Blue light before bedtime can make it harder to sleep, and the screens on phones, computers and televisions give out plenty of blue light. This is all true. But if you consider blue light as a major problem affecting your sleep or your eye health, it’s time to change your mind.

Philip Yuhas, a professor of optometry (验光), writes at The Conversation, “Blue light isn’t a uniquely technological evil. It’s part of sunlight, and your eyes are exposed to plenty of it all the time. You’re fine.” The pigments (色素) and the lenses of our eyes actually block blue light fairly well—so in a sense, we already have built-in blue-blocking protection.

Adding more protection isn’t likely to help, though. You can buy glasses and screen filters (过滤器) that block blue light, but Yuhas points out they are probably a waste of money. He says, “The products that my patients ask about do not block out much blue light.” The leading blue-blocking anti-reflective coating, for example, blocks only about 15% of the blue light that screens give out.

You could get the same reduction just by holding your phone another inch from your face. Try it now and see if you notice a difference. No? Then it shouldn’t surprise you that a recent analysis concluded that blue-blocking glasses and coatings have no significant effect on sleep quality, comfort at the computer or retinal (视网膜的) health.

The American Academy of Ophthalmology doesn’t recommend blue-blocking products, either. Instead, if you’re concerned about your eye health or your ability to get into sleep on time, you already know what to do: Put the screens away at bedtime. Read a book or find something else to do. While you’re using screens, take a 20-second break every 20 minutes to look at something 20 feet away. If you get dry eyes when you look at screens for a long time, use artificial tears.

1.What do we know about blue light?

A.It produces kinds of pigments. B.It does serious harm to our health.

C.It can be blocked by our eyes effectively. D.It is a unique product of electronics.

2.What can be learned about blue-blocking glasses from the text?

A.They are widely popular B.They are almost useless.

C.They are inaccessible. D.They are reliable.

3.What does the author suggest readers do?

A.Try to wet dry eyes with tears. B.Keep a distance from blue light.

C.Stop using screens in the evening. D.Have regular breaks when using screens.

4.Which of the following would be the best title for the text?

A.Does blue light really affect your health? B.Are blue-blocking products recommended?

C.Where does blue light actually come from? D.How can we avoid the harm from blue light?

    Morris, a well-known English violinist, had been exhausted from a day of recording at Abbey Road Studios when he exited the Southeastern Railway from London late last month. He was so tired that he didn’t even realize that he had left his beloved violin on the train until the following morning.

The violin is one of the few surviving instruments made by Roman craftsman David Tecchler in 1709. Not only is the violin worth $320,000, but Morris has also been playing the instrument for 15 years.

Feeling panic, Morris contacted the British Transport Police to see if it had been returned; unfortunately, officers checked the footage (录像) and saw that the violin had been picked up by another train passenger. Morris then created social media accounts to beg for the return of his instrument. The footage was shown in the news, and the person responsible for taking the violin was treated as a suspect.

Several days later, Morris received a phone call from someone who recognized the man on the train. Morris was then put in contact with the man who took the violin—and he had apparently been very eager to return the instrument. After promising the man that he wouldn’t be arrested, Morris met him in a grocery store parking lot so he could reunite with his beloved instrument.

The man apologized sincerely, saying he wanted to hand it to Morris in person. Morris found the instrument and the contents of its case were still in perfect condition. To his surprise, it was even still intune (音调准确). Morris was excited and deeply grateful for its return.

“I’m still getting over the shock of its coming back,” Morris admitted in an interview afterwards. Then he played a breathtaking piece of music Amazing Grace on his 310-year-old violin in front of the reporters.

1.What can we learn about the lost violin?

A.It’s valuable and important. B.It’s a gift from David Tecchler.

C.It’s the only violin Morris owns. D.It’s the oldest violin in the world.

2.What did Morris do first after he found his violin missing?

A.He spoke to reporters about it. B.He turned to the police for help.

C.He described his situation online. D.He returned to the train to look for it.

3.What do we know about the man who took the violin away?

A.He knew the violin was unique. B.He got in touch with Morris directly.

C.He was unwilling to return the violin. D.He felt afraid to be punished for his act.

4.What can be a suitable title for the text?

A.Citizens protected an expensive violin

B.Strangers were connected by a special violin

C.A violinist reunited with his 310-year-old violin

D.An old violin was returned to its former owner

    While Google, Bing and Yahoo dominate (居……之首) adult search engine choices, they are not always the best choice for students. The sites on this list are good search engines that students can rely on.

Fact Monster

Homework help is always on hand with Fact Monster (www.factmonster.com). It is mainly fit for students aged from 7 to 12. There are also all kinds of games, spelling tests and more for kids to improve their study and have some fun.

Ask Kids

Ask Kids (www.askkids.com) is a great site for students to safely find the information they need from the web. Besides being a useful and safe search engine, Ask Kids also has a useful picture and video search function that allows students to find pictures or videos that may be useful to their information search.

SortFix

SortFix (www.sortfix.com) is one of the useful search engines for students because it provides relevant, organized search results. It does this by analyzing the keywords in the search results, and giving the searcher the ability to focus on, or remove, certain keywords. It is a useful search engine if you are not sure what information you want to find, or if you are tired of finding irrelevant (不相关的) results in your searches.

Wolfram Alpha

Created Stephen Wolfram, Wolfram Alpha (www.wolframalpha.com) can calculate things that it would take a hundred or more individual websites to do. It uses a set of ways to answer questions directly that you type into the search box, which is different from other websites. You can find everything from the nutritional value of an apple to the real-time position of the International Space Station. An Apple app is offered so that you can add it to any iPod Touch devices. It is best suited for older students.

1.What’s the author’s purpose in writing the text?

A.To recommend four useful apps.

B.To advertise four interesting websites.

C.To list the top four popular websites in the US.

D.To introduce four student-friendly search engines.

2.If you keep getting the results you don’t want, which will you probably use?

A.Fast Monster. B.Ask Kids. C.SortFix. D.Wolfram Alpha.

3.What’s special about Wolfram Alpha?

A.It offers answers directly. B.It provides games for kids.

C.It focuses on solving maths problems. D.It is intended for astronomy enthusiasts.

阅读下面短文，根据所给情节进行续写，使之构成一个完整的故事。

A few years ago, I had taken a part-time job in a video store at the local shopping mall. From inside the store, I’d begun to see the people rushing by outside. Then an elderly woman caught my eye. Although slow and unsure of step, she moved with deliberation(从容). The elderly woman had come into the store along with a younger woman who I guessed was her daughter. The daughter was clearly impatient, checking her watch every few seconds.

The older woman then separated from the younger one and began to tick through the DVDs on the nearest shelf, obviously expecting someone else to help. After the slightest hesitation, I walked over and asked if I could help her find something. The woman smiled up at me and showed me a title scrawled(乱涂乱画的)on a piece of paper. It was a bit unclear to make out. Clearly a person looking for it knew a little about movies, about quality. Rather than rushing off to locate the DVD for the woman, I asked her to walk with me so I could show her where she could find it.

Looking back, I think I wanted to enjoy her company for a moment. Something about her deliberate movements reminded me of my own mother, who’d passed away the previous Christmas. As we walked along the back of the store, I introduced her to the different sections: old television shows, action movies, cartoons, science fiction. The woman seemed glad of the unrushed company and casual conversation.

We found the movie, and I complimented her on her choice. She smiled and told me it was one she’d enjoyed when she was her daughter’s age and that she hoped she would enjoy it as much as she had. Maybe, she said with a hint of wistfulness(一丝渴望), her daughter could enjoy it with her own young children. Then, when the older woman’s turn in line came, she paid in cash, counting out the dollars and coins with the same sureness she’d displayed earlier.

注意：

1.续写短文的词数150左右；

2.续写部分分为两段，每段的开头已为你写好。

Paragraph 1：

As the cashier put the DVD into a plastic bag, I walked over to the younger woman.

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Paragraph 2:

The elderly woman moved with her deliberate slowness back to her daughter.

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

假定你是李华，你收到外国朋友Peter的邮件，他想了解你校在新冠疫情 (COVID-19 epidemic) 期间线上教学(online classes)的情况。请你给他回复邮件，内容包括：

1. 课程与时间；  2. 你的学习状态；  3. 你的期待。

注意：词数100左右；可适当增加细节，以使行文连贯。

Dear Peter,

__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Yours,

Li Hua

    When I was young, I was quite shy and wasn’t great at school. Mrs. Kerswell was my English teacher. It’s hard to_________her exact age. When you’re a child, every adult is_________. She must be past middle age with grey hair and a(n)_________face. Her lessons were in a stress-free environment. However, I was really_________because I was from a village school.

I didn’t_________anyone. No one from my primary school went there. I really struggled in my first year to   _______. Thanks to Mrs. Kerswell, she was really the sort of humorous teacher, who read materials just for_________.

She managed to make Beowulf interesting to a number of_________.She was key in keeping my love of reading going. It certainly wasn’t a_________thing for a boy of that age to love reading as an entertainment. Actually, I just treated it as a learning task.

When I was 13, I wasn’t excellent at writing. But she allowed and__________me to write in a natural way. Unlike my other teachers, she told me not to use the fanciest__________. “Writing is not about flowery language but about real communication.__________, you’re having a conversation on a page,” she said. So it made me realize that I didn’t have to__________about it too much.

I saw her once, over 10 years ago. My writing career was going well, and she was proud of my achievements and__________as a writer, and I really__________her for keeping the fame on.

1.A.work out B.leave out C.adapt to D.amount to

2.A.innocent B.friendly C.old D.lively

3.A.blue B.kind C.honest D.guilty

4.A.relaxed B.disappointed C.moved D.stressed

5.A.guide B.adore C.know D.recommend

6.A.search B.fit C.rest D.speak

7.A.fun B.defense C.victory D.fame

8.A.writers B.celebrities C.teenagers D.teachers

9.A.flexible B.cool C.major D.painful

10.A.commanded B.forbade C.warned D.encouraged

11.A.words B.dreams C.ways D.ideas

12.A.Gradually B.Basically C.Eventually D.Awkwardly

13.A.enquire B.hear C.worry D.doubt

14.A.habit B.interest C.privilege D.reputation

15.A.thanked B.criticized C.promoted D.dismissed

    If you’re enjoying a cup of tea while reading this, you’re supporting just about every organ in your body. Unsweetened tea can prevent some diseases and help repair cells in the body. The popularity of Chinese tea cannot be separated from its medicinal value.

Your heart will thank you. Tea’s properties can keep your blood vessels (血管) relaxed and clear, putting less stress on your heart, and thus slow down block formation in vital blood vessels. 1..

Your risk of the brain disease could decrease. 2.. It’s important to know the early warning signs and do what you can to prevent it. Green tea can help you develop resistance against stress and potentially Alzheimer’s disease. The special substance in it protects cells from damage.

3.. If you spend your nights turnings try relaxing yourself with a cup of east-Asian medicinal tea before bed, which can improve sleeplessness. 4., it can help improve sleep and quality of life in those with mild sleeplessness according to a study in Integrative Medicine Research.

Your attention may improve. The caffeine in tea can improve your attention and awareness. The unique acid to tea may also improve attention by relaxing the brain, but stimulating it when it is time to focus. 5.. try making a warm cup of tea just before it’s time to work or consider these reasons you may not be able to focus.

A.Your sleep could improve

B.Your body becomes more energetic

C.When you have the habit of getting up early

D.Once you have formed the habit of drinking that kind of tea

E.you ever find yourself having difficulty with concentration

F.So drinking a proper amount of black tea can be beneficial to your heart

G.The thought of you being diagnosed with the brain disease is very scary

    The evidence for harmony may not be obvious in some families. But it seems that four out of five young people now get on with their parents, which is the opposite of the popularly held image(印象)of unhappy teenagers locked in their room after endless family quarrels.

An important new study into teenage attitudes surprisingly shows that their family life is more harmonious than it has ever been in the past. “We were surprised by just how positive today’s young people seem to be about their families,” said one member of the research team. “They’re expected to be rebellious(叛逆的)and selfish but actually they have other things on their minds: they want a car and material goods, and they worry about whether school is serving them well. There’s more negotiation and discussion between parents and children, and children expect to take part in the family decision-making process. They don’t want to rock the boat.”

So, it seems that this generation of parents is much more likely than parents of 30 years ago to treat their children as friends. “My parents are happy to discuss things with me and willing to listen to me,” says 17-year-old Daniel Lazall. “I always tell them when I’m going out clubbing. As long as they know what I’m doing, they’re fine with it.” Susan Crome, who is now 21, agrees. “Looking back on the last 10 years, there was a lot of what you could call negotiation. For example, as long as I’d done all my homework, I could go out on a Saturday night. But I think my grandparents were a lot stricter with my parents than that.”

Maybe this positive view of family life should not be unexpected. It is possible that the idea of teenagers’ rebellion is not rooted in real facts. A researcher comments, “Our surprise that teenagers say they get along well with their parents comes because of a brief period in our social history when teenagers were regarded as different beings. But that idea of rebelling and breaking away from their parents really only happened during one time in the 1960s when everyone rebelled. The normal situation throughout history has been a smooth change from helping out with the family business to taking it over.”

1.What is the popular images of teenagers today?

A.They always worry about school.

B.They dislike living with their parents.

C.They have to be locked in to avoid troubles.

D.They quarrel a lot with other family members.

2.The study shows that teenagers don’t want to ______.

A.cause trouble in their families B.share family responsibility

C.go boating with their family D.make family decisions

3.Compared with parents of 30 years ago, today’s parents _____.

A.care less about their children’s life

B.give their children more freedom

C.are much stricter with their children

D.go to clubs more often with their children

4.What is the passage mainly about?

A.Negotiation in family. B.Harmony in family.

C.Education in family. D.Teenage trouble in family.

    Tiny as they are, bats have the ability to “see” in the dark by using a special skill called echolocation (回声定位法).They make noises and wait for sound waves, or an echo, to bounce back off objects. They can tell the distance of various objects by how quickly the sound waves bounce back off them. If no sound bounces back, they can then fly forward.

This special ability has been copied in the human world for a long time, such as in submarines and planes. But apart from helping vehicles “see” where they are, what if blind people could use echolocation for themselves? American Daniel Kish, who is blind, is known as “Batman”. This isn’t because he walks around in a cape (披风)and a mask, but because he has a bat-like ability to locate where he is through sharp clicks he makes by moving his tongue against the roof of his mouth. Kish is so skilled at echolocating that he can ride a bike and hike on his own.

Recently, a research carried out at the University of Durham in England shed some light on the power of human echolocation. Kish, as well as other volunteers, worked with a group of scientists who studied the way blind people listen to the echoes that they produce from clicks. The team found that people were capable of hearing even very faint echoes, ones far fainter than had been previously thought.

Lore Thaler, lead scientist of the group, said, “We found that in some conditions, they were really faint—about 95 percent softer than the actual clicks, but the echolocators were still able to sense this.”

Andrew Kolarik, another expert in echolocation, told BBC News that echolocation “can be very useful at providing information at face or chest height” and could help people “avoid objects like low hanging branches that might not get detected by the cane or a guide dog”

According to BBC News, echolocation is a skill blind people can acquire and develop, just like learning a language. As Kolarik said, “Teaching echolocation skills could provide blind people with the means of exploring new places.”

1.What does “this special ability” in Paragraph 2 refer to?

A.The ability to make noises in the dark.

B.The ability to bounce back off objects.

C.The ability to measure the distance quickly.

D.The ability to use sound waves to echolocate.

2.What do we know about Daniel Kish from the text?

A.He is fond of riding a bike and hiking alone.

B.He is called “Batman” because he looks like a bat.

C.He is able to hear echoes he produces from clicks.

D.He conducted the experiment to circulate echolocation.

3.What is Kolarik’s attitude towards the future use of echolocation in blind people?

A.Hopeful. B.Ambiguous.

C.Tolerant. D.Doubtful.

4.What’s the best title for the text?

A.Echolocation in Human World B.Finding New Way to “See”

C.A Very Special Batman D.A Breakthrough in Echoing

    My father loves his garden. He planted some seeds in it. But at that time, I didn’t understand why working in the dirt excited him so much.

Unfortunately, in early May, my father was seriously injured in an accident. He had to stay in bed for a while. My mother had several business trips, so she couldn’t take care of the garden. I didn’t want my father to worry, so I said that I would take care of his garden until he recovered. I assumed that the little plants would continue to grow as long as they had water, and luckily it rained fairly often, so I didn’t think much about the garden.

One Saturday morning, my father said to me, “Christine, the vegetables should be about ready to be picked. Let’s have a salad today!” I went out to the garden and was upset to see that many of the lettuce leaves and carrots had been half eaten by bugs. There were hundreds of bugs all over them!

I panicked for a moment but then I quietly went to the nearest store to buy some vegetables.

When I gave the salad to him, he said, “Oh, Christine, what a beautiful salad! I can’t believe the carrots are this big already. You must be taking very good care of my garden.” I felt a little bit guilty.

Coming home, my mother saw the bag from the supermarket in the kitchen. I was embarrassed and I admitted, “Dad wanted a salad, but the garden was a disaster. I didn’t want to disappoint him, so I went to the store.” She laughed but promised to help me in the garden and weeks later I was finally able to pick some.

I carefully made a salad and took it to my father. He looked at it with a hint of a smile. “Christine, the carrots are smaller in this salad, but they taste better.”

Now, I better understand how putting a lot of effort into caring for something can help you appreciate the results more, however small they may be. Perhaps this was one of the reasons for my father’s love of gardening.

1.Why did Christine originally promise she would do the gardening?

A.She was asked by her father to do it.

B.She was interested in growing vegetables.

C.She knew it was important to her father.

D.She wanted to improve her gardening skills.

2.Which of the following was a problem in the garden?

A.Insects destroyed the lettuce and carrots.

B.Animals often dug holes in the garden.

C.The plants were given too much water.

D.The vegetables were marked incorrectly.

3.Why could Christine secretly make the salad from store-bought vegetables?

A.Her mother helped her to buy the vegetables.

B.Her mother regularly helped her to make a spray.

C.Her father couldn’t see the garden’s progress.

D.Her father went on a business trip at that time.

4.What did Christine learn through her experience of gardening?

A.Always get ready for a rainy day.

B.Don’t be disappointed by bugs.

C.Working alone produces results.

D.Hard work can often be rewarding.