1 . It was a cold winter. The wind blew all night and the snow was blinding. When morning came, my three children and I got up and made our way to the windows. As we looked out the window, we saw that the henhouse was gone. Our three hens had been blown away.
I looked at the emptiness outside. Then I saw all three chickens sat around the edge of a white bucket. How was this violent wind not blowing them into the field beyond? I quickly pulled on long snow pants and heavy winter coat, wrapped a scarf and stuck my feet into very large boots.
I shouted at the wind as it blew. I was alone, save for my children. They stared out the window into the vast white sea of snow, their eyes peeled for any sign of movement. Outside I heard the sound of my boots as I walked against the wind.
The snow circling around me, I steadily made my way to the soft cluck-cluck-cluck sound my hens always made. When I reached them, I saw that their little feet were holding on to the edge of the bucket, heads bent forward and away from the wind. I gently lifted each hen and put it carefully into the warm inside. Then I began the freezing walk back to the small shed directly behind our house. One by one I laid my chickens on the cold floor, and they began to cluck softly.
As I shut the shed doors, my eyes went directly to the window where my children were watching. They jumped up and down cheering, and so did I! I wasn’t some dragon slayer (屠龙者) from a fairy tale. I was simply a mom, but the look on my children’s faces told me that they thought I was a hero mom.
1. What was the author’s feeling when seeing all three chickens sitting around the bucket?| A．incredible | B．worried |
| C．shy | D．confident |
| A．By searching for the white bucket. |
| B．By wearing protective clothes. |
| C．By following the sound of the hens. |
| D．By shouting at the henhouse. |
| A．The author’s children liked dragon slayers. |
| B．The children watched their mother all the way. |
| C．The author struggled to be a hero. |
| D．The author enjoyed herself in the snow. |
| A．Weather in extreme. | B．Hens in trouble. |
| C．Kindness in need. | D．Hero in the snow. |
2 . Traveling to a foreign country can make you frightened if you don't know the local language.Mr.Thibault has a number of tips to help travelers manage in a destination when they don't speak the native tongue, based on his own experience.Here are a few of them.
Download a Language Translation App
Mr.Thibault tends to rely on Google Translate and suggests that travelers find an app that works for them.Ideally, find one that specializes in the language you need to translate especially if the language uses a character set you’re not familiar with, or have difficulty pronouncing.
Speak with Your Hands and Head
Pointing with your hands and nodding or shaking your head, Mr.Thibault said, are easy ways to communicate with locals in the country you’re in.“Gestures are all universally understood，” he said.
Learn a Few Key Words
Knowing basic words and phrases like "hello""thank you” and “I’m sorry，I don’t speak your language.Do you speak English?” is a must, Mr.Thibault said.Showing that you care enough to learn some of the language before you go, and at least enough to acknowledge that you don’t know more, is a form of respect and will make you go a long way to be liked by locals.
Work with a Local Travel Agent
If you feel particularly uncomfortable in the country you’re heading to, and you have to go anyway, relying on a local travel agent who knows both your and your destination's languages can be incredibly useful.
Hire a Local Tour Guide
A tour guide can help you get a better grasp of the local language and is a good person to practice words and phrases with.Whenever Mr.Thibault visits a new country, he books a sightseeing tour with a guide on the first day of his trip.“I use this day to learn about my destination and get familiar with the language,”he said.
1. In what situation should a language translation app be applied while traveling abroad?| A．When you have trouble pronouncing the words. |
| B．When you want to acknowledge your ignorance. |
| C．When you want to practice the local language. |
| D．When you feel uncomfortable in the country. |
| A．Downloading a language translation app. |
| B．Learning a few key words. |
| C．Using body language. |
| D．Working with a guide. |
| A．By speaking with your hands and head. |
| B．By learning a few key words. |
| C．By downloading a language translation app. |
| D．By hiring a local tour guide. |
3 . That morning, I dropped our eldest at kindergarten and returned home to let our two younger children play while I worked on my medical report. It was a wonderful chance to work from home, but it hit me that my career in hospital wasn't making a difference in anyone's life. I needed something that would stretch my limits and push me to grow. My career enabled me to work from home. I could work from home, and become a foster mother, providing safety for a child who needed it desperately.
On Monday morning. I picked up the phone and dialed the number I had Googled for the nearest Department of Children's Services. The man on the other end was receptive to my questions and explained the next step of training, involving eight weeks of classes designed to prepare and educate foster parents. We continued through all the classes, the home visits, background checks, and seemingly endless steps.
Five long months after we were approved, the phone rang. In the middle of the night, I woke my husband and rushed to East Tennessee Children's Hospital. Our placement was waiting for us in the emergency room, sick and lack of nutrition. It didn't take long for us to realize the full depth of her suffering. Six months later, her half-brother came to us by our request. We now had five children under our care.
On August 12, 2016, our family of seven walked into a small courtroom. The children's lawyer and social worker were there. With just a few words, our adoption was finalized. These two amazing children weren't going home, because they were already home. We are their forever family, and they are our forever children. We may not be able to change the entire world, but we have changed the world entirely for our new children.
1. How did the author feel about her hospital work?| A．Lacking of motivation. | B．Filled with challenge. |
| C．Highly motivating. | D．Unusually Demanding. |
| A．She felt sympathetic for abused children she knew. |
| B．She wanted to make a difference in other people. |
| C．She felt confident about her ability to raise children. |
| D．She experienced training to raise children properly. |
| A．The child to be adopted. | B．The need to get trained. |
| C．The approval of adoption. | D．The official at the hospital. |
| A．To put the adopted kids elsewhere. | B．To receive another adopted child. |
| C．To make the adoption officially legal. | D．To begin the kids' adoption in her home. |
4 . The pupils of Grange town High have been busy getting to know their newest and tallest classmate, a 7-meter-tall giraffe outside their school
The giraffe is a huge sculpture made by a local artist. The school's headmaster noticed the sculpture in the artist's garden as he drove past one day. He thought it would be perfect for his school. “I knew everyone would love it,” he said, “because our basketball team is known as Grange town giraffes, and they wear giraffes on their shirts. So I asked them to write a letter to the artist, asking how much it would cost to buy the giraffe. He was very kind and got it ready to deliver in six weeks - all for nothing. It was expected to arrive on Sunday morning so that the pupils would see it when they got to school on Monday - at that time they had no idea that we were getting it.
The artist, Tom Bennett, was a university professor of chemistry before he left that job in 2006 and only took up metalwork a couple of years ago. “I've always drawn pictures,” he said, “I can even remember doing it on my first day at school - I drew a horse. I wanted it to be the best horse picture ever, but I don't think I succeeded.” Tom's first metalwork was a bicycle for two that he and his wife could go cycling on together. “It was a most uncomfortable bike ever created,” he said, “So I gave up making bicycles and went into sculpture instead.”
Meanwhile, the pupils at Grange town High are very happy with their new classmate. “We are going to hold a competition to give it a proper name.” said one girl. “Everyone likes the expression on his face, so perhaps that will give us some ideas.”
1. According to the text, the giraffe _______________.| A．was as tall as a basketball player | B．was given to Grange town High for free |
| C．was sent to Grange town High on Monday | D．was specially made for a basketball team |
| A．excited | B．nervous | C．worried | D．confident |
| A．He learned a lot about sculpture at university. | B．He visited Grange town High |
| C．He was good at drawing, especially horses. | D．He showed interest in art at an early age. |
| A．It was a difficult job to name a giraffe. |
| B．Tom Bennett is well-known as a sculptor. |
| C．A metal giraffe arrived at Grange town High. |
| D．The Grange town Giraffe is a strong basketball team. |
5 . When talking about the economics of online publishing, the first thing to remember is that job No. 1 isn’t to get the news to you. Rather, it is to monetize you, by selling you off, in real time, to the highest bidder. This happens every time you click on a link, before the page has even started to load on your phone. Once upon a time, if you and I both visited the same web page at the same time using the same web browser, we would end up seeing the same thing. Today, however, an almost unthinkably enormous ecosystem of scripts and cookies and often astonishingly personal information is used to show you a set of brand messages and sales links which are tailored almost uniquely to you.
That ecosystem raises important questions about privacy—the way that the minute you look at a pair of shoes online, for instance, they then start following you around every other website you visit for weeks. But whether or not you value your privacy, you are damaged, daily, by the sheer weight of all that technology.
Online ads have never got less annoying over time, and you can be sure that mobile ads are going to get more annoying as well, once Silicon Valley has worked out how to better identify who you are. The move to greater privacy protections might help slow the pace with which such technologies are adopted. But there’s no realistic hope that websites will actually improve from here. If you want to avoid the dreadful experience of the mobile web, you’ll only have one choice—which is to start reading your articles natively, in the Facebook or Apple News app. But it won’t be Facebook and Apple who killed the news brands. It’ll be ad tech.
1. What will happen if two people click on the same link today?| A．They will immediately get the news that they want. |
| B．They will see the same thing whenever they browse. |
| C．They will see different brand messages and sales links. |
| D．They will be recommended to the same bidder. |
| A．Because the ecosystem knows who you are. |
| B．Because they know how to identify who you are. |
| C．Because you don’t care about your privacy. |
| D．Because you always use the same web browser. |
| A．By slowing the pace with such technologies. |
| B．By improving the website functions. |
| C．By stopping using the mobile phones. |
| D．By reading articles in specific apps. |
| A．Negative. | B．Positive. | C．Unconcerned. | D．Optimistic. |
6 . I grew up eating eggs from white shells; I didn't know they could be any other color.
Our eggs came from the grocery store in styrofoam packaging, and the eggs in the refrigerators at all my friends' houses were exactly the same. Life in the 1970s and 1980s meant no farmer's markets, no trips to farms and no concept of food variety.
When I began buying my eggs at the farmer's market, things changed. The eggs were brown and usually in paperboard cartons or Styrofoam cartons that were clearly being reused.
I know I'm not the only one who had that experience with eggs, so it's no wonder that many people assume brown eggs are more nutritious. If we're working off the assumption that all white eggs at the grocery store come from big factory farms and that all brown eggs come from local farmers who raise freerange chickens... sure. Brown is better.
But is that true?
Eggshell color is determined by the breed of the hen, not by the conditions in which the chicken is raised. Generally speaking, you can tell whether eggs will be white by looking at a hen's earlobes, the colored skin on the side of the head. Hens with white earlobes generally lay white eggs. Hens with brown or reddish earlobes generally lay eggs that are brown, or sometimes light green, blue or a speckled creamy color, according to Michigan State University Extension.
No one breed of hen, however, is proven to lay a more nutritious egg than another, despite the color of the eggshell. Not all eggs are created equal because not all hens are raised the same way.
A test done by Mother Earth News on eggs taken from 14 flocks around the country whose hens were allowed frequent access to fresh pasture, land covered with grass, found that true freerange eggs were nutritionally superior to eggs sold in grocery stores.
“True” freerange means just that eggs from the grocery store that are marketed as free range do not necessarily come from hens that have spent their days wandering the barnyard, getting fresh air and eating a natural diet. When “Freerange” is on an egg carton, it means that the chickens can move around their building and have access to the outdoors “during their production cycle”．
But access doesn't guarantee time outside. There's no regulation that says getting to that door has to be easy, how big the outdoor area must be, or that a chicken ever has to get outside. A chicken in a crowded henhouse may never get to the door, and if it manages to go through it, it may find there's no room for it in the small area outside.
That's why it's so hard to determine if freerange eggs at the store come from truly freerange chickens. At a farm or farmers' market, you can ask about the conditions that the hens' are raised in before you buy.
Another factor in the nutrition of an egg is the hens' diet. Although chickens are not vegetarians by nature—bugs and worms are part of their natural diets—Consumer Reports tested grocery store eggs and found that “hens fed vegetarian diets tended to have more of certain vitamins and omega3s than those from hens fed a conventional diet”.
So when you're choosing eggs and aiming for nutrition, don't judge an egg by its shell color. White eggs can be just as nutritious as brown eggs. Hens that are kept in conditions that are natural to them—with access to the outdoors, sunlight and exercise—and fed a good diet are what you're looking for. To find them, you'll need to ask some questions and, perhaps, pay a little more, because raising hens in pastures costs more than raising them at factory farming.
1. When the author first saw eggs at a farmers' market, ________.| A．they were fresher than those in grocery stores | B．they had an unusual colour |
| C．they cost less than those he had bought before | D．they were variously packed |
| A．true freerange chickens can no longer be found anywhere |
| B．socalled freerange hens remain in henhouses all day long |
| C．the word “freerange” is only used as a means of cheating |
| D．the definition of “freerange” can sometimes be ambiguous |
| A．nutritional value of eggs depends on nothing but what hens eat |
| B．a diet mixed with plants and worms makes eggs more nutritious |
| C．farmers should feed hens scientifically to get highquality eggs |
| D．the breed of hens should be improved for the purpose of nutrition |
| A．analyse their nutritional composition | B．investigate how the hens are raised |
| C．assure yourself of the eggs cost price | D．discover where the eggs come from |
7 . There may be no job more reactive than firefighting. You wait for the alarm to sound; when it does, you go and fight fires. However, what if there is an algorithm (计算程序) that can take the guesswork out of fire prevention? For more than a year, the Fire Department of New York (FDNY) has been doing just that. Using a data tool called FireCast 2.0, it has been prioritizing (排序) which ones of the hundreds of thousands of buildings in the city are at the highest risk of having a fire. The software applies an algorithm from five city agencies, taking into account as many as 20 different risk factors.
It wasn’t that long ago, in fact, that even a fire department as sophisticated (配备精良) as FDNY was keeping track of buildings in card catalogues in local fire houses. Each structure would have its own card with basic information on it — when it was built, construction materials — and from that, company commanders were expected to determine which buildings were to be inspected (检查). Building inspections were a key part of fire prevention in cities like New York, and that, as you might suspect, wasn’t a very efficient way to handle them. Usually, the FDNY struggled to meet its annual goal of inspecting 10 percent of the 330,000 buildings in the city for which it was responsible. But FireCast 2.0 has already simplified that process, allowing the department to more accurately target the most fireprone buildings, many of which haven’t been inspected for years.
The FDNY is pleased with the big advance it has made in what's known as “smart firefighting”, but it’s only a first step. Later this year, the department is expected to upgrade to FireCast 3.0, an even more powerful tool that will analyze three years’ data from 17 different city agencies for every one of the 330,000 buildings. Each will be given a fire risk score. But that list will be updated daily — if a building receives a trash violation, for instance, its score may rise on the next day’s list. Compiling (汇集) the data from all those buildings will take only 90 minutes, according to a report from the National Fire Protection Association.
A very different approach to the future of firefighting was unveiled (揭露) recently by the U.S. Office of Naval Research. It’s an 18pound robot named SAFFIR, and it was designed by engineers at Virginia Tech to put out fires where they’re most dangerous. During a recent test, SAFFIR was able to find fire through thick smoke and extinguish (扑灭) the flames. Maybe more impressively, it displayed its sea legs, able to stay upright on a rolling ship. That, according to SAFFIR’s designers, may have been their biggest challenge.
SAFFIR still struggles to navigate (穿过) doorways and stairwells. In the test, in fact, its movements were controlled by a human. While it will likely be paired with a human for some time, SAFFIR may eventually be able to move and make decisions on its own.
1. According to the passage, what’s the main function of FireCast 2.0?| A．To make the alarm sound for a longer time. |
| B．To reduce firefighters' chances of being injured. |
| C．To prevent the fire from spreading further. |
| D．To predict places that are more likely to catch fire. |
| A．The FDNY doesn’t keep track of buildings in card catalogues. |
| B．The FDNY is only responsible for inspecting buildings in New York. |
| C．The FDNY has failed to meet its annual goal of building inspections. |
| D．The FDNY gets its staff’s workload reduced by using FireCast 2.0. |
| A．can analyze more data than FireCast 2.0 does |
| B．has already been used by each fire department |
| C．will update the fire risk scores every 90 minutes |
| D．will keep a record of information on buildings in 13 cities |
| A．is able to make decisions on its own |
| B．is not ready to be brought into use |
| C．was originally designed to be used on ships |
| D．is mainly used to lead the way for firefighters |
8 . A simple mosquito bite can mean serious illness or death. So we spray large areas with chemicals to wipe out mosquitoes. But this has a bad influence on the whole ecosystem and your health. Now there’s a new device (装置), which claims to keep you and your loved ones mosquitofree：
What are we talking about?
Mosquitron, a brand new type of bug (虫子) catcher, designed by two German engineers, is perfect for clearing your home of all annoying and dangerous flying pests!
How does it work?
◆It is easy to set up; plug it in — and away you go!
◆It lures (引诱) the flying pests near using a safe, completely harmless UV light.
◆A reverse fan sucks the insects through a oneway trapdoor.
◆Once trapped in the drying basket, they are dried to death by the fan within 2 minutes.
◆You can simply empty the dead bugs into the trash, without even touching them.
◆No need for batteries or any chemicals.
How much does it cost?
It’s now ＄179.99. It may seem expensive at first, but when you consider most devices need regular, expensive refills and don’t work for more than 10 minutes, this is a pretty good deal. In fact, competitor products using the same UV technology are priced at over ＄250! Now you can buy it from the supplier’s website with 50% off and with free shipping for a limited time by clicking here. Note: The device can only be returned or exchanged if it arrives damaged, and you must pay in advance.
1. What is the characteristic of a Mosquitron?| A．It is easily recharged. |
| B．It is batterypowered. |
| C．It is almost silent when operating. |
| D．It kills mosquitoes with UV light. |
| A．A high discount. | B．A cheap delivery. |
| C．Return without reasons. | D．Cash on delivery. |
| A．A review. | B．An advertisement. |
| C．An instruction. | D．A report. |
9 . What is better for you? Exercising in the great outdoors, or signing up for a gym?To try and find out, the Guardian was invited to spend a month working withfitness and sports psychology experts at Bath University and the National Trust. The concept was that participants— including me — would spend alternate weeks exercising in a gym and on National Trust land.
The first week was spent on the exercise bikes, rowing machines and treadmills (跑步机) in a gym at Bath.Getting started at the gym was easy. There was a nice community too. People are gently teasing and encouraging each other.
On the downside, it was hard to ignore the background noise ofdance and pop music. And all the machines faced screens showing music videos, rolling news and sports channels. Not a place to get away from it all.
So it was a relief in week two to head for the hills of Dyrham, a National Trust parkland full of birds and deer.
Weeks three and four followed the same pattern. The diaries I had kept, questionnaires I had filled in, and heart monitors I had worn, were then analysed by scientists from Bath University.
The findings surprise me a bit. The heart monitors showed I had consumed a similar amount of energy whether exercising in the gym or outdoors. But fitness expert Martyn Standagewas most interested in the fact that on the days when my exercise had been done outside, I used more energy through the rest of the day.Standage said this fitted with studies that suggest working out in the outdoors leads to a greater feeling of vitality (活力).
Jo Barton, who specialises in studying outdoor exercise, suggested that working out in the fresh air could be “life-changing”.“Exercising in nature lifts your mood and increases your self-respect,” she said.
My verdict? It was more fun outside but sometimes more convenient to get to the gym. A bit of both may be the way forward.
1. Which shows the author’s exercisepattern in the four weeks?| A．in the outdoors→in the outdoors→in the gym→in the gym |
| B．in the gym→in the gym→in the outdoors→in the outdoors |
| C．in the outdoors→in the gym→in the outdoors→in the gym |
| D．in the gym→in the outdoors→in the gym→in the outdoors |
| A．He used more energy when exercising indoors. |
| B．He felt more energetic after exercising outdoors. |
| C．He was very tired after finishing daily exercise. |
| D．He summarized the findings after the experiment. |
| A．Supportive. | B．Doubtful. |
| C．Tolerant. | D．Uncaring. |
| A．concern | B．opinion |
| C．chance | D．challenge |
10 . Boston wants to be smarter. The city has taken advantage of technologies to become more responsive to its residents' needs. But technology alone is not sufficient to make today's cities liveable. Boston has discovered that it also needs to reach the old-fashioned low-tech community and integrate that technology with city life.
Kris Carter rolled out Boston's smart city program in 2014. It started with an App that residents could download to report locations where sidewalks needed repair. The city sorted out those reports and ranked them in a database, which repair crews used to prioritize their work.
The system worked beautifully, except for one problem: most of the alerts(警报) came from wealthier neighborhoods, where the concentration of smartphone - equipped residents was highest. ＂The complaints from the App didn't always correlate with the greatest community need for repairs, " explains Carter.
Carter's group has moved away from the model common to many smart city initiatives of letting tech-savvy(精通技术的）residents drive the process. Instead, they run meetings to find out what problems people in different neighborhoods care about solving. When it came to sidewalks, Boston introduced a second method of collecting repair tips, hiring people to get out and walk the city's 1,700 miles of sidewalks to take notes on their condition.
Whether using low-tech or high-tech approaches, says Carter, to stay smart, a city needs to continually reassess its options to spot opportunities to improve residents' lives. Take the sidewalk repair program, walking on the streets was proved a useful, if inefficient way to prioritize repair needs. But last year the group found that walkers' mobile phones could be tracked as they moved along the streets, and that data could be analyzed to identify sidewalk routes which are most often used by neighborhoods.
“Combined with our other sidewalk information, that gave us an even better way to predict where faster repairs would do the most good," says Carter,"We're really always looking for whatever mix of approaches best solves the problem."
1. What is the first paragraph mainly about?| A．The citizens' life. | B．The city's reputation. |
| C．The city's management. | D．The benefits of technology. |
| A．They faced many technical obstacles. |
| B．They couldn't serve all residents well. |
| C．They were not supported by residents. |
| D．They were annoyed by being short-staffed. |
| A．Maximizing the benefits of technology. |
| B．Mixing approaches for solving problems. |
| C．Giving full play to the power of residents. |
| D．Letting tech companies be a leading role. |
| A．A Smart City: More Than Just Tech |
| B．A City with Intelligent Facilities |
| C．Joint-effort in City Construction |
| D．The Modernization of a City |
