Blue Note Jazz Festival 2018
Jul 1-Jul 30, 2018
Location ： Several locations tn New York
The Blue Note Jazz Festival in New York City is the city’s most popular jazz festival and focuses on bringing big-name artists to small crowds and up-and-coming acts to the public. The event takes over 15 places across the city and includes Questlove, Michael Bolton and Aretha Franklin.
Grant Park Music Festival 2018
Jun 14-Aug 19, 2018
Locations: Jay Pritzker Pavilion, South Shore Cultural Center, & Harris Theater for Music and Dance | 201 East Randolph Street, Chicago, Illinois
Listening to classical music is said to improve your intelligence. Whether that’s true or not, the Grant Park Music Festival will provide you with free, classical music, and you’d be smart to attend. The music at these concerts will leave you begging for more. It’s free to attend, so come and enjoy some great music with your family and friends.
Lake Park Friends Wonderful Wednesdays 2018
Jun 21-Jul 26, 2018
Location: Lake Park | Milwaukee, Wisconsin
Energy is way too contained (被压抑) in an indoor music place. Let that energy go where it wants through a series of outdoor concerts with Lake Park Friends Wonderful Wednesdays. Wednesday is no longer the most boring day of the week. This time, there’s something fun to do. A list of live music acts has made the middle of the week something to look forward to.
YouthCUE Festival of Youth Choirs (合唱队) 2018
Augl0-Aug 22, 2018
Locations: Washington National Cathedral | 3101 Wisconsin AVE NW Washington, DC
YouthCUE Festival of Youth Choirs in Washington gives students the rare opportunity to perform in the Washington National Cathedral, a famous historic place. The festival is a showcase of student choirs (唱诗班) from all over the local professional orchestra.
1.What can people enjoy at the Blue Note Jazz Festival?
A.Performances by famous singers.
B.Lively performances by public.
C.Performances by artists from 15 countries.
D.High quality performances with free admission.
2.Those who are interested in classical music would probably go to ________.
A.Blue Note Jazz Festival
B.Grant Park Music Festival
C.Lake Park Friends Wonderful Wednesdays
D.YouthCUE Festival of Youth Choirs
3.If you like choirs, which city should you go to?
A.New York. B.Chicago.
C.Milwaukee. D.Washington DC.
假定你是李华，国外著名学习网 Student Tube邀请你发帖分享你平时的学习方式。要点如下：
1. 多读多写；2. 合理安排时间；3. 其他方式（自拟）。
注意：1. 词数100左右，开头与结尾已给出，不计入总词数；
2. 可以适当增加细节，以使行文连贯。
Dear friends,
________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Yours,
Li Hua
根据句意及首字母或汉语提示，写出各句中所缺单词的正确形式。
1.F________ letting go of such a good chance like that, young man!
2.At first he didn’t realize that he had been r________ by his old friend, who he hadn’t seen for 20 years.
3.The sign says “Children without the company of an adult are not to be a ________.”
4.Large q________ of information and timely help have been offered since the organization was built.
5.With five minutes to go before the plane was s________ take off, Jack was only halfway to the airport.
6.Tom’s ________ (坚定的) look showed that he just never listened to me.
7.The Blacks were so friendly that I ________ (感激) their help when we moved.
8.From the car mirror I saw a police car drawing near and ________ (示意) to me to stop.
9.His purpose was not so much to attack his ________ (竞争者) but defend his own position.
10.Neighbors think he’s an ________ (有教养的), well-read man. So many people like him.
Italians are some of the fastest speakers on the planet, chatting at up to nine syllables (音节) per second. Many Germans, on the other hand, are slow ones, delivering five to six syllables during the same period. Yet in any given minute, Italians and Germans express about the same cover of information.
Scientists started with written texts from 17 languages. They calculated (计算) the information density (密度) of each language in bits. They found that Japanese, which has only 643 syllables, had an information density of about 5 bits per syllable, while English, with its 6949 syllables, had a density of just over 7 bits per syllable. Vietnamese, with its hard system of six tones, topped the charts at 8 bits per syllable.
Next, the researchers spent 3 years recording 10 speakers—five men and five women—from 14 of their 17 languages. Each read aloud 15 identical texts that had been translated into their mother tongue. After noting how long the speakers took to get through their readings, the researchers calculated an average (平均) speech rate per language, measured in syllables/second.
Some languages were clearly faster than others: no surprise there. But when the researchers took their final step to find out how much information moved per second, they were shocked by the agreement of their results. No matter how fast or slow, how simple or hard, each language moved toward an average rate of 39. 15 bits per second.
Language science has explained things so long like grammatical difficulty, so this information passing-on rate has been ignored. But the “why” is another question entirely. Some scientists doubt that the answer has everything to do with the weakness from our biology. Research in neuroscience (神经科学) supports that idea, with one recent paper suggesting an upper number to hearing processing of 9 syllables per second in U.S. English. It really seems that the bottleneck is in putting the ideas together.
1.What is the purpose of the first paragraph?
A.To explain the reason for the research.
B.To introduce the idea of the whole text.
C.To discuss different syllables of languages.
D.To stress the importance of how fast we speak.
2.Which has the highest information density per syllable according to the study?
A.English. B.Germans.
C.Japanese. D.Vietnamese.
3.What is the research mentioned in Paragraph 3 intended to show?
A.How fast we can speak.
B.How difficult the texts are.
C.How much information spreads per second.
D.How we can translate them into our mother language.
4.What does “the weakness from our biology” mean in the last paragraph?
A.The difficulty of language grammar.
B.The syllables of language we process.
C.The time of collecting our thoughts.
D.The density of language information.
5.What is the best title for the text?
A.How Can We Express Our Ideas Swiftly?
B.Why Are Languages Spoken Fast or Slow?
C.An Average Information Density: 6 Bits a Syllable
D.A Universal Passing-on Rate: 39. 15 Bits Per Second
Over the past half-century, North America has lost more than a quarter of its entire bird population, or around 3 billion birds.
“We saw this great net loss across the entire bird community,” says Ken Rosenberg, a scientist in Ithaca, N.Y. “But we also knew that other bird populations were increasing. And what we didn’t know is whether there was a net change.”
Common birds with decreasing populations include dark-eyed juncos and red-winged blackbirds, says Rosenberg. Grassland birds have suffered a 53% decrease, and more than a third of the shorebird population has been lost. Bird populations that have increased include raptors (猛禽), like the bald eagle, and waterfowl.
“The numbers of ducks and geese are larger than they’ve ever been, and that’s not an accident,” says Rosenberg. It’s because hunters who mainly want to see healthy waterfowl populations for sportful hunting have raised their voices.
“People are doing a wonderful effort to try and understand our bird populations with a lot of uncertainty, but the actual systems that we have in place to try and answer really tough questions like this are really far short of what we need,” Ted Simons in North Carolina State University says.
“In all, the conclusions weren’t necessarily surprising,” says Kristen Ruegg, a biologist at Colorado State University. There have been hints (暗示) that the loss was this large from all kinds of sources over the past few years. But in most cases, these were species-specific records of local extinctions or models of projected losses, resulting from things like climate change. This really sort of wakes people up to the idea that this is happening.
Elise Zipkin, a quantitative ecologist at Michigan State University, says the loss can be a big problem. “Just because a species hasn’t gone extinct (灭绝) or isn’t even necessarily close to extinction, it might still be in trouble,” she says. We need to be thinking about conservation (保护) efforts for that.”
1.Which of the following becomes more than before?
A.Dark-eyed juncos. B.The bald eagle.
C.Grassland birds. D.The shorebirds.
2.Why do duck and goose populations increase?
A.To hunt for fun. B.To provide rich foods.
C.To escape net loss. D.To keep people healthy.
3.What does the underlined word “tough” mean in Paragraph 5?
A.Extra. B.Interesting.
C.Difficult. D.Official.
4.What can we infer from Elise’s words in the last paragraph?
A.Bird loss can be a big problem. B.Climate change causes part of bird loss.
C.Protecting birds is quite necessary. D.What is happening is worth considering.
5.How does the author support the subject of the text?
A.By giving examples. B.By showing ideas.
C.By explaining numbers. D.By providing research results.
Last Friday, Mike Babbitt was about to leave the Bremerton Yacht Club to go gas up when the engine of the boat caught fire.
“The wind was blowing from the North. It would have blown the boat into the yacht (快艇) club so I just gave it all the power I could to get it away from the yacht club,” he told Komo News. However, that wasn’t the end of Mike’s mission (使命). Still on the boat were his two bulldogs Pearl and Hootie. He placed the dogs on a paddleboard before jumping into the water himself.
He explained to Komo News that he didn’t even have time to grasp a life coat or his oxygen. Mike served in the army for five years in a special police unit in Iraq and Afghanistan. During his time in the army, he suffered a pancreatic (胰腺的) attack that forced him to rely on oxygen treatment for the rest of his life.
Still, he succeeded in doing the unthinkable. “I just slid into the water and started paddling away from the fire and I could still feel the heat from the fire,” Mike told the news reporters. Mike was then rescued by some friends and later transported to a nearby hospital, where his wife Jamie met him. The fire is especially heartbreaking for Mike and his wife as the yacht was their only house. They had early sold their home and saved up in order to live a life on the water.
However, Mike is just happy to have survived. “I think it is the gift of God watching over us,” Mike told Komo News. “You have to put it exactly that were still alive and we’re still together.” A GoFundMe has since been created to help the Babbitts following the fire.
1.Where was Mike going when the yacht caught fire?
A.The club. B.The boat.
C.A police unit. D.A filling station.
2.What did Mike do in the end?
A.Got a life coat. B.Pushed the boat away.
C.Put out the fire. D.Saved Pearl and Hootie.
3.By writing Paragraph 3, the author intends to ________.
A.sum up the paragraphs before it B.continue talking about the incident
C.add some background information D.introduce a new subject for discussion
4.What probably is continued with the passage?
A.Opening up about the terrible fire. B.Raising money to help the Babbitts.
C.Being thankful for what God gives. D.Realizing a dream of living on the water.
5.Which of the following best describes Mike?
A.Brave and kind. B.Confident and calm.
C.Positive and devoted. D.Generous and grateful.
