The oceans can absorb 93 per cent of the heat trapped by the greenhouse gases which humans release into the atmosphere. And the other 7 per cent
“If the ocean wasn’t absorbing as much heat, the surface of the land would heat up much
However, the ocean itself, as Discover Magazine noted, is heating up 40 per cent faster on average than the United Nations
2 . On a boat near Costa Rica, a team of marine biologist is helping a turtle. The animal is having trouble breathing, and the team discovers why—there is something inside its nose. A scientist tries to extract the object, but the turtle cries in pain. Finally after eight long minutes, a long object is pulled out. It is a 10-centimeter plastic straw.
The video of the turtle's rescue has been viewed millions of times on YouTube. It has helped raise awareness of a growing problem: The world's seas are full of plastic. Since 2000, there has been a huge increase worldwide plastic production, but we recycle less than one-fifth of it. A lot of this plastic waste' ends up in the ocean. Today, scientists think about 8.1 billion kilograms goes into the sea every year from costal regions. Most of this plastic will never break into little pieces.
This ocean plastic hurts millions of sea animals every year. Some fish eat plastic because it is covered with sea plants, and it looks and smells like food. “In some cases, eating sharp pieces of plastic can seriously hurt sea animals and even result in death,” says marine biologist Matthew Savoca.
Plastic is useful to people because it is strong and lasts a long time, but this is bad news for sea creatures who eat or get stuck in it. According to Savoca, Single-use plastics are the worst.” These are items that are used only once before we throw them away. Some common examples include straws, water bottles, and plastic bags. About 700 sea species have been caught in or have eaten this kind of plastic. Luckily, the turtle survived and was released back into the ocean. How will plastic affect sea animals in the long term? “I think we’ll know the answers in 5 to 10 years’ time,” says an expert from Columbia University. But by then, another 25 million tons of plastic will already be in the ocean.
1. Which of these questions is answered in Paragraph 1?| A．Where was the scientist from? |
| B．When did the incident take place? |
| C．What was the cause of the turtle's pain? |
| D．How did the scientists remove the object? |
| A．The video. | B．The turtle. | C．YouTube. | D．The Plastic. |
| A．Because sea animals consume plastic. |
| B．Because more plastic is produced than recycled. |
| C．Because plastic can be dissolved in the sea quickly. |
| D．Because other places are already full of plastic waste. |
| A．Single-use plastics are people's favorite. |
| B．Plastic waste can cause deadly damage to sea animals. |
| C．More than 700 sea species can survive the ocean plastic. |
| D．The ocean’s plastic problem will be solved in a decade. |
3 . If you were to throw, say, a banana peel out of your car while driving along the motorway, that would be a completely harmless action, due to the fact that it’s part of a fruit — right? Actually, no. A banana peel can take up to two years to be naturally processed, and with a third of motorists admitting to littering while driving, that’s a whole lot of discarded banana peels. An orange peel and a cigarette butt has a similar biodegrading (生物降解) term to that of a banana peel, but tin cans last up to 100 years; and plastic bottles last forever, as do glass bottles.
Despite the fact that longer-lasting materials will serve to damage the environment and its animals for longer, we can’t merely measure the severity of a certain type of rubbish by its lifetime. For example, despite having a fairly short length of biodegrading time, more than 120 tons of cigarette-related litter is discarded in the UK every day.
It’s not a cheap habit either: to keep our streets clean annually costs UK taxpayers £500 million, and when you include our green spaces, that goes up to £1 billion. So, it’s not surprising that if caught fly-tipping you could face a £20,000 fine or even jail time and, if you disposed of something dangerous, the court could give you five years to serve. Regardless of how severe these punishments might seem, however, among the reported cases only 2,000 were found guilty out of 825,000, so we still have some way to go in making sure people obey the rules.
1. What does the underlined word “discarded” in para1 mean?| A．Harmless. | B．Processed. | C．Thrown. | D．Long-lasting. |
| A．Glass bottles. | B．Tin cans. | C．Cigarette butts. | D．Banana peels. |
| A．The severity of rubbish can be measured by its lifetime. |
| B．Quite a few people were found guilty of illegally littering. |
| C．Every year UK taxpayers spend £500 million keeping streets free of dirt. |
| D．Cigarette-related litter and peels can be ignored for their fairly short lifetime. |
| A．To inform readers of different biodegrading terms. |
| B．To call for people not to litter illegally. |
| C．To encourage people to use fewer plastic bags. |
| D．To stress the importance of good behavior. |
4 . Baggy has become the first dog in the UK—and potentially the world—to join the fight against air pollution by recording pollutant levels near the ground.
Baggy wears a pollution monitor on her collar so she can take data measurements close to the ground. Her monitor has shown that air pollution levels are higher closer to ground level, which has helped highlight concerns that babies and young kids may be at higher risk of developing lung problems.
Conventional air pollution monitors are normally fixed on lampposts at about nine feet in the air. However, since Baggy stands at about the same height as a child in a pushchair（婴儿车）, she frequently records pollution levels which are much higher than the data gathered by the Environment A gency.
The doggy data research was the idea of Baggy's 13-year-old owner Tom Hunt and his dad Matt. The English youngster noticed that pollution levels are around two-thirds higher close to the ground than they are in the air at the height where they are recorded by the agency. Tom has since reported the shocking findings to the government in an attempt to emphasise that babies are at higher risk of developing asthma（哮喘）.
Matt Hunt said he was "very proud" of his son because “when the boy gets an idea, he keeps his head down and gets on with it, and he really does want to do some good and stop young kids from getting asthma."
“Tom built up a passion for environmental protection at a very early age," Matt added. “He became very interested in gadgets（小装置）. About one year ago, he got this new piece of tech which is like a test tube. One Sunday afternoon, we went out to do some monitoring, and he said, why don't we put it on Baggy's collar and let her monitor the pollution？'So we did it."
Tom said, "Most of the time, Baggy is just like any other dog. But for the rest of the time she is a super dog, and we are all really proud of her."
1. With a monitor on her collar, Baggy can ____________.| A．take pollutant readings | B．record pollutant levels |
| C．process collected data | D．reduce air pollution |
| A．High places are free of air pollution. |
| B．Higher pushchairs are more risky for kids. |
| C．Conventional monitors are more reliable. |
| D．Air is more polluted closer to the ground. |
| A．To warn of a health risk. | B．To find out pollution sources. |
| C．To test his new monitor. | D．To prove Baggy's abilities. |
| A．Modest. | B．Generous. | C．Creative. | D．Outgoing. |
1．写邮件的目的；2．垃圾分类的实施情况；3．你对垃圾分类的看法。
注意：1.词数100左右；2．开头和结尾已为你写好，不记入总词数。
参考词汇：垃圾分类garbage classification
Dear Peter,
________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Best wishes!
Yours,
Li Hua
1、汽车带来的问题；
2、骑自行车的益处；
3、你的立场。
参考词汇：低碳的 low-carbon
注意：1.词数：80字左右，开头结尾已给，不计入；
2.可适当增加细节，以使行文连贯。
Good morning, everyone!
I'm Li Hua from Xingguang Middle School.
________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Thanks for your listening!
Olympic and Paralympic medals for the Tokyo 2020 Games will be made from recycled mobile phones donated by the public.
Olympic host cities have
“A project which allows the people of Japan
Collection boxes have been placed in local offices and telecom stores and they will remain there until the metal required
Members of the organizing committee put forward the idea to government officials and companies earlier this year and won their support.
As a result, the medals hanging around Olympic winners’ necks will carry even more meaning
要点：1.简要介绍之前存在的问题；2.具体整改措施及带来的好处。
注意：1.词数100左右；
2.可适当增加细节，以使行文连贯。
Dear Peter,
________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Yours sincerely,
Li Hua
9 . So you think that by staying at home you are safe from all the terrible kinds of pollution present outdoors? Recent research done at the University of Texas has shown that staying indoors may actually be more harmful to one’s health than being outdoors in smoggy cities.
The research shows that chemicals added to our local water supply to kill harmful bacteria can have unwanted side effects. These chemicals can cause potential harm through drinking and in such seemingly harmless activities as cleaning one’s house. These additives are released from water by daily actions like water running out of taps, spraying from garden hoses, or splashing in dishwashers and washing machines. As the water is agitated (搅动), these chemicals are released into the air and then breathed in. Once inside our bodies, they start to affect our health harmfully.
Does this mean we should stop bathing? No, say the scientists, but we should put all pollution into perspective. Activities at home such as the burning of candles and incense release a lot of things which have been proven as harmful to health as working or living near high density traffic. New rugs, bedding, and even clothing give off that “new smell”, which is a sure sign of chemicals. In the office, newly-applied paint, newly-purchased telephones and other telecommunications equipment, and computers and their peripheral (外部设备) release polluting chemicals, too. As offices and homes often have inadequate ventilation (空气流通), these chemicals can build up to become health trouble. Their toxic effects are only now being slowly recognized.
These facts suggest that, at a minimum, proper airing of newly-purchased goods with an obvious chemical smell is a wise precaution. Home and office windows should be opened during good weather to allow a flushing of stale air. Even one’s car needs to be ventilated as well as the garage.
Until we understand the effects of our new technological environment better, we can only hope that “there is no place like home”.
1. According to the text, why is the local water supply unsafe?| A．Because it contains harmful chemicals. |
| B．Because it contains poisonous bacteria. |
| C．Because the activities of using water are harmful. |
| D．Because washing dishes makes the water polluted. |
| A．long-lasting | B．poisonous |
| C．obvious | D．immediate |
| A．Present more detailed information. | B．Summarize the previous paragraphs. |
| C．Introduce a new topic for discussion. | D．Give some advice about the problem. |
| A．Enclosed environment may have potential health risks. |
| B．Staying indoors is actually less risky than going outside. |
| C．Home and office windows should be opened at any time. |
| D．Any use of electronic devices should be banned to prevent pollution. |
10 . On a hot summer weekend, Jorge Ayub saw the public beach north of Boston already crowded with nearly 1 million people drawn to the annual sand sculpture festival. Traffic on the nearby road was heavy, bands played music loudly, and later that night fireworks would light up the beach.
And on the sand were four pairs of tiny shorebirds. These chicks(小鸟) were still too young to fly and a precious addition to the national endeavor to save a bird once down to 139 pairs in Massachusetts. It was Mr. Ayub’s job. “Everyone made it,” Ayub, a coastal ecologist reported at the end of the long weekend over the nests.
Once common, piping plovers(笛鸻) were hunted and then squeezed out of their habitats(栖息地) by coastal development until, in 1986, the federal government listed the Atlantic Coastal birds as threatened. The bird’s recovery has been halting. After three decades, the Atlantic population stands just under the 2,000-pair goal set by federal law.
But the star has been Massachusetts, which has seen plovers increase to 687pairs from 139 pairs in 1986. One reason for that: “chick-sitting” in which conservationists sometimes spend all day watching over the birds.
That progress has made Massachusetts the only East Coast state that decided to relax some Endangered Species Act restrictions: for example, to reduce the fenced-off areas and vehicle limits that have annoyed residents（居民）.
“Look at the stretch(一片土地)，”Anyb says. “We had six nesting pairs between here and that bathhouse 600 yards away. By regulation, each nest should have 100 yards of fencing. We could have put up fencing and closed the beach all the way to the bathhouse.”
Instead, the plovers are surrounded in much smaller areas by “symbolic fencing”. None of the 52 seawall entrances to the beach are closed. “If we put up too much fencing, people will be upset, and they are going to destroy it or walk right through the nesting areas,” Ayub says. “By opening the beach, people are happier and the species does better.”
1. What was Jorge Ayub doing at the beginning of the text?| A．Directing traffic. |
| B．Enjoying fireworks. |
| C．Looking after some birds. |
| D．Watching some bands perform. |
| A．slow | B．Similar |
| C．Important | D．Complete |
| A．It is an important habitat for wildlife. |
| B．It has done well in protecting piping plovers. |
| C．It encourages the residents to keep piping plovers. |
| D．It allows ecologists to test certain species of birds. |
| A．Supportive | B．Disapproving |
| C．Uninterested | D．Doubtful |
