At this very moment you’re thirsty and hunting for something to drink. So you start walking towards the drinks machine at school. As you drink you hear your teacher say those frightening words: “Could I see you for a moment in the classroom, please?”
You can almost feel your blood pressure rise as you walk to your English class. She’s always picking on you. What can it be this time? You think of the test you did last Friday. Now your mind is racing, your heart is pounding, and your forehead is pouring with sweat. In situations like this you will often feel like running away but you may also feel like hitting someone on the nose.
Your teacher asks you to go into the class. “Here it comes,” you think. But what you hear is: “Well done. Your test was excellent.” You can hardly believe your ears.
Our fight or flight response is designed to protect us from tigers that would have once hidden in the woods around us, threatening(威胁) our survival. At times when our survival is threatened, there is no greater response to have on our side. When activated(刺激), the response causes stress hormones to pump through our body.
When we face very real dangers to our survival, it is invaluable. However, few of the “tigers” we face in our lives cause a serious physical threat to our existence. They cause us no end of stress, triggering(引发) the full activation of our fight or flight response. They tend to cause us to overreact to the situation in a counterproductive (事与愿违的) way. It is counterproductive to hit someone (the fight response) or run away (the flight response).
By recognizing the symptoms, we can begin to take steps to handle the stress overload. By learning to recognize the signals of fight or flight activation, we can avoid reacting excessively (过度地) to events and fears that are not life threatening. In doing so, we use this extra energy to help ourselves, borrowing the beneficial effects in order to change our emotional environment and deal productively with our fears, thoughts and potential dangers.
1.You feel nervous when walking to the classroom because ________.
A.you broke the school rules B.you failed the test last Friday
C.your teacher spoke to you loudly D.your teacher always blames you
2.What is Paragraph 4 mainly about?
A.The power of our fight or flight response.
B.How our fight or flight response works.
C.The benefits of our fight or flight response.
D.How we control our fight or flight response.
3.The underlined word “They” in Paragraph 5 probably refers to ________.
A.fierce tigers B.real dangers
C.dangers we face D.serious physical threats
4.A good understanding of our fight or flight response can help us ________.
A.get rid of unnecessary stress B.face real dangers bravely
C.find hidden dangers D.take threats seriously
The spread of Western eating habits around the world is bad for human health and the environment. These findings come from a new report in the journal Nature.
David Tillman, a professor of ecology at the University of Minnesota, America, examined information from 100 countries to identify what people ate and how a diet affected health. He noted a movement beginning in the 1960s. He found that as nations industrialized (工业化), population increased and earnings rose, more people began to adopt what has been called the Western diet.
The Western diet is high in sugar, fat, oil and meat. By eating these foods, people began to get fatter and sicker. David Tillman says overweight people are at greater risk of noninfectious(不传染的) diseases like diabetes (糖尿病) and heart disease.
Unfortunately when people become industrialized, if they adopt this Western diet, they are going to have these health problems, especially in developing countries in Asia. China is an example where the number of diabetes cases has been jumping from less than one percent to 10 percent of the population as they began to industrialize over a 20year period. And that is happening all across the world, in Mexico, in Nigeria and so on.
And, a diet bad for human beings is also bad for the environment. As the world's population grows, more forests and tropical areas will become farmlands for crops or grasslands for cattle. We are likely to have more greenhouse gas in the future from agriculture than that coming out of all forms of transportation right now.
Mr. Tillman calls the link among the diet, the environment and human health “a trilemma” — a problem offering a difficult choice. He says one possible solution is leaving the Western diet behind.
1.According to the passage, more greenhouse gas might be given off in the future from ______.
A.transportation B.developing countries
C.agriculture D.developed countries
2.David Tillman believes that ______.
A.the diet, the environment and human health are closely connected
B.the Western diet is the only choice as the nation industrializes
C.people in tropical areas are more likely to have diabetes
D.traditional diets are more balanced than the Western diet
3.The main purpose of the passage is to ______.
A.call on us to protect the environment
B.warn us of the risk of the Western diet
C.remind us of the importance of health
D.advise us to have a balanced diet
After an absence of thirty years, I decided to visit my old school again. I had expected to find changes, but not a completely different building. As I walked up the school drive, I wondered for a moment if I had come to the right address. The dirty red brick houses had been swept away. In its place stood a bright, modern block. A huge expanse of glass extended (延展) across the face of the building, and in front, there was a well-kept lawn (草坪) where there used to be “an untidy gravel (沙石) yard”.
I was pleased to find that it was bread time and that the children were all in the playground. This would enable me to meet some members of staff. On entering the building, I was surprised to hear loud laughter coming from what appeared to be the masters’ common room. I could not help remembering the teachers in my time, all dressed in black gowns and high collars. And above all, I recalled Mr Garston whom we had nicknamed “Mr Ghastly”, the headmaster who had iron discipline on staff and pupils alike. I knocked at the common room door and was welcomed by a smiling young man who introduced himself to me as the headmaster. He was dressed casually in a sports jacket, and his cheerful manner, quickly dispelled (驱散) the image of Mr Ghastly. After I had explained who I was, the headmaster presented me to the teachers all of whom were a little younger than himself, and said he would take me round the school.
Here the biggest surprise of all was in store for me. Gone were the heavy desks of old with their deeply carved names; gone too, were the dark classrooms with their ink stained, dark brown walls, and their raised platforms for the teachers. The rooms now were painted in bright colors, and the children, far from sitting straight in their places, seemed almost free to do as they liked. I looked with envy as I remembered how, as a child, I had looked at the blackboard hardly daring to whisper to my neighbor.
1.The writer ______.
A.had no difficulty in recognizing his old school
B.found it difficult to recognize his old school
C.noticed that the building was still unfinished
D.was surprised to see an untidy gravel yard
2.Which of the following statements is NOT true?
A.He had expected that the school had completely changed.
B.In the writer’s time, all the teachers were dressed in black gowns and high collars.
C.There was a well-kept lawn in their school when he visited it.
D.An untidy gravel yard had disappeared.
3.“Mr. Ghastly” must be ______.
A.the writer’s teacher B.a serious old man
C.the strict headmaster D.a naughty boy
4.From what is said in the passage it seems clear the writer ______.
A.disapproved of all the changes that had taken place
B.felt sorry for the children in the school
C.was glad that the school was still the same
D.felt that conditions at the school had improved a lot
阅读下面短文，根据其内容写一篇 60 词左右的内容概要。
In today’s world where we have various translation apps that allow us to talk to almost anyone “in his own language”, why do we still need to make an effort to learn a foreign language ourselves? There are practical reasons, of course. For example, those who are bilingual (具备双语能力的) have a better chance in the job market. And science has proved that learning to speak more than one
language can train one’s brain to be stronger.
But there’s more to it than that. US author Rita Mae Brown once wrote: “Language is the road map of a culture.” By taking a look at the vocabulary and idioms of a language system, we get a glimpse (一瞥) at what’s held important in a certain culture. Take the Swedish word “lagom” for example. It means “just the right amount”, which doesn’t have a matching word either in English or in Chinese. From “lagom”, we can see how much the concepts of “moderation (适度)” and “balance” are valued in Swedish culture. By learning a foreign language, you also gain a better understanding of your own culture. Irish language expert Benny Lewis explained this idea in his blog with an interesting metaphor: “Trying to understand your own culture merely from within it is like trying to understand what a bus is like if you’ve only ever ridden inside it. If you want the bigger picture, you need to get off that bus and examine it from the outside.” And by opening our eyes to different
cultures, we’re able to understand better how people grow up to be different from one another. We also learn to be more tolerant and respectful to the diversity of the world.
As Trinity University professor Leonardo De Valoes wrote on the school’s website: “Foreign language study is simply part of a very basic liberal education: to ‘educate’ is to lead out, to lead out of narrowness and darkness.”
假定你是某国际高中的学生李华，得知学校正在为 2 位加拿大交换生征询寄宿家庭，你有意申请，请用英文给学校该项目负责人 Mr. Chen 写一封申请信。
内容包括：1.自我介绍；2. 家庭条件及个人优势。
注意：1. 词数 100 左右；2. 可以适当增加细节，以使行文连贯。
Dear Mr. Chen,
_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Yours sincerely,
Li Hua
I had always hated playing chess. Up until a few months ago, I don’t think I ever_____ a chess game in my life. Actually, I didn’t have a______ about how to play. I knew the rules, but that’s it. I had tried to _________ playing chess most of my life, even though it _________ that it should be a great game to play.
I started playing again just as a ________ to stay in touch with my friend who moved abroad. We play ______ . But nothing has changed. He still ______ me easily every time. After six months of getting kicked all over the _______ , I decided to learn something about the game. I finally___ losing.
I _______ somebody must have made a video or a clear book on the _______ of chess, so I started looking and was astonished at how much good ______ is out there. I got some and played lots of games with my computer,______ some of the stuff I was learning. And what do you know? Not only did I start to play a lot ________ , but the game became as fun as I always ________ it should be. It’s interesting and___ . It’s just like playing a game of___ . It’s a great battle.
I’m no Grandmaster. Not even close. But the _______ between me two months ago and me now is amazing. I_____ learned a few important basic principles, and now suddenly I know the game. And that’s the first lesson I learned about chess that ______ to living life well: It really helps to learn some basics.
1.A.lost B.played C.won D.missed
2.A.clue B.question C.dream D.choice
3.A.keep B.admit C.deny D.avoid
4.A.mattered B.seemed C.happened D.proved
5.A.way B.joke C.cause D.change
6.A.indoors B.everywhere C.online D.overseas
7.A.defeated B.disappointed C.guided D.assisted
8.A.body B.world C.board D.field
9.A.made use of B.got tired of C.had fun with D.got away with
10.A.declared B.approved C.figured D.regretted
11.A.benefits B.origin C.spirit D.basics
12.A.pleasure B.culture C.interest D.material
13.A.practicing B.suspecting C.improving D.recording
14.A.worse B.less C.better D.harder
15.A.required B.thought C.decided D.discovered
16.A.relaxing B.puzzling C.touching D.challenging
17.A.war B.speed C.chance D.trust
18.A.success B.wisdom C.appearance D.difference
19.A.just B.still C.even D.seldom
20.A.leads B.applies C.objects D.adjusts
