1 . An earthquake can strike without warning. But many injuries and deaths from this kind of natural disaster can be prevented if people follow these safety tips.
If you’re inside a building, stay there! One of the most dangerous things to do in an earthquake is to try to leave a building.
If you are trapped in the ruins, cover your mouth with a handkerchief or a piece of clothing. Use your cellphone to call for help if possible. Don’t shout.
Be prepared for aftershocks
| A．Don’t move about or kick up dost. |
| B．If you’re outside, go to an open space. |
| C．Shouting can cause you to breathe in dust. |
| D．Don’t park your car under a tree or any tall object. |
| E．Take a good hold of your cellphone in the building. |
| F．They can happen in the first hours after the earthquake. |
| G．Most injuries happen when people inside buildings try to get out. |
2 . As we all know, environmental pollution is still serious nowadays. Our group wanted to know how many students knew about each kind of the pollution and we wanted to learn how often they sorted rubbish. So we did a survey among the students in our school. Here are the results of our questionnaire (问卷).
The results of the questionnaire
1. The survey is mainly about ______.
| A．scientific research | B．environmental protection |
| C．everyday habits | D．physical education |
| A．All of the students | B．Most of the students |
| C．Some of the students | D．None of the students |
| A．Five kinds of environmental pollution are mentioned in the questionnaire. |
| B．The students don’t realize the situation of the environment at all. |
| C．Most students take enough action to sort rubbish. |
| D．Air pollution is noticed by a large number of students. |
3 . Sunflowers have increasingly become popular on social media. People enjoy the bright yellow flowers and take pictures of themselves in bright fields of sunflowers, which are called “sunflower selfies.”
Actually, it is easy to grow your own sunflowers. Here are some instructions.
Do you want to start growing sunflowers from seeds?
Then, plant each seed into soil apart. Keep the soil wet, but not too wet, until the seeds begin to grow. During the growth process, you should water regularly the plants. When they grow up, it is best to put up some shelves to protect the plants from strong winds.
When seeds will start coming out of the head, it is time for harvest. Cut the flowers off and put them into a bag or container. In this way, the seeds will not fall out. Then remove the seeds by rubbing flowers with your hands or a hard brush over a container.
Finally, you’d better select those full seeds for food.
| A．Equally attractive is the delicious taste. |
| B．Sunflower seeds may be eaten cooked or uncooked. |
| C．You can also tie the plants to something tall for support. |
| D．Some kinds of sunflowers can grow up to three meters tall. |
| E．It is important to loosen the soil before the seeds are planted. |
| F．Put the selected seeds in room-temperature water for 2-8 hours. |
| G．They will develop long roots that work their way deep into the ground. |
1. Why must trees be planted according to the talk?
| A．To improve farms. | B．To replace desert. | C．To fight climate change. |
| A．4%. | B．13%. | C．17%. |
| A．Farmers’. | B．Scientists’. | C．Business experts’. |
5 . More than half of the food produced in Canada goes to waste. A shocking new study has shown that the level of food waste is far worse than previously thought, at 58%. Of that, about 85% of food waste is due to food processors. This differs from earlier studies, which criticized families for driving food waste and said they were responsible for 51% of food waste.
The study was carried out by Martin Hooch, the leading expert on food waste and the author of several previous studies on the subject. Reflecting on the study’s findings, Hooch said, “It means stopping criticizing consumers. Sure, consumers are part of the problem, but they’re not the problem.”
In the past, Hooch didn’t master good data, particularly from the private factories, but relied on numbers collected by the food industry for purposes other than tracking waste. This time, however, Hooch worked directly with companies at all stages along the food production chain and interviewed over 700 experts in the industry. Clearly he found it hard to believe what he was seeing.
This is what they found: Food processing causes 34% of food waste. This is followed by production, which causes 24%. Next is manufacturing at 13%, then hotels and restaurants at 9%. Families cause only 14%, and market sales 6%. This should be a scrious wake-up call for Canadians who would do well to examine their own food supply chains. Food waste is costly, not only in terms of dollars wasted, but also in resources like land, water, and so on. To be using these resources and wasting the product is totally irresponsible and unnecessary.
To make matters worse, when food is thrown into rubbish cans, it produces methane, a greenhouse gas 30 times more powerful than carbon dioxide (CO2). At Canada’s rate of food waste, that’s like adding 12 million cars to the road. It seems that the food industry needs redesigning. Therefore, let’s hope the government takes action.
1. What did earlier studies say about food waste in Canada?| A．Families were to blame for food waste. | B．Food went bad when it was processed. |
| C．Most of the food was wasted on purpose. | D．Food waste was better than expected. |
| A．By studying data from the industry. | B．By drawing a conclusion from the previous studies. |
| C．By collecting advice from experts worldwide. | D．By tracking the whole production chain. |
| A．Because it is harmful to the trees. | B．Because it produces more greenhouse gas. |
| C．Because it gives off unpleasant smells. | D．Because it pollutes the soil around it. |
| A．Canadians don’t like to save food for future. |
| B．Families are mainly responsible for food waste. |
| C．More than half of the food is wasted in Canada. |
| D．The food industry is better redesigned in Canada. |
6 . For the past few years, I’ve taken my vacation in the spring. One April I planned to visit a friend in Nepal who had lived in the country for over 15 years.
I flew into Kathmandu and spent a week visiting sites, and on Friday, April24, 2015, we went to Lukla, a mountain town to the northeast. My friend had worked there before. We visited a nearby village on Saturday. We were served a delicious pancake and endless cups of milk tea; villagers made small talk and caught up with each other. After a couple of hours, my friend and I made a polite exit(离去) for a coffee break across the dirt path to our lodging, a house he had lived in while working in Lukla years ago.
As we sat in the kitchen taking a rest, I wondered why it felt like an underground was running under the village. As the sound started to shake, I looked out the window at the passers-by and thought it felt like a truck was driving by-impossible in this village. I looked at my friend and he said off-handedly: “It’s an earthquake.” Before I could ask questions, he began shouting to get out of the house.By the time I was running down the dirt path, I couldn’t run straight.
Away from buildings, we lowered our bodies near a low wall, and unbelievably before our eyes, walls and buildings fell. In front of us the end wall of the house we slept in collapsed(倒塌), the stones dislodging(移开)and falling to the ground. In a matter of seconds, every house in the village was damaged(损坏), with walls either seriously cracked(破裂), or partially or completely damaged.
In the days and weeks that followed we checked in with friends and shared stories of where we were and what we were doing. The event was so wide-reaching that it was difficult to understand except through personal stories.
1. What did the author do in Nepal?| A．He visited his friend. | B．He tried to look for a job. |
| C．He built a house for villagers. | D．He moved to a village to enjoy life. |
| A．Shy. | B．Bored. | C．Friendly. | D．Humorous. |
| A．He was injured by a collapsed wall. | B．An earthquake struck the village. |
| C．A truck drove by the village | D．He missed the train. |
| A．It was left empty. | B．It was quite peaceful. |
| C．It was badly damaged. | D．It was attractive to visitors. |
7 . As most parts of the country enter the summer flood season, weather events will again put the country’s disaster preparedness to test.
Some areas in the south of the country are experiencing what the National Meteorological Center calls the strongest rainfall in 60 years. Other parts of northwestern and central China, as well as the Yellow and Huaihe river valleys, have been under the control of heat waves.
On Sunday, the Ministry of Water Resources and the China Meteorological Administration issued the year’s first red alert for flash floods. On Monday, the National Meteorological Center sustained red alerts for high temperatures, yellow alerts for storms and fog, and blue alerts for severe convective (对流) weather.
According to experts, this round of strong rainfall will be long-lasting, wide-ranging and of very strong intensity (强度) in some areas. The waters in 75 rivers across the country have already risen above the warning levels.
As the lessons from the past few years have taught us, climate change has considerably increased the frequency, intensity and damaging potential of extreme weather events. And, most worrisome of all, their severity has frequently made people victims before they know it.
The upsetting potential of severe weather would still be beyond most people’s imagination had it not been the 2021 floods in Zhengzhou, capital of Henan province. It exposed the consequences of poor urban planning, inadequate drainage systems, inactive disaster preparedness and slow emergency responses.
The importance of multi-hazard early warning systems and natural disaster response preparedness was highlighted in the sixth Assessment Report that the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released in August 2021.
The report provided evidence that extreme hydrometeorological events, such as droughts, floods and heat waves, are increasing as is the severity of their impacts on everyday life around the globe as well as harming fragile ecosystems. It concludes that climate change is widespread, rapid and intensifying, and extreme weather will become more frequent.
1. Why were alerts of different levels issued?| A．To stress the severity of the rainfall? |
| B．To take advantage of the water resources. |
| C．To receive the public’s favourable response. |
| D．To warn people against bad weather conditions. |
| A．People’s unawareness. | B．Climate change. |
| C．Frequent weather events. | D．Rising dire levels. |
| A．To remind people of the terrible disaster. |
| B．To stress the importance of preparedness. |
| C．To make a comparison between disasters. |
| D．To expose people’s lack of imagination. |
| A．How to change the existing climate. |
| B．How to research extreme weather. |
| C．How to make accurate predictions. |
| D．How to get prepared for disasters. |
8 . Shocking declines in bird populations are taking place around the world. Loss of natural habitats is cited as the key threat to bird biodiversity. Climate change is identified as a possible driver of bird population declines.
“We are now witnessing the first signs of a new wave of extinctions of continentally distributed bird species,” says lead author Alexander Lees, senior lecturer at Manchester Metropolitan University in the United Kingdom. “Bird diversity peaks globally in the tropics and it is there that we also find the highest number of threatened species.”
The study says about 48% of existing bird species worldwide are known or suspected to be undergoing population declines. Populations are stable for 39% of species. Only 6% are showing increasing population trends, and the status of 7% is still unknown. The study authors reviewed changes in bird biodiversity using data from the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s “Red List” to reveal population changes among the world’s 11,000 bird species, The findings mirror the results of a 2019 study which determined that nearly 3 billion breeding birds have been lost during the past 50 years across the United States and Canada.
Despite their findings, study authors say there is hope for bird conservation efforts, but transformative change is needed. “The fate of bird populations is strongly dependent on stopping the loss of habitats,” says Lees. “That is often driven by demand for resources. We need to better consider how commodity (货物) flows can contribute to biodiversity loss and try to reduce the human footprint on the natural world.”
“Fortunately, the global network of bird conservation organizations taking part in this study have the tools to prevent further loss of bird species and abundance,” adds Rosenberg. “From land protection to policies supporting sustainable resource-use, it all depends on the will of governments to live side by side with nature on our shared planet.”
1. What’s the main cause of bird extinction?| A．Significant climate change. | B．Destruction of their habitats |
| C．Human’s overuse of wetland. | D．A new wave of bird immigration. |
| A．By listing concrete data. | B．By providing examples. |
| C．By interviewing-people. | D．By explaining concepts. |
| A．Relevant education. | B．Government policies. |
| C．Environmental activities. | D．Conservation organizations. |
| A．Roles of conservation organizations. |
| B．Diversity of global bird species. |
| C．Hope for environmental protection |
| D．Decline of global bird population. |
9 . The Pacific island of Tonga was struck by huge volcanic explosion on January 15, 2022, which was followed by a tsunami (海啸) that flooded the regions of the capital, Nuku’alofa. Witnesses reported ash was falling over the capital, and social media images showed water flooding into a church and many residences. Local residents had to flee to higher ground when the tsunami warning was issued.
The capital of Tonga is around 65 kilometers north of the volcano. The volcano’s plumes of gas, smoke, and ash extended 20 kilometers into the sky, according to Tonga Geological Services. According to authorities in Suva, the eight-minute eruption was so powerful that it could be heard as “loud thunder sounds” more than 500 miles away. Storm waves have been predicted in New Zealand, which is more than 2,300 kilometers away from Tonga.
Internet and phone lines went down after the violent volcanic eruption, leaving the 105,000 residents on the islands almost uncontactable. All communication to the outside world in Tonga was affected due to damage to the undersea cable (电缆). Digicel, a Jamaican phone company that partly owns the Tonga Cable System, said that it might take 24 hours to restore the important communications link before it could provide an update on work. The company said it was working urgently with local authorities to “resolve the damage”, adding that its domestic (国内的) mobile phone towers were operating across the main island of Tongatapu.
New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said that the New Zealand government has made an initial sum of 340,000 dollars available to provide assistance to Tonga. An Australian Air Force P8 Poseidon aircraft also reached Tonga on January 17. Meanwhile, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson said that China is closely watching the volcanic eruptions and the disasters including tsunami and volcanic ash in Tonga, and stands ready to provide every possible support and assistance at Tonga’s request.
1. What was the influence of the tsunami?| A．The huge volcanic explosion struck Tonga. |
| B．Local residents were forced to move away. |
| C．The capital of Tonga was completely flooded. |
| D．Many churches and residents were flooded away. |
| A．The reason for the volcanic explosion. |
| B．The enormous losses caused by the flood. |
| C．The serious air pollution due to volcanic ash. |
| D．The widespread effect of the volcanic eruption. |
| A．In total confusion. | B．In great danger. |
| C．Out of sight. | D．Out of touch. |
| A．Support from different countries is around the corner. |
| B．The way of predicting natural disasters needs improving. |
| C．Post-disaster reconstruction faces many difficulties. |
| D．Volcanic eruptions have a great effect on global climate. |
10 . Human has only one home — the Earth. But it isn’t just ours. We share our beautiful planet with millions of other species, and our living is closely connected with theirs. For the sake of all living things, we must make sure that the earth is a healthy planet. However, to truly safeguard nature for the future, we need to see wide and fast changes. In particular,
First, it is important to strengthen the connection between how we deal with biodiversity (生物多样性) protection and climate change. The ecosystems that climate change is damaging not only provide living places for wildlife,
Second, it is valuable to provide enough money for biodiversity protection.
Third, it is of great value for private business to take part in environmental protection. Without its money,
Finally,
| A．but they also take in greenhouse gases as carbon sinks |
| B．there are several areas where it is important for us to advance progress |
| C．We should work together to face the challenges of climate change |
| D．it is necessary to recognize the importance of international efforts |
| E．it is very important to take action to protect our beautiful planet |
| F．it will be much more difficult to keep biodiversity for generations |
| G．We need up to $824 billion every year to keep biodiversity. |
