1 . An argument will break down if one of the premises is not true or if the conclusion does not logically follow from them. For example, consider this argument:
The deer population in our state should be preserved. During the hunting season hundreds of deer are killed. Therefore, the hunting season should be discontinued.
To challenge this argument, the state’s wildlife commission might agree with both the major and minor premises but question whether the conclusion follows logically from them. True, the deer population should be preserved; true, deer are killed during the hunting season. However, in a state where deer have no natural enemies, herds become too large for the natural forest vegetation to support them. The overpopulated herds eat the leaves of the young trees, killing the trees, before dying of starvation themselves. The commission might conclude, therefore, that a limited hunting season helps preserve a healthier and more stable population of deer.
People who already agree with you need no persuasion, although a well-argued case for their own point of view is always welcome. But indifferent and doubting people will tend to resist your argument because they have minds of their own. To convince them, you will need to refute(驳斥)opposing arguments.
To give up a position that seems reasonable, the arguer has to see that there is an even more reasonable one. In addition to presenting your own case, review the chief arguments of the other side and explain what you think is wrong with them.
It is the best way to deal with the other side. Often it is useful to summarize the opposing position. Sometimes a better plan is to anticipate objections as you develop your detailed reasons for your argument. Wherever you decide to deal with opposing arguments, do your best to refute them.
As you refute opposition arguments, try to establish common ground with readers who at first do not agree with your views. If you can show that you share their values, they may be able to switch to your position without giving up what they feel is important. For example, to persuade people emotionally opposed to shooting helpless deer, a state wildlife commission would have to show that it too cares about preserving deer and does not want them to die needlessly. Having established these values in common, the commission might be able to persuade people that a carefully controlled hunting season is good for the deer population because it prevents starvation caused by over-population. However, if those opposed to hunting want to persuade the commission to ban the hunting season, they would need to show that the commission could achieve its goals by some other means, such as expanding the deer preserve or allowing the deer and the food supply to come into a natural balance.
1. What does the underlined word premises mean in the first paragraph?| A．establishments | B．commercials |
| C．assumptions | D．prejudices |
| A．have the hunting season | B．make the hunters happy |
| C．protect the rest of the herds | D．create their natural enemies |
| A．present your case first | B．summarize the position of the other side |
| C．review your own views | D．pretend to be indifferent |
| A．One may give up a position when he sees a more reasonable one. |
| B．You’d better anticipate the possible objections before you give your reasons |
| C．Deer should be preserved but overpopulation will do harm to them. |
| D．Those opposed to hunting don’t have good reasons |
2 . Colorado; a place we usually associate with snow-capped mountains and green grassy meadows, winter skiing, and kayaking in its clear, mirror-like lakes. But did you know the state is also home to a 30-square-mile sand dune (沙丘) field?
Nestled on the eastern edge of the San Luis Valley, and beside the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, this fantastic landscape features dunes that are up to 750 feet high and are perfect for hiking, camping, and photo opportunities.
The tallest sand dunes in North America are situated in the diverse landscape of wetlands, forests, mountainous lakes, tundra, and grasslands — providing a patchwork of color. Great Sand Dunes National Park and Preserve is so unusual and unique, in fact, that it is a protected landscape under the International Union for Conservation of Nature.
The four main components of the sand dune system are the mountain watershed, the dune field itself, the sand sheet — a flat plot of sand with large grains — and the sabkha — a coastal mudflat or sandflat. The dunes were formed over tens of thousands of years by sediments (沉积物) from the surrounding mountains that filled the valley. In addition, as the lakes in the valley retreated, exposed sand was blown by the winds, resulting in dunes.
The park was originally labelled a protected area back in 1932, by President Hoover, after fears of gold mining or concrete manufacturing alarmed residents of the nearby Alamosa and Monte Vista cities, who then petitioned Congress asking for protection. The area was eventually upgraded from a national monument to a national park and preserve in 2004.
It contains a mind-boggling 1.2 cubic miles — or 5 billion cubic meters — of sand. Evidence of human habitation, however, dates back to 11,000 years, with the first historic peoples to inhabit the region being the Southern Ute Tribes.
Now, visitors have numerous activities to enjoy — from sandboarding and sand sledding to four-wheel driving. But the best adventure comes at nightfall; the adventurous can backpack over sand dunes to pitch a tent and enjoy the stunning starry night skies when the sun goes down. (Although backpackers will need a permit and can be required at the visitor’s center.) The park’s elevation at 8.200ft and rural location makes it a favorite with dark sky stargazers, with park officials offering special astronomy programs from May to September.
Overnighters can bask in the still silence, indulge in this remote, isolated region of the county, and be soothed to sleep by the wind whistling through the dunes. If you want to camp out, but backcountry isn’t your style, Piñon Flats Cam pground is nearby and run by the National Park Service, with 44 sites that are first-come, first-served, with a further 44 sites that can be reserved.
By day, tourists can hike to the summit of Star Dune, the tallest dune in the park, while Crestone Needle, Cleveland Peak, and Mount Herard also offer challenging elevation climbs.
And, as the park also offers special sand wheelchairs (it’s recommended to reserve one in advance), everyone can enjoy this stunning, once-in-a-lifetime experience in the sand dunes of Colorado.
1. Dunes came into being due to the fact that ________ .| A．lakes in the valleys were blown dry due to the climate change in history |
| B．human overexploitation of resources drained the water in the valley |
| C．thousands of years of deposits from mountains filled the valley |
| D．deposits from mountains and wind blow on the drained lakes played a common role |
| A．President Hoover urged people to have a place for hiking and camping as a restoration |
| B．The locals were deeply concerned about the consequences of gold mining on the environment |
| C．Residents of the nearby Alamosa and Monte Vista cities were too obsessed with gold mining |
| D．President Hoover wanted to keep the tallest dunes in the area as a world record |
| A．the sand field features its dunes that are up to 750 feet high, a record in the world |
| B．according to the Southern Ute Tribes, their ancestors had already inhabited in the sand dune field 11,000 years ago |
| C．the park’s location and height make it unique for stargazers to observe the night skies |
| D．88 sites for camping are available for tourists in sand dunes area, with advanced reservation required |
| A．A Fantastic Place for Stargazers | B．President Hoover’s Decision |
| C．Camping on the Dunes | D．Exploitation on Dunes |
3 . The Ebro Delta, in Spain, famous as a battleground during the Spanish Civil War, is now the setting for a different contest, one that is making rice farmers fight against two enemies: the rice-eating giant apple snail, and rising sea levels. What happens here will have a bearing on the future of European rice production and the overall health of southern European wetlands.
Located on the Mediterranean, just two hours south of Barcelona, the Ebro Delta produces 120 million kilograms of rice a year, making it one of the continent’s most important rice-growing areas. As the sea creeps into these fresh-water marshes, however, rising salinity (盐度) is hurting rice production. At the same time, this sea-water also kills off the greedy giant apple snail, an introduced pest that feeds on young rice plants. The most promising strategy has become to play one enemy off against the other.
The battle is currently being waged on land, in greenhouses at the University of Barcelona. Scientists working under the banner “Project Neurice” are seeking varieties of rice that can withstand the increasing salinity without losing the absorbency that makes European rice ideal for traditional Spanish and Italian dishes.
“The project has two sides,” says Xavier Serrat, Neurice project manager and researcher at the University of Barcelona, “the short-term fight against the snail, and a mid- to long-term fight against climate change. But the snail has given the project greater urgency.”
Originally from South America, the snails were accidentally introduced into the Ebro Delta by Global Aquatic Technologies, a company that raised the snails for fresh-water aquariums (水族馆) but failed to prevent their escape. For now, the giant apple snail’s presence in Europe is limited to the Ebro Delta. But the snail continues its march to new territory, says Serrat. “The question is not whether it will reach other rice-growing areas of Europe, but when.”
Over the next year and a half investigators will test the various strains of salt tolerant rice they’ve bred. In 2018, farmers will plant the varieties with the most promise in the Ebro Delta and Europe’s other two main rice-growing regions along the Po in Italy, and France’s Rhone. A season in the field will help determine which, if any, of the varieties are ready for commercialization.
As an EU-funded effort, the search for salt-tolerant varieties of rice is taking place in all three countries. Each team is crossbreeding a local European short-grain rice with a long-grain Asian variety that carries the salt resistant gene. The scientists are breeding successive generations to arrive at varieties that incorporate salt tolerance but retain about 97 percent of the European rice genome (基因组).
1. Why does the author mention the Spanish Civil War at the beginning of the passage?| A．It has great impact on the lives of Spanish rice farmers. |
| B．It is of great significance in the records of Spanish history. |
| C．Rice farmers there are engaged in another kind of battle of similar importance. |
| D．Rice farmers there are experiencing the hardships of wartime. |
| A．Striking the weaker enemy first. | B．Killing two birds with one stone. |
| C．Eliminating the enemy one by one. | D．Using one evil to fight against the other. |
| A．It can survive only on southern European wetlands. |
| B．It will invade other rice-growing regions of Europe. |
| C．It multiplies at a speed beyond human imagination. |
| D．It was introduced into the rice fields on purpose. |
| A．Cultivating ideal salt-resistant rice varieties. |
| B．Increasing the absorbency of the Spanish rice. |
| C．Introducing Spanish rice to the rest of Europe. |
| D．Popularizing the rice crossbreeding technology. |
Children Raised in Greener Areas Have Higher IQ
Growing up in a greener urban environment boosts children’s intelligence and lowers levels of difficult behaviour, a study has found.
The analysis of more than 600 children aged 10 to 15 showed that a 3% increase in the greenness of their neighborhood raised their IQ score
There is already significant evidence for green spaces’ effects on improving various aspects of children’s cognitive development but this is the first research
The increase in IQ points was particularly significant for those children at the lower end of the spectrum,
“Evidence has built up over time
“
The study, published in the journal Plos Medicine, used satellite images to measure the level of greenness in neighborhoods, including parks, gardens, street trees and all other vegetation.
The average IQ score was 105 but the scientists found 4% of children in areas with low levels of greenery scored below 80,
The benefits of more greenery
Behavioral difficulties such as poor attention and aggressiveness were also measured in the children
5 . The colours of beautiful feathers are often borrowed. Flamingos, for example, owe their pinkness to chemicals called carotenoids that are made by bacteria known (confusingly) as blue-green algae. The birds, when feeding, both ingest these bacteria directly and consume small crustaceans (甲壳纲动物) that themselves live on such bacteria､Blue-footed boobies obtain their eponymous colour similarly, via the fish they eat.
Carotenoids, though, are dual-use molecules. Besides giving these birds colours, they also help to stimulate the immune system. If a bird has some health issues, its immune system will thus use up some of its carotenoid stock defending against these interlopers, and its colour will suffer. If it is in good shape, by contrast, most of the carotenoids it consumes will be used to create colour. This is a difference that potential mates notice and act on, as dozens of experiments have proved. But a study just published in Naturwissenschaften has gone beyond these observations and shown that bright feather is also an indicator of a healthy digestive system.
Wild animals live in a world of constant food scarcity. Squeezing every last calorie and nutrient molecule from what they eat is crucial to their survival. Since carotenoids are obtained as part of this digestive process. Tuul Sepp of Arizona State University and her colleagues wondered if feather brilliance might therefore be a reliable signal of the efficiency with which a bird draws goodness from its food.
To assess that she turned to a test called the “acid steatocrit”. This involves collecting an animal’s faeces(排泄物) mixing them with perchloric acid to liberate the fat molecules within, centrifuging(使离心) the mixture and then measuring the thickness of the fatty layer which has accumulated at the top. The thinner this layer, the more efficiently the animal in question has been digesting any fats it has eaten. Since most carotenoids are bound to fatty molecules called lipoproteins, Dr Sepp reasoned that those birds which the test suggests are collecting fats efficiently from their food will also be brightly coloured.
To investigate this idea, she and her colleagues collected 36 male house finches—birds known for having brilliant red breasts. They photographed their captives and held them in cages for a short time, in order to collect some faeces from each. They then ran the images of the birds ‘breasts through a computer to analyse how red they were, and studied a sample of each bird’s faeces using the acid stratocrat test.
The result was that there is indeed a correlation between the brilliance of a bird’s breast and the efficiency of its fat digestion. If Dr Sepp’s computer can see this, it seems likely female house finches can, too—and will thus have yet another reason to pick the mates with the prettiest feathers.
1. By “The colours of beautiful feathers are often borrowed” the writer means that ________.| A．the colour of birds’ feathers fades with age |
| B．birds prefer to eat food that look colourful |
| C．birds’ feathers get colour after they are born |
| D．the colours of birds’ feathers are a sign of disease |
| A．more carotenoid is consumed to create colour |
| B．their immune system produces more carotenoid |
| C．they are more likely to defend against certain disease |
| D．their potential mates are more likely to see bright colours |
| A．have a less strong digestive system |
| B．appeal less to female house finches |
| C．are more able to separate fatty molecules |
| D．digest fat collected from food more efficiently |
| A．Female birds choose mates based on their act. |
| B．Birds with poor digestion are literally off colour. |
| C．Faeces are a useful indicator of birds’ immune system. |
| D．How efficiently birds process food remains to be studied. |
91. The Problem of Packaging
A large source of rubbish is packaging material. It often makes up more than 30 percent of the total. To understand why this is true, think of the packaging commonly used for a simple product, such as toothpaste. The packaging includes not only the tube for the toothpaste, but also the box for the tube. This box is put into a plastic wrapper. Then, the boxes are transported in a cardboard container.
Most packaging material ends up in a landfill after it is thrown away. Though necessary, landfills take up valuable space, often stink, and can leak harmful substances into the soil. Landfills not included, the production of packaging material itself is a major source of air and water pollution.
People are now trying to solve the problems caused by packaging materials. In 1991, Germany took the lead by requiring companies to recycle the packaging used for their goods. To do this, the companies set up recycling bins in every neighborhood. Consumers now separate their rubbish into three categories—metal, plastic and paper cartons. They then put it into the appropriate bin. The rubbish sorted, it is transported to recycling company for processing.
The programme worked well at first. However, the amount of rubbish has begun to increase again. One reason for this is that many consumers no longer reduce waste because they think the problem is solved. It seems that to properly deal with the problem of rubbish, everyone must remain alert and do their part.
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Quake Strikes Chile
On the night of February 27, an 8.8 magnitude earthquake struck in Chile, damaging over 500,000 homes and killing more than 800 people.
The earthquake released much more energy than the one that devastated Haiti in January (Richter scale: 7.0), but left 200 times fewer fatalities – the death toll in Haiti has topped 230,000.
To say that Santiago looks far better today than Port-au-Prince is
One answer is that the Haitian quake had a shallow hypocenter. The earthquake near Port-au-Prince, the capital of Haiti, was only about 15km below the surface,
There was also an element of chance. So much depends on what time of a day an earthquake happens.
“In Chile, a lot of car parks collapsed, but there was nobody in them because it was the middle of the night,” David Galloway, a seismologist (地震学家) at the British Geological Survey, told AFP.
On the other hand, the earthquake in Haiti happened in the afternoon
But the deadly destruction and huge loss of life in January cannot only
“The quality of construction and building codes in Haiti were obviously not as strong as
Chile had regulations in place
Haiti, by contrast, the poorest country in the Latin America, has no building codes
Also, Chile’s government is far
No one ever expects an earthquake, and in that sense it’s always a piece of bad luck,
8 . The East African country of Kenya has been at the forefront of the global war on plastic since 2017, when officials banned plastic bags. In June 2020, the government
The material engineer’s search to find a(n)
She says, “I wanted to use my education in applied physics and material engineering to do something about the problem of plastic waste pollution. But I was very
Her company, Gjenge Makers, now hires 112 people and produces over 1,500 bricks a day. The pavers（铺路材料） are made using a mix of plastic products that cannot be reprocessed or recycled. The polymer is obtained
The collected plastic is
Matee, who was recently
| A．modified | B．glorified | C．intensified | D．justified |
| A．barely | B．nearly | C．mildly | D．equally |
| A．leaked | B．turned | C．loaded | D．dumped |
| A．modes | B．heaps | C．ports | D．mills |
| A．personal | B．orderly | C．feasible | D．adjustable |
| A．remind | B．convince | C．assure | D．direct |
| A．get off | B．show off | C．give up | D．put out |
| A．clear | B．fair | C．bold | D．mature |
| A．enclosing | B．distributing | C．channelling | D．reversing |
| A．distantly | B．openly | C．secretly | D．directly |
| A．replaced | B．mixed | C．equipped | D．fixed |
| A．reforming | B．recovering | C．resulting | D．recording |
| A．recognized | B．criticized | C．claimed | D．defended |
| A．level | B．grant | C．diploma | D．honour |
| A．employment | B．experiment | C．entertainment | D．investment |
| A．Finland. | B．Egypt. | C．Mexico. | D．Zambia. |
10 . As the arc of coronavirus misery rose in 2020, a hopeful development on another dangerous curve may have escaped your attention. The curve tracking the rise of global carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from energy use went totally flat in 2019, according to a report released in February by the International Energy Agency (IEA). Another international report found very slight growth in global emissions during the same time span, compared with prior years.
Either way, this flattening happened before COVID-19 temporarily hampered economic activity and carbon output. So, the promising CO2 trend stems from other factors: plunging use of coal in many economies and gains in renewable energy, according to the IEA report. “We’re flattening the curve, which is the first step toward bending it downward,” says Michael Mann, a climate scientist at Penn State.
Pending final numbers, we’ll likely see actual reductions in CO2 emissions in 2020, “partly but not entirely due to the pandemic,” Mann says. “Perhaps even more significantly, we know that the flattening of carbon emissions is tied to the transition away from fossil fuel burning and toward renewable energy.”
That’s a structural change, and the shift has been accelerating. Mann predicts the final emissions report for 2020 will show a drop of about 5 percent. But that won’t thwart dangerous climate impacts in our future. “The problem is that we need further reductions by the same amount, year after year, for the next decade and beyond,” he says. The goal is to keep Earth from warming an average of 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit, which is projected to cause deadly heat waves, debilitating droughts and stronger storms. In fact, 2020 was on track to be one of the hottest years on record, according to Gavin Schmidt, director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies.
Also, despite this emissions curve flattening in 2019, and likely decreasing in 2020, the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere still reached a new high in 2020, and will continue to rise. Like a bathtub overflowing until the tap is shut off completely, CO2 levels will not stop rising until emissions are driven down to zero—either that, or until emissions are drastically slowed while CO2 is actually removed from the atmosphere.
Pieter Tans, a scientist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, says he now sees “a golden opportunity to provide much-needed jobs by working on the energy transition.” To seize that opportunity, he says we must embrace this idea: “We humans are really in charge of, and responsible for, our own future, which includes the health of our planet.”
1. What do we learn about the current curve of CO2?| A．It wasn’t until Covid19 hit the economy that the curve flattened. |
| B．The flattening of the curve was as hopeful as the rise of the arc of COVID-19. |
| C．The flat curve means that we’re one step closer to bringing down CO2 emissions. |
| D．People in the economic fields used less coal, which contributed to the flat curve. |
| A．prevent | B．shield | C．oppress | D．fuel |
| A．If carbon emissions drops by 5% year after year, there will be no natural disasters like heat waves, droughts and storms. |
| B．If we shut off the tap of the bathtub overflowing with water, the carbon emissions are likely to drop to zero. |
| C．To protect our planet is to protect our future, a notion commonly identified with by humans. |
| D．The pandemic is not all bad in that it actually serves as a critical time for humans to make energy transition. |
| A．The development of the CO2 curve in human history |
| B．Pandemic, a golden chance for energy transition |
| C．A glimmer of hope for global emissions |
| D．Our determination to prevent CO2 emissions from rising |
