1 . Water pollution caused by the coal industry is a critical issue that requires urgent attention. According to a report by environmental and clean water groups, coal plants are the primary source of toxic (有毒的) water pollution in the United States. Nearly 70% of 274 coal plants have no limits on toxic materials, such as As2O3 and Pb, and they were dumped directly into waterways. Over one-third of these plants have no requirements to monitor or report discharges of these toxic materials to government agencies or the public.
Furthermore, the report reveals that 71 coal plants discharge toxic water pollution into waterways that have already been declared damaged due to poor water quality. Almost half of the 386 coal plants surveyed operate without Clean Water Act permits, and 53 of them have permits that went out of date five or more years ago. These results are due to the lack of any strict standards limiting toxic pollution from coal plants.
Coal-fired power plants are the main source of toxic water pollution in the United States, accounting for more than half of all toxic water pollution. The human health impacts from this pollution are serious. The EPA estimates that nearly 140,000 people per year experience increased cancer risk due to As2O3 in fish from coal plants. The report indicates that almost 13,000 children under the age of seven each year have reduced IQs because of Pb in fish they eat, and almost 2,000 children are born with lower IQs because of toxic fish their mothers have eaten.
Fortunately, the EPA proposed the first ever national standards to limit toxics dumped into waterways from coal plants in April 2013. According to the EPA, these standards should reduce pollution by more than 5 billion pounds a year. The report suggests that the EPA’s new coal plant water pollution standards will not only clean up our water but will also save lives.
Affordable wastewater treatment technologies exist to prevent toxic discharges and are already in use at some plants. It is time for the coal industry to be responsible for the damage it is causing, and for the government to set stricter standards to protect the environment and public health. With the proposed EPA standards, there is hope for a cleaner future. By holding the coal industry responsible, we can make significant steps in protecting our waterways and ensuring that future generations have access to clean and safe water.
1. What can we learn from the first two paragraphs?| A．Over 100 coal plants have limits on toxic materials. |
| B．Most coal plants operate with Clean Water Act permits. |
| C．About half of 274 coal plants monitor the toxic materials. |
| D．Strict standards limiting toxic pollution are urgently required. |
| A．Outdated Clean Water Act permits. |
| B．Consumption of polluted fish by humans. |
| C．Air pollution caused by Coal-fired power plants. |
| D．Not advanced wastewater treatment technologies. |
| A．Significant. | B．Ineffective. |
| C．Alternative. | D．Meaningless. |
| A．Lack of strict standards to limit toxic pollution. |
| B．Serious health problems affected by coal plants. |
| C．Urgent joint efforts to deal with water pollution caused by coal plants. |
| D．Importance of affordable wastewater treatment technologies in the United States. |
2 . As Torri’ell Norwood drove through St. Petersburg, Florida, last February, the laughter and chatter from the four teenage girls quickly gave way to screams. As they approached a crossroads, another car crashed into their car, sending it to hit a tree.
Smoke and fire surged from the car and a bystander shouted, “It’s about to blast! Get out!” Norwood crawled out through the window. Along with two of her friends, she ran for her life.
But halfway down the street, she realized that her best friend, A’zarria Simmons, wasn’t with them. Norwood ran back and found Simmons sank in the back seat. She opened the back door and pulled her out. She dragged Simmons a few feet to safety and laid her on the ground. “I checked her pulse.” Norwood said to Inside Edition. Nothing. “I put my head against her chest.” No sign of life. “That’s when I started CPR.”
Had the accident happened a few weeks earlier, she might not have known what to do. But Norwood, who wants to pursue a career in medicine, had earned her CPR certificate just the day before. Looking down at her dying friend, Norwood started pumping Simmons’s chest with her interlocked fingers and breathing into her friend’s mouth in hope of filling her lungs with the kiss of life. No response. And then, after the 30th compression, Simmons began coughing and gasping for air. The CPR had worked.
Soon, medics arrived and rushed Simmons to the hospital, where she heard how her best friend had saved her life. “I wasn’t shocked,” Simmons told CNN. “She is always helping anyhow she can.”
1. What do we know about the car accident?| A．Norwood was disturbed by her friends while driving. |
| B．The car crashed into the tree due to the driver’s carelessness. |
| C．The accident happened not far from a crossroads. |
| D．Norwood helped two of her friends escape at first. |
| A．spring up. | B．blow up. |
| C．roll over. | D．pull over. |
| A．She realized she forgot something important. |
| B．She heard a noise coming from the car. |
| C．She wanted to apply CPR to her friend. |
| D．She failed to find her best friend. |
| A．A Lesson in a Crash. | B．The Breath of Life. |
| C．Trust Between Friends. | D．The Power of Determination |
1. 社团的主要活动；
2. 报名方式及截止日期。
注意：
1. 写作词数应为80左右；
2. 请在答题卡的相应位置作答。
Dear Mike,
________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Yours sincerely,
Li Hua
4 . Compean, fond of hiking, had hiked the park near his home in Southern California numerous times. But after taking risks along a
With no flashlight, only a bottle of water and a power bar in his
Compean climbed to a spot, where he found at least one bar of
Sixty miles away in Ventura County, Ben Kuo was working at home visiting the website when he
Ben is skilled at looking for where photos are taken and always
That finding tightened his search, leading him to an area that resembled the place in the
After spending 27 hours
| A．regular | B．new | C．broad | D．quiet |
| A．house | B．phone | C．team | D．backpack |
| A．charged | B．leaking | C．remaining | D．started |
| A．Enthusiasm | B．Curiosity | C．Fear | D．Surprise |
| A．signal | B．chocolate | C．soap | D．music |
| A．sight | B．control | C．power | D．condition |
| A．drawing | B．scanning | C．printing | D．attaching |
| A．maps | B．rocks | C．bottles | D．flashlights |
| A．read | B．enjoyed | C．edited | D．shared |
| A．feet | B．fingers | C．legs | D．ears |
| A．previous | B．snowy | C．terrible | D．foggy |
| A．mystery | B．challenge | C．accident | D．location |
| A．considerate | B．successful | C．confident | D．mature |
| A．picked out | B．picked up | C．folded up | D．printed out |
| A．identified | B．compared | C．explored | D．searched |
| A．image | B．plan | C．description | D．explanation |
| A．differed | B．disappeared | C．changed | D．matched |
| A．posted | B．expressed | C．supplied | D．sent |
| A．ambulance | B．helicopter | C．spaceship | D．balloon |
| A．bitterly | B．angrily | C．guiltily | D．alone |
5 . Starbucks recently made plans to build nearly 3, 000 new stores in China over the next five years. That almost doubles the number of stores here now. The company just opened its largest stores in Shanghai, China, which often has a long line of people waiting. It is opening a new store in China every 15 hours, and it now has plenty of competition. That marks an important change in the tastes and buying power of the growing market.
It’s no secret there’s a lot of tea in China. But coffee, not tea, is increasingly becoming the choice for China’s rapidly growing middle class.
Starbucks keeps opening hundreds of new stores here mainly because of China’s young people who are accepting coffeehouse culture. “You have a very young population that has got in touch with Western cultures easily,” Dave Seminsky said. He owns Sumerian Coffee in Shanghai.
There’s still a lot of room for the bean business here to grow. The ordinary person in China drinks just 3 cups of coffee every year, while the ordinary person in the U.K. drinks 250 cups and in the U.S., the number is 363. But that need and the influence of climate change on the world’s supply could lead to fewer beans and higher prices.
In the next 30 years, China could be bringing two to three million tons of coffee into the nation and the world’s supply of coffee now is 6.9 million tons. If coffee really does take off here, is there enough supply? Luckily, there’s still all that tea in China.
1. Why are China’s young people fond of drinking coffee?| A．They can afford Western products. |
| B．They want to look more international. |
| C．Their taste gradually changes as they grow up. |
| D．They grow up influenced by Western cultures. |
| A．Competition in the coffee market. | B．Changes in natural conditions. |
| C．More new drinks coming out. | D．Terrible taste of coffee beans. |
| A．The supply of coffee cannot meet people’s needs. |
| B．Tea will be the main drink for the Chinese. |
| C．Coffee beans cannot be grown in China. |
| D．Fewer companies will offer coffee. |
| A．leave the ground and begin to fly | B．become popular |
| C．go away in a hurry | D．remove clothing from the body |
1. Who may the speaker be?
| A．A host. | B．A student. | C．An employer. |
| A．Which major employers most value. |
| B．Whether it is easy to find a job. |
| C．The result of the study on the job market. |
| A．20%. | B．22%. | C．50%. |
| A．Their choices are limited. |
| B．The salary is usually good. |
| C．They need more work experience. |
7 . While traveling, there are chances that you stay at a hotel or a family member's house. But have you ever thought about staying in a stranger's
This might sound
Lodging rental companies like Airbnb are helping people look for cheap ways to
Created by young American men Brian Chesky, Joe Cebbia and Nathan Blecharczyk, Airbnb is a good example of a
A man in New York named Jonathan Powley even rents out his
But Airbnb does have some problems. Sometimes it is not as
In China, Airbnb operates in eight cities including Beijing and Shanghai. The country has seen a major
| A．office | B．camp | C．home | D．garden |
| A．great | B．powerful | C．influential | D．strange |
| A．travel | B．play | C．walk | D．drive |
| A．new | B．normal | C．spare | D．separate |
| A．shops | B．hotels | C．restaurants | D．markets |
| A．sharing | B．different | C．fresh | D．commercial |
| A．objects | B．rooms | C．resources | D．experiences |
| A．Hosts | B．Travelers | C．Guests | D．Sellers |
| A．company | B．website | C．clinic | D．park |
| A．phone | B．cafe | C．apartment | D．taxi |
| A．ordinary | B．comfortable | C．definite | D．horrible |
| A．outside | B．inside | C．size | D．shape |
| A．nice | B．cheap | C．bad | D．anxious |
| A．Also | B．Instead | C．Though | D．Therefore |
| A．decrease | B．symptom | C．standard | D．increase |
8 . Last year, 138,000 San Francisco residents used Airbnb, a popular app designed to connect home renters and travelers. It’s a striking number for a city with a population of about 850,000, and it was enough for Airbnb to win a major victory in local elections, as San Francisco voters struck down a debatable rule that would have placed time restrictions and other regulations on short-term rental services.
The company fiercely opposed the measure, Proposition F, with a nearly $10 million advertising campaign. It also contacted its San Franciscan users with messages urging them to vote against Proposition F.
Most people think of Airbnb as a kind of couch-surfing app. The service works for one-night stays on road trips and longer stays in cities, and it often has more competitive pricing than hotels. It’s a textbook example of the “sharing economy”, but not everyone is a fan.
The app has had unintended consequences in San Francisco. As the San Francisco Chronicle reported last year, a significant amount of renting on Airbnb is not in line with the company’s image: middle-class families putting up a spare room to help make ends meet. Some users have taken advantage of the service, using it to turn their multiple properties into vacation rentals or even full-time rentals. Backers of Proposition F argued that this trend takes spaces off the conventional, better-regulated housing market and contributes to rising costs.
“The fact is, widespread abuse of short-term rentals is taking much needed housing off the market and harming our neighborhoods,” said ShareBetter SF, a group that supported Proposition F. Hotel unions have protested the company’s practices in San Francisco and other cities, saying that it creates an illegal hotel system.
San Francisco is in the middle of a long-term, deeply rooted housing crisis that has seen the cost of living explode. Actually, explode is a generous term. The average monthly rent for an apartment is around $4, 000. Located on a narrow outcropping of land overlooking the bay, San Francisco simply doesn’t have enough space to accommodate the massive inflow of young, high-salaried tech employees flocking to Silicon Valley.
As the Los Angeles Times reported, some San Francisco residents supported the measure simply because it seemed like a way to check a big corporation. Opponents of Proposition F countered that the housing crisis runs much deeper, and that passing the rule would have discouraged a popular service while doing little to solve the city’s existing problems.
1. The intention of Proposition F is to ________.| A．place time limits in local election. | B．set limits on short-term rental. |
| C．strike down a controversial rule. | D．urge users to vote against Airbnb. |
| A．It shrinks the living space of middle-class families. |
| B．Users are taken advantage of by the service financially. |
| C．It makes the house market more competitive. |
| D．It indirectly leads to high house rental price. |
| A．explosion of the living cost | B．its geographic characteristics |
| C．generosity of local enterprises | D．inflow of migrant population |
| A．objective | B．supportive |
| C．negative | D．indifferent |
9 . A bicycle may be seen by most people as just another vehicle(交通工具), but for many Londoners, cycling is a way of life.According to an official UK government survey in 2017, about 570,000 bike journeys are made every day in London.In fact, almost half of the vehicles that pass over London Bridge each day are bikes.
London introduced a public bikesharing system in 2010. “There can be no doubt that our trusty bicycles have changed the way people get around our great city,” Johnson told The Guardian in 2015.
In London, bikes are used for more than just taking short trips to and from the subway.No matter where you want to go in the city, taking a bike is usually the quickest and easiest choice.
And it's not just shared bikes that the government is encouraging people to ride.In many companies across the UK, the UK government's Cycle to Work scheme(骑行倡议) allows employees to buy a brand new bike without having to pay any tax(税)．This means that it's common to see many people cycling to and from work, and some employers even provide workplace showers and lockers(储物柜) for their workers.More importantly, a cycle-friendly boss may let you off for being late if you rode a bike to work.
Not only is it great for the environment and our body, cycling is also good for the mind.According to National Geographic Magazine, “Bike riding can improve people's happiness.”
1. How does the author show the popularity of cycling in London?| A．By making comparisons. | B．By giving examples. |
| C．By using numbers. | D．By using famous sayings. |
| A．Uninterested. | B．Doubtful. |
| C．Disappointed. | D．Supportive |
| A．A tax-free bike. | B．Free bike-sharing services. |
| C．Shorter working hours. | D．Workplace showers and lockers. |
| A．不惩罚 | B．奖赏. |
| C．请假 | D．使爆炸 |
10 . LONDON——Global auction(拍卖）sales of Chinese art and antiques fell in 2019 to $ 5.7 billion, a 10 percent drop year-on-year, and the lowest level for the collecting category since 2010. The Global Chinese Art Auction market report, compiled by Artnet and the Chinese Association of Auctioneers, found this was clue to trade tensions between the United States and China, as well as a slowdown of GDP in China.
The report, now in its eighth edition, noted that the value of total auction sales within the Chinese mainland declined by 10 percent in 2019 to $ 3.7 billion, the lowest total since 2010. Outside China, there was also a 9 percent drop in sales of Chinese art and antiques.
“The combination of such slowdowns resulted in a weakening of collectors' confidence and a more cautious attitude among buyers making decisions on investing in art in 2019," said the report.
However, despite the downturn in total sales value for Chinese art and antiques in 2019, the European market showed some positive trends emerging. Significant peaks in lots offered and lots sold in Europe, combined with a strong sell through rate（卖出率）of 61 percent in 2019.
Europe accounted for 29 percent of all Chinese art and antique lots sold overseas in 2019 , according to the report, closing in on（接近）the North American market's share.
The annual report also found strong performances with 20th century and contemporary Chinese art in both the Chinese mainland and overseas, boosted by a younger generation of Chinese collectors.
The average price for the category increased in the Chinese mainland, up by 23 percent year- on-year, and overseas sales saw a nine-year high in 2019. But fine Chinese paintings and calligraphy, the largest collecting category on the Chinese mainland, did not perform as well.
According to the report this category “continued to spiral(螺旋式的）downwards, reaching its lowest point in sales since 2013”. The number of lots dropped by 10 percent year-on-year, almost half of that of 2013 and it also struggled elsewhere, with the overseas total falling to a seven-year low.
1. What is the third paragraph mainly about?| A．The result of a weakening of collectors' confidence in buying art. |
| B．The advantage of buyers' making decisions on investing in art. |
| C．The advantage of the decline of the value of total auction sales. |
| D．The result of the decline of the value of total auction sales. |
| A．Their standards were not so high. |
| B．Their prices were not so satisfying. |
| C．They are the largest collecting category. |
| D．The average price for the category rose sharply. |
| A．Took up. | B．Took off. |
| C．Took away. | D．Took on. |
| A．A Slowdown of GDP in China in 2019 |
| B．A Report on the Global Chinese Art Auction Market |
| C．Trade Tensions Between the United States and China |
| D．Global Auction Sales of Chinese Antiques and Art Fall to a 10-year Low |
