4 . The beauty, majesty, and timelessness of a primary rainforest are indescribable. It is impossible to ________ on film, to describe in words, or to explain to those who have never had the awe-inspiring experience of standing in the heart of a primary rainforest.

Rainforests have ________ over millions of years to turn into the incredibly complex environments they are today. Rainforests represent a store of living and ________ renewable natural resources that for ages, by virtue of their richness in both animal and plant species, have ________ a wealth of resources for the survival and well-being of humankind. These resources have included basic food supplies, clothing, shelter, fuel, spices, industrial raw materials, and medicine for all those who have lived in the majesty of the forest. ________, the inner dynamics of a tropical rainforest is an intricate (错综复杂的) and fragile system. Everything is so ________ that upsetting one part can lead to unknown damage or even destruction of the whole. Sadly, it has taken only a century of human intervention to destroy what nature designed to________ forever.

The scale of human ________ on ecosystems everywhere has increased enormously in the last few decades. Since 1980 the global economy has tripled in size and the world population has increased by 30 percent. Consumption of everything on the planet has risen — at a cost of our ________. In 2001, The World Resources Institute estimated that the demand for rice, wheat, and corn is expected to grow by 40% by 2020, increasing irrigation water demands by 50% or more. They further reported that the demand for wood could double by the year 2050; ________, it is still the tropical forests of the world that supply the bulk of the world’s demand for wood.

In 1950, about 15 percent of the Earth’s land surface was covered by rainforest. Today, more than half has already gone up in ________. In fewer than fifty years, more than half of the world’s tropical rainforests have fallen ________ to fire and the chain saw, and the rate of destruction is still accelerating. Unbelievably, more than 200,000 acres of rainforest are burned every day. That is more than 150 acres lost every minute of every day, and 78 million acres lost every year! More than 20 percent of the Amazon rainforest is already gone, and much more is severely threatened as the destruction continues. It is estimated that the Amazon alone is vanishing at a rate of 20,000 square miles a year. If nothing is done to curb (抑制) this________, the entire Amazon could well be gone within fifty years.

Massive________ brings with it many ugly consequences—air and water pollution, soil erosion, malaria epidemics, the release of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere and the________ of biodiversity through extinction of plants and animals. Fewer rainforests mean less rain, less oxygen for us to breathe, and an increased threat from global warming.

1.

A．maintain

B．capture

C．claim

D．prove

2.

A．changed

B．evolved

C．expanded

D．existed

3.

A．energizing

B．healing

C．isolating

D．breathing

4.

A．contributed

B．stored

C．reduced

D．affected

5.

A．However

B．Furthermore

C．Therefore

D．Otherwise

6.

A．active

B．sensitive

C．interdependent

D．delicate

7.

A．restore

B．support

C．revive

D．last

8.

A．pressure

B．power

C．concern

D．strength

9.

A．existence

B．ecosystem

C．planet

D．survival

10.

A．unfortunately

B．consequently

C．naturally

D．similarly

11.

A．store

B．food

C．smoke

D．wealth

12.

A．subject

B．down

C．apart

D．victim

13.

A．trend

B．practice

C．increase

D．attitude

14.

A．protection

B．industrialization

C．modernization

D．deforestation

15.

A．appearance

B．explosion

C．loss

D．increase

6 . 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.

The ancient Chinese were stonewall masters. China     1     has the world's longest fortification (buildings or walls built to defend a place), the 21,196-kilometer-long Great Wall, but the world's longest circular city wall, the Ming City Wall, which was originally 35 kilometers around. The latter stands in Jiangsu's provincial capital of Nanjing. It's one of China's most underrated tourist attractions and many local residents think it is worthy     2     (visit).

Currently, visitors can access only about three kilometers of the wall, but about 22 of the     3     (remain) 25 kilometers of the once-inaccessible wall are scheduled to open to the public soon. "In the past, the wall was the end of the city," says Sun Xiaowei, 32, president of the Nanjing-based urban hiking community. "But now it's the starting point of Nanjing's culture.” Sun recently shared with us the greatest barbican (楼堡) (an outer defensive work)     4     attracts him most: Zhonghua Gate.

    5     (locate) immediately to the north of Qinhuai River, Zhonghua Gate, is one of the best preserved and most intricate barbicans in the world, according to Sun.The gate is used as a grand entrance to any tour of the City Wall.

It once served as the southern gate of ancient Nanjing, a 15,168-square-meter fortification that contained four layers of defenses, as well as three grand castles,     6     the ruins are connected to each other by a wide ring of wall. If paying an entry fee, visitors     7     view former garrisons, an exhibition about the history and variety of bricks used to build the City Wall.

7 . Directions: Read the following text and choose the most suitable heading from A-F for each paragraph. There is one extra heading which you do not need.

    1    

New York—the Statue of Liberty（自由女神像），the skyscrapers（摩天大楼），the beautiful shops on Fifth Avenue and the many theaters on Broadway. This is America’s cultural（文化的）capital. It is also her biggest city, with a population of nearly 8 million. In the summer it is hot, hot, hot and in the winter it can be very cold. Still there are hundreds of things to do and see all the year round.

    2    

Manhattan is the real center of the city. When people say“New York City,”they usually mean Manhattan. Most of the interesting shops, buildings and museums are here. In addition, Manhattan is the scene of New York’s busy night life. In 1605 the first Europeans came to Manhattan from Holland. They bought the island from the Native Americans for a few glass necklaces worth about $26 today.

    3    

Wall street in Manhattan is the financial heart of the USA. It is also the most important banking center in the world. It is a street of“skyscrapers.”These are high buildings, which Americans invented, and built faster and higher than anyone else.

    4    

Like every big city, New York has its own traffic system. Traffic jams can be terrible. It’s usually quickest to go by subway. The New York subway is easy to use and quite cheap. The subway goes to almost every corner of Manhattan. But it is not safe to take the subway late at night because in some places you could get robbed. New York buses are also easy to use. You see more if you go by bus. There are more than 30,000 taxis in New York. They are easy to see, because they are bright yellow and carry large TAXI signs. Taxis do not go outside the city. However, they will go to the airports. In addition to the taxi fare, people give the taxi driver a tip of 15 percent of the fare’s value.

    5    

Central Park is a beautiful green oasis（绿洲）in the middle of New York’s concrete（混凝土）desert. It is surprisingly big, with lakes and woods, as well as organized recreation areas. New Yorkers love Central Park, and they use it all the time. In the winter, they go ice-skating, and in the summer roller-skating. They play ball, ride horses and have picnics. They go bicycling and boating. There is even a children’s zoo, with wild birds and animals.

A. The Financial Center of USA
B. American biggest cities and culture center
C. The Traffic Facilities of New York
D. Manhattan, real center of New York City
E. New York—An International City
F. Central Park—A Place of Recreation for the New Yorkers

8 . One picture in the Wonder Book of knowledge I had as a little boy showed a man reading a book while floating in the Dead Sea. What a miracle! How would it feel to lie back in water so thick with salt that it was impossible to sink?

Fed by the Jordan River and smaller streams, the Dead Sea is the lowest point on the earth’s surface, and its water is ten times saltier than the Mediterranean. With evaporation its only outlet, salt and other minerals become super-concentrated.

Earlier this year, I drove down the long, steep hill to realize my dream. The shoreline was a broad area of bare salt-mud, but the water edge was far out of sight. Had somebody pulled the Dead Sea’s plug? I wondered. Eli Dior, an Israeli official, explained the problem: “The Dead Sea is drying up. Every year, the surface drops about one meter, and as the water level falls, shadow areas are left high and dry.”

Over the last half-century, the five neighboring countries have collectively diverted nearly all the water flowing into the Dead Sea to meet human and agriculture needs. Result: the Dead Sea is being emptied.

With population in the region set to double at least in the next 50 years, there is little hope of restoring the water being diverted for human consumption. No country has a drop to spare for the Dead Sea, where they know it will just evaporate. To dream of opening the dams and restoring natural balance is plainly unrealistic.

Yet one ambitious high-tech dream may turn out to be not only the salvation of the Dead Sea but also a ticket to peace around its shores. The “Red-Dead” is a proposed $5 billion project to bring sea water some 240 kilometers by pipeline and canal from the Red Sea to the Dead Sea. The Red-Dead may be the only solution, but even if the project is carried out successfully, the Dead Sea will be 10 to 20 meters lower than now and two thirds of its current size.

Whatever the future holds, the Dead Sea’s magical mix of sun, mud, sea and salt will surely survive. Many might complain that the Dead Sea is half empty—but for me the Dead sea will always be half full.

1. What’s the passage mainly about?

A．Dead Sea – miracle of the world.

B．Save the environment of the Dead Sea.

C．Slow shrinking of the Dead Sea.

D．Why is the Dead Sea so salty.

2. The shrinking of the Dead Sea is mainly caused by ________ according to the passage.

A．a severe reduction of the water flowing into the sea

B．rapid evaporation of the water in the Dead Sea area

C．the increasing quantity of water drawn from the sea

D．very low annual rainfall in the Dead Sea Area

3. Which of the following is right according to the passage?

A．With no outlet to any ocean, the Dead Sea has become by evaporation most dense waters on earth.

B．Though burdened with the growing population, the neighboring countries haven’t cut off the sources of the Dead Sea.

C．All the countries in the area will consider diverting less water from the Jordan River.

D．The Red-Dead Project has not only brought water to the Dead Sea, but peace to the area as well.

4. Which of the following statements will the author approve of?

A．If the Dead Sea dried up, great natural disasters would happen in the region.

B．The Dead Sea will not survive no matter what people do to save it.

C．The five neighboring countries should stop diverting water from the Jordan River.

D．Though the Dead Sea is shrinking gradually, it will not die.

9 . Now elsewhere in the world, Iceland may be spoken of, somewhat breathlessly, as western Europe's last pristine wilderness. But the truth is, once you're off the ______ track of the low-lying coastal areas where everyone lives, the roads are few, and they're all bad, ______ Iceland's natural wonders have been out of reach and unknown even to its own ________For them the land has always just been there, something that had to be dealt with and, if possible, _______—the mind-set being one of land as commodity rather than land as, well, priceless art on the scale of the " Mona Lisa".

When the opportunity arose in 2003 for the national power company to enter into a 40-year ______ with the American aluminum company Alcoa to supply hydroelectric power for a new smelter （冶炼厂）, those who had been dreaming of something like this for decades ______ the opportunity. For a long time, life here had meant little more than a hut, dark all winter, cold, no hope, children dying left and right, plagues, starvation, volcanoes erupting and destroying all vegetation and livestock, all spirit— a world ______ almost entirely around the welfare of one's sheep and, later, on how good the cod catch was. In the outlying regions, it still largely does.

Ostensibly, the Alcoa project was intended to save one of these dying regions— the remote and sparsely populated east— where the way of life had steadily ______ to a point of desperation and gloom. After fishing quotas (定额) were ______ in the early 1980s to protect fish stocks, many individual boat owners sold their allotments or gave them away, fishing rights ended up mostly in the hands of a few companies and small fishermen were virtually ______. Technological advances drained away even more jobs previously done by human hands, and the people were seeing everything they had worked for all their lives turn out to be ______ and their children move away. With the old way of life doomed, aluminum projects like this one had come to be perceived, wisely or not, as a last chance. "Smelter or death."

The contract with Alcoa would infuse the region with foreign ______, an estimated 400 jobs, and spin-off service industries. It also was a way for Iceland to develop expertise that ______ could be sold to the rest of the world and ______ an economy historically dependent on fish. “We have to live,” Halldor Asgrimsson said. Halldor, a former prime minister and longtime member of parliament from the region, was a driving ______ behind the project. “We have a right to live.”

1.

A．beaten

B．explored

C．expired

D．centered

2.

A．so

B．when

C．if

D．as

3.

A．government

B．inhabitants

C．countryside

D．scale

4.

A．designed

B．retained

C．exploited

D．preserved

5.

A．stage

B．contract

C．transition

D．prosperity

6.

A．gave up

B．jumped at

C．rushed to

D．made up

7.

A．revolving

B．developing

C．Stirring

D．Initiating

8.

A．transferred

B．declined

C．grew

D．reformed

9.

A．preferred

B．presented

C．resisted

D．imposed

10.

A．wiped out

B．held up

C．kept down

D．put aside

11.

A．priceless

B．superficial

C．worthless

D．negative

12.

A．investment

B．Exclusion

C．invasion

D．landscape

13.

A．socially

B．immediately

C．accidentally

D．potentially

14.

A．stabilize

B．wreck

C．diversify

D．consolidate

15.

A．force

B．wheel

C．instructor

D．signal

10 . By the end of the century, if not sooner, the world’s oceans will be bluer and greener thanks to a warming climate, according to a new study.

At the heart of the phenomenon lie tiny marine microorganisms(海洋微生物) called phytoplankton. Because of the way light reflects off the organisms, these phytoplankton create colourful patterns at the ocean surface. Ocean colour varies from green to blue, depending on the type and concentration of phytoplankton. Climate change will fuel the growth of phytoplankton in some areas, while reducing it in other spots, leading to changes in the ocean’s appearance.

Phytoplankton live at the ocean surface, where they pull carbon dioxide(二氧化碳) into the ocean while giving off oxygen. When these organisms die, they bury carbon in the deep ocean, an important process that helps to regulate the global climate. But phytoplankton are vulnerable to the ocean’s warming trend. Warming changes key characteristics of the ocean and can affect phytoplankton growth, since they need not only sunlight and carbon dioxide to grow, but also nutrients.

Stephanie Dutkiewicz, a scientist in MIT’s Center for Global Change Science, built a climate model that projects changes to the oceans throughout the century. In a world that warms up by 3℃, it found that multiple changes to the colour of the oceans would occur. The model projects that currently blue areas with little phytoplankton could become even bluer. But in some waters, such as those of the Arctic, a warming will make conditions riper for phytoplankton, and these areas will turn greener. “Not only are the quantities of phytoplankton in the ocean changing. ” she said, “but the type of phytoplankton is changing.”

And why does that matter? Phytoplankton are the base of the food web. If certain kinds begin to disappear from the ocean, Dutkiewicz said, “it will change the type of fish that will be able to survive.” Those kinds of changes could affect the food chain.

Whatever colour changes the ocean experiences in the coming decades will probably be too gradual and unnoticeable, but they could mean significant changes. “It’ll be a while before we can statistically show that the changes are happening because of climate change,” Dutkiewicz said, “but the change in the colour of the ocean will be one of the early warning signals that we really have changed our planet.”

1. What are the first two paragraphs mainly about?

A．The various patterns at the ocean surface.

B．The cause of the changes in ocean colour.

C．The way light reflects off marine organisms.

D．The efforts to fuel the growth of phytoplankton.

2. What does the underlined word “vulnerable” in Paragraph 3 probably mean?

A．Sensitive.

B．Beneficial.

C．Significant.

D．Unnoticeable.

3. What can we learn from the passage?

A．Phytoplankton play a declining role in the marine ecosystem.

B．Dutkiewicz’s model aims to project phytoplankton changes.

C．Phytoplankton have been used to control global climate.

D．Oceans with more phytoplankton may appear greener.

4. What is the main purpose of the passage?

A．To assess the consequences of ocean colour changes.

B．To analyse the composition of the ocean food chain.

C．To explain the effects of climate change on oceans.

D．To introduce a new method to study phytoplankton.