Do you find it hard to memorize words? You must not be the only one. It could be 1.(help) if you say the words aloud. But this often isn’t good in a quiet classroom.
Now, researchers from the University of Waterloo, Canada, have come up 2.a new idea. They suggest 3.(draw) a picture of what you are trying to memorize!
The researchers did a study 4.(base) on the idea. They first gave a group of students some words such as “apple” or “balloon”. Then they gave the students 40 seconds, during 5.the students could either write the words again and again, or draw a picture.
When the time 6.(be) over, the researchers asked the students to do something else, like sing a song. After that, they gave the students 60 seconds to write down as many words 7.they could remember. The results showed that those who drew the words did a much 8.(good) job than those who wrote them.
So the next time you are having a hard time memorizing a word, 9.(draw) it! No worries if you’re not good at drawing. The 10.(research) say the quality of the drawing doesn’t matter at all.
My husband, Rashid, arrived in New York on his own from India. He stayed in a _______for a short time while _______for a house for me and our children.
During the first week of his _______, he went out one day to do some shopping. He came back in the late afternoon to discover that his suitcase was _______. He was extremely worried _______ the suitcase had all his important papers, _________ his passport.
He reported the _________ to the police and then sat there，lost and _______ in strange city, thinking of the terrible troubles of getting all the paperwork organized again from a distant country while trying to_______ in a new one.
Late in the evening, the phone rang. It was a(an) __________. He was trying to pronounce my husband’s name and was asking him a lot of questions. __________ he said they had found a pile of papers in their trash can（垃圾桶）__________had been left out on the footpath.
My husband__________ to their home to find a kind family holding all his papers and documents. Their young daughter had gone to the trash can and found a pile of __________papers. Her parents had carefully sorted them out, although they had found mainly __________ addresses on most of the documents. At last they had seen a half-written __________in the pile in which my husband had given his new __________ number to a friend.
That family not only restored(归还) the important documents to __________that day but also restored our faith and __________ in people. We still remember their __________ and often send a warm wish their way.
1.A. school B. museum C. hotel D. shelter
2.A. leaving B. looking C. waiting D. paying
3.A. design B. change C. offer D. stay
4.A. gone B. shared C. cost D. returned
5.A. if B. as C. though D. after
6.A. including B. containing C. case D. holding
7.A. thought B. complaint C. case D. pain
8.A. happy B. lonely C. satisfied D. confident
9.A. grow up B. break down C. lie down D. settle down
10.A. officer B. stranger C. friend D. passenger
11.A. Then B. So C. But D. Yet
12.A. where B. what C. that D. it
13.A. moved B. rushed C. skated D. wandered
14.A. unfamiliar B. favorite C. similar D. expensive
15.A. suitable B. flexible C. convenient D. foreign
16.A. e-mail B. letter C. paragraph D. essay
17.A. flight B. bus C. telephone D. diploma
18.A. us B. you C. them D. me
19.A. friendship B. justice C. trust D. devotion
20.A. curiosity B. confidence C. patience D. kindness
Have you ever heard of an insect called the cicada(蝉)? 1. But they have an interesting internal clock that tells them when to go aboveground.
Every 17 years, billions of the noisy Brood V cicadas(十七年蝉) will swarm(成群出现) to northeastern parts of the US, including New York, Ohio and Pennsylvania. 2.But there are usually a lot less of them compared to the Brood V cicadas.
3. According to Discovery News, these insects started their lives in 1999. And as their 17-year life cycle comes to an end, they go aboveground when their underground homes get warmer 64 degrees Fahrenheit (about 18℃) to be exact.
Then the females will lay hundreds of eggs in trees, and after about four to six weeks, the mother and father cicadas will die. 4.
While they can be kind of annoying, these insects don’t harm humans, but they do make a lot of noise during their time aboveground. 5.
However, since there are so many of the 17-year cicadas, the amount of laid eggs can sometimes harm small trees and bushes. But after this summer, these insects will mostly mind their own business until 2033.
A. That sound is the male cicadas attracting the female cicadas.
B. The cicada insects are common in summer, especially in August and can be found in July as well.
C. There are other kinds of cicadas that come around once a year or every 13 years.
D. The baby cicadas will go underground, and the 17-year cycle will start over again.
E. As a matter of fact, people like to eat them in some cultures.
F. Well, a special kind of these insects live underground in the US for most of their lives.
G. This is what makes Brood V cicadas so special.
It’s an ordinary morning，like all the others．But instead of being woken up by the buzzing of an alarm clock, you’ll be roused by the smell of freshly made coffee，light entering your room as the curtains open automatically，and a gentle back massage（按摩）provided by your high-tech bed.
This is what a typical(典型的) person's life will be like two decades from now，according to The Guardian. Want to know more?
After you get up, your apartment will be like an electronic orchestra with you as the conductor. With simple moves of your hand and spoken instructions, you’ll be able to control your apartment’s temperature, humidity, music and lighting. You’ll be able to look through the day’s news on translucent screens while your breakfast waits for you in the automatic oven.
As you move into your kitchen, you might accidentally hit your toe on a cupboard. If you do, you’ll grab your cell phone and open the diagnostics(诊断) app. Inside your phone there will be a tiny microchip(芯片) that uses X-ray waves to scan your body. The scan will tell whether your toe is bruised or broken.
After breakfast, your driverless car will take you to work. While you “drive”, your central computer system will suggest a list of chores(家务事) that your housekeeping robots can do that day and it will also remind you to buy a gift for your mother’s upcoming birthday.
As you can see, with the help of advanced technology, our lives will be more efficient(有效率的). Technology will mitigate our forgetfulness and free us of many small burdens that distract us, such as buying a ticket. Our brain will therefore be able to focus on more important things like preparing for a presentation or doing “deep thinking”.
However, the development of technology might have some disadvantages as well. By 2036, we’ll be relying heavily on the virtual(虚拟的) world, which will mean that all of our data will be stored in the cloud, a remote digital storage system with near limitless capacity(容量). That will increase the possibility of someone else accessing, sharing or manipulating(操控) our personal information.
1.What might be the author’s purpose in writing the text?
A. To stress the importance of developing technology.
B. To remind people not to depend too much on computers．
C. To introduce one new invention that will benefit our future lives.
D. To describe how advanced technologies will affect our future lives.
2.According to the text, in two decades, ________.
A. you’ll be able to rely on an electronic orchestra to wake you up instead of an alarm clock
B. a tiny microchip in your phone will treat you when you are sick
C. you will be able to adjust the conditions of your apartment via oral instructions or simple hand gestures
D. technology will be smart enough to help us with important things like preparing for a presentation
3.What does the underlined word “mitigate” in Paragraph 6 mean?
A. Make up for. B. Worsen. C. Cure. D. Take advantage of.
When we know somewhere well，we say we “know it like the back of our hand”. But new research has shown that we don’t actually know as much about our hands as we think we do.
Wider and shorter
Professor Matthew Longo at the University of London and his team did an experiment, covering the left hands of 100 people. Then they asked the people to point to where they thought their fingertips and knuckles (指关节) were. They made some quite big mistakes.
“People think their hand is wider than it actually is,” said Longo. The fingers also seem shorter than they are. This mistake gets worse as you go across the hand from the thumb to the little finger.
Sense of position
“It is connected to our sense of position,” explained Longo. This is our ability to tell where different parts of our bodies are, even when we can’t see them. “It tells us whether a joint is straight, or not” he said. It also tells us whether we are going up or down in an elevator. All this information comes from signs from nerves in real time. It’s like our brain has maps — maps that show the size and shape of our body. “This experiment tried to find those maps,” said Longo.
Strength(强度) of feeling
But these maps make mistakes. These mistakes may be made because of how the brain understands different parts of the skin. “Our brains ‘see’ areas as larger where the skin feels touch strongly,” said Longo. Body parts don’t appear as their true size, but appear bigger or smaller depending on how strongly they feel touch. Our lips, for example, have more nerves than our nose. So brain “sees” lips on its map of the body as being bigger than our nose. The same thing happens for other parts of the body that have lots of nerves.
Longo believes that more research in this area may help us to understand eating problem better, because people suffering from these problems may not know their bodies properly.
1.Which of following statement is TRUE about the experiment according to the article?
A. People think their body parts are larger than they actually are.
B. People made more mistakes about their little fingers length than their thumbs’ length.
C. People’s fingers are actually shorter than they think.
D. People were asked to draw their hands from memory
2.What does the underlined “it” in Paragraph 4 refer to?
A. The new experiment. B. The location information.
C. The mistake people made. D. The sizes of fingers and hands.
3.We can learn from the article that ________.
A. the maps of people’s bodies form before they are born
B. the maps of our body are based on information from nerves
C. our sense of position tells how different parts of the body work
D. how we feel about our body shape is only decided by our sense of position
4.We can infer from the article that ________.
A. the hand feels touch more strongly than fingers do
B. our lips have a weaker sense of touch than our nose
C. there are more nerves in the finger than in the hand
D. our sense of position should not be trusted because it is too often incorrect
Books have tremendous power. Between their pages, readers can be transported to anywhere imaginable and become just about anyone or anything. Unfortunately, many children all over the world don’t have access to books. For several years now, Maria Keller, a 14-year-old girl from Minneapolis, Minnesota, has been changing that fact.
When she was 8 years old, Maria already loved reading. She also noticed that some of her classmates didn’t read as much as she did. When she asked her mother why that could be, her mother said that they might not be able to afford books. Maria had never thought of this. She could not believe that some children might not have bedtime stories read to them. She became determined to change this.
With her mother’s help, Maria created Read Indeed. Read Indeed is a non-profit organization aiming to collect and distribute(分发) books to children in need. During the early stages of Read Indeed, Maria set the goal to collect and distribute 1 million books by the time she was 18. It didn’t take long to reach that goal.
Today, at age 14, she has collected over 1.8 million books and has shipped them to many states and countries around the world. She says, “I cannot live without books. As I continue my mission, I have learned that the number of kids who have no books are in the hundreds of millions. So I just can’t give up, even after reaching my original goal of 1 million books distributed.”
She recently set a new goal: to distribute donations to kids in need in every state in the United States, and every country in the world. She keeps track of her progress on a large map at the warehouse(仓库) where they store and sort books. Maria believes that she can get support from even more people and help kids around the world to become better readers!
1.We can know from Paragraph 2 that ________.
A. some of Maria’s classmates had no textbooks
B. some of Maria’s classmates didn’t have money to buy books
C. some of Maria’s classmates didn’t like reading at all
D. some of Maria’s classmates couldn’t afford to go to school
2.According to the passage, which statement about Read Indeed is true?
A. It collects and gives out books to poor children.
B. It is an organization which sells books to children around the world.
C. It raises money to buy books for children.
D. It is a campaign which encourages children to read.
3.What can we infer from what Maria says in Paragraph 4?
A. She lives on selling books.
B. Her original dream has been achieved.
C. She will give up her mission of distributing books.
D. The number of children who have no books has greatly dropped.
4.Which word can best describe Maria?
A. Optimistic. B. Smart. C. Brave. D. Strong-willed.
