March, April and May are months full of ...

Directions：Write an English composition in 120-150 words according to the instructions given below in Chinese. 外国学生来我校访学，要求了解汉语成语典故。请你从“刻舟求剑”和“坐井观天”两个成语典故中选取一个，用英语向他们介绍。

具体要求：

1. 引出你要介绍的成语；

2. 说出它的字面意义和寓意；

3. 用一个具体的实例，对它加以应用。

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Directions：Translate the following sentences into English, using the words given in the brackets.

1.她能否如期完成被期待要做的事情还得拭目以待。（expect…of…）

2.他的观点是我们不能孤注一掷。（hold; eggs）

3.直到期末考试临近，迈克才意识到他的复习时间不够了。（Not until…）

4.作为一名教育工作者，你应该牢记在日常教学中要注重学生的身心发展。（suppose; mind; value）

Directions：Read the following passage. Summarize the main idea and the main point(s) of the passage in no more than 60 words. Use your own words as far as possible.

There are various means consumers can do if they find that an item they bought is faulty or in some other way does not live up to the manufacturer’s claims. A simple and common method used by many consumers is to complain directly to the store manager. In general, the“higher up”his or her complaint, the faster he or she can expect it to be settled. In such a case, it is usually settled in the consumer’s favor, assuming he or she has a just claim.

Consumers should complain in person whenever possible, but if they cannot get to the place of purchase, it is acceptable to phone or write the complaint in a letter．

Complaining is usually most effective when it is done politely but firmly, and especially when the consumer can demonstrate what is wrong with the item in question. If this cannot be done, the consumer will succeed best by presenting specific information as to what is wrong, rather than by making general statements. For example,“The left speaker does not work at all and the sound coming out of the right one is unclear”is better than“This stereo does not work.”The store manager may advice the consumer to write to the manufacturer. If so, the consumer should do this, stating the complaint as politely and firmly as possible. If a polite complaint does not achieve the desired result, the consumer can go to a step further. She or he can threaten to take the seller to court or report the seller to a private or public organization responsible for protecting consumer’s rights.

Directions：Read the passage carefully. Fill in each blank with a proper sentence given in the box. Each sentence can be used only once. Note that there are two more sentences than you need.

A team of engineers at Harvard University has been inspired by Nature to create the first robotic fly. The mechanical fly has become a platform for a series of new high-tech integrated systems. 1. Its mini wings allow it to stay in the air and perform controlled flight tasks.

“It’s extremely important for us to think about this as a whole system and not just the sum of a bunch of individual components,” said Robert Wood, the Harvard engineering professor who has been working on the robotic fly project for over a decade. 2. “The added difficulty with a project like this is that actually none of those components are off the shelf and so we have to develop them all on our own,” he said.

They engineered a series of systems to start and drive the robotic fly. “The seemingly simple system which just moves the wings has a number of inter-dependencies on the individual components, each of which individually has to perform well, but then has to be matched well to everything it’s connected to,” said Wood. The flight device was built into a set of power, computation, sensing and control systems.

While this first robotic flyer is linked to a small, off-board power source, the goal is eventually to equip it with a built-in power source, 3. “Basically it should be able to take off, land and fly around,” he said.

Wood says the design offers a new way to study flight mechanics and control at insect-scale. 4. “You can start thinking about using them to answer open scientific questions, you know, to study biology in ways that would be difficult with the animals, but using these robots instead,”

A. Yet, the power, sensing and computation technologies on board could have much broader applications.

B. A few years ago, his team got the go-ahead to start piecing together the components.

C. There used to be few ways like this to study how insects fly.

D. There are a lot of technologies and open interesting scientific questions that are really what drives humans on a day-to-day basis.

E. Thus, it might some day perform data-gathering work at rescue sites, in farmers’ fields or on the battlefield.

F. Designed to do what a fly does naturally, the tiny machine is the size of a fat housefly.

    Edgar Degas, J. M. W. Turner and other painters captured centuries of atmospheric records as they decorated canvases with sunset scenes.

Greek Scientists worked with an artist to confirm that the ratio of red to green in sunset painting, both old and new, increased when particles filled the air, such as after major volcanic eruption（火山喷发）or dust storms. The atmosphere physicists also found a gradual shift in artistic sunset hues over centuries, possibly due to ever-increasing air pollution during the Industrial Revolution.

An earlier study, led by atmospheric physicist Christos Zerefos of the Academy of Athens in Greece, discovered that the amount of red relative to green in sunset descriptions increased after eruptions, including Tambora, Indonesia in 1815, Coseguina, Nicaragua in 1835 and Krakatau, Indonesia in 1883.

Zerefos’ team analyzed 554 paintings created between 1550 and 1990. For up to three years after eruptions, sunsets reddened as sunlight bounced off dust and gas from the volcanoes. The latest study, also by Zerefos, used improved scanning and analysis techniques to confirm the earlier results.

A modern painter, Panayiotis Tetsis, unknowingly repeated the artistic atmospheric observations of classical masters. In the artists’ description of sunsets light over the Greek island of Hydra, the color ratio shifted towards red in paintings done both before（June 19,2010）and after（June 20,2010）a dust cloud from Sahara Desert filtered the sunset’s light.

Zerefos’ team connected the timing of classical paintings’ red shift to other records of the atmosphere trapped in ice cores from Greenland, in the recent study published in Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics. The ice cores recorded spikes（尖刺）in sulfur-containing chemicals likely from volcanoes. These spikes corresponded in time to artists’ increasingly dark red sunsets.

The comparison of ice and art also revealed a slow shift in the coloring of the sunset. As the factories of Europe roared into production in the 19th and early 20th century, painting described a steady increase in the red to green ratio. The ice cores recorded a steady rise in airborne particles from industrial pollution during the same time.

1.The underlined word“hues”in the second paragraph probably means_____.

A.angles B.colors

C.locations D.times

2.What do we know about Zerefos’ research from the passage?

A.Both modern and ancient artists describing sunset are involved in the research.

B.It confirmed an obvious increase in the ratio of green to red in sunset paintings.

C.The shift from green to red also existed in the records of ice cores trapped items.

D.The team used traditional techniques to confirm the earlier results of the research.

3.How did Zerefos’ team confirm that atmospheric records kept by painters were reliable?

A.By analyzing classical paintings.

B.By connecting time to color.

C.By comparing art with ice.

D.By working with an artist.

4.Which of the following is the best title of the passage?

A.A modern research of ancient art and ice with pollution.

B.Art Masterpiece and pollutants trapped in ice cores.

C.An increase in the ratio of red to green in paintings.

D.Art Masterpiece Recorded Centuries of Pollution.