1 . Diving in the ocean, marine biologist Erika Woolsey has seen how coral reefs (珊瑚礁) are being damaged by climate change. It has made her decide to find a way to share her experience —including those who can’t easily explore the ocean.
Through her non-profit, The Hydrous, Woolsey is using virtual reality to bring the ocean to everyone. Scientists, filmmakers and divers are taking people on immersive (沉浸式的) virtual dives, attracting attention to reef damage and expecting action to protect our sea. About 25% of marine species depend on coral reefs. However, climate change, pollution and overfishing have done harm to around half the world’s shallow water coral reefs.
Twenty years of underwater exploration has given Woolsey a detailed understanding of the dangerous situations facing reefs. “I’ve seen this first-hand shift. Healthy colourful coral reefs become what look like the moonscape step by step,” Woolsey says.
It is through this experience that The Hydrous team set out to recreate with their award-winning film Immerse. Intended to watch with a VR headset, viewers join Woolsey for a nine-minute guided virtual dive on the coral reefs, immersed in a 360-degree underwater view.
They swim alongside sea turtles and sharks before witnessing the worsening of the reefs. The experience often brings out strong feelings. “As soon as people take off that headset and look me in the eye, they want to tell me a story about their ocean experience,” Woolsey says. “It’s that human connection to our ocean that will solve our ocean problems.”
Woolsey hopes advances in camera technology will allow her team to take more and more people to places in the ocean that are under-explored and places further away from human civilization. They are developing a virtual experience that will put the people in the role of a marine biologist, carrying out biodiversity surveys underwater, and even transporting the viewers to space to monitor global sea surface temperatures.
1. Why did Erika Woolsey set up The Hydrous?| A．To collect money for ocean protection. | B．To let the public know about coral reefs better. |
| C．To help people enjoy the ocean’s beauty. | D．To encourage people to protect the ocean. |
| A．Positive. | B．Negative. | C．Concerned. | D．Uninterested. |
| A．The story about the ocean. | B．The situation of coral reefs. |
| C．The connection with sea life. | D．The way to protect the ocean. |
| A．To bring more fun during the lockdown. | B．To help people learn more about the ocean. |
| C．To train talents for environment protection. | D．To discover more places that need protection. |
要点：1．你为环境保护做了什么。
2．你的感受和收获。
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1. 野生动物的现状；
2. 如何保护野生动物；
3. 总结，表达心愿。
注意：
1. 词数100左右;
2. 可以适当增加细节，以使行文连贯；
3. 开头和结尾已给出，不计入总词数。
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4 . Paris mayor Anne Hidalgo has long worked to make her city less dependent on cars. She wanted to see more people using bicycles to get around. Over a number of years, the city government set limits on cars and increased the amount of bike paths from 200 kilometers to over 1,000 kilometers.
This year, Parisians are not complaining about too much automobile traffic. Instead, they say there are too many bikes. “Now, it’s really like a bike traffic jam(阻塞),” Thibault Quere, a spokesperson for France’s Federation of Bicycle Users, said. ”It’s kind of a good difficulty to have, especially when we think about what Paris used to be.”
Some famous roads along the River Seine are completely closed to cars. Now you see people riding bikes, running and walking with their families along the river. In another part of Paris, a bike path on Sebastopol Boulevard is one of the busiest in Europe, after opening in 2019. In one week in early September, it reached a record high of 124,000 riders.
The city will host the Summer Olympics in 2024 and plans to add more bike paths by then. Paris wants to reduce its pollution by half during the games, even as visitors from around the world will be in the city for the event. Organizers say all of the competition sites will be reachable by bike through a 60-kilometer network of bike paths.
The change to Paris, however, has not been easy. With more people using bikes, more people are making mistakes. Some of them are new to cycling and disobey traffic rules. But the environment may be improving. Cycling is good exercise and helps reduce pollution, which is still a problem for the large city. The French government blames atmospheric pollution for 48,000 early deaths in the country each year.
Hidalgo was re-elected in 2020 and plans to keep making what she calls a “Paris that breathes”. Her newest five-year bike plan includes over $250 million for more bike paths and bike parking. The new budget is an increase of over $100 million from her first five-year plan.
1. What can be learned from the second paragraph?| A．Hidalgo’s effort has paid off. | B．Parisians prefer to travel by car. |
| C．Parisians find it difficult to ride bikes. | D．Quere disagrees with Hidalgo. |
| A．To compare the famous roads in France. |
| B．To praise people enjoying riding bicycles. |
| C．To stress the importance of France in Europe. |
| D．To show how busy a cycle path is in Paris. |
| A．Tour local bike shops. | B．Ride to competition sites. |
| C．Promote the sights in France. | D．Support the athletes around the world. |
| A．Friendly. | B．Helpful. | C．Determined. | D．Honest. |
5 . Most of us have heard of the 3Rs: reduce, reuse and recycle. It is the core principle of a sustainable (可持续的) life, but few of us can apply it in our own lives. Now, there’s a “lab” you can explore and discover a way toward living sustainably.
3R Lab is located in Xuhui district, Shanghai. It offers exhibitions, activities and goods that showcase the 3R principle. The key to a sustainable life, according to Vincent T. M. Fong, the 32-year-old from Hong Kong who created the lab, is to make it a long-term promise. “A sustainable life should be sustainable itself in the first place. You can’t lead a sustainable life on a whim. Small and comfortable changes are exactly what you need,” Fong said.
The lab regularly hosts ugly fruit markets, offering these strange fruits which are often thrown away by traditional markets and consumers at a quite attractive price. “They’re thrown away simply because of their appearance. Buying fruit regardless of how they look reduces food waste significantly in our daily life,” Fong commented.
A water tank with two types of straws is another equipment in the lab. “One type is made from normal plastics widely used in our daily life while the other is from PHA, a new replacement for plastics, and the water is sourced from the Suzhou River,” explained Ni Li, an employee of the lab. Visitors can see how the PHA straws degrade (降解) into a thin layer in just one month, while the others remain unchanged.
“Leading a sustainable life does not necessarily mean sacrifice,” said Fong. Consuming ugly fruit and using degradable plastics are small changes that are good for the environment and easy to stick to. Only in this way can the 3R principle become part of our lives, he added.
After working there for six months, Ni, who wasn’t mindful of the 3R principle before arriving at the lab, now uses her cup every time she buys a coffee. “The job has reshaped my life,” Ni said.
1. What does the-underlined phrase “on a whim” in the second paragraph probably mean?| A．In a rush. | B．On a regular basis. |
| C．Without any reason. | D．As a common practice. |
| A．To reduce food waste. | B．To promote healthy eating. |
| C．To sell new kinds of fruit. | D．To provide more affordable fruit, |
| A．The water pollution caused by plastics. | B．The degradation of PHA straws. |
| C．The interaction between two types of straws. | D．The disappearance of normal plastic straws. |
| A．She avoids going to traditional markets. | B．She has devoted less time to her hobbies. |
| C．She has got rid of a few bad habits. | D．She is leading a low carbon life now. |
1. 举出人类活动引发的灾害的实例；
2. 提出一些必要的防范措施；
3. 发出倡议，号召大家行动起来拯救地球。
注意:
1. 词数100左右；
2. 开头和结尾已给出，不计入总词数。
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Many of us were raised with the saying “waste not, want not”. None of us, however, can
Any kind of waste is thoughtless. Whether we waste our potential talents,our own time, our
8 . Want to eat healthy and also save the planet?
How do our food choices affect climate change?
Food production accounts for about 20% of greenhouse gas emissions worldwide.
In each of four food groups — protein, mixed dishes, dairy and beverage — researchers looked at foods that disproportionately contribute to greenhouse gas emissions that cause global warming.
Top foods to swap out
USA TODAY asked if there is one specific food (or food group) that would be most recommended to be swapped out of.
| A．If universally adopted, the recommended changes would lower the nation’s dietary carbon footprint. |
| B．The team then matched each of these environmentally unfriendly foods to a similar option with a far lower carbon footprint. |
| C．The good news is that there are many options for small changes to make to reduce your carbon footprint and improve your diet. |
| D．A drastic change in your diet isn’t necessary to make a significant difference. |
| E．You don’t have to make these changes all the time to make a difference. |
| F．This means that changing what we eat can reduce greenhouse gas and carbon pollution. |
| G．If you are a person who make the changes that we propose, you’re likely to see the benefits you want. |
9 . Human activities are making the globe saltier, specifically in our soils, fresh water and air, according to a study released this week in the journal Nature Reviews Earth & Environment.
Salt pollution isn’t some flashy threat to our existence — like, say, a meteor hitting Earth — but the issue is gravely overlooked and is a “sleeping giant”, said Sujay Kaushal, lead author of the study. Over the past 50 years, salt have increased in streams and rivers as people have begun using and producing more salts. The team found that across the globe, about 2.5 billion acres of soil — an area about the size of the United States — have become saltier.
Most people think of salt as the white specks we put in our food or the salt in the oceans, chemically known as sodium chloride (NaCl). That sodium salt can also be found in detergents (去污剂), other household products and more, but there are many different salts, including calcium, magnesium and other ions used in additional products — and they’re all increasing in places where they don’t normally occur.
Salt is a natural and necessary component of Earth. The compound is brought to the surface slowly over long geological time scales, through natural processes such as weathering of sedimentary (沉积而成的) rocks. When exposed at the surface, the salt can mix with water, be transported into water or go into the air. Living organisms, from plants to people, take up small portions to help regulate daily functions. Excess salt hitches a ride with water molecules, entering soil and the oceans. But human activities have altered this normal salt cycle in recent decades, the team found. Agriculture, mining, construction, water and road treatment, and other industrial activities are increasing the salt in our ground, freshwater systems and air.
Before this study, scientists didn’t really know how much humans were changing salt concentrations around the globe. But the “magnitude to which we have altered one of Earth’s natural cycles is alarming,” said ecologist Bill Hintz, who was not involved in the research. He agreed with the study’s authors that these changes to the salt cycle are an existential threat to freshwater supplies.
1. The underlined word “flashy” in Paragraph 2 can best be replaced by ________.| A．instant | B．serious | C．damaged | D．unsolved |
| A．People can only have access to sodium salt in daily life. |
| B．People intend to have a limited insight into salt. |
| C．Additional products are supposed to be banned. |
| D．Salts are increasing in the world scale. |
| A．Forming as a compound — weathering of sedimentary rocks — consumed by living organisms |
| B．Coming into being in Earth naturally — being brought to the surface — combining with water — entering soil and oceans |
| C．Coming into being in Earth naturally — being transported to water and air — increased by human activities |
| D．Forming as a compound — removing excessive salt — entering soil and oceans |
| A．Inefficient. | B．Unreliable. | C．Brain-washing. | D．Ground-breaking. |
1. 大量使用塑料的危害；
2. 倡议减塑环保。
注意：
1. 词数100左右;
2. 可以适当增加细节，以使行文连贯；
3. 开头语已写好，不计入总词数。
Dear fellow students,
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