Tim Wasem, an English teacher, says he's still getting his head around it. "I have students coming in this semester who are asking, like, 'When are we gonna do the podcast （播客）challenge? When's that gonna happen?' I didn't know the answers."
That's because a year ago, an unlikely team of 11th-graders at Elizabethton High School in east Tennessee won NPR's first-ever Student Podcast Challenge. Their 11-minute entry told the story of how the nearby town of Erwin is trying to rehabilitate （挽回）its image a century after hanging an elephant. They called their podcast"Murderous Mary & The RISE Of Erwin."
As the Student Podcast Challenge opens this month for its second year and as our new podcast about the contest launches on Monday, we've checked back in with last year's two grand-prize winners to see how the experience changed their learning and their lives.
Deanna Hull was a driving force behind "Murderous Mary". She says the experience gave a big lift to her "internal confidence as a student and just as a person in general”. Now a senior, Hull is making college plans, and she says winning the contest helped her see what she's truly capable of. "I'm typically very self-critical of my work. I can't really see what everyone else sees... But then when we found out we'd won, I was like, 'Whoa, OK. Hull admits that she and her classmates took a few weeks to find their footing. Wasem and a fellow teacher Alex Campbell assigned the teams themselves, often avoiding friend groups and forcing unlikely cooperation.
And Hull says that while she was proud of the finished project, she never imagined it could win. The podcast project not only helped Hull and her team but also changed the lives of some of their classmates who didn't win. "The most amazing thing that came from the podcast experience of that class is how many of them found their passion through this project," Campbell says, "and how this project helped them connect to people and learn how to tell someone else's story."
1.How did Tim Wasem feel about his students' questions?
A.He felt tired of them.
B.He was surprised at them.
C.He lacked confidence in them.
D.He had no idea of their answers.
2.What can we learn about "Murderous Mary & The RISE Of Erwin”？
A.It lost a chance to win last year.
B.It tells people elephants are friendly.
C.Its winning was beyond its makers' expectation.
D.It is about the history of the makers' hometown.
3.What did Deanna Hull mainly get from the winning?
A.Self-confidence.
B.Her passion for science.
C.Admission into a college.
D.A good knowledge of her disadvantages.
4.What can be the best title for the text?
A.Making a Podcast Enriched Students' Lives
B.What Can Make the Podcast Sound Better?
C.A Successful Way to the College： Podcast Challenge
D.More Problems to be Solved About Podcast Challenge
Each month, we post a photo online. All you need to do is work out where it is and you could win three superb illustrated （有插画的）DK Travel Guide books.
To give you a helping hand, we'll be revealing clues here. So make sure to check back, and follow @MirrorTrapel and @TravelEdNigel on Twitter for updates !
This month's picture shows a shining royal palace. It's in the capital of an exotic country and a popular tourist destination—but it's not the most famous one in this nation.
The question for April—name the COUNTRY.
CLUE 1 ：The city is on the banks of a famous 2,703-miIe-long river.
CLUE 2: Sounds like you could find a pen pal here.
THE PRIZE：
The first correct answer chosen at random will win three beautifully illustrated DK Travel country or city guides of their choice, each up to a value of £19. 99. For a full list of titles visit dk. co. uk.
HOW TO ENTER：
When you think you've guessed our mystery location, simply fill out the form below with your answer and details.
Terms & Conditions：
Competition closes on April 30, 2020.
Entry is open to aged 18 or over only. Employees of Reach pic, DK Travel Ltd, their families, agents, suppliers of the prizes and anyone professionally connected with this competition are not included.
Only one free entry per person via the competition entry form above.
Entries made using methods produced by a movie, macro （微距镜头）or the use of automated devices will be useless. No responsibility is accepted for entries which are invalid, incomplete, unclear, lost or delayed in transit, or which fail to be properly submitted. All of these will be considered useless.
Entry is considered acceptance of these Terms and Conditions.
The winner will be the first correct answer drawn at random after lines close.
1.What does the author want readers to do?
A.Find out the best photos.
B.Guess the mystery picture location.
C.Work out the most popular country.
D.Take part in a photography competition.
2.Who can take part in the competition?
A.A pupil whose hobby is photography.
B.An employee of Reach pic, DK Travel Ltd.
C.An adult sending his entry before April 30, 2020.
D.A college student who selected a picture from a movie.
3.Where is the text probably from?
A.A weather report.
B.A travel website.
C.A geography textbook.
D.A photography magazine.
假定你是红星中学高二学生李华，你的英国笔友Jim在给你的邮件中提到他对中国电影很感兴趣，并请你向他推荐一部你喜欢的中国电影，请你给他回邮件，内容包括：
1. 电影的基本信息
2. 电影情节简介
3. 你的推荐理由
注意：
1. 词数不少于50；
2. 开头和结尾已给出，不计入总词数。
Dear Jim,
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Yours,
Li Hua
How to Improve Your English
Learning English is a continuous process. For tips on how to improve your English, read on.
Read English newspapers, books, and magazines. Reading is an active process that requires your brain to work. When learning a language, much is achieved by speaking, listening and writing. 1. When you read, you learn new words and will be able to use them.
2. After reading the daily papers, choose one or two articles that stood out among all those that you read, and write down your reactions to them. Read what you wrote afterwards, and check if you made any grammatical errors or would like to improve your work.
Read the book version of a movie that you have already seen. 3. Reading the book version means you will find it easier to understand and guess vocabulary, and you can remember it easily since the story is already familiar to you.
Teach English to children or friends. 4. This also holds true for the English language. When you share and teach English to others, you are able to practice. At the same time, you become more aware of your weak areas.
Use English every day. Whatever you are doing, from washing the dishes or taking out the garbage to going to work or to the gym, use English. Take out those new words that you learned and use them. Bring out those new idioms you came across and use them. 5. Learn how to use it in your daily life.
As you try to improve your English day by day, you will surely see improvements that are going to “make your day”.
A.Open your mouth.
B.Keep a news diary.
C.But reading is also a great help.
D.Listening to songs can help you improve your English.
E.The best way to improve something is by teaching it to others.
F.If the new knowledge stays inside your head and in your notebooks, it won’t come to life.
G.If you are not a serious book reader, reading a story that you are already familiar with will help you move along page by page.
You have probably heard of the Mozart effect. It's the idea that if children or even babies listen to music composed by Mozart, they will become more intelligent. A quick Internet search reveals plenty of products to assist you in the task. Whatever your age is there are CDs and books to help you taste the power of Mozart's music, but when it comes to scientific evidence that it can make you more clever, the picture is more mixed.
The phrase “the Mozart effect” was made up in 1991, but it was a study described two years later in the journal Nature that sparked real media and public interest about the idea that listening to classical music somehow improves the brain. It is one of those ideas that sound reasonable. Mozart was undoubtedly a genius himself; his music is complex and there is a hope that if we listen to enough of it, we'll become more intelligent.
The_idea_took_off,_with thousands of parents playing Mozart to their children, and in 1998 Zell Miller, the Governor of the state of Georgia in the US, even asked for money to be set aside in the state budget so that every newborn baby could be sent a CD of classical music. It was not just babies and children who were exposed to Mozart's music on purpose, even an Italian farmer proudly explained that the cows were played Mozart three times a day to help them produce better milk.
I'll leave the debate on the impact on milk yield to farmers, but what about the evidence that listening to Mozart makes people more intelligent? More research was carried out but an analysis of sixteen different studies confirmed that listening to music does lead to a temporary improvement in the ability to handle shapes mentally, but the benefits are short－lived and it doesn't make us more intelligent.
1.What can we learn from Paragraph 1?
A.Mozart composed many musical pieces for children.
B.Children listening to Mozart will be more intelligent.
C.There are few products on the Internet about Mozart's music.
D.There is little scientific evidence to support the Mozart effect.
2.Why did many people believe in the idea of the Mozart effect?
A.Because a study described it in the journal Nature.
B.Because Mozart himself was a genius.
C.Because Mozart's music is enjoyable.
D.Because Mozart's music makes people relaxed.
3.The underlined sentence in Paragraph 3 suggests that ________.
A.people were strongly against the idea
B.the idea was accepted by many people
C.Mozart played an important part in people's life
D.the US government helped promote the idea
4.What is the author's attitude towards the Mozart effect?
A.Favorable. B.Objective.
C.Doubtful. D.Positive.
Steven Stein likes to follow garbage trucks. His strange habit makes sense when you consider that he’s an environmental scientist who studies how to reduce litter, including things that fall off garbage trucks as they drive down the road. What is even more interesting is that one of Stein’s jobs is defending an industry behind the plastic shopping bags.
Americans use more than 100 billion thin film plastic bags every year. So many end up in tree branches or along highways that a growing number of cities do not allow them at checkouts(收银台). The bags are prohibited in some 90 cities in California, including Los Angeles. Eyeing these headwinds, plastic-bag makers are hiring scientists like Stein to make the case that their products are not as bad for the planet as most people assume.
Among the bag makers’ argument: many cities with bans still allow shoppers to purchase paper bags, which are easily recycled but require more energy to produce and transport. And while plastic bags may be ugly to look at, they represent a small percentage of all garbage on the ground today.
The industry has also taken aim at the product that has appeared as its replacement: reusable shopping bags. The stronger a reusable bag is, the longer its life and the more plastic-bag use it cancels out. However, longer-lasting reusable bags often require more energy to make. One study found that a cotton bag must be used at least 131 times to be better for the planet than plastic.
Environmentalists don’t dispute(质疑) these points. They hope paper bags will be banned someday too and want shoppers to use the same reusable bags for years.
1.What has Steven Stein been hired to do?
A.Help increase grocery sales.
B.Recycle the waste material.
C.Stop things falling off trucks.
D.Argue for the use of plastic bags.
2.What does the word “headwinds” in paragraph 2 refer to?
A.Bans on plastic bags.
B.Effects of city development.
C.Headaches caused by garbage.
D.Plastic bags hung in trees.
3.What is a disadvantage of reusable bags according to plastic-bag makers?
A.They are quite expensive.
B.Replacing them can be difficult.
C.They are less strong than plastic bags.
D.Producing them requires more energy.
4.What is the best title for the text?
A.Plastic, Paper or Neither
B.Industry, Pollution and Environment
C.Recycle or Throw Away
D.Garbage Collection and Waste Control
