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.
How Supermarkets Are Changing Britain
The British love their supermarkets. And there are more and more of them every year. But is this a good thing?
Not necessarily. For a start, many small shops can’t compete on price with superstores such as Tesco. And they don’t have as many products either. As a result, 36% of the UK’s small shops shut down between 1990 and 1996 while the number of supermarkets increased from 457 to 1,102. Supermarkets have even had a negative effect on the British pub. Beer and wine is much cheaper in a supermarket than in a pub. There are now over 55,000 supermarkets in the UK, but less than 55,000 pubs. A decade ago there were more than 61,000. These days, pubs are closing at the rate of 39 a week!
Supermarkets are also bad for animal welfare. The UK has high standards in this field, but some supermarkets get their meat from abroad. And in many cases, this meat is produced under conditions that would be illegal in the UK. But once they’ve got the meat, supermarkets put a British flag on the product as the meat is packed there. Dishonest? Not exactly, but it isn’t entirely true either!
Supermarkets have a poor environmental record too. Many of them don’t store food products themselves as storage space is expensive, so they get food producers to do it for them. This means that supermarket lorries have to make more trips to collect supplies. In turn, this increases the amount of petrol used, which leads to more pollution. Supermarkets also use a lot of plastic packaging, which isn’t good for the environment either.
So, what can be done to help the “little guys”? Not much really. Supermarkets have a lot of power. Many political parties receive donations from supermarkets. And supermarkets often use their money to influence decisions. For example, just before the year 2000, one supermarket gave the government £12 million to help build the Millennium Dome in London. Later, plans to tax supermarket car parks were dropped.
Directions: Read the following passage. 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.
The Ban on Trading Ivory(象牙) is Unfair but Necessary
As in some countries elephant population have recovered, there are competing proposals about how absolute the ban on elephant trading should be. Countries seeking a modest relaxation have a strong case to make. But it is not strong enough. The ban must stay.
Understandably, countries that have done a good job protecting their elephants feel this is unfair. 1. And the real burden of all this is borne by poor local people who are in competition with wildlife for resources, and sometimes in conflict with it—elephants can be destructive. People and governments, so the argument goes, need to have an economic stake(利害关系) in the elephants’ survival. The ivory trade would give them one.
To understand why these reasonable-sounding proposals should be rejected, consider what
has happened to elephant numbers since some legal trade was authorised, when Botswana, Namibia and South Africa were allowed in 2007 to sell a fixed amount of ivory to Japan. 2.
A survey conducted in 2014-15 estimated that elephant numbers had fallen by 30% across 18 countries since 2007.
3. In better-resourced national parks, drones are used to make it easier for park keepers to spot illegal hunters. DNA testing of ivory can identify where they came from, and thus whether they are legal. As prices of the technologies fall and countries get richer, both technologies are likely to spread.
The objection to trade in products of endangered species is not moral. When the world is confident that it will boost elephant numbers rather than wipe them out, the ivory trade should be encouraged. 4. And until it does, the best hope for the elephant—and even more endangered species, such as rhinos(犀牛)—lies not in easing the ban on trading their products, but in enforcing it better.
A. Regrettably, that point has not yet come.
B. Elephant numbers started falling.
C. The existence of even a small legal market increases the opportunities for illegal trade.
D. They point out that they have devoted huge resources to the elephant.
E. In the long run technology can help make trade coexist with conservation.
F. One animal, as so often in the past, will attract much of the attention: the African elephant.
Each year, backed up by a growing anti-consumerist movement, people are using the holiday season to call on us all to shop less.
Driven by concerns about resource exhaustion, over recent years environmentalists have increasingly turned their sights on our “consumer culture”. Groups such as The Story of Stuff and Buy Nothing New Day are growing as a movement that increasingly blames all our ills on our desire to shop.
We clearly have a growing resource problem. The produces we make, buy, and use are often linked to the destruction of our waterways, biodiversity, climate and the land on which millions of people live. But to blame these issues on Christmas shoppers is misguided, and puts us in the old trap of blaming individuals for what is a systematic problem.
While we complain about environmental destruction over Christmas, environmentalists often forget what the holiday season actually means for many people. For most, Christmas isn’t an add-on to an already heavy shopping year. In fact, it is likely the only time of year many have the opportunity to spend on friends and family, or even just to buy the necessities needed for modern life.
This is particularly, true for Boxing Day, often the target of the strongest derision(嘲弄) by anti-consumerists. While we may laugh at the queues in front of the shops, for many, those sales provide the one chance to buy items they’ve needed all year. As Leigh Phillips argues, “this is one of the few times of the year that people can even hope to afford such ‘luxuries’, the Christmas presents their kids are asking for, or just an appliance that works.”
Indeed, the richest 7% of people are responsible for 50% of greenhouse gas emissions. This becomes particularly harmful when you take into account that those shopping on Boxing Day are only a small part of our consumption “problem” anyway. Why are environmentalists attacking these individuals, while ignoring such people as Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich, who has his own￡1.5bn yacht with a missile defence system?
Anyway, anti-consumerism has become a movement of wealthy people talking down to the working class about their life choices, while ignoring the real cause of our environmental problems. It is no wonder one is changing their behaviours—or that environmental destruction continues without any reduction in intensity.
1.It is indicated in the 1st paragraph that during the holiday season, many consumers .
A.ignore resource problems
B.are fascinated with presents
C.are encouraged to spend less
D.show great interest in the movement.
2.It can be inferred from Paragraphs 2 and 3 that the environmentalist movement .
A.has targeted the wrong persons
B.has achieved its intended purposes
C.has taken environment-friendly measures
D.has benefited both consumers and producers
3.The example of Roman Abramovich is used to show environmentalists’ .
A.madness about life choices
B.discontent with rich lifestyle
C.ignorance about the real cause
D.disrespect for holiday shoppers
4.It can be concluded from the text that telling people not to shop at Christmas is .
A.anything less than a responsibility B.nothing more than a bias
C.indicative of environmental awareness D.unacceptable to ordinary people
2020 SAN FRANCISCO
WRITERS CONFERENCE
17th Celebration of Craft, Commerce & Community
February 13-16, 2020 at the Hyatt Regency San Francisco
Speakers: *Walter Mosley*Jonathan Maberry *Brooke Warner
Plus authors, editors, publishers & literary agents from New York, L.A. & S.F. Bay Area
Visit www.SFWriters.org to get event/contest/scholarship details, access online registration for the free SFWC Newsletter.
Considerable Early Discounts and Special Room Rates!
2019 SAN FRANCISCO
WRITING FOR CHANGE
A one-day conference for all writers who want to change the world through their writing.
September 14th at the Unitarian Center Details and registration:
www.SFWritingforChange.org
SFWC/San Francisco Writers Foundation is a nonprofit organization
Behind the Scenes of a Writing Conference
When you attend a writing conference, you see a facade that took months or longer to make up. Plenty is going on behind the scenes. Let’s take a look behind the curtain.
The day starts long before attendees walk through the door. Registration is set up, signs posted and tables arranged. Logistics ( 后 勤 ) all fall on the conference organizers. For example, the annual conference I direct in San Francisco (see the poster above) is a simple one-day conference that takes more than eight months to put together and around 15 staff and volunteers to manage. Larger multi-day conferences have even more going on behind the scenes.
Overseeing it all is the conference director, a conductor who typically works with committee directors to make sure everything runs smoothly. Over the course of the conference, staffers make sure everything stays on track. It’s not unusual for staff to walk miles in a day and go without meals.
Conference staff and volunteers are always behind the curtains making sure your experience is perfect. The next time you attend a well-run writing conference, take a moment to thank staff and volunteers for their devotion. They deserve all the praise they can get because without them, there would be no conference.
1.The underlined word facade refers to ___.
A.the effort behind the scenes
B.the scenes visible to the public
C.the literary masterpiece on display
D.the material distributed at the meeting
2.What’s the latest time to start to arrange for the one-day conference in San Francisco?
A.July, 2019. B.March, 209.
C.September, 2019 . D.January, 2019.
3.According to the writer, the attendees of the 2020 San Francisco Writers Conference should praise the ____ .
A.three speakers B.authors and editors
C.staff and volunteers D.corporate sponsors
Dame Zaha Hadid, the Iraqi-born British architect whose tall structures left a mark on skylines and imaginations around the world and in the process reshaped architecture for the modern age.
She was not an average designer. She liberated architectural geometry( 几何), giving it a whole new expressive identity. Geometry became, in her hands, a vehicle for unprecedented and eye-popping new spaces. Her buildings elevated uncertainty to an art, conveyed in the odd ways.
Her work implying mobility, speed, freedom and uncertainty spoke to a worldview widely shared by a younger generation. “I am not European, I don’t do conventional work and I am a woman,’’ Strikingly Ms. Hadid never allowed herself on her work to be categorized by her background or her gender. And she was one of a kind, a path breaker. In 2004, she became the first woman to win the Pritzker Prize, architecture’s Nobel.
Zaha Hadid was born in Baghdad on October 31, 1950. Then in 1972, she arrived at the architectural association in London, a center for experimental design. Her teachers included Elia Zenghelis and Rem Koolhaas. “They aroused my ambition,” she would recall, “and taught me to trust even my strangest instincts.” By the 1980s she had established her own practice in London. And she began to draw attention with an unrealized plan in 1982—1983 for the Peak Club.
Her partner, Patrick Schumacher, played an instrumental and collaborative role in her career. Mr. Schumacher coined the term parametric(参数的) design to include the computer-based approach that helped the firm’s most weird concepts become reality. Ms. Hadid called what resulted in an organic language of architecture, based on these new tools, which allow us to combine highly complex forms into a fluid(流线的) and complete whole.
Her sources were nature, history or whatever she sought useful. When her Rosenthal Center, a relatively modest project, opened in 2003, Herbert Muschamp, the architecture critic declared it “the most important American building to be completed since the end of the cold war”.
“She was bigger than life, a force of nature,” as Amale Andraos, the dean of Columbia University’s architecture school, put it, “she was a pioneer.”
She was. For women, for what cities can desire to build and for the art of architecture.
1.What features the structures designed by Zaha Hadid?
A.Free architectural geometry. B.Conventional design.
C.Odd imagination. D.Colorful patterns.
2.According to Paragraphs 3 and 4, which of the following statement is TRUE?
A.Zaha Hadid taught herself to trust instincts.
B.The plan for the Peak Club hasn’t been carried out.
C.The architect’s gender influenced her work dramatically.
D.Zaha Hadid was the first architect to win the Pritzker Prize.
3.How did the computer-based approach make a difference to Zaha Hadid’s work?
A.It contributes to realizing the strange ideas.
B.It simplifies the complex structure as a whole.
C.It provides new tools to translate the language.
D.It serves as an instrument to interpret the concepts.
4.The purpose of the passage is to____.
A.present Zaha Hadid’s life experience
B.praise Zaha Hadid’s inspiration and diligence
C.compare Zaha Hadid’s works in different times
D.show Zaha Hadid’s great contributions to architecture
The networked computer is an amazing device. It is the first media machine that serves as the mode of production (you can make stuff), means of distribution (you can upload stuff to the network), site of _____ (you can download stuff and interact with it), and place of praise and criticism (you can comment on the stuff you have downloaded or uploaded). _____, the computer is the 21st century’s culture machine.
But for all the reasons there are to _____ the computer, we must also act with caution. This is because the networked computer has started a secret war between downloading and uploading—between passive consumption and active _____—whose outcome will shape our collective future in ways we can only begin to imagine.
All animals download, but only a few upload anything besides faces and their own bodies. Humans are _____ in their capacity to not only make tools but then turn around and use them to create superfluous( 过 剩 的 ) material goods (paintings, sculpture and architecture) and superfluous experiences (music, literature, religion and philosophy). _____, it is precisely these superfluous things that define human culture and ultimately what it is to be human. Downloading and consuming culture requires great skills, but _____ to move beyond downloading is to rob oneself of a defining ingredient of humanity.
Despite the possibilities of our new culture machines, most people are still _____ download mode, brought about by television watching. Even after the _____ of widespread social media, a pyramid of production remains, with a small number of people uploading material, a slightly larger group commenting on or modifying that content, and a huge percentage remaining satisfied to just _____.
The networked computer offers the first chance in 50 years to _____ the flow caused by TV viewing, to encourage thoughtful downloading and, even more importantly, meaningful uploading. The computer offers the opportunity to bring about a complete _____ from the culture of television and a shift from a consumption model to a production model. This is a historic opportunity. Fifty years of television dominance has given birth to an unhealthy culture. The _____ is now in our collective grasp. It involves controlling our intake, or downloading, and _____ our levels of activity—uploading.
Of course people will still download. Nobody uploads more than a tiny percentage of the culture they consume. But using the networked computer as a download-only device, or even a download-mainly device, is a _____ opportunity that history affords us. Therefore, the goal must be to establish a balance between consumption and production.
1.A.celebration B.conversations C.reception D.ceremonies
2.A.Without doubt B.In return C.In particular D.By contrast
3.A.liberate B.celebrate C.concern D.reject
4.A.request B.support C.defense D.creation
5.A.unique B.familiar C.efficient D.loyal
6.A.In addition B.In fact C.For instance D.By the way
7.A.striving B.comparing C.failing D.attempting
8.A.optimistic about B.unfamiliar with C.stuck in D.ashamed of
9.A.transformation B.emergence C.encounter D.maintenance
10.A.consume B.neglect C.combine D.innovate
11.A.enhance B.quicken C.reverse D.extend
12.A.outcome B.exposure C.break D.evolution
13.A.puzzle B.cure C.regret D.favor
14.A.analyzing B.maintaining C.featuring D.increasing
15.A.wasted B.treasured C.multiplied D.revised
