2 . Directions: Read the following passage. Summarize the main idea and the main points of the passage in no more than 60 words. Use your own words as far as possible.

Life in the Clear

Transparent animals let light pass through their bodies the same way light passes through a window. These animals typically live between the surface of the ocean and a depth of about 3,300 feet-as far as most light can reach. Most of them are extremely delicate and can be damaged by a simple touch. Sonke Johnsen, a scientist in biology, says, “These animals live through their life alone. They never touch anything unless they’re eating it, or unless something is eating them.”

And they are as clear as glass. How does an animal become see-through? Ifs trickier than you might think.

The objects around you are visible because they interact with light. Light typically travels in a straight line. But some materials slow and scalier(散射) light bouncing it away from its original path. Others absorb light, stopping it dead in its tracks. Both scattering and absorption make a.n object look different from other objects around it, so you can see it easily.

But a transparent object doesn't absorb or scatter light, at least not very much. Light can pass through it without bending or stopping. That means a transparent object doesn't look very different from the surrounding air or water. You don't see it- you see the things behind it.

To become transparent, an animal needs to keep its body from absorbing or scattering light. Living materials can stop light because they contain pigments(色素) that absorb specific colors of light. But a transparent animal doesn’t have pigments, so its tissues won’t absorb light. According to Johnsen, avoiding absorption is actually easy. The real challenge is preventing light from scattering.

Animals are built of many different materials—skin, fat, and more—and light moves through each at a different speed. Every time light moves into a material with a new speed, it bends and scatters. Transparent animals use different tricks to fight scattering. Some animals are simply very small or extremely flat. Without much tissue to scatter light, it is easier to be see-through. Others build a large, clear mass of non-living jelly-like(果冻状的) material and spread themselves over it.

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7 . Directions: After reading the passage below, fill in the blanks to make the passage coherent and grammatically correct. For the blanks with a given word, fill in each blank with the proper form of the given word; for the other blanks, use one word that best fits each blank.

Life Doesn’t Just Happen to Us

Being good at something and having a passion for it are not enough. Success depends mainly on our view of ourselves and of the events in our lives.

When twelve-year-old John Wilson walked into his chemistry class on a rainy day in 1931, he had no way of knowing that his life was to change completely. The class experiment that day was to show     1    heating a container of water would bring air bubbling to the surface. Somehow, the container the teacher gave Wilson     2    (heat) mistakenly held something more volatile(易挥发的) than water. When Wilson heated it, the container exploded,     3    (leave) Wilson blinded in both eyes.

When Wilson returned home from hospital two months later, his parents attempted to find a way to deal with the disaster that     4    (happen) to their lives. But Wilson did not regard the accident     5    a disaster. He learned braille(盲文) quickly and continued his education at Worcester College for the Blind. There, he not only did well as a student but also became an     6    (accomplish) public speaker.

Later, he worked in Africa,    7    many people suffered from blindness for lack of proper treatment. For him, it was one thing to accept his own fate of being blind and quite another to allow something to continue when it     8    be fixed so easily. Wilson did his best to prevent the preventable     9     tens of millions in Africa and Asia could recover their sight.

Wilson received several international awards for his great contributions. He lost his sight but found a vision. He proved that it’s not what happens to us     10    determines our lives- it’s what we make of what happens.

9 . As consumers, we are very wasteful. Annually, the world generates 1.3 billion ions of solid waste. This is expected to go up to 2.2 billion by 2025. The developed countries are _________for 44% of waste, and in the U.S. alone, the average person throws away their body weight in rubbish every month.

Traditional wisdom would seem to suggest that companies have no interest in_________the life cycle of their products and reduce the revenue (营收)they would get from selling new goods._________, more and more businesses are thinking about how to reduce consumer waste. This is_________ driven by the rising price of raw materials and metals. Also, both consumers and companies becoming more aware of the need to protect our environment is another force that contributes.

When choosing what products to buy and which brands to buy from, more and more consumers are looking into sustainability, which is_________ just price and performance they were concerned about in the past. In a survey of 54 of the world's leading brands, almost all of them reported that consumers are showing increasing care about environmental lifestyles. At the same time, surveys on consumers in the U.S. and the U.K. show that they also care about _________ energy use and reducing waste.

_________, consumers control what happens to a product. But some companies are starting to realize that placing the burden of recycling entirely on the consumer is not an effective strategy, especially when_________something seems like the easiest and most convenient option.

Some retailers and manufacturers in the clothing, footwear, and electronics industries have launched _________programs, They want io make their customers interested in __________ their products and preventing things that still have value from going to the landfill. By offering services to help expand the longevity of their products, they're promising quality and __________ to consumers, and receiving the__________ gains for being environmentally friendly and socially responsible.

Enormous opportunities also__________e-waste. It is estimated that in 2014 the world produced some 42 million metric tons of e-waste (discarded electrical and electronic equipment and its parts) with North America and Europe accounting for 8 and 12 million metric tons __________. The materials from e-waste include iron, copper, gold, silver, and aluminum-materials that could be reused, resold, recovered, or recycled. Together, the value of these metals is estimated to be about $52 billion. Electronics giants like BestBuy and Samsung have provided e-waste __________programs over the past few years, which aim to refurbish (翻新)old electronic components and parts into new products.

1.

A．forgivable

B．accountable

C．tolerable

D．remarkable

2.

A．altering

B．lengthening

C．obeying

D．upsetting

3.

A．Therefore

B．Somehow

C．Yet

D．Otherwise

4.

A．partly

B．barely

C．precisely

D．exclusively

5.

A．bridged with

B．subjected to

C．opposed to

D．associated with

6.

A．minimizing

B．maintaining

C．stimulating

D．deserting

7.

A．On the contrary

B．Above all

C．For example

D．In most cases

8.

A．modifying

B．wrecking

C．dumping

D．restoring

9.

A．sustainable

B．compulsory

C．economic

D．educational

10.

A．insuring

B．substituting

C．concealing

D．preserving

11.

A．accessibility

B．productivity

C．affordability

D．durability

12.

A．profitable

B．emotional

C．predictable

D．reputational

13.

A．lie in

B．stand for

C．consist of

D．result in

14.

A．respectively

B．dramatically

C．evenly

D．thoroughly

15.

A．take-back.

B．give-away

C．clean-up

D．cut-down

10 . Also of interest...in family dramas

The Travelers

by Regina Porter (Hogarth, $27)

Though Regina Porter’s formally daring first novel “can feel too much like a jigsaw puzzle,” it achieves a “simply stunning” level of complexity, said Meng Jin in the San Fracisco Chronicle. As the first-time novelist tells the stories of two Georgia families — one black, one white — she weaves together events from 1946 to 2010 while deftly shifting between play-like dialogue, straight narrative, and various other modes. Not one character is a mere extra, and the impressive result “looks very much like life.”

Ask Again, Yes

by Mary Beth Keane (Scribner, $27)

Mary Beth Keane’s new novel is “one of the most unpretentiously profound books I’ve read in a long time,” said Maureen Corrigan in NPR.org. In 1973 New York City, two rookie cops forge a friendship that shapes the lives of the Irish-American families they raise side by side in a nearby suburb. Because each chapter is told from a new perspective, we come to know almost every member of those families, and Keane “beautifully dramatizes” how lives are built on a series of happenstances, including tragic ones.

Native Country of the Heart

by Cherrie Moraga (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $26)

“This memoir’s beauty is in its fierce intimacy,” said Roy Hoffman in The News York Times. Playwright Cherrie Moraga makes her mother the heroine of the book, bringing the late immigrant’s story to life “with a poet’s verve.” Mexican-born Elvira Moraga, who picked cotton in California at 11, sold cigarettes in Tijuana at 14, and never learned to read, became the heart and soul of a large extended family. Here, she’s a character too resonant to be merely emblematic.

The Edge of Every Day

by Marin Sardy (Pantheon, $26)

Mental illness leaves no one in a family untouched, said Alison Van Houten in Outside. In a book whose nonlinear structure “mimics the erratic nature of schizophrenia,” essayist Marin Sardy bringing the describes how the disorder struck her mother and a brother, scrambling life for all the children. Her mother’s paranoid delusions disrupted their schooling; years later, Sardy’s brother, after refusing help, committed suicide. “How does one lead any semblance of a normal life under such circumstances?” Sardy shows us how.

Note:

1. resonant: 共振的，共鸣的       2. emblematic: 象征的，典型的

3. nonlinear: 非线性的               4.schizophrenia: 精神分裂症

1. Which book touches upon a personal family tragedy?

A．The Travelers.	B．Ask Again, Yes.
C．Native Country of the Heart.	D．The Edge of Every Day.

2. Which of the following about each book is TRUE?

A．The Travelers tells a straightforward story about two Georgia families.

B．The thread running through Ask Again,Yes is Irish way of life.

C．Native Country of the Heart was written in memory of Elvira Moraga.

D．The Edge of Every Day describes one’s struggle against mental diseases.

3. What do the four books have in common?

A．They were published by the same publishing house.

B．They belong to the same type of literary works.

C．The stories were’ll set in the last century.

D．They represented the peak level of each writer.