1 . Tyler had broken his arm in a bicycle accident. A car knocked Tyler down when it came out of a side street without stopping. The accident happened because there was no stop sign at the corner and the car didn’t stop. So Tyler decided to try to get the city to put up a stop sign.
First, Tyler wrote a petition (请愿书) to have a stop sign put up with his parents’ help. Then, Tyler and his parents asked their neighbors, friends, teachers, classmates ... almost everyone they knew to sign the petition. Soon, there were hundreds of names on the petition.
Tyler also got some information about other accidents at the same corner where he had had his own accident. If he could show the city that it was a dangerous corner, they might put up a stop sign there. He hoped that this information and his petition would work.
When the petition was ready, Tyler and his parents went to a meeting of the city council (政务委员会). They brought along the petition and the other information. After a long wait, Tyler got a chance to tell what had happened to him. He told the story of the bicycle accident and explained his idea. If there were a stop sign at the corner where the accident happened, other kids would be safer. After that, Tyler read the petition out loud. Then, he handed it and the other information to the council. The city council agreed to consider the request and make a decision before their next meeting.
The next month, Tyler and his parents attended another meeting of the city council. The head of the city council announced that the city had decided to agree to the petition! There would be a stop sign at the corner where Tyler had his accident. Now other kids would be safer when they rode their bikes.
1. Why did Tyler have the bicycle accident at the corner?| A．Tyler rode rather too fast. | B．There was no stop sign. |
| C．The car ran the red light. | D．The street was crowded. |
| A．He found out about other accidents. |
| B．He explained his idea to his neighbors. |
| C．He wrote a petition for the stop sign. |
| D．He attended a meeting of the city council. |
| A．As soon as Tyler handed it. | B．After Tyler’s parents handed it again. |
| C．After about a six-month wait. | D．Nearly a month after Tyler handed it. |
| A．Thankful. | B．Nervous. | C．Embarrassed. | D．Proud. |
| A．It is dangerous for people to ride bikes in the street. |
| B．Only adults have the responsibility to present a petition. |
| C．Kids can play a role in making their neighborhoods better, |
| D．Stop signs are supposed to be put up at every street corner. |
| Stone Castle | |
| Open times: Summer season: (April 1— September 20) 9:00 a.m.- 5:00 p.m. every day Winter season: (October 1— March31) 10:00 a.m.— 4:00 p.m. every day Prices: Adult ticket:￡7 Child ticket:￡3 Family ticket:￡17 (2 adults & 2 children between the ages of 5 and 15) Buy tickets at the door. You can also buy tickets on the Internet. | Bad weather conditions: Before setting off to the castle, we advise you to visit our website to check if the castle is open. In the event of bad weather, the castle may be closed for safety reasons. A tip about dogs: Dogs are welcome at the castle as long as they are kept on a leash at all times. |
1. Stone Castle is open for hours in the winter season every day.
| A．five | B．six | C．eight and a half | D．nine and a half |
| A．At 9:00 a.m. on March 2. | B．At 6:00 p.m. on February10. |
| C．At 10:00 a.m. on September1. | D．At 5:00 p.m. on November3. |
| A．￡15. | B．￡20. | C．￡25. | D．￡35. |
| A．the weather is bad | B．there are no visitors |
| C．the road is closed | D．the castle is damaged |
| A．The castle never closes all year round. |
| B．A child aged８can’t visit the castle. |
| C．There are two ways to buy tickets. |
| D．No dogs can go into the castle. |
3 . Every drink has a destination that defines it. In turn, these drinks become the local pride and develop their own distinctive personality. As you travel around, you’ll discover how every place has its own style.
Mint Tea – Morocco
Most Moroccan families have an additional fine tea service only for special occasions and visiting guests. Mint tea is simply hot water with dried peppermint, and much sugar. Be warned: sometimes the tea is so sweet it can make your cheeks hurt.
Gahwa – United Arab Emirates
Centuries ago, the shepherds of Arabia noticed their goats became very active after chewing coffee berries, and so made their own energy drink out of it, and thus gahwa — Arabic coffee — and the world’s first coffee culture was born. When you’re in the UAE you’ll notice how important gahwa is for socialising, as it’s served at family gatherings, business meetings and even at parliament.
Tequila – Mexico
Mexico’s hero drink tequila has its roots in adventure, made from the hardy blue agave plant that grows in the red volcanic soils, which is now a UNESCO World Heritage site. If you find a worm or moth larvae in your bottle, be sure to send it back, as it’s likely not tequila but its low quality, inferior cousin, mezcal.
Rakija – Croatia
In the Balkans the locals begin their meals with a glass of the highly potent rakija, which is confidence if ever we’ve seen it. Produced using primarily honey or mistletoe, rakija is both the national drink and usually homemade. Rakija was traditionally used as a medicinal drink.
1. Where are you likely to travel if you enjoy coffee culture?| A．Мorocco. | B．The UAE. | C．Mexico. | D．Croatia. |
| A．The sweet one. |
| B．The super social one. |
| C．The adventurous one. |
| D．The confident one. |
| A．Mint Tea. | B．Gahwa. | C．Tequila. | D．Rakija. |
4 . When you’re put on the spot, it can feel like a sink-or-swim situation, which can be tense, stressful and pressurizing, especially when you deliver a public speaking.
Adjust your use of language
When we feel ourselves to be on a stage, we sometimes use words that are cold, formal, and passive. We do this because we’re anxious and seek to establish authority. Let’s say you’re a doctor, and you’ re standing in front of a group of your peers. You might find yourself making statements like, “It is significant that doctors help solve this problem.”
Pose more questions
Questions are two-way interactions.
Beware of the memorisation trap
| A．You will become more connected with your peers. |
| B．Writing down what we might want to say can help. |
| C．You and others around you enter into a back-and-forth. |
| D．Here are three ways that you can improve your delivery. |
| E．Conversations are more casual and familiar than performances. |
| F．Language like this creates distance between yourself and others. |
| G．Using that structure, you can more confidently fill in the gaps as you go. |
5 . While many animal populations seem to dwindle, one species that is moving in the opposite direction of such loss is America’s native wildlife — wood stork.
The wood stork is the only stork that breeds in North America. In 1984, it was declared an endangered species after its population decreased sharply to just 5,000 mating pairs. At the time, scientists predicted that the bird would become completely extinct by 2000. Today, it numbers 10,000 mating pairs, and the Fish and Wildlife Service is proposing a delisting of the wood stork as an endangered species. So how did the population bounce back?
The success is in part down to the resourcefulness of the wood stork. The wood stork’s native home was in the Everglades in Florida, but it migrated north as the Everglades were being destroyed by development of mankind. Wetland preservation and restoration, protection of nesting areas, and management of water flows began with the approval of the wood stork’s first recovery plan in 1986. In the following year, former Savannah Coastal Refuges biologist John Robinette noticed stork nests in Georgia as stork populations moved to safer wetlands.
According to Stephanie Kurose, a senior policy specialist at the Centre for Biological Diversity, the Endangered Species Act is also to thank for this recovery. She said, “The act saved the wood stork and it helped preserve and rebuild vital habitats throughout the southeast, which has improved water quality and benefited countless other species who call the area home.” “The Endangered Species Act has saved 99 per cent of the species that were on the list since 1973. A hundred types of plants and animals have been delisted as their populations become stable again.
If the wood stork is delisted, it will remain protected by other laws and a monitoring plan will be put in place to ensure the population remains stable.
1. What does the underlined word dwindle probably mean?| A．Boost. | B．Change. | C．Decline. | D．Explode. |
| A．Its population shows a rising trend. | B．It has become completely extinct. |
| C．It is widely distributed worldwide. | D．It is the most endangered species. |
| A．Climate change of Earth. | B．Popularity of water sports. |
| C．Impact of human activities. | D．Arrival of other wild animals. |
| A．People have safer water to drink. | B．A list of species have been saved. |
| C．The local economy has boomed. | D．The wood stock has flown away. |
6 . Damon Carson calls himself a matchmaker (媒人) of the never-ending waste of American society, trying not to pair people with people, but things with people.
In the late 1990s, Carson was on break from business school in Vail, Colorado, when he discovered the vast world of waste. He began thinking about creating a secondhand store that would sell old materials and keep them out of being wasted. As a result, in 2010, his company, Repurposed Materials appeared.
For nearly ten years, his company, Repurposed Materials, has not been looking to recycle the waste he gets — breaking it down to make something new — but rather finding new homes for thrown-away goods in their original forms.
Carson, a husband and father of three adult children, is far from wasteful. Frugal is how he describes himself. The clothes he’s wearing all came from a charity shop; his truck was bought with 290, 000 kilometers driven.
“Why break something down, why melt something down, if it still has value?” he asks. An old oil-field pipe might be melted down and turned into a car bumper, but it still takes an amount of power to finish the complete change. Why not leave it as a steel pipe? Why not turn it into a fence post on a farm? The only cost is transport.
American industrial facilities create and throw about 7.6 billion tons of unwanted industrial materials every year. For the moment, Carson’s unique business finds new lives for millions of kilograms of industrial waste every year.
1. What is paragraph two mainly about?| A．Carson’s school lessons. |
| B．Carson’s journey to Colorado. |
| C．The start of Carson’s business. |
| D．The serious waste of materials. |
| A．Marketing wastes to people in need. |
| B．Breaking down the wasted goods. |
| C．Manufacturing industrial products. |
| D．Recycling the thrown-away stuffs. |
| A．Economical. | B．Poetic. | C．Tough. | D．Risky. |
| A．Well began, half done. |
| B．Innovative thinking counts. |
| C．One is never too old to learn. |
| D．Hard work will pay back. |
7 . One Second Every Day
I’ve been in advertising for eight years and used to work a lot of late nights and weekends for numerous projects.
The first project ends up being something I call “One Second Every Day”. Basically I record one second of every day for the rest of my life, combining these moments into one single continuous video until I can’t record them anymore.
I don’t use any filters (滤镜), just trying to catch the moment as much as possible as it is. I started a rule of the first person view. Early on, I thought I should have a couple of videos where people would see me, but I realized that wasn’t the way to go.
The project has many possibilities. I encourage you all to record just a small piece of your life every day, so you can never forget that day and treasure every moment.
| A．It instantly inspired me. |
| B．The purpose is to remember what I’ve done. |
| C．I’m always energetic when doing things I love. |
| D．People might have different interpretations of it. |
| E．It’s difficult, sometimes, to pick that one second. |
| F．But I never had time for one I wanted to work on on my own. |
| G．The essence of my project should be recording the thing as I actually see it. |
8 . To much of the world, bullfighting has always been distinctly Iberian. But these days, parts of France are laying claim to this tradition. From the Cte Basque to the arenas of Arles and Beziers, it has spread to towns where bullfighting has long been banned, and been embraced with such enthusiasm you’d think the sport had been born there.
The rising passion for blood and sand has been resisted by animal-rights activists. Last month someone set off a bomb near the bullring in Carcassonne. Yet France’s enthusiasts fiercely defend their right to these moral rituals. Bullfighting, they insist, is part of the heritage, an expression of a shared regional culture that should be protected.
The rest of the Continent should take note. The paradox (自相矛盾) of an ever-more-united Europe is that as borders between member states become less important, so do the nations themselves-and regional identities are valued. It’s easy to forget that most European nation-states were created as we know them only during the 19th century, after a long series of bloody conflicts. “If the chances of war had been a little different, all the regions sharing bullfight might have been together,” argues Jean Michel Mariou, a huge fan of bullfighting. On both sides of the Pyrenees there are Basques, there are Catalans, there are common cultures, he says. “Bullfighting is only one expression of it.”
Bullfighting isn’t the only cultural tradition that has begun to go beyond borders, of course. To name but one other: the Celtic revival, built largely around musical groups along the coast of Ireland, Scotland and Cornwall, Brittany and Normandy. But while bagpipes (风笛) may stir the blood, they don’t spill it. And the violence of bullfighting horrifies many people who don’t feel they share in its culture.
“The concept of lasting local tradition doesn’t mean anything anymore,” says Josyane Wuerelle, coordinator of the Federation de Liasions Anti-Corrida in Agde. Bullfighting is about attracting tourists, not honoring local history, she argues. Robert Marge doesn’t see it that way, of course. He recently declined an invitation to organize a bullfighting in Paris’s enormous Stade de France. “We didn’t want to sell our souls by bringing bullfight to a region where it doesn’t exist,” he explains. But he has also got the sense to know that some traditions don’t travel well.
1. What can we learn about bullfighting from the first two paragraphs?| A．It is legal in France. | B．It will boom tourism in France. |
| C．It has become popular in France. | D．It is part of the heritage of France. |
| A．Shared cultures could bring people together. |
| B．The continent of Europe is more united than ever. |
| C．Bullfighting is a popular culture in many regions. |
| D．Regions sharing bullfight were separated by wars. |
| A．It ignores animal rights. | B．It honors local tradition. |
| C．It is intended for money. | D．It is too violent for Paris. |
| A．Fight over Bullfight | B．Culture or Violence |
| C．Bullfight and Tourism | D．Passion for Blood and Sand |
9 . This 3-mile stretch of sand and tide pools beneath a castle of 80-foot cliffs is a California tourism poster if there ever was one. Nothing disturbs the perfect, sunny view, except — once you’re aware of them — microplastic particles (颗粒). But you have to look close-on-your-hands-and-knees close-to see one. And once you do, you see another and another — so many that you may not think of this, or any beach, the same way again. These tiny preproduction plastic balls that manufacturers (生产商) melt down to form everything have been escaping factories, container ships, trains, trucks — and public notice — for decades.
The 2- to 3-millimeter, multicolored balls are a subset (子集) of microplastic-plastic particles less than 5 millimeters in size. Microplastic particles accumulate where water takes them, and they’ve been found on shorelines of every continent.
Dr McReynolds is an environmental scientist who’s now joined a global movement studying their trail into the environment. Establishing a baseline count of the presence of microplastic particles — and, more broadly, any microplastics — is the focus of Dr McReynolds’ scientific study here. Charting the count, noting tide, current, and weather conditions will show if amounts are increasing, and perhaps at what rate and why. That knowledge, he says, can inform solutions to plastic pollution such as regulation of their use.
“What are you doing? Picking up trash?” asks a steady stream of beach walkers whenever Dr McReynolds’ crew walks onto the beach and sets up equipment. These are teachable moments for Dr McReynolds.
One recent morning he told some beach walkers how microplastic particles are believed to absorb toxic chemicals, and — because they resemble fish eggs — are eaten by fish and birds and enter the food chain. Almost right on time, a seagull hopped up to a plastic-coated photo of microplastic particles and hungrily pecked (啄食) at it.
Will his work help save the world? Dr McReynolds waves a finger at that idea, “I won’t ever use that word — I won’t save the world from this pollution problem. Preserve it, yes. We want to take care of it.”
1. What do we know about microplastic particles from paragraph 1?| A．They are too small to be seen. | B．They have been ignored for long. |
| C．They are products of plastic balls. | D．They can be made into almost everything. |
| A．Classifying plastic particles into subsets. | B．Finding solutions to plastic pollution. |
| C．Charting the tides and currents of oceans. | D．Creating a data collection for microplastics. |
| A．The interesting teachable moments. | B．The spread of poisonous chemicals. |
| C．The harmful effect of microplastic particles. | D．The beauty of the photo of microplastic particles. |
| A．To save the world. | B．To protect the earth. | C．To educate the public. | D．To provide solutions. |
10 . One man’s trash is another man’s treasure is absolutely the case in Turkey where garbage collectors started collecting books that have been thrown away and ended up opening a library.
It started when garbage man Durson Ipek found a bag of abandoned books when he was working and then it snowballed from there. Ipek and other garbage men started gathering the books they found on the streets that were ready for landfills (垃圾填埋地) and as their collection started to grow, so did word of mouth. Soon, local residents started donating books directly. The library was initially available only to the garbage employees and their families to use but as the collection grew, so did public interest and the library was opened to the public in 2017.
“On the one hand, there were those who were leaving these books on the streets. On the other hand, others were looking for these books,” Ankaya mayor Alper Tasdelen told CNN. “We started to discuss the idea of creating a library from these books. When everyone supported it, this project happened.”
All the books that are found are sorted and checked for condition. If they pass, they go on the shelves. Today, the library has over 6,000 books that range from fiction to nonfiction and there’s a very popular children’s section that even has a collection of comic books. An entire section is devoted to scientific research and there are also books available in English and French. The collection has grown so large that the library loans books to schools and educational programs.
“Village school teachers from all over Turkey are requesting books,” Tasdelen told CNN. The government has to hire a full-time employee to manage the library.
This library is incredibly popular. It is frequently filled with the children of the city’s workers and students from nearby schools. There is a waiting room set up for readers and chess boards for the people who visit the library. You can even enjoy a cup of tea in the waiting room.
1. What does the underlined word “snowballed” in paragraph 2 probably mean?| A．Declined quickly. | B．Grew slowly. | C．Developed rapidly. | D．Worsened steadily. |
| A．Its great popularity. | B．Its potential significance. |
| C．Its huge collection of books. | D．Its wide variety of readers. |
| A．To raise people’s awareness of recycling. | B．To classify and check the donated books. |
| C．To expand the social influence of the library. | D．To meet the huge demand from rural teachers. |
| A．It’s an excellent place to enjoy tea. | B．It’s crowded with readers every day. |
| C．It needs to improve its management. | D．It provides a very considerate service. |
