The 2020 summer Olympics will be held in Tokyo next year. Japan has made 5,000 medals for the winners. But this Olympic medals are more special than most----they are made entirely out of recycled electronics.
One new focus of the Tokyo Olympics is to make them “sustainable”----to avoid using too many natural resources, so that the games are environmentally friendly. As part of this goal, the organizers decided to make all of the Olympic medals out of metal recycled from old electronics. They needed gold for first place medals, silver for second, and bronze for third. You might not know it, but almost all electronics are made with small amounts of “precious” metals, like gold and silver. But collecting enough of these metals to make 5,000 medals is a huge challenge. That's because the amount of metal in each device is tiny. It would take about 20,000 cell phones to get just 2. 2 pounds (1kilogram) of gold.
Beginning in April 2017, organizers placed collection boxes around the country, and asked people to turn in their old electronic devices for the Olympic medals. Soon people began to fill up the boxes, turning in smart phones, digital cameras and laptops. By the end, 1,621 local governments had helped out with the collection process. The Japanese mobile phone company NTT Docomo collected 6.21 million used cell phones. In all, around 158,000,000 pounds (71,667,660 kilograms) of electronics were collected.
Then came the job of breaking those phones down into smaller pieces. This is a difficult job. It's also dangerous, because some of the metals and other things that go into electronics aren't safe for people to touch or breathe. That's why it's not a good idea to try something like this at home. Once the devices were broken down, the metals had to be carefully separated out. By the end of March, the organizers had hit their targets. The opening ceremony for the 2020 summer Olympics will take place in Tokyo on July 24,020.
1.What's special about the 2020 summer Olympics medals?
A.Shape. B.Material.
C.Meaning. D.Weight.
2.Why is it a challenge to collect enough metals for medals?
A.The Japanese people are unwilling to help.
B.Companies are recycling metals for profit.
C.The amount of metal in each device is small.
D.The amount of device with metals is limited.
3.What do the figures in paragraph 3 suggest?
A.The number of the used electronics is too large to deal with.
B.People in Japan are eager to get rid of their used electronics.
C.People in Japan are in great favor of the collecting process.
D.A number of metals are wasted to produce electronics in Japan.
4.What can we learn from the last paragraph?
A.The job of breaking down phones into pieces is tough.
B.The targets of collecting metals are hard to achieve.
C.The metals in the devices are easy to separate out.
D.The opening for the 2020 summer Olympics falls in June.
高二英语阅读理解中等难度题查看答案及解析
Jamie Whitmore, 43, isn't used to slowing down. The professional athlete who became a gold medalist of Olympics for the disabled has never met a challenge she couldn't overcome, whether it was a mountain bike race-or cancer.
One morning in 2007, Whitmore found her leg muscles were tight when trying for a jog. Thinking she’d pushed herself too hard in the last race, she ignored the pain. Later at a sports camp in Arizona, she realized something was wrong. “Once I got on my bike I was so painful that it was hard to pick my legs up. I flew back home to go to a hospital.” What doctors found shocked them all: Whitmore had a soft tissue tumor (肿瘤)that started in the bone, and the tumor was wrapped around her nerve of waist, touching several vital organs.
After the surgery, Whitmore had to learn to walk again with the help of a physical doctor. She also started radiation treatment, but four months later, doctors had worse news: A scan had shown the cancer was back. “This time it was more aggressive. Doctors took the rest of my nerve in the waist, and removed some cancer from my tail bone. ” Whitmore developed sepsis(败血症) from the surgery and endured a two-month recovery. “My scans were coming back clear of cancer, but now I had all of these other complications(并发症).”
Today, Whitmore is a mother and cancer-free. She has won a gold medal in the Paralympics, and has set two world records. Whitmore has some advice for others with limitations: Never let anyone tell you what you can and cannot do. You have to find out yourself. Some doctors told me I would never ride anything more than a stationary bike. And yet I rode my mountain bike 104 miles climbing from 9,000 feet to 14,000 feet. You just can't give up.”
1.What's Whitmore's first reaction to her leg pain?
A.She was very scared. B.She thought nothing of it.
C.She related it to cancer. D.She thought of muscle tumor.
2.What does the author intend to tell us in Paragraph 3?
A.What Whitmore has suffered. B.How Whitmore reacted to cancer.
C.What Whitmore planned to perform. D.How Whitmore thought of the treatment.
3.Who does the underlined part in paragraph 4 refer to?
A.People living with cancers. B.Students short of virtues.
C.Students without good luck. D.People living with disabilities.
4.Which one of the following best describes Whitmore?
A.Humorous and unhealthy. B.Outgoing and honest.
C.Strong minded and optimistic. D.Determined and naughty.
高二英语阅读理解中等难度题查看答案及解析
AppFire
This application provides for users apps that are free and highly discounted daily. By using this app, you only need to submit some information when registering. After filling it up,you are eligible to have access to a list of recommended downloads.
Starling
Based on bank nature, this app has been a good one in that regard. They have a banking license and allow you to open a current account through your phone for just some minutes. You are even liable to earn interest on the money held in your account through this app. The app will notice you with alerts when you spend money as it will help you outline what you have spent in categories like shopping, bill, foods and many more.
Campus Special
This app is greatly used by students as it enables them to have great deals on food stores and restaurants around the school. It also gives you the opportunity to order food from your hostel through your phone on pick-up delivery. The good thing about this app is that it enables you to get more rewards when you often use it. Those rewards can be used at your usual local food stores.
ATM Locator
This is another interesting app that can assist you in financial needs. When you are hooked up in an area that is not familiar to you and you are interested in getting some cash, instead of moving up and down in searching for the nearest place to withdraw some cash, this app should give you comfort in doing that. It helps you to find cash points that are very near to you, and it will display them on the map for you to check through.
1.Which app can serve as a warning if you spend money?
A.Campus Special. B.ATM locator.
C.AppsFire. D.Starling.
2.What's special about Campus Special?
A.Its rewards enable you to save some money.
B.It offers you the biggest discounts for deals on food.
C.It allows you to do your banking without going out.
D.It enables you to spend less on eating in campus canteen.
3.In which situation can you make use of the app ATM locator?
A.When you have no bank cards on you.
B.When you can't find the nearest cash machine.
C.When you are unfamiliar with the local campus.
D.When you are busy with some banking business.
高二英语阅读理解简单题查看答案及解析
Researchers have studied how birth order affects kid’s personalities in the past, but one study out of the United Kingdom has found that firstborns may have an educational advantage over their younger siblings (兄弟姐妹).
Researchers at the University of Essex’s Institute for Social and Economic Research surveyed 3,553 individuals and 1,503 groups of siblings, and discovered that firstborn children tended to have higher educational aspirations and attainment. Only children and firstborn twins were not included in the study.
For each family involved in the study, researcher Feifei Bu examined sibling birth order, the number of children in the family, age spacing, sex, health, relationships with one another and educational aspirations. She found that firstborns had a greater probability—16 percent higher—of attending further education, compared with later-born sibling.
“The advantage of firstborns in educational outcomes may be partially explained by the fact that firstborns tend to have higher aspirations which push them toward high education levels,” Bu wrote in the published study.
She further explained to The Guardian that parenting could play a role. “It could be that the parents simply devote more time and energy to them; it could be that they are actually more intelligent. For me, I tend to lean towards the theory that the amount of time, energy and involvement that parents put into caring for their children is possibly at work here,” she said.
She also found age spacing to be a contributing factor. The further apart in age the siblings—for example, a six year instead of one year difference—the more likely both kids were to be successful. The idea is that with widely spaced siblings, parents have the ability to spread out their resources. In other words, they have time to give each child more time and money.
But younger siblings shouldn’t worry. The world is full of successful middle and youngest children willing to prove this study wrong.
1.Who are more likely to complete higher levels of education according to Paragraphs 1 and 2?
A.Only children. B.Firstborn twins.
C.Younger siblings. D.Firstborn siblings.
2.What is possibly important for kids’ educational achievement according to Bu?
A.Parental investment. B.Parents’ intelligence.
C.Kids native intelligence. D.Kids’ school environment.
3.What is the influence of wider age spacing between two siblings?
A.It may cause conflicts between them.
B.It may place more pressure on parents.
C.Both of them are more likely to succeed.
D.They are likely to be different from each other.
4.How is the text mainly developed?
A.By listing examples. B.By giving descriptions.
C.By setting down general rules. D.By presenting research findings.
高二英语阅读理解中等难度题查看答案及解析
Have you ever wondered how many cigarettes you're passively smoking while walking through the streets of a polluted, smog-infused((烟雾笼罩的)city?No?Well, a pair of digital developers just invented an app that will definitely and accurately answer that question.
Shit, I Smoke! was created by Brazilian-born designer Marcelo Coelho and Paris-born app developer Amaury Martiny in just a week, after they read a study that analyzed air pollution and its equivalent(等量)to cigarette smoking. The article, co-written by Richard Mueller, a MacArthur fellow and physics professor at the University of California, Berkeley, explains a mathematical model that compares smoking and tobacco-related deaths to levels of PM2.5, a microscopic particle(微粒)that is a dangerous, cancerous pollutant after burning.
The app shows that Parisians can effectively inhale(吸入) between three and six cigarettes per day, while a person in Delhi could be smoking up to 20 cigarettes-without even touching one--on a bad day. Other cities have worrying numbers, too (6. 5 cigarettes daily in Mexico City ).
“I was surprised to see that Buenos Aires and Sao Paulo have the best air quality in all Latin America,despite the fact that these are heavily populated cities,”said Coelho, who's originally from the latter, Brazil's largest city.
For both Coelho and Martiny, the app isn't only a useful tool to inform users about their city's air quality;it also makes this information more accessible and easier to understand. “These air-quality monitoring stations are just numbers, numbers that are very specific to professionals who work in environmental issues,” Martiny said. “So when you make this conversion(转换)to cigarettes, it makes it easier to understand what people are dealing with and the consequences air quality has in the daily lives.”
The developers' plan now is to keep working on and enriching the app's features. This will most likely include monthly average cigarette rates, and enabling users to get data from cities other than the one they're in.
1.What does the underlined part “that question” mean?
A.How severely a city's air is polluted.
B.How harmful it is to smoke in urban areas.
C.How many cigarettes one usually smokes daily.
D.How much harmful air you're taking in in urban areas.
2.According to Shit, I Smoke!, which city has the worst air quality?
A.Paris B.Delhi.
C.Mexico City. D.Sao Paulo.
3.Before Coelho used the app, he probably thought that__________.
A.Brazil might have good air
B.his hometown was a badly polluted city.
C.air pollution wasn't a problem in Latin America.
D.Buenos Aires had the best air quality in Latin America
4.In the opinion of Coelho and Martiny, what is the usage of the app?
A.Encouraging people to abandon the habit of smoking.
B.Recommending some best places for people to live in.
C.Helping people better know their everyday air quality.
D.Reminding people to do something good for the environment.
高二英语阅读理解困难题查看答案及解析
When I was nine years old, I went off to summer camp for the first time. And my mother packed me a suitcase full of books, which to me seemed like a perfectly natural thing to do. While reading, you have the animal warmth of your family sitting right next to you, but you are also free to experience the adventure land inside your own mind. And I had this idea that camp was going to be just like this.
On the very first day, our counselor(顾问) gathered us all together and she taught us a cheer that she said we would be doing every day for the rest of the summer to instill(浸润) camp spirit. And it went like this: “R-O-W-D-I-E, that's the way we spell rowdie. Rowdie, rowdie, let's get rowdie . Yeah!”. So I couldn't figure out why we had to spell this word incorrectly. But I recited the cheer along with everybody else. I did my best. And I just waited for the time that I could go off and read my books.
But the first time that I took my book out of my suitcase, the coolest girl in the room came up to me and asked me, “Why are you being so mellow(安静的)?” Mellow, of course, is the exact opposite of R-O-W-D-I-E. And then the second time I tried it, the counselor came up to me with a concerned expression on her face and she repeated the point about camp spirit and said we should all work very hard to be outgoing.
And so I put my books away, back in their suitcase, and I put them under my bed, and there they stayed for the rest of the summer. And I felt kind of guilty about this. I felt as if the books needed me somehow, and they were calling out to me but I just gave them up.
1.According to the author, what would the coming camp be like?
A.It would be very noisy.
B.It would involve lots of reading.
C.It would be full of danger and excitement.
D.It would make a good chance to get close to nature.
2.How did the author feel about the cheer part?
A.Puzzled. B.Excited.
C.Concerned. D.Frightened.
3.How did the counselor react on seeing the author reading?
A.She got very angry.
B.She praised the author.
C.She asked the author to share the book
D.She indirectly advised the author not to read.
4.Why was the author guilty?
A.She was kind of quiet.
B.She had to leave her books unread.
C.She was unwilling to open her books.
D.She didn't follow the counselor's advice.
高二英语阅读理解中等难度题查看答案及解析
Charities
These days there are thousands of charities around the world and it is possible to donate money to help people, animals and places.
Mencap is a charity which is intended to fight against prejudice against those people who suffer from any kind of learning disability. Most of Mencap's work is campaigning. People with learning disabilities are disadvantaged because of prejudice and lack of funding for community care. Mencap raised awareness by working at local, national and European levels to deal with those issues that affect people with learning disabilities. It also provides services of education, housing and employment as well as support and advice for families and carers of sufferers.
EveryChild is a relatively new charity which was created in 1983. Every Child identifies the needs of a particular community and then sets up projects to make sure that children in these communities have basic rights such as healthcare. education, social services and community development. Every Child sets up the projects so that they are self running. The organization then moves on to new projects, leaving things in the hands of locals.
The RSPCA( Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals) is the first organization meant for the well-being of animals anywhere in the world. The SPCA was set up in London in 1824 .At that time it was considered strange that people should care about cruelty to animals. In 1840 Queen Victoria gave the organization permission to be called a royal society The RSPCA. These days there are almost two hundred branches in the UK.
The TBG(Tidy Britain Group) is an independent national charity fighting to improve the quality of the local environment. They aim to get everyone involved in doing their bit to keep Britain clean. The work of the TBG is done mainly hrough campaigning. Volunteers work closely with governments and businesses to organize educational programs designed to raise awareness of the problems. The TBG's sister organization, Going for Green,concentrates on pollution issues. The two groups have the same chief executive.
1.What's the main purpose of Mencap?
A.To improve community care. B.To provide educational services.
C.To fight against any kind of prejudice. D.To help people with learning disabilities.
2.What was Queen Victoria's attitude towards the SPCA?
A.Approving. B.Doubtful.
C.Tolerant. D.Casual.
3.Going for Green shares a similar goal with__________.
A.Mencap. B.Every Child
C.the RSPCA D.the TBG
高二英语阅读理解中等难度题查看答案及解析
Language learning apps are very popular now and offer opportunities to learn vocabulary and practice grammar. But there has been a discussion about just how effective such apps can be.
Among the most popular apps are Duolingo and Busuu. A previous research found positive results on the use of them. But it mainly concentrates on studies with learners who had signed up for language courses and these apps worked as an after-class support, so the results were not always reliable. A recent study of 4,095 Busuu users has been carried out to find out if users can actually learn a language with an app.
Busuu provides learning materials for 12 different languages. It offers special models where some contents are available for free while some contents are not, We find that its users are an even mix of men and women. More than half consider themselves to be at the beginner level as there is a decrease in users as their language levels go up. Most people use the app because of personal interest, or because they want to study or live abroad. Females tend to use it less often but for longer periods of time than male users.
Getting any feedback on Busuu depends on whether your answer is correct or not. While it is helpful, this is not the sort of feedback language teachers prefer, as it does not explain why the answer is right or wrong. In spite of this, feedback in the app is very highly rated.
More than 92% of the people state that the app has met their expectations and 86% consider the app as very good or good. In fact, more than 80% of the users surveyed strongly agree that using the app has helped them improve their knowledge of the language they are learning.
Besides, language learning apps also create an environment where mistakes are only known to the users, and this can address the performance anxiety that many learners suffer from when asked to speak a foreign language. So language teachers should encourage their students to use them to do the grammar work, leaving precious class time for more language communication.
1.Why weren’t the results of the former research always dependable?
A.Because it used out-of-date methods.
B.Because it just focused on positive results.
C.Because it was only carried out before class.
D.Because it only considered users of a limited type.
2.What can we learn about the app Busuu from the text?
A.All the contents are free to use. B.It’s used by more advanced learners.
C.Most users consider it satisfying. D.It’s more popular with female learners.
3.Which of the following can probably replace the underlined word address?
A.Deal with. B.Write down. C.Turn to. D.Speak of.
4.What is the main idea of the text?
A.Students won’t suffer anxiety in learning languages by using Busuu.
B.Language learning apps are effective and satisfactory to language learners.
C.Language learning apps are very popular with most language teachers.
D.Students should be required to use apps for homework after class.
高二英语阅读理解中等难度题查看答案及解析
Science is finaly beginning to embrace animals who were, for a long time, considered second-class citizens.
As Annie Potts of Canterbury University has noted, chickens distinguish among one hundred chicken faces and recognize familiar individuals even after months of separation. When given problems to solve, they reason: hens trained to pick colored buttons sometimes choose to give up an immediate food reward for a slightly later (and better) one. Healthy hens may aid friends, and mourn when those friend die.
Pigs respond meaningful to human symbols. When a research team led by Candace Croney at Penn State University carried wooden blocks marked with X and O symbols around pigs, only the O carriers offered food to the animals. The pigs soon ignored the X carriers in favor of the O's. Then the team switched from real-life objects to T-shirts printed with X or O symbols. Still, the pigs walked only toward the O-shirted people: they had transferred their knowledge to a two-dimensional format, a not inconsiderable feat of reasoning.
I’ve been guilty of prejudiced expectations, myself. At the start of my career almost four decades ago, I was firmly convinced that monkeys and apes out-think and out-feel other animals. They're other primates(灵长目动物), after all, animals from our own mammalian(哺乳动物的) class. Fairly soon, I came to see that along with our closest living relatives, whales too are masters of cultural learning, and elephants express profound joy and mourning with their social companions. Long-term studies in the wild on these mammals helped to fuel a viewpoint shift in our society: the public no longer so easily accepts monkeys made to undergo painful procedure kin laboratories, elephants forced to perform in circuses, and dolphins kept in small tanks at theme parks.
Over time, though, as I began to broaden out even further and explore the inner lives of fish, chickens, pigs, goats, and cows, I started to wonder: Will the new science of "food animals" bring an ethical (伦理的) revolution in terms of who we eat? In other words, will our ethics start to catch up with the development of our science?
Animal activists are already there, of course, committed to not eating these animals. But what about the rest of us? Can paying attention to the thinking and feeling of these animals lead us to make changes in who we eat?
1.According to Annie Potts, hens have the ability of_____________.
A.interaction B.analysis
C.creation D.abstraction
2.The research into pigs shows that pigs___________.
A.learn letters quickly
B.have a good eyesight
C.can build up a good relationship
D.can apply knowledge to new situations
3.Paragraph 4 is mainly about________.
A.the similarities between mammals and humans
B.the necessity of long-term studies on mammals
C.a change in people's attitudes towards animals
D.a discovery of how animals express themselves
4.What might be the best title for the passage?
A.The Inner Lives of Food Animals
B.The Lifestyles of Food Animals
C.Science Reports on Food Animals
D.A Revolution in Food Animals
高二英语阅读理解困难题查看答案及解析
Prateek Sharma was born into a family of farmers. After 10 years of being a chief manager of Kotak Mahindra Bank, he did a good job and earned a good pay. But Prateek couldn’t continue the corporation life with ease, as his heart was always in farming. So he worked as a banker on weekdays and on weekends travelled 100 km to get to his 5-acre in Dhaba Khurd.
By the end of 2015, Prateek had set up a house on his farm to grow offseason vegetables. Prateek thought he’d quit his job once he was able to earn enough from farming, but this wasn’t an easy decision to make. This was because costs to grow these vegetables were very high, along with the fact that farmers weren’t a part of the value chain and thus couldn’t decide the price of their own vegetables.
Fortunately, Prateek met Vinay Yadav, another educated farmer. They then decided to start their own value chain and sell their vegetables and grains, while skipping the middlemen. The variety of vegetables they grew wasn’t enough, so they decided to form a group of farmers.
Once the plan was ready, the group was registered by the name of Farmer Producer Organization (FPO). However, the trial failed in the first year as most of the farmers were grain growers and had limited knowledge of growing vegetables. However, the largest reason was the switch to organic from chemical.
Luckily, once the soil was used to organic methods, the next round of crops were successful and the FPO had a good amount of produce. So at the end of 2017, Prateek finally quit his job and devoted all his time to farming. Now he’s successful and recently his team has started two farmer resource centers at Dhaba Khurd and Nathrula Canj.
1.Why did Prateek have trouble continuing his life as a banker?
A.He felt it so boring to be a banker.
B.He almost never satisfied his boss.
C.He found farming easier to do well.
D.He was enthusiastic about farming.
2.Why was it difficult for Prateek to decide on quitting his job?
A.The prices of organic products were low.
B.The income from farming wasn’t much.
C.He had no money to put into farming.
D.He found farming produce hard to sell.
3.What did Prateek and Vinay Yadav set about doing after they met?
A.Building their own marketing system.
B.Raising the prices of their products.
C.Switching from chemical to organic.
D.Adding the kinds of vegetables grown.
4.What mainly resulted in the failure of FPO’s first year trial?
A.Their no experience in growing vegetables.
B.Their poor management on the employees.
C.The soil’s not adapting to organic farming.
D.The wrong ways of doing organic farming.
高二英语阅读理解中等难度题查看答案及解析