“A usual boring day!” This would be the answer from Roman if somebody asked him how his day was. These days he found everything boring, and nothing excited him.
One day he was lying on the bed in his room as usual. Suddenly the light went off. His room was rather hot without an air conditioner. Though he did not want to leave his room, he had to. Unwillingly, he left his room and came to the living room. It was slightly cool there as the living room had two huge windows.
His young brother was playing with his friend. They were rolling on the floor. He was looking out for the TV remote, but couldn’t find it. He got up and searched for it everywhere, but the remote was nowhere to be seen. He looked at his brother who was still lying on the floor, playing.
He asked him, “where is the remote?”
“Under the sofa,” his brother yelled.
He tried to look through the remote, but it was dark. He put his hand under the sofa. He touched something, grabbed it and took his hand out. It was a snake in his hand!
Upon seeing that, his brother started to yell, “Snake! Snake!” Mom came as soon as she heard the shouting. She was too horrified to see a snake. She was so scared that she even couldn’t speak a word. Two kids were trying to hide behind each other’s back. “What an old trick!” Roman thought and threw it to the kids.
As the snake landed on the floor and neared the kids, it started moving from the left side to the right. Only then did Roman realize that the snake was real, and not a toy. He threw the snake to kids because he thought it was a fake snake and it was the kids who were playing some tricks.
This time Mom almost got a heart attack. Now Roman was scared, too. The snake was only 10 meters away from the kids and was staring at them. They even couldn’t call the rescue team. There might be some deadly damage before their arrival. There was not much time to think. It was the time for a quick action.
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As Roman was farther from the snake, he jumped onto the window and grabbed the curtains.
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Paragraph 2:
After the rescue team caught and took the snake away, everyone went inside the home.
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Following pressure from animal activist groups , Apsara, the management authority for the Angkor Archaeological Park in Siem Reap, Cambodia announced in June 2019 it would ban elephant rides in early 2020. Now the process has already begun.
An Apsara press
In 2016, an elephant named Sambo died at Angkor Archaeological Park,
The ban comes at a time when more and more travelers and tourism organizations around the world have moved to eliminate animal-related attractions. Most recently, Trip Advisor-one of the world’s biggest travel listings and booking sites--announced that
3 . Understand your pet's body language
Body language is different depending on what sort of animal you have chosen as your pet.
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●If your cat looks at you and blinks at you slowly, it's likely communicating affection.
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A.Pets' health depends on your daily care. |
B.You can do this back at your cat to show your love, too. |
C.The context is important in telling which emotion it might be. |
D.Birds can be quite expressive through their eyes, feathers, and voices. |
E.When dogs feel stressed out or threatened, their eyes will look larger than normal. |
F.Once familiar with each other's presence and body language, cats and dogs can play together. |
G.If you're unsure of your pet's body language, consider reading some articles for your specific animal. |
4 . Rainforests are home to a rich variety of medicinal plants, food, birds and animals. Can you believe that a single bush(灌木丛)in the Amazon may have more species of ants than the whole of Britain! About 480 varieties of trees may be found in just one hectare of rainforest.
Rainforests are the lungs of the planet-storing vast quantities of carbon dioxide and producing a significant amount of the world's oxygen. Rainforests have their own perfect system for ensuring their own survival; the tall trees make a canopy(树冠层)of branches and leaves which protect themselves, smaller plants, and the forest animals from heavy rain, intense dry heat from the sun and strong winds.
Amazingly, the trees grow in such a way that their leaves and branches, although close together, never actually touch those of another tree. Scientists think this is the plants' way to prevent the spread of any tree diseases and make life more difficult for leaf-eating insects like caterpillars. To survive in the forest, animals must climb, jump or fly across the gaps. The ground floor of the forest is not all tangled leaves and bushes, like in films, but is actually fairly clear. It is where dead leaves turn into food for the trees and other forest life.
They are not called rainforests for nothing! Rainforests can generate 75%of their own rain. At least 80 inches of rain a year is normal-and in some areas there may be as much as 430 inches of rain annually. This is real rain-your umbrella may protect you in a shower, but it won't keep you dry if there is a full rainstorm. In just two hours, streams can rise ten to twenty feet. The humidity(湿气)of large rainforests contributes to the formation of rainclouds that may travel to other countries in need of rain.
1. What can we learn about rainforests from the first paragraph?A.They produce oxygen. | B.They cover a vast area. |
C.They are well managed. | D.They are rich in wildlife. |
A.Heavy rains | B.Big trees. |
C.Small plants. | D.Forest animals. |
A.For more sunlight. | B.For more growing space. |
C.For self-protection. | D.For the detection of insects. |
A.Life-Giving Rainforests | B.The Law of the Jungle |
C.Animals in the Amazon | D.Weather in Rainforests |
The production of coffee beans is a huge, profitable business, but, unfortunately, full-sun production is taking over the industry and bringing about a lot of damage. The change
On a local level, the damage
Medical research often makes use of the forests’ plant and animal life,
The loss of shade trees is gradually causing
It is obvious that
6 . Scientists are attempting to extract (提取) cells from a 40,000-year-old horse in hopes of using the sample to clone the extinct species back into existence. The male baby horse was discovered in 2018 in permafrost (永冻土) in northeastern Siberia of Russia.
A team of scientists from South Korea and Russia believes the young horse, called the Lenskaya or Lena horse, was about 20 days old when it died. The species of horse, now extinct, is between 30,000 and 40,000 years old. Thanks to the terrible coldness, the animal’s tissue was preserved enough for the scientists to obtain samples.
Semyon Grigoriev, head of the lab at the Mammoth (猛犸象) Museum of the North-Eastern Federal University in Yakutsk, said the horse was “well-preserved and a “great find”. There is no damage to the horse’s body and even its hair is undamaged. The unfortunate animal, according to Grigoriev, “could have drowned after falling into some kind of a natural trap.”
Hwang Woo-Suk, a researcher from South Korea working on the project, said, “If researchers find a cell, they will do their best to clone the animal. If we get live cells from this ancient baby horse, it would be wonderful in terms of cloning.”
After that, they will make a cloned embryo and let a female horse carry it as its mother. Hwang said modern-day horses are “very similar to the ancient one,” so there would be no problem getting help from a modern-day female horse.
The scientists are hoping the experiment on the baby horse will give them experience in progressing toward their ambitious goal - bringing back the extinct woolly mammoth.
“If we manage to clone the horse - it will be the first step to cloning the mammoth,” Hwang said.
1. Why was the Lenskaya horse kept in good condition?A.It died quite young. |
B.It was buried under the ground. |
C.A local museum had preserved it. |
D.The temperatures were extremely low. |
A.It was a female horse. |
B.Its hair was partly destroyed. |
C.It might have died by accident. |
D.Its tissue can hardly be found. |
A.Get live cells from the baby horse. |
B.Make an embryo in a female horse. |
C.Find an ideal modern-day female horse. |
D.Know more about extinct ancient horses. |
A.A new horse species found in Siberia |
B.Scientists attempt to clone extinct horse |
C.How to preserve ancient animals’ tissue |
D.How to extract cells from extinct species |
7 . The African elephant, the largest land animal remaining on earth, is of great importance to African ecosystem (生态系统). Unlike other animals, the African elephant is to a great extent the builder of its environment. As a big plant-eater, it largely shapes the forest-and-savanna (大草原) surroundings in which it lives, therefore setting the terms of existence for millions of other animals that live in its habitat (栖息地).
It is the elephant’s great desire for food that makes it a disturber of the environment and an important builder of its habitat. In its continuous search for the 300 pounds of plants it must have every day, it kills small trees and underbushes, and pulls branches off big trees. This results in numerous open spaces in both deep tropical forests and in the woodlands that cover part of the African savannas. In these open spaces are numerous plants in various stages of growth that attract a variety of other plant-eaters.
Take the rain forests for example. In their natural state, the spreading branches overhead shut out sunlight and prevent the growth of plants on the forest floor. By pulling down trees and eating plants, elephants make open spaces, allowing new plants to grow on the forest floor. In such situations, the forests become suitable for large hoofed plant-eaters to move around and for small plant-eaters to get their food as well.
What worries scientists now is that the African elephant has become an endangered species. If the elephant disappears, scientists say, many other animals will also disappear from vast areas of forest and savanna, greatly changing and worsening the whole ecosystem.
1. What is the passage mainly about?A.Disappearance of African elephants. |
B.Forests and savannas as habitats for African elephants. |
C.The effect of African elephants’ search for food. |
D.The eating habit of African elephants. |
A.Fixing the time. |
B.Worsening the state. |
C.Improving the quality. |
D.Deciding the conditions. |
A.They result from the destruction of rain forests. |
B.They provide food mainly for African elephants. |
C.They are home to many endangered animals. |
D.They are attractive to plant-eating animals of different kinds. |
A.showing the effect and then explaining the causes |
B.pointing out similarities and differences |
C.describing the changes in spare order |
D.giving examples |