1 . These days' experience, like many other things, are becoming increasingly expensive. One has to get to pay a lot to get, even an ordinary one.
Not long ago, I wanted to invite my friends to a lunch. What we really need was a good and a quiet place for a talk, not a big meal. So I chose one and told my friends to go there.
After I ordered, I was asked whether I would eat a 100 yuan or 200 yuan lunch, I said, "200 yuan." I didn't realize until I was asked to pay after lunch, that "200 yuan" means "200 yuan for person each."
There were five people that day, and all of us were surprises by the 200 yuan meal. The bill came at last: it was 1260, 1000 for the five of us, plus the money for drinks, fruits and air conditioning. I paid the bill without a word.
What could I say? It was not their fault. It was my own fault that made me pay the largest bill in my life.
However, it was not so bad: we had a good lunch and at a quiet place. Besides, the experience will help in my later years.
To support my idea, I have developed my own way of thinking about the price: 200 yuan for the lunch and 1260 for the experience. This paid experience has made me ten times wiser.
1. According to the passage , now one has to pay ________ .| A．more for a lunch in a restaurant | B．more to get an ordinary lunch |
| C．more for some experience | D．increasingly high price |
| A．so as to have a big lunch | B．so that we could have a good meal |
| C．in order to introduce my friends to the restaurant | D．to have a talk in a good place |
| A．me 100 yuan | B．me 200 yuan |
| C．us 200 yuan each | D．me 1260 yuan |
| A．the restaurant cheated the customers | B．I was very rich |
| C．I was unknown to the restaurant | D．I knew little about the market prices |
| A．my thanks to the experience | B．my happiness to be 10 times wiser |
| C．my anger at the experience | D．my pleasure to have a good lunch |
2 . These animal dads have some seriously strange ideas about fatherhood.
Barbary macaque
Unlike human dads boasting of their kids' winning contests or college acceptances, barbary macaques, monkeys that are native to North Africa, show off babies as a way to impress each other and build social networks. These monkeys live in troops of about 30 members, and life centers around the babies born each spring.
During baby season, males carry the infants, even picking up little ones that aren’t their own offspring (后代). However, there are status symbols, used to build male social networks and connections within the group. The infants can serve as a social passport, to approach other males and hang out with them. After all, it’s much simpler to break the ice if you have a cute baby in hand.
Sand grouse
Lots of dads bring home the bacon. But for young sand grouses living in Namibia’s dry deserts, water is the essential resource. Sand grouse fathers are the frequent flyers that travel almost 125 miles each day to fill up for the family at a watering hole.
With no other way to transport water, male sand grouses settle in the pool, rocking back and forth to bathe their belly feathers. Filling up can take 15 minutes, leaving them exposed to killers like falcons (猎鹰). But it all pays off. The dads return home after a long day and are able to provide their babies with few precious tablespoons of liquid.
Pipefish
Pregnant pipefish males-yes, males-give birth to live young from eggs that females deposit in their brood pouches (育儿袋). This mothering act has earned them praise as devoted animal dads.
But it turns out that the pregnant pipefish also has a wandering eye. If he sees a bigger female he often aborts (流产) existing eggs. If he stops exporting nutrients to the developing embryos (胚胎) while reabsorbing nutrients from abortions, he assures enough resources to invest in the more rewarding offspring.
Blue poison dart frog
Females of this species lay only about half a dozen precious eggs. That is maybe why dads are so devoted to them. Frog eggs must stay watery or moist, and these devoted dads accomplish that by regularly urinating on them over the course of 10 days, until they hatch (孵化) as tadpoles.
1. Barbary macaques carry their kids around in order to _____.| A．show how proud they are about being a father. |
| B．show their family strength within monkey groups. |
| C．center around their kids as a tradition. |
| D．build up better relations with other monkeys. |
| A．barbary macaque and sand grouse. |
| B．sand grouse and pipefish. |
| C．pipefish and blue poison dart frog. |
| D．sand grouse and blue poison dart frog. |
| A．Sand grouse carries the water by drinking it first and then spitting it out. |
| B．Pipefish gives up some eggs in order to make himself stronger. |
| C．Male blue poison dart frog protects the eggs by keeping them wet. |
| D．Sand grouse has to compete for water with the falcon. |
3 . Free school meals are back in the news. Footballer Marcus Rashford’s petition(请愿书) to extend free school meals provision(供给) into the school holidays has collected 1.1 million signatures, causing the government to reverse policy. It has restarted the debate over free school meals, fuelled, most recently, by figures forecasting that if the government ends as planned the current £20 top-up(附加款), another 200,000 children will slip into poverty. This is in addition to the 550,000 children already living in poverty previous to Covid-19.
The roots of the current school meals system lie in the mid-19th century. In Manchester, independent charities as well as official bodies started to provide free meals for undernourished children in the 1870s. When education became compulsory in the following decades, the extent of the issue became apparent. Proponents of feeding starving children pointed out that it was due to government order that children were in school, not working and contributing to the family food budget, so the government should pay.
Reception was mixed. Then, as now, children rejected foods they weren’t used to. Diaries of the time talk of “little bags of mystery” (sausages). Some children were put off brassicas(芥菜类) for life. Finding the balance between cheap and good proved hard. The chief medical officer talked about the lack in calorie value and elements of a well-balanced diet which a needy child does not get at home, such as milk, cheese, eggs, green vegetables, fruit and meat”. In 1980, the Tory government, desperate to cut costs, made provision largely optional and abolished nutritional standards. Over the next 15 years convenience and cost became the most important.
Today, school meals provision is linked to benefits: in England around 17 per cent of children are entitled to free school meals. Provision is outsourced(外包), leading to huge variation. In the last year, we’ve seen all of the age-old debates repeated once more. How do we decide who is entitled? How do we guarantee quality? Who decides what children eat? Who pays? Undernutrition does not just have physical effects, but also affects behavior and ability to learn. It has a lifelong impact. The arguments around free school meals seem never to end. But they are hugely important and, until poverty is ended, they will not and should not go away.
1. Why did Marcus Rashford start the petition?| A．To feed an increasing number of children in poverty. |
| B．To restart the debate over free school meals. |
| C．To raise fund for hunger relief for children. |
| D．To lift children out of poverty. |
| A．Officials. | B．Charities. |
| C．Advocates. | D．Critics. |
| A．Some children liked brassicas provided in the school. |
| B．School meals were both tasty and cheap. |
| C．School meals failed to meet children’s nutritional needs. |
| D．The Tory government chose nutrition over cost. |
| A．Never-ending. | B．Meaningless. |
| C．Influential. | D．Necessary. |
4 . Ever wondered if dogs can learn new words? Yes, say researchers as they have found that talented dogs may have the ability to grasp new words after hearing them only four times.
While previous evidence seems to show that most dogs do not learn words, unless eventually very well trained, a few individuals have shown some extraordinary abilities, according to a study published in the journal Scientific Reports.
“We wanted to know under which conditions the gifted dogs may learn novel words,” said researcher xuekw Claudia Fugazza from the Eötvös Loránd University in Hungary. For the study, the team involved two gifted dogs, Whisky and Vicky Nina. The team exposed the dogs to the new words in two different conditions.
In the exclusion-based task, presented with seven known toys and one new toy, the dogs were able to select the new toy when presented with a new name. Researchers say this proves that dogs can choose by exclusion when faced with a new word, they selected the only toy which did not have a known name.
However, this was not the way they would learn the name of the toy. In fact, when they were presented with one more equally new name to test their ability to recognize the toy by its name, the dogs got totally confused and failed.
The other condition, the social one, where the dogs played with their owners who pronounced the name of the toy while playing with the dog, proved to be the successful way to learn the name of the toy, even after hearing it only 4 times. “The rapid learning that we observed seems to equal children’s ability to learn many new words at a fast rate around the age of 18 months,” Fugazza says. “But we do not know whether the learning mechanisms(机制) behind this learning are the same for humans and dogs. ”
To test whether most dogs would learn words this way, 20 other dogs were tested in the same condition, but none of them showed any evidence of learning the toy names, confirming that the ability to learn words rapidly in the absence of formal training is very rare and is only present in a few gifted dogs.
1. What was the purpose of the study published in Scientific Reports?| A．To better train dogs’ ability to learn new words. |
| B．To further confirm previous evidence about dogs. |
| C．To prove extraordinary memory abilities of gifted dogs. |
| D．To explore favorable conditions for gifted dogs’ new-word learning. |
| A．Slow to understand. | B．Quick to learn. | C．At a loss. | D．In a panic. |
| A．Learning through playing applied to most dogs. |
| B．The social condition helped dogs learn new words. |
| C．Dogs’ new-word learning turned out to be less effective. |
| D．Dogs shared similar learning mechanisms with children. |
| A．Gifted Dogs Can Learn New Words Rapidly. |
| B．Dogs Identify Newly-named Toys by Exclusion. |
| C．Dogs Can Acquire Vocabulary through Tons of Training. |
| D．Gifted Dogs Have Similar Learning Abilities to Humans. |
5 . I saw my first tree today. Dad used to tell me stories about the trees that still existed when he was a boy. There weren’t very many even then, with the urbanization program in full swing.
The O’Brien home was one of the few examples of old-style wooden structures that hadn’t been destroyed in Boston’s urban-renewal campaign. The family had been able to avoid this because of its wealth and political influence, and the house was passed on through generations to the present. Old man O’Brien had no children, so when he died, the Urban Center bought it. Then an official discovered that the house had a backyard-in the yard was a live tree!
When the news of the tree’s discovery leaked out, quite a few sightseers stopped by to have a look at it, and the local government, realizing the money-making potential, began charging admission and advertising the place. By now it had become a favorite spot for family trips like ours.
Dad paid the fee and we walked through a doorway hidden in a bookshelf and into the backyard. I just couldn’t help noticing the tree!
It was located at one end of the yard, with a fence around it for protection. It was similar in form to the plastic trees I’d seen, but there was much more. You could see details more delicate than in any artificially made plant. And it was alive. But best of all was the smell-fresh, living smell, unfamiliar to the world outside with metal, plastic, and glass. I wanted to touch the bark, but the fence prevented me from doing so.
On the way back, I read through the brochures. One part said the O’Brien home would be torn down next year to make room for some insurance building, and the tree will have to go, too.
I just sat still, fingering the object in my pocket that I had picked in the O’Brien’s backyard. I think it’s called an acorn (橡子).
1. Why could the tree in the O’Brien’s backyard survive till today?| A．It possessed some special characteristics. |
| B．It had a very strong fence around to protect it. |
| C．It was preserved together with the house by its owner. |
| D．It got the local government’s attention as a tourist attraction. |
| A．Annoyed. | B．Calm. | C．Excited. | D．Upset. |
| A．Social progress and urbanization come at a cost. |
| B．Social progress should give way to nature protection. |
| C．Humans value nature protection over social progress. |
| D．Urbanization has more advantages than disadvantages. |
6 . Training for Saving
First Aid at Work 3 days £279
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Lunch break. Classroom setting. Certificate to issue.
AED with Life Support 2 days £107
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Certificate valid for three years.
First Aid for Teachers Training 1 day £50
Specially designed for those working in a school environment and wishing to have the first aid skills to act in an emergency. Ideal for teachers and other school staff over 16. First aid skills to help a child who is unresponsive and breathing or not breathing, choking, having an allergic reaction or a head injury.
Not qualify the learner to act as a first aider.
Fire Marshal Training 4 days £364
Take this if you are over 16 and responsible for fire safety or appointed fire marshals in the workplace. Come to understand how a fire starts and spreads; how to assess and manage these risks; and how to use firefighting equipment. You must be physically able to carry out the practical elements of the course.
Role play. Classroom environment. Certificate.
1. What can be learnt in the course AED with Life Support?| A．Steps to deal with massive injuries. |
| B．Process of preventing a terrible fire. |
| C．Operation of certain medical equipment. |
| D．Treatment for an adult's mental problems. |
| A．First Aid at Work. | B．AED with Life Support. |
| C．First Aid for Teachers Training. | D．Fire Marshal Training. |
| A．Providing certificates for trainees. |
| B．Having the same requirement for age. |
| C．Offering discount for group booking. |
| D．Taking more than one day to complete. |
7 . Last year, 138,000 San Francisco residents used Airbnb, a popular app designed to connect home renters and travelers. It’s a striking number for a city with a population of about 850,000, and it was enough for Airbnb to win a major victory in local elections, as San Francisco voters struck down a debatable rule that would have placed time restrictions and other regulations on short-term rental services.
The company fiercely opposed the measure, Proposition F, with a nearly $10 million advertising campaign. It also contacted its San Franciscan users with messages urging them to vote against Proposition F.
Most people think of Airbnb as a kind of couch-surfing app. The service works for one-night stays on road trips and longer stays in cities, and it often has more competitive pricing than hotels. It’s a textbook example of the “sharing economy”, but not everyone is a fan.
The app has had unintended consequences in San Francisco. As the San Francisco Chronicle reported last year, a significant amount of renting on Airbnb is not in line with the company’s image: middle-class families putting up a spare room to help make ends meet. Some users have taken advantage of the service, using it to turn their multiple properties into vacation rentals or even full-time rentals. Backers of Proposition F argued that this trend takes spaces off the conventional, better-regulated housing market and contributes to rising costs.
“The fact is, widespread abuse of short-term rentals is taking much needed housing off the market and harming our neighborhoods,” said ShareBetter SF, a group that supported Proposition F. Hotel unions have protested the company’s practices in San Francisco and other cities, saying that it creates an illegal hotel system.
San Francisco is in the middle of a long-term, deeply rooted housing crisis that has seen the cost of living explode. Actually, explode is a generous term. The average monthly rent for an apartment is around $4, 000. Located on a narrow outcropping of land overlooking the bay, San Francisco simply doesn’t have enough space to accommodate the massive inflow of young, high-salaried tech employees flocking to Silicon Valley.
As the Los Angeles Times reported, some San Francisco residents supported the measure simply because it seemed like a way to check a big corporation. Opponents of Proposition F countered that the housing crisis runs much deeper, and that passing the rule would have discouraged a popular service while doing little to solve the city’s existing problems.
1. The intention of Proposition F is to ________.| A．place time limits in local election. | B．set limits on short-term rental. |
| C．strike down a controversial rule. | D．urge users to vote against Airbnb. |
| A．It shrinks the living space of middle-class families. |
| B．Users are taken advantage of by the service financially. |
| C．It makes the house market more competitive. |
| D．It indirectly leads to high house rental price. |
| A．explosion of the living cost | B．its geographic characteristics |
| C．generosity of local enterprises | D．inflow of migrant population |
| A．objective | B．supportive |
| C．negative | D．indifferent |
8 . I’m a talker. I am keen on debating, gossiping and teasing when I have people to talk to. Under lockdown, however, I’ve only had my partner, Peter.
We not only lived, worked and travelled together, we mostly socialized together, too. Under the first UK lockdown, our already closeness began to feel uncomfortable. While talking to Peter, I could see his attention drift.
For the first time in our 10 years together, we needed to be alone. I tried to manufacture this by going on walks on my own, but a short walk wasn’t doing the job. I had hiked in remote spaces all over the world but always in a pair or group — for safety reasons. I considered my options and hit upon an idea: the semi-solo hike.
Could we do a circular hike but walk in different directions? This would give us the space and peace of a solo hike — done by a person alone. It felt like a promising way out, and he agreed to give it a try.
We started with a four-mile loop (环路) from Reeth. At the start, we parted ways. At first, I was aware of how close we were, which lessened the appeal. As I gained ground, however, I found myself very much alone. I set my own pace, and I decided to take my time.
I sat on a rock and breathed out. That moment — with the weak sun through the clouds and the breeze blowing — felt extraordinary to me. I was born and raised in London and had never imagined leaving until I met an outdoorsman. Now, my former life as a city girl felt crazy. In remembering what I had gained, I felt the tension leave me. There, in the chilly air, I no longer needed to talk. The semi-solo hike gave us a shared experience with added room to breathe.
I didn’t see Peter on the way but reunited back where we started, both pleased.
The semi-solo hike is admittedly silly in theory, but for me it has been a lifeline. It has given me the gift of time alone and, in a year of constant closeness, the joy of reuniting.
1. What motivated the author to adopt the semi-solo hike?| A．Peter’s disinterest in her words. |
| B．Her habit of venturing into the wild. |
| C．The lack of privacy under lockdown. |
| D．Her desire to engage in outdoor exercise. |
| A．Their routes coincide sometimes during the hike. |
| B．They depart in a separate way to different destinations. |
| C．They hike in each other’s company throughout the journey. |
| D．They start and return to the same place by a different route. |
| A．Fearless and refreshed. | B．Free and relaxed. |
| C．Tense and depressed. | D．Upset and embarrassed. |
| A．An appropriate distance creates beauty. |
| B．There are more solutions than difficulties. |
| C．Access to nature is better than social circles. |
| D．Hiking helps improve interpersonal relationships. |
9 . A few plants in the cabbage and mustard (芥菜) family pay a dramatic price to fight off hungry caterpillars (毛毛虫): they kill off patches of their own leaves where butterflies have laid eggs. Without a living anchor, the eggs wrinkle and die. These plants’ egg-killing abilities have been documented since at least the 1980s, but a new study shows they appear in just a few closely related plants in this family — and they are triggered only by certain butterfly species.
Nina Fatouros of Wageningen University in the Netherlands and her colleagues investigated 31 plant species in the target family. First, they dabbed the plants’ leaves with liquid that had been exposed to egg material from a butterfly species known to lay eggs on them. Four closely related plant species reliably killed off the treated leaf patches. Further tests confirmed that the species with the most distinct response only reacted strongly when the egg material came from one group of butterflies, Pieris, which lays eggs on these plants in the wild. This is “clear evidence” that specific butterfly species could have stimulated the evolution of the necrosis (坏死) defense, Fatouros says. The researchers also tracked eggs laid by wild butterflies to confirm the defense mechanism. The work was detailed in New Phytologist.
“It’s very unlikely that you find this by coincidence,” says University of Sheffield molecular plant biologist Jurriaan Ton, who was not involved in the study. He adds that the plants’ relatedness, coupled with their exaggerated reaction to these butterflies, suggests a heated evolutionary “arms race” took place between the plants and insects.
“This is the first study to my knowledge where they really looked at the appearance of this trait within a particular plant family,” says ecologist Julia Koricheva, who was also not involved in the work.
Future research could explore how recently the trait evolved, Fatouros says. She notes that arms races rarely end—and evidence suggests the butterflies may be fighting back. Some prefer to lay their eggs in tightly grouped clusters(丛), making them less likely to be influenced by the plants’ strategy.
1. What is special about Nina Fatouros’ study?| A．It found the plants’ egg-killing abilities for the first time. |
| B．It pointed out the price plants paid to defend themselves. |
| C．It discovered a new species of egg-killing plants. |
| D．It narrowed down the range of the plant-butterfly interaction. |
| A．To see whether they would sacrifice their leaves. |
| B．To stimulate their defense mechanism. |
| C．To find out which species reacted most strongly to the liquid. |
| D．To track eggs laid by wild butterflies. |
| A．Indifferent. | B．Approving. |
| C．Disapproving. | D．Skeptical. |
| A．Survival strategies of plants |
| B．Evolution of plants against hungry caterpillars |
| C．Killer leaves emerge from plant-butterfly arms race |
| D．The relatedness of plants and butterflies |
10 . Plastic baby bottles shed microplastics when heated. Should you be worried about its side-effects? We still don’t have enough evidence of health risks posed by microplastic consumptions by infants or adults.
“The last thing we want to do is unduly alarm parents,” said John Boland, a professor at Trinity College Dublin in Ireland and one of the authors of the Nature Food study. While the health effects of microplastics are still unknown, parents can significantly reduce their infants’ exposure by adding some steps to their bottle preparation routine, Boland said. He recommends letting plastic bottles cool completely after sterilization(消毒) in hot water, then washing them out at least three times with water that’s been allowed to cool to room temperature after being sterilized by boiling. Researchers here also found that plastic tea kettles, plastic instant noodle cups and plastic food storage containers all released similarly high levels of microplastics when subjected to heat.
As for what those microplastics may be doing in our bodies, the evidence so far is quite limited and unclear, Schwabl said that points to a need for more research into microplastics released from plastic food storage containers, especially when they are subjected to higher temperatures. He noted some research has found microplastics can cause inflammation(发炎) in the organs, while other studies “show they do not harm.” “The threshold at which they cause problems has not been determined for humans,” Schwabl said. For now, Schwabl agrees we shouldn’t panic. He’s avoiding plastic containers in his daily life – “not so much that I am afraid of the ingestion, but I think thereby I may be contributing to reducing the amount of plastic waste” that makes its way into the environment.
At the moment, there is no need to be afraid, but it is an open question and definitely an unmet need.
1. What does the underlined word “unduly” mean in paragraph 2?| A．Properly. | B．Extremely. | C．Obviously. | D．Specially. |
| A．Temperature. | B．Products. | C．Time. | D．Containers. |
| A．Panic. | B．Caring. | C．Indifference. | D．Critical. |
| A．By providing the examples. | B．By reasoning the readers. |
| C．By analyzing the figures. | D．By comparing the findings. |
