1 . Growing plants at home is a fun and enjoyable activity to do and can be developed as a new hobby.     1     Let’s take a look.

Gardening reduces stress. Gardening is one of the most effective, and fun ways to free yourself from the physical, mental, and emotional stress you have been carrying since the beginning of the week. If you are overworking yourself during the weekdays or seeing yourself drowning in stressful thoughts, try to spend your weekends gardening at home.     2     The sweet smell of the wet soil and the plants’ fascinating colors has a calming effect on our minds.

    3     Just like plants that need sunlight to photosynthesize (光合作用), we also need to be exposed to sunlight. Our body produces or makes natural Vitamin D when the sunlight touches our skin. Gardening outdoors allows us to be exposed to sunlight and, in turn, the sunlight enriches us with Vitamin D. Vitamin D helps protect our body from getting diseases such as cancer.

Gardening is good for your heart. Gardening requires our body to move around by doing simple tasks such as digging the ground, planting seeds, pulling out weeds, and carrying a water container’s load.     4     They allows our body to burn calories and fats, and help strengthen our heart, reducing the risk of suffering from heart attack.

By spending our free time gardening and monitoring our plants’ growth, we are also taking care of ourselves as we gain lots of health and emotional benefits. It is a worthwhile activity because we get to see the results of our hard work when our plants start growing fonder and healthier. The way we take care of our plants reflects the way we take care of ourselves.     5    

A．Gardening is an act of self-love.

B．Gardening is good for your bones.

C．Gardening helps your body against diseases.

D．You will see a significant change in your mind.

E．These simple gardening tasks can be considered a low-level exercise.

F．It also has several positive health and emotional benefits that you can enjoy.

G．Returning home to a place full of beautiful plants helps us enjoy the freshness of the air.

2 . The behavior of beavers and other animals has often inspired expressions in English. If someone is very industrious or hard-working in tackling many things at once, we can say the person is “as busy as a beaver.” This phrase hints at one of the characteristics of these wild animals—they are indeed active creatures.

With their large teeth, which are orange due to iron in the tooth enamel (牙齿的珐琅质), beavers can cut down trees and change their environments like no other animals except humans. They use these fallen trees to build dams, creating safe, watery environments. The busy beavers build homes — called lodges — in the ponds created by the dams. The only way to get in and out of lodges is by entering an underwater opening of the structures. This offers beavers protection from predators such as bears, wolves, or coyotes.

It’s also interesting to note that beavers have another reason for cutting down trees aside from building dams. Beavers can digest cellulose, so wood is a significant food source for them, with their diet 15 also consisting of leaves and aquatic plants. Chewing on trees also helps beavers keep their teeth sharp, making it easier for them to keep chopping down trees.

Of course, no discussion about beavers would be complete without mentioning their most noticeable feature their large, flat tails, which have different uses. One is that they act as a rudder, helping them steer in the water. Another is that the animals pound their tails on the water to warn other beavers of danger. Since beavers work so hard building their homes and warning others of potential harm, it’s no surprise that busy as a beaver is a common phrase.

1. Which of the following usages of “as busy as a beaver” correct?

A．My cat is as busy as a beaver since it always lies on the sofa.

B．This kind of tree is as busy as a beaver because it takes hundreds of years for it to be used as timber.

C．Hanna is having a cup of coffee and listening to music in the living room. She is truly as busy as a beaver.

D．Oliver is responsible for two projects and has to train the three new employees, so he has been as busy as a beaver recently.

2. Which of the following is NOT mentioned in the passage?

A．What countries beavers are found in.	B．How beavers keep themselves safe.
C．The animals that threaten beavers.	D．The food that beavers eat.

3. How does building dams protect beavers?

A．The wood is very strong.

B．The water from dams helps beavers digest wood.

C．Dams make it harder for other animals to catch.

D．Dams provide beavers with lots of water to drink.

4. If a beaver sees a pack of wolves approaching, which body part will it use to alert others?

A．Tail

B．Teeth

C．Paw

D．Head

3 . Without shiny black solar panels (太阳能板) on the roof, the residents in an apartment building in Illinois are enjoying the benefits of “community solar” — a program in which residents can buy electricity from nearby solar farms, reducing planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions (排放) and receiving discounts on their electric bills.

The solar energy in community solar doesn’t actually flow into your home, but flows into your area’s power grid (电网), providing electricity to homes and businesses in your region, and you get the benefits of government solar rewards in the form of lower electricity bills.

Among those signing up for the program is Dickerson, 73, of Oak Park, Illinois. “Try it; you’ll like it,” he said. “You’ll save money, and you’ll feel good about saving the planet — at least a little bit.” Proudly showing charts of their electricity costs in a recent interview, Dickerson and his fellow members of the community green committee, said they’re all paying less with community solar for their individual homes as well as the community’s common space.

Community solar was pioneered in the mid-2000s as a way to bring clean energy to the many American households without access to solar panels for various reasons. “Community solar is about to boost everywhere in terms of access,” said Nicole Steele, a senior advisor in the U. S. Department of Energy. “It’s just another way to be part of the clean energy transformation and see the actual benefits.”

Dickerson and his neighbour Johnson have been protecting the planet since childhood, such as leaving no litter in the forest and sorting recyclables. Therefore, they found it easy to accept community solar. Now, the building’s green newsletter, edited by Johnson, is trumpeting community solar savings. “As a parent and grandparent, it’s kind of like a heritage,” Johnson said of this work. “How could I do something that’s bad for the world in which my grandchildren are going to live?”

1. How does community solar work?

A．By directly transporting energy to households.

B．By equipping residents’ rooftops with panels.

C．By storing electricity in nearby solar farms.

D．By providing electricity through the power grid.

2. Why did Dickerson and the committee members sign up for the program?

A．To prevent greenhouse gas emission.

B．To reduce cost and help save the planet.

C．To experience a more convenient energy.

D．To get rewards from the local government.

3. What is Nicole Steele’s attitude to community solar?

A．Doubtful.

B．Dismissive.

C．Conservative.

D．Approving.

4. What does the underlined word “trumpeting” in the last paragraph probably mean?

A．Admitting shyly.	B．Stating critically.
C．Explaining secretly.	D．Announcing proudly.

4 . Wildfires, when allowed to burn in areas without human development, can contribute to the restoration of the surrounding watershed(集水区), renewal of the soil, and resetting the clock for the ecosystem.

Many forests cannot sustain themselves without natural wildfire, including pine barrens, lodgepole pine forests and many more. These forests require canopy fires, which primarily affect the upper layer of plants in a forest, to reproduce because the trees in the forest are adapted to only produce seeds following a major fire event. Hence, fires can be restorative for the forest, and without them many of these forest types would decline on the landscape. How is a fire restorative for the watershed? It restores in many ways including, but not limited to, improving water quality, offering habitat for insects that serve as food for fish, promoting the growth of fire adapted plants, etc... Not to mention renewal of the soil chemistry which is vital to the forest and the watershed.(My attitude is that of someone who has studied wildfire and streams since the disastrous 1988 Yellowstone wildfires.) The science backs up how natural wildfire can be favorable through research publication after publication.

It’s like “resetting the clock” on the ecosystem, allowing it to smoothly all over again for another 200 years. By the way, a canopy fire such as Yellowstone in 1988 also results in the reproduction of younger trees after fire which act to stop the spread and progress of a potentially destructive wildfire immediately. Without it, future wildfires are very likely to become bigger and bigger.

The bottom line is that we may need today’s natural wildfires on our forested landscape to prevent more serious fire events in the future. That lesson was learned in 1988 Yellowstone wildfires which was a year of disastrous large-scale fires despite more than 50 years of thorough and tight fire monitoring.

1. What does the underlined word “them” in Paragraph 2 refer to?

A．Seeds.

B．Wildfires.

C．Trees.

D．Ecosystems.

2. What is the function of younger trees after wildfires?

A．Making wildfires easier to be spotted.	B．Reducing occurring rates of wildfires.
C．Stopping a major wildfire in its tracks.	D．Preventing potential wildfires completely.

3. What can be learned from the 1988 Yellowstone wildfires?

A．We should accept wildlife on its own terms.	B．Fire monitoring in Yellowstone was successful.
C．Natural fires may reduce the risk of larger ones.	D．Serious wildfires are caused by human activities.

4. What is the text mainly about?

A．The beneficial effects of wildfires.	B．Impacts of wildfires on development.
C．The necessity of watershed preservation.	D．Measures to prevent large-scale wildfires.

5 . 听下面一段独白，回答以下小题。
1. What is the talk mainly about?

A．What to do to protect animals.

B．Whether to keep animals in zoos.

C．How to improve zoos’ environment.

2. What do scientists of Group A suggest?

A．Allowing wild animals to be killed.

B．Protecting animals in a well-founded area.

C．Teaching people more about wild animals.

3. What do scientists of Group B say about modern zoos?

A．They do harm to animals.

B．They are poorly founded.

C．They can give animals protection.

4. What is the speaker?

A．A scientist.

B．A teacher.

C．A zookeeper.

6 . A “fierce queen” named “128 Grazer” has been crowned the fattest bear of all of Katmai National Park in Alaska. Grazer, a mama bear to two litters of cubs(幼兽), has been a fixture(固定成员) of the park since 2005.

This is Grazer’s first time winning the contest, an achievement made easier by the fact that she has released her cubs and was able to focus on self-care. When females are caring for cubs, they are often nursing them, helping them hunt for salmon(三文鱼) and providing them protection — all of which detracts from the females’ ability to eat as much as possible, said Felicia Jimenez, a ranger at Katmai National Park.

The brown bears living along Alaska’s Brooks River have spent the summer fattening up on salmon, berries and grasses in preparation for their annual winter hibernation(冬眠). The bears enter hibernation around November and eventually experience a one-third loss of their body weight through the winter season, according to park officials.

The fixed competition has been making the fattest brown bears at Katmai National Park compete against each other since 2014. When the contest first began, it consisted of just a single day in which a few of the park’s most enormous bears competed with each other. By the next year, the contest had transformed into a “globally recognized” event that required more days and more competitors.

The popularity of Fat Bear Week allows park officials to direct attention to conservation efforts in the region, especially for the salmon run on the Brooks River, which the bears rely on for food. The health of the brown bears signifies the overall health of the local ecosystem, according to the park. “Without the ecosystem protected, there would be no Fat Bear Week,” Jimenez said.

1. What contributed most to Grazer’s winning the contest?

A．Hunting for enough salmon.	B．Giving birth to her cubs.
C．Concentrating on caring for herself.	D．Being a fixture in the park.

2. What do the underlined words “detracts from” in paragraph 2 mean?

A．Removes.

B．Weakens.

C．Strengthens.

D．Changes.

3. What is paragraph 3 mainly about?

A．The process of bears’ hibernation.	B．The reason for bears’ fattening up.
C．The time of bears’ hibernation.	D．The way of bears’ fattening up.

4. What is the significance of the “Fat Bear Week”?

A．To choose the fattest bear globally.	B．To shoot the movie regarding bears.
C．To draw attention to environment care.	D．To highlight the efforts to protect ecosystem .

7 . In a lab in London, newborn chicks took the first steps of their life and might become part of solving one of the brain’s big puzzles. Elisabetta Versace, the lead author of the new study and head of the Prepared Minds Lab at Queen Mary, and her co-workers published their findings on Tuesday in Biology Letters.

In a simple test, researchers placed the downy animals, hatched after less than a day in complete darkness, one at a time into a special box. Two screens on the opposite sides of the box played videos of moving orange balls, one moving upward and the other downward. Over the course of 20 minutes, most of the chicks hesitantly walked over to the end of the box with the upward-moving ball.

Biologists call the mechanisms (生物机制) that assist animals in their earliest moments “evolutionary predispositions (进化倾向)” or “priors”. “Studying how predisposition s work in humans is difficult,” says Elisa Raffalla Ferre, co-author of the new study, as babies take time to develop complex skills. By the time human babies can easily move, they have already spent significant time learning. Chicks, however, can perform relatively complex actions very soon after hatching, which makes them ideal candidates for exploring how predispositions function.

Why this preference for objects that move against gravity exists at all remains unclear. “Going against gravity in a consistent way is associated with animate objects in the ecological world,” Versace says, “because usually you see that water flows down or a rock falls down.” Lifeless objects, on the other hand, are unlikely to move consistently against gravity.

The newly released article is consistent with previous research, according to Orsola Rosa Salva, a comparative psychologist at the University of Trento. What Salva wants to see next in this field are experiments that begin to identify what areas of the brain are active when predispositions are launched, so scientists can better understand how the mechanisms work. Versace hopes that future research can offer insights into the way the brain is organized to make sense of the world.

1. What did the test find out about newborn chicks?

A．They liked bright colors.	B．They had a poor sense of direction.
C．They preferred rising objects.	D．They picked up first steps with difficulty.

2. Why are newborn chicks better subjects for the test than human babies?

A．Their mechanisms are more complex.

B．They were already studied more in the past.

C．Their evolutionary predispositions work more effectively.

D．They can exhibit complex behaviors soon after birth.

3. What does Versace say about going against gravity?

A．It is common among species in nature.	B．It is a natural behavior of living animals.
C．It contributes to the survival of animals.	D．It helps newborn animals to learn quickly.

4. What does Salva expect of future experiments?

A．They’ll be carried out in the wild.	B．They’ll offer detailed workings of the brain.
C．They’ll compare the brains of different species.	D．They’ll apply to scientific research in related fields.

8 . 阅读下面材料，在空白处填入 1个适当的单词或括号内单词的正确形式。

The green grass and bar e rock of Macquarie Island’s landscape contrast dramatically, giving it a wild and natural beauty.

But the island’s more recent history tells     1     tragic story that began in 1810 when humans arrived on the island. In their ships they unknowingly brought rats and mice, which quickly took over the island,     2     (eat) the birds’ eggs and attacking baby birds. Cats     3     (bring) to the island to control the rats and mice.     4     (fortunate), the cats subsequently developed an appetite for the birds, too.

Meanwhile, rabbits were introduced to the island     5     a source of food for humans. Loose on the island,     6     did what rabbits do best—they multiplied rapidly and began eating the native vegetation and digging holes,     7     caused soil erosion. The exploding rabbit population     8     (provide) plentiful food for the cats, meaning that the number of cats also increased. This in turn led to     9     (much) cats hunting the birds. The end result was that parakeets, once large in number and native to the island, died out in 1891.

In 2014, Macquarie Island was declared pest-free and the island’s eco logy is finally on the road to     10     (recover).

9 . 阅读下面短文，在空白处填入1个适当的单词或括号内单词的正确形式，并将答案填写在答题卡上。

The Silk Road,     1     connected China and the Far East with the Middle East and Europe, was a network of trade routes (线路).       2     (establish) when the Han Dynasty opened trade with the West in 130 B. C., the Silk Road routes remained in use until 1453 A. D., when the Ottoman Empire closed them   Although it     3     (be) nearly 600 years since the Silk Road was used for international trade, the routes had a lasting impact     4     trade, culture and history that resonates (引起共鸣) even today.

While the name “Silk Road” originates from the    5     (popular) of Chinese silk among tradesmen, the material was not the only important export from the East to the West. Trade along the Silk Road included fruits and vegetables, livestock, grain, leather tools, artworks, precious stones     6     metals. The greatest value of the Silk Road was the exchange of culture. Art, along with other elements of civilization like religion, philosophy, technology, language, science, as well as architecture,     7     (exchange) along these routes at that time

In 2013, China began to     8     (official) rebuild the historic Silk Route. The project opened up new trade     9     (market) for Chinese goods, giving the country the cheapest and easiest way     10     (sell) materials and goods.

10 . Pet parents — cats and dogs under 20 pounds — can travel on Capitol Corridor for $30 one-way! If your furry family member fits the bill, take them on your next adventure. Check out the information below and how to book your next trip. Our check-in process is simple, making traveling with your four-legged friend easy and enjoyable.

What to Know

As you plan your next train trip with your pet, note that we welcome a maximum (最大) of 6pets per train. Booking needs to happen in advance and only one pet reservation is allowed per customer. Pets cannot be booked with multi-ride tickets, bus connections or unaccompanied minors (未成年人).

When at the station, your pet must always travel in a carrier, which counts as one piece of carry-on baggage, and the combined weight of your pet and carrier is 20 pounds. While aboard trains, it must be able to sit, lie down and remain entirely inside without touching the sides of the carrier. It is not permitted in the Café, or Quiet Cars.

How to Book

Select your trip on the booking machine.

Add your travel details and proceed until you see the option to customize (定制) your trip.

Add a pet to your booking for $30.

Contact 800-USA-RAIL if you need to change your reservation.

The Rules

Your pet must be at least eight weeks old and be unsmelly, harmless, not disruptive, and require no attention during travel.

You confirm that your pet is up to date on all vaccinations and accept responsibility for your pet by signing the pet release document at check-in.

1. How much does a pet owner have to pay for the pet for a round-trip?

A．$15.

B．$30.

C．$45.

D．$60.

2. What does a pet owner need to do if he/she is to take a cat on board?

A．Book ahead of schedule.	B．Take a carrier weighing 20 pounds.
C．Buy a multi-ride ticket.	D．Contact 800-USA-RAIL first.

3. What are pets allowed to do?

A．Eat in the Café.	B．Sleep in Quiet Cars.
C．Travel in a carrier.	D．Lie behind the door.