The second little pig was unlucky. He built his house from sticks. It was blown away by a huffing, puffing wolf, which quickly ate him up. His brother, by contrast, built a wolf-proof house from bricks. The fairy tale could have been written by someone hired by the building industry, which strongly favours brick, concrete and steel. However, in the real world it would help reduce pollution and slow global warming if more builders copied the wood-loving second pig.
In 2015 world leaders meeting in Paris agreed to move towards zero net greenhouse-gas emissions in the second half of this century. That is a tall order, and the building industry makes it even taller. Cement- making(水泥制造) alone produces 6% of the world 's carbon emissions. Steel, half of which goes into buildings, accounts for another 8%. If you factor in all of the energy that goes into lighting, heating and cooling homes and offices, the world's buildings start to look like a giant environmental problem.
However, buildings can become greener. They can use more recycled steel and can be made in sections that can be put together later in off-site factories, greatly reducing lorry journeys. But no other building material has environmental credentials (证书) as exciting and overlooked as wood.
The energy required to produce a wooden beam is one-sixth of that required for a steel one of comparable strength. As trees take carbon out of the atmosphere when growing,wooden buildings contribute to negative emissions by storing the stuff. When a mature tree is cut down, a new one can be planted to replace it, capturing more carbon. After buildings are torn down, old beams and panels are easy to recycle into new structures. And for improving older buildings to be more energy efficient, wood is a good insulator(隔热材料). A softwood window frame provides nearly 400 times as much insulation as a plain steel one of the same thickness and over a thousand times as much as an aluminium equivalent.
Wood alone will not bring the environmental cost of the world's buildings into line. But using wood can do much more than is appreciated. The second little pig was not wrong, just before his time.
1.Why is the second little pig with his brother mentioned in Paragraph 1?
A.To attract readers. B.To share a story.
C.To support the main idea. D.To introduce the topic.
2.Which of the following is TRUE according to the passage?
A.The world’s buildings are the biggest environmental problem.
B.The goal set by world leaders in Paris in 2015 is difficult to achieve.
C.The wooden house is not only exciting but also overlooked for a long time.
D.The building industry produces 14% of the world's carbon emissions totally.
3.How can buildings become eco-friendly?
A.Restoring them.
B.Planting more trees in them.
C.Recycling old wooden structure.
D.Substituting steel windows for wood ones.
4.What is the best title for the text?
A.The benefit from wood
B.The building industry
C.The lesson from fairy tales
D.The house made of wood
The world of work is changing. Are people ready for the new job outlook? A survey of 15- year-olds across 41 countries by the OECD(经合组织) has found that teenagers may have unrealistic expectations about the kind of work that will be available.
Four of the five most popular choices are traditional professional roles: doctors, teachers, business managers and lawyers. Teenagers cluster around the most popular jobs, with the top ten being chosen by 47% of boys and 53% of girls.
This selection is partly due to wishful thinking on the part of those surveyed. Furthermore, teenagers can hardly be expected to have an in-depth knowledge of labour-market trends. They encounter doctors and teachers in their daily lives. Other popular professions, such as lawyers and police officers, are familiar from films and social media.
Some parts of the OECD survey are disturbing. More boys than girls expect to work in science or engineering. The problem continues in higher education; with the exception of biological and biomedical sciences, degrees in STEM Subjects (science, technology, engineering and maths ) are male-dominated. In America women earn just 35. 5% of undergraduate STEM degrees and 33. 7% of PhDs. Things are even worse in technology. In Britain only one in five computer-science university students is a woman. Women are underrepresented in some important fields of technology; they have only 12% of jobs in cloud computing, for example.
Women play a much bigger role in the health- and social-care sectors. The problem is that some of these jobs are not very well paid. Home-health and personal-care aides had median annual salaries in 2018 of just over 24,000. Some jobs in health care are extremely profitable, of course. But another gender imbalance emerges here: women make up only one-third of American health-care executives. In contrast, they tend to dominate the poorly paid social care workforce.
The biggest problem in the labour market, then, may not be that teenagers are focusing on a few well-known jobs. It could be a mismatch: not enough talented women move into technology and not enough men take jobs in social care. Any economist will recognise this as an inefficient use of resources. Wherever the root of the problem lies---be it the education system, government policy or corporate recruiting practices---it needs to be identified and fixed.
1.Many teenagers would like to choose some traditional jobs because_______.
A.they are ready for these jobs
B.these jobs are better known to them
C.these jobs live up to their expectations
D.they think these jobs are available to them
2.Where do most women work?
A.In engineering
B.In technology.
C.In health care.
D.In business.
3.What would-the author most probably agree with?
A.The mismatch of resources requires improving.
B.Not enough men and women take jobs in society.
C.Teenagers have unrealistic expectations about jobs.
D.It's the education system that causes the problem in the labour market.
4.In which section of a magazine may this text appear ?
A.Entertainment. B.Education.
C.Science. D.Career.
My brother had, for years, a delightfully tame and lively blue-fronted Amazon parrot named Papagallo, which had an extraordinary talent for speech. Living with us in Altenberg, Papagallo flew just as freely around as most of my other birds. A talking parrot that flies from tree to tree and at the same time says human words, gives a much more comical effect than one that sits in a cage and does the same thing. When Papagallo, with loud cries of “Where’s the Doc?” flew about the district, sometimes in a real search for his master, it was funny.
Still funnier, but also remarkable from a scientific point of view, was the following performance of the bird. Papagallo feared nothing and nobody, with the exception of the chimney sweep. Birds are likely to fear things which are up above. And this tendency is associated with the natural fear of the bird of prey diving down from the heights. So everything that appears against the sky, has for them something of the meaning of “bird of prey”. As the chimney sweep in black stood up on the chimney and became outlined against the sky, Papagallo fell into a panic of fear and flew, loudly screaming, so far away that we feared he might not come back. Months later, when the chimney sweep came again, Papagallo was sitting on the weathercock, quarrelling with other birds who wanted to sit there too. All at once, I saw him stretch his neck and peer down anxiously into the village street; then he flew up and away, crying out in tough tones, “ The chimney sweep is- coming!” “The chimney sweep is coming! The next moment, the man in black walked through the doorway of the yard !
Unfortunately, I was unable to find out how often Papagallo had seen the chimney sweep before and how often he had heard the excited cry of our cook, which meant his approach. It was, without a doubt, the voice and intonation of this lady that the bird copied. But he had certainly not heard it more than three times at the most and, each time, only once and at an interval of months.
1.It can be inferred that the author_______.
A.might be a bird expert
B.must set a lot of parrots free
C.could talk with Papagallo
D.did have Papagallo look for his brother
2.What does the underlined words “bird of prey” in Paragraph 2 mean?
A.Bird flying up high.
B.Bird hunting animals.
C.Bird having black feathers.
D.Bird diving down from the sky.
3.What confused the author?
A.Why Papagallo feared the chimney sweep.
B.What the chimney sweep did to Papagallo.
C.How Papagallo had learnt to say the exact sentence.
D.How often Papagallo was seen by the chimney sweep.
4.Which of the following best describes Papagallo?
A.Gifted B.Caring.
C.Shy. D.Talkative.
There are plenty of things to do while at home, from watching heartwarming TV to indoor fitness, but if you want to do something with the whole family, a board game is the perfect activity.
Telestrations
It is like a combination of the whisper game Telephone and Pictionary. Players draw a word and pass their sketch to the player next to them, who writes down the word they think the first player draws. The next player draws the word the previous player writes down, and the game continues in this way until the final drawing or description comes out wildly different from the original one. It is most popular among kids.
Catan
A slightly more involved game than Risk or Monopoly, Catan, previouly known as Settlers of Catan or Settlers, has become popular in the past decade or so beyond board game enthusiasts. In the game, which has many expansions available if you get bored with the original, players become “settlers”, each trying to build up individual settlements while trading resources. The bigger your settlement, the more points, and the first to a set number wins.
Ticket to Ride
It is an easy-to-understand game that is about something as simple as trains. Players use colored train cars that they are able to obtain by collecting cards of the same color to create train routes across a map of the U. S. Expansion packs have many other maps to choose from. Bigger train routes give you more points, as do building the routes shown on the secret ticket cards you draw at the beginning of the game.
Lords of Waterdeep
This board game from the makers of Dungeons Dragons is definitely more complex but is one of the most enjoyable games once you understand all the rules. Beautifully designed in fantasy style, Waterdeep is a “worker placement game”, in which players use agents to gather resources to complete quests, which generate victory points. Whoever has the most at the end of the game wins.
1.In which of the following board games is drawing needed?
A.Telestrations.
B.Catan.
C.Ticket to Ride.
D.Lords of Waterdeep.
2.Who will be the winner in Catan?
A.The one becoming the first settler.
B.The one getting needed points first.
C.The one gathering the most resources.
D.The one creating the most train routes.
3.What do the four board games have in common?
A.They have many expansions.
B.They ask players to get points.
C.They involve more than one player.
D.They are easy to understand and play.
假定你是李华，在得知东京奥运会推迟至明年的消息后，需要将之前在Airbnb上预订的房间取消，并希望退回订金，请给你的房东Abe先生写一封邮件，要点如下:
1. 写信目的；
2. 表达歉意,解释原因；
3. 期待明年造访东京。
注意:1. 词数100左右；
2. 可以适当增加细节以使行文连贯。
参考词汇:东京奥运会the Tokyo Olympics 订金deposit
Dear Mr. Abe,
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Yours,
Li Hua
假定英语课上老师要求同学们交换修改作文,请你修改你同桌写的以下作文。文中共有10处语言错误,每句中最多有两处。错误仅涉及一个单词的增加、删除或修改。
增加:在缺词处加一个漏字符号(∧),并在其下面写出该加的词。
删除:把多余的词用斜线(＼)划掉。
修改:在错的词下划一横线。并在该词下面写出修改后的词。
注意:1. 每处错误及其修改均仅限一词;
2. 只允许修改10处,多者(从第11处起)不计分。
I used to go fishing with my father. Initially, I consider fishing is a piece of cake—sitting or waiting for fish to bite. I sat in there for almost one hour, yet I got nothing. Impatiently and annoyed, I intended to quit. “Be focused and wait.” said my father. Have nothing else to do, I followed his advise. I calmed down and concentrated on the fishing pole. Another two hour passed and I finally gained his reward. The experience has taught me what all things are difficult at beginning. As long as you make efforts and hang on, you'll succeed.
