1 . Cape Town, the second-biggest city in South Africa, is now in danger.
How can a city run out of water?
Water covers about 70 percent of Earth’s surface. But most of that is seawater. Freshwater is what we use to drink, take showers and cook food. Less than 1 percent of the planet’s water is fresh and accessible (可利用的).
Usually, freshwater comes from rivers and lakes. But the amount of accessible water changes over time. People build reservoirs (水库) to help store water so that they always have enough water to use.
Underground water is another source of freshwater. For example, water from wells is a kind of underground water.
The ocean can also give us water.
Cape Town’s water problem is due to population growth and a record drought, National Geographic reported.
| A．During rainy times, the reservoir stores water from rivers. |
| B．People are still wasting water every day. |
| C．The city is running out of water. |
| D．Now, people in this city are trying to save water. |
| E．Collecting rainwater is another important way to save water. |
| F．To answer this question, we need to take a look at where our water comes from. |
| G．But we need to get rid of its salt before we can use it. |
2 . Japan has long been regarded as having one of the strongest economies in the world, but according to recent reports this could be set to change. The nation’s increasingly strict immigration policies, low birth rates, and aging society means that Japan’s population is said to decrease by 500,000 a year over the next few decades, which could mean life in Japan could dramatically change. But what does daily life look like for those who live in Japan today?
In Japan, more than 126 million people live in 145,000 square miles — that make for pretty tight living places. Many Japanese are packed together on crowded sidewalks or are pushed into subway cars like sardines. Thus, personal space is hard to find and the concept of privacy has been more of a state of mind rather than actually being alone.
From an early age the people of Japan are known to be very hard workers. If you work in a company, you can expect to work long hours on top of overtime, which is usually unpaid. But it is usually considered normal to stand this stress in hopes of getting promoted. And believe it or not, part of getting promoted means drinking alcohol — a lot of alcohol. Here, having beers with your boss may seem an essential way to build trust within the office.
While men in Japan usually work and play hard, life can be very different if you are a woman. Traditionally women have stayed at home and though many want to get out to work, limited childcare facilities, a lack of career support and the prejudice against women has kept them at home. But this could be about to change, as the government has pushed for more child care centers and better working conditions for women. But there’s still a long way to go. Many pregnant working women experience improper treatment from their bosses or their co-workers who imply think that they should be fired.
1. Which of the following is NOT the cause of the decrease in Japan’s population?| A．It has a low birth rate. |
| B．There are increasingly more elderly people. |
| C．It has been one of the largest economies in the world. |
| D．The immigration to Japan is strictly limited. |
| A．More Japanese like to stay alone. |
| B．Privacy is a state of mind. |
| C．Japanese cannot understand the concept of privacy. |
| D．It’s hard for Japanese to find a place entirely to themselves. |
| A．Japanese working in a company may face a great stress from overwork. |
| B．It’s still not that easy for Japanese women to get out to work. |
| C．If you drink a lot of alcohol with your boss, you will be fired. |
| D．Japanese government has tried to help more women to work in society. |
| A．The population of Japan has decreased because of its strong economy. |
| B．What the daily life in Japan is like. |
| C．Women in Japan prefer to stay at home rather than work in society. |
| D．Every Japanese lives in a tight place. |
3 . Every week in China, millions of people will sit in front of their TVs watching teenagers compete for the title Character Hero, which is a Chinese-style spelling bee. In this challenge, young competitors must write Chinese characters by hand. To prepare for the competition, the competitors usually spend months studying dictionaries.
Perhaps the show’s popularity should not be a surprise. Along with gunpowder and paper, many Chinese people consider the creation of Chinese calligraphy(书法) to be one of their primary contributions to civilization. Unfortunately, all over the country, Chinese people are forgetting how to write their own language without computerized help. Software on smart phones and computers allows users to type in the basic sound of the word using the Latin alphabet. The correct character is chosen from a list. The result? It’s possible to recognize characters without remembering how to write them.
But there’s still hope for the paint brush. China’s Education Ministry wants children to spend more time learning how to write.
In one Beijing primary school we visited, students practice calligraphy every day inside a specially decorated classroom with traditional Chinese paintings hanging on the walls. Soft music plays as a group of six-year-olds dip brush pens into black ink. They look up at the blackboard often to study their teacher’s examples before carefully attempting to reproduce those characters on thin rice paper. “If adults can survive without using handwriting, why bother to teach it now?” we ask the calligraphy teacher, Shen Bin. “The ability to write characters is part of Chinese tradition and culture,” she reasons. “Students must learn now so they don’t forget when they grow up.” says the teacher.
1. What can we learn about the Character Hero?| A．It’s open to people of all ages and all walks. |
| B．It’s the most-viewed TV programs in China. |
| C．It aims to spread Chinese culture to the world. |
| D．It draws great public attention across the country. |
| A．Chinese people don’t refer to dictionaries very often. |
| B．Chinese people no longer use brush pens or practice calligraphy. |
| C．Chinese people are using the Latin alphabet instead of the characters. |
| D．Chinese people needn’t write by hand as often with the help of technology. |
| A．necessary for adults to survive in China |
| B．a requirement made by the Education Ministry |
| C．helpful to keep Chinese tradition and culture alive |
| D．an ability to be developed only when you are students |
| A．A news report. | B．A science report. |
| C．An advertisement. | D．Children’s literature. |
4 . Train yourself, save a life
On Friday afternoon, a male passenger with a heart attack on Beijing’s Line 2 subway died about one hour later. That’s the third heart attack death in 10 days that aroused public attention, with the other two being actor Godfrey Gao and Xu Yong, a senior journalist at Xinhua News Agency.
They are only three of the 550,000 people in China who suffer from sudden cardiac (心脏的) shock every year, of which only about I percent are saved. Actually, many more of these victims could have been saved if Cardio-Pulmonary Resuscitation (CPR心肺复苏) are popularized. When someone suffers a heart attack and falls unconscious, people nearby have a good chance of saving him with CPR.
CPR is really not so hard to learn. All one needs is to learn how to observe and decide if a person is unconscious, where to press on the patients chest, and how to blow air through the mouth and into the lungs. Besides that, public facilities such as airports, high-speed railway stations, and big subway stations could install the Automatic External Defibrillator (AED自动体外除颤器), a device that proves effective and easy to use in saving the lives of people suffering heart attacks. All one needs is to pick it up and follow the instructions.
Unfortunately, neither of the two is popular in China. According to data, the total number of AEDs in China is slightly higher than 2,000, of which most are located in metropolises, such as Beijing and Shanghai. On CPR, less than I percent of adults can master the skill, while many have never heard of it.
Both need improvements to save those 550,000 lives every year. The cost of installing AEDs might be high, and it does take time and resources to train more people in CPR, but it is really worth the effort because every life counts and should be saved in an emergency. It’s time to train everyone and equip more public facilities to save more lives.
1. What’s the major function of the first paragraph?| A．To introduce the background of a story. |
| B．To lead in the topic of the passage. |
| C．To describe a social phenomenon. |
| D．To arouse the reader’s interest. |
| A．CPR is hard to learn |
| B．installing an aed does not cost much |
| C．CPR and AEDs are paid little attention to |
| D．more people suffer from sudden cardiac shock now |
| A．Big cities. | B．Public places. |
| C．Hospitals. | D．Subway stations. |
| A．Some knowledge about CPR. |
| B．More examples of the victims of sudden death. |
| C．The measures to be taken to solve the problem. |
| D．More reasons why learning CPR and Installing AEDs is necessary. |
5 . Living with your parents has its benefits at least when it comes to raising your kids― their grandkids. Two new studies add to the evidence that grandmothers can enhance the survival of grandchildren. That is, unless grandma's too old or lives too far away.
Humans are unusual in that the females live long past the age at which they stop having babies. Patrick Bergeron, professor of biology at Bishop's University in Quebec, said that most of the organisms will reproduce up to their very last moment. This increase is often explained by the so-called "grandmother effect". He thinks there could still be a benefit for women who stop having babies to increase their genetic footprint by helping their daughters to raise larger families.
To explore the "grandmother effect" hypothesis （假设），Bergeron and his colleagues examined nearly 200 years' worth of French-Canadian population records from the 17th and 18th centuries. "At the time, life was tough. In some years, a third o£ the kids were not even making it to one year of age.” But the researchers found that having a grandmother still alive was a definite plus."Families with grandmothers alive were larger by about two and the survival of these grandchildren to age 15 was much improved."
This beneficial effect was only seen when the matriarchs （女家长）lived nearby. That role is tougher for them to fulfills as they get older in poor health, which brings us to the second study. The researchers found that the benefits associated with having a grandmother on hand depended on her age. Once manna hit 75, the grandchild survival benefit disappeared. This was almost certainly due to some form of indirect resource competition, though, rather than wickedness （邪恶）on the part of co- resident grandmothers.
So a healthy grandma helps make for a healthy grandchild. If ',over the river and through the woods to grandmother's house" isn't too long a trip.
1. What's the second paragraph mainly about?| A．Differences between animals and human beings. |
| B．Disadvantages of living with grandmas |
| C．Grandmothers' influence on the kids. |
| D．What's called“grandmother effect”. |
| A．By voicing opinions. | B．By providing facts. |
| C．By giving examples. | D．By telling stories. |
| A．Society should be concerned about the old women. |
| B．Grandmothers over 75 years old are unwilling to help. |
| C．Some grandmothers may occupy kids' relative recourses. |
| D．Some grandmothers are getting wicked after they are old. |
| A．A healthy one living nearby. , |
| B．A healthy one living abroad. |
| C．An old one living in a nursing home. |
| D．A knowledgeable one living together. |
6 . These days, teenagers often have their noses buried in a cellphone or other electronic devices. They are often so
17-year-old Senquavlous Driver joined his
The teen jumped out of his aunt’s car without
His aunt watched on,
Connie proudly
| A．concerned | B．associated | C．satisfied | D．pleased |
| A．remind | B．review | C．ignore | D．notice |
| A．generally | B．actually | C．basically | D．certainly |
| A．why | B．how | C．when | D．if |
| A．moving | B．complaining | C．struggling | D．driving |
| A．interest | B．faith | C．respect | D．delight |
| A．aunt | B．mother | C．teacher | D．grandma |
| A．walk out | B．take out | C．pull out | D．come out |
| A．experienced | B．recovered | C．survived | D．succeeded |
| A．conclusion | B．rescue | C．end | D．point |
| A．hesitation | B．doubt | C．shame | D．excuse |
| A．dealt | B．stopped | C．continued | D．began |
| A．hardly | B．never | C．still | D．even |
| A．driven | B．walked | C．played | D．fallen |
| A．car | B．store | C．home | D．sidewalk |
| A．amazed | B．inspired | C．attracted | D．touched |
| A．sweat | B．tears | C．relief | D．silence |
| A．aware | B．tired | C．afraid | D．proud |
| A．chose | B．remembered | C．shared | D．described |
| A．bravery | B．kindness | C．sympathy | D．gratitude |
7 . At times we all get angry when we are driving. It might be because we are stuck in a traffic jam or stuck behind a very slow driver. t might be because we think another driver has done something very stupid and dangerous. Whatever the reason, it seems that getting angry in a car is something which happens more and more often and there is now a special term for it: "road rage". Some experts even think that road rage is a kind of mental illness! How can we recognize this "illness" of road rage?
There are two kinds of road rage: aggressive driving and aggressive reactions to the way other people are driving. Aggressive driving can take different forms:
●Driving much faster than the speed limit.
●Increasing your speed very quickly.
●Driving very close behind the car in front and sounding the horn or flashing the headlights.
●Changing lanes very suddenly and blocking another car.
●Moving into a parking space where another ear is trying to park.
There are also different reactions to the way other people are driving. These include:
●Making rude signs at people.
●Shouting at people and threatening them.
●Deliberately driving into another person's car.
●Hitting somebody.
●Using a weapon such as a baseball bat, or even a gun or a knife.
Road rage is certainly not a joke. There have been incidents of road rage which have led to serious injuries and even murder. Experts think that one reason for road rage is that films show a lot of examples of fast and aggressive driving such as car chases where this kind of driving seems to he positive.
Experts also think that the punishments for dangerous driving are not serious enough. Experience shows that driving problems can be controlled，but it takes a long time. In the UK in the last 30 years，the police have been quite successful in reducing the number of people who drink and drive. They are now working to stop people using mobile phones when they are driving. Let's hope they can have the same success with road rage.
1. Which of the following describes aggressive reactions to the way other people are driving？| A．Making polite signs at people. |
| B．Shouting at people and threatening them. |
| C．Driving much faster than the speed limit. |
| D．Moving into a parking space where another car is trying to park. |
| A．we are in a fast-changing society |
| B．it won't cause serious injuries or death |
| C．the drivers themselves have done something stupid |
| D．the drivers won't get severe punishments for dangerous driving |
| A．Sad. | B．Cold. |
| C．Optimistic. | D．Exciting. |
8 . At 88, my grandmother Vera has dementia and barely recognizes me. But I’m determined to help her age with dignity and grace in her home for as long as she can.
Since 2015, I’ve been a manager at Honor, a technology company that uses a website and an app to pair professional caregivers (we call them Care Pros) with loved ones who need a hand. I want to make sure we are offering all our clients (客户), including my grandmother, a service that is affordable, with people who are reliable, diverse and skilled. On Sundays. Amy, my grandmother’s most-loved Honor professional caregiver, comes over to get her dressed for church. She loves the time she spends with Amy. That’s the best gift I can give her and the best gift I can give myself. Care giving can exhaust a family emotionally and physically. At Honor, we’re trying to create something that makes it easier for women to be moms, daughters, and sisters all at once. That’s why this company was built.
What sets Honor apart from other care giving services is that we’re equally focused on treating the Care Pros well. We pay higher-than-average rates and they can get health benefits and sick leave. Most of our Care Pros are women, and a lot of them are single mothers. The technology behind our app allows Care Pros to set parameters (参数) based on when, where, and how much they want to work so they can control their schedules. The company also allows continuity of care. Each Care Pro notes in the caregivers’ app how the client is feeling or what should happen on the following shift. That way, the client’s family can stay up to date on their loved one’s health.
When I was working with my team at Honor, I wanted to create opportunities for people who looked like me. I’m proud to say that there are single moms and other women without traditional educational training who lead teams here. The makeup of this company proves that people with diverse backgrounds can be part of a successful tech company. This has to be a model for the future.
I’m confident it will happen.
1. The author mentions Amy to _______.| A．share a precious memory |
| B．advocate caring for the elderly |
| C．show the importance of caregivers |
| D．inform the readers of a touching story |
| A．It allows flexible working schedules. |
| B．It gives higher salary and more paid leave. |
| C．It mainly employs single mothers and males. |
| D．It matches caregivers with clients at random. |
| A．Go to bed later than usual. |
| B．Get the latest information. |
| C．Attend to somebody at fixed time. |
| D．Accompany somebody day and night. |
| A．women are able to hold up half the sky |
| B．success has nothing to do with education |
| C．Honor will probably have a better future |
| D．people with diverse backgrounds will be a model |
9 . Chinese tech giant Tencent Holdings Ltd, the largest global gaming provider and the operator of QQ, an instant messaging software service, has launched a series of scientific exploration events aimed at encouraging young people to explore the outside world, instead of being continuously absorbed online.
“QQ has been in the market for 18 years, but it is not aging, and its application has become younger and trendier. We hope that more young Chinese can use the app to connect with different people and views worldwide. We never worry about losing game players. Instead, we hope that players can actually go out to learn more,” said Li Dan, general manager of marketing department of the social network group at Tencent.
China’s gaming market netted (净赚) sales revenues of 218.96 billion yuan ( $33.75 billion) in 2017, jumping 23.1 percent year-on-year. Meanwhile, the number of mobile gain players in China reached 462 million, adding 10 percent over the last year. According to Tencent the number of active users of QQ, who are 21 years old or younger, has been increasing, and they tend to use the app for a longer time.
Starting May 22 of last year, QQ organized free trips for young people to Galapagos, Namibia, Spain and the Antarctic, but it didn’t reveal the specific amount it contributed to those trips. During each trip, it selected three to four participants from those who uploaded videos and made specific travel plans online. The finalists stand out with their clear video statements and their enthusiasm about going on adventures.
“Tencent’s approach appears to be contradictory with its own interests. But, in fact, this is consistent with the company’s long-term growth strategy and will promote its business by establishing a good social image,” said Neil Wang, president of consulting firm Frost & Sullivan in China.
1. Tencent has launched a series of scientific exploration events to _______.| A．bring in more profits |
| B．increase the number of its game users |
| C．make young Chinese use its app while exploring nature |
| D．encourage youngsters to connect more with the outside world |
| A．QQ was started in the early 1990s. |
| B．Tencent is not worried about the loss of game users. |
| C．The public knew how much Tencent spent on the exploring trips. |
| D．The number of mobile game players in China last year was about 462 million. |
| A．are people from different age groups |
| B．can be offered a chance to go abroad |
| C．should upload videos to introduce themselves |
| D．have to pay for their own food and accommodation |
| A．approving | B．critical |
| C．unclear | D．skeptical |
10 . It was 3 am, a cold and wet night, on August 21, 2010. I had just left a local club to travel ten kilometers home when I lost
I
With my seat belt
I
I spent a few weeks in hospital, during which time Jared visited me to see how I was
Today, nearly seven years later, Jared and I still
| A．balance | B．sight | C．interest | D．control |
| A．got | B．stepped | C．crashed | D．hid |
| A．kept | B．parked | C．found | D．stood |
| A．Worse | B．Luckily | C．Clearly | D．Badly |
| A．off | B．under | C．near | D．beyond |
| A．Sitting | B．Sleeping | C．Driving | D．Waiting |
| A．stopped | B．failed | C．happened | D．hesitated |
| A．practice | B．hand | C．safety | D．danger |
| A．renewed | B．undone | C．repaired | D．fastened |
| A．hardly | B．gradually | C．bravely | D．naturally |
| A．Annoyed | B．Dragged | C．Warned | D．Woken |
| A．while | B．although | C．until | D．since |
| A．devote | B．owe | C．take | D．save |
| A．bloody | B．social | C．special | D．loose |
| A．nervous | B．pleasant | C．normal | D．serious |
| A．recovering | B．operating | C．struggling | D．relaxing |
| A．eventually | B．exactly | C．totally | D．probably |
| A．spot | B．process | C．way | D．challenge |
| A．take care | B．fit in | C．drop in on | D．keep in touch |
| A．angel | B．owner | C．doctor | D．driver |
