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

Kangaroos can “talk” to us

Kangaroos can “talk” to people, according to a new study. The report is the first research of its kind to be done on marsupials—a type of creature whose young get carried in skin pockets on their mother’s body. It suggests kangaroos are cleverer than previously thought.

Researchers from the University of Roehampton in the UK and the University of Sydney in Australia tested kangaroos at the Australian Reptile (爬行动物) Park, Wildlife Sydney Zoo and Kangaroo Protection Co-operative. The scientists put food in a box that the kangaroos could not open, and waited to see what the animals would do. Rather than giving up, 10 out of the 11 kangaroos actively looked at the person who had put the food in the box and then looked at the box. The researchers said this could be interpreted as the kangaroos requesting help to open the container.

Dr Alexandra Green, a co-author of the study, told The Guardian newspaper that some of the kangaroos actually approached the person and started scratching (挠) and sniffing (嗅) him, then looked back at the box. “So they were really trying to communicate,” Green said. This behaviour is not uncommon in animals. However, it is usually only seen in domesticated animals, such as pets or farm animals. The lead author of the study, Dr Alan McElligott, explained, “Through this study, we were able to see that communication between creatures can be learnt and that the behaviour of looking at humans to access food is not related to domestication. “Indeed, kangaroos showed a very similar pattern of behaviour we have seen in dogs, horses and even goats, when put to the same test,” he added.

It is hoped that the study will give people a more positive attitude towards kangaroos, which are sometimes seen as harmful creatures that damage farmers’ crops.

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3 . Directions: road the following passage. Summarize the main idea and the main point (s) of the passage in no more than 60 words. Use your own words as far as possible.

A plan to restore green spaces

The UK government has revealed a plan to protect and restore England’s wild life. It focuses on at-risk species by making canals, rivers and streams cleaner and expanding green spaces.

The new Environmental Improvement Plan sets goals to create or restore more than 5,000 square kilometres of wildlife habitats across England and restore 400 miles of rivers. It will create or expand 25 national nature reserves. New woodland will also be planted alongside rivers. At the moment, access to green spaces is not equal across the UK. Around 4% of people live more than 10 minutes away from their nearest park. The Environmental Improvement Plan aims to make sure households in England are within a 15-minute walk to a green space.

As well as helping more people to act close to nature, the plan should increase England’s biodiversity. A species Survival Fund will be set up to help some of England’s most endangered animals, such as red squirrels (松鼠) and watch rats. The Government has set targets to boost these species by 2030. There are also targets to reduce food waste, glass, metal, paper and plastic by 2028, and to improve the quality of water in rivers.

New rules mean that the Government will have to consider the environmental effects of any policy it puts forward. These goals are part of a 25- year plan that was launched in 2018. The aim of the plan is to improve the environment “within a generation ” which is roughly 25 years.

Although lots of people have welcomed the plan, not everyone is impressed. Pail de Zylva, from the charity Friends of the Earth, said it wasn’t clear enough how the goals would be met and that many of them were like promises the Government had already made but not yet delivered.

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4 . 听下面一段独白，回答以下小题。1.

A．Rich soil.

B．Enough water.

C．Some crops.

D．Little shade.

2.

A．Because it had a lot of trees.

B．Because it was always raining there.

C．Because it was located near a big city.

D．Because it had a wetland with water and rich soils.

3.

A．The history of Saudi Arabia.

B．The climate change in Saudi Arabia.

C．The development of civilization in AlUla.

D．The hunting techniques of the first people in AlUla.

6 . Flight Shaming: # stayontheground

For the environmentally conscious, boarding a flight can be a source of mild stress or guilt, considering the large amounts of carbon footprint that comes with it.     1    

Flight shaming, or flygskam, is a movement that originated in Sweden in 2017. Back then, singer Staffan Lindberg declared his intention to give up flying to and from his concerts in favor of travel by train, bus, car, or boat.     2     Before long, a substantial portion of the general public had happily jumped on board. The following year, the hashtag # jagstannarpamarken — which translates as # stayontheground started gaining popularity on the Internet, and by 2019, annual air travel in Sweden had fallen by 5%.

Although “shame” has a relatively negative meaning associated with it, the overall outcome of the flight shaming movement has been undeniably positive. No longer restricted to Sweden alone, the trend has spread throughout Europe.     3     Besides, the movement is less about shaming other people out of flying than it is about changing one’s own travel habits for the benefits of the Earth.

An interesting side effect of the flight shaming movement is that those who observe it often rediscover the novelty of slow, purposeful travel. When traveling by land, one can take in the variety of sights, sounds, and smells along the way.     4     Without doubt, travelers willing to take on the challenge of flygskam have the opportunity to experience local culture in ways that passengers flying thousands of miles above could only dream of.

A．More and more Europeans are now choosing to travel by land or sea whenever possible.

B．However, airlines in Europe also have warned of the harmful effects of the flight shaming movement.

C．In addition, travelers are more likely to discover interesting new restaurants and hotels, and get a chance to interact with the locals.

D．A new anti-flying movement known as “flight shaming” is giving Earth-loving travelers a way of shaking off their guilt while still experiencing the joys of domestic and international travel.

E．It’s a way of revisiting holiday travel plan, including your accommodations while protecting the environment.

F．Other local celebrities, including environmental icon Greta Thunberg, followed suit.

7 . Not all birds sing, but those that do—some several thousand species—do it a lot. All over the world, as soon as light filters over the horizon, songbirds start singing. They sing to defend their territory and to impress potential mates.

“Why birds sing is relatively well-answered,” says Iris Adam, a behavioral neuroscientist at the University of Southern Denmark. The big question for her was this: Why do birds sing so much? “For some reason,” Adam says, birds have “a crazy drive to sing.” This means hours every day for some species, and that takes a lot of energy. Plus, singing can be dangerous.

“As soon as you sing, you reveal yourself,” she says. “Like, where you are, that you even exist, where your territory is —all of that immediately is out in the open for predators, for everybody.”

In a new study published in the journal Nature Communications, Adam and her colleagues offer a new explanation for why birds take that risk. They suggest that songbirds may not have much choice. They may have to sing a lot every day to give their vocal muscles the regular exercise they need to produce top-quality song.

These findings could be related to human voices too. “If you apply the bird results to the humans,” says Adam, “anytime you stop speaking, for whatever reason, you might experience a loss in vocal performance.”

To figure out whether the muscles that produce birdsong require daily exercise, Adam designed a series of experiments on zebra finches —little Australian songbirds with striped heads and a bloom of orange on their cheeks.

Through these experiments. Adam’s conclusion is that “songbirds need to exercise their vocal muscles to produce top-performance song. If they don’t sing, they lose performance, their vocalizations get less attractive to females—and that’s bad.”

This may help explain songbirds’ constant singing. It’s a kind of daily vocal practice to keep their instruments in tip-top shape. It’s a good rule to live by, whether you’re a bird or a human—practice makes perfect, at least when it comes to singing one’s heart out.

1. What does Iris Adam try to figure out?

A．Why all the birds don’t sing.	B．Why songbirds sing so well.
C．Why songbirds sing so much.	D．Why birds have vocal muscles.

2. What do the underlined words “that risk” in Paragraph 4 probably mean?

A．Defending territory.

B．Impressing partners.

C．Singing all to death.

D．Threatening lives.

3. Which of the following agrees with Adam’s experiment conclusion?

A．Regular singing helps to exercise songbirds’ vocal muscles.

B．Songbirds have to sing their heart out to win their partners.

C．Zebra finches are born to have excellent vocal instruments.

D．Good vocal muscles are more attractive to female songbirds.

4. What can be the best title for the text?

A．A New Study of Songbirds	B．The Way That Songbirds Sing
C．Practice Makes a Perfect Song	D．The Reason Why Birds Sing Much

8 . 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.

A. adopted   B. approaching   C. demonstration D. expansion E. featured F. focus G. forecasted H. maintained I. nonrenewable J. optimistic. K. surviving

Earth Day Turns 50

About 20 million Americans turned out for the first Earth Day on April 22, 1970. Lectures and gatherings took place at more than 2,000 college campuses, 10,000 elementary and high schools, and thousands of other places across the country. Forty-two states     1     resolutions supporting Earth Day. It is sometimes described as, up to that time, the largest public     2     in history.

The lectures and literature surrounding the event     3     lots of depressing predictions about the future, which could be found in the book The Environmental Handbook. Its cover noted that it had been “prepared for the first national environmental teach-in.” Commissioned(委托) by the group Friends of the Earth, the book talked about the threats of rising population and exhaustion of     4     resources- Many of its contributors—let’s call them the Catastrophists―warned that even such actions as halving the number of human beings and stopping economic growth completely might not be enough to prevent the     5     ecological disasters.

A different group of researchers     6     that while economic growth and technological progress had created some ecological problems, these things also would be a source of solutions. Let’s call these folks the Prometheans. The economist Theodore Schultz argued in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists in 1972 that the     7     of modern agriculture would free up more land for nature. Other advocates of this more     8     outlook included the oceanographer Cy Adler, the economist Christopher Freeman, and Nature editor emeritus John Maddox, author of the 1972 book The Doomsday Syndrome.

Today, the Earth Day Network hopes a billion people across the world will participate in Earth Day 2020, where the 50th anniversary     9     will be on man-made climate change. Living as we do in the future that the Catastrophists and the Prometheans (灾变论者与开创者)    10    ,   now is a great time to look back at the claims made five decades ago.

9 . Directions: Read the following passage. Summarize in no more than 60 words the main idea of the passage and how it is illustrated. Use your own words as far as possible.

Shark attacks in U.S. waters—and how common they really are

The first American shark panic began in the hot summer of 1916, when a series of attacks of the Jersey Shore killed four in two weeks. This was thought to be the work of a single great white shark—a species native to the Atlantic coast and the same likely involved in recent attacks. In a time when little was known about beasts from the deep, the deaths were big news. One paper warned that, facing a scarcity of fish, the shark had “probably acquired a taste for human flesh.”

But 1916 did not start a new time of human-hunting sharks. The rate of attacks in the U.S. stayed relatively stable, at two or three per year, for decades. From the 1950s on, that number rose with human population growth, and its attendant increase of people in the water.

Globally, both numbers have been climbing faster since the late 1980s and into the 21st century, but such encounters with sharks are still remarkably uncommon given that the human population is some 7.5 billion. In 2017, 53 of the world’s 88 confirmed attacks took place on U.S. coastlines, with 31 in Florida - but even there, you’re far less likely to be killed by a shark than by lightning. Thanks to beach safety and hospital access, only five of last year’s global attacks were fatal.

“If sharks were actively hunting people, we’d see far more attacks,” says Gavin Naylor, director at the Florida Museum’s Program for Shark Research.

Statistically, sharks have far more to fear from us than we do from them—fisheries wipe out an estimated 100 million each year, and climate change and other human activity have threatened shark habitats, sending their global population into decline. But that doesn’t make it any less sad when the beasts bite back.

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10 . 听下面一段较长对话，回答以下小题。1.

A．To help the man learn more about the gardener.

B．To show the value of taking advice in gardening.

C．To publicize the attractiveness of Dorset Gardens.

D．To inform people of more guidelines for gardening.

2.

A．By attending a college course.	B．By visiting Kew Garden.
C．By listening to talks on gardening.	D．By reading Margery Fisher’s book.

3.

A．It was full of creative angles.	B．It made her famous in the town.
C．It occupied a rather small area.	D．It was near her house in Somerset.

4.

A．Because it’s full of plants given by her friends.

B．Because it’s visited and appreciated by tourists.

C．Because it’s where she spends much time with others.

D．Because it’s an outdoor classroom for biology students.