U_____________you work hard, you will not succeed.
For visitors to Guangzhou, there are p__________of places to experience its culture.
It’s a general rule to keep q________ in libraries and concerts.
Storytelling
Storytelling has caught the human imagination for thousands of years. People everywhere have told stories to amuse, to teach, to remember, and just to pass the time. People started telling stories long before writing was invented.1.But people all over the world still tell one another stories out loud. A person who can tell a good story nearly always finds listeners.
Before people developed writing, storytelling was the most important way to pass along information. Anything a culture wanted to protect一its beliefs, its history, and its traditions—had to be told out loud. Each generation would tell the culture’s stories to the next.2.Knowledge passed on in this method is called the spoken tradition. Even cultures that know how to write still pass along some information in this way.
3.In other cultures only special storytellers were trusted to do this important job.A culture’s best storytellers had good memories. They could also make the stories very interesting, so people would listen and remember them. Sometimes people would sing the stories or tell them in the form of poems.4.
However, stories told aloud change over time as different people tell them. A storyteller might change a story in order to make it better. Or a teller may simply not remember all the details of a story. Unlike written stories, the spoken tradition is not created by any one person. 5.Sometimes the stories are collected and written down long after they have been created.
A.In this way the stories were passed along.
B.In some cultures everyone would pass along the stories.
C.Songs and poems can both make stories easier to remember.
D.Instead, a whole culture helps shape the changing stories throughout history.
E.Today stories are also written down in books and acted out in movies, TV shows, and plays.
What will astronauts（宇航员）eat when a space trip takes years?
“Lots of fresh vegetables,” says Dr. Janet Williams, whose team have spent the last 10 years learning how to grow plants in a space station. And it’s a good thing that she has already started her work, because space gardening can be really hard.
As usual, astronaut George White looked into the closed plant room. He had planted Dr. Williams’s quick-growing seedlings in it, but none of the stems were showing. He opened the room to check and found the problem. The stems weren’t growing upward and the roots weren't growing downward. On Earth, gravity（重力）helps a plant’s stems and roots to find “up”and “down”. However, in the space station, there was almost no gravity.
Dr. Williams suggested a solution: give the plants more light, as plants also use sunlight to find their way. And it worked. When the plants had more light, the stems turned up and the roots went down.
Now Dr. Williams was free to worry about the next problem:Would her baby plants live to flower? Can we grow food on a space journey?
Many plants died in the space station. Dr. Williams thought she knew why: the space plants were hungry for air. Plants live by taking up CO2 from the air. Since a plant uses it up in the air around, the plant needs moving air to bring more CO2 close to its surface! On Earth, the air is always moving. Gravity pulls down cold air, and warm air rises. And with these air movements, plants get enough CO2.
Many earlier experiments with plants in space had used closed rooms.Dr. Williams tried a new greenhouse that had a fan to keep the air move. The plants loved it. They flowered and even produced more seeds. Using Dr. Williams's method, astronaut George completed the first seed-to-seed experiment in space, and moved one plant closer to a garden in space.
“And this,” says Dr.Williams, “is good news for long-term space travel.”
1.Why have Dr. Williams’s team tried to grow plants in space?
A.To produce fresh air for astronauts.
B.To help astronauts relax themselves.
C.To provide food for long space journeys.
D.To make the space garden more beautiful.
2.How did light help solve the problem mentioned in Paragraph 3?
A.It caused the gravity to change.
B.It encouraged the plants to grow faster.
C.It helped the plants to grow in the right direction.
D.It showed the astronauts where to plant vegetables.
3.Why did many plants die in the space station?
A.The light was too strong.
B.There was too much CO2.
C.There was not enough room to grow.
D.The air condition was not good enough.
4.The underlined word “it” in Paragraph 7 refers to________.
A.the moving air B.the closed room C.the space journey D.the space garden
5.What can we learn about Dr. Williams’s team from the passage?
A.They mainly live on fresh vegetables.
B.They have successfully built a space garden.
C.They invented a special fan for their greenhouse.
D.They have worked on space gardening for many years.
Five interesting sports
Our most unusual sports from around the world
Every country has a national sport and some popular sports are now played across the world, However, in most countries, people also play unusual sports, with strange or interesting rules. Here are our top five unusual sports from around the planet.
Man vs. Horse Marathon
This race takes place in a small town in Wales, about 200 miles from London. It’s called a marathon (马拉松),but it's actually 35.4km, not 42.2km like a usual marathon.People race against horses across the hills and mountains.It started in 1981, but a human did not win until 2004.
Camel Wrestling
In Turkey, camel（骆驼）wrestling is a very old sport. The largest camel wrestling competition takes place every year and thousands of people come. In the sport, two camels fight against each other. Sometimes the camels do not want to fight and they run through the crowds, which can be dangerous.
Dragon Boat Racing
Every year in China, thousands of people watch dragon boat races. A dragon boat is a traditional Chinese boat with a painted dragon's head on one end. There can be up to 36 people or more racing in each boat in the water. Dragon boat racing is also popular in some other Asian countries.
Caber Toss
In this sport, players compete to throw a large piece of wood called a caber as far as they can. There is no rule about the size of the caber, but it’s usually the size of a small tree. It’s an ancient Scottish sport. Visitors to the UK can check it out.
Chess Boxing
A good chess boxer needs to be both strong and smart. Players play a round of chess, followed by a round of boxing. There are eleven rounds in total. Chess boxing was invented in 1992 by an English comic book writer. The sport is more popular in England and Germany.
1.What can we learn about Man vs. Horse Marathon?
A.it is an outdoor sport. B.It first appeared 16 years ago.
C.No human has ever won the game. D.It follows the rules of a usual marathon.
2.Which of the following is mentioned about Camel Wrestling?
A.It should be stopped. B.It’s worth seeing.
C.It s unfair to the animals. D.It’s sometimes dangerous to watch.
3.Which picture best describes Caber Toss?
A.
B.
C.
D.
4.Which sport is popular in Asia?
A.Man vs. Horse Marathon. B.Dragon Boat Racing.
C.Caber Toss. D.Chess Boxing.
5.How many sports have animals as players?
A.1 B.2. C.3. D.4.
