An Outdoor Trip That Speaks Louder Than A Regular Class
One day, as Jack, a science teacher, stressed the pressing need for protecting Tangerine Darters, a kind of fish, students in his class seemed uninterested and bored. Jack continued, but his students showed little enthusiasm.
He paused for a moment, allowing the silence to settle in the classroom. Then he went on in a different way.
“Imagine,” Jack began, his voice filled with passion, “the feeling of wading (趟水) through the clear shallow waters of Pigeon River, surrounded by the gentle sunlight. Picture the colors of the Tangerine Darters as they gracefully swim through the currents, their orange bellies (肚子) shining like rays of sunshine, or in that moment, a Tangerine Darter in your hands, its orange belly shining in the sunlight.” He painted a vivid picture with his words. Curiosity lit in his students’ eyes as they bent forward, eager to know more.
Jack continued, “The darters are very picky about their habitats. The place where they live should be very clean, and slight pollution could drive them away or even endanger their very existence.”
As Jack spoke, his passion spread quickly among his students, who started to ask questions, wanting to know more about the Tangerine Darters. Inspired by their newfound interest, Jack had an idea. Why not take students to the Pigeon River, where they can witness the beauty of the Tangerine Darters firsthand?
A week later, they were on the trip to the Pigeon River in Canton, North Carolina, where the environment was well preserved in comparison with other industrial areas.
Sunshine bounced off the Pigeon River, and cool water flowed over rocks and boulders (卵石)—the preferred habitat of Tangerine Darters. With Jack, it was the first time that the students had stood in the shallow water, eager to see their target of this fish eco logy class field trip.
注意：1.续写词数应为150左右;
2.请按如下格式在答题卡的相应位置作答。
Suddenly, Jack bent and quickly caught a fish.
___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________Seeing the students’ interested looks, Jack raised a question.
___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________Ten-year-old Riley Christensen and her mother, Lynn, were sitting in front of the family computer, checking out models and prices of bikes. “Let’s pick one out for your birthday,” Lynn suggested to her daughter. The air in the room was filled with excitement as they scrolled through various options, envisioning the joy when Riley cycled around the neighborhood. They laughed together, exploring the features of each bike, and discussing colors.
As Riley scrolled down the home page of the Bike Rack, a shop in their town of St. Charles, Illinois, a video link for Project Mobility caught her eye. She clicked on it out of curiosity, unaware that this simple click would unfold a profound story of compassion and sympathy. The video clip began to narrate the inspiring journey of Bike Rack co-owner Hal Honeyman. Through it, Lynn and Riley were transported into the world of Project Mobility, witnessing how Hal Honeyman had transformed a passion for biking into an organization dedicated to providing specially engineered bicycles for those facing physical challenges. The video footage (镜头) painted a vivid picture of the positive impact these adapted bikes had on individuals — accident victims, injured veterans, and children with disabilities, including Hal’s own son, who had been born with cerebral palsy (脑瘫).
“I don’t want a bike for myself. I’m going to buy a bike for one of those kids,” Riley told her mother. Two days later, she showed Lynn a letter she had written asking for donations. “I think it’s amazing for a guy to make bikes for kids who can’t walk,” the letter said. “I saw how happy a boy was when he got one... I’m writing to ask for your help.”
Lynn was blown away by her daughter’s effort, but doubts quickly emerged. The cost of just one of those special bikes could be as high as $4,000. Riley could never raise the money.
注意：1.续写词数应为150左右；
2.请按如下格式在答题卡的相应位置作答。
Nonetheless, her letter went out to 75 relatives and friends.
________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________On her birthday, Riley delivered the bicycles to three lucky kids.
________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________What my father wore embarrassed me! I wanted him to dress like a doctor or lawyer, but he always dressed like my father, getting up before dawn every day to make breakfast for my mother and me.
We lived in South Texas, where my father worked as a repairman. He often wore a pair of jeans and a shirt, keeping his pencils, glasses and wrenches (扳手) in his breast pocket. His boots were those with steel toes that made them difficult to pull off his feet, which I sometimes helped him with when he returned from repairing cars — his job that also shamed me.
I blamed the way he dressed. I felt that my classmates laughed at me because they’d seen him mowing lawns (修剪草坪) in cut-off jeans and black boots. My classmates’ families paid men to beautify their lawns, while their fathers travelled in the bay wearing lemon-yellow sweaters and expensive shoes.
He preferred clothes that allowed him the freedom to move under cars. So even when taking part in a school trip with me, he was dressed in his repairman’s suit. On the school bus to the campsite, all students on the bus happily chatted with their parents except me, who lowered the head, avoiding spotting my classmates’ mocking glance (讥笑的眼光) or hearing their jokes, which I thought was about nothing else but what my father wore.
I regretted telling my parents the school trip, and I was very angry why my mother had no spare time while my father happened to have a vacation. But my father failed to read my mind. He was very happy, whistling a tune along the way.
Though my father didn’t sense my bad mood, the school bus seemed as sad as I was. It drove more and more slowly and finally it stopped on the roadside. The driver got out to check the bus but found nothing wrong. Students and parents on the bus began to whisper about what was happening, worried that the delay might spoil the journey.
注意：1.续写词数应为150 左右；
2.请按如下格式在答题卷的相应位置作答。
When others were complaining, my father stood up.
___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________The school bus restarted and everyone cheered.
___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________4 . Most glitter(小发光物品), which is made up of tiny pieces of plastic, is a huge danger to the environment. “Everyone talks about the mountain of plastic floating in the ocean. You can grab empty bottles from the water, but with tiny pieces, it’s impossible,” says Victor Alvarez, a chemical engineer who sells an eco-friendly alternative to glitter.
In the early 2,000s, Alvarez worked for Mercedes-Benz in Germany, where he became fond of any technology that protected the environment. A few years after leaving Mercedes-Benz, he founded Blue Sun International in Miami, which makes specialty ingredients for the skin and hair care industries.
Glitter is a popular ingredient in cosmetics, such as eye shadows and lipsticks. So Alvarez began researching an alternative that didn’t contain plastic to make his products safer for the environment. That’s when he came across Ronald Britton Ltd., a company which had developed a plastic-free, biodegradable product called Bioglitter. It is made from regenerative cellulose(纤维素) sourced from hardwoods, primarily eucalyptus(桉树). Alvarez worked with the company to become the first retailer to sell Bioglitter in America. In 2018, he formed Today Glitter in order to sell the biodegradable glitter directly to consumers through its website.
Today Glitter sells two kinds of biodegradable glitter Bioglitter Sparkle and Bioglitter Pure. Both are almost plastic-free and can biodegrade in a short time. Meanwhile, they are as shiny as regular glitter. All these products are third-party tested by TÜV, an international organization that provides testing and certification for compostable (可降解的) and biodegradable products.
Despite its benefits, the hardwoods needed to make biodegradable glitter cause it to cost about twice as much as conventional glitter. A small glass container that contains just 6 grams of Bioglitter costs $10, while the same amount of regular glitter could cost at least half that amount. Alvarez expects the price will come down over time. He also expects the company’s sales to cross $1 million next year. But more importantly, Alvarez says, his main goal is to effect a meaningful change.
1. While at Mercedes Benz, Alvarez .| A．developed a way to grab glitter in the sea | B．became interested in the environment |
| C．attempted to live a plastic-free life | D．created a kind of harmless glitter |
| A．It is a plastic-free ingredient for eye shadows. |
| B．It will soon be on sale in the American market. |
| C．It is very difficult to break down in the wild. |
| D．It was invented by Blue Sun International. |
| A．To show Bioglitter Sparkle and Bioglitter Pure are popular. |
| B．To stress it provides a broad range of testing services. |
| C．To prove Today Glitter’s products are eco-friendly. |
| D．To explain many plastic products are low-quality. |
| A．The complex process of making glitter. | B．How to expand its overseas market. |
| C．How to attract potential investors. | D．The high cost of raw materials. |
5 . Birds rely on their keen sense of hearing to detect prey (猎物) and identify other birds on the basis of their songs. In fact, birds have better hearing than humans, so they hear with much more detail. So how do birds hear?
Birds and humans both have an inner ear and a middle ear. However, birds differ from humans in that they lack an external ear structure. Where humans have an outer ear organ, birds have a funnel-shaped opening that functions as their outer ear, located on each side of their head. These openings are usually positioned behind and slightly below a bird’s eyes and are protected by soft feathers.
The position of a bird’s head also plays a role in its hearing abilities. Scientists have determined that noises register at different frequencies on each side of the bird’s head. Depending on the angle from which the noise originates, it registers with a certain frequency in the left eardrum but with a different frequency in the right eardrum. This allows the bird to locate a sound’s origin.
For example, owls are known for their extremely accurate hearing, which helps them locate prey at night. This hearing ability is due in part to the unbalanced arrangement of the ear openings, with one opening being lower than the other. Sounds register in these openings at slightly different times. Owls can use this time difference, which is only 30 millionths of a second, to determine whether the sounds are coming from their left or their right. Other birds of prey have flaps in front of their ears that help them determine whether sounds are coming from above them or below them. Some owls do appear to have ears on the top of their head, but those are actually feathers controlled by small muscles under the skin that do not affect their hearing at all.
1. What is the difference between birds and humans according to paragraph 2?| A．Ears’ structure. | B．Ears’ function. |
| C．Ears’ position. | D．Ears’ sensitivity. |
| A．The angle of noise sources. |
| B．The bird’s unique ear structure. |
| C．The intensity of the sound around the bird. |
| D．The difference in frequencies between the eardrums. |
| A．The flaps of birds of prey have little impact on their hearing. |
| B．Owls determine the direction of sound based on their feathers. |
| C．Different birds have varying abilities to judge the direction of sound. |
| D．Many birds have unbalanced positions of the ear openings besides owls. |
| A．The Secret of Owls’ Hearing | B．Special Ear Structure of Birds |
| C．Different Hearing Systems of Birds | D．Remarkable Hearing Abilities of Birds |
| A．to weep | B．to be wept | C．weeping | D．wept |
7 . Imagine you can open your fridge, open an app on your phone and immediately know which items will go bad soon. This is one of the applications that a new technology developed by engineers at the University of California San Diego would enable.
The technology combines a chip (芯片) integrated into product packaging and a software update on your phone. The phone becomes capable of identifying objects based on signals the chip sends out from specific frequencies, in this case Bluetooth or WiFi. In an industrial setting, a smartphone equipped with the software update could be used as a radio frequency identification (RFID) reader.
The work uses breakthroughs in backscatter (反向散射) communication, which uses signals already generated by your smartphone and re-directs them back in a format your phone can understand. Effectively, this technique uses less power than the latest technology to generate WiFi signals.
The custom chip, which is roughly the size of a grain of sand and costs only a few pennies to produce, needs so little power that it can be entirely powered by LTE signals, a technique for wireless broadband communication for mobile devices. The chip turns Bluetooth signals into WiFi signals, which can in turn be detected by a smartphone with that specific software update.
The technology’s broader promise is the development of devices that do not need batteries because they can harvest power from LTE signals instead. This in turn would lead to devices that are significantly less expensive and last longer, said Dinesh Bharadia, one of the paper’s senior authors.
“E-waste, especially batteries, is one of the biggest problems the planet is facing, after climate change,” Bharadia said.
For future research, the team will integrate this technology into other projects to demonstrate its capabilities, and they also hope to commercialize it, either through a startup or through an industry partner.
1. How does the chip interact with the phone?| A．By providing power for the phone. | B．By producing LTE signals for the phone. |
| C．By giving Bluetooth signals to the phone. | D．By sending WiFi signals back to the phone. |
| A．Reducing e-waste. | B．Making batteries cheap. |
| C．Supplying power to LTE signals. | D．Decreasing the cost of LTE signals. |
| A．Invest in new technologies. | B．Bring the technology to market. |
| C．Improve the quality of the device. | D．Commercialize more research projects. |
| A．New technology turns smartphones into RFID readers |
| B．Smartphones need to be equipped with software updates |
| C．RFID readers obtain new chips and have new functions |
| D．Backscatter communication makes the best of smartphones |
8 . Parents have been urged to stop pretending Father Christmas is real in case the “lie” damages relations with their children. Making up stories about Santa risks destroying a child’s trust and is morally unbelievable, according to two experts.
Psychologist Professor Christopher Boyle and social scientist Dr. Kathy McKay also criticize the idea employed by parents—Santa Claus judges children to be nice or naughty. Writing in a well-known journal, they argue, “If they are capable of lying about something so special and magical, can they be relied upon to continue as the guardians of wisdom and truth?”
Defending the claims, Prof Boyle said, “The morality of making children believe in such myths has to be questioned. All children will eventually find out they’ve been consistently lied to for years, and this might make them wonder what other lies they’ve been told. Whether it’s right to make children believe in Father Christmas is an interesting question, and it’s also interesting to ask whether lying in this way will affect children in ways that have not been considered.”
Dr. McKay, from the University of New England in Australia, said there was clear evidence from the world of make-believe in movies and TV that adults looked for a chance to be children again. “The persistence of fandom(影迷) in stories like Harry Potter and Star Wars indicates their desire to briefly re-enter childhood,” she said. “However,” she added, “if adults have been lying about Santa, even though it has usually been well intentioned, what else is a lie? If Santa isn’t real, are fairies real? Is magic? Is God?”
They conclude, “Many people may long for a time when imagination was accepted and encouraged, which may not be the case in adult life. Might it be the case that the harshness of real life requires the creation of something better, something to believe in, something to hope for in the future or to return to a long-lost childhood a long time ago in a galaxy far far away?”
1. What did parents do that drew criticism from Dr. Kathy McKay?| A．They were fond of Harry Potter and Star Wars. |
| B．They acted as the guardians of wisdom and truth. |
| C．They said Santa Claus could judge a kid to be good or bad. |
| D．They have told many lies to their children besides Santa Claus. |
| A．Parents are capable of making up stories about Santa Claus. |
| B．Lies about Santa Claus can have a negative impact upon children. |
| C．Stories about Santa Claus develop children’s trust in their parents. |
| D．Experts think it right to make children believe in Father Christmas. |
| A．They desire to return to the long-lost childhood. |
| B．Everything will become better in movies than in real life. |
| C．They want to get away from pressure from life and work. |
| D．They didn’t watch such exciting movies when they were young. |
| A．Positive. | B．Indifferent. | C．Disappointed. | D．Concerned. |
9 . The Global Food Donation Policy Atlas has issued a recent report in order to recommend ways to increase food donations, reduce food waste, and fight hunger, which may help Kenyan leaders meet 2030 food waste reduction goals.
Food donation can reroute eatable food—that would otherwise give off greenhouse gasses in a landfill—to those experiencing hunger. According to the Famine Early Warning Systems Network, 3.5 million Kenyans, roughly 37 percent of the population, face severe hunger. At the same time, the Policy Atlas reports roughly 40 percent of food produced within Kenya goes to waste. But Broad Leib, Deputy Director of Harvard Law School Food Law and Policy Clinic (FLPC), sees some promising changes. “While progress is not happening as quickly as needed, Kenya’s food loss index has been steadily reduced from 1,744 metric tons in 2017, to 1,531 in 2018, to 1,446 metric tons in 2019, indicating a steady improvement and national commitment to food loss reduction,” reports Broad Leib.
According to the Policy Atlas, motivating food donation with rewards is particularly important, which helps food donors and food recovery organizations make up for costs necessary for recovery, storing, processing, and transporting food for donation.
“A major driver of food waste is inconsistent or unclear date labels that cause confusion among all actors along the value chain and limit the ability of businesses to donate food. This increases the likelihood that much safe food will go to waste,” Broad Leib tells Food Tank. However, he acknowledges Kenya’s current dual (双的) date labeling laws. While food may lose its freshness over time, it is still eatable before expiration (到期). Dual date labeling on packaged foods reduces bewilderment by defining dates for both safety and quality. This helps reduce considerable waste and responsibility for donors.
Broad Leib believes that the private sector can also play a significant role in decreasing food waste in Kenya. It is vital for consumer education campaigns. FLPC’s research shows that public-private initiatives can help raise awareness among consumers and donors around issues of food waste and food donation.
1. What changes does Broad Leib see?| A．People in Kenya no longer suffer hunger. |
| B．Kenya has gradually reduced its food waste. |
| C．Kenya is not committed to reducing food loss. |
| D．Progress in reducing food waste is happening quickly. |
| A．Sadness. | B．Convenience. | C．Confusion. | D．Emotion. |
| A．By increasing storehouses. |
| B．By fighting hunger with rewards. |
| C．By reducing food produced within the country. |
| D．By using double date labeling on packaged food. |
| A．Consumer education campaigns are the most important. |
| B．Only the private sector is helpful in reducing food waste. |
| C．Private and public joint efforts matter around food issues. |
| D．Broad Leib doesn’t agree with FLPC on food waste reduction. |
10 . What is the most shocking about the heatwave affecting the Pacific Northwest is not that it has hit a usually mild area, nor that so many long-standing temperature records are being broken. It is that those records are being broken by such large margins (幅度). In Portland, Oregon, temperature reached 46.6℃(116°F) — making it one of several cities in the region where former records have been beaten by a full 5℃(9°F). At the same time, heatwaves are also hitting central Europe and even Siberia.
Heatwaves may become headlines, but less attention is paid to them. In 2018 about 300,000 people over the age of 65 died as a result of extreme heat, mainly in India, a 54% increase since 2000, according to a report in the Lancet, a medical journal. The report also shows that, unlike storms and floods, heat does not lead to dramatic before-and-after pictures or widespread damage to belongings. It is a silent killer. As many as 70,000 people died due to a heatwave in Europe in 2003.
Heat also kills by worsening health conditions such as heart problems, so not all the deaths it causes may be directly attributed (归因) to it. Climate change will make heatwaves more common and more extreme. Even if greenhouse-gas emissions (排放) are cut to zero by the middle of this century, temperatures will go on rising for decades. So other measures are needed to protect people against extreme heat.
Governments can set up early warning systems to alarm health workers, shut down schools and stop outdoor activities. They can provide the public with forecasts of coming heatwaves, explanations of the dangers and detailed advice on what to do. Improved facilities can also help. This includes providing shaded areas, water parks and “misting stations” to help people cool down, and get to airconditioned “cooling centers” where they can find shelter and sleep if necessary.
The world is, undoubtedly, facing a big health challenge right now. There is no excuse for ignoring heatwaves and their effects.
1. What shocks us most about the heatwave in the Pacific Northwest?| A．It has stricken a usually mild area. |
| B．It hits central Europe except Siberia. |
| C．Many temperature records are being broken. |
| D．Many records are being broken by large margins. |
| A．People have paid much attention to heatwaves. |
| B．Heat doesn’t cause widespread damage to belongings. |
| C．The damage of heat is as obvious as storms and floods. |
| D．About 300,000 middle-aged people died from extreme heat. |
| A．Provide some cool places. | B．Build nursing homes. |
| C．Organize outdoor activities. | D．Shelter the homeless. |
| A．Improving Public Facilities | B．Taking Heatwaves Seriously |
| C．Preventing Natural Disasters | D．Reducing Greenhouse-gas Emission |
