which was printed in several countries.
Florence Nightingale died at the age of ninety, still trying to serve others through her work as a nurse. Indeed, it is because of her that we honour nurses.
1. What made Florence determine to become a nurse?| A．Her father’s support. |
| B．Her desire to help the sick. |
| C．Her education in Germany and France. |
| D．Her knowledge from reading great books. |
| A．she earned a little money. |
| B．work was very difficult |
| C．few soldiers died because of her work |
| D．she didn’t have enough food and clothes |
| A．She built the Nightingale Home for Nurses. |
| B．She wrote a book on public health. |
| C．She worked as a nurse all her life. |
| D．She did a great deal of work during the Crimean War. |
| A．the life story of a famous woman |
| B．a description of the nursing work |
| C．an example of successful education |
| D．the history of nursing in England |
7 . It’s 3 o'clock and you’ve been hard at work. As you sit at your desk, a strong desire (欲望) for chocolate overcomes you. You try to busy yourself to make it go away. But it doesn’t. Here is another situation. Perhaps you are not feeling well. The only thing you want to eat is a big bowl of chicken soup, like your mom used to make when you were sick as a child. Food cravings are a strong desire for a specific type of food. And they are normal.
Scientists at the website How Stuff Works compare hunger and cravings this way. Hunger is a fairly simple connection between the stomach and the brain. They even call it simply “stomach hunger.” When our stomachs burn up all of the food we have eaten, a hormone (荷尔蒙) sends a message to one part of the brain for more food, which controls our most basic body functions such as thirst, hunger and sleep. The brain then produces a chemical to start the appetite (食欲) and you eat. Hunger is a function of survival.
A craving is more complex. It activates (刺激) brain areas related to emotion, memory and reward. These are the same areas of the brain activated during drug-craving studies. Because of this, some scientists call food cravings “mind hunger.” People often crave foods that are high in fat and sugar. Foods that are high in fat or high in sugar produce chemicals in the brain. These chemicals give us feelings of pleasure.
In a 2007 study, researchers at Cambridge University found that “dieting or controlled eating generally increases the possibility of food craving.” So, the more you refuse yourself a food that you want, the more you may crave it. However, fasting is a bit different. They found that eating no food at all for a short period of time reduced food cravings.
So, the next time you crave something very special, know that it’s the fault of your brain, instead of your stomach.
1. The author describes two situations in the first paragraph to ________.| A．deepen the understanding of hunger | B．report the discovery of craving study |
| C．introduce the topic of the whole passage | D．remind readers of their own special food |
| A．It shows food is connected with emotion. | B．It makes sure that a person survives hunger. |
| C．It means the stomach functions well. | D．It proves the brain decides your appetite. |
| A．The drop of chemicals. | B．The increase of food desire. |
| C．The refusal of fat and sugar. | D．The disappearance of appetite. |
| A．Education. | B．Entertainment. |
| C．Science. | D．Economy. |
8 . Jerome Karie and Isabella Lugoski met in their first physical chemistry class at the University of Michigan in 1940. Jerome Karie was in his first year of doctoral work, Isabella Lugoski was in her last year as an undergraduate(大学本科生), and they were laboratory partners. However, they didn't get along well at first.
Isabella Lugoski looked back on the past, “I walked into the physical chemistry laboratory and there's a young man in the desk next to mine with his equipment all set up running his experiment. I don't think I was very polite about my question. I asked him how he got there early and had everything all set up. He didn't like that. So we didn't talk to each other for a while.
Their relationship got going as they competed for the top grade in that course and they started to build connection because both of them were interested in chemistry. They married in 1942. By 1946, both of the Karies had earned doctorates in physical chemistry, and, after a period of time at the University of Chicago working on the Manhattan Project, moved to Washington DC to join the US Naval Research Laboratory.
Each specialized in a different aspect of X-ray crystallography(晶体学): Jerome focused on developing equations(方程式) that could determine how atoms(原子) were arranged inside complex molecules, while Isabella ran practical experiments to test how well the equations worked. Working together, they created what is now called the direct method for determining molecular structures(分子结构), which has allowed scientists to effectively study and copy complex organic molecules to continue further study.
Jerome Karie was awarded the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1985. Although he was disappointed that the Nobel committee had ignored Isabella's contribution to that work, she was unfazed. At that point, she had already won more awards and prize money for her experimental work than he had.
1. What did Isabella Lugoski do when she first met Jerome Karie?| A．She blamed him for his being late. | B．She set up all his equipment for him. |
| C．She asked him a question impolitely. | D．She observed his experiment silently. |
| A．Their common interest in chemistry. | B．Their wonderful marriage since 1940. |
| C．Their pleasant first talk in a laboratory. | D．Their successful cooperation in courses. |
| A．The Karies' encouraging further study. | B．The Karies' good teamwork in science. |
| C．How the Karies worked with others. | D．Why the Karies won the Nobel Prize. |
| A．Generous. | B．Touched. | C．Shocked. | D．Calm. |
9 . Pangolins (穿山甲) are the most trafficked (非法交易) mammals in the world and are facing extinction. To draw attention to these scaly (有鳞片的), anteater-like animals, a new wildlife documentary, Eye of the Pangolin, is attempting a unique way to inspire action and conservation. Partnering with the non-profit organization Pangolin. Africa, the documentary was made available on YouTube in May 2019. The intention is to reach communities wherever the Internet is available, especially African communities, who live near the animal’s habitats.
Over two years, the documentary crew traveled to South Africa, Ghana, Central African Republic and Gabon in search of the four unique species of pangolin, which has never been achieved before. Filmmakers Bruce Young and Johan Vermeulen say that they went into the shoot knowing relatively little about pangolins, but grew to respect and appreciate the animals. Getting close to the creatures over two years was a crash course in these secretive creatures. Johan Vermeulen said, "One thing however that might seem unimportant is that they are actually quite fussy eaters. You would think they would eat any type of ant, but they all prefer a specific type ant."
Pangolins are hunted illegally across Africa for their scales, which are used for traditional medicine, and their meat. In April 2019, Singaporean customs officials conducted two separate seizures of 24 tons of pangolin scales, which equals to the death of 69,000 pangolins.
Though the documentary focuses less on the trafficking of pangolins, and more on the animals in their natural habitat, the aim of the documentary is to inspire viewers around the world to call for action to end trafficking and protecting these unique creatures.
Filmed on location in South Africa, Ghana, Central African Republic, and Gabon, this powerful documentary is the story of two men on a mission to get all four species of African pangolin on camera for the very first time.
1. What is the purpose of the documentary?| A．To study the situation of pangolins. |
| B．To collect fund to protect pangolins. |
| C．To raise awareness of pangolin protection. |
| D．To propose setting up pangolin reserves. |
| A．Picky. | B．Messy. |
| C．Showy. | D．Heavy. |
| A．The illegal trade of pangolins. |
| B．The medical function of pangolin's scales. |
| C．The life of pangolins in their natural habitats. |
| D．The efforts of Pangolin, Africa to save pangolins. |
| A．A brochure. | B．A diary. |
| C．A novel. | D．A magazine. |
10 . The new garbage sorting regulation has taken effect in Shanghai starting July 1. Many citizens are still confused about the classification of the four different types of trash. Thankfully, authorities have released an official guideline to clarify the new rules.
The guideline, published by the Shanghai Greenery and Public Sanitation Bureau, provides a rather clear definition on the four kinds of waste: recyclable waste, hazardous (有害的) waste, household food waste and residual (剩余的) waste.
Hazardous waste, as the name suggests, includes assorted poisonous materials like used batteries, light bulbs, out-of-date medicines, paint and pesticides.
Household food waste, which is translated to “wet trash” in Chinese，refers to food leftovers, rotten food, pet food, fruit peels, remains of TCM herbs (中药) and flowers.
Paper, plastic, glass, metal and textiles (纺织品) are counted as recyclable waste.
The definition of residual waste is a little confusing. Anything that is not listed above belongs in this category.
As specific as the new guideline is, residents still have a hard time sorting trash correctly and are finding it challenging to memorize them all. For instance, both plastic bottles and bubble tea or coffee cups are plastic materials. However, the former falls to the category of recyclable waste and the latter belongs to residual waste. To save the hassle, some netizens have come up with their own ways to sort trash.
“We should do this from a pig’s angle,” commented one netizen. “Those edible (可食用的) for pigs are household food waste. Those even pigs don’t want to eat are residual waste. If a pig consumes something and dies of it, then something must be hazardous waste. Those which can be sold and the money we gain can be used to purchase pigs are recyclable waste.” The new regulation has gone into effect on July 1. Those who do not sort their trash properly will be fined RMB200.
1. What do the old thrown-away sweaters belong to?| A．Residual waste. | B．Hazardous waste. |
| C．Recyclable waste. | D．Household food waste. |
| A．They are completely wet. | B．They all come from plants. |
| C．They can give off bad smell. | D．They can break up easily. |
| A．Humorous. | B．Serious. |
| C．Delightful. | D．Uncertain. |
| A．Shanghai bans four sorts of garbage. |
| B．Shanghai launches garbage sorting enforcement. |
| C．Citizens in Shanghai still question garbage sorting. |
| D．Citizens in Shanghai welcome the garbage sorting policy. |
