1 . If you want to do your kids a favor, consider having them walk to school. Walking to school provides many benefits – improving academic performance, reducing anxiety, boosting spirits, better sleep, a sense of independence, having an opportunity to familiarize oneself with a neighborhood, to notice small details, to feel a sense of wonder at the surroundings. The list goes on.
Parental fears still exist, however. Parents are terrified of cars, of injury, of harsh weather, of encounters with strangers and wild animals. These fears prevent parents from letting their kids do something that's actually enormously beneficial to them, despite the fact that removing an opportunity to be active contributes to an increase in childhood obesity, which can have a greater negative impact on a child's life than the risk of being injured due to being active.
How do we go from being a society that does not encourage its children to walk independently to being one that does? Parents must face their own discomfort with letting go. Brussoni, an expert who researches children's outdoor and risky play, said "We want to move parents from focusing solely on protecting their child to building trust in their child’s abilities and strategies to support their child’s skills in navigating the streetscape."
Schools can play a role by encouraging children to walk to school. Brussoni offers additional suggestions: "They should promote a culture that walking to school is the norm, help educate parents on why this is important, and consider closing the streets around the school to cars before and after school."
Parents might do well to put themselves in their children's shoes. As adults, we know how good a morning walk feels to start off a day or to end one. Walking energizes us and cheers us up, and it can do the same for children. As we go through this pandemic that has shaken up all of our lives, it's a good time to practice new routines and establish new habits. Walking to school is a great place to start.
1. What can we infer about kids’ usual way of going to school?| A．They walk to school alone. | B．They are driven to school. |
| C．They ride bikes to school. | D．They are led to school by teachers. |
| A．Focus on their child’s safety. | B．Protect their child against injury. |
| C．Believe their child’s abilities. | D．Strike traffic rules into their child’s heart. |
| A．Schools. | B．Societies. | C．Governments. | D．Children. |
| A．To illustrate the roles of parents and schools. |
| B．To advise parents to have kids walk to school. |
| C．To promote a way of establishing a new routine. |
| D．To encourage kids to form a good habit. |
2 . I was on vacation with my husband, my brother, his wife and daughter. We were not familiar with the area and jumped onto a bus, thinking it would be a nice way to see the downtown’s old town area. Well, until visiting with the bus driver, we found out we were on the neighborhood route which picks up school children and delivers to various neighborhood places, with a route of well over about 2 hours. That was a surprise and a concern because we had parked our vehicle in a timed parking area and it was going to end.
We shared this with the bus driver only to let her know we were not from the area and apologized for getting on her bus in error. Then she surprised us further saying, “I get off shift after a few more blocks, and if you don't mind a tight squeeze in my company car, I'd be happy to take you back to your vehicle before the time is over.” The bus driver received permission from her manager, so we gratefully said yes to her offer.
She went out of her way to take us back to our vehicle after her shift was over and it wasn't on her route to home either. We were touched and grateful for her kindness and thoughtfulness. In return because she had shared some of her concerns about the school-age children she sometimes had on the bus route, I shared with her a little tip on how to quiet the children with an energetic technique that would make the ride safer for them as well as for her. She was so grateful. It was a wonderful exchange of kindness!
1. What was wrong with the author and her family ?| A．They got on a wrong bus. | B．They would lose their car. |
| C．They couldn't drive their own car. | D．They had to tour neighborhood places. |
| A．The timed parking area. | B．The family's concern. |
| C．The vehicle parked there. | D．The time limit for parking |
| A．Invite them to her home. | B．Ask her manager for help. |
| C．Drive them to where they parked. | D．Get off shift earlier than usual. |
| A．She taught her how to send children to school. |
| B．She taught her how to calm down children. |
| C．She gave her a tip for her good service. |
| D．She helped make her ride comfortable and safe. |
3 . The Japanese government, citizens and groups are debating what to do with radioactive water from the disabled nuclear power plant near Fukushinma. An earthquake on March 11, 2011 caused severe damage to three of the six nuclear reactors at the Fukushinma Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant. Since then, Japanese officials have been trying to contain and clear up the damage.
The Associated Press recently observed the decontamination (净化) process taking place there. Officials are trying to decide what to do with 1.2 million tons of radioactive water being stored at Fukushinma. The nuclear center is operated by the Tokyo Electric Power Co. , or TEPCO. The company says it needs to free up space as work on the damaged reactors reaches an important point. Many people expect TEPCO to slowly release the water into the ocean near the nuclear center. The government has already approved the plan.
However, it is not clear when the company will carry out the plan. Local people oppose it because that could hurt the fishing industry. Sales of fish caught off the coast near Fukushinma are half what they were before the nuclear disaster. Fish caught in the area have been approved for sale after radioactivity testing by health officials.
TEPCO Chief Decommissioning Officer Akira Ono said the water must be removed. He says crews need the space currently occupied by the water tanks. In their place, workers will set up structures to hold melted reactor wreckage(反应堆残骸).
People wear protective clothing and head coverings to work in the most radioactive areas around the nuclear center. But underground conditions remain dangerous and radioactive water is leaking from the melted reactors and mixing with groundwater. This water is being pumped into containers to keep it from flowing into the sea. The polluted water from underground is processed and filtered to remove dangerous radioactive elements. Tritium(氚) is the only radioactive material that remains. Japan's industry ministry and nuclear officials say tritium is not harmful in small amounts. However, although officials try to ease public fear, there are worries that fish might be affected if the water is released into the sea.
1. What do we know from the text?| A．The Fukushinma disaster was caused by humans. |
| B．Tons of radioactive water has been leaked into the ocean. |
| C．Melted reactor wreckage will take up most of the region. |
| D．Japan is struggling with the clean-up of radioactive pollution. |
| A．Making room for the damaged reactors. |
| B．Releasing the water into the nearby ocean. |
| C．Filtering the water near the nuclear center. |
| D．Storing the radioactive water in the nuclear center. |
| A．It can be found in the polluted water. |
| B．It has aroused great panic among residents. |
| C．It does no harm to fish. |
| D．It exists in a solid form. |
| A．The groundwater has been severely polluted in Fukushinma. |
| B．People in Fukushinma used to earn their living by fishing. |
| C．It is hard for the authorities to earn the public's trust. |
| D．It is unclear when TEPCO will remove the radioactive water. |
4 . The terraced rapeseed(油菜)flower hills of Jiangling, Wuyuan is well-known as one of the four “seas of flowers” in China, attracting thousands of plant-loving tourists to come and appreciate and photograph the vast and endless rapeseed flower fields.
“Rapeseed flowers are the messenger of spring,” said Bin Zhan, manager of Jiangxi Wuyuan Tourism, “Jiangling is the best place for a relaxing spring trip to enjoy the most visually impressive views of golden seas of rapeseed blossoms covering layered terrace fields”.
The rapeseed blossom in the terraced fields of Jiangling, located 45 kilometres to the northeast of Wuyuan County, Jiangxi Province, reached full bloom in the second week of March.
This year. Wuyuan restores ancient farming traditions and practices to give visitors an idea or the history ，culture and folk customs of the county by adding scarecrows(稻草人) in the rapeseed flower fields. The creative scarecrows of Wuyuan County are designed in the shapes of popular cartoon characters, Hui-style architecture and folk customs. They are placed in the rapeseed fields to provide more fun and interactions for visitors on flower viewing tours.
“As flower viewing is becoming more popular in recent years, Jiangling is seeing a growing number of returning visitors, especially professional photograph who come back every year for the dramatic rapeseed blossoms,” Zhan said. “The blossoms only last one to two months. April is the last chance to catch a flower-viewing tour this year.”
In addition to flower viewing, Wuyuan County is also home to the most well-protected ancient Hui-style architecture in China. As one of the most beautiful countryside villages in China, it attracts photographers from around the world every year to document not only the natural scenery, but also the unique farming culture and folk traditions.
1. Which is NOT one of the features of the rapeseed blossoms of Jiangling？| A．The rapeseed fields cover a limited area. |
| B．The rapeseed is planted on layered terraces. |
| C．Rapeseed flowers blossom, at the beginning of spring. |
| D．When the flowers blossom, the fields are like a golden sea. |
| A．Folk customs. | B．Hui-style buildings. |
| C．Creative scarecrows. | D．Models of popular cartoon characters. |
| A．Returning visitors get discount when entering Jiangling. |
| B．Visitors could catch the last flower viewing tour in May. |
| C．It is in March and April that Jiangling has the most visitors. |
| D．Not many professional photographers will go to see the blossoms. |
| A．To introduce Wuyuan County as a tourist destination. |
| B．To report how many people visited Jiangling this year. |
| C．To introduce the history of rapeseed farming in Jiangling. |
| D．To remind visitors the best viewing time for rapeseed blossoms. |
5 . Earthquake rescue robots experienced their final tests in Beijing. Their designers said with these robots, rescuers would be able to buy more time to save lives during an earthquake.
This kind of robot looking like a helicopter is a flying robot. It’s about 3 meters long, and it took about 4 years to develop the model. Its main functions (功能) are to collect information from the air, and send goods of up to 30 kilos to people trapped by an earthquake. It has a high-definition 360-degree panoramic (全景的) camera. It can work day and night and is also able to send the latest pictures from the quake area.
Dr Qi Juntong, a researcher at Chinese Academy of Sciences, said, “The most important feature of this flying robot is that it doesn’t need a distant control. We just set the destination information on it, and then it takes off, and lands by itself. It flies as high as 3, 000 meters, and as fast as 100 kilometers per hour.
This robot has a different function—it can change as the environment changes. Its main job is to search for any signs of life in places where human rescuers are unable to go. As well as a detector (探测器) that finds victims and detects poisonous gases, a camera is placed in the 3-metre-long robot, which can work in the dark. Another use for the rescuers is the supply bot. With its 10-metre-long pipe, people who are trapped in the ruins will be able to get supplies including oxygen and liquids.
Experts have said that the robots would enter production and serve as part of the national earthquake rescue team as soon as possible.
1. What does Dr Qi Juntong think makes this robot mainly different from the others?| A．It has more functions. | B．It has a unique shape. |
| C．It has more advanced cameras. | D．It can work by itself once given the information. |
| A．A camera. | B．A detector. | C．A rescuer. | D．A supply. |
| A．It is carried by the helicopter. | B．It weighs about 30 kilos. |
| C．It is a machine with a length of 10 meters. | D．It hasn’t been put into production so far. |
| A．What the robot looks like. | B．An introduction to a robot. |
| C．How the robot is made. | D．Information about earthquakes. |
6 . 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. |
7 . You know that squeak(吱吱声)you hear from your pet mouse or the pest mouse? It turns out that it is 'not really a squeak, but a sweet song by male mice to attract females. This is the conclusion reached by biologist Dustin Penn and his team at the Veterinary University of Vienna.
The scientists who have been conducting a series of studies on house mice for a number of years, began by recording the high-pitched(声调高的)sounds male mice made the moment they sensed a female mouse around. What they discovered when they played them back to females was that the ladies could tell between those made by their brothers and the ones made by unrelated males. Just like human, they tended to ignore the ones made by their brothers.
The researchers then took the experiment one step further and analyzed the squeaks. To their surprise they discovered that while the squeaks sounded similar, they each had a different "tune". The biggest surprise of all was that the mice could even learn tunes from each other.
However, not all scientists agree with this finding. Some like Kurt Hammer, a scientist at the German Primate Center believe that the test sample was too small to make such a conclusion.
The researcher's next plan to test if the females care about the quality of the “song”. In some bird species, males that can sing the most complex tunes seem to get the most attention.
So why do we care whether mice can sing or not? Clearly, since they are being used as laboratory testers, it will help us make advances in human speech disorders like the ones found in people suffering from autism(自闭症).
1. What does Dustin Pen describe the squeak made by a male mouse as?| A．A hungry signal. | B．A sad cry. |
| C．A terrible noise. | D．A pleasant sound. |
| A．The male mice. | B．The female mice. |
| C．The squeaks made by the male mice. | D．The squeaks made by the female mice. |
| A．More studies should be made. | B．Mice are intelligent animals. |
| C．The conclusion is reasonable. | D．Mice shouldn't be studied. |
| A．It can find ways to kill mice. |
| B．It can inspire musicians with their work. |
| C．It can help treat human speech disorders. |
| D．It can find ways to select intelligent mice. |
8 . Anyone who commutes(通勤)by car knows that traffic jams are an unavoidable part of life. But humans are not alone in facing potential backups.
Ants also commute—between their nest and sources of food. The survival of their habitats depends on doing this efficiently.
When humans commute, there’s a point at which cars become dense(稠密) enough to slow down the flow of traffic, causing jam. Researchers wanted to know if ants on the move could also get stuck. So they regulated traffic density by constructing bridges of various widths between a colony of Argentine ants and a source of food. Then they waited and watched, trying to find out at what point they are going to have a traffic jam.
But it appears that that never happened. They always managed to avoid traffic jam. The flow of ants did increase at the beginning as ants started to fill the bridge and then levelled off at high densities. But it never slowed down or stopped, even when the bridge was nearly filled with ants.
The researchers then took a closer look at how the behaviour of individual ants impacted traffic as a whole. And they found that when ants sense overcrowding, they adjust their speeds and avoid entering high-density areas, which prevents jams. These behaviors may be promoted by pheromones, chemicals that tell other ants where a trail is. The ants also manage to avoid colliding(碰撞) with each other at high densities, which could really slow them down.
Can ants help us solve our own traffic problems? Not likely. That’s because when it comes to getting from point A to point B as fast as possible, human drivers put their own goals first. Individual ants have to be more cooperative in order to feed the colony. But the research could be useful in improving traffic flow for self-driving cars, which can be designed to be less like selfish humans—and more like ants.
1. What does the underlined word “this” in paragraph 2 refer to?| A．Surviving. | B．Commuting. | C．Finding food. | D．Avoiding jams. |
| A．Through closer observation. | B．By regulating their numbers. |
| C．By finding out the dense points. | D．By controlling the widths of their path. |
| A．They follow a special route. |
| B．They level off at high densities. |
| C．They never stop or slow down on the way. |
| D．They depend on their natural chemicals to adjust their speeds. |
| A．Traffic jams | B．Survival of an ant colony |
| C．Unavoidable? Not for ants! | D．Differences between human and ants |
9 . I have well travelled in Spain and visited a good number of Spanish cities. However, no city will ever quite match Cadiz, where I spent six months studying as a student.
Before that, I knew very little about Cadiz but I decided to take a risk and explore it. Well, the risk certainly paid off.
Cadiz, Europe’s oldest city, hangs off Spain’s southern coast on a peninsula (半岛), surrounded almost entirely by water. As you leave the shady streets of the historical old city and explore more of it, you are met with vast areas of the blue Atlantic Ocean and white sandy beaches, which in my opinion are some of the best in Spain!
One of the great things about Cadiz is the wonderful, rich culture of food and drink. There are little tapas (小吃) bars lining every street and most will serve tapas for around 1.50~2 euros, meaning you can try a whole variety of Andalusian dishes.
Cadiz has also come to be known as “The Singing City”. It comes from the annual carnival (狂欢节), one of the biggest in Europe. A very large number of people go to Cadiz to see it. During those ten days, Cadiz’s narrow streets are filed with the sound of singing as musical groups fight for a place in the contest, which takes place on the last Saturday of carnival. The songs perfectly show the sense of humor of the Gaditanos, who, besides being so warm and welcoming, are said to have the best sense of humor in Spain!
That is my experience of Cadiz: a wonderful, typically Andalusian city which is often overlooked but well worth a visit. I can currently living in Huelva, just a short drive from Cadiz, so please pay attention to my next sharing!
1. What dose the word “that” underlined in paragraph 2 refer to?| A．Studying in Cadiz. | B．Competing in a match. |
| C．Teaching a student. | D．Becoming an explorer. |
| A．The unknown origin and long history of Cadiz. | B．The beautiful life of people living to Cadiz. |
| C．The geographic position and scenery of Cadiz. | D．The author’s complex attitude towards Cadiz. |
| A．A number of local people enjoy humorous songs. |
| B．Singing is everywhere during a big annual carnival. |
| C．Many grand carnivals attract well-known singers. |
| D．A lot of singing competitions take place each year. |
| A．A post on the Internet. | B．A geography textbook. |
| C．A travel brochure. | D．A biography. |
10 . Smoking is harmful. But as soon as you quit the habit, everything will be OK, right? Wrong.
New research has found that even if you give up smoking, the damage it has done to your genes will stay there for a much longer time. In the research, a team of US scientists studied the blood of 16,000 people. Among them, some were smokers, some used to smoke, and the rest were non-smokers. Scientists compared their genes and found that more than 7,000 genes of smokers had changed－a number that is one-third of known human genes.
According to NBC News, both heart disease and cancer are caused by genetic changes. Some people may have had the changes when they were born, but most people get them in their day-to-day lives while doing things like smoking.
When you stop smoking, a lot of these genes will return to normal within five years.
This means your body is trying to heal (治愈) itself of the harmful effects of smoking. But the changes in some of the genes stay for longer. They can stay for as long as 30 years, It’s almost like leaving a footprint on wet cement (水泥)－it will always be there, even when you’ve walked away and when the cement becomes dry.
Although the study results may make people unhappy, there is a bright side: the findings could help scientists invent medicine to treat genetic damage caused by smoking or find ways to tell which people have heart disease or cancer risks.
1. The purpose of Paragraph 1 is to______ .| A．raise a question | B．give an example |
| C．make an argument | D．show the main idea of the passage |
| A．people’s condition at birth | B．environmental pollution |
| C．heart disease and cancer | D．people’s bad living habit |
| A．the footprint | B．the cement |
| C．the harmful effect | D．the genetic change |
| A．The findings are the fruit of more than three years’ research. |
| B．The findings have prevented more people from starting smoking |
| C．The findings offer evidence that a damaged gene can heal itself. |
| D．The findings help to find cures for genetic damage caused by smoking. |
