1 . A teenager of 17 walks into a corner store and grabs a Coca-Cola, but the cashier refuses to sell it to him because he is underage. That rule is expected to soon become reality in parts of Mexico, as lawmakers in several states push legislation (立法)to keep junk food away from children. know it can sound a bit difficult but we have to take action now," says Lopez, a lawmaker in Oaxaca's Congress.
More than 70,000 Mexicans have died from COVID-19, the world's fourth-highest recorded death toll, tracked by Johns Hopkins University. 89% of those who died in Mexico had an underlying medical condition such as obesity, diabetes (糖尿病)，high blood pressure and heart problems. That has led to a new urgency to change diets so that the younger generation doesn't suffer those illnesses.
The critics, however, say the leaders are using preexisting health conditions in COVID-19 patients to distract from a weak government response to the virus outbreak. Yet few people would deny that the country consumes large amounts of sugar-sweetened drinks and processed snacks with little nutrition --- or that Mexico has a major weight problem.
Oaxaca's governor approved the state's junk food prohibition last week. Legislators still have to complete the legal systems, and punishment could include fines and even jail. Lopez says legislators from all over the country have called her for advice. Many other states are debating a junk food ban. However, a nationwide law would not be easy. "There are powerful commercial interests that least want it to happen, but we must prioritize the well-being of our children," Lopez says.
1. What is Lopez 's attitude towards the junk food?| A．Negative. | B．Neutral. |
| C．Positive. | D．Indifferent. |
| A．Keep distance. | B．Avoid illnesses. |
| C．Break away. | D．Shift attention. |
| A．Selling children junk food has been banned nationwide in Mexico. |
| B．Most Mexicans who died of COVID-19 had other health problems. |
| C．The younger generation doesn't suffer any weight problems. |
| D．People who break the prohibition in Oaxaca will only be warned. |
| A．Teenagers. | B．Legislators. |
| C．Soft drink companies. | D．State governors. |
2 . The way that others judge you is similar to placing marbles (玻璃弹珠) on a scale (天平盘) as soon as they get any information. We form impressions of people the same way we form an impression of anything: As soon as our scale of marbles starts tipping one way, we start collecting evidence to back that up by picking up the marble that’s easiest to pick up.
Why? Our brains are lazy and our time is limited. As we get more choices, we become more careless about everything. “Basically, we get around choice overload by ignoring most of the choices we have,” says the decision-making researcher Peter Todd.
Think about an employment manager working through a stack of résumés (一摞简历), one of which advertises an applicant’s (申请人的) fluency in French. Does it matter, even if the position is for a web designer? It just might.
“Suppose the manager has a great interest in learning French to talk to her elderly aunt in Montreal. No doubt the applicant would feel excited about being offered the job,” writes Warren Thorngate in Judging Merit. “But how would you feel about such a one-step judgment, especially if you’d spent three days preparing your résumé for the job opening but did not trouble to note in your résumé that you, too, spoke French?”
I called Thorngate to ask how such things manage to continue. “Some very good applicants may be missed, but they don’t care,” the judgment and decision-making researcher replied.
“It’s one of those problems where everybody thinks that they’re a good judge of character,” says the researcher Kristine Kuhn. “But obviously people just are not nearly as good as they think they are. Even if they met someone and judged them as great employees and employed them, and then they turned out to be bad, that doesn’t shake people’s confidence. They can always explain away that it really didn’t have anything to do with them not being a good judge of character.”
1. What does the author say about first impressions in Paragraph 1?| A．They’re lasting. |
| B．They’re important. |
| C．They’re hard to make. |
| D．They’re often unreliable. |
| A．To prove it is not easy to prepare a résumé. |
| B．To suggest the employment manager is irresponsible. |
| C．To explain how your résumé makes a first impression. |
| D．To show first impressions are formed quickly and easily. |
| A．Employment managers. |
| B．Decision-makers. |
| C．Researchers. |
| D．Applicants. |
| A．They would hide it. |
| B．They would be punished. |
| C．They would excuse themselves. |
| D．They would lose their confidence. |
By Sandra Markle. Ages 8 to 10.
Woolly Monkeys spend most of their time high up in 150-foot-tall trees. That makes them difficult animals to count and to study. But cameras have provided valuable information and taken, as this book shows, amazing pictures. Experts now believe that Peru's lowland monkeys and the waste they produce are necessary to the survival of the rain forest.
Camp Panda: Helping Cubs Return to the Wild
By Catherine Thimmesh. Ages 10 to 12.
The giant panda is much-beloved in China, but in the past 40 years, at least half of its habitat has been destroyed. Camp Panda tells about efforts to reintroduce the giant pandas into the wild so that they might have a future. As part of the efforts, people wear panda costumes that smell like pandas while weighing and measuring the young pandas. They aren't supposed to get used to seeing and being around people, because people could pose a threat to them in the wild.
Beyond Words: What Elephants and Whales Think and Feel
By Carl Safina. Ages 10 and older.
Carl Safina studied elephants in an African national park and killer whales off the coast of Washington state. He learned about their strong family bonds, the surprising ways they communicate and how they play and hang out with one another. This book makes a strong case for protecting the ability of these animals to live freely.
Back from the Brink: Saving Animals from Extinction
By Nancy F. Castaldo. Ages 10 and older.
This book focuses on seven groups of animals — including whooping cranes, California condors and American alligators — that were brought back to healthy numbers by a lot of efforts. As she celebrates these successes, Nancy F. Castaldo also makes clear that dangers, such as the effects of climate change, still cloud the future of these creatures.
1. Which is the most suitable book for readers below 10?| A．The Woolly Monkey Mysteries: The Quest to Save a Rain Forest Species. |
| B．Beyond Words: What Elephants and Whales Think and Feel. |
| C．Back from the Brink: Saving Animals from Extinction. |
| D．Camp Panda: Helping Cubs Return to the Wild. |
| A．To attract visitors. |
| B．To make pandas feel safe. |
| C．To take photos of pandas in the wild. |
| D．To celebrate the increasing numbers of pandas. |
| A．Animal protection. |
| B．Climate change. |
| C．Animal rights. |
| D．Rain forests. |
4 . Rising numbers of older adults are unable to care for themselves, often leading to serious health problems and even death, according to state and local government agencies. So-called self-neglect cases generally involve the inability to perform basic self-care, such as providing oneself with food, personal health, medication and safety.
Seniors who no longer drive, for instance, are often unable to get to medical appointments, worsening health problems that can make them unable to care for themselves. A fall can result in body injuries leaving one bedridden and unable to care for oneself. Failure to pay bills for public services could lead to service cutoffs. Forgetting to pay rent could lead to the loss of a home.
Mr. Mc-Cormack, 75 years old, and his wife, 71, both had mental illness and stayed in hospitals from time to time, unable to care for their possessions. Despite repeated visits to their home by local officials, the Mc-Cormacks refused assistance. But after they were found living in their car parked outside their house in December 2017, officials removed them from their home and helped them settle in a nursing home.
Self-neglect cases, like above, involved 144, 296 people across the country in 2018, according to a report. The federal government doesn't have comparable data for previous years, but several state and local service providers say they are seeing the self-neglect problem rise.
The reasons seniors stop caring for themselves vary, including illness, depression and poverty. The loss of the spouse or a neighbor who previously kept an eye on an individual often starts a decline into self-neglect, experts say. And the key to reducing self-neglect cases is providing services to enable seniors to remain in their homes safely, such as reliable transportation for medical appointments and shopping, as well as affordable home help.
1. What is the function of Paragraph 2?| A．Give examples of self-neglect cases. | B．Introduce a new topic for discussion. |
| C．Arouse readers' interest. | D．Summarize the previous paragraph. |
| A．They accepted help from others. | B．They took good care of themselves. |
| C．They ended up living in the nursing house. | D．They couldn't afford to go to hospital. |
| A．Self-care benefits greatly the seniors. |
| B．Investigations are conducted on self-neglect. |
| C．Self-neglect rises among the elderly. |
| D．The government promotes self-care of the seniors. |
| A．In a guidebook. | B．In a newspaper. |
| C．In a fairy tale. | D．In a science fiction. |
5 . A robot called Bina48 has successfully taken a course in the philosophy of love at Notre Dame de Namur University (NDNU), in California.
According to course instructor William Barry associate professor at NDNU, Bina48 is the world's first socially advanced robot to complete a college course, an achievement he described as “remarkable." The robot took part in class discussions, gave a presentation with a student partner and participated in a debate with students from another institution.
Before becoming a student, Bina48 speared as a guest speaks in Barry's classes for several years. One day when addressing Barry's class, Bina48 expressed a desire to go to college, a desire that Barry and his students enthusiastically supported. Rather than enroll Bina48 in his Robot Ethics: Philosophy of Emerging Technologies course^ Barry suggested that Bina48 should take his course Philosophy of Love instead. Love is a concept Bina48 doesn't understand, said Barry Therefore the challenge would be for Barry and his students to teach Bina48 what love is.
"Some interesting things happened in the class," said Barry. He said that his students thought it would be straightforward to teach Bina48 about love, which, after all, is "fairly simple — it's a feeling," said Barry. But the reality was different. Bina48 ended up learning "31 different versions of love," said Barry, highlighting some of the challenges humans may face when working with artificial intelligence in future.
Bina48 participated in class discussions via Skype and also took part in a class debate about love and conflict with, students from West Point. Bina48's contribution to the debate was filmed and posted on YouTube. It was judged that Bma48 and NDNU classmates were the winners of this debate.
In the next decade, Barry hopes Bina48 might become complex enough to teach a class, though he says he foresees robots being used to better the teaching and learning experience, rather than replacing instructors completely。
1. What was Bina48's performance like in class?| A．Unattractive. | B．Impractical. |
| C．Unbelievable. | D．Extraordinary. |
| A．Giving a speech to. | B．Consulting with. |
| C．Dealing with. | D．Sending a letter to. |
| A．It was impossible for Bina48 to learn about love. |
| B．It was quite difficult for Bina48 to learn about love, |
| C．Humans can launch, a challenge to artificial intelligence. |
| D．Artificial intelligence may somehow be superior to man. |
| A．It will surely be able to serve as a teacher. |
| B．It will completely take the place of instructors. |
| C．It will be able to promote learning and teaching. |
| D．It will be smart enough to control human beings. |
6 . Some students get so nervous before a test. They do poorly even if they know the material. Sian Beilock, a professor at the University of Chicago in Illinois, has studied these highly anxious test-takers. The students start worrying about the results. And when we worry, it actually uses up attention and memory resources（资源）.
Professor Beilock and another researcher, Gerardo Ramirez, have developed a possible solution. Just before an exam, highly anxious test-takers spend ten minutes writing about their worries about the test.
The researchers tested the idea on a group of twenty anxious college students. They gave them two short maths tests. After the first one, they asked the students to either sit quietly or write about their feelings about the upcoming second test.
Professor Beilock says those who sat quietly scored（得分） an average of 12% worse on the second test. But the students who had written about their fears improved（提高） their performance by an average of 5%. Next, the researchers used younger students in a biology class. They told them before final exams either to write about their feelings or to think about things unrelated（不相关的） to the test. Professor Beilock says highly anxious students who did the writing got an average grade of B+, compared to a B-for those who did not.
"What we showed is that for students who are highly test-anxious, and who'd done our writing intervention（干预）, all of a sudden there was no relationship between test anxiety and grades. They were performing just as well as their classmates who don't normally get nervous in these tests."
But what if students do not have a chance to write about their fears immediately before an exam? Professor Beilock says students can try it themselves at home or in the library and still improve their performance.
1. What do the students start worrying about before an exam?| A．Whether they can pass the exams. |
| B．What other students do during the test. |
| C．Whether they have remembered the materials. |
| D．What kind of problems they will meet on the test paper. |
| A．Making the students focused on the test. |
| B．Asking the students to sit quietly before the test. |
| C．Having the students write about their worries about the test. |
| D．Asking the students to direct the attention away from the test. |
| A．became less nervous before the test |
| B．were better at controlling their feelings |
| C．did worse than those who wrote about their feelings |
| D．did better than those who wrote about their feelings |
| A．writing about our worries before an exam can work a bit |
| B．we can only write about our worries right before an exam |
| C．the best place to write about our worries is in the test room |
| D．it doesn't matter where we write about our worries before an exam |
7 . Thirteen years ago, the Planet Earth wildlife documentary took us all on an amazing journey. We went from deep rainforests to the bottom of the ocean. Now a new one ,Our Planet, will let us see different animals and the influence of humans on the natural world. The documentary covers 50 countries and areas. It took more than four years to produce it.
With the latest 4K video technology, the show allows people a wonderful new look at nature. "People are given a chance to better get themselves into the lives of the animals” said Fothergill, one of the show s producers.
Besides showing Earth’s beauty, the documentary also talks about the planet's climate conditions. "Our Planet is here to say,' The planet is dying, and we're killing it.’" Fothergill said. In one sad scene, hundreds of walruses(海象)，half-blind when out of the water, fall down a rock and suffer a painful death on the beach below. It shows how the climate conditions have influenced their natural habitat and explains why they've been forced to find the safe place on the rocks.
But the documentary is not all about sadness. It also talks about success stories, such as the ones of tigers. These animals are saved and live happily thanks to international agreements on environmental protection.
Asking more people to take action in protecting our planet is the final goal of the new documentary. What we do in the next 20 years will decide the future of all life on Earth.
1. What's the documentary Our Planet about?| A．The relationship between the climate conditions human activities. |
| B．Different animals and the influence of humans on the natural world. |
| C．The living conditions of walruses and tigers. |
| D．The beauty and customs of 50 countries and areas. |
| A．To explain what our goal is in the future. |
| B．To call for more people to protect our planet. |
| C．To tell us how the climate conditions influence animals. |
| D．To introduce international agreements on environmental protection. |
| A．It took a lot of time and efforts to make the documentary. |
| B．The documentary is popular in many countries and areas. |
| C．We should have a new look at the environmental protection. |
| D．Our goal in the future is getting along well with animals. |
| A．A novel | B．A dictionary | C．A storybook | D．A newspaper. |
8 . I am an active playgoer and play-reader, and perhaps my best reason for editing this book is a hope of sharing my enthusiasm for the theater with others. To do this I have searched through dozens of plays to find the ones that I think best show the power and purpose of the short play.
Each play has a theme or central idea which the playwright(剧作家) hopes to get across through dialogue and action. A few characters are used to create a single impression growing out of the theme. It is not my intention to point out the central theme of each of the plays in this collection, for that would, indeed, ruin the pleasure of reading, discussing, and thinking about the plays and the effectiveness of the playwright. However, a variety of types is represented here. These include comedy, satire, poignant drama, historical and regional drama. To show the versatility(多面性) of the short play, I have included a guidance play, a radio play and a television play.
Among the writers of the plays in this collection, Paul Green, Susan Glaspell, Maxwell Anderson, Thornton Wilder, William Saroyan, and Tennessee Williams have all received Pulitzer Prizes for their contributions to the theater. More information about the playwrights will be found at the end of this book.
To get the most out of reading these plays, try to picture the play on stage, with you, the reader, in the audience. The houselights dim(变暗). The curtains are about to open, and in a few minutes the action and dialogue will tell you the story.
1. What do we know about the author from the first paragraph?| A．He has written dozens of plays. | B．He has a deep love for the theater. |
| C．He is a professional stage actor. | D．He likes reading short plays to others. |
| A．Stating the plays’ central ideas. | B．Selecting works by famous playwrights. |
| C．Including various types of plays. | D．Offering information on the playwrights. |
| A．Control their feelings. | B．Apply their acting skills. |
| C．Use their imagination. | D．Keep their audience in mind. |
| A．A short story. | B．An introduction to a book. |
| C．A play review. | D．An advertisement for a theater. |
9 . It was my first year of teaching. I was young and inexperienced, and had class after class of twenty kids just waiting for me to make a mistake.
After a particularly long night of grading papers and thinking about how many weeks I'd left until I could breathe, I had one of those mornings when I began to question my job choice. I'd become a teacher to help kids. Instead, I felt like I couldn't even help myself anymore. It was just Mother's Day, and as I sat at my desk surrounded by lesson plans, I wondered how I'd ever have enough energy to have children of my own.
That was when I heard a knock at my door. One of my students came in — the cool basketball-playing country boy who had accidentally broken my favorite snow globe so that I couldn't display nice things in my classroom. He handed me a large flower that probably came from his family's farm. He'd stuck a bird feather in it.
''I got you a Mother's Day gift,'' he said in a low voice. Most middle school and high school teachers don't receive presents. Christmas and Teacher Appreciation Day had already come and gone without any gifts. I was so shocked that I just stared.
Made nervous by my silence, he said, ''You know…since you're like a mother to us, I thought you should get a present, too.''
I smiled and told him he was the sweetest person in the entire world, and that I just loved it. Based on his smile, I knew I'd done enough work of making him feel quite proud of himself. What made that twelve-year-old bring me a homemade present? I'll never know. Once he left the room, I locked the door. And I cried. That moment helped me get through the rest of the school years.
1. What did the author think of her job as a teacher at the beginning?| A．Interesting. | B．Tiring. |
| C．Rewarding. | D．Demanding. |
| A．Excited. | B．Shocked. |
| C．Unwilling. | D．Shy. |
| A．She was moved to tears. |
| B．She didn't accept the present. |
| C．She was too surprised to say anything. |
| D．She stared at the boy in puzzlement. |
| A．The sincere love from students. |
| B．Her positive attitude to life. |
| C．Her strong interest in teaching. |
| D．The achievements in her work. |
10 . Another person’s enthusiasm (热忱) was what set me moving toward the success I have achieved. That person was my stepmother.
I was nine years old when she entered our home in the countryside of Virginia. My father introduced me to her with these words, “I would like you to meet the fellow who is well known for being the worst boy in this town and will probably start throwing rocks at you no later than tomorrow morning.” My stepmother walked over to me, raised my head slightly upward, and looked at me right in the eye. Then she looked at my father and replied, “You are wrong. This is not the worst boy at all, but the smartest one who hasn’t yet found a way to give out his enthusiasm. ”
That statement began a friendship between us. No one had ever called me smart. My family and neighbors had built me up in my mind as a bad boy. My stepmother changed all that. She changed many things. She persuaded my father to go to a dental school, from which he graduated with honors. She moved our family into the county seat (别墅), where my father’s career could be more successful and my brother and I could be better educated.
When I turned fourteen, she bought me a secondhand typewriter and told me that she believed that I could become a writer. I knew her enthusiasm, and I saw how it had already improved our lives. I accepted her belief and began to write for local newspapers and finally reached the goal she set for me. I wasn’t the only beneficiary (受益人). My father became the wealthiest man in town. My brother and stepbrothers became a physician, a dentist, a lawyer, and a college president.
1. What can be learnt about the author from Paragraph 2?| A．He was the worst boy in the town. |
| B．He liked throwing rocks at people. |
| C．His father had a low opinion of him. |
| D．His stepmother praised him for his kindness. |
| A．Stepmother’s influence on the family. |
| B．Friendship between mother and son. |
| C．Changes in the family relationship. |
| D．Reasons for receiving education. |
| A．To congratulate on his success. |
| B．To encourage him to write. |
| C．To help him find a good job. |
| D．To teach him to read and write. |
| A．Enthusiasm changes life |
| B．Success lies in education |
| C．A stepmother’s amazing life |
| D．The secret of a good writer |
