Is there link between humans and climate change or not? This question was first studied in the early 1900s. Since then, many scientists have thought that our actions do make a difference. In 1997, the Kyoto Protocol explained our role in the Earth’s changing atmosphere and set international limits for gas emissions(排放) from 2008 to 2012. Some countries have decided to continue these reductions until 2020. More recently, the Paris Agreement, stuck by nearly 200 countries, also aims to limit global warming. But just now how much warmer it will get depends on how deeply countries cut carbon emissions.
1.It can be concluded from paragraph 1 that ________.
A. the problem of global warming will have been quite solved by 2020
B. gas emissions have been effectively reduced in developed countries
C. the Paris Agreements is more influential than the Kyoto Protocol
D. humans have made continuous efforts to slow down global warming
2.If nations could only keep the initial promises of the Paris Agreement, what would happen by the year 2100?
A. The human population would increase by one third.
B. Little over 50% of all species would still exist.
C. Nations would not need to tighten their emissions targets.
D. The Agreement’s minimum goal would not be reached.
3.If those island nations not far above sea level are to survive, the maximum temperature rise, since the start of the industrial age, should be_______.
A. 0.8℃B. 1.5℃C. 2℃D. 3.5℃
In the depths of the French Guianese rainforest, there still remain unusual groups of indigenous(土著的) people. Surprisingly, these people live largely by their own laws and their own social customs. And yet, people in this area are in fact French citizens because it has been a colony(殖民地) of the French Republic since 1946. In theory, they should live by the French law is often ignored or unknown, thus making them into an interesting area of “lawlessness” in the world.
The lives of these people have finally been recorded thanks to the effects of a Frenchman from Paris called Gin. Gin spent five months in early 2015 exploring the most remote corners of this area, which sits on the edge of the Amazon rainforest, with half its population of only 250,000 living in its capital, Cayenne.
“I have a special love for the French Guianese people. I have worked there on and off for almost ten years,” says Gin. “I’ve been able to keep firm friendships with them. Thus I have been allowed to gain access to their living environment. I don’t see it as a lawless land. But rather I see it as an area of freedom.”
“I wanted to show the audience a photographic record touching upon the uncivilized life,” continues Gin. “I prefer to work in black and white, which allows me to show different specific worlds more clearly.”
His black-and-white pictures present a world almost lost in time. These pictures show people seemingly pushed into a world that they were unprepared for. These local citizens now have to balance their traditional self-supporting hunting lifestyle with the lifestyle offered by the modern French Republic, which brings with it not only necessary state welfare, but also alcoholism, betrayal and even suicide.
1.Why does the author feel surprised about the indigenous people in French Guiana?
A. They seldom follow the French law.
B. They often ignore the Guianese law.
C. They are separated from the modern world.
D. They are both Guianese and French citizens.
2.Gin introduces the special world of the indigenous Guianese as _________.
A. a tour guideB. a geographer
C. a film directorD. a photographer
3.What is Gin’s attitude towards the lives of the indigenous Guianese?
A. Cautious.B. Doubtful.
C. Uninterested.D. Appreciative.
4.What does the underlined word “it” in the last paragraph refer to?
A. The modern French lifestyle. B. The self-supporting hunting.
C. The uncivilized world. D. The French Republic.
The Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, California is one of the world's most beautiful bridges. It is also one of the most visited places in the world. Vehicles(车辆) cross the bridge an average of 41 million times each year. More than 1,800 hundred million vehicles have used the bridge since it opened more than 70 years ago.
The bridge was painted “International Orange” because that color went well with the natural surroundings. The color also is easier to see in the heavy fog that often covers the area. But the Golden Gate Bridge was not named for its orange color. It was named for the body of water that it crosses, the Golden Gate Strait.
The Golden Gate Strait is the entrance to the San Francisco Bay from the Pacific Ocean. The Golden Gate Bridge links the city of San Francisco with Marin County，California.
Planning for the bridge began in the 1920s when the area around San Francisco was growing. People living in the area needed another way to get to the city besides small ferries(渡船)．
Joseph Strauss was the chief engineer for the project. Work began in 1934. Mr.Strauss demanded the strongest safety protections in the history of bridge building. These included the first use of “hard hats” to protect the workers' heads and special glasses to protect their eyes.
A special safety net was suspended(挂) under the bridge. This net saved the lives of 19 men during the construction. However, 11 other workers were killed when they fell from the bridge through the net. Still, this was a new safety record for the time.
The Golden Gate Bridge opened in 1937. It extends 1,280 meters across the water. The total length is 2,737 meters. It was the largest suspension bridge(吊桥) in the world until 1964. That is when the Verrazano Narrows Bridge opened in New York City. Today, the Golden Gate Bridge is the ninth longest suspension bridge in the world.
1.The Golden Gate Bridge was named after ________．
A．the local climateB．the color of a paint
C．the strait it crossesD．its natural surroundings
2.How did people cross the Golden Gate Strait before the bridge was built?
A．By plane.B．By boat.C．By road.D．By train.
3.The purpose of suspending a special safety net is to ________.
A．protect the environment
B．make construction easier
C．prevent workers from falling
D．save building materials from falling
4.What do we know about Joseph Strauss?
A．He attached importance to the workers' safety.
B．His safety measures were not of practical value.
C．He built the first suspension bridge in the world.
D．He demanded strong measures to ensure the safety of the bridge.
请阅读下面文字及图表，并按要求用英语写一篇150个词左右的英语短文。
You really should finish compiling that boring spreadsheet, but you just can’t bring yourself to do it. Maybe it can wait a little longer? Or it might just disappear if you ignore it long enough? You know the feeling.
According to Professor Piers Steel, of the Haskayne School of Business at the University of Calgary, 95% of people postpone important tasks at some point. But for some, procrastination (拖延症) isn’t occasional, but constant. Professor Joseph Ferrari, of DePaul University Chicago, found that 20% of the population of the world are habitual procrastinators. Sadly, delaying our duties isn’t very good for us. As the poet Edward Young wrote: “Procrastination is the thief of time”.
【写作内容】
1. 用约30个单词概述上述信息的主要内容；
2. 结合上述信息，简要分析“拖延症”产生的原因及危害；
3. 根据你的分析，就如何克服“拖延症”谈谈你的看法（不少于两点）。
【写作要求】
1. 写作过程中不能直接引用原文语句；
2. 作文中不能出现真实姓名和学校名称；
3. 不必写标题。
Age has its privileges in America, and one of the more prominent of them is the senior citizen discount. Anyone who has reached a certain age — in some cases as low as 55 — is automatically entitled to dazzling array of price reductions at nearly every level of commercial life. Eligibility is determined not by one’s need but by the date on one’s birth certificate. Practically unheard of a generation ago, the discounts have become a routine part of many businesses — as common as color televisions in motel rooms and free coffee on airliners.
People with gray hair often are given the discounts without even asking for them; yet, millions of Americans above age 60 are healthy and solvent(有支付能力的). Businesses that would never dare offer discounts to college students or anyone under 30 freely offer them to older Americans. The practice is acceptable because of the widespread belief that “elderly” and “needy” are synonymous (同义的). Perhaps that once was true, but today elderly Americans as a group have a lower poverty rate than the rest of the population. To be sure, there is economic diversity within the elderly, and many older Americans are poor. But most of them aren’t.
It is impossible to determine the impact of the discounts on individual companies. For many firms, they are a stimulus to revenue. But in other cases the discounts are given at the expense, directly or indirectly, of younger Americans. Moreover, they are a direct irritant in what some politicians and scholars see as a coming conflict between the generations.
Generational tensions are being fueled by continuing debate over Social Security benefits, which mostly involve a transfer of resources from the young to the old. Employment is another sore point. Buoyed (支持) by laws and court decisions, more and more older Americans are declining the retirement dinner in favor of staying on the job — thereby lessening employment and promotion opportunities for younger workers.
Far from a kind of charity they once were, senior citizen discounts have become a formidable economic privilege to a group with millions of members who don’t need them.
It no longer makes sense to treat the elderly as a single group whose economic needs deserve priority over those of others. Senior citizen discounts only enhance the myth that older people can’t take care of themselves and need special treatment; and they threaten the creation of a new myth, that the elderly are ungrateful and taking for themselves at the expense of children and other age groups. Senior citizen discounts are the essence of the very thing older Americans are fighting against — discrimination by age.
Outline | Details |
Introduction | Age determines whether an American can be given a discount, which is a common 1.________________in American business life today. |
Origin of senior citizen discount | ●Since the senior citizens are often treated as people who are in 2.____________, they are given such priority. |
3.__________ situation | ●The situation has changed a lot where the majority of the elderly are not poor at all. ●Younger Americans were at a/an 4.__________ directly or indirectly due to the discounts given to the elderly, thus leading to conflicts between generations. ●The number of older Americans 5.___________ to work rather than retire is on the increase, which means 6.__________ opportunities for young workers. ●It is no longer a kind of charity because millions of senior citizens don’t need the priority 7.__________. |
Conclusion | It’s unwise to offer discount priority to the elderly. ●It will mislead people to think they are unable to 8._____________ to themselves. ●People may think that they are ungrateful and they’re hurting the 9._____________ of other age groups. ●Actually senior citizen discounts, to some extent, 10. ___________against their age. |
Shakespeare’s Sister
Let us imagine, since facts are so hard to come by, what would have happened had Shakespeare had a wonderfully gifted sister, called Judith.
Shakespeare himself went, very probably — his mother was an heiress — to the grammar school, where he may have learnt Latin — Ovid, Virgil and Horace — and the elements of grammar and logic. He was, it is well known, a wild boy who poached (偷猎) rabbits, perhaps shot a deer, and had, rather sooner than he should have done, to marry a woman in the neighborhood, who bore him a child rather quicker than was right. That escapade sent him to seek his fortune in London. He had, it seemed, a taste for the theatre; he began by holding horses at the stage door. Very soon he got work in the theatre, became a successful actor, and lived at the centre of the universe, meeting everybody, knowing everybody, practicing his art on the boards, exercising his wits in the streets, and even getting access to the palace of the queen.
Meanwhile his extraordinarily gifted sister remained at home. She was as adventurous, as imaginative, as curious to see the world as he was. But she was not sent to school. She had no chance of learning grammar and logic, let alone of reading Horace and Virgil. She picked up a book now and then, one of her brother’s perhaps, and read a few pages. But then her parents came in and told her to mend the stockings or mind the stew(炖锅) and not moon about with books and papers. They would have spoken sharply but kindly, for they were practical people who knew the conditions of life for a woman. Soon, however, before she was out of her teens, she was to be engaged to the son of a neighboring wool stapler(经销商). She cried out that marriage was hateful to her, and for that she was severely beaten by her father. Then he ceased to scold her. He begged her instead not to hurt him, not to shame him in this matter of her marriage. He would give her a chain of beads or fine dresses, he said; and there were tears in his eyes. How could she disobey him? How could she break his heart?
The force of her own gift alone drove her to it. She made up a small parcel of her belongings, let herself down by a rope one summer’s night and took the road to London. She was not seventeen. The birds that sang in the woods were not more musical than she was. She had the quickest fancy, a gift like her brother’s, for the tune of words. Like him, she had a taste for the theatre. She stood at the stage door; she wanted to act, she said. Men laughed in her face. The manager — a fat, loose-lipped man — howled with laughter. He roared something about puppies dancing and women acting — no woman, he said, could possibly be an actress. She could get no training in her craft. Could she even seek her dinner in a bar or roam (游荡) the streets at midnight? Yet her genius was for fiction and lusted to feed abundantly upon the lives of men and women and the study of their ways. At last — for she was very young, oddly like Shakespeare the poet in her face, with the same grey eyes and rounded brows — at last Nick Greene the actor-manager took pity on her; she found herself with child by that gentleman and so — who shall measure the heat and violence of the poet’s heart when caught and confined in a woman’s body? — killed herself one winter’s night and lies buried at some cross-roads where the omnibuses (公共汽车) now stop outside the Elephant and Castle.
That, more or less, is how the story would run, if a woman in Shakespeare’s day had had Shakespeare’s genius.
1.From Paragraph 2, we can find Shakespeare once did all of the followings but ________.
A. hold horses at the theatreB. perform plays on the stage
C. be the centre of the universeD. go to the palace of the queen
2.What can we infer from Judith’s teen life?
A. She was cared for but was expected to live a girl’s life.
B. She was willing to be engaged to a wool stapler.
C. Her father wanted to make a fortune by her marriage.
D. She got less affection from her parents than her brother.
3.What is the right order of Judith’s life events?
a. She was forced to be engaged.
b. She found herself pregnant by Nick Greene.
c. She had no chance of schooling.
d. She fled away from home to London.
e. She put an end to her life.
A. c-a-b-d-e B. c-a-d-b-e C. a-c-b-d-e D. b-c-a-d-e
4.Why did Judith commit suicide to end her life?
A. The fat manager rejected her and even insulted her.
B. She married the wrong person and couldn’t face it.
C. She couldn’t tolerate the violence of the poet’s heart.
D. She was caught between her ideal and the reality.
5.From the passage, we can safely draw the conclusion that in the age of Shakespeare ________.
A. women couldn’t possibly act on the stage or write plays
B. women could enjoy themselves domestically and socially
C. women couldn’t make their achievements at any level
D. women could make their own decision as to their marriage
