1 . Direction: Fill in each blank with a proper word chosen from the box. Each word can be used only once. Note that there is one word more than you need.

A.increasing 　　　　B.defend　　　　 C.partially 　　　　D.depriving E.sharpened　　 　　 F.breaks 　　　 　G.endured 　　　　H.granting I.issues 　　　　　　J.activate 　　　　K.roughly

Flood-hit Venice’s shrinking population faces mounting problems

Venetians(威尼斯人) are fed up with what they see as inadequate responses to the city’s mounting problems: record-breaking flooding, environmental and safety threats from cruise ship traffic and the burden on services from over-tourism.

They feel largely left to their own devices, with ever-fewer Venetians living in the historic part of the city to    1    its interests and keep it from becoming mainly a tourist land.

The historic flooding this week---marked by three floods over 1.5 meters (nearly 5 feet) and the highest in 53 years at 1.87 meters(6 feet, 1 inch)---has    2    calls to create an administration that recognizes the uniqueness of Venice, for both its concentration of treasures and its    3    vulnerability.

Flood damage has been    4    estimated at hundreds of millions of Euros (dollars), but the true range will only become clear with time. The frustration goes far beyond the failure to complete and    5    78 underwater barriers that were designed to prevent just the kind of damage that Venice has    6    this week. With the system not yet completed or even    7    tested after 16 years of work and 5 billion Euros ($5.5 billion) invested, many are suspicious it will even work.

At the public level, proposals for better administering the city including    8    some level of autonomy(自制) to Venice, already enjoyed by some Italian regions like Trentino-Alto-Adige with its German-speaking minority, or offering tax    9    to encourage Venice’s repopulation.

Just 53,000 people live in the historic part of the city that tourists know as Venice, down by a third from a generation ago and dropping by about 1,000 people a year. That means fewer people watching the neighborhood, monitoring for public maintenance    10    or neighbors in need. Many leave because of the increased expense or the daily difficulties in living in a city of canals, which can make even a simple errand a hard journey.

2 . Each year, backed up by a growing anti-consumerist movement, people are using the holiday season to call on us all to shop less.

Driven by concerns about resource exhaustion, over recent years environmentalists have increasingly turned their sights on our “consumer culture”. Groups such as The Story of Stuff and Buy Nothing New Day are growing as a movement that increasingly blames all our ills on our desire to shop.

We clearly have a growing resource problem. The produces we make, buy, and use are often linked to the destruction of our waterways, biodiversity, climate and the land on which millions of people live. But to blame these issues on Christmas shoppers is misguided, and puts us in the old trap of blaming individuals for what is a systematic problem.

While we complain about environmental destruction over Christmas, environmentalists often forget what the holiday season actually means for many people. For most, Christmas isn’t an add-on to an already heavy shopping year. In fact, it is likely the only time of year many have the opportunity to spend on friends and family, or even just to buy the necessities needed for modern life.

This is particularly, true for Boxing Day, often the target of the strongest derision(嘲弄) by anti-consumerists. While we may laugh at the queues in front of the shops, for many, those sales provide the one chance to buy items they’ve needed all year. As Leigh Phillips argues, “this is one of the few times of the year that people can even hope to afford such ‘luxuries’, the Christmas presents their kids are asking for, or just an appliance that works.”

Indeed, the richest 7% of people are responsible for 50% of greenhouse gas emissions. This becomes particularly harmful when you take into account that those shopping on Boxing Day are only a small part of our consumption “problem” anyway. Why are environmentalists attacking these individuals, while ignoring such people as Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich, who has his own￡1.5bn yacht with a missile defence system?

Anyway, anti-consumerism has become a movement of wealthy people talking down to the working class about their life choices, while ignoring the real cause of our environmental problems. It is no wonder one is changing their behaviours—or that environmental destruction continues without any reduction in intensity.

1. It is indicated in the 1st   paragraph that during the holiday season, many consumers .

A．ignore resource problems

B．are fascinated with presents

C．are encouraged to spend less

D．show great interest in the movement.

2. It can be inferred from Paragraphs 2 and 3 that the environmentalist movement .

A．has targeted the wrong persons

B．has achieved its intended purposes

C．has taken environment-friendly measures

D．has benefited both consumers and producers

3. The example of Roman Abramovich is used to show environmentalists’ .

A．madness about life choices

B．discontent with rich lifestyle

C．ignorance about the real cause

D．disrespect for holiday shoppers

4. It can be concluded from the text that telling people not to shop at Christmas is .

A．anything less than a responsibility	B．nothing more than a bias
C．indicative of environmental awareness	D．unacceptable to ordinary people

3 . Directions: Complete the following passage by using the words in the box. Each word can only be used once. Note that there is one word more than you need.

There’s nothing more annoying than settling down to sleep and hearing the sound of a mosquito buzzing around you.

The only thought most of us ever give to this noise is “I need to get rid of this insect, immediately”, but it turns out that the mosquito is actually quite a(n)     1     creature.

A team of scientists from Oxford University in the UK, in     2     with the Royal Veterinary College in London and Chiba University in Japan, recently published a study that found some interesting facts about the world’s most     3     insect.

By placing eight cameras inside a tiny film studio, the scientists could study several mosquitoes up close. The high-tech cameras filmed the insects at 1,000 frames per second, meaning the scientists were able to study the insects’     4     in never-before-seen detail. However, it wasn’t always straightforward.

“Recording mosquitoes during free-flight represented a huge technical challenge due to their small size,     5     wing beat frequency, and the presence of large antennae and legs that can     6     the view of their wings,” Simon Walker of Oxford University, co-author of the study, wrote.

Published in the journal Nature, the study found that mosquitoes flap their wings around 800 times a second. As a     7    , house flies flap their wings about 200 times a second, and hummingbirds 50 times a second.

Richard Bomphrey of the Royal Veterinary College, the study’s leader, believes that mosquitoes have a unique flying method that sets them apart from other flying insects.

“We predicted that they must make use of clever tricks, as the wings     8     their direction at the end of each half-stroke.” he wrote in the study.

Hopefully, the discovery of the mosquito’s special abilities will be of benefit to engineers in the future. The findings could lead to better aircraft, or even improvement to tools like lenses or pumps.

But the scientists hope their study can one day be     9     to new developments in more human-focused use.

“The more we know about mosquitoes, the better our chance of understanding their flight behavior, how they carry disease and     10     how to stop them from doing so,” Walker wrote.

4 . Directions:Complete the following passage by using the words in the box. Each word can be used only once. Note that there is one word more than you need.

A drop in the sun’s radiation can cause cold winters in parts of North America and Europe, scientists say, a finding that could improve long-range forecasts and help countries     1     for storms.

Scientists have known for a long time that the sun has an 11-year cycle during which radiation from the sun reaches a(n)     2     then falls. But detecting a clear link of the cycle to the weather has proved much     3    .

“Our research notices a link between solar activities and regional winter climate,” lead author Sarah Ineson of the UK Met Office told the reporters in an email.

Her team focused on the data from the recent minimum solar radiation period during 2008-10, which was a(n)     4     calm period for the sun but at the same time,     5     winters in the U.S and Europe were recorded which brought troubles to many businesses and made people’s lives difficult.

The researchers found that a reduction in radiation from the sun can affect wind patterns,     6     cold winters.

“While radiation levels won’t tell us what the day-to-day weather will be, they provide the exciting     7     of improved prediction for winter conditions for months and even years ahead. These predictions play an important role in long-term weather planning,” Ineson said.

Ineson’s team used the data in a complex computer to     8     long-term weather patterns. It successfully reproduced what scientists had observed happening in the upper atmosphere during changes in solar radiation. More study was needed, though. The key     9     in the experiment lay in the satellite data used, because it spans (跨度) only a few years.” So there are still questions concerning whether the current research results are accurate and whether they can be     10     to other solar cycles,” she said.

5 . 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.

6 . The company that revolutionized the delivery of information now aims to do the same with electricity, Technology powerhouse Google today announced it would spend “tens of millions” of dollars next year in research and development and investments in an effort to drive down the cost of large-scale renewable energy to make it cheaper than coal, Not only will Google be hiring engineers and energy experts for its new initiative, known as RE<C (renewable energy at less cost than coal), but it also will make investments in new companies-starting with those that focus on solar is not only critical for the environment, and high-altitude wind power. “Cheap renewable energy is not only critical for the environment but also vital for economic development in many places where there is limited affordable energy of any kind,” said Sergey Brin, Google co-founder and president of technology, in a prepared statement.

Coal supplies 40 percent of the world’s electricity and more than half of U.S. power, and if current trends continue, it is expected to grab an ever increasing share because it is a plentiful and cheap fuel for big consumers like the United States and Russia. But coal is also the worst fuel in its production of the global warming gas carbon dioxide. Google co-founder Larry Page said the company’ s goal is to produce one gigawatt (十亿瓦特) of renewable energy capacity that is cheaper than coal within “years, not decades.” Google says that’s enough electricity to power a city the size of San Francisco (about 330000 households).

Google, located in Mountain View, Calif, said it was initially working with two other California companies. They are e Solar, of Pasadena, which is specializing in solar-thermal power, using large fields of mirrors to concentrate sunlight and generate steam to run utility-scale electric turbines (涡轮), and Makani of Alameda, which is developing wind energy technology that takes advantage of the much stronger and more reliable currents available at high altitudes.

Google did not specify how much money it was putting into its projects with these companies but said they both had “promising scalable energy technologies.” This portion of the initiative will be funded through the company’s philanthropic arm, Google.org, which is not a traditional charity but can make equity (股票) investments in companies. Brin and Page have pledged (抵押) 1 percent of Google’s equity and profits toward efforts including climate change and global poverty.

The RE<C program is the latest of a series of steps Google has taken on climate change. The company says it is on track in its goal to be carbon neutral in the near future.

1. Which one of the following statements is TRUE of the coal?

A．It is a kind of controversial fuel given its large quantity and its harm to the environment.

B．It is s plentiful and cheap fuel that will surely earn more market share

C．It will be totally replaced by the renewable energy in years because it produces the worst gas-carbon dioxide

D．It is supported by some enthusiastic countries like U.S. and Russia which rely heavily on the coal

2. It can be inferred from the passage that ________.

A．Google.org has made some crucial decisions in expanding the company

B．Google.org has focused on exploiting alternatives to traditional energy

C．Google.org is a charity organization committed to funding the projects benefiting mankind

D．Google.org is an environmental organization that specializes in promoting green fuel

3. What can Not be learned about the RE<C Programme?

A．It will come true in a few years with the efforts made.

B．It is a programme of environmental protection.

C．It is one of the measures taken to neutralize carbon.

D．It will be realized through investment in solar and wind energy companies.

4. The best title of this passage is ________.

A．Google’s RE<C Programme

B．Google, the Energy Revolutionary

C．Google, the Environmental Protector

D．Google’s Renewable Energy

7 . Directions: Read the following passage, Fill in each blank with a proper sentence given in the box Each sentence can be used only once. Note that there are two more sentences than you need.

Venice Carnival

The annual Venice Carnival is in full swing, with thousands of revelers (狂欢者) gathering the city’s canals and squares in elaborate costumes and extraordinary masks       1    .

The Carnevale di Venezia is thought to date back to the 11th century, making it one of the world’s oldest. Carnivals are held in many Catholic countries: such as Spain and Brazil, where they serve as a last chance to cat, drink end be merry before the deprivations or Lent, the 40 days of fasting (斋戒) that precede Easter.

It is thought that the masks allowed Venetians to hide their identities, allowing the poor to mix with the wealthy, breaking strict social order, even if only for a brief and controlled period.

    2     The theme of Carnival 2019 is “Tutta cope della Luna,” or “Blame the moon”, marking a half-century since man first walked on the satellite

To prevent overcrowding, authorities have installed turnstiles at the entrances to the historic St. Marks’Square, closing it off to new visitors once 23,000 revelers have entered. Costumed revelers are also searched as they enter the square.

Venice is situated across a group of 118 small islands that are separated by canals and linked by over 400 bridges. The islands are located in the shallow Venetian Lagoon, an enclosed bay that lies between the mouths of the Po and the Piave Rivers       3     The lagoon and a part of the city are listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Although most visitors stick to the traditional Carnival costumes of baroque gowns and be jeweled masks for women and black capes and threatening masks for men, more and more people are opting for their own unique interpretations.

Some visitors use Carnival as an opportunity to show off a fantastic creation they’ve always reamed of wearing. It doesn’t have to be Venetian       4     At Carnival, everybody is free to who-or what-they want to be. Perhaps a different gender-or even species. That’s the joy of the mask-nobody knows who or what the person wearing it was before Carnival.

A．This year’s Carnival festivities kicked off on February 16 and go on until March 5.

B．During the 18 days of Carnival, the city fills with thousands of tourists from across Italy and around the world.

C．Parts of Venice are well known for the beauty of their settings, their architectureand artwork.

D．The Italian government decided to bring back the history and culture of Venice by seeking to use the traditional Carnival.

E．It doesn’t have to be traditional.

F．Carnival virtually disappeared when Napoleon’s troops brought an end to the Venetian Republic in 1797.

8 . Questions are based on the following passage1.

A．He is an Englishman living in Sweden.

B．He prefers hot weather to cold weather.

C．He visits London nearly every winter.

D．He likes Sweden better than England.

2.

A．The long night.	B．The bad weather.
C．The gloomy winter.	D．The cold houses.

3.

A．Delightful.	B．Refreshing.
C．Painful.	D．Frustrating.

4.

A．They work hard and play hard.

B．They often stay up late reading.

C．They like to go camping in summer.

D．They try to earn more and spend more.

9 . Questions are based on the following passage1.

A．They are gardeners.	B．They sell vegetables.
C．They run a guesthouse.	D．They are scientists.

2.

A．Five hours.	B．Eight hours.
C．Twelve hours.	D．Fourteen hours.

3.

A．They have deeper roots.	B．They don’t need sunshine.
C．They have wider leaves.	D．They have bigger Flowers.

10 .

A．Down jackets are now on sale.

B．She can’t wait for the winter to arrive.

C．It’s hard to know how severe the winter will be.

D．She needs a warm jacket.