1 . Coral reefs are some of the most diverse and valuable ecosystems on Earth. Coral reefs support more species per unit area than any other marine (海洋的) environment, including about 4,000 species of fish, 800 species of hard corals and hundreds of other species. Scientists estimate that there may be millions of undiscovered species living in and around reefs. This biodiversity is considered the key to finding new medicines for the 21st century. Many drugs are now being developed from coral reef animals and plants as possible cures for cancer, viruses, and other diseases.
Healthy coral reefs support fisheries as well as jobs and businesses through tourism and recreation. About half of all managed fisheries depend on coral reefs and related habitats for a part of their life cycles. The National Marine Fisheries Service estimates the commercial value of U. S. fisheries from coral reefs is over $ 100 million, Local economies receive billions of dollars from visitors to reefs through diving tours, recreational fishing trips, hotels, restaurants, and other businesses based near reef ecosystems.
Coral reef structures also buffer (缓冲) shorelines against 97 percent of the energy from waves, storms, and floods, helping to prevent loss of life, and property damage. When reefs are damaged or destroyed, the absence of this natural barrier can increase the damage to coastal communities from normal wave action and violent storms. Several million people live in U. S. coastal areas near coral reefs. Some coastal development is required to provide necessary infrastructure (基础设施) for coastal residents and the growing coastal tourism industry.
Despite their great economic and recreational value, coral reefs are severely threatened by pollution, disease, and habitat destruction. Once coral reefs are damaged, they are less able to support the many creatures that live on them and the communities near them. When a coral reef supports fewer fish, plants, and animals, it also loses value as a tourist destination.
1. Why is biodiversity important to medicines?| A．It can reduce the prices of new medicines. | B．It can help make new medicines. |
| C．It can be used for medicines. | D．It can be used to cure diseases. |
| A．They protect people against sharks. | B．They completely avoid serious flooding. |
| C．They prevent people from being drowned. | D．They weaken most of the energy from waves. |
| A．Most fish will die out. | B．Coastal cities will attract fewer tourists. |
| C．There will be no large fish. | D．The sea will be polluted. |
| A．The Importance of Diverse Ecosystems | B．The Environments of Coral Reefs |
| C．The Importance of Coral Reefs | D．The Value of Biodiversity |
2 . Many people think that hippos (河马) are cute and funny-looking. They are really fat and they have short, thick legs. They also have little round ears that wiggle (摆动) sometimes.
Hippos look funny, but you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover. Hippos are extremely violent and dangerous. In fact, they kill more people than any other animal in Africa. Think of how many dangerous animals that Africa has. It has got crocodiles, snakes, lions, elephants and many more. Hippos are more dangerous than all of them.
Hippos are naturally very dangerous animals, but there are some situations that make them even more dangerous than normal. They are very territorial. That means that they stay in one area which they consider to be their private area. If a person or animal enter a hippo’s area, the hippo will attack. Hippos also often attack when they are returning to the water. Hippos eat on land and return to water at dusk. If a hippo sees an animal when it’s returning to the water, it will become violent.
Hippos are so strong that they often kill crocodiles. There are two reasons that explain why hippos and crocodiles often fight. First of all, hippos and crocodiles live in the same areas. Since hippos are territorial, they don’t like having crocodiles nearby. Also, crocodiles often eat young hippos. For that reason, adult hippos frequently kill crocodiles.
Mother and daughter hippos have close relationships. However, hippos don’t have any other close relationship with each other. Hippos often live together in large groups, but scientists don’t know why. It’s hard to study the behaviour of male and female hippos, because males and females look the same.
Hippos are violent, but they are herbivores. A herbivore is an animal that eat only plants. An adult hippo eats about 50 kilograms of plants every day. Hippos are much more comfortable in the water, but they can run fast on land. Their top speed is about 19 kilometers per hour. That’s much faster than humans can run.
1. What is the text mainly about?| A．The fight between hippos and crocodiles. |
| B．How to tell male hippos and female ones. |
| C．Africa’s most dangerous animal — hippos. |
| D．Why hippos get violent. |
| A．It is afraid of other animals. |
| B．It stays within a limited area. |
| C．It does not like to live in large groups. |
| D．It does not want other animals to enter its area. |
| A．Hippos swim faster than crocodiles. |
| B．It is hard to explain why hippos live in groups. |
| C．Male and female hippos look different. |
| D．Violent animals usually eat plants. |
| A．To inform. | B．To entertain. |
| C．To instruct. | D．To persuade. |
1. 倡导绿色生活的原因；
2. 实践途径（至少三点）。
注意：
1. 词数100左右；
2. 可以适当增加细节，以使行文连贯；
3. 开头和结尾已给出，不计入总词数。
Boys and girls,
I’m honored to give the speech.
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Thank you!
4 . Today, the most frightening living shark is the great white, which is over six meters long and bites with a force of two tonnes. Its fossil relative, Megalodon (meaning "big tooth") that lived about 23 to 3.6 million years ago, was over twice the length of a great white shark and had a bite force of more than ten tonnes.
Jack Cooper and his team used a number of mathematical methods to find out the size and proportions(比例)of this monster, by making close comparisons with a variety of living relatives that have certain similarities to Megalodon. He said, “I have always been mad about sharks. Megalodon was actually the very animal that inspired me to pursue palaeontology(古生物学) in the first place when I was just six years old, so I was over the moon to get a chance to study it. This was my dream project.”
Previously the fossil shark, known formally as Otodus megalodon, was only compared with the great white. Jack and his colleagues, for the first time, expanded this analysis to include five modern sharks. “ Megalodon is not a direct ancestor of the great white and is equally related to several modern sharks such as the salmon shark, as well as the great white. We collected detailed measurements of all five to make predictions about Megalodon,”Dr. Pimiento said.
The researchers discovered that the babies of all these modern sharks start out as little adults, and they don’t change in proportion as they get larger. Jack Cooper said, “This means we could simply take the growth curves(生长曲线) of the five modern forms and forecast the overall shape as they get larger and larger--- right up to a body length of 16 meters.”
The results suggest that a 16-meter-long Megalodon likely had a head round 4.65 meters long, a fin about 1.62 meters tall on the back and a tail around 3.85 meters high. The reconstruction of the size of Megalodon’s body parts represents a fundamental step towards a better understanding of this huge extinct shark.
1. Why is the great white mentioned in Paragraph 1?| A．To remind people to stay away from it. |
| B．To uncover its close relation with Megalodon. |
| C．To introduce the researchers' new findings about it. |
| D．To show Megalodon's giant body and strength by comparison. |
| A．A bit hesitant. | B．Very excited. |
| C．Really stressed. | D．Totally unprepared. |
| A．It proved the real existence of Megalodon. |
| B．It was based on data from five types of modern sharks. |
| C．It was aimed at finding the direct ancestor of the great white. |
| D．It compared Megalodon with the great white for the first time. |
| A．Their babies had the same body length as modern baby sharks. |
| B．Their body proportions changed dramatically during growth. |
| C．Their fin on the back could be as tall as an adult human. |
| D．Their bite force was equal to the great white’s. |
5 . In a recent study, researchers at Germany’s Technical University of Munich（TUM）find that trees in cities can grow up 25% faster than their country cousins. This is believed to be a direct result of the heat island effect, which is a situation where the temperature of the city is higher than the nearby rural areas. It’s mostly caused by the fact that buildings, roads, and many other things in the city take in a lot of sunlight and send out the sun’s heat more than natural landscapes such as forests and water bodies. A secondary cause is waste heat produced by heavy uses of energy.
For the study, TUM researchers studied 1,400 trees in 10 cities around the world, which were found in both city centers and nearby rural areas. Based on tree ring study, researchers found that city trees are growing faster than their rural cousins. But before the 1960s, both city and rural trees grew at about the same speed.“We can show that city trees of the same age are generally larger than rural trees because they grow faster. While the difference is about a quarter at the age of 50, it is still just under 20% at a hundred years of age,” lead author Hanz Pretzch says.
Researchers from TUM also found that in some cities, higher-than-normal temperatures have led to growing seasons that are more than eight days longer than the norm. This sounds like a good thing. But while fast -growing city trees are busy taking in CO2and providing relief from the heat, they’ re also aging and dying at a faster speed than rural trees. As a result, these trees need to be replaced and replanted more frequently.
Considering the valuable “ecosystem services” that city trees provide, planning and management should follow to make a change with today’s tree growth speed. Pretzch and his team set out to perform the study largely in response to United Nation’s report that the world’s cities will experience population growth of more than 60% by 2030. And with such fast growth comes a great need for city trees that make these cities better places to live in.
1. What does the first paragraph mainly tell us?| A．Cities need more trees to reduce the temperatures. |
| B．Humans lead to trees growing faster in cities. |
| C．Trees need scientific planting in rural areas. |
| D．Greenhouse effect is too serious in cities. |
| A．Rural trees live twice longer than city trees. |
| B．City trees live for about 100 years at most. |
| C．Rural trees live much longer now than in the 1960s. |
| D．City trees grow faster at early years. |
| A．Cities suffer more easily from natural disasters. |
| B．The temperatures in cities will fall greatly. |
| C．City trees have a shorter life circle. |
| D．More people move to rural areas. |
| A．Taking better care of urban trees |
| B．Planting more trees in urban areas |
| C．More researches to be done on urban trees |
| D．Urban trees growing faster than rural trees |
6 . Extreme heat can kill people, even though most of the deaths are preventable. It is reported that in the 24 years between 1979 and 2003 more people died in the United States of extreme heat than from hurricanes, lightning, tornadoes, floods and earthquakes.
| A．How can we survive it? |
| B．Extreme heat can also bring wildfires. |
| C．It is clear that the world is getting warmer. |
| D．Very often you can see such a terrible circle! |
| E．It is also reasonable to realize the man’s effect on the world’s weather. |
| F．How can people predict extreme heat according to the climate change? |
| G．Great damage can be caused in a short time if quick action is not taken. |
1. What are the second most popular pets in the U. S.?
| A．Dogs. | B．Fish. | C．Cats. |
| A．How to make travel plans. |
| B．Which company to work in. |
| C．Where to buy a new house. |
| A．More and more Americans keep pets. |
| B．Americans benefit more from keeping pets. |
| C．More younger Americans prefer raising pets than having children. |
8 . If you live in certain parts of the world, you will see something magical happen each fall. It is the changing of the color of the leaves on many different trees. Each year deciduous (落叶的) trees go through a process in which their green leaves become bright yellow, gold, orange and red before turning brown and falling onto the ground.
Photosynthesis (光合作用) is the process for trees to make their food taking energy from the sun, water from the ground, and carbon dioxide from the air, they make sugar to “eat” so they can grow into strong, healthy trees. The leaves of a tree are where photosynthesis happens because the chlorophyll (叶绿素) in the leaves is what makes photosynthesis possible. Chlorophyll also has another job—it is what makes leaves green. When the seasons change in places where deciduous trees grow and the days get shorter and the weather gets colder, it is harder for the chlorophyll in the leaves to make the food needed to stay green. So instead of making more food, the leaves start using food they have stored away for this time of year.
As the leaves use the food that has been stored away, cells form at the bottom of each leaf. These cells act like a door between the leaf and the rest of the tree—a door that closes very slowly and doesn’t shut until all the leaf’s food is gone. While this is happening, the colors in the leaves of the trees are able to show through. In fact, the red, yellow, gold and orange colors are hiding in the leaves all summer long. The colors just can’t be seen in the summer because of all the chlorophyll in the leaves.
You might be wondering how the rest of the tree keeps growing when the weather turns cold and the leaves die and fall. Doesn’t the rest of the tree need the food made by the tree’s leaves?
Not really. The tree trunk and branches get food from the roots of the tree. The roots supply water, vitamins and minerals they get from the ground. Trees need sunshine and warm weather to grow, but they also need time to rest like bears that sleep during the winter.
1. Why do leaves change colors?| A．They save some energy to stay alive. |
| B．The chlorophyll stores some food away. |
| C．They have to get used to the cold weather. |
| D．They can’t get enough energy from the sun. |
| A．When there is no sunlight any longer . |
| B．When the food stored away in the leaves is use up. |
| C．When the chlorophyll in the leaves stops working. |
| D．When cells start to form at the bottom of each leaf . |
| A．By getting food from the ground. |
| B．By storing food in their branches. |
| C．By storing food in their roots. |
| D．By making the most use of the dead leaves. |
| A．To study how trees survive in winter. |
| B．To tell about the importance of photosynthesis. |
| C．To explain why leaves change colors. |
| D．To show the changes of trees in the whole year. |
9 . Like many teens, Lia loves her pet. But this Florida girl doesn’t own a goldfish or a cat. Lia and her family raise tigers. That’s right, tigers. When the tiger was young, he slept in Lia’s bed every night. “It’s sort of like raising a dog,” she said.
Millions of people in the United States own exotic pets. These include wild animals like wolves, bears, and giant snakes. It is legal to own a wild animal in many states. In some places, you don’t even need a permit or a license. It is also surprisingly easy to get an exotic pet. You can buy a young tiger online for just $300. That’s cheaper than some kinds of dogs!
Exotic pets may start out as cute babies. But as they grow bigger, they become harder to handle. Tracy Coppola is an animal expert at Born Free USA. This group helps wild animals in cages. “Most people cannot provide the special care the animals need,” she says. Many need special food, space to wander, and lots of attention. Exotic pets are often kept in small cages all by themselves. This is cruel, says Coppola. Exotic pets are not only hard to care for. They can make you sick, too. They can give humans many diseases. And that’s not the worst danger pet owner face. An exotic pet is a wild animal. Wild animals can attack.
The behavior of exotic pets can be violent and hard to predict. Their actions might be natural in the wild—but not in your home. Hundreds of other wild pets have attacked or killed their owners. Last October, an Ohio man released his 56 wild pets. His lions, tigers, and bears ran wild. Police had to kill most of the animals to protect the community.
1. Lia regards the tiger as .| A．a baby | B．a pet dog | C．a guard | D．a car |
| A．Because getting exotic pets is legal and easy. |
| B．Because raising exotic pets can prevent theft. |
| C．Because raising exotic pets is fashionable. |
| D．Because it is a way to protect these animals. |
| A．Pet owners may get attacked by some diseases. |
| B．Pet owners may be killed by the wild animals. |
| C．It is reasonable to keep them in small cages all by themselves. |
| D．Exotic pets are hard to care for in their homes. |
| A．How to prevent another tragedy like the one in Ohio. |
| B．The advantages of keeping exotic pets in homes. |
| C．How to keep exotic pets in homes. |
| D．These wild animals can become aggressive suddenly. |
10 . Scientists believe the earth is 4.6 billion years old. However, the mountains, valleys, rivers, deserts and forests we see today are much younger than that. For example, Qomolangma is about 60 million years old and the Amazon Rainforest is about 55 million years old. The Baltic Sea, the youngest sea in the world, is only about 15,000 years old.
The earth is always changing because of volcanoes, earthquakes and, of course, wind and rain. Some of these changes are very slow and others are quick. Water and ice can make very big changes to the planet. For example, glaciers can cut through mountains and make deep valleys.
It’s normal for our planet to change. But at the moment scientists think it’s changing faster than usual. They don’t understand everything that is happening but they know that temperatures are rising. Besides, the weather is getting wetter in some places and drier in others, and there are more big storms. Now there is a growing awareness that climate change is definitely not confined to a certain region or country. However, it is a problem all countries are involved. What’s more, there is no denying t hat industrial emissions has been the main influence of climate change for the last 50 years, overwhelming natural forces.
However, these changes are not bad for everyone. Because the Arctic is getting warmer, farmers in Greenland now can grow and sell vegetables. That wasn’t possible 50 years ago. Farmers in Greenland like the warm weather and hope it will continue.
1. Which of the following is the oldest?| A．The earth. | B．Qomolangma. |
| C．The Amazon Rainforest. | D．The Baltic Sea. |
| A．glaciers | B．deep valleys |
| C．wind and rain | D．volcanoes and earthquakes |
| A．They turned the impossible into possible. |
| B．The warm weather is good for the Arctic. |
| C．They now own businesses and become successful. |
| D．They benefit from the vegetable businesses that did not exist before. |
| A．Global Warming | B．Beautiful Greenland |
| C．Our Changing Planet | D．The Old Earth |
