1 . Electric Vehicle Benefits
Plug-in electric vehicles (also known as electric cars or EVs) are connected, fun, and practical. They can reduce emissions and even save your money.
Fueling with electricity offers some advantages not available in ordinary internal burning engine vehicles. Because electric motors react quickly, EVs are very responsive and have very good torque(使机器运转的扭转力). EVs are often more digitally connected than conventional vehicles, with many EV charging stations providing the option to control charging from a smartphone app.
Just like a smartphone, you can plug in your EV when you get home and have it ready for you to use the next morning. Since the electric grid (输电网) is available almost anywhere, there are a variety of options for charging: at home, at work or on the road. By charging often, you may never need to go to a gas station again!
You can find many advantages with an electric car:
◆Zero Oil price and promotes Energy Management
◆Aids in reducing the Emission of Green House Gases
◆No tailpipe pollutants emitted and leads to reduced air pollution
◆No gas required to run your Electric Car
◆Cost Effective and many governments are appreciating Electric Cars by money back offers
◆Electric Cars guarantee a smooth drive and reduce noise pollution too.
Electric Cars are modes of Green Transportation that run using Batteries, Solar Panels or other energy sources that are just one time investment. The charging of batteries of saving energy through Solar Panels might be time consuming, but such initiatives ensure a safe environment. Though electric cars are a little costly, we should participate in such a global initiative and encourage others to do the same. After all, it is we who can make our world a better place to live in.
1. Compared with conventional cars, Electrical Vehicles can _______.| A．react quickly |
| B．increase air pollution |
| C．be charged only at home |
| D．be connected less digitally |
| A．Needing no gas to run it |
| B．Reducing noise pollution |
| C．Ensuring a smooth drive |
| D．Ruining energy management |
| A．Doubtful | B．Supportive |
| C．Opposed | D．Indifferent |
2 . Marian Bechtel sits at West Palm Beach’s Bar Louie counter by herself, quietly reading her e-book as she waits for her salad. What is she reading? None of your business! Lunch is Bechtel’s “me” time. And like more Americans, she’s not alone.
A new report found 46 percent of meals are eaten alone in America. More than half(53 percent) have breakfast alone and nearly half(46 percent) have lunch by themselves. Only at dinnertime are we eating together anymore, 74 percent, according to statistics from the report.
“I prefer to go out and be out. Alone, but together, you know?” Bechtel said, looking up from her book. Bechtel, who works in downtown West Palm Beach, has lunch with coworkers sometimes, but like many of us, too often works through lunch at her desk. A lunchtime escape allows her to keep a boss from tapping her on the shoulder. She returns to work feeling energized. “Today, I just wanted some time to myself,” she said.
Just two seats over, Andrew Mazoleny, a local videographer, is finishing his lunch at the bar. He likes that he can sit and check his phone in peace or chat up the barkeeper with whom he’s on a first-name basis if he wants to have a little interaction(交流). “I reflect on how my day’s gone and think about the rest of the week,” he said. “It’s a chance for self-reflection. You return to work recharged and with a plan.”
That freedom to choose is one reason more people like to eat alone. There was a time when people may have felt awkward about asking for a table for one, but those days are over. Now, we have our smartphones to keep us company at the table. “It doesn’t feel as alone as it may have before all the advances in technology,” said Laurie Demeritt, whose company provided the statistics for the report.
1. What are the statistics in paragraph 2 about?| A．Food variety. | B．Eating habits. |
| C．Table manners. | D．Restaurant service. |
| A．He makes videos for the bar. | B．He’s fond of the food at the bar. |
| C．He interviews customers at the bar. | D．He’s familiar with the barkeeper. |
| A．The trend of having meals alone. | B．The importance of self-reflection. |
| C．The stress from working overtime. | D．The advantage of wireless technology. |
3 . The door of a small cage opens up and a bird flies into a large enclosure (围场). The bird lands on a tree and moves its red head to the side, as if it is surprised. “That’s what it feels like to be free,” said Juan Camilo Panqueba, who works at a wildlife center in the Colombian city of Bogota, far from the Caribbean coast, where the bird usually lives.
Birdsong contests have taken place all over the Caribbean for hundreds of years. Although catching any wildlife is not permitted by the law, wildlife trafficking (非法交易) still happens a lot in Colombia, as the officials were too busy fighting with the drug trade, nongovernment fighters and other dangerous groups. Until recently, they did not enforce (强制实施) the law. Now, as dangerous groups have fallen and with the drug trade mostly destroyed, officials are taking another look.
Three weeks ago, Colombian officials saved birds from a group. The group was mostly people who had recently moved to Bogota from the Caribbean and Venezuela. Officials accuse (控告) the group of setting up a songbird competition on social media. In a closed Facebook group, crowds cheered and recorded the loudness and the number of calls from each bird. The owner of the winning bird received＄100, and people who correctly predicted the winner could also win money. Environmental officials say the birds were badly hurt, because they were kept in the small cages and forced to listen to loud music all day long to make sure they can sing. In the wild, the birds sing to protect themselves or find a mate. “For them, it was like cruel harm,” noted Juan Camilo Panqueba, who works at Bogota’s wildlife center. There, he and others care for birds and more than 1, 000 animals.
Colombians have grown to understand the importance of wildlife, and officials are working to end animal trafficking.
1. Colombia has lots of wildlife trafficking because ________.| A．there was no law to protect wildlife |
| B．people from other countries kept coming |
| C．Colombians are people that like birds very much |
| D．the government didn’t have enough time to carry out the law strictly |
| A．It’s a new form of entertainment. |
| B．The birds were badly treated during the contest. |
| C．Finding their mates was what birds sang for. |
| D．All the owners of the birds can win a prize. |
| A．There will be less and less harm to wildlife. |
| B．Government officials will keep the wild animals. |
| C．Birdsong contests will be more and more popular. |
| D．Many wild animals will die out because of the trafficking. |
| A．The bird training methods are important. |
| B．There are many kinds of wildlife in Colombia. |
| C．Colombia has introduced laws to stop the harm to wildlife. |
| D．Birdsong contests did a lot of harm to birds and Colombia is trying to stop it. |
4 . More museums are showing multisensory art, which asks people to use more than one of the senses. Sometimes, the art has a smell. Others have sounds. The artists are finding new ways for people to understand their work.
The Dorothy and Charles Mosesian Center for the Arts is in Watertown. Recently, the center created “Please Touch the Art”. The special show lets visitors touch the work. Aneleise Ruggles works at the Mosesian Center. She is in charge of the museum’s shows. She says that “Please Touch the Art” rethinks meaning in art. The artist must go beyond sight. Forty artists created 52 pieces for the show. Ruggles explained that “Please Touch the Art” is not a show for blind people. Everyone can enjoy the show. Guests use all five senses. The work, though also includes people who are blind or have low vision. “Touchable art creates something people can share.” He also said, “Touch is key to understanding the works.”
A group of guests with low vision visited “Please Touch the Art”. At first, they were nervous about touching the work. One man touched a raised blue painting. The work is Claudia Ravaschiere and Michael Moss’s “Whirl”. Soft music followed his movements. By the end, the visitors were no longer shy. They wrapped each other in hanging cloth.
Shows like “Please Touch the Art” can change what we think of as fine art. Ruggles says the change will take time. The art world must find a new understanding of art. They also need a new way to talk about touchable art.
1. Whom is “Please Touch the Art” intended for?| A．Anyone who is into art. | B．People with poor eyesight. |
| C．Anyone who understands art. | D．People with blindness. |
| A．It makes them question what real art is. | B．It helps them regain some of their eyesight. |
| C．It helps them understand and enjoy art. | D．It encourages them to create their own art. |
| A．listing numbers | B．making comparisons |
| C．offering reasons | D．giving examples |
| A．To attract visitors to the show. | B．To show the creativity of the blind. |
| C．To enrich the lives of blind people. | D．To introduce a special art show. |
5 . In the small village of Goss in Austria, a century-old brewery tradition had a novel transformation towards Sustainability (可持续性), Göss in home to the Gösser Brewery, the world’s first large scale zero-carbon brewery.
Owned and operated by the Heineken Group, the world's third-largest beer maker, the Gösser Brewery was relaunched as a zero-carbon facility in June. The brewery produces 1.4 million bottles of beer every day using a mix of entirely renewable energy sources, including hydropower, biogas and waste heat. This has brought its carbon emissions (排放) down from 3, 000 tons a year to zero.
Andreas Werner, brew master at Gösser Brewery said, “Our Cöss brewery may be in a small town but our goal was to make a big influence. I am proud of what we have achieved for the Heineken Group and want to help our other breweries and the wider brewing industry makes renewable energy part of their energy mix, just as we have done.”
The brewery is helping Heineken achieve its commitment to a 40 percent reduction in CO2 emissions from production by 2022, which is kept in the company’s Brewing a Better World stability strategy.
To power its production, the Gösser Brewery uses 100 percent hydropower sources for eletnicity-35 percent from biomass for heating, 10 percent from biogas from waste water, 3-5 percent from a solar plant, and 50 percent from biogas generated from the spent grain fermentation (发酵) tank.
For this creative move towards sustainability, the brewery won the EU Sustainable Energy Award and Citizens Choice Award in June. The awards cognize creative projects in energy efficiency and renewability in Europe. “The Goss brewery is the stand-out example of this work and our commitment to sustainability,” Roland Verstappen, Heineken’s director for public and movement affairs said.
1. What is special about the Gösser Brewery?| A．It’s the world’s third largest zero-carbon brewery. |
| B．No carbon will be given off during its production. |
| C．It can produce 1.4 million bottles of beer annually. |
| D．The Heineken group newly opened it to produce more beer. |
| A．The resources of making beer. |
| B．The production of beer bottles. |
| C．The examples of sustainable energy. |
| D．The composition of hydropower sources. |
| A．It has won two international awards for its creativity. |
| B．It has helped more industries turn to renewable energy. |
| C．It has led to the draft of Heineken’s Brewing a Belter World strategy. |
| D．It has played an important role in Heineken’s achieving its goal of CO2 reduction. |
| A．A brewery’s creative move to achieve sustainability. |
| B．Profits gained from the transformation of an old brewery. |
| C．The brewery industry’s responsibility for protecting the environment. |
| D．A small business making a big difference by mixing various sources. |
6 . On 19 March 2018, you were born. I knew absolutely nothing of you and hadn’t even considered adding another member to our family.
You see, at that time I was becoming increasingly concerned about our teenage daughter. She had been spending more and more time away from the family, bad tempered and unsociable. She seemed unhappy most of the time. She had talked of wanting a dog for a long while, so I thought: if I do this for her, it will boost her mood, get her out more and give her a new focus.
To my surprise, our daughter’s reaction was not what I expected when I introduced the two of you-had 1 made a mistake?
I soon began to understand that you were not going to bring her out of her sadness. Yet you still needed taking care of, so, naturally, most of the duties of your care fell upon me.
Then, in July, our daughter was diagnosed with anorexia (厌食症). Our lives were turned upside down, as she faced the biggest challenges of her life. My husband and I had different ideas about what would be the best course of action to take; the illness sent the whole family into chaos. Without you, I wouldn’t have had the opportunity, to find clarity. On our walks together, you gave me the freedom to think clearly and rationally (理性地). I found a calmness that I never would have, had I been at home with Google.
In September, we kept our daughter off school and I looked after her, putting everything else on hold. During that time I bonded with her and she bonded with you. She rejoined school in the middle of September, and was slowly but surely on the road to recovery.
Thank you for your constant love and playfulness, and for showing me the simple pleasures of life. But most of all, thank you for being my light in the dark.
1. Who does the author write the letter to?| A．Her daughter. | B．Her dog. | C．Her husband. | D．Herself. |
| A．She needed a lifelong friend. |
| B．She would like to know more about dogs. |
| C．She wanted a dog 1o ease the tension in the family. |
| D．She hoped u dog could relieve her daughter of bad mood. |
| A．It cured her daughter of her disease. |
| B．It made her husband stay elear-minded. |
| C．It helped her belter deal with the difficult situation in her life. |
| D．It strengthened the relationship between her daughter and her. |
| A．She had anorexia. | B．She was a devoted mother. |
| C．She felt guilty to her dog. | D．She recovered from her sadness. |
7 . Plants: we eat them, juice them-and now it seems we can mine them too!
After a successful experiment on the island of Borneo, the botany professor Alan Baker and a group of researchers want to introduce phytomining (harvesting minerals from plants) as a better, partial substitute for traditional mining.
Phytomining, also known as agromining, means collecting metals from live plants. However, this can only be done with a group of plants known as "hyperaccumulators". There are around 700 identified types worldwide, and what makes these hyperaccumulators special is that they naturally attract and absorb minerals through their roots-metals poisonous to other plants-and then store huge, pure concentrations of these minerals in their bodies. The metals can then be extracted from the plants' sap(汁;液), oil, or sometimes even live tissue.
Baker and his colleagues see a lot of potential in phytomining. Not only can it help meet the growing global demand for metals, but is a way of undoing some of that damage to the environment by traditional mining.
One of the biggest problems with traditional mining is that it pollutes the surrounding area. Phytomining can extract metal waste, plus planting the hyperaccumulators would regrow the deforested areas caused by mining operations. Aside from this, if phytomining is able to replace part of traditional mining, then there would be fewer instances of bad mining practices like abandoned mines, which pollute the nearby waters. Also, since phytomining provides metals that are already naturally pure, there is no need to use huge amounts of energy to purify the ore(矿石).
Phytomining has its drawbacks. Harvesting plants on a large scale is expensive today, compared to traditional mining. Besides, plants can be wiped out by diseases or unexpected weather conditions.
However, there are many reasons to consider phytomining. After all, we need to make sure that our planet can keep up and sustainable practices like phytomining give us the hope that our advancement doesn't mean sacrificing Mother Earth.
1. What makes hyperaccumulators different from other plants?| A．The sap poisonous to other plants. |
| B．The ability to take in and store minerals. |
| C．The oil extracted from live plant tissue. |
| D．The concentrations of minerals in their bodies. |
| A．It can stop deforestation. |
| B．It may reduce the desertedmines. |
| C．It uses clean energy to purify the ore. |
| D．It can't be destroyed by diseases. |
| A．Pessimistic. | B．Indifferent. | C．Optimistic. | D．Skeptical. |
| A．Metals From Plants. |
| B．The Future of Phytomining. |
| C．What Are Hyperaccumulators? |
| D．Benefits of Phytomining. |
8 . Is there a strange something high up in the world’s tallest mountains? If so, is it a big bear? Is it a monkey? Or is it a kind of man? No one knows. This mystery has puzzled the world for years.
In 1887, a mountain climber found large footsteps in the snow. They looked like the footsteps of a very large man. But men don’t walk without shoes in the snow!
In 1906, another climber saw more footsteps. He saw a very large animal standing on two legs. As he watched, it ran away very quickly. Fifteen years later, a newspaper had new stories about the “something”. A mountain climber said he had seen the “snowman” walk slowly in the snow. He said it looked like a very large man.
From then on, more and more people had stories to tell. But not until 1951 did a mountain climber bring back the pictures of large footsteps. The pictures showed clearly that the snowman walked on two legs. So it was not a bear or a monkey. Could it be an apeman (猿人)? And the mystery keeps growing. Some day, we may find out just what it is that makes the largest footsteps.
1. The passage is about ________.| A．some mountain climbers |
| B．some strange animals |
| C．the snow |
| D．the mystery of the large footsteps |
| A．Because they were the footsteps of a large bear. |
| B．Because they looked like the footsteps of a large man. |
| C．Because they were found in the snow. |
| D．Because they were found in the mountains. |
| A．They were the footsteps of an apeman. |
| B．They were the footsteps of a snowman. |
| C．The pictures showed clearly how the snowman walked. |
| D．People still don’t know who made the footsteps. |
| A．Snow | B．The large footsteps |
| C．A big bear | D．Monkey |
9 . There are many American expressions about insects - like bees, for example.
You might say you were as busy as a bee if you spent your weekend cleaning your house. In fact, you also might say you made a beeline for something if you went there right away. When we go to see a movie, my friend always makes a beeline for the place where they sell popcorn.
Here is an expression about bees that is not used much any more, but we like it anyway. If something was the best of its kind, you might say it was the bee's knees. Now, we admit that we do not know how this expression developed. If fact, we do not even know if bees have knees!
If your friend cannot stop talking about something because she thinks it is important, you might say she has a bee in her bonnet. If someone asks you a personal question, you might say "that is none of your beeswax." This means none of your business.
Hornets are bee-like insects that sometimes attack people. If you are really angry, you might say you are mad as a hornet. And if you stir up a hornet's nest, you create trouble or problems.
Butterflies are beautiful insects, but you would not want to have butterflies in your stomach. That means to be nervous about having to do something, like speaking in front of a crowd. You would also not want to have ants in your pants. That is, to be restless and unable to sit still.
Here are some expressions about plain old bugs, another word for insects. If a friend keeps asking you to do something you do not want to do, you might ask him to leave you alone or "stop bugging me." A friend also might tell you again and again to do something. If so, you might say he put a bug in your ear.
If you were reading a book in your warm bed on a cold winter's day, you might say you were snug as a bug in a rug. And, if you wish someone good night, you might say, "sleep tight — don't let the bed bugs bite."
1. If you are going to give a speech before a big audience, you would probably______.| A．have ants in your pants |
| B．have a bug in your ear |
| C．have a bee in your bonnet |
| D．have a butterfly in your stomach |
| A．bees are popular insects |
| B．bees fly to a place directly |
| C．bees actually have no knees |
| D．bees sometimes refer to babies |
| A．The various insects commonly seen in America. |
| B．The interesting expressions concerning bugs in America. |
| C．The different explanations for particular idioms in America. |
| D．The amazing richness of English expressions in America. |
10 . The world has seen many inventions. While most people are proud of those associate with their names, there are things making inventors feel the other way.
The pop-up (弹出) advert, by Ethan Zuckerman
Pop-up ads are convenient for those who are interested, but most people get annoyed when they are on computers. They may contain computer viruses. Just as we would blame the inventor, the man humbly accepted his invention isn’t one of the best. In his essay, Zuckerman wrote about the most hateful thing, “I wrote the code to launch the window and run an ad in it.”
The emoticon, by Scott E. Fahlman
Emoticons began to occupy screens crazily in 2011 and gained great popularity, especially with young men. It had been four years since Fahlman first used a “smiley face” in a computer message. He created the emoticon as a joke marker. But things are different. “It has gone to places I don’t approve of,” he complained to The Wall Street Journal in 2013. “It shouldn’t have been created.”
The office cubicle (隔间), by Bob Propst
In 1968, Bob Propst came up with the idea office cubicles, something that “would build a futuristic and tidy office style with no real walls or doors and provide a more comfortable environment”. But the man has come to hate what he has invented, as Propst recalled to Fortune at age 80, “They’ve changed and just become cubicles”.
The K-Cup, by John Sylvan
It seems everyone has a Keurig coffee maker for K-Cups. John Sylvan invented the K-Cup, aimed at facilitating office life of white-collar workers. Now it’s common in houses and companies. However, the single-serve plastic coffee cups aren’t eco-friendly. “I feel bad sometimes that I ever did it”, Sylvan admits. But! Good news for Mr. Sylvan: Keuring now offers varieties of recyclable K-Cups.
1. When was the emoticon invented?| A．In 2007. | B．In 2009. | C．In 2011. | D．In 2013. |
| A．The pop-up advert. | B．The emoticon. | C．The office cubicle. | D．The K-Cup. |
| A．They benefit human life greatly. |
| B．Their creators are blamed by the public. |
| C．Their inventors feel regretful. |
| D．They are very popular with young people. |
