My school appeared on the news last week because we had made an important change in our local area. Our class had planted a large garden in what was once only a vacant lot. It was a lot of work but it was all worth it. I got blisters(水泡) from digging, and we all got insect bites, too.
I learned a lot about gardening and collaboration(合作), and then I learned about the media. Our teacher telephoned the TV station and informed them of what we had accomplished. She spoke with the producer. The producer checked with the directors, but they said there were plenty of stories similar to ours. They wanted to know what was special about our particular garden, since many schools plant them.
The teacher explained that, after going on the Internet to learn about the prairie(大草原), we had made a prairie garden. We had gone to a prairie and gotten seeds from the plants, and then we planted them. We did not water the garden, but we did weed it. We decided to let nature water it with rain, since that was how prairies grew in the past. We sent a picture of the garden to the news station. In the picture, the grass was so high that it stood taller than the fourth grade students.
As a result, the producer sent a reporter to our school. He interviewed the headmaster and asked him many questions about the garden. After that, they interviewed us, and we explained to them what we had learned through this project.
That night, we watched the news, and there we were. The news reporter told our story. It was only two minutes long, but it was us. We were famous. All that work, all those blisters, it was worth it. We knew that when we saw the garden every day, but now we knew that the whole city thought so, too.
1.What seemed to be the TV directors’ initial reaction to the garden?
A.They were excited. B.They were surprised.
C.They were worried. D.They were uninterested.
2.What is special about the garden?
A.Weeds were allowed to spread naturally.
B.The grass grew faster than common grass.
C.The seeds came from the plants of a prairie.
D.Underground water was used for the plants.
3.What does the underlined word “that” refer to in the last paragraph?
A.We got blisters on our hands. B.Our hard work was worthwhile.
C.The garden would be famous. D.The project would be finished.
4.How did the author feel about the project?
A.Annoyed. B.Curious. C.Proud. D.Regretful.
Want to explore new cultures, meet new people and do something worthwhile at the same time? You can do all the three with Global Development Association(GDA). Whatever stage of life you’re at, wherever you go and whatever project you do in GDA, you’ll create positive changes in a poor and remote community(社区).
We work with volunteers of all ages and backgrounds. Most of our volunteers are aged 17-24. Now we need volunteer managers aged 25-75. They are extremely important in the safe and effective running of our programmes. We have such roles as project managers, mountain leaders, and communication officers.
Depending on which role you choose, you could help to increase a community’s access to safe drinking water, or help to protect valuable local cultures. You might also design an adventure challenge to train young volunteers.
Not only will you help our young volunteers to develop personally, you’ll also learn new skills and increase your cultural awareness. You may have chances to meet new people who’ll become your lifelong friends.
This summer we have both 4-week and 7-week programmes:
Country | Schedule | |
4-week programmes | 7-week programmes | |
Algeria | 5 Jul. — 1 Aug. | 20 Jun. — 7 Aug. |
Egypt | 24 Jul. — 20 Aug. | 19 Jun. — 6 Aug. |
Kenya | 20 Jul. — 16 Aug. | 18 Jun. — 5 Aug. |
South Africa | 2 Aug. — 29 Aug. | 15 Jun. — 2 Aug. |
GDA ensures that volunteers work with community members and local project partners where our help is needed. All our projects aim to promote the development of poor and remote communities.
There is no other chance like a GDA programme. Join us as a volunteer manager to develop your own skills while bringing benefits to the communities.
Find out more about joining a GDA programme:
Website:www.glodeve.org
Email:humanresources@glodeve.org
1.What is the main responsibility of volunteer managers?
A.To seek local partners. B.To take in young volunteers.
C.To carry out programmes. D.To foster cultural awareness.
2.The programme beginning in August will operate in ________.
A.Egypt B.Algeria C.Kenya D.South Africa
3.The shared goal of GDA’s projects to ________.
A.explore new cultures B.protect the environment
C.gain corporate benefit D.help communities in need
Directions: Write an English composition in 120-150 words according to the instructions given below in Chinese.
假设你是明启中学高三学生李青。史上最长的”寒假”结束后，校刊举办主题征文活动，内容是关于学生在这个”寒假”里发生的一个变化。请你结合自己的实际写一篇文章投稿。你的文章必须包括:
▪ 简述该变化的具体内容；
▪ 阐述该变化对你的意义。
(注意:文中请不要出现真实的校名和人名)
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Directions: Translate the following sentences into English, using the words given in the brackets.
1.研学的兴起让公共文化服务成为新亮点。 (rise)
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2.不出所料，这个养身讲座吸引了社区众多老年居民。 (expect)
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3.“线上音乐会”不受时空的局限，为剧场未来发展提供了新机遇。 (break)
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4.该是时候民众在日常生活中通过具体行动表达对自然的敬畏与呵护了，比如节约能源、保 护野生动物等。 (It)
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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 Do Our Phones Affect Our Parenting?
As a pediatrician (儿科医生), I have researched how mobile phone use affects family dynamics. The parent-child relationship is central to children’s social and emotional health and life success — yet I also see how more and more family interactions interrupted by mobile devices … including my own.
My interest in the topic began in 2010. I worked for a year as a pediatrician in the suburbs outside of Seattle. Many of the parents bringing in their sick kids worked at tech companies and were early adopters of mobile devices. During my training, I had gotten used to children playing with handheld gaming devices, but this was different: parents texted during health-related conversations (were they really processing what I was saying?); looked up medical information online to check my accuracy (was this a sign of parent anxiety?); and used videos to stop children from crying (this was pretty helpful during ear exams, but is it OK other times, I wondered?).
I was fascinated by the cultural change America was experiencing with the rapid adoption of mobile devices. But as a pediatrician, I had no idea what to do about it. So when I moved to Boston for training in Developmental Behavioral Pediatrics, I decided to explore the topic in more depth.
I started my research by observing families in fast food restaurants and the results were pretty eye-opening: when parents’ attention was highly absorbed in their smartphones, parents talked less to children; responded slower (or not at all) to child bids for attention; and sometimes overreacted to child behavior.
Our more recent studies show that in the long-run, parent technology use during parent-child activities leads to more difficult child behavior — which in turn leads to more parent technology usage. It’s a vicious cycle: when kids stress us out, we often go to our phones for escape or to avoid interaction, and this interrupts time with kids or makes them annoyed, and they might react with difficult behavior, and so on.
As a working mom of two young boys, I knew how this child-phone multitasking felt to me, but I wanted to hear what others thought. So I interviewed 35 parents from diverse backgrounds in Boston to understand their experiences. They told me they have never felt their brains split in so many directions — like all the matters of the world could intrude upon home time and “land in their lap”. They expressed both relief and despair when their phones were broken or lost, because while this made it easier to “single-task” on their kids again, they also felt cut off from friends and information.
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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.
New sense discovered in dog noses: the ability to detect heat
Dogs’ noses are amazing. Not only are they up to 100 million times more sensitive than ours, they can sense weak thermal radiation- the body heat of mammalian (哺乳动物的) prey, a new study reveals. The find helps explain how dogs with damaged sight, hearing, or smell can still hunt successfully.
“It’s a fascinating discovery,” says Marc Bekoff, an expert on dog sniffing (嗅探). “It provides yet another window into the sensory worlds of dogs’ highly evolved cold noses.” The ability to sense weak, radiating heat is known in only some animals: black fire beetles, certain snakes, and one species of mammal, the common vampire bat, all of which use it to hunt prey.1. But the tips of dogs’ noses are moist, colder than the surrounding temperature, and richly endowed with nerves-all of which suggests an ability to detect not just smell, but heat.
To test the idea, researchers at Lund University trained three pet dogs to choose between a warm (31°C) and a surrounding-temperature object, each placed 1.6 meters away.2. (Scientists could only detect the difference by touching the surfaces.) After training, the dogs were tested on their skill in double-blind experiments; all three successfully detected the objects emitting weak thermal radiation.
Next, the researchers scanned the brains of 13 pet dogs of various breeds while presenting the dogs with objects emitting neutral or weak thermal radiation. The left somatosensory cortex in dogs’ brains, was more responsive to the warm thermal stimulus than to the neutral one. The scientists identified a group of 14 voxels (体素) in this region of the dogs’ left brains , but didn’t find any in the right, and none in any part of the dogs’ brains in response to the neutral stimulus.
3. Also, a specific region of their brains is activated by this infrared (relating to a type of light) radiation, the scientists say. They suspect dogs inherited the ability from their ancestor, the gray wolf, who may use it to sniff out warm bodies during a hunt.
“The study is consistent with other research that describes the combined dog nose and brain as a highly complicated platform for processing a broad range of signals,” says Gary Settles, a professor of mechanical engineering at Pennsylvania State University. “The dog nose can distinguish patterns of hot and cold objects at a distance,” he said. “4. That needs further study.”
A.If nothing else, the work suggests the extraordinary skills of the dog.
B.The dogs weren’t able to see or smell the difference between these objects.
C.But dogs’ thermal detection skills may not be useful for long distance hunting.
D.Most mammals have naked, smooth skin on the tips of their noses around the nostrils (鼻孔).
E.Dogs track prey “not by sight or sound or smell, but by some other and subtler sense”.
F.Together, the two experiments show that dogs, like vampire bats, can sense weak hot spots.
