1 . It is natural for us teenagers to feel upset.
•Move your body.
•Talk about it.
•Laugh a lot.
Humour can rescue you from an upset moment or make you feel better when you’re in an unpleasant mood. No matter what’s going on, the ability to laugh at yourself and your situation is really important.
•Cry — it’s okay!
Sometimes the only way to get out of your feelings is to cry — so go ahead! Shut yourself in your room and cry your eyes out! No one says you have to be happy all the time.
A.Why not pack up your suitcase and take a trip? |
B.We can’t say enough good things about exercise. |
C.But still we should find ways to manage our feelings. |
D.So smile at whatever is happening and choose to be happy. |
E.And do you know just smiling can help better your mood? |
F.When you are done, you’ll be ready to face the world again. |
G.Don’t hold in all those feelings until you are ready to explode. |
Socializing with my friends online is my life. The moment I wake
Social networking
It is common that at parties or at a family holiday, most members fix their eyes on their phones,
What is most worrying is that it is
3 . Bred to be more sweeter, today’s cherries, bananas and apples taste different than they used — to but not necessarily better. Among fruit farmers, the word “quality” is now routinely used as a standard for “high in sugar”, though firmness, color and size are also considerations. In a recent study about ways to enhance the sweetness of fruit using “molecular (分子的) approaches”, a group of plant scientists wrote that, in general, the sugar content of many fruits are now higher than before owing to continuous selection and breeding. Modern apple varieties, the scientists stressed, were on average sweeter than older ones.
The sweetness of fruit depends not just on how it is bred but also on growing conditions, yield and harvest. The lead researcher, Sugiura, said, “If you could taste an apple harvested 30 years ago, you would feel the difference.” He believed that modern apples are picked so early that even if they are bred for sweetness, they often don’t develop their full character. The fragrance (香味) never develops in fruit that is harvested too early.
Jim Cooper, an apple farmer in England, is regretful to admit the fact that many people will never taste the “strawberry hint” in a really ripe Pearmain, a type of heritage apple. In a way, the rise of consistently sweeter fruit in our lifetimes has been a victory of plant breeding. After all, it’s a rare person who would seek out bitter grapes if they could have sweet ones instead.
But the sweetness of modern fruit is not without its problems, especially for people with diabetes (糖尿病), who have to reduce their intake of higher-sugar fruits. Fruit that is bred sweeter also tends to be lower in the chemicals that make it healthy. Considering health, maybe the real problem with modern fruit is that it has become yet another sweet thing in a world with sugar. Even grapefruits, which used to be quite bitter, are sometimes now as sweet as oranges. If you’ve never tasted a sour cherry, how can you fully appreciate a sweet one?
1. In what aspect is many fruits different from before?A.Sugar content. | B.Soft skin. | C.Bright color. | D.High yield. |
A.They are bred too early. | B.They taste so sweet. |
C.They are losing a good flavor. | D.They need a higher yield. |
A.Favorable. | B.Critical. | C.Ambiguous. | D.Indifferent. |
A.It’s a wise choice to breed fruits for sweetness. |
B.Breeding sweet fruits improves the quality of fruits. |
C.Some fruits like grapes and cherries taste the same. |
D.The sweetness of fruits will cause health issues. |
4 . In the time before air-conditioning, southern China’s sky wells played a key role in keeping people’s homes cool. Could they do it again today?
A skywell, or “tian jing”, is atypical characteristic of traditional homes in southern and eastern China. Different from a northern Chinese courtyard, or “yuan zi”, a skywell is smaller and less open to the outdoor environment. Its size and design differ from place to place.
Skywells were designed to cool buildings at a time well before air-conditioning existed. When wind blows above a skywell house, it can enter the indoor space through the opening. Because outdoor air is often cooler than indoor air, the incoming wind travels down the walls to the lower stories and create airflows by replacing warmer indoor air, which rises and leaves through the opening.
Although skywell buildings have existed in China for hundreds of years, in recent times they have often been forgotten by people who prefer modern buildings. Over the past two decades, however, skywell buildings have been making a comeback.
Yu Youhong, 55, has spent more than 30 years restoring (修复) skywell homes in Wuyuan county of Jiangxi province, apart of the old Huizhou. One of the skywell homes restored by Yu is in the village of Yan, in Wuyuan county. The deserted 300-year-old house was bought by Edward Gawne, a former marketing director from the UK, and his Chinese wife, Liao Minx in, in 2015. The couple turned the three-storey house into a 14-room hotel with the help of Yu. They kept the spaces surrounding the sky wells in their original state: open and with natural airflow. Gawne says that even without air conditioning the skywell areas are very comfortable in summer.
Yu says he expects sky wells to be more and more popular among younger generations especially as sustainability (可持续性) becomes an important element for new buildings.
1. What do we know about the sky wells?A.They had the same size and design. |
B.They were commonly seen throughout China. |
C.They acted as air-conditioners in the summer. |
D.They were fully open to the outdoors like courtyard. |
A.When sky wells appeared. |
B.What sky wells look like. |
C.Why sky wells are no longer popular. |
D.How sky wells cool buildings. |
A.They enlarged its rooms. |
B.They moved the skywell. |
C.They pulled it down and rebuilt it. |
D.They kept part of its architectural characteristic. |
A.The comeback of sky wells. |
B.An introduction to an expert in sky wells. |
C.The preservation of traditional Chinese architecture. |
D.The influence of modernization on ancient buildings. |
5 . I finally climbed into bed at 1: 20 in the morning. My friends had helped me celebrate my 31st birthday in the basement apartment, where I lived.
Earlier in the day I had prepared for the unlikely event of a flood. We are about a third of a mile from the banks of the Ahr River. It had been raining buckets that week and the government had sent out a flood warning, though not for where I was. Still, I’d placed sandbags on the floor outside my garden door and put electronics on tables. “Silly bro!” My friends laughed at me for doing that, but I thought, why take a chance?
As I drifted off to sleep, I was awakened by the sound of rushing water, as if I were lying beside a waterfall. When I got off the bed, I was shocked that cold water was rising fast. In darkness, I grabbed my cellphone and turned on the flashlight. When I stepped out of the bedroom, I saw water shooting through the gaps of the door.
I began to panic. I knew I had to get out—fast! In bare feet, I started to make my way to the only escape: the door that led upstairs to the main floor. Finally I made it to the door and tried several times to-pull it open even just a little bit, but the rushing water shut it again. I looked around for anything I could use to keep it open. There in the corner was a coat rack (架子). I took it and, once again, opened the door, throwing the coat rack between the door and the frame (门框) to keep the door from shutting. Finally, I managed to make a gap just wide enough to squeeze (挤) through and make it into the hallway.
I leaped on to the stairs and ran outside. I stood there in the darkness, wet through. What was once a lovely street was now a waterscape, with floating ruins instead of people and cars. The river had drowned (淹没) the neighborhood!
1. What does the underlined sentence in paragraph 2imply?A.Better safe than sorry. |
B.It never rains but it pours. |
C.A lost chance never returns. |
D.A friend in need is a friend indeed. |
A.Celebrating his birthday. |
B.Sleeping in the basement. |
C.Placing sandbags by the door. |
D.Playing with electronic devices. |
A.Making his way to the door. |
B.Finding a coat rack. |
C.Keeping the door from shutting. |
D.Squeezing through the gap. |
A.Sad and shocked. |
B.Annoyed and anxious. |
C.Surprised and disappointed. |
D.Puzzled and awkward. |
6 .
Four novels to read this winter | |
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee | This classic novel explores racism in the American South through the eyes of a young girl named Scout Finch and her father, Atticus Finch, a just and sympathetic lawyer. To Kill a Mockingbird earned the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1961 and was made into an Academy Award-winning film in 1962, giving the story and its characters further life and influence over the American social sphere. For more, click here |
One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez | This novel tells the story of the Buendía family over seven generations in the town of Macondo, combining magic realism with the portrayal of Latin American culture and history. The novel won many awards for Márquez, leading the way to his eventual honor of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1982 for his entire body of work, of which One Hundred Years of Solitude is often lauded as his most triumphant. For more, click here |
Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison | This groundbreaking novel delves into the expression of identity for African American males, with the unnamed narrator facing adversity and discrimination as he moves from the South to New York City. The novel is renowned for its surreal and experimental style of writing that explores the symbolism surrounding African American identity and culture. Invisible Man won the U.S. National Book Award for Fiction in 1953. For more, click here |
Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf | This novel describes one day in the life of a British socialite named Clarissa Dalloway, using a stream-of-consciousness style to provide a deeply personal look into the characters’ minds, focusing on their regrets, struggles with mental illness, and the impact of social pressures. The novel’s unique style, subject, and time setting make it one of the most respected and regarded works of all time. For more, click here |
A.Invisible Man. | B.Mrs. Dalloway. |
C.To Kill a Mockingbird. | D.One Hundred Years of Solitude. |
A.The author won the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1982. |
B.The author tells his true family story in this novel. |
C.The author uses a writing style called magic realism. |
D.The author explores the symbolism on African culture. |
A.In a magazine. | B.In a science report. |
C.On a movie poster. | D.On the Internet. |
As darkness falls on Chengiyuan village in northwest China, the spotlight shines on 83-year-old Jing Tingyou as his nightly show begins. The skilled shadow puppet (皮影) master takes center stage behind a white curtain, skillfully
8 . It is late autumn—millions of gardeners across the northern hemisphere, pulled on their thickest sweaters, spent hours clearing large piles of leaves and packed them into plastic bags at the end of driveways.
In the US alone, nearly 10 million tonnes of garden waste go to landfill every year. That is a large amount of effort, not just from an environmental viewpoint but from that of our aching backs, too. So where does this advice come from? Well, it largely comes from the belief that thick fallen leaves can make plants under them unable to breathe, especially shorter grass. They shut down important photosynthesis (光合作用) and get in the way of the growth of the shorter grass. However, this received wisdom has recently been questioned by researchers at Wisconsin University.
The key finding of their new research was that although clearing fallen leaves is one of the most common gardening practices, it makes very little sense. In natural ecosystems, fallen leaves help return nutrients necessary for healthy plant growth to the soil, which greatly improves soil condition. Removing leaves year after year breaks this ecological (生态的) balance. Letting some leaves stick around to cover your garden is a great way to help your grass and the local ecosystem.
They further explained that if up to 50percent of your grass lawn (草坪) is covered by fallen leaves, you might as well go back indoors and put your feet up. The advantages of this light leaf coverage far outweigh the disadvantages—the leaves will quickly break down and help next year’s lawn grow far better than if you had cleared them. Only at over 50 percent coverage do the Wisconsin researchers recommend clearing.
So why not consider leaving the leaves? Save time, carbon and effort, and in exchange get a healthier lawn from this garden waste—that seems like a pretty good deal. And how many plastic bags could be saved by simply not binning fallen leaves every year? In the US alone, about 700 million.
1. What does the author describe in paragraph 1?A.An amazing autumn game. | B.A common sight in gardens. |
C.A hot attraction in the north. | D.An extreme weather event. |
A.Fallen leaves need not be cleared. |
B.Fallen leaves protect shorter grass. |
C.Fallen leaves block photosynthesis. |
D.Fallen leaves are hard to break down. |
A.it ruins city image | B.it breaks gardening rules |
C.it affects local economy | D.it causes ecological damage |
A.Doubtful. | B.Positive. | C.Unclear. | D.Worried. |
1. How does the man feel about flying?
A.Excited. | B.Bored. | C.Scared. |
A.The man. | B.The woman. | C.Neither of the speakers. |
A.It’s unpleasant and inconvenient. |
B.It’s great to see the scenery. |
C.It’s exciting to meet other passengers. |
A.The plane. | B.The train. | C.The car. |
Earthquake in northwestern China kills at least 118 people
An overnight earthquake killed at least 118 people in a cold and mountainous region in northwestern China,
The magnitude 6.2 earthquake struck in Gansu at a relatively shallow
By mid-morning, 105 people had been confirmed dead in Gansu and another 397 injured, including sixteen people
The earthquake
The rescue work was proceeding in