3 . Directions: Fill in each blank with a proper word chosen from the box. Each word can be used only once. Note that there is one word more than you need.

A. heading     B. incredibly     C. adaptable     D. alternative     E. pursuit     F. dumped G. recycled     H. global     I. calculated     J. precisely     K. generated

Planet Plastic

Here’s a shocking statistic. Scientists have calculated the total amount of plastic ever made: 8.3 billion tonnes. Looked at another way, that’s as heavy as 25,000 Empire State Buildings or one billion elephants. And     1    , almost all of it has been made in the last 65 years.

So what’s the problem? Much plastic is in the form of packaging which is used just once and then thrown away. According to a major new study from the University of California, 9% of this is     2    , 12% is burned and 79% goes to landfill. And because most plastic doesn’t biodegrade (生物降解), once it’s in the ground, it stays there.

It’s a situation that has led the paper’s lead author, ecologist Dr. Roland Geyer, to say that we are “rapidly     3     towards ‘Planet Plastic’”. He believes that there’s already enough waste out there to cover the whole of Argentina.

The team behind this report also estimate that eight million tonnes of plastic waste are     4     into the sea every year. This has     5     concern that plastic is entering the food chain through fish and other sea life which consume the smaller pieces.

Of course, the reason why there’s so much plastic around is that it’s an amazingly useful material. We can’t get enough of it. It’s durable and     6    , and is used for everything from yoghurt pots to spaceships. But it’s    7     this quality that makes it a problem. The only way to destroy plastic is to heat or burn it — although this has the side effect of harmful emissions.

So what’s the     8     other than using less plastic? Oceanographer (海洋学家) Dr. Erik van Sebille from Utrecht University says we’re facing a flood of plastic waste, and that the     9     waste industry needs to “get its act together”.

Professor Richard Thompson, a marine biologist from Plymouth University, says it’s poor design that is at fault. He says that if products are currently designed “with recyclability in mind”, they could be recycled around 20 times over.

Dr. Geyer agrees: “The     10     of recycling is to keep material in use and in the cycle forever if you can. But it turns out in our study that actually 90% of that material that did get recycled — which I think we calculated was 600 million tonnes — only got recycled once.”

4 . Directions: Complete the following passage by using the words in the box. Each word can only be used once. Note that there is one word more than you need.

A. species   B. labelled   C. expanding   D. informed   E. underestimate   F. sustainable G. brief        H. rare          I. involves        J. valuable   K. endangered

Eating Jellyfish Could Come to the Rescue

According to the IUCN Red List 32,000 species are threatened with extinction—everything from birds and mammals. Despite national and international efforts being gathered to protect

    1     species, we actively fish for many of them. For those seafood lovers, the news is sad, but the researchers have come up with an unusual way we can help—and it     2     eating jellyfish.

Between 2006 and 2014,92 vulnerable or threatened     3     were being caught, recorded, and sold. When they are sold, it is     4     that fish and invertebrate (无脊椎的) species are required to be     5     according to species, so consumers have no way of knowing what they’re eating.

It is stressed that only a/an     6     view of the real problem is shown. “A lot of the ‘seafood records’ are listed in groups like ‘marine fish’. Here we didn’t look at those vague records, we only looked at records where the actual species was listed — so we’ve made a huge     7     of the actual catch.

There are some ways to untie the mess we’re creating in the world’s oceans, including     8     our idea of seafood to include jellyfish. That might sound a little off the theme, but it’s not the first time scientists have suggested it as a food source.

There are other ways to help keep the lovely marine lives off the menu. “We need to improve the labelling of seafood so that consumers can have all the information to make a/an     9     choice,” conservation scientist Carissa Klein told Science Alert.

And these choices, at least in some places, are easier than you might imagine. In Australia, where the researchers are based, there’s even official guides providing the     10     future both on your table and at sea.

5 . Directions: Complete the following passage by using the words in the box. Each word can only be used once. Note that there is one word more than you need.

A. constituents 　　　B. ultimately 　　　C. exhausts 　　　D. economical 　　　AB. conventional AC. electricity 　　　AD. approximately 　　　BC. contributes 　　　BD. extent 　　　CD. substances ABC. generates

Driving an electric car     1     to the protection of environment, or so the marketing departments of their makers would have you believe. Yet a report which analyzes car emissions presents a rather different picture. A battery-powered car recharged with     2     generated by coal-fired power stations, it found, is likely to be more harmful. It could cause more than three times as many deaths from pollution as a     3     petrol-driven vehicle.

The study was carried out by the University of Minnesota. The researchers estimated how levels of fine particulate matter (细颗粒物) and ground-level ozone — two important     4     of air pollution — would change when a car is powered by different ways.

It was no surprise that electric cars whose batteries were recharged with power from wind, solar or hydro-electric sources came out to be virtually free from harmful     5    . They were estimated to cause 231 deaths over the course of a year, compared with 878 for petrol cars. Electric cars recharged with power from natural gas-fired stations were also a lot less harmful than petrol-driven ones, with 439 deaths. But if those same electric cars were recharged     6     by coal, they would be responsible for over 3,000 deaths.

Biofuels also caused more health problems than petrol. But diesel, which often     7     concern about pollution, is slightly cleaner than petrol. This is because the study assumes for all cars that emission-control technologies will be more widely used, especially particulate filters which have a remarkable effect on cleaning diesel     8    . Diesel cars are also more     9     of fuel than petrol-driven ones.

Overall, the study shows that electric cars are cleaner than those traditional vehicles only if the power used to charge then is also clean. That is hardly a surprise, but the     10     of the difference is. How green electric cars really are, then, will depend mainly on where they are driven. In France, which obtains more than half of its power from nuclear station, electric cars look like a good bet. In China and some other developing countries, where a large amount of electricity is produced from coal, they may not be so environment- friendly as they are marketed.

8 . Directions: Fill in each blank with a proper word given in the box. Each word can be used only once. Note that there is one word that you do not need.

A. countless        B. limits        C. comparison        D. essential        E. disappears        F. unique G. relatively        H. cleared        I. unfortunately        J. recycled

Rainforests, found in Earth’s temperate and tropical(热带的) zones, are some of the most biologically varied ecosystems on the planet. All rainforests share certain     1     features, including a closed canopy—the dense vegetation of the top branches that forms a roof above the forest floor, a damp and warm climate, and    2     constant temperatures throughout the year. Most of the forest’s insect and animal life grows well in the canopy’s leafy and sunlit environment. The forest’s ground cover, by comparison, is small. Less than 2% of the sun’s light makes its way through the canopy and the darkness below. This darkness, along with the poor quality of the soils,     3     plant growth.

Rainforests are a(n)    4     part of Earth’s total ecology. Huge amounts of water are absorbed into tree roots and    5     into the atmosphere from the tree leaves through a process called transpiration(蒸腾作用). Tree roots also fix the soil in place and slow the run-off of rains into rivers and oceans. Through the process of photosynthesis(光合作用), rainforests absorb more carbon dioxide and give off more oxygen than any other ecosystem.

The rainforests are    6     shrinking at a rapid rate as a result of the profitable ventures of farming, logging, and mining. When tropical rainforests are    7     in order to raise cattle and crops, the nutrient-poor soils are quickly exhausted. When farmers move on to new areas, heavy rains and baking sun leave the land fruitless and lifeless. Logging and mining cause similar damage to the land and destroy the territory of    8     millions of birds, insects and animals. By some estimates, an area of tropical rainforest the size of the state of Delaware    9     in this way every month.

9 . Complete the passage with the correct forms of the words in the box.

garbage        harmonious        initiative       restrict       restore     dozen

When asked by a TV reporter to talk about air and water quality in his hometown, Qi Mu noted, “The air is great now, and we can take more walks and enjoy being outdoors again.” He felt quite pleased because the villagers were living     1     with nature once more. However, he could not forget about an earlier time when his village had been struggling with a serious air quality problem.

In the 1990s,     2     from a nearby city was usually brought to the village. “How can we make use of this?” the villagers wondered. Soon they found that garbage could be used to feed pigs. “Over the next few years,     3    of pig farms were set up,” Qi recalled. But then nobody in the village wanted to open their windows. “The smell from the garbage and pig waste was making us sick,” Qi said. The numbers of mosquitoes and flies were also horrifying. “Under such circumstances, no single women wanted to marry anyone in our village and move here,” Qi sighed.

The villagers could no longer tolerate the situation. So an    4     was launched and a “clean-up” campaign was added to the government agenda, including     5     large vehicles from passing through the village. Garbage from the city was no longer disposed of in the village, and more trees were planted. “We can all breathe more freely now that the natural beauty of our village has been    6    ,” said Qi.