Many little girls like flowers, watching butterflies and riding small horses. A lot of them also like cars, robots and spaceships. But most girls’ clothing only has pictures of flowers, butterflies or horses.
Two mothers decided to make clothes that include all the things that little girls do and love.
Six-year-old Bella loves to play with cars. So her dress has pictures of cars on it.
“We haven’t found this type of dress in the store,” Cathy, Bella’s mother, says.
The car dress is from a new girl’s clothing line called Princess Awesome. Rebecca Melsky set up the business. She says its products for girls have some designs normally found on boys’ clothes.
It all started two years ago when Rebecca was hoping to buy clothing for her two-year-old, who liked robots, trucks and spaceships.
“One day when I walked through a girls’ store, I thought to myself I wish they’d make one of those beautiful dresses that also have a robot on it because she will love that. And I thought someone should do that. Maybe I should do that,” Rebecca, said.
Her friend Eva St. Clair believed she should, and their business was born. The women sold the first 70 dresses they made at a market. So they decided to expand their business online. Their products sold very well there, too.
“They sold out so fast that I could not make them fast enough. We decided it was time to think about a factory,” Rebecca said.
So they started to raise money from people over the Internet. The women raised more than ＄215,000 within days, far more than the ＄35,000 they expected.
“Our biggest challenge is going to be how we expand as rapidly as people seem to want us to,” Rebecca said.
The women hope Princess Awesome will expand into products for girls of all ages and all interests.
1.Princess Awesome was started .
A. by Cathy and Rebecca
B. because of six-year-old Bella
C. with the help of a girls’ store
D. to make unusual clothing for girls
2.The dresses made by Rebecca and her friend .
A. sold better online than at the market
B. helped them get a job in a factory
C. were popular among girls
D. were sold expensively
3.What is the most difficult thing Rebecca and her friend will face?
A. Meeting the needs of all girls.
B. How to make interesting products.
C. Raising enough money for their business.
D. How to expand their business as people expected.
书面表达
阅读下面的短文，然后按照要求写一篇150词左右的英语短文。
China began relaxing the one-child policy in January 2014, allowing couples to have a second baby if the mother or father was an only child.
The state-run Xinhua news agency reported on Thursday that a move that would thoroughly relax the country's one-child policy that had been eased in recent years would come out sooner or later.
China, now a nation of more than 1.3 billion people, practiced a policy of one child per couple to control population growth in the 1970s. The move was viewed as a major liberalization of the three-decades-old restriction. Nationwide, nearly 1 million couples eligible(合格的）under the new rules had applied to have a second child, state media reported at the time. Health officials had said that the policy would lead to as many as 2 million new births when the policy change was first announced.
【写作内容】
1.用约30个单词概述上述图文信息的主要内容；
2.用约120个单词发表你的观点，内容包括：
（1）陈述你对文章提及政策的立场；
（2）用2-3个理由或论据支撑你的立场
【写作要求】
1. 发表观点时必须提供理由或论据；
2. 写作过程中不能直接引用原文语句；
3. 作文中不能出现真实姓名和学校名称；
4. 不必写标题
【评分标准】
内容完整，语言规范，语篇连贯，词数适当。
单词拼写
1.My calculations were based on the a__________ that house prices would remain steady.
2.Teachers have to constantly update their knowledge in order to maintain their professional c__________.
3.O__________, we can’t find ample evidence that there is life in space.
4.I am extremely s__________ about what I read in the newspaper.
5.He r___________ to as many as two or three different newspapers since he knew the importance of information.
6.Our government tried hard to improve our living conditions by __________ (加快)the rate of economic growth.
7.__________ (入迷)herself to love stories, the girl almost forgot everything，which made her parents very disappointed.
8.Does the name on the envelope __________ (相一致) with the name on the letter inside?
9.Under no __________ (状况) will our country give in to any country that wants to occupy Diaoyu Island.
10.The old man who was in __________ (拥有) of little money owned good health and a happy life.
任务型阅读
请认真阅读下面短文，并根据所读内容在文章后表格中的空格里填入最适当的单词。注意：每空一个单词。
Why Blue LED Lights Won the Nobel
The 2014 Nobel Prize in physics went to three scientists who gave lighting a big change by inventing blue LED lights. A big change in lighting efficiency is under way around the world.
Save and green
LEDs use less energy than other forms of lighting. A typical LED bulb(灯泡) can produce around 83 lumens per watt — a measure of how much brightness you can get from a unit of electrical power — much more efficient than other lighting facilities.
LEDs produce light by passing electric current through a semiconductor, while traditional bulbs pass current through a wire. The wasted heat energy is chiefly why traditional bulbs are so much less efficient.
LEDs also last about 30 times longer than traditional bulbs, and many LED bulb products promise up to 25,000 hours of use — more than 17 years if you used one for about four hours a day.
Lighting the world
The lighting transformation is not only in homes. LEDs are also being used for street lights, public holiday and decorative displays, commercial buildings, and other large energy users.
Car lighting is another application where LEDs are making progress. LEDs used to be used only for daytime running lights, but now many new cars have LED headlights for night-time use.
LEDs also hold promise for bringing light to the more than 1.5 billion people around the world without access to electricity, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences noted. Indeed, several proposed solutions to energy poverty include the distribution of LED lights, particularly solar-powered ones.
Digital displays
Without blue LEDs, the world wouldn’t have back-lit smart phones, TV and computer LCD screens, blu-ray(蓝光) players, many forms of lighting, and countless other products.
In the electronics industry, LEDs provide back lighting for LCD screens in many smart phones, laptops, and televisions. The LEDs are more energy efficient and allow for very thin displays.
Blu-ray players use blue LED lasers(激光) to read data off a digital optical disc. When these systems switched from using an infrared(红外线) laser to a blue LED laser, it became possible to store five to 10 times as much data.
LEDs are now being explored for their potential uses to transmit(传送) data from the Internet across open space, similar to WiFi. Such a system could transmit a lot more data than WiFi alone. This high bandwidth is possible because LEDs can turn on and off millions of times per second.
The rise of LED lighting came at a time when people were just starting to be concerned about global warming. Because of LEDs’ energy efficiency, using them for the world’s lighting would affect environmental protection in a positive way.
Why Blue LED Lights Won the Nobel
The reason why blue LED lights won the 2014 Nobel Prize in physics is that they are to 1.______ in big changes in lighting. | |
Save and green | 2._______ with other forms of lighting, LEDs are much more efficient because of the different ways they pass electric current. What’s more, LED bulbs can be 3._______ 30 times longer than traditional bulbs. |
Lighting the world | 4._______ from household applications of LED bulbs, they can also be used as street lights and car headlights. |
Because of their high efficiency, LEDs, especially solar-powered ones, 5._______ to light areas without access to electricity. | |
Digital displays | Many smart phones, laptops and televisions use LEDs to back-light their LCD6._______. |
By using blue LED lasers, blu-ray players are likely to store 7.________ data. | |
People are now exploring more 8._______ uses of LEDs such as transmitting data. | |
9._______ | LED lighting will have a positive 10.________ on environmental protection. |
We’ve all heard the quote, ‘Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.’
My husband and son died within two years of each other. From my personal experience, I believe that if we aren't careful, grief can become a rather self-involved process in which we can become so focused on our own suffering that we miss the opportunity to connect with, and possibly bring comfort to, someone else who may be going through a similar experience.
Six months after my husband died, I was sinking in the quicksand of grief. I could not pull myself out of the misery. In that moment, I actually believed that my life was more difficult than anyone else around me. Life handed me a perfectly wrapped lesson that opened my eyes to the fact that through my suffering I had allowed myself to become blinded by my self-pity.
The lesson presented itself in a health crisis. I had complications (并发症) from a surgical procedure and ended up being hospitalized for four days. I was in an extreme amount of pain during this time. Between the physical pain and the emotional pain of grief, I was an absolute mess.
I should also tell you that I am a Registered Nurse. As a nurse, it is hard to be on the receiving end of medicine as the patient. The first three nights that I was in the hospital, the same nurse took care of me. She was young, maybe in her mid to late 20s, and she hardly interacted with me at all the first two nights, other than to give my medications as scheduled. She obviously had no idea how much emotional pain I was in. How hard is it to ask your patient how she's feeling? I wrote her off as a bad nurse who had little sympathy, and remained absorbed in my own emotional and physical pain. The third night the young nurse was a little more talkative. She asked me how I was feeling (finally!). I told her that I was struggling with depression and grief because my husband had died in an airplane accident. She looked at me and told me that her husband had died too, just two months earlier. I was stunned. Speechless. Shocked.
Never, in any of the possibilities that my mind entertained of why this nurse was so unfriendly to me, did I even consider that she might be in the same pain I was. Not only was she grieving as I was, but she was having to take care of me, instead of caring for herself and her family.
We went on to talk and share our stories about our late husbands and children. I like to think that we helped each other a bit that night. We had much more in common than I would have believed. We were both widowed single moms with young children, and nurses. But, that was where the similarities ended. Her husband had no insurance policy. She had very little family support. She was working paycheck to paycheck to support her boys. I was humbled. I realized how much I had to be grateful for. And, frankly, I never saw life the same way after this experience.
This experience was a life-changing event for me. I had always prided myself on being a sympathetic person, but I realize now that I had not really understood what being sympathetic meant. To truly be sympathetic, you must be able to see beyond your own pain to be witness to the pain. I never looked at another person in the same way after this experience. I thank death for very few things. The gift of sympathy for my fellow man, and understanding that we all suffer in ways that aren't always visible, are presents from death that I will always be grateful for.
Always take the time to be kind even when you’re suffering with your own pain. And don't assume that someone else has it easier than you. You never know the battles someone else is fighting.
1.What can we conclude from the author’s personal experience in para2?
A. We can always comfort people who experienced the similar suffering.
B. We become more concentrated on ourselves once hurt.
C. We never get through what we suffered any more.
D. People self-centered won’t have the chance to be hurt.
2.What can be learned from the underlined sentence in para3?
A. Self-pity always brings about selflessness.
B. Selflessness often brings out blindness.
C. Self-pity always results in selfishness.
D. Selfishness can prevent self-pity.
3.Why did the author regard the nurse as a bad one at first?
A. The nurse treated her abruptly.
B. The nurse didn’t offer medications on time.
C. The nurse seldom communicated with her.
D. The nurse was irresponsible.
4.Which one is closest to the meaning of the word ‘humbled’?
A. ashamed B. beaten
C. defeated D. depressed
5.Which of the following can best serve as the title of the passage?
A. Every bean has its black.
B. Let bygones be bygones.
C. Misfortunes never come singly.
D. Stand in others’ shoes.
It took 100 years, but finally, scientists, from CalTech, MIT and the LIGO Scientific Collaboration, proved Albert Einstein's theory that gravitational(引力的) waves exist. The waves were predicted as part of Einstein's General Theory of Relativity nearly 100 years ago. It was the theory of the physics behind the workings of our world and the universe. The idea was that the waves are like ripples in space, caused by some of the violent and energetic processes in the Universe. For example, two black holes crashing into each other.
What are these gravitational waves? Well, imagine throwing a rock into a pond. When the rock hits the flat surface of the water, it creates ripples or waves. Space time is like the surface of the water. So that means gravitational waves are like the ripples moving out from where the rock hits the water. It might be hard to understand, but those gravitational waves expand and contract space and time as they move through space. And when they get to the Earth, the waves pass through, and contract and expand the planet as the wave goes by.
It was Einstein who said these gravitational waves should be observable. But these are not huge waves. They are very, very small, which is why it took so long to find them. You cannot see them with your eyes. They are smaller than the size of an atom.
How did the scientists find them? For years, scientists have been watching two black holes in another galaxy faraway with the help of the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory. The two were spinning around each other, moving closer and closer together. When they finally crashed into each other, it was with such power and force, that gravitational waves rang throughout the universe, like a giant bell. Those waves, traveling at the speed of light, finally reached the Earth, some 1.3 billion years later. They are the same waves that the scientists announced this past week.
The National Science Foundation tweeted that each of the black holes was thought to be 29 to 36 times the mass of our sun. So, what does this discovery mean? Abhay Ashtekar, a Penn State physicist, who was not on the discovery team, said: "Our understanding of the heavens changed dramatically."
1.According to the 1st paragraph, we can learn that_______.
A. gravitational waves were part of Einstein's General Theory of Relativity
B. scientists proved that gravitational waves existed 100 years ago
C. gravitational waves were the theory of the physics behind the universe
D. gravitational waves result from two black holes crashing into each other
2.From the passage we can know that the gravitational waves______.
A. are not supposed to be observed.
B. are very huge.
C. are easy to be found.
D. can’t be seen with our eyes.
3.Why did scientists spend years watching two black holes?
A. Because they wanted to see how the two black holes crashed into each other.
B. Because they wanted to find the gravitational waves.
C. Because they wanted to see the gravitational waves reach the Earth.
D. Because they wanted to know how black holes formed.
4.What can we infer from the passage?
A. The discovery has no relation to Albert Einstein's theory
B. Throwing a rock into a pond can generate gravitational waves
C. The discovery will considerably affect people’s understanding of universe
D. gravitational waves can’t contract and expand the Earth
