1 . Twice every month, Miranda Sam, a 66-year-old Ghanaian, visited the China Traditional Herbal Hospital, a private herbal facility at Pokuase, a suburb of the Ghanaian capital, for treatment.
“I was squeezing lemons, and when I finished, I could not get up or even move my legs, so I went to the hospital and did an X-ray examination, but they saw nothing. Meanwhile, I could not walk and was in a wheelchair,” the retired worker said. Hence Miranda decided to visit the herbal facility. “On two occasions, I had to do acupuncture(针灸), and I have found great relief. Now I walk unaided, so I keep coming for treatment,” she said.
As Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) is gaining popularity in Ghana, many acupuncture clinics run by Chinese doctors pop up in the country. However, the China Traditional Herbal Hospital was established by 52-year-old Ghanaian business owner Bediako, after his fruitful encounter with the effects of TCM in 2012. With the help of a Chinese lady, Bediako set up a small clinic specializing in TCM. Years on, the facility has subsequently grown into a bigger herbal hospital. The hospital treats patients with a combination of local and Chinese herbal formulas. It supports this with the application of traditional Chinese medical methods.
Strokes(中风) account for 1.3 percent of all hospital admissions in Ghana, and 6.3 percent of all hospital deaths. But Bediako is confident that as more people with these conditions turn to the natural methods of healing, the pain and death rates would subside. “A gentleman was brought here three weeks ago, who could not sit, stand, or walk. He was first taken through acupuncture. I observed him on camera 30 minutes later, squatting(蹲), standing, and walking. You come here with your pain but will leave with a smile. That is our feature,” he said.
The hospital has started a second facility in Ashaiman near the capital, with plans to open other branches across the country to meet the growing demand.
1. What can we learn from Miranda’s words in Paragraph 2?| A．Her illness is not a bit severe. | B．Squeezing lemons is a risky job. |
| C．She is feeling better now. | D．She is unsure about what to do next. |
| A．It is located in the downtown area. |
| B．It was originally a specialized clinic. |
| C．It was established by a Chinese doctor. |
| D．It uses nothing but Chinese herbs. |
| A．Decline. | B．Remain. |
| C．Climb. | D．Change. |
| A．Negative. | B．Optimistic. |
| C．Uncertain. | D．Concerned. |
2 . A sleepover (过夜) program, which is designed to make kids believe that their favorite toys enjoy reading, can help encourage children to pick up more books, a new study suggests.
Toys sleepover programs are designed to get children interested in books. Children take their toys to a library for the night. At this point, workers and volunteers take photos of the toys which explore the library and read books. The next day, the children collect their toys and the photos of what the toys did during the night. They are given the books their toys chose to read.
It was found that before the sleepover the children did not spend time looking at the books in their play area at preschool. Immediately after the sleepover, the number of children who read to the toys was higher than the number who did not, but after three days the effect decreased gradually.
The researchers also tested a method for sustaining the effect. They reminded the children of the sleepover a month later, by hiding the toys and showing them the photos again the next day. This simple method brought an increase in the number of children reading to their toys.
The study proves for the first time that children who take part in sleepover programs read picture books to their toys more. “We wanted to know if there really was an effect, and if so, how long it lasts. Surprisingly, not only did the children show interest in the books, but they also began to read to their toys. This means that a new behavior pattern appeared that the children hadn’t had before. We did not expect anything like this,” said one of the researchers.
Reading is important for the development of children’s language skills and imagination. When parents read to their children, it is a passive way of reading for the child. However, when children read to their toys, it is a more active, self-directed way of reading, helping them develop into more active readers, researchers said.
1. What is the purpose of the sleepover program?| A．To develop children’s language skills. |
| B．To help children to sleep well. |
| C．To encourage children to read more. |
| D．To guide children to form a good sleeping habit. |
| A．Go around the library with their toys. |
| B．Sleep with their toys. |
| C．Read together with their toys. |
| D．Take their toys to the library. |
| A．keeping | B．testing | C．surveying | D．showing |
| A．Children showed no interest in the books. |
| B．The effect of the sleepover program could last long. |
| C．Children began to read to their toys on their own. |
| D．Whether the sleepover program had an effect remained unknown. |
3 . There is more that comes with older age than greying hair and wrinkled skin When humans reach their later years, they favour more established friends and their social circle is reduced.
Now, for what appears to be the first time, scientists have seen the same behaviour in another species. Twenty years of observations of chimpanzees (猩猩) reveal that older males choose to hang out with their long-term friends at the expense of other relationships.
The researchers studied 78, 000 hours of observations made between 1996 and 2016 that followed the social interactions of 21 male chimpanzees between the ages of 15 and 58 years old. They classified the chimps’ relationships depending on the amount of time they sat with others and groomed (梳毛) them. They then rated the various pairings as mutual (相互的) friendships, where both chimps seemed to enjoy the relationship; one-sided friendships, where one chimp was more keen to be friends than the other; and non-friendships, where neither chimp showed interest in the other.
When the scientists looked at the patterns of friendships, they found that the older chimps had more mutual friendships and fewer one-sided friendships than younger chimps. Another feature seen in older humans was also spotted in the chimps. As the males got older, their levels of aggression (挑衅) tailed off, meaning they started fewer fights and tended to intimidate others in their group less often.
The observations have left the researchers puzzled. According to an idea in psychology known as socioemotional selectivity theory, or SST, older humans prefer more positive relationships because they are aware time is running out. But many animal experts argue that chimpanzees lack the human sense of mortality (死亡), suggesting something else is driving the behaviour.
Robin Dunbar, a professor of evolutionary psychology at the University of Oxford, said in humans, the decline in social circles with age is due to declining social motivation to get out and meet people combined by lack of opportunity. In chimpanzees, as older males compete less for mates, they may focus on close, reciprocal (互惠的) relationships with trusted partners, she said.
1. What do older male chimpanzees favour?| A．Old friendships. | B．New bonds. |
| C．Greying hair. | D．Wrinkled skin. |
| A．By turning to other scientists. |
| B．By introducing a new concept. |
| C．By forming relationships with them. |
| D．By analyzing two decades’ observations. |
| A．Threaten. | B．Motivate. | C．Defend. | D．Accompany. |
| A．Awareness of time. | B．Less competition for mates. |
| C．Low motivation for socialization. | D．Lack of the human sense of mortality. |
4 . Guests arriving at the Aloft Hotel in Manhattan or one in Silicon Valley will soon be able to do something hotels have dreamed about offering for years: walk past the check-in desk and enter their rooms by using a smartphone as a room key. The boutique hotel brand from Starwood to Hotels & Resorts Worldwide Inc. plans to offer this feature at two hotels before the end of the quarter.
Starwood officials are hoping this will be one of the biggest technological changes in the industry since free Wi-Fi. “We believe this will become the new standard for how people will want to enter a hotel.” says Frits van Passchen, Starwood’s CEO.
Not everyone is so sure. Past attempts to use technology to streamline the check-in process have had mixed results. Robert Habeeb, president of the First Hospitality Group, says he pulled out check-in desks at two of his Holiday Inn hotels after finding that most guests ignored them. He found that many travelers will talk with a staff member and ensure their room has the right view or location, or to try for an upgrade. Other guests may still want to be greeted when they arrive.
Hotels have never been known for being in the forefront of technology, partly because many hotels are owned and managed by small companies. Many hotel operators, though, have been searching for ways to remove the bottlenecks (瓶颈) at a hotel’s front desk. “Everybody has to check in, but we are all doing it pretty much the same way we were 100 years ago,” says Christopher Nassetta, CEO for Hilton Worldwide holdings Inc. “It’s something we are seriously addressing.”
Yet it is still not clear that virtual keys will do better than previous attempts to beat traditional check-ins. An effort several years ago to allow guests to enter rooms with the magnetic strip (磁条) on their credit cards never became popular. Guests worried about security and were unwilling to give their kids credit cards instead of room keys.
1. According to the first two paragraphs, which of the following is NOT true?| A．The new room key may become a new standard of choosing a hotel. |
| B．Hotel officials hope the new room key will be a great change in hotel industry. |
| C．Aloft of Hotel in Manhattan will allow guests to use a smartphone as a room key. |
| D．All Starwood Hotels plan to offer the new room key before the end of the quarter. |
| A．unify | B．identify | C．simplify | D．beautify |
| A．it’s a good idea to cancel check-in |
| B．the way of check-in needs to be changed |
| C．the management of hotel needs to be improved |
| D．it depends on the hotel operators to update technology |
| A．secure | B．negative | C．bright | D．uncertain |
5 . We recognize our friends’ faces. And we’re not alone. Many social animals can identify individuals of their own species by features of their faces. That's important, because they need to be able to change their behavior depending on who they meet. And a recent research has shown that some species of monkeys, birds, and domesticated (家养的) animals can even tell different faces apart by looking at photographs alone.
Ethologist Léa Lansade of the French National Research Institute for Agriculture, Food and Environment did an experiment to find out how well horses can recognize individual people in photographs.
She and her team first taught the horses how to “choose” between two side-by-side pictures by touching their noses to a computer screen. The horses were then shown photos of their present keeper alongside faces of unfamiliar humans. They had never seen photos of any of the people before. The horses correctly identified their current keeper and ignored (忽视) the stranger’s face about 75%of the time. In fact, even though the horses didn't get it right every single time, they were at least as correct in picking out their earlier keeper as they were at identifying their present one.
The results suggest that not only can horses differentiate between familiar and unfamiliar human faces, they also naturally understand that photographs are two dimensional representations (二维呈现) of real life, without any other intimations such as smell or sound. And they’re even better at this than our oldest animal parter, the domestic dog.
In addition, horses seem to have a strong long-term memory for human faces, like their long lifespan and history of domestication. In future experiments, the researchers would like to test whether looking at photos of people that they have had bad experiences with in the past might cause horses to act anxious or even avoidance. So maybe think twice before doing anything that might give a horse a long face.
1. Why did researchers show the horses both the keeper’s photos and the strangers’?| A．To find out what horses would do in the experiment. |
| B．To see why horses could recognize the keeper in the pictures. |
| C．To test whether horses could recognize the strangers in pictures. |
| D．To study to what degree horses can make out different people in pictures. |
| A．Clues. | B．Differences. |
| C．Photographs. | D．Senses. |
| A．Whether horses can live longer than other animals. |
| B．Whether horses can remember human's faces for a long time. |
| C．Whether horses can show their emotions at the sight of photos. |
| D．Whether horses are better at recognizing photos than other animals. |
| A．To talk about animals’ species. |
| B．To explain animals’ facial features. |
| C．To show animals’ behaviour for adaptation. |
| D．To introduce animals’ ability to identifying faces. |
6 . Jack was born without eyes. He was very lucky as he grew up having other kittens(young cats) to socialize with, and was used to people from the moment he was born. However, when it came time to find the kittens homes, no one knew where Jack would end up.
That's when I got an email from my friend. All she asked was “Do you still want one of the kittens? There's one here with no eyes and no one would like to take him.” Without thinking, I told her that I did want the kitten.
When we first brought him home, Jack stayed mostly in my room. After about a day he had no issues running around and climbing on everything. At times he gets lost in the house, he'll stop. But we just call him and talk to him and it isn't long before he finds his way back to us.
A few weeks after getting Jack, we got a new farm cat named Bear. Jack and Bear have become best friends. It doesn't matter that he can't see. He always knows when Bear is around. He'll run across the yard straight to Bear and wrap his front legs around his neck in a big hug. They run after each other around and wrestle. They'll lie down in the grass together when tired.
Jack is truly an inspiration. I've owned lots of kittens in my life, but Jack is the happiest and most playful. He doesn't feel sorry for himself. He doesn't need pity. I think Jean, owner of Gumbo, another eyeless cat, said it best when she told me that cats don't have disabilities, they have adaptability.
1. Why did Jack come to our home?| A．I liked an eyeless cat. | B．I didn't mind whether he was blind. |
| C．No other young cats kept him company. | D．My friend ordered me to take him home. |
| A．Difficulty. | B．Fun. | C．Luck. | D．Business. |
| A．Jack likes to play with a new eyeless cat. |
| B．Jack is good at talking and playing with people. |
| C．Jack quickly adapts to the new environment. |
| D．Jack and Bear lie down on the sofa together when tired. |
| A．A cat has nine lives. | B．All is well that ends well. |
| C．God helps those who help themselves. | D．A good beginning makes a good ending. |
7 . “Look how stupid he is!" a 7-year-old said to her dad Daniel Funke, pointing to a picture of a famous person on the Internet. The photo showed the man writing his name with his pen turned upside down.
Of course, the photo was not the original one. It had been changed to look like him using the pen the wrong way. Funke quickly pointed out the mistake, and his daughter got an on-the-spot education in fake news. By then, however, many people had already shared it on social media.
“The pitfalls of sharing misinformation and fake news can be very serious," says Laeeq Khan, who heads the Social Media Analytics Lab at Ohio University in Athens. Sharing something that’s not true can cost people their lives, he says. Last year, people in India used a messaging app, WhatsApp, to spread fake stories about a kidnapping ring. The lies caused violent attacks in which people died.
Fake news stories hurt people in other ways, too. For example, fake reports lead some parents to refuse vaccines (疫苗) for their children. Yet without vaccines, children can get serious diseases or even die.
“About seven in 10 Americans were telling us that fake news has a big influence on the confidence in our government,” says Jeffrey Gottfried. He’s a journalism and media-research expert at Pew Research Center in Washington, D.C. Researchers there did a survey in the United States about the influence of made-up news. About half the people in the survey said they had shared misinformation online. Most of them said they didn’t realize it at the time.
Besides causing serious results, sharing a fake story makes it harder for people to tell what's real. And when people find out a story is not real, they may not trust other information from a person who spread it. Therefore, it's important to do fact-checking before sharing news stories.
1. What is the purpose of the first two paragraphs?| A．To bring up the topic of the text. | B．To tell an interesting news story. |
| C．To provide the main idea of the text. | D．To list people's popular online behavior. |
| A．Mistakes. | B．Problems. | C．Advantages. | D．Possibilities. |
| A．About 30% of online news wasn't real. |
| B．Made-up news spread faster than expected. |
| C．Made-up news had a bad influence on children. |
| D．Many Americans shared fake news without knowing it. |
| A．Positive | B．Unclear | C．Worried | D．Supporting |
8 . ON TUESDAY， the Shenzhen team of Blue Sky Rescue， a nonprofit civil rescue team， confirmed that two of its members had died trying to rescue 24 tourists who had got into difficulties.
According to the official news， it was on Monday that the rescue team received a telephone call from 24 travelers， who were trapped in a river valley， with a storm on the way and one of the female travelers being badly injured.
The team responded immediately. However， when they helped the travelers， two team member got trapped by the rising river water. The next day， they were confirmed dead.
The two heroes who gave their own lives to save others are being mourned by all.
Who can rescue the rescuers？ The question aroused a heated discussion among people. Most of them think we would rather such "heroic deeds" were not required. However， that depends on people being more sensible. In the past several years， there have been many cases in which travelers， ignoring the signs saying certain areas are dangerous and off﹣limits， still have kept on "exploring" unpaved and unmarked regions and ended up needing to be rescued. By so doing， they put not only their own lives at risk but also the lives of those who go to their aid.
In this case， although the travelers may have been in an authorized area， they ignored the warnings of an approaching typhoon. It was extremely reckless（鲁莽） of them to travel into the wild on such a day， as the local weather forecast had warned people against the upcoming typhoon. Two rescuers have lost their lives because of the thoughtlessness of others.
The law has already made it clear that if a traveler or group gets into difficulties when entering unauthorized regions， they must bear the costs of the rescue operations. The regulations need strengthening to deter travelers from putting their own lives and the lives of others at risk.
1. What happened to a woman traveler？| A．She lost her way. |
| B．She was trapped on the mountain. |
| C．She died in the storm. |
| D．She was seriously hurt. |
| A．Critical. |
| B．Sympathetic. |
| C．Understanding. |
| D．Admiring. |
| A．protect. |
| B．keep. |
| C．excuse. |
| D．separate. |
| A．The Blue Sky Rescue. |
| B．Who can rescue the rescuers？ |
| C．Who should bear the costs？ |
| D．A deadly typhoon. |
9 . The end of the school year was in sight and spirits were high. I was back teaching after an absence of 15 years, dealing with the various kinds of "forbidden fruit" that come out of book bags. Now was the spring of the water pistol.
I decided to think up a method of dealing with forbidden fruit.
"Please bring that pistol to me," I said. "I'm going to put it in my Grandma's Box."
"What's that?" they asked.
"It's a large wooden chest full of toys for my grandchildren," I replied,
"You don't have grandchildren," someone said.
"I don't now." I replied. "But someday I will. When I do, my box will be full of wonderful things for them."
My imaginary Grandma's Box worked like magic that spring, and later. Sometimes. students would ask me to describe all the things I had in it. Then I would try to remember the different possessions I supposedly had taken away—since I seldom actually kept them. Usually the offender would appear at the end of the day, and I would return the belonging.
The-years went by, and my first grandchild Gordon was born. I shared my joy with that year's class. Then someone said, "Now you can use your Grandma's Box." From then on instead of coming to ask their possessions back, the students would say, "That's okay. Put it in your Grandma's Box for Gordon."
I loved talking about the imaginary box, not only with my students but also with my own children. They enjoyed hearing about all the forbidden fruit I had collected. Then one Christmas I received a surprise gift—a large, beautifully made wooden chest. My son Bruce had made my Grandma's Box a reality.
1. What was the author's purpose in having the conversation with the students?| A．To collect the water pistol. | B．To talk about her grandchildren. |
| C．To recommend some toys. | D．To explain her teaching method. |
| A．The student's parent. | B．The maker of the Grandma's Box. |
| C．The author's grandchild. | D．The owner of the forbidden fruit. |
| A．They went to play with the baby. | B．They asked to see the Grandma's Box. |
| C．They made a present for Gordon. | D．They stopped asking their toys back. |
| A．She enjoys telling jokes. | B．She is a strict and smart teacher. |
| C．She loves doing woodwork. | D．She is a responsible grandmother |
10 . Can a fish be depressed? This question has been floating around my head ever since I saw a sad-looking Siamese fighting fish in a hotel. His name was Bruce Lee, according to a sign beneath his little bowl.
On the bottom of the little bowl was Bruce Lee, totally still, his lower fin( 鳍 ) somewhat injured. When he did finally move, just slightly, I got the sense that he would prefer to be dead.
The pleasant woman at the front desk convinced me that he was well taken care of. Was I simply incorrectly supposing his lethargy was a sign of mental suffering?
Later on, I sought answers from scientists. It turns out that not only can our gilled( 有 鳃 的 ) friends become depressed, but some scientists consider fish to be a promising animal model for developing anti-depressants. New research has been completely changing the way scientists think about fish, building a case that pet and owner are not nearly as different as many suppose.
Dr. Pittman likes working with fish, in part, because they are so obvious about their depression. He can reliably test the effectiveness of anti-depressants with something called the “novel tank test.” A zebra fish gets dropped in a new tank. If after five minutes it is hanging out in the lower half, it’s depressed. If it’s swimming up top — its usual behaviour when exploring a new environment — then it’s not. The seriousness of the depression, he says, can be measured by quantity of time at the top vs. the bottom, all of which seemed to confirm my guess about Bruce Lee.
“One of the things we’re finding that fish are naturally curious and seek novel things out,” said Dr. Braithwaite.
In other words, your goldfish is probably bored. To help prevent them from depression, she suggests introducing new objects to the tank( 缸 ) or changing the location of items.
Dr. Brown agrees, pointing to an experiment he conducted, which showed that if you leave a fish in an enriched, physically complex environment — meaning a lot of plants to bite at and cages to swim through — it decreases stress and increases brain growth.
The last time a guest posted Bruce Lee to Instagram he was looking good and lively. Perhaps that new green leaf in his bowl had provided the enrichment he desired.
1. What does the underlined word “lethargy” in Paragraph 3 mean?| A．suffering | B．sorrow |
| C．anxiety | D．laziness |
| A．Fish can be used to develop anti-depressants. |
| B．The way scientists thought about the fish proves totally right. |
| C．Pets and owners sometimes have the same feeling. |
| D．Many people suppose pets are quite different from people. |
| A．They are not born to be curious. |
| B．They lack new things to explore. |
| C．They can’t locate the positions of items. |
| D．They need oxygen from the air. |
| A．Fish have their own feelings. |
| B．Fish can be a boring pet. |
| C．Fish need better care. |
| D．Fish depression is not a joke. |
