1 . A http:/www.literacynet.org/cnnsf/
Fantastic site from CNN. Over 50 news stories categorized under headings such as crime, environment and adventure. Each story has a range of activities focusing on comprehension and vocabulary, mostly of the multiple-choice variety.
B http:/www.npr.org/
NPR is an American radio network with an extensive audio archive—an excellent source of authentic English.
C http:/www.humorlinks.com/
Hilarious site bringing together over 7,000 links to humor of every kind, from American comedy to Australian cartoons. Here you will see the funniest jokes and pictures from around the world.
D http:/www.bbc.co.uk/bbcfour/audiointerviews/
Hundreds of fascinating interviews with famous people from every walk of life: actors, cartoonists, musicians, painters, philosophers, political activists, scientists and writers.
E http:/www.bbc.co.uk/music/listen
Lots of online music from classical to jazz, from blues to rap. You can listen to radio programs or select a range of special features.
F http: /www.onestopenglish.com
Here you will find listening activities—updated each month--from the online magazine from Macmillan.
1. http:/www.literacynet.org/cnnsf is a website intended for those who________.| A．are learning English |
| B．are writing news stories |
| C．are interested in environment protection |
| D．are designing activities for newspapers |
| A．http:/www.onestopenglish.com |
| B．http:/www.humorlinks.com/ |
| C．http:/www.bbc.co.uk/bbcfour/audiointerviews/ |
| D．http:/www.bbc.co.uk/music/isten |
| A．How to Choose a Suitable Website |
| B．This Week's Web Guide |
| C．Web Radio: New Access to Information |
| D．Special Features from Famous Websites |
2 . Progressives often support diversity missions as a path to equality and a way to level the playing field. But all too often such policies are an insincere form of virtue-signaling that benefits only the most privileged and does little to help average people.
A pair of bills sponsored by Massachusetts state Senator Jason Lewis and House Speaker Pro Tempore Patricia Haddad, to ensure "gender equality" on boards and commissions, provide a case in point.
Haddad and Lewis are concerned that more than half the state-government board are less than 40 percent female. In order to ensure that elite women have more such opportunities, they have proposed imposing government quotas（配额）. If the bills become law, state boards and commissions will be required to set aside 50 percent of board seats for women by 2022.
The bills are similar to a measure recently adopted in California, which last year became the first state to require gender quotas for private companies. In signing the measure, California Governor Jerry Brown admitted that the law, which clearly classifies people on the basis of sex, is probably unconstitutional.
The US Supreme Court frowns on sex-based classifications unless they are designed to address an "important" policy interest. Because the California law applies to all boards, even where there is no history of prior discrimination, courts are likely to rule that the law violates the constitutional guarantee of "equal protection".
But are such government mandates even necessary? Female participation on corporate boards may not currently mirror the percentage of women in the general population, but so what?
The number of women on corporate boards has been steadily increasing without government interference. According to a study by Catalyst, between 2010 and 2015 the share of women on the boards of global corporations increased by 54 percent.
Requiring companies to make gender the primary qualification for board membership will inevitably lead to less experienced private sector boards. That is exactly what happened when Norway adopted a nationwide corporate gender quota.
Writing in The New Republic, Alice Lee notes that increasing the number of opportunities for board membership without increasing the pool of qualified women to serve on such boards has led to a "golden skirt "phenomenon, where the same elite women occupy multiple seats on a variety of boards.
Next time somebody pushes corporate quotas as a way to promote gender equity, remember that such policies are largely self-serving measures that make their sponsors feel good but do little to help average women.
1. The author believes that the bills sponsored by Lewis and Haddad will __________.| A．help little to reduce gender bias. |
| B．pose a threat to the state government. |
| C．raise women's position in politics. |
| D．greatly broaden career options. |
| A．the harm from absolute board decision. |
| B．the importance of constitutional guarantees. |
| C．the pressure on women in global corporations. |
| D．the needlessness of government interventions. |
| A．the underestimation of elite women's role |
| B．the objection to female participation on boards. |
| C．the entry of unqualified candidates into the board. |
| D．the growing tension between labor and management. |
| A．Women's need in employment should be considered. |
| B．Feasibility should be a prime concern in policy making. |
| C．Everyone should try hard to promote social justice. |
| D．Major social issues should be the focus of the government. |
3 . Our youngest daughter can be stubborn about receiving gifts, and I told her so.
“Where do you think I get it from?” she asked.
“I’m not stubborn when it comes to receiving gifts,” I said. “I used to be but not now.”
She has a birthday coming up and we want to get her some new cowboy boots.
Cowboy boots aren’t cheap, but we want to do something special and get her something she could use and enjoy for years to come.
But my daughter is pushing back, saying she’s happy with her current boots-which are old and worn-out.
I push back, she pushes back, and we become locked in a mother-daughter match over stubbornness and how much is too much to spend on a special gift.
She thinks my husband and I do too much for her. I used to think the same thing about my parents—my parents weren’t rich, but they were generous.
They kept saying they enjoyed giving me gifts, but all I could think about was how much money they were wasting on me.
Years ago, I mentioned to a friend that I thought my mother overdid it when it came to buying gifts for her children.
My friend, closer to my mothers age than mine, looked at me and said, “Who are you to tell your mother what she can do?”
I wanted to argue with her, but I didn’t. I didn’t fully understand it then but I understand it now—now that I’m a grandmother myself.
The longer you live, the more you see how often things go wrong.
Marriages fail, friendships break down， family members become estranged, and accidents and illnesses cut lives short.
There is a brokenness that fills many of our lives.
So, when you see life going well, families working hard and growing strong, you want to celebrate.
It took a lot of time for me to understand that giving is an expression of joy, as much as it is an expression of love, understand where my daughter is coming from, but I also understand where my parents were coming from—a place of pure and simple joy celebrating those moments when life goes well.
1. Why did the author’s daughter try to refuse her mom’s gift?| A．She had many boots to wear. |
| B．She wanted something else for her birthday. |
| C．She didn’t like the style of the boots. |
| D．She didn’t want her mom to spend too much money. |
| A．listened to her friends’ advice |
| B．experienced brokenness in life |
| C．communicated with her husband |
| D．received gifts from other family members |
| A．lonely | B．distant | C．joyful | D．complete |
| A．It is the best way to express our love to others. |
| B．It is an expression of hope for the future. |
| C．It is a way to show our joy when life is going well. |
| D．It is a way for people to escape bad things in life. |
4 . Are we getting more stupid? According to Gerald Crabtree, a scientist at Stanford University in the US, we are.
You may not want to hear this, but Crabtree believes that human intelligence reached its peak more than 2,000 years ago and ever since then has been going downhill. “If an average Greek from 1,000 BC were transported to modern times, he or she would be one of the brightest among us,” Crabtree told The Guardian.
At the heart of Crabtree’s thinking is a simple idea. In the past, intelligence was critical for survival when our ancestors had to avoid dangerous animals and hunt for food. The difference of being smart or stupid is often life or death. However, after the spread of agriculture when our ancestors began to live in dense farming communities, the need to keep their intelligence in peak-condition gradually reduced.
This is not hard to understand. Most of the time, pressure is what keeps us going—you need the pressure from your teachers to finish your homework the pressure of looking pretty encourages you to lose weight when summer comes. And the same is also true of our intelligence-if we think less, we become less smart.
These mutations (变异) are harmful to our intelligence and they were all developed in the past 3,000 years. The other evidence that Crabtree holds is in our genes. He found that among the 2,000 to 5,000 genes that we have that determine human intelligence, there are two or more mutations in each of us.
However, Crabtree’s theory has been criticized by some who say that early humans may have better hunting and surviving abilities, but people today have developed more diverse intelligence. For example, spearing (用矛刺) a tiger doesn’t necessarily require more brainpower than playing chess or writing a poem. Moreover, the power of modern education means lot more people have the opportunity to learn nowadays.
“You wouldn’t get Stephen Hawking 2,000 years ago. He just wouldn’t exist,” Thomas Hills of the University of Warwick, UK, told Live Science. “But now we have people of his intellectual capacity doing things and making insights (洞察力) that we would never have achieved in our environment of evolutionary adaptation (进化适应).”
1. What is Crabtree’s recent finding according to the article?| A．The Greeks from 1,000 BC could have been the smartest in human history. |
| B．Our ancient ancestors had no better surviving abilities than we do nowadays. |
| C．Mutations in genes that decide human intelligence have affected the development of intelligence. |
| D．Humans have been getting steadily more intelligent since the invention of farming. |
| A．had much more genes that determine human Intelligence |
| B．were forced to be smart due to natural selection pressures |
| C．relied more on group intelligence than individual intelligence |
| D．developed a diverse intelligence to adapt to the hard realities |
| A．people today are under much more pressure than early humans |
| B．it’s unreasonable to compare hunter’s and a poet’s intelligence |
| C．modern education is far more advanced than ancient education |
| D．human intelligence nowadays is different from that of the distant past |
| A．He is for Crabtree’s theory. |
| B．He is against Crabtree’s theory. |
| C．He is worried about Crabtree’s theory. |
| D．He is confused about Crabtree’s theory. |
5 . Elephants have four distinct personalities that help their herd survive in the African bush, scientists have found.
With their grey skin, mournful eyes and slow heavy pace, you could be forgiven for thinking elephants are uniformly blue creatures. But scientists have now discovered the largest living land animals have personalities to match their size. In a new study of African elephants, researchers have identified four distinct characters that are common in a herd -- the leaders, the gentle giants, the playful rogues and the reliable plodders.
Each of the types has developed to help the giant mammals survive in their harsh environment and is almost unique in the animal kingdom, according to the scientists. Professor Phyllis Lee and her colleague Cynthia Moss studied a herd of elephants in the Amboseli National Park in Kenya known as the EB family - famous for their matriarch Echo before she died in 2009. Using data collected over 38 years of watching this group, the researchers analyzed them for 26 types of behaviors and found four personality features tended to emerge.
The strongest personality to emerge was that of the leader. Unlike other animals, where leadership tends to be won by most dominant and aggressive individual, the elephants instead respected intelligence and problem solving in their leader. Echo, the matriarch and oldest in the group, her daughter Enid, and Ella, the second oldest female, all emerged as leaders.
The playful elephants tended to be younger but were more curious and active. Eudora, a 40-year-old female in the herd, seemed to be the most playful, consistently showing this trait through out her life while playfulness in some of the other elephants declined with age.
Gentle elephants, which included two 27-year-old females Eleanor and Eliot, caressed and rubbed against others more than the others.
Those that were reliable tended to be those that were most consistent at making good decisions, helped to care for infants in the herd and were calm when faced with threats. Echo and her youngest daughter Ebony seemed to be the most reliable. Professor Less said that elephants with these features tended to be the most socially integrated in the group while those who tended to be pushy and less reliable were more likely to split from the herd.
1. The reason why elephants have four distinct personalities is that ________.| A．scientists can distinguish them from each other more easily. |
| B．the four personalities can help them survived in Africa. |
| C．the elephants will be unique in the animals kingdom. |
| D．the elephants can avoid being caught by human beings. |
| A．the researchers reached their conclusion by analyzing the data. |
| B．the research centered on the 26 types of behavior of the matriarch. |
| C．the scientists conducted the research by comparing elephants with other animals. |
| D．Professor Phyllis Lee and her colleague spent nearly 38 years tracking the herd. |
| A．mother and daughter | B．the two oldest female |
| C．the most gentle ones | D．leader and member |
| A．Not all the types can help the elephants survive in their environment. |
| B．Leadership tends to be won by the most dominant and aggressive elephant. |
| C．The playful elephants not only tended to by younger but also were more curious. |
| D．The reliable elephants are likely to rely on others to decide what to do. |
6 . Last - Minute Father’s Day gift ideas
Okay, it’s officially last minute for deciding and choosing Father’s Day gifts. Here are some last-minute ideas.
The gift of music. If you’ve got the cash, and think Dad might like his own MP3 player to enjoy, go with an Apple iPod nano ($ 60), which would allow him to listen to and wirelessly buy all kinds of music via a Yahoo! Music subscription. If he’s strictly a CD man, burn one for him with some new tunes you think he’d like. |
Digital camera. The most expensive thing on this last-minute list, the Canon PowerShot SD600 IS Digital Elph ($ 102) is a can’t - miss choice for excellent photos with simple - to - use features. It slips into a pocket and makes taking great pictures of the kids nearly effortless. |
Do something for him. Sometimes the best gift is noticing what Dad does around the house to keep things running smoothly, and then offering to do it in his stead. Mow the lawn. Take out the garbage and recycling for a month. If you don’t live near your Dad, you can promise to do a few things to help out around the house on the next visit. Remember it is free of charge! |
Something simple. Kids can make a unique, personal T-shirt ($5) for Dad quickly and easily with EasyImage. |
Sunday will be here before we know it. Don’t put it off another day!
1. If Tom’s father is crazy about music, how much will it cost Tom to buy the gift for him?| A．$102 | B．$60 | C．$10 | D．$5 |
| A．A senior high school student with little pocket money . |
| B．A father who likes traveling and taking photos for his kids |
| C．A professional photographer |
| D．A grandpa who is too sick to walk about |
| A．mow the lawn | B．wash the car |
| C．take out the garbage | D．make a unique, personal T-shirt |
7 . There once was a master who went to India. in those times, we didn’t have the communications or airplanes or many kinds of transportation that we do now. So the master went to India on foot. he had never been to India before; perhaps he came from Persia. And when he got there, he saw a lot of fruit. In India they have plenty of fruit to sell, but much of it is expensive because they can’t grow much due to the water situation. So he saw one basket, a big basket of some very red, long fruit. And it was the cheapest in the shop, not expensive at all.
So he went up and asked, ‘How much per kilo?’ And the shopkeeper said, ‘Two rupees.’ Two rupees in India is nothing; it’s like dirt. So he bought a whole kilogram of the fruit and started eating it. But after he ate some of it: Oh, my God! His eyes watered, his mouth watered and burned, his eyes were burning, his head was burning and his face became red. As he coughed and gasped for breath, he jumped up and down, saying, ‘Ah!Ah!Ah!’
But he still continued to eat the fruit! Some people who were looking at him shook their heads and said, ‘You’re crazy, man. Those are chilies! You can’t eat so many; they’re not good for you! People use them as a condiment, but only a little bit to put into food for taste. You can’t just eat them by the handful like that; they’re not fruit!’ So the stupid master said, ‘No, I can’t stop! I paid money for them, and now I’ll eat them. It’s my money!’
And you think that master was stupid, right? Similarly, we sometimes do a lot of things like that. We invest money, time or effort in a relationship, business or job. And even though it’s been a long time, bitter expereince tells us it won’t work, and we know there’s no more hope that things will change in the future - this we definitely know by intuition - we still continue just because we’ve invested money, time, effort and love into it. If so, we’re kaput(故障)in the brain. Just like the man who ate the chilies and suffered so much but couldn’t stop because he didn’t want to waste the money he’d paid. ________________________. That’s better than continuing to lose.
1. After the master went to India, ________.| A．he bought much fruit | B．he thought the fruit there was just like dirt |
| C．he bought some chilies | D．he ate a lot of fruit |
| A．fruit | B．salt | C．vegetable | D．fish |
| A．No pains, no gains. |
| B．We can’t waste anything. |
| C．Where there is a will, there is a way. |
| D．So even if you’ve lost something, let it go and move on. |
| A．silly | B．thoughtful | C．truthful | D．frightening |
8 . Welcome to Iceland! I hope that your trip will be pleasant and that __________ will help you during your stay. It includes very important information you might find useful for your travel and we hope you will enjoy it.
Iceland is becoming a very popular place to visit all year round and we are not surprised. The country with its spectacular, unspoiled, fragile and raw nature, hot springs, icebergs and waterfalls is a feast for the eyes both during summer and winter. Our history and culture is young compared to most other countries. We speak our own language, Icelandic, which due to the country’s isolation in the past, has been very well preserved.
Driving in Iceland can be a bit different from many other countries. We do have a number of gravel roads, single lane bridges, narrow roads, rough mountain roads with unbridged rivers, animal stock near or on the road and weather conditions can change quickly. Therefore driving in Iceland needs your full care during your stay because we want you back safe and happy.
We kindly ask you to help us improve our quality by giving us feedback on how we are doing and what we can do better. Not less importantly, we ask you to help us preserve the Icelandic nature which can be very fragile. Off-road driving is strictly forbidden and please do not litter.
In case of trouble, accident or breakdown please don’t hesitate to contact our emergency phone numbers 840-6010 for south and west Iceland, or 840-6000 for north and east Iceland or one of our many locations around the country and we will do our very best to help you to safely continue your journey.
I trust that your travel in Iceland will be comfortable and pleasant. I wish you a safe journey.
1. Which of the following statements might be most suitable for the blank in Paragraph 1?| A．our travel agency magazine | B．this newspaper article |
| C．the traffic regulations | D．police travel guides |
| A．Travelling in Iceland is only popular in summer and winter. |
| B．The country is not much visited because of its special language. |
| C．Travelers can enjoy nice food when travelling in Iceland. |
| D．A traveler can both have hot and cold experiences in Iceland. |
| A．He may have his car repaired. |
| B．He may call 840-6010 for help. |
| C．He may push his car off the road. |
| D．He may drive in the other direction. |
9 . There are several ways of retelling “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory”. In 2005 Hollywood focused on Willy Wonka, the factory’s owner, portraying him as a purple-gloved man-child. A new musical production of Roald Dahl’s children’s story at the Theatre Royal in London concentrates on the up-from-poverty fortune of Charlie Bucket, the boy who finds the golden ticket.
Tales of upward social mobility attempted or achieved are crowding the London stage. “Billy Elliott”, the story of a miner’s son who strives with the death of family strikes to make it as a ballet dancer, recently celebrated its four-millionth visitor. “Port”, an account of a Stockport girl’s attempts to escape her depressing origins, was a success at the National Theatre this spring. Last year “In Basildon” described strivers in the typical upwardly-mobile Essex town.
It is a respectable theatrical (and literary) theme, but it is being handled in a different way. John Osborne’s 1956 play “Look Back in Anger” showed a working-class man’s anger at the middle class he had married into. By the 1970s and 1980s writers were looking down their noses at social climbers, in plays like “Top Girls” and “Abigail’s Party”, in which a middle-class arriviste (暴发户) serves inferior snacks and the wrong kind of wine.
Social mobility moved away as a topic for a while, as playwrights like David Hare turned to examine carefully the state of the nation. Now it has returned—and is described much more sympathetically. Dominic Cooke, who directed “In Basildon” at the Royal Court Theatre, says this may be a delayed reaction to the collapse of state socialism in Europe.
A possible reason for the sympathetic tone is that upward mobility can no longer be taken for granted. In 2011 researchers at the London School of Economics concluded that intergenerational social mobility, assessed by income for children born between 1970 and 2000, had suspended. Another study, by Essex University academics, found matters had not improved during the crisis.
So it is fantastic fun to see people make it. Charlie Bucket does so spectacularly(壮观地). At the end of “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” he is a pint-size entrepreneur(企业家), with an immigrant workforce of Oompa-Loompas to ensure he does not fall back down the social ladder.
1. What are the versions of “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” mentioned in the passage?| A．Magic and ballet. | B．Movie and musical. |
| C．Drama and painting. | D．Novel and documentary. |
| A．The story of a miner's son. |
| B．The topic of upward social mobility. |
| C．An account of a Stockport girl's attempts. |
| D．A striver in the upwardly-mobile Essex town. |
| A．gaining by dishonest means |
| B．serving others what they like |
| C．being involved in social climbing |
| D．marrying the one sharing your background |
| A．Curious. | B．Optimistic. |
| C．Pessimistic. | D．Concerned. |
10 . Scientists in Antarctica have recorded,for the first time,unusually warm water beneath a glacier (冰川)the size of Florida that is already melting and contributing to a rise in sea levels.
The researchers,working on the Thwaites Glacier,recorded water temperatures at the base of the ice of more than 2℃,above the normal freezing point.Critically,the measurements were taken at the glacier's grounding line,the area where it transforms from resting wholly on bedrock to spreading out on the sea as ice shelves.It is unclear how fast the glacier is getting worse:Studies have forecast its total collapse in a century or in a few decades.The presence of warm water in the grounding line may support estimates at the faster range.
That is worthy of attention because the Thwaites,along with the Pine Island Glacier and several smaller glaciers, acts as a brake on part of the much larger West Antarctic Ice Sheet, which , if melted, would raise the world's oceans by more than a meter over centuries,an amount that would put many coastal cities underwater.
“Warm waters in this part of the world,as remote as they may seem,should serve as a warning to all of us about the potential terrible changes to the planet brought about by climate change,” said David Holland, director of New York University's Environmental Fluid Dynamics Laboratory.
Glaciologists have previously raised alarm over the presence of warm water melting the Thwaites from below.This is the first time,though,that warm waters have been measured at the glacier's grounding line.
To observe activity beneath the glacier,Dr.Holland's team drilled a hole -about 30 centimeters wide and 600 meters deep-from the surface to the bottom and then placed equipment that measures water temperature and ocean turbulence,or the mixing of freshwater from the glacier and salty ocean water.Collecting the data took about 96 hours in subzero weather.Warm waters beneath the Thwaites are actively melting it, the team found.
While scientists may not yet be able to definitively predict how soon glaciers like the Thwaites will melt, human-caused climate change is a key factor.The biggest predictor of “how much ice we will lose and how quickly we will lose it,”Dr.Holland said,”is human action.”
1. What does warm water found in the glacier's grounding line indicate?| A．Sea levels should be remeasured. |
| B．It may take a century for the glacier to melt. |
| C．The grounding line is getting shorter. |
| D．The glacier might disappear sooner |
| A．they hold back ice |
| B．they are extremely large |
| C．they are located at bedrocks |
| D．they are collapsing |
| A．We can predict how much ice can be kept. |
| B．Human beings are to blame for the loss of ice. |
| C．Glaciers serve a more important purpose than expected. |
| D．More data needs to be collected to support the estimates. |
| A．The efforts made to avoid the presence of warm water. |
| B．The alarm voiced on the worsening situation of glaciers. |
| C．The tools employed to measure the temperature of Antarctica. |
| D．The prediction based on a scientific study of the grounding line. |
