1 . What is the greatest threat to mankind? Maybe different people come up with different answers. However, there is no denying the fact that the only threat to humankind, apart from humankind itself, is, without any doubt, the nature. Natural disasters are the result of natural environmental processes that have a damaging effect on people. Natural disasters can come in many forms: such as geological events like earthquakes, tsunamis or mud-rock flows, climatic events like storms, hurricanes or tornadoes and fire events like forest fires and wildfires.
The damage done by natural disasters is mainly as a result of our inability to predict exactly when they will happen. Although great progress has been made in designing and developing forecasting models for some natural disaster, complete certainty is still impossible. Even to be pessimistic there is a possibility that human beings will never achieve accurate prediction of the happening of all natural disasters.
What's more, even though we were able to predict these disasters from nature, preventing them is equally impossible. So we only have two ways to both prevent injuries or deaths and reduce economic losses to the least. These two methods are to prepare before a natural disaster comes to hit, and to manage the necessary resources and public services after a natural disaster strikes.
These two things have always been at the leading position of the projects of both national governments and international organizations. In the United States, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) is responsible for the "preparedness, response and recovery planning" of both man-made and natural disasters.
Most natural disasters cannot be prevented, and both emergency preparation and good disaster management are the best ways to deal with them. Although natural events may appear to serve no purpose but simply to punish and destroy, natural disasters, a perfect symbol of the great power of the nature, are display of our planet's evolution and its state of change.
1. Which can't be regarded as a similarity between tornadoes and earthquakes?| A．They can not be prevented. |
| B．They are both geological events. |
| C．They cause damage to people. |
| D．They are both the result of natural environmental processes. |
| A．it is very difficult to predict when exactly they will happen |
| B．our forecasting equipment is too old for many natural disasters |
| C．we don't do enough preparation before natural disasters strike |
| D．we don't have the necessary public services to use after natural disasters strike |
| A．natural disasters can not be predicted at all |
| B．human beings are pessimistic to the future |
| C．being well-prepared can avoid economic losses |
| D．good preparation and disaster management are advisable. |
| A．a symbol of the power of nature | B．the greatest threat to mankind |
| C．Natural disasters and mankind | D．reduce losses to the least |
2 . Tropical rainforests (热带雨林) are home to native peoples who rely on their surroundings for food, shelter, and medicines. Today very few forest people in many areas like the Philippines, Papua New Guinea live in traditional ways; most have been displaced by outside settlers or have been forced to give up their lifestyles by governments.
Of the remaining forest people, the Amazon supports the largest native or native populations, although these people, too, have been affected by the modern world. While they still depend on the forest for traditional hunting and gathering, most Amerindians, as American native people are called, grow crops, use western goods, and make regular trips to towns and cities to bring foods and products to market. In Africa there are native forest people sometimes known as pygmies. The tallest of these people, also called the Mbuti, are not more than 5 feet in height. Their small size enables them to move about the forest more quickly than taller people.
Tropical rainforests have supported humans since ancient times. Although forest life cannot be described as easy, these peoples have built their lives around the surrounding forest and its systems. Still, these forest people can teach us a lot about the rainforest. Their knowledge of medicinal plants used for treating illness is valuable, and they have a great understanding of the ecology (生态学) of the Amazon rainforest. As a result, they are a great storehouse of the knowledge about the forest. They know the medicinal functions of plants and understand the value of the forest as an undamaged ecosystem. As forests fall, these native peoples lose their homes and culture, resulting in the drop of the native population.
1. Where do the greatest number of native rainforest peoples live today?| A．In the Philippines . | B．In Africa. |
| C．In the Amazon. | D．In Papua New Guinea. |
| A．They know little about growing some crops. |
| B．They make trips to towns and cities for trade. |
| C．They would like to use eastern goods in daily life. |
| D．They seldom know traditional hunting and gathering. |
| A．Forest people can get benefits from rainforests. |
| B．We can learn how to build storehouses from forest people . |
| C．Forest people live an easy and comfortable life as we imagine. |
| D．The knowledge of medicinal plants for treating illness can be ignored. |
| A．To make an advertisement for tropical rainforests. |
| B．To introduce the lifestyles of the native forest people. |
| C．To spread the knowledge and value of the forest plants. |
| D．To raise the awareness of protecting tropical rainforests. |
3 . The traditional Chinese lunar calendar(农历）divides the year into 24 solar terms(节气）．Start of Winter, the 19th solar term of the year,begins this year on Nov 7 and ends on Nov 21.
Start of Winter is the first solar term of winter,which means winter is coming and crops harvested in autumn should he stored up.
In ancient times, the Start of Winter was regarded as the beginning of winter, however,due to geographical factors, the actual winter time varies from place to place.
In fact,the Start of Winter is not the beginning of winter in terms of meteorology(气象学）。The weather every year is different, so the beginning of winter could be quite different.And as China is very large, it starts at different times in different areas.
The beginnings of the four seasons were important festivals in ancient times. Before the Start of Winter,the ancient emperor would take a shower and have no more meat.On that day,the emperor would lead his officials to the countryside and"welcome the winter".
People eat dumplings on the beginning of winter. Legend has it that in the late Eastern Han Dynasty,Zhang Zhongjing invented "Jiao Ear"(娇耳）to treat typhoid(伤寒） patients with ear frostbite(冻疮）.He cooked mutton,hot peppers and herbs to drive out the cold and warm up the body.He put these materials into a dough skin and made them into an ear shape.Since then,people have learned to make the food which became known as "dumpling" or jiaozi. Today there is still a saying that goes "Eat dumplings on Start of Winter Day, or your ears will be frostbitten.”
1. Which of the following is right about Start of Winter?| A．It is one of the solar terns in Chinese calendar. |
| B．People begin to harvest crops on this day. |
| C．Winter begins on November 7 this year. |
| D．It begins in different months in different places. |
| A．the Start of Winter |
| B．the change of weather |
| C．the important festival |
| D．the beginning of winter |
| A．Importance of Start of Winter. |
| B．Customs of Start of Winter. |
| C．Origin(起源）of Start of Winter. |
| D．Food eaten on Start of Winter. |
| A．Because dumplings can drive away typhoid. |
| B．Because they wish for good luck for themselves. |
| C．Because eating dumplings can warm up their ears. |
| D．Because they want to prevent the coming of winter. |
4 . After an earthquake most survivors can be expected to recover over time, particularly with the support of family and friends. Some families will be able to return to their normal life quickly, while others will have to contend with the destruction of their homes, medical problems, and injury to family members. Children especially will need time to recover from the loss of a loved one or a pet or from the closing down of their school.
Children often turn to adults for information, comfort and help. Parents should try to remain calm, answer children’s questions honestly and remain understanding when they see changes in their children’s behavior.
Children react differently to an earthquake depending on their ages, developmental levels and former experiences. Some will respond by withdrawing (不与人交往), while others will have angry outbursts (爆发). Parents should remain sensitive to each child’s reactions. Parents should spend time talking to their children，letting them know that it’s OK to ask questions and to share their worries. Although it may be hard to find time to have these talks, parents can use regular family mealtimes or bedtimes for them. They should answer questions briefly and honestly and be sure to ask their children for their opinions and ideas. Issues may come up more than once and parents should remain patient when you answer the questions again. For young children, parents, after talking about the earthquake, might read a favorite story or have a relaxing family activity to help them calm down. Parents should also tell children they are safe and spend extra time with them. They could play games outside or read together indoors. Most importantly, be sure to tell them you love them.
1. The underlined phrase “contend with” in Paragraph 1 can be replaced by “________”.| A．deal with | B．make up | C．put off | D．turn back |
| A．read a favorite story to comfort them |
| B．ask them to help do some housework |
| C．be patient and answer the question again |
| D．take them out to play games |
| A．Keep a close watch on children’s behavior. |
| B．Tell the children they are safe. |
| C．Tell the children you love them. |
| D．Ask educational experts for help. |
| A．All people will recover from an earthquake quickly. |
| B．Children may need a longer time to recover after an earthquake. |
| C．Children should turn to their classmates for help after an earthquake. |
| D．Children react in the same way as adults do to an earthquake. |
5 . Football is my favorite sport. I loved to watch it, but I had never played in a football game before I went to college. I lacked self－confidence and I doubted if I could do well in a team, which was why I hardly did sports together with others. I just loved practicing playing football in the backyard of my house.
About one month after I went to college, one day some of my classmates said they'd play a football game with some players of another class. I really looked forward to it but never thought I'd join them to play. That day finally came and I went to watch with my classmates. However, just about ten minutes after the game started, one member of our football team got injured and could no longer play. The other members looked worried. Then one of them came to me and asked, “Can you play?” At first, I shook my head, but then I nodded. “Great! Come and play,” he said. I followed him, having no idea at all what to do. To my joy, he asked me to play in defense (防守). Defense was my favorite because I found it more fun and less complicated (复杂的). Then the game began again. There weren't a lot of big kids on the offensive line (攻击线) of the other team and I suddenly gained some self－confidence. About five minutes later, the ball was kicked toward the guard. I thought it was a good opportunity for me. I quickly ran past the guard and got the ball. When the guard came to the offensive line, I kicked the ball. I scored and all my classmates cheered. You may not believe it, but I scored twice that time. The final score was 6—2 and we won. My teammates thought that I did very well and none of them believed I hadn't played in a game before.
That game really changed me. I am a really confident person now and often play football games with my teammates.
1. Why didn't the author play sports with others before?| A．He wasn't interested in sports. |
| B．He wasn't popular with others. |
| C．He couldn't afford time for sports. |
| D．He wasn't confident about his ability. |
| A．excited | B．boring |
| C．anxious | D．angry |
| A．got nervous about watching football games |
| B．decided to become a full－time football player |
| C．was considered the best football player at school |
| D．fell in love with joining others in playing football |
| A．My first football game. |
| B．My most unforgettable experience. |
| C．My way of finding self－confidence. |
| D．My way of scoring at football games. |
6 . Tired of your quiet day-to-day life? How about leaving your computer games behind and taking up an extreme sport?
You can ride a bicycle, right? In that case you’re halfway to becoming a mountain biker. All you have to do is take your bike off the road and try some hilly areas. Mountain biking was developed in California in the 1970s and became an Olympic sport in 1996.
Not challenging enough? Skydivers jump from planes at a height of 1,000 to 4,000 meters. You have to be fit but there’s no age limit with this sport. For example, Dilys Price from Cardiff went on her first jump aged 54. The minute she came down, she wanted to go up again. She said: “It was so attractive”.
Some adventures have invented base jumping, in which people jump from tall structures, such as buildings or bridges, with a parachute. Many of their jumps aren’t legal, especially in the cities.Dan Witchalls has jumped off The Shard —London’s 310 meter-high building four times.He says, “Base jumping is scarier than jumping out of a plane. In a plane there is no sense of height, but when you are standing on the edge of the building you can see people and cars, the experience makes it very real.”
It seems there’s no shortage of imagination when it comes to risking life to look cool and get the heart beating wildly. Surfing, diving, rock climbing ...And how about extreme ironing? That is, pressing your clothes on top of a mountain! Extreme ironing is said to have been created in the 1990s in England by a man who saw a large amount of wrinkled clothes and felt bored when doing the cloth ironing. That man was Phil Shaw. For him, the excitement of this sport comes from looking at the viewers’ faces. Shaw says, “Sometimes they look confused; sometimes they laugh. It’s fun to see how people react to it.”
1. What does the author think about mountain biking?| A．A bit boring. | B．Challenging indeed. |
| C．Great fun. | D．Not very hard. |
| A．Skydivers have to be very healthy. | B．Skydiving is not challenging enough. |
| C．Elderly people can also take up skydiving. | D．People can easily become crazy about skydiving. |
| A．The sense of height. | B．Base jumping experience. |
| C．The edge of the building. | D．Jumping out of a plane. |
| A．He liked ironing clothes. | B．He wanted to make clothes ironing more fun. |
| C．He enjoyed different looks on people's faces. | D．He had a good view standing on top of a mountain. |
7 . Todd wore the same clothes every day for the first three weeks of school. He was laughed at because of this. But there was little Todd could do. His mother simply couldn’t afford to buy him new clothes. Two of the kids laughing at Todd were Garrett and Graham, a pair of football players. But over time, they realized that their disparaging words seemed to be slowly destroying Todd’s spirit.
“I felt like I needed to do something,” Graham told CBS News. So he and Garrett created a plan. They went home and hunted through their own drawers and closets. The next day at school, they met Todd at their third-period class and asked him to come into the hall. Todd was understandably worried about being called out by the larger boys.
“He wasn’t smiling or anything, and I was like, ‘I think this is going to make you smile,’” Graham says. “I told him, ‘We’re in the same third period, and I apologize for laughing at you, and I want to give something to you to make it up’” He then handed Todd a large bag. Inside were clean shirts and shorts, as well as a brand-new pair of sneakers.
Todd was wild with joy. “I was very happy,” he told CBS News. “Shocked, completely.” And Todd got much more than some new clothes. He no longer sits alone at lunch. Now he cats with his new friends, Garrett and Graham.
Garrett and Graham say they just want to inspire others to help those in need.
1. What can we know about Todd?| A．He came from a poor family. | B．He wasn’t used to school life. |
| C．His taste for clothes was single. | D．His behavior brought others laughter. |
| A．Humorous. | B．Encouraging. | C．Unkind. | D．Selfish. |
| A．Garrett beat Graham in a competitive game. |
| B．Garrett and Graham became friendly to him. |
| C．Garrett and Graham apologized to each other. |
| D．Garrett and Graham gave away clothes on TV. |
| A．Many hands make light work. | B．The early bird catches the worm. |
| C．Where there’s a will, there’s a way. | D．A friend in need is a friend indeed. |
8 . Waste heat from one of the London Underground’s lines will be used to warm over a thousand homes in the UK capital this winter. The warm air will be channeled from the Northern Line to support the London Borough of Islington’s district heating.
Named Bunhill 2,the heat network is a joint project between Islington Council, Transport for London and engineering firm Ramboll and is considered as the first of its kind in Europe. The council hopes the system will make London more self-sufficient (自给自足的) in energy, cut carbon emissions and reduce heating bills for people.Meanwhile, tube passengers on the underground can also expect cooler air.
District heating, also known as heat networks, is the supply of heat and hot water from a central source to a group of buildings. The Bunhill 2 district heating system is the second phase (阶段) of Islington Council’s Bunhill Heat and Power scheme-a heat network in Islington that was established in 2013 to warm approximately 700 homes.
The network currently channels heat created in the Bunhill Energy Centre power station into local council housing, schools and a leisure centre. Bunhill 2 will extend this network to more community buildings and a further 450 homes.
The central source of the Bunhill 2 heat network is a ventilation shaft (通风井)-a passage that is used to expel waste heat-in the abandoned (废弃的) City Road station. A heat pump designed by Ramboll will capture this extra heat from the ventilation shaft, before it is warmed to approximately 70 degrees Celsius. This will then be transferred (转移) into Islington’s heat network to supply heat and hot water to buildings.
According to the Greater London Authority, there is enough heat wasted in London to meet 38 per cent of the city’s heating demand. The expansion of district heating networks like Bunhill 2 could see this increase to 63 per cent by 2050.
“We believe that the use of large-scale heat in this way connected to urban district heating systems will play a major part in the Uk’s heating energy demand,” explained Lucy Padfield, director of District Heating at Ramboll.
“The use of heat pumps taking advantage of industrial waste heat sources is more carbon efficient than gas-fired combined heat and power, the usual source of heat for district energy schemes,” she continued. “I am convinced that with the increasing use of renewable power sources, large-scale heat pumps connected to district heating systems will play a major role in the future heating of cities in the UK.”
1. What can we learn about Bunhill 2 in London?| A．It is inspired by other cities in Europe. |
| B．It will be beneficial to London’s environment. |
| C．It can satisfy the whole city’s need for energy. |
| D．It is aimed at cooling the London Underground. |
| A．Rely on | B．Deal with. |
| C．Break down. | D．Drive out |
| A．Concerned. | B．Confident |
| C．Amazed | D．Disapproving |
| A．London’s special way to protect the environment. |
| B．The development of London’s district heating network. |
| C．Using waste heat from the underground to warm homes. |
| D．Ways to deal with the London Underground’s waste heat. |
9 . You can remember the face, but can't put a name to it. Many of us have been caught in this embarrassing situation. But researchers say it is often easier to remember someone's name than what they look like.
Twenty-four volunteers were shown 40 pictures of strangers, paired with random(随机的) names. They were given time to memorize the faces and names before being tested on which they thought they had seen before.
The participants could remember up to 85 percent of the names but only 73 percent of the faces. When they were shown a different picture of the same person, the participants could recall only 64 percent of faces, according to the study, led by the University of York.
That may be because faces are only recognized visually(视觉地), while names can be both spoken and written down so appear in our visual and audio memory. When people were shown famous people, they also remembered their names more accurately than their photographs. Co-author Dr Rob Jenkins, from the university’s psychology department, said, ''Our study suggests that, while many people may be bad at remembering names, they are likely to be even worse at remembering faces. This will surprise many people as it is against our initial understanding. Our life experiences with names and faces have misled us about how our minds work. '' Remembering names gets harder with age, leading to many uncomfortable moments for middle-aged people when they run into people they know.
But to study whether names are harder to recall than faces, the researchers, whose findings are published in the Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, used a ''fair test'' where the participants were presented with strangers' names and faces.
1. What can we know according to the research in Paragraph 3?| A．It is certain that names are harder to recall than faces. |
| B．Remembering names is more easily than remembering faces. |
| C．Most participants can remember the face not the name to it. |
| D．The participants can recall 73% faces of the same person. |
| A．Age will weaken the ability to remember names. |
| B．Unlike faces, names are only recognized visually. |
| C．Faces can appear in our visual and audio memory. |
| D．Rob Jenkins has proved people can remember faces better. |
| A．Clear. | B．first. |
| C．Unusual. | D．Creative. |
| A．People can't remember strangers’ names and faces. |
| B．Recalling names is more difficult than remembering faces. |
| C．The researcher uses the same method to study another problem. |
| D．Whether names are harder to recall than faces is further proved. |
10 . Summer is the most popular season to visit Texas since there is so much to see and to do. While visiting the Lone Star State this summer, don’t miss visiting some of these attractions and taking part in some of Texas’ best summer vacation activities.
Visit SeaWorld
There are sea life shows，adventure camps，thrilling rides and a water park. A great many activities are waiting for you at SeaWorld.
Windsurf at South Padre
With miles of shallow (浅的)，calm water in the Lower Laguna Madre and strong winds conning off the Gulf of Mexico，South Padre Island is a windsurfer’s dream.
Swim at Barton Springs
Barton Springs is in the famous Zilker Park. It was formed when Barton Greek was built. Since its opening, Barton Springs has become one of the most popular swimming pools in the state.
Take part in an outdoor adventure
In the scenic Texas Hill Country, Lake Buchanan Adventures offers different kinds of activities, including boating, hiking, camping and more.
Camp and hike in Big Bend Park
Big Bend offers a great number of outdoor activities in an old way. Backpacking, mountain biking, fishing, boating, hiking, nature watching and camping - you name it. If it can be done outdoors, it can be done in Big Bend.
Enjoy saltwater fishing
Saltwater fishing in Texas is as good as anywhere else in the USA. More and more fishermen have been discovering this in recent years and packing their bags and rods (鱼竿)to make good use of Texas, world - class saltwater fishery.
1. The underlined phrase “the Lone Star State” in Paragraph 1 is another name for .| A．Texas | B．San Antonio | C．South Padre | D．Gulf of Mexico |
| A．sea life shows | B．adventure camps |
| C．climbing | D．exciting rides |
| A．San Antonio. | B．South Padre. |
| C．Barton Springs. | D．Texas Hill Country. |
