1 . The following are a few of my favorite TV shows, each of which have some educational value.
Blue Peter
As a child, this was one of the only programmes I was allowed to watch. It is the longest-running children's TV show in the world, but seemed to have fallen out of fashion recently. The crafts on the show were always good fun, and you would often learn about different countries around the world—for example, one presenter went to the Amazon rainforest in South America!
The Great British Bake Off
This show is all about making cakes, biscuits, and pies. The aim is to find British’s best amateur(业余的)baker. You can watch the show to get some ideas of new things to try baking and the recipes are often available online.
Frozen Planet
David Attenborough has produced many wildlife documentaries. I love this show not only because of the cute animals in it, but also because it teaches us about the effect we have on the planet and what need to do to save these regions. David narrates each episode(电视剧的一集); because he speaks clearly and slowly, his show might be of interest to English language learners.
Pointless
This show is a general knowledge quiz show. Each round will feature a different category(e.g. Sport, music, films) and a topic will be given, for example “Teams which have won the World Cup”. Before the show, 100 people will have been asked the same question. Then they have to think of an answer and the aim is to find an answer which none of the 100 people asked before the show thought of. I've learnt a lot from this show!
1. If you are a food lover, you may be interested in _______.| A．Blue Peter | B．The Great British Bake Off | C．Frozen Planet | D．Pointless |
| A．Blue Peter | B．The Great British Bake Off |
| C．Frozen Planet | D．Pointless |
| A．Some popular TV shows in English |
| B．Some educational TV shows |
| C．How to choose the TV shows for kids |
| D．The differences between some TV Shows |
2 . Do you know Dianzan is one of the most popular words on the Internet? When you think someone's ideas are right, when you think someone's articles are
Dianzan is a kind of Chinese Internet language. People
Websites can know how many people support some ideas
Clicking the praise sign is really a(n)
| A．wonderful | B．terrible | C．hard | D．awful |
| A．offers | B．takes | C．means | D．avoids |
| A．never | B．luckily | C．slowly | D．usually |
| A．after | B．since | C．in | D．before |
| A．broke | B．checked | C．refused | D．started |
| A．accept | B．express | C．create | D．receive |
| A．by | B．on | C．at | D．under |
| A．that | B．where | C．what | D．when |
| A．plans | B．happiness | C．problems | D．fairness |
| A．difficult | B．surprising | C．embarrassing | D．easy |
Charlie Chaplin was born in
4 . The well-dressed, gray-haired woman was crying her eyes out. She had just been fined $100 by the judge because a month ago her dog made a mess on the front lawn of the courthouse.
“I just got out of the cab and I leashed Poopsie to the light pole. After I paid the fare and gave the driver a dollar tip, I turned around and saw that Poopsie had made a mess. I didn’t have any plastic bags, so I said, ‘Well, Poopsie, let’s go home. There’s nothing I can do about this now.’
“We were just starting home when I heard this voice out of nowhere: ‘Excuse me, ma’am. Is that your dog?’ I turned around. It was an officer of the law. Well, of course, it was my dog. ‘That dog just made an illegal deposit on the courthouse lawn. As its owner, it’s your responsibility to dispose of that deposit. See the sign over there? I’m going to have to write you a citation.’
“I asked him what sign he was talking about. He pointed all the way down to the end of the block. One little sign, a block away! How could anyone see that? I couldn’t see that sign with my best glasses. The officer said that I could fight the ticket. He said the judge was a nice old man who owned four dogs. So I said, ‘OK, thank you, I’ll fight the ticket.’
“So when I went to court, I dressed Poopsie up in his prettiest ribbons and made extra sure he did his business first. We were both so excited. I just knew the judge and Poopsie would hit it off.
“But do you know what happened when we got inside? They had a different judge, a judge who is allergic to dogs, and he immediately started sniffling, coughing, sneezing, and looking around. And then he yelled at me to get the dog out of the courtroom. He fined me $100 on the way out without even giving me a chance to talk about Poopsie’s chronic dyspepsia. It was terrible! I’m still upset.”
1. The woman was fined by the officer because________.| A．she had parked her car in the wrong place |
| B．Her dog had made a mess in the wrong place |
| C．She has refused to pay fare to the cab driver |
| D．Her dog had tried to attack the officer________. |
| A．the judge was broad-minded and would pity her |
| B．the judge loved dogs too and would forgive her |
| C．the judge was kind and was easily persuaded |
| D．the judge would give her a lesson on law |
| A．come to an end | B．fight against each other |
| C．depend on each other | D．enjoy a good relationship |
| A．Uncertain | B．Exciting |
| C．Unexpected | D．Inspiring |
5 . Welcome to Los Angeles. Here are some best things to do in Los Angeles (LA) with your kids.
Fall at the Beach
Thanks to its almost perfect weather all through the year, a visit to the beach is one of the best things to do when in Los Angeles with kids. While they enjoy themselves nearby, you can simply relax and have a good rest in the sun.
Trip to Disneyland
A trip to the City of Angels with your little angels is incomplete without a visit to the Magic Kingdom. The joy they'll feel from being around all those Disney characters will light up your day, too.
Visit to the museums
If you want to turn your stay in LA into an educational one for your kids, you should visit the museums. Starting with the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, or the California Science Center, or even the Kidspace Museum in Pasadena, you have many choices. I'm sure a visit to all these places will make your kids feel smarter.
Visit to the Universal Studios Hollywood
Your kids could get to see interesting things from some of the most popular movies ever. From the theme park of Jurassic Park to Wisteria Lane from the TV play Desperate Housewives, the Universal Studios Hollywood is a place that we all find wonderful.
1. The passage is written for those who ________.| A．will go on a business trip to Los Angeles |
| B．plan to have a trip to Los Angeles with their kids |
| C．want to educate their children by traveling abroad |
| D．are interested in the history and culture of Los Angeles |
| A．the Universal Studios Hollywood |
| B．the Magic Kingdom |
| C．the museums |
| D．the beach |
| A．children can learn a lot there |
| B．parents can take a rest there |
| C．it provides different sports equipment |
| D．it’s the best beach in the world |
Kang Yu, a 24-year old volunteer teacher in a remote town in the mountains of Yunnan province, was teaching calligraphy to the eighth graders when all of
She told them to go outside, under a shelter, to enjoy the rain and come back to write something like a poem. Much
Inspired by that class, Kang founded the nonprofit, Enlighten Our Future, to help Chinese youngsters improve their mental well-being and their exam grades through poetry composition and
What's great about poetry is that it can help one to find an
7 . Every week, two converted blue buses packed with children’s books carefully drive along the streets of Kabul, avoiding areas where deadly explosions are common. These travelling libraries stop off at schools in different parts of the city, delivering a wealth of reading material directly to youngsters who have limited access to books.
“A lot of schools in our city don’t have access to something as basic as a library,” says Freshta Karim, a 27-year-old Oxford University graduate who was inspired to start Charmaghz, a non-profit organization, in her home city having grown up without many books herself. “We were trying to understand what we could do to promote critical thinking in our country.”
While for many people a bus or train journey presents a rare opportunity to get stuck into a book, in some cities public transport is being used as means of getting books to communities that need them most. Afghanistan, for example, has one of the world’s lowest literacy rates, with only three in 10 adults able to read, according to UNESCO. The majority of public schools in Kabul do not have libraries and the city’s libraries do not offer many children’s books. For Karim, buses were a cost-effective, efficient way to get books to children.
Charmarghz rents them from a state-owned bus company. “We go to nearby schools,” she says. “We try to stop inside communities rather than on the main streets where explosions often happen.”
The organization is funded by donations from local business and communities, and also rents a third bus that acts as a mobile cinema. Over 600 children visit the buses each day to read, socialise and play games. “They are often very excited,” she says. “Our biggest challenge is that so many children want to come inside the bus, but we can’t have all of them in one day.”
1. Why does Freshta Karim set up the organization?| A．To raise money for the poor. | B．To recycle abandoned buses. |
| C．To build libraries for the local schools. | D．To offer the children more reading opportunities. |
| A．It’s funded by UNESCO. | B．It’s a state-owned organization. |
| C．It buys buses from a company. | D．It aims to inspire critical thinking. |
| A．Deadly explosions. | B．Poor public transport system. |
| C．Shortage of travelling libraries. | D．Lack of support from the government. |
| A．Caring and courageous. | B．Humorous and ambitious. |
| C．Demanding and enthusiastic. | D．Honest and hardworking. |
8 . The bad health effects of sleep loss during the week can’t be repaid by longer weekend sleep, according to a new study.
Researchers have long known that sleep deprivation (剥夺) can cause weight gain and increase other health risks. But for those who force themselves out of bed every weekday after too few hours of shut eye, they hope turning off the alarm on Saturday and Sunday will repay the weekly sleep debt and remove any ill effects.
The research, published in Current Biology, crushes those hopes. Despite complete freedom to sleep during a weekend recovery period, people in a sleep lab who were limited to five hours of sleep on weekdays gained nearly three pounds over two weeks and experienced disorders that would increase their risk for diabetes over the long term. While weekend recovery sleep had some benefits after a single week of sleep loss, those gains were wiped out when people fell right back into their same sleep deprived schedule the next Monday.
''If there are benefits of catch-up sleep, they're gone when you go back to your daily schedule. It's very short lived'', said Kenneth Wright, director of the sleep and chronobiology lab at the University of Colorado at Boulder. ''These health effects are long term. It's kind of like smoking once was-people would smoke and wouldn't see an immediate effect on their health, but people will say now that smoking is not a healthy lifestyle choice. I think sleep is in the early stage of where smoking used to be.''
Wright said that the study suggests people should put sleep in the first place cutting out the ''sleep stealers'' such as watching television shows or spending time on their phones. Even when people don't have a choice about losing sleep because of child-care responsibilities or job schedules, they should think about getting sleep in the same way they would get a healthy diet or exercise.
1. What does the underlined word ''rushes'' mean?| A．Ruins. | B．Guarantees. |
| C．Deepens. | D．Arouses. |
| A．Smoking is more harmful than sleep loss. |
| B．Weekend recovery sleep has many benefits. |
| C．Smoking and sleep loss have the same bad effects. |
| D．It takes long for people to see the effects of sleep loss. |
| A．Take regular exercise every day. |
| B．Reduce the screen time before sleep. |
| C．Watch some TV shows before bedtime. |
| D．Sleep as long as possible during weekdays. |
| A．To share some unhappy experiences. | B．To show some unknown facts. |
| C．To promote a healthy lifestyle. | D．To introduce a new study. |
9 . Laura Sides was a psychology major at the University of Nottingham in 2004. She first noticed signs of her dad’s developing dementia(痴呆) when she moved to Nottingham. She said, "Dad was a doctor, so he knew exactly what had happened to him, but people try to hide it when they are ill. Then, I came home for my 21st birthday and arranged to meet him, but he never showed up as he’d forgotten. That’s when I knew something serious had happened."
So, aged 21, she decided to leave university and look after him herself. She lived close by, popping in every day to make sure he was eating, and that the house was tidy, before heading off to her work.
Besides challenging moments, there was a time when looking after her dad was a pure joy. "We’d wake up, I’d ask what he wanted to do that day, and however ridiculous the adventure is, off we’d go."
Sadly, in 2009, 5 years later, Laura lost her father. Before he died, Laura went to a hospital appointment with him, where doctors mentioned that his form of Alzheimer’s disease was genetic meaning there was a fifty-fifty chance that she had inherited it. For several years Laura agonised over whether to be tested, finally finding out in August 2017 that she has the APP gene, meaning that, like him, she will develop the condition within a decade.
At first, she struggled, feeling as if her life lacked purpose. Then, during a sleepless night in the summer of 2018, she decided at around 2 a.m. to enter the 2019 London Marathon sponsored by the charities Alzheimer’s Society and Alzheimer’s Research UK.
She hoped to start the conversation around early-onset Alzheimer’s disease and to encourage people to talk about it more openly. "I remember when Dad was ill, people wouldn’t know how to react, but I want to be honest and open," she added. "The more information we can get, the less of a taboo(忌讳) we will feel. That said, the support I’ve received so far after going public has been amazing — that’s what is carrying me through."
1. Laura noticed her father’s dementia when .| A．her father told her his condition in person |
| B．people nearby informed her of his father’s condition |
| C．her father forgot his own birthday party |
| D．her father forgot to attend her 21-year-old birthday party |
| A．excited | B．struggled |
| C．shocked | D．delighted |
| A．getting people to talk about Alzheimer’s disease openly |
| B．earning some money to help treat her Alzheimer’s disease |
| C．making herself stronger to fight against Alzheimer’s disease |
| D．raising funds for charities Alzheimer’s Society and Alzheimer’s disease Research UK |
| A．Caring and positive. | B．Careful and honest. |
| C．Patient and cautious. | D．Devoted and modest. |
10 . Tests have shown robots can diagnose heart problems in as little as four seconds, as a review of artificial intelligence （Al） finds machines are now as good at spotting illness as doctors.
Analyzing a patient's heart function on a cardiac MRI （心脏磁共振成像）scan currently takes doctors around 13 minutes. But a new trial by University College London （UCL） showed an Al program could read the scans in less time with equal accuracy. There are approximately 150,000 such scans performed in the UK each year, and researchers estimate that fully using Al to read them could save 54 clinician-days （临床天数）at each cardiac centre per year. So it can make up for the shortage of doctors.
It is hoped that Al where computer systems are able to learn from data to identify new patterns with minimal human intervention will transform medicine by helping doctors spot dis- eases such as heart disease and cancer faster and earlier. However, most scans are still read by specially trained doctors.
Dr Charlotte Manisty, who led the UCL research, said, "Cardiovascular MRI offers in- comparable image quality for assessing heart structure and function. However, current manual analysis remains basic and outdated. Automated machine techniques offer the potential to change this and completely improve efficiency and accuracy, and we look forward to further research that could confirm the superiority to human analysis."
She added, “Our dataset of patients with a range of heart disease who received scans enabled us to demonstrate that the greatest sources of measurement errors arise from human factors. This indicates that automated techniques are at least as good as humans, with the potential soon to be 'super-human'—transforming clinical and research measurement precision."
Professor Alastair Denniston said, "Within those handful of high-quality studies, we found that by deep learning Al could indeed detect disease ranging from cancer to eye disease as accurately as health professionals. But it's important to note that it did not absolutely exceed human professional diagnosis. ”
1. Which of the following can best describe this Al program?| A．Time-consuming. | B．Environmentally friendly. |
| C．Extremely unpractical. | D．Labor-saving. |
| A．To treat eye disease faster and earlier. |
| B．To analyze heart disease efficiently and accurately. |
| C．To combine manual with automated analysis. |
| D．To confirm heart structure and function. |
| A．It would be super-human soon. |
| B．It couldn't completely replace expert doctors. |
| C．It would correct professionals' measurement errors. |
| D．It couldn't detect cancer as accurately as health professionals. |
| A．Al has many shortcomings in practice. |
| B．Al totally shows its superiority to human analysis. |
| C．Al can reduce medical errors arising from human factors. |
| D．Al can diagnose heart disease as well as doctors in less time. |
