1 . Keeping fit often means sharing a busy pathway with cyclists,runners and walkers,but imagine facing the task of doing it all without being able to see or hear.It is a challenge many disabled athletes face,unless someone agrees to be their eyes and ears.

Newly formed group Achilles Brisbane pairs visually and audibly impaired (视觉和听觉受损的) athletes with people who would like to guide them.

Jane Britt,president of Achilles Brisbane,who is—vision and hearing—impaired,said,“When we go out,it’s much less frightening to have someone beside us that has full hearing to listen for us and tell us what’s there.”

Ms.Cullen and Ms.Britt meet up most Saturday mornings to take part in the five-kilometer park run.Their partnership is built on trust,but Ms.Britt said that it took time to develop.

Ms.Britt said it took an unexpected storm for her to trust Ms.Cullen completely.“There was violent rain,my glasses were broken and we were walking together.I suddenly had to tell her I couldn’t see anything,and I was going to have to completely trust her.From that time I knew it was going to work because she was so good about dealing with the special situation we both found ourselves in,” she said.

Isabella Allen and her seeing eye dog Tatum are two new additions to the Achilles Brisbane.Ms.Allen kept active by rowing,running and cycling but found it difficult to keep going as her vision became worse.After nearly giving up completely,she worked up the courage to ask Achilles Brisbane to find someone to share a boat with her.

Ms.Allen said the fear of not finding anyone to row with almost stopped her from reaching out to Achilles Brisbane.“But,they found people and matched me to them,” she said.“It’s the best thing I’ve ever done.”

1. How does Jane Britt feel about going out alone?

A．Relaxed.

B．Excited.

C．Worried.

D．Bored.

2. What happened in the heavy rain according to Ms.Britt?

A．She developed a strong sense of teamwork.

B．She led Ms.Cullen forward on the road.

C．She began to rely on Ms.Cullen as her guide.

D．She fell down on the ground.

3. What was the best thing Ms.Allen has done?

A．Asking Achilles Brisbane for help.

B．Working in Achilles Brisbane.

C．Exercising non-stop.

D．Meeting Tatum.

4. What does Paragraph 1 try to show?

A．The danger of walking on a busy road.

B．The difficulty the disabled athletes face.

C．The exercise people do to keep fit.

D．The necessity of building roads for the blind.

2 . 阅读下面短文，在空白处填入1个适当的单词或括号内单词的正确形式。

According to a new research, humans' attention time is getting shorter and it's all because of technology.

"We move quickly from one site     1     another on the website,” says Dr. Ted Selker, a computer scientist from Massachusetts." And we are losing the     2     (able) to concentrate." With millions of websites to choose from, the attention time of the average Internet users     3     (be) just seconds.

Some people are worried about it."You need time     4     (understand) and think about what you read," says Julia Wood, from London." Young people search online all the time and their brains become full of useless information but there is no time to     5     （true） make sense of it." To improve her students' concentration, Julia plays music during her science lessons. "It has amazing effects. The music made them     6     （calm）, and their concentration was much better," said Julia.

But not everyone believes there is a problem. Ray Cole,     7     is an educational psychologist, says, “On the website, young people learn to make quick decisions about what is and isn't worth     8     （read）. They might look at five unhelpful websites very quickly, before stopping and reading a     9     （six） useful website more carefully. With so much information available, this is     10     important skill."

3 . Boredom is something to experience. If kids don't figure this out early on, they're in for an unpleasant surprise. School, let's face it, can be dull and it isn't actually the teacher's job to entertain as well as educate. -

In a much-read story, The Relentlessness of Modern Parenting, Claire Cain Miller referred to a recent study that found regardless of class, income or race, parents believed that "children who were bored after school should take part in extracurricular activities, and that parents who were busy should stop their task and draw with their children if asked."

Parents preparing for a long car ride are like army officers planning a complex land maneuver（(演 习)）with the help of games and movies played on iPad and smartphones. What did parents in the 1970s do when kids were bored? Nothing! They let them breathe in gas fumes. And since it wasn't actually for wearing, play with the broken safety belt. If you complained about being bored back then, you were really asking for it. "Clean your room," you might get. Was this fun? No. Was it helpful? Yes.

Because things happen when you're bored. Some of the most boring jobs I've had were also the most creative. While checking out food at the supermarket, I invented stories about people's purchases. The man buying eggplant and a six-pack of beer at 9 p.m.: Which was the must-get thing and which the impulse purchase? How did my former fifth-grade teacher feel about my observing her weekly purchase of cookies?

The ability to handle boredom, not surprisingly, is associated with the ability to focus. Research has shown that people with attention disorders are particularly poor in handling boredom.

It's especially important that kids get bored and be allowed to stay bored when they be young. It shouldn't be considered "a problem" to be avoided or removed by the higher-ups, but instead something kids handle on their own. We've stopped training children to do this. Rather than teach them to understand material that is duller, teachers spend more time inventing ways to "attract" students. But surely teaching children to stand boredom will prepare them for a more realistic future.

1. What is the finding of the study mentioned by Claire Cain Miller?

A．School kids find it hard to stand boredom.

B．People are too busy to draw with their kids.

C．Extracurricular activities are gaining popularity.

D．Parents are trying their best to make their kids have fun.

2. What did parents in the 1970s usually do when kids were bored on a long car ride?

A．They played with them.

B．They left them alone.

C．They told them about famous movies.

D．They asked them to pay attention to safety.

3. Why does the author share her experience at the supermarket?

A．To show customers'   purchasing habits.

B．To show what a difficult life she was living.

C．To show boredom and jobs go hand in hand.

D．To show the link between boredom and creativity.

4. What would be the best title for the text?

A．Kids have enough fun	B．Life is a boring journey
C．Let kids get bored again	D．Turn boredom into entertainment

4 . Global warming is the increase of the earth’s average surface temperature due to the effect of greenhouse gases, for example, carbon dioxide, which traps heat that would otherwise escape from the earth. After the trees are cut down and more greenhouse gases are released. the “blanket” around the earth called the ozone layer（臭氧层）, will get thicker. This catches more heat and makes the earth hotter. Luckily, there are many things that every citizen of the earth can do to help reduce the effects of global warming, and it’s never too late or too early for children to take action.

The children should learn what a carbon footprint is. A carbon footprint is the amount of carbon and greenhouse gases people make as they lead the daily life and go about the normal activities. In other words, the carbon footprint is a measure of the environmental impact（冲击）the life has. To live an environmentally friendly life that doesn’t contribute to global warming, people-want to have the smallest carbon footprint possible.

Almost everything people do contributes to global warming and is related to fossil fuel consumption. These can be direct uses of fossil fuels, like riding in a gasoline-powered car, or indirect contributions to greenhouse gases, such as eating fruits or vegetables that have to be shipped from far way to reach their tables.

If a child wants to make a contribution to reducing global warming, he should ride a bicycle to the near park, school, his friend’s house, or anywhere else instead of taking the car. Or he may try to walk or jog, which is also helpful. In addition, although trains and buses often run on fossil fuels, on average, each person uses less energy and produces less pollution to run. Next time if children with their parents have to get around town or it’s too far to walk or bike, take the bus or other public transportation instead of asking for a ride.

1. What is the main reason for global warming?

A．Too much greenhouse gases are released.

B．The ozone layer has caught more heat.

C．Much more ozone layer has been released.

D．The increase of the earth’s inner temperature results in the global warming.

2. What is the main idea of Paragraph 2?

A．Life has an impact on carbon footprint.

B．The definition of a carbon footprint.

C．People should live an environmental friendly life.

D．People make a huge amount of carbon and greenhouse gases.

3. The author wants to write the passage for_________

A．children

B．parents

C．children educators

D．adults

4. What can be a suitable title for the text?

A．What Can People Do To Use Less Energy?

B．Why Global Warming Affects Humans’ Life?

C．How Can Kids Help Reduce Global Warming?

D．How Does Carbon Footprints Measure Pollution?

5 . A survey said the average Asian dad spent one minute a day with his children. I was shocked. I mean, a whole minute? Every day? Get real. Once a week maybe. The fact is, many Asian males are terrible at kid—related things. In fact, I am one of them.

Child—rearing (养育) doesn’t come naturally to guys. My mother knew the names of our teachers, best friends and crushes. My dad was only vaguely aware there were short people sharing the apartment. My mother bought healthy fresh food at the market every day. My dad would only go shopping when there was nothing in the fridge except a jar of capers and a bay leaf. Then he’d buy beer. My mother always knew the right questions to ask our teachers. My dad would ask my English teacher if she could get us a discount on school fees. My mother served kid food to kids. My dad added chili sauce to everything, including our baby food.

The truth is, mothers have superpowers. My son fell off a wall once and hurt himself all over. I demanded someone bring me a computer so I could google what to do. My wife ignored me and did some sort of chanting phrase such as “Mummy kiss it better,” and cured l7 separate injuries in less than 15 seconds.

Yes, mothers are incredible people, but they are not always right. Yet honesty forces me to record the fact that mothers only know best 99.99 percent of the time.Here are some famous slip-ups.

The mother of Bill Gates: “If you’re going to drop out of college and hang out with your nerdy friends, don’t come running to me when you find yourself penniless.” The mother of Albert Einstein: “When you grow up, you’ll find that sitting around thinking about the nature of time and space won’t pay the grocery bills.” The mother of George W. Bush: “You’ll never be like your dad, who became President of the United States and started his own war.”

1. The tone for the writer to write the passage is ___.

A．cruel

B．humorous

C．disapproving

D．critical(批评的)

2. In paragraph 2 the writer makes a comparison between mothers and fathers to prove that ______.

A．females love kids more than males	B．males are not good at child—rearing
C．Males are not interested in child-rearing	D．child-rearing is difficult both for females and males

3. What does the underlined word “slip-ups” in Paragraph 4 probably mean?

A．stories

B．shortcomings

C．mistakes

D．advantages

4. The last paragraph is mainly developed by ___.

A．providing different examples	B．following the order of space
C．making comparisons	D．analyzing causes

6 . The Millennial Trains Project is a non-profit organization that enables young people to get involved in creative projects. The organization leads crowdfunded train journeys.     1     The organization has already completed two journeys, through the northern and central United States. Twenty-four people are now getting ready to be a part of the third.

To earn a place on the train, each person has to raise $5,000.     2     At each stop, they get off the train to explore a different town or city. The idea is to visit small businesses, community centers, schools -or wherever their projects take them.

    3     He knows that universities are becoming more and more expensive each year, and many people think higher education is no longer affordable. Over the next 10 days he is visiting seven universities. He wants to see what they are doing to meet these challenges.

Catherine Tsavalas is planning to explore how bookstores and libraries improve local communities.     4     She also wants to know if they are using social media to connect with people.

Hurricanes, tornadoes, wildfires, floods—research suggests these are going to happen more and more. Jenny Gottstein thinks she can address these challenges. At each stop, she is planning to interview local leaders, emergency workers, and computer game designers.     5     She believes people are more likely to remember something important when the information is fun and game-like.

These 24 people are strangers now, but not for long. The next week is going to be a life-changing learning experience for many.

A．She then plans to create a game to help people prepare for disasters.

B．Trevor Eagle wants to make s difference to the education system.

C．Besides money, they also need to have an idea for a project.

D．Community leaders will travel by train across American South.

E．These journeys provide the young with the chance to help different communities.

F．Tyson Foods had supported the project for a 10-day journey across the US.

G．She wants to find out what they are doing to encourage more people to read.

7 . Andrew Grey doesn’t fit most people’s idea of an astronomer. He works in a car repair shop, not in a lab or university, yet the Australian repairman discovered a star system hiding in data from NASA’s Kepler space telescope.

Mr. Grey is one of millions of citizen scientists helping researchers to expand collective understanding. For centuries, only a few ordinary people had been contributing to science, but advances in technology have brought a higher level of democratization (民主化) to science.

“This is a collaborative (合作的) effort that anyone could get involved in,” says Chris Lincoln, an Oxford University astrophysicist (天体物理学家) and cofounder of Zooniverse, a platform that hosts dozens of citizen science projects. Citizen scientists can contribute to breakthroughs in almost any field, from ecology to astrophysics.

“As long as pattern recognition is involved, there are no limits to what can become a citizen science project,” Dr. Linton says. “Anyone can identify patterns in images, graphs, or even seemingly boring data after a short tutorial. Machine learning allows computers to do some pattern recognition. But humans, particularly amateur scientists, don’t stay focused on what they’re supposed to. And that’s good, because people who do that notice the unusual things in s data set.

“And citizen science doesn’t have to be directed by a scientist,” says Sheila Jasanoff, director of the Program on Science, Technology and Society at Harvard University. “Citizens producing knowledge in places where official organs have failed then can also be citizen scientists,” she says. That’s what happened in Flint, Michigan, when a local mother started drinking water tests that caused a broader investigation of lead levels.

Citizen-powered research is as old as scientific inquiry. For centuries before science became professionalized, regular people looked for patterns in the world around them. Despite a lot of advanced equipment and computer models, scientists still welcome help from everyday people.

As a professional scientist himself, Lintott says, “People think that were intelligent, but science is easy and we need your help.”

1. What made citizen scientists appear?

A．The high level of science projects	B．The development of technology.
C．The support of the government.	D．The foundation of Zooniverse.

2. What is a human advantage in pattern recognition compared with machines?

A．Humans can identify patterns mare swiftly.

B．Humans focus their attention on data.

C．Humans can observe uncommon things.

D．Humans have stronger emotions.

3. What is Lincon’s attitude towards citizen science?

A．Favorable.	B．Cautious.
C．Indifferent.	D．Doubtful.

4. What would be the best title of the text?

A．Citizen scientists can be intelligent.	B．Science is important to everyone.
C．Anyone can be a scientist.	D．Science is everywhere.

8 . Charlotte Heffelmire was home in Vienna,Va.,for Thanksgiving break from the Air Force Academy when she saw that her father had gotten stuck under the pickup truck he'd been working on.

"I was on my back,face up,and I was trying to get some brake lines when apparently the jack（千斤顶）slipped and fell down on me,"her dad,Eric Heffelmire,told WUSA9.Gasoline spilled（溢出）and caught fire,and he knew he was in trouble."I thought they 'd be pulling out a dead body later in the evening."

After his struggling for 10 minutes,his barefoot teenage daughter came running into the garage."I felt the weight shift,and I said,'You almost got it.'and then it was just UGHHHRRR,and suddenly I'm pulled out,"Eric told NBC4.

Even Charlotte,120 pounds and 5-foot-6,isn't sure where her power came from."It was some crazy strength,"she told WUSA9.

Realizing the burning truck could set her house on fire at any moment,Charlotte jumped into the truck and drove it out of the garage."I didn't want the entire house to explode with the truck,so I started the truck,put it in four-wheel drive,and managed to drive it with three wheels,"she said.

Then she went inside the house to grab her baby sister and got her grandmother out of the house too."I just did what I had to do,so I don't feel like a big hero or anything,"Charlotte said.Her local fire department,Fairfax County Fire and Rescue,felt differently,awarding her the Citizen Lifesaving Award.

1. What did Eric Heffelmire do after he got stuck under the truck?

A．He put out the fire.	B．He tried to get out.
C．He shouted for help.	D．He waited for his death.

2. Why was Charlotte awarded by the local fire department?

A．Because she remained low-key.

B．Because she was a lifesaving hero.

C．Because she did what they should do.

D．Because she had some crazy strength.

3. Which of the following words can best describe Charlotte?

A．Brave and powerful.	B．Determined and patient.
C．Energetic and outgoing.	D．Considerate and cautious.

9 . On a hot summer day, there are few things that are more wonderful than a nice cool pool.     1    And it is completely relaxing. Of course, if you have children, there are certain measures you should take to keep them safe, whether you have a pool in your backyard or you are going to a public pool.

Go swimming together. No person should ever swim alone. Though many people do, the simple truth is that it only takes a second for people to become injured or drown.     2     Having someone there with you can make the difference between life and death. This is especially true for young children. If your children is under the age of 5, you should never allow them to swim out of arm’s length.

    3     Kids love to chase one another through the water and to splash and jump around. But it is important to teach children not to jump on top of one another and to watch their surroundings in the water, so that they do not accidentally knock into others, injuring them. Playing around in the pool is very interesting but dangerous.

Keep it locked. If you have a pool, you must have a locking gate around your pool.     4    Keep the gate locked at all times, even when you are in the pool. It is terrible for children to steal into the pool.

Know the way out.     5     Make sure that they know where all ladders are and how to enter and get out of the pool properly. Although your children may be able to lift themselves out of the pool using the side, that is not the safest way to go.

A．Don’t play around in the pool.

B．Be sure to show all children the proper way to exit the pool.

C．Swimming under water is forbidden in the pool.

D．This is to prevent children from entering the pool without your permission.

E．Slipping into the water seems like the perfect way to deal with the heat.

F．Something sad happens every year.

G．Make sure kids know food should be eaten either before or after swimming.

10 . Any car accident is frightening, but an accident in which your vehicle is thrown into the water, with you trapped inside, is absolutely terrifying.     1    However, most deaths result from panic, without a plan or understanding what is happening to the car in the water. By adopting a brace(支撑) position, acting decisively and getting out fast, you can save yourself from a sinking vehicle.

Brace yourself for impact (撞击力). As soon as you're aware that you're going off the road and into a body of water, adopt a brace position. The impact could set off the airbag system in your vehicle, so you should place both hands on the steering wheel in the “ten and two” position.

Undo your seat belt.     2     Unfasten the children, starting with the oldest first. Forget the cell phone call. Your car isn’t going to wait for you to make the call.

    3     Leave the door alone at this stage and concentrate on the window. A car’s electrical system should work for up to three minutes in water, so try the method of opening it electronically first. Many people don’t think about the window as an escape option either because of panic or misinformation about doors and sinking.

Break the window. If you aren’t able to open the window, or it only opens halfway, you’ll need to break it with an object or your foot. It may feel counterintuitive (有悖常理的) to let water into the car.     4    

Escape when the car has equalized. If it has reached the dramatic stage where the car cabin has been filled with water and it has become balanced, you must move quickly and effectively to ensure your survival.     5     While there is still air in the car, take slow，deep breaths and focus on what you’re doing.

A．Open the window as soon as you hit the water.

B．Surviving a sinking car is not as difficult as you think.

C．It takes 60 to 120 seconds for a car to fill up with water usually.

D．Such accidents are particularly dangerous due to the risk of drowning.

E．In conclusion, if you know what to do in the water, you will be safe.

F．This is the first thing to attend to, yet it often gets forgotten in the panic.

G．But the sooner the window is open, the sooner you can escape directly through it.