1.George didn’t find it difficult at all, but it was really a ______ (challenge) task for me.
2.______ (blame) for the breakdown of the computer, Alice was in low spirits.
3.Your statement is in conflict ______ the rest of the evidence.
4.The town hall ______ (complete) in the 1800’s was the most distinguished building at that time.
5.I keep my reference books near my desk ______ convenience.
6.I’ve been told that the medical team,______ (consist) of five doctors, is to be sent.
7.The West Lake is very beautiful and it is beyond ______(describe).
8.He was surprised to find the room ______ (furnish) with modern equipment.
9.Under the ______(guide) of the local guide, we had a tour of the small town.
10.______ (lack) enthusiasm for sports, rejected the invitation to a football game.
I learned my first lesson at a meeting. As we sat around the table I heard Meg, who was ______ a recent operation, talking to Judith, the manager of our project. “Thank you so much for ______ my daughters to their dance lessons last week.” “Don’t mention it,” Judith says, “It was nothing.”
Knowing how ______ Judith’s schedule is, with her work, kids and aging parents, I found her driving Meg’s children to lessons unbelievably ______. I was about to say more about this when Donna, another colleague, entered the room ______. She apologized for being late, saying she just hosted a lunch for her friends who are over seventy. “That is so nice of you,” I say,______ how busy she was, how she didn’t like to cook and clean. “Oh,” she said, waving her hand, “It was nothing.”______, I could still tell the ______ in her voice. She did gain a sense of satisfaction from the entertainment offered to her friends.
Seeing their ______ to help others selflessly, I started thinking about the concept of “nothing”, this peaceful and generous way of living--- had it really been nothing or were they simply saying that? It ______ to me that once I spent a whole afternoon after work helping a friend ______ a speech. I ______ her to rearrange the sequence of the stories in the lecture to make it sound more ______. After the fifth try, she finally ______ it. She hugged me with ______, saying thanks to me. I smiled and said it was nothing.
Suddenly, I realized that helping someone was really something to me. I learned that giving from the heart doesn’t ______ mean sacrifice and hard work. The ______ is finding something we love to do and finding someone who ______ that something. Our generosity pan benefit others ______ ourselves. Once you have a good ______ of it, it’s nothing. And it’s really something.
1.A. adapting to B. recovering from C. going through D. taking up
2.A. guiding B. fetching C. driving D. dragging
3.A. tight B. common C. strange D. practical
4.A. ridiculous B. cautious C. tiresome D. generous
5.A. disappointedly B. hurriedly C. angrily D. unexpectedly
6.A. ignoring B. forgetting C. knowing D. predicting
7.A. Somehow B. Therefore C. Otherwise D. Moreover
8.A. regret B. sadness C. surprise D. pleasure
9.A. willingness B. ambition C. promise D. progress
10.A. referred B. occurred C. appeared D. seemed
11.A. put up B. give away C. prepare for D. deal with
12.A. begged B. invited C. recommended D. sponsored
13.A. sensible B. confusing C. subjective D. typical
14.A. got B. meant C. caught D. made
15.A. gratitude B. worry C. concern D. apology
16.A. normally B. accidentally C. possibly D. necessarily
17.A. treat B. trick C. plot D. plan
18.A. needs B. admires C. loves D. defends
19.A. on account of B. as well as C. except for D. regardless of
20.A. order B. glimpse C. command D. impression
Today we eat on the go, at our desks and even in front of computers. We eat takeout, delivered and packaged meals. 1.
“Over the past three decades, people have started eating out more than ever before and purchasing more prepared foods at the grocery store, which tend to contain more fat, salt and sugar than their home-made foods,” noted US healthy living website Spark People.
2. It encourages us to value the time we spend preparing, sharing and consuming food, as a recent USA today article put it. It all started in 1986 with the efforts of Slow Food’s founding father, Italian activist Carlo Petrini, who wanted to bring back food varieties and flavors that had gone dark in the face of industrialization.3. Now his idea is almost the mainstream.
Starting at the table, the movement promotes an unhurried way of life founded on the idea that everyone has a right to cooking pleasure, and that everyone must also take responsibility to “protect the heritage (遗产) of food, tradition and culture that make this celebration of the senses possible”, wrote The Phnom Penh Post.
“4.. It means turning down the speed at which we eat and increasing the amount of time we spend dining together with other people,” Althea Zanecosky, spokeswoman for the American Dietetic Association, told The Huf fington Post.”5. Dinner table conversations keep families together,” noted the Belgian non-profit organization Greenfudge.
A. It is a way to bring back the social togetherness of yesterday.
B. It seems that we have adapted our foods to our fast-paced lives.
C. So the Slow Food Movement has occurred against this fast-food trend.
D. Slow Food doesn’t necessarily mean food that takes a long time to cook.
E. It is based on the idea that we should spend as much time as possible on cooking.
F. It’s not only the food itself but also the time we spend dining together that matters.
G. At that time, he asked people to follow a more sustainable (可持续的) living model.
Do you want to live another 100 years or more? Some experts say that scientific advances will one day enable humans to last tens of years beyond what is now seen as the natural limit of the human life span.
“I think we are knocking at the door of immortality (永生),” said Michael Zey, a Montclair State University business professor and author of two books on the future. “I think by 2075 we will see it and that’s a conservative estimate (保守的估计).”
At the conference in San Francisco, Donald Louria, a professor at New Jersey Medical School in Newark said advances in using genes as well as nanotechnology (纳米技术) make it likely that humans will live in the future beyond what has been possible in the past. “There is a great effort so that people can live from 120 to 180 years,” he said. “Some have suggested that there is no limit and that people could live to 200 or 300 or 500 years.”
However, many scientists who specialize in aging are doubtful about it and say the human body is just not designed to last past about 120 years. Even with healthier lifestyles and less disease, they say failure of the brain and organs will finally lead all humans to death.
Scientists also differ on what kind of life the super aged might live. “It remains to be seen if you pass 120, you know; could you be healthy enough to have good quality of life?” said Leonard Poon, director of the University of Georgia Gerontology Centre. “At present people who could get to that point are not in good health at all.”
1.By saying “we are knocking at the door of immortality”, Michael Zey means .
A. they believe that there is no limit of living
B. they are sure to find the truth about long living
C. they have got some ideas about living forever
D. they are able to make people live past the present life span
2.Donald Louria’s attitude towards long living is that .
A. people can live from 120 to 180
B. it is still doubtful how long humans can live
C. the human body is designed to last past about 120 years
D. it is possible for humans to live longer in the future
3.The underlined “it” (in paragraph 4) refers to .
A. a great effort
B. the idea of living beyond the present life span
C. the idea of living from 200 to 300 years
D. the conservative estimate
4.What would be the best title for this text?
A. Living Longer or Not
B. Science, Technology and Long Living
C. No Limit for Human Life
D. Healthy Lifestyle and Long Living
When I graduated from college I dreamed of being a television news reporter. Having no experience, I had to work in a small town until I finally got my big break in the form of a job in Boston. I made it.
Soon, reality set in. I was too often sent to run after accused criminals out of courts, waiting outside of crime scene tape or at the doorstep of a family still crying for tragedy (悲剧). My breaking point came the day I accidentally informed a young woman that her mother died. It was the worst day of my professional life and the day I decided I no longer wanted to shine a light on these stories. My career was ebbing, and at the same time my personal life was too-I divorced.
My mom had always told me “When you’re feeling extremely upset, go help someone else.” So I started seeking out stories of people who had been in the news under tragic circumstances but were doing something inspiring with their lives: a young girl who was paralyzed (瘫痪的) by an accident but was uplifting her classmates with her positive spirit, a blind and autistic (自闭的) musician who learned to play 27 instruments, a disabled soldier who opened his own art studio. I started to tell and promote stories like them.
Over the last 10 years I have discovered my kindness gift: my ability to see the beautiful side of a person and reflect it back to them and the world. In telling stories of people turning their own hurt into acts of helping others I have become more sympathetic, more grateful and kinder. I have learned kindness is who we are, that our power for it is limitless and that, as we shine a light on it, it grows.
1.What changed the author’s working direction in his job in Boston?
A. The tragedy in the society B. The low payment of the job
C. The hurt from his divorce D. The fear of cruel criminals
2.What is the meaning of the underlined word “ebbing” in paragraph 2?
A. taking off
B. getting into trouble
C. unchangeable at all
D. dull but important
3.What the author’s mother said means .
A. helping others is a way to escape from reality
B. helping others can comfort your soul
C. the best way of helping others is telling stories
D. it is difficult to make contributions to helping others
4.According to the last paragraph, what does the author advise us to do?
A. To tell inspiring stories.
B. To fight against criminals.
C. To ignore our own hurt.
D. To do as much kindness as possible.
If you’re wondering when you might get the flu, a new study indicates you should keep an eye on your local weather report.
According to a research published in the Journal of Clinical Virology, if you keep your eye on the weather and watch for the first major dip in the temperature, you can essentially mark your calendar in prediction for an outbreak the flu.
To figure out how the weather and flu outbreak may be connected, researchers analyzed statistics of 20,000 people in an area over three seasons. The number of people who caught the flu was then compared with local weather data.
After each season, the team noticed one consistent finding: The first really cold period with low outdoor temperatures and low humidity (湿度) was always followed by a week of a mass influenza outbreak.
The researchers say that aerosol particles (气溶胶粒子) containing virus and liquid are more able to spread in cold and dry weather. So, in theory, if you sneeze or cough and the surrounding air is very dry, the air will absorb the moisture and the particles containing the virus keep spreading through the air for a longer period of time.
Luckily there are ways to keep off the illness regardless of the weather. Washing your hands, coughing into the crook (弯曲) of your arm and getting vaccine (疫苗) are the best ways to prevent the flu from spreading. People over the age of 65, pregnant women and young children are at the highest risk of developing complications (并发症) related to the virus, according to the CDC.
1.From the first paragraph we can infer that .
A. people may easily fall sick
B. nobody can predict when one gets flu
C. flu is often related to weather changes
D. weather report plays an important part in life
2.How did the researchers draw the conclusion of the study?
A. By analyzing the data
B. By doing questionnaires
C. .By carrying out experiments
D. By making observation
3.Why do people catch the flu easily in cold and dry weather?
A. Cold and dry weather helps the spread of virus
B. The colder it is, the more kinds of flu there are
C. Gold and dry weather can prevent people from doing exercise
D. Low temperature can increase the number of aerosol particles
4.What can we learn about from the last paragraph?
A. The vaccines for flu
B. The main ways to cure flu
C. The most common kind of flu virus
D. The people who are easy to get flu
