Just a couple of hours ago, I was on the plane, ready to fly home from London. The flight had been delayed by a few hours so it felt good to be so close to take-off. I had my iPod in place and a new book to read. Then, over the loudspeaker came the pilot’s voice: “The ground crew has found a metal instrument in one tire. We regret that we must cancel this flight.”
The passengers’ reactions that announcement led to were interesting. One man close to me began to argue with a flight attendant. A couple in another row complained loudly. A businessman in a black suit actually kicked the seat in front of him. Yet some passengers responded differently. An elderly gentleman smiled as he helped others take their bags down from the overhead compartments. A teenager, rather than trying to rush off the plane like most of the other passengers, stopped to help a woman with a disability. The lady sitting next to me laughed and said: “Hey, it’s not the end of the world,” before she made a call to her kids and shared her adventure with them, the wisest among us who has a remarkable ability to maintain grounded(稳定的) when times get tough.
No life is perfect; mine certainly isn’t. We all must face challenges, both large and small. You and I have the power to choose to rise above the external circumstances(外部环境). We always have the choice to be strong and kind when things fall apart.
That’s grace under pressure. My seatmate was right — things could have been so much worse. Anyway, I am safe. I have my health. I have two wonderful children. I have work I love and so much to be grateful for. Sure I now have to wait a few hours to catch the next flight home.
1.What caused the passengers’ different reactions?
A.The loudspeaker. B.The delay of the flight.
C.The ground crew’s fault. D.The pilot’s announcement.
2.Who turned his anger on the seat?
A.A teenager helping the disabled. B.An old man taking bags down.
C.A man in a black suit. D.A man close to the author.
3.What did the woman sitting next to the author do?
A.She assisted a disabled woman. B.She made a phone call to her family.
C.She helped others carry their luggage. D.She told moving stories to her children.
4.What can we learn from the story?
A.Our life is full of ups and downs.
B.It is natural to be scared under pressure.
C.We should help each other in times of difficulty.
D.We should be positive and calm when life is hard.
假设你是红星中学高三学生李华。停课期间，妈妈过生日，你在学习之余给妈妈准备了丰盛的生日晚餐。请根据以下四幅图的先后顺序，写一篇稿件，记述整个过程。
注意：词数不少于 60。
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假设你是红星中学高三学生李华，你的英国笔友 Jim 在邮件中谈到近年来全球掀起的剩食运动（Waste No Food Movement），例如：推行打包及食物共享文化、鼓励购买即期品，并将厨余分类回收后加以利用。请你回邮件，说明你对此现象的看法，内容包括：
1. 你对剩食运动的看法；
2. 你或者你周围人的做法。
注意 ：1．词数不少于50；
2．开头和结尾已给出，不计入总词数。
提示词： leftover n. 剩余食物; adj. 剩余的
Dear Jim,
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Yours,
Li Hua
All book writing has to start somewhere, and the best place to kick off your manuscript (原稿) is by coming up with a great idea.1. It can be an article you read from your local newspaper, a conversation you overheard at Starbucks, a recent experience you had during a vacation, etc. Your overall idea should be narrowed down to one-to-two paragraphs, similar to the back cover copy you find on most books. When writing books, the idea is king. Always remember that.
2. This doesn’t just mean fictional characters—memoirs (回忆录) and nonfiction books still have characters, even if those characters are based on real people. When you write your own book, you must ask yourself what makes this character unique, what is the No. 1 thing this character wants and what difficulties must he or she overcome to reach it. Readers love imperfect, yet relatable characters.
3.
Maybe the most crucial step in the steps to writing a book, setting a deadline and sticking to it is essential. 4. Too many writers say they are going to write a book and, after starting strong, find excuses as to why they stopped (or are on a super-long pause from writing books). There are definitely reasonable reasons that could prevent you from book writing—help needed in the family, a health issue, etc. But if you’re serious about writing a book, you have to make time for it. Deadlines will push you to do just that.
You can spend as much time as you want reading tips for writing a book, how to write books and how to edit your novel—and you should spend some time doing that. You should invest in studying the craft and learning how to write a bestseller.5. Do it during your lunch break. Do it while waiting for the kids at soccer practice. Do it after everyone goes to bed. There’s no official book writing model, there’s just you, a pen and a paper (or a computer, of course).
A.Strive to make your characters as interesting as possible.
B.But you’ll never write a book if you don’t spend time writing.
C.Now discover our best tips for how to write a book effectively.
D.It’s time to further your writing career by diving deeper into deadline.
E.Book ideas come in all shapes and sizes and can be found anywhere.
F.It’s the difference between serious writers and those who are merely dreamers.
G.How to start writing a book begins with an idea, but your idea needs to be carried out with well-developed characters.
How many more people can we squeeze onto our fragile planet? Surely, the Earth must be full? Pretending that human numbers can grow forever, with no ill-effects, is at best innocent and at worst utterly irresponsible.
Biodiversity loss, climate change, pollution, deforestation, water and food shortages — these are all worsened by our huge and ever-increasing numbers. Yet governments and most environmental groups choose to sidestep this giant elephant in the room. The human population was just 2.6 billion in 1950. But it has been 7.7 billion today and according to the UN it will reach 9.7 billion by 2050 and 11.2 billion by the end of the century. Where will so many people live? How will we feed them?
Unless we diffuse this “population bomb”, by the end of the century we will need several Earths to survive. But we can’t have several Earths, and so we will face a future of increasing poverty, food shortages, conflict and environmental degradation.
Admittedly, not everyone agrees with the UN’s predictions. But even the doubters calculate that the human population will grow to 8 or 9 billion sometime between 2040 and 2060. Ultimately, there has to be a limit.
The good news is that the human populations of about two dozen countries, from Poland and Italy to Cuba and Japan, are now decreasing. But that’s not true of most countries. The cradle of overpopulation is in Africa, which is where more than half of global population growth is expected to occur: from 1.3 billion people in 2020 to 4.3 billion in 2100.
The solution isn’t rocket science. There are two drivers of population growth: birth rates and longevity. We all aim to grow old, after all, but we can reduce birth rates. That’s not to say that anyone should be denied the right to have many children as they like. But it’s a fact that wherever women are empowered and literated, have help with family planning and have access to medical care, they generally choose to have fewer children. And the birth rate falls.
So why the stony silence? Why such a failure of leadership from governments and environmental groups? I think it’s for two reasons. First, calls for population control are often believed racist: relatively rich people in the developed world blaming poor people in the developing world. Second, it is often thought insincere. The problem is as much about consumerism as it is about population growth: westerners are consuming more and more, so it appears as if they are blaming the poor for the excesses of the rich. Most population growth is, indeed, taking place among those who consume almost nothing. But the uncomfortable truth is that we all need to consume much less.
Whatever the complications, we urgently need a UN Framework Convention on Population, just as we have for climate change. Either we limit our population growth or the natural world will do it for us.
1.What are the first three paragraphs mainly about?
A.Environmental degradation made by humans.
B.The increasing poverty coming with illnesses.
C.The problems resulting from the growing population.
D.Water shortages caused by climate change and pollution.
2.How do governments react to human population?
A.They are too busy with other problems to solve it.
B.They avoid seeking solutions to reduce population.
C.They know the consequence and face the problem.
D.They think the population will decline in the future.
3.What is practical for birth control according to the passage?
A.Consuming much less than before.
B.Removing the right to have more children.
C.Decreasing population in developed areas.
D.Educating women and providing health care.
4.What is the author’s attitude to the ever-increasing human population?
A.Neutral. B.Concerned.
C.Skeptical. D.Indifferent.
Infections that cross over from other species are a deadly problem. The new coronavirus(冠状病毒) is the latest example of a disease that jumped from animals into humans. When infections do this, they can be deadly—and 2019-nCoV is no exception.
Nearly all viruses and bacteria that infect other organisms are completely harmless to people. But a tiny proportion can infect us and cause so-called zoonotic diseases, which come from animals rather than people. Such diseases are a massive problem. They make around 2.5 billion people ill every year and kill 2.7 million. Not all zoonotic diseases cause serious illness, but the Ebola virus, for example, currently kills most of those it infects.
One reason zoonotic viruses can be this deadly is that we lack pre-existing immunity( 免疫) to them. Another is that these viruses aren’t adapted to humans. Viruses that normally circulate among people can develop to become less deadly, as this helps them spread. “They don’t want you to drop dead within a day because you won’t pass it to anyone else,” says Chris Coleman at the University of Nottingham, UK.
To get infected, people need to come into contact with the animal the virus usually infects. This is most likely with domesticated animals. Camels carry the MERS coronavirus that causes sporadic human cases, for instance.
Many viruses that jump into people, like MERS, seldom spread from person to person. They can still infect thousands, though. Rabies is mostly passed on by dog bites, but kills 60,000 people a year. Others, such as Ebola, can spread from person to person, but aren’t very good at it and so cause relatively small outbreaks. The 2019 coronavirus, by contrast, appears quite good at spreading from person to person. We don’t know how deadly it is yet.
Biologists have been warning for decades about the risks of animal viruses spreading to people. There is good reason to worry. The last global pandemic(传染病), the 2009 flu that killed up to 400,000 people, was caused by a strain of flu that came from pigs. And that flu is thought to be a descendant of the 1918 flu, which came from birds. HIV, which has infected about 75 million people, is now thought of as a human virus. But it jumped from chimpanzees into humans relatively recently, in the 1930s.
Coleman thinks there is little we can do to stop people coming into contact with animals that may carry dangerous viruses. “It’s very difficult to control that,” he says. Instead, he says we need to have vaccines( 疫苗) ready in advance. This could mean creating vaccines that are effective against a wide range of viruses and developing vaccines that require only minor changes to work against a new viral strain, much like annual flu vaccines.
1.What does the underlined word “circulate” in Para.3 probably mean?
A.Pass on. B.Attack each other.
C.Die away. D.Work together.
2.What can we learn from the passage?
A.People must keep away from wild animals.
B.The majority of viruses are a massive problem.
C.The 2009 flu had no connection with the 1918 flu.
D.Vaccines are an effective option to fight against viruses.
3.The passage mainly aims to _______.
A.analyze the origins of viruses
B.explain the consequence of diseases
C.draw people’s attention to zoonotic viruses
D.persuade people to protect the wild animals
4.Which of the following can be the best title for the passage?
A.How Are Vaccines Made?
B.Viruses Infected from Animals
C.A Global Health Emergency
D.Why Isn’t There a Coronavirus Vaccine Yet?
