Can you imagine a cloud floating in the middle of your room? Do you want to know what it feels like to fly like a bird? Find your answers in Time Magazine's 25 "Best Inventions". Here, we have picked out the most interesting 4 to share with you.
Talking Gloves
Ever felt confused by the sign language used by disabled people? Here is the "helping hand" you need. Four Ukrainian students have created a pair of gloves that helps people with hearing and speech problems communicate with others. The gloves are equipped with sensors that recognize sign language and translate it into text on a smartphone. Then the smartphone changes the text to spoken words.
Google Glasses
Google Glasses are like a computer built into the frame of a pair of glasses. With its 1.3-centimeter display, the glasses allow you to surf the Internet and make calls without even lifting a finger. The glasses also have a camera and GPS mapping system. Users can take and share photos, check maps and surf the Internet just by looking up, down, left and right.
Indoor Clouds
It's not virtual.That's a real world. Dutch artist Smilde managed to create a small but perfect white cloud in the middle of a room using a fog machine. But it required careful planning—the temperature, humidity（湿度）and lighting all had to be just right. Once everything was ready, the cloud formed in the air with the machine. But it only lasted for a short while.
Wingsuits
The suit fulfills your dreams of flying like a bird.Well, not exactly flying, but gliding（滑翔）through the air. It increases the surface area of the human body, which makes it easier for people to float in the air. Fliers wearing wingsuits can glide one kilometer in about 30 seconds.
1.Who will probably be the users of “Talking Gloves”?
A.Disabled people B.Normal people.
C.Trained people. D.Working people.
2.How can users of Google Glasses surf the Internet?
A.By moving the mouse. B.By tapping the keyboard.
C.By moving the eyeballs. D.By pressing the button.
3.Which of the following can help you fly?
A.Talking Gloves. B.Wingsuits.
C.Google Glasses. D.Indoor Clouds.
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。
As Amy Hagadorn rounded the corner across the hall from her classroom, she ran into a tall boy from the fifth grade running in the opposite direction.
“Watch it, dwarf.” The boy yelled as he kept away the little third-grader. Then, with an unfriendly smile on his face, the boy took hold of his right leg and imitated the way Amy limped (跛行)when she walked.
Amy closed her eyes for a moment. “Forget it”! she told herself as she headed for her classroom. But at the end of the day, Amy was still thinking about the tall boy’s mean teasing (嘲弄). It wasn’t as if he were the only one. It seemed that ever since Amy started the third grade, someone teased her every single day. Kids teased her about her speech or her limping. Amy was tired of it. Sometimes, even in a classroom full of other students, the teasing made her feel all alone.
Back home at the dinner table that evening, Amy was quiet. Her mother knew that things were not going well at school.
“There’s a Christmas wish contest on the newspaper,” Amy’s mom announced. “Write a letter to Santa, and you might win a prize”.
The contest sounded like fun to Amy. She started thinking about what she wanted most for Christmas. A smile took hold of Amy when the idea first came to her. Out came pencil and paper, and Amy went to work on her letter.
While Amy worked away at her writing, the rest of the family tried to guess what she might ask from Santa. Amy’s sister, Jamie, and Amy’s mom both thought a three-foot Barbie doll would top Amy’s wish list. Amy’s dad guessed a picture book. But Amy wasn’t ready to reveal her secret Christmas wish just then. Here is Amy’s letter to Santa, just as she wrote it that night:
注意：
1．所续写的短文的词数应为150左右；
2．续写部分分为两段，每段的开头语已为你写好；
Paragraph 1：
“Dear Santa Claus,” she began.
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Paragraph 2：
The next day, a picture of Amy and her letter to Santa made the front page of the News Sentinel.
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假定你是学生会主席李华，五一假期期间，你将负责带你校留学生去爬崂山。请写一个书面通知，内容包括：
1.集合时间、地点；
2.注意事项。
注意：1. 词数80左右；
2. 可以适当增加细节，以使行文连贯。
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阅读下面短文，在空白处填入适当的内容（1个单词）或括号内单词的正确形式。
Today our knowledge of food and what it does for our bodies is far 1. advanced than that of the old times. Now we know about vitamins and how each kind of vitamin helps in the 2. (grow) of a particular part of our body. There are on the market all kinds of vitamins which one can take 3. (make) up for one’s lack of certain important things. Of course, if we eat properly, the food that we eat will take care of 4. (we) bodies and so there is no need to take any kinds of vitamins.
Generally 5.(speak), everything we eat 6. (do) some good to our body, but if we eat too much of one kind of food and pay too little attention to others, we may have too much of one kind and not enough of others. Then we may be 7. trouble. We are often told that we must eat some meat at each meal in order to get the necessary proteins (蛋白质). That is only 8. (part) true, for proteins are not found only in meat. They can also be got from some 9. (vegetable). The best advice about what to eat is that we should eat all kinds of food 10. never too much of any.
When I was young, my father used to grow carnations — a kind of flower that was red, pink or white. He ______ them with much love and devotion. Every day he came home from work, he would ______ watching them. And he used to tell us, “No one should touch my flowers.”
One day, my younger sister Clemence, who loved dad very much, wanted to help him. So she cut the carnation from their stems（枝干）one by one and ______them on the ground. She believed that dad would be very ______ to see them that way.
When mom and I realized what my sister had done, we became completely ______. However, my sister had no ______why no one showed her any ______. When dad arrived, he went as usual straight to watch the flowers. Seeing his flowers ______ on the ground like dead animals, he was ______ at first. He looked towards the ______to see if it was any of the neighbors’ children who could have done it. Then he looked at mom in ______. Finally mom, who always taught us to tell the ______no matter what, said, “No bad neighbors did this great job, only your lovely daughter Clemence.”
Dad’s face changed into a (an) ______ and then he said, “Do I have better flower than my _______ daughter?” My younger sister smiled and hugged dad ______.
1.A.fed B.took care of C.bought D.used
2.A.stop B.admit C.enjoy D.avoid
3.A.dried B.piled C.threw D.arranged
4.A.pleased B.surprised C.disappointed D.embarrassed
5.A.blind B.lost C.hopeless D.speechless
6.A.guess B.idea C.way D.words
7.A.appreciation B.friendship C.favor D.interest
8.A.standing B.placing C.sitting D.lying
9.A.sad B.shocked C.satisfied D.amused
10.A.windows B.school C.house D.street
11.A.agreement B.return C.silence D.thought
12.A.truth B.story C.matter D.apology
13.A.fear B.smile C.cry D.anger
14.A.naughty B.special C.lovely D.curious
15.A.heavily B.suddenly C.deeply D.firmly
In China, poetry is an important part of the curriculum and, with recent changes announced by the Ministry of Education, the number of poems students will have to memorize and recite is being increased from fourteen to seventy-two. Now, before you gasp in horror, let’s think about the reasons why studying so many poems, especially ancient poems, is important.
First of all, poetry is an essential part of traditional Chinese culture. 1.It is also the key to understanding the thoughts and emotions that are common to everyone but which we may be unable to express—the joy of Li Bai dancing with the moon, for example. Everyone has feelings of joy, love, loneliness, sadness and even anger. 2. .3.In a few short lines, even something commonplace can become beautiful. Here is a poem called “Fog” by Carl Sandberg: The fog comes / on silent haunches (弓腰蹲着) / and then moves on. Yes, fog does move smoothly, silently and mysteriously like a cat, and Sandberg captures that feeling and image, and makes it beautiful.
4. After all, a poem is really just a song without music. Most ancient poetry, especially Western poetry, was actually spoken before it was written. Take Homer’s Iliad, for example. The story was apparently told for hundreds of years in palaces and on street corners before Homer wrote it down.
The American poet Robert Frost said, “Poetry is when an emotion has found its thought and the thought has found words.” And poems are very concise—there is not a wasted word. 5.
A.Few people read it for pleasure.
B.Poems can also express beauty.
C.Poetry is difficult to recite.
D.Of course, to really appreciate poetry, it has to be read aloud.
E.You are lucky that you now have seventy-two poems to learn!
F.It is a pathway to understanding your history and your society.
G.A good poem can put those emotions into words and bring us self-understanding.
