All the unusual and interesting events from around the world are here in our review.
A chocolate wall at railway station in Netherlands
A wall of chocolate at the railway station, Utrecht Centraal, in Utrecht, the Netherlands, has become many food lovers new place to mark. The whole wall is made of chocolate, making it very fun, good-looking, and of course, delicious.
Wine bath resort launched in Japan
The 2019 Beaujolais Nouveau Wine on a Bathing was officially released on Nov. 21 in Hakone, west of Tokyo. A beverage-based bathing experience is the red wine hot spring, with its huge, 3.6-meter-tall wine bottle. People may even be present to witness the wine show, in which staff members spray bathers with a bottle of Hakone wine. Whether seeing the show or not, the red wine bath is perfect for every wine lover.
A Monkey Buffet Festival held in Thailand
The annual Monkey Buffet Festival, a fun one with a difference, was held in Lopburi, Bangkok, on Nov. 24. The Monkey Buffet takes place in the overgrown and ruined Khmer temple of Pra Prang Sam Yot, where the majority of the monkeys live. The monkeys are treated with respect. Endless oceans of fruits you can think of are spread out for the monkeys to feast upon. The festival begins with live performances and dances that draw the monkeys out. Culturally, the feast will bring good luck to the local townspeople.
World’ s strongest puffer jacket (羽绒夹克)
Dutch brand Vollebak has created the world’s strongest puffer jacket, which is 15 times stronger than steel. The exterior (外部) of the indestructible puffer is made from 100 percent Dyneema, the strongest fiber ever made. Dyneema was originally used in body armor (防弹衣) and bullet-proof vehicles. The puffer is made to withstand temperatures up to -40℃, as the colder it gets, the stronger Dyneema becomes. “It will withstand any abuse you put it through during your life time and be in good enough condition to pass down to your grandkids when you are done with it.” explained Vollebak’s co-founder Steve Tidball.
1.Where can a wine lover go for fun?
A.Utrecht. B.Hakone.
C.Lopburi. D.Tokyo.
2.What can a visitor see at the Monkey Buffet Festival?
A.Live performances and dances. B.Endless ocean of food.
C.A chocolate wall for local townspeople. D.Many kinds of animals besides monkeys.
3.Which of the following is NOT true about the puffer jacket?
A.It’s cold-resistant.
B.It’s designed to be a body armor.
C.It uses Dyneema as its main material.
D.It may be handed down to the younger generation.
难度: 中等查看答案及解析
Taylor Alison Swift is an American country pop singer-songwriter, musician and actress.
Swift was born on December 13, 1989, in Reading, Pennsylvania, and raised in Wyomissing. Pennsylvania. She is the daughter of Andrea Gardner, a housewife who previously worked in finance, and Scott Kingsley Swift, a stockbroker. Her grandmother, Marjorie Finlay, was an opera singer. Swift has a younger brother, Austin. She grew up on a Christmas-tree farm.
When Swift was in fourth grade, she won a national poetry contest with a three-page poem, “Monster in My Closet”. At the age of ten, a computer repairman showed her how to play three chords (和弦) on a guitar, arousing her interest in learning the instrument. Afterwards, Swift wrote her first song, “Lucky You”. When Swift was 12, she devoted an entire summer to writing a 350-page novel, which remains unpublished. She began writing songs regularly and used it as a way to help her with her pain from not fitting in at school. Swift was a victim of bullying (欺凌), and spent her time writing songs to express her emotions. She also started performing at local karaoke contests, festivals, and fair.
Swift began to regularly visit Nashville, Tennessee, and work with local songwriters. When she was 14, her family moved to Nashville. Her first major show was a well-received performance at the Bloomsburg Fair. In Tennessee, Swift attended Hendersonville High School, but was then homeschooled for her junior and senior years. In 2008, she earned her high school diploma.
Swift’s greatest musical influence is Shania Twain. Her other influences include Leann Rimes, Tina Turner, Dolly Parton, and Swifts grandmother. Although her grandmother was a professional opera singer, Swifts tastes always leaned more toward country music. In her younger years, she developed a love for Patsy Cline and Dolly Parton. She also credits her love for music in her teens to the influence of the Dixie Chicks.
1.What can we know about Swift from the passage?
A.Her first novel came out in 2001.
B.She showed her music talent in her teens.
C.Her first major show was in Hendersonville High School.
D.Her mother influenced her a lot in her later music career.
2.Which word can best describe Swift’s school life?
A.Colorful. B.Busy.
C.Successful. D.Unhappy.
3.We can infer that Shania Twain in the last paragraph is a famous ________.
A.film star B.novelist
C.opera singer D.country music star
4.The passage is mainly about the ________ of Taylor Alison Swift.
A.family life B.achievements
C.early life D.contributions
难度: 困难查看答案及解析
Japan’s biggest airline is betting that the future of travel isn’t traveling at all.
For the last month, a married couple has been interacting with a robot—called an Avatar—that’s controlled by their daughter hundreds of miles away. Made by ANA Holdings Inc., it looks like a vacuum cleaner (真空吸尘器) with an iPad attached. But the screen displays the daughter’s face as they chat, and its wheels let her move about the house as though she’s really there.
“Virtual travel” is nothing new, of course. Storytellers, travel writers and artists have been inspiring the senses of armchair tourists (足不出户的旅行者) for centuries. It’s only in recent decades that frequent, safe travel has become available to the non-wealthy.
Yet even as the worlds middle classes climb out of the armchair and into economy-class seats, there are hints of a post-travel society coming. Concerns about sustainability (可持续发展) are causing a loss to carbon-intensive airlines, which do harm to our environment. And the aging of wealthy societies is both limiting physical travel and creating demand for alternative ways to experience the world. For the travel industry, virtual reality offers an inviting response to these trends.
Of course, far-out technologies encourage far-out claims. ANA doesn’t plan to start selling Avatars until next year. Profits, too, will probably be a barrier. By one estimate, the global market for this kind of technology will be worth only about $300 million by 2023. By contrast, ANA’s traditional travel business brought in more than $19 billion last year.
But if the business case for virtual vacations is still weak, the market for technologies that bridge physical distances between families and coworkers seems likely to only expand. ANA’s robots may not replace its airplanes any time soon, but they’ll almost certainly be a part of travels high-tech future.
1.What do we know about Avatar?
A.It’ll take the place of ANA’s airplanes soon.
B.It s a kind of the latest vacuum cleaner.
C.It is invented by ANA Holdings Inc.
D.It’s on sale right now.
2.What prevents Avatars coming into market at present?
A.Lower Profits. B.Aging society.
C.Physical distances between families. D.Concerns about environment.
3.The writer s attitude towards future virtual travel is ________.
A.Critical. B.Objective.
C.Doubtful. D.Positive.
4.What’s the best title for the passage?
A.Difficulties for the armchair tourists
B.The coming trend of virtual vacation
C.Something about virtual reality
D.The popularity of Avatar
难度: 困难查看答案及解析
Train yourself, save a life
On Friday afternoon, a male passenger with a heart attack on Beijing’s Line 2 subway died about one hour later. That’s the third heart attack death in 10 days that aroused public attention, with the other two being actor Godfrey Gao and Xu Yong, a senior journalist at Xinhua News Agency.
They are only three of the 550,000 people in China who suffer from sudden cardiac (心脏的) shock every year, of which only about I percent are saved. Actually, many more of these victims could have been saved if Cardio-Pulmonary Resuscitation (CPR心肺复苏) are popularized. When someone suffers a heart attack and falls unconscious, people nearby have a good chance of saving him with CPR.
CPR is really not so hard to learn. All one needs is to learn how to observe and decide if a person is unconscious, where to press on the patients chest, and how to blow air through the mouth and into the lungs. Besides that, public facilities such as airports, high-speed railway stations, and big subway stations could install the Automatic External Defibrillator (AED自动体外除颤器), a device that proves effective and easy to use in saving the lives of people suffering heart attacks. All one needs is to pick it up and follow the instructions.
Unfortunately, neither of the two is popular in China. According to data, the total number of AEDs in China is slightly higher than 2,000, of which most are located in metropolises, such as Beijing and Shanghai. On CPR, less than I percent of adults can master the skill, while many have never heard of it.
Both need improvements to save those 550,000 lives every year. The cost of installing AEDs might be high, and it does take time and resources to train more people in CPR, but it is really worth the effort because every life counts and should be saved in an emergency. It’s time to train everyone and equip more public facilities to save more lives.
1.What’s the major function of the first paragraph?
A.To introduce the background of a story.
B.To lead in the topic of the passage.
C.To describe a social phenomenon.
D.To arouse the reader’s interest.
2.It can be inferred from that ________.
A.CPR is hard to learn
B.installing an aed does not cost much
C.CPR and AEDs are paid little attention to
D.more people suffer from sudden cardiac shock now
3.What does the underlined word in Para. 4 most probably mean?
A.Big cities. B.Public places.
C.Hospitals. D.Subway stations.
4.What may be written in the next part of the passage?
A.Some knowledge about CPR.
B.More examples of the victims of sudden death.
C.The measures to be taken to solve the problem.
D.More reasons why learning CPR and Installing AEDs is necessary.
难度: 困难查看答案及解析
In a research carried out in the UK, it was found that only one out of every five employees were happy to work. Surprisingly, it wasn’t the pay or the love for the work that made people happy. Instead, friendly, supportive colleagues and a sense of achievement have been found to be the primary causes of happiness at work. 1. Here are some suggestions.
Happiness is a state of mind, so staying happy at work is completely based on a positive attitude towards your job. 2.
Challenge yourself and take charge of your own growth in your career. Boredom is one of the primary factors that cause people to change jobs. 3.
Having co-workers you like and enjoy working with is a feature of happiness in the workplace. Talk to people, get to know them and try to get along well with them in the workplace, Meeting new people and getting fresh views can help you to keep yourself interested in your work.
Complete your tasks, 4. This gives you a sense of achievement and encourages you to work towards your goals in future.
Sitting and staring at your screen all day long isn’t going to help you. Instead, take breaks and go outside for some time. For example, 5. Eat your lunch outside or work for a few minutes during that hour, which helps you stay happy at work.
A.Smiling everyday is easy to do.
B.go out for a few minutes to feel the breeze.
C.So how do you develop a sense of joy on the job?
D.no matter how disagreeable or tough they might be.
E.Convince ourselves that tomorrow will be better than today.
F.Focus on the bright side of the work rather than keep talking about what makes you unhappy.
G.Find new challenges and it’s a great feeling to take control over what you do and see a task through.
难度: 困难查看答案及解析
I didn’t grow up in a very loving family. In fact, there are few, if any, _________ memories I have of my childhood involving my family members. My family eventually got separated from all the _________, so the time came when I didn’t even have neighborhood kids to play with. I became quite serious, just to hide my _________.
There was another family in town. They _________ the same church. I always wondered what it would be like if my family were more like them. They never knew it, but I watched them and _________ them. They were kind, genuine and close—_________ I wished my family could be.
Decades later I _________ myself back at that very same church for my mother’s funeral. My family was _________, as always. I felt _________ that neither time nor circumstance could make them act with loving kindness toward each other. As I approached the church for the funeral, __________ came flooding back to me. I remembered the __________ smiles of that family who used to sit in the front of the church when I was a child.
After the funeral service a __________ was provided in the church. After getting a plate of food I __________ the room for a seat with my husband. Then I heard a __________ voice I hadn’t heard in decades call my name. I turned around and he was there, the father of that family I had admired when I was young. We chatted for a bit and it was at that point that I __________ I was raising my boy in a way I had seen him raise his own __________ so long ago. He didn’t realize it, __________ my son’s life has been greatly affected by him. Peace __________ my soul.
You never know who’s __________, who you will inspire and whose life you’ll __________.
1.A.moving B.terrible C.unforgettable D.happy
2.A.neighbors B.relatives C.friends D.members
3.A.truth B.laughter C.shyness D.pain
4.A.reached B.helped C.attended D.liked
5.A.admired B.respected C.embarrassed D.bothered
6.A.anything B.everything C.nothing D.something
7.A.confirmed B.found C.offered D.remembered
8.A.challenged B.transformed C.connected D.divided
9.A.moved B.nervous C.sad D.interested
10.A.requests B.stories C.memories D.comments
11.A.pround B.warm C.strange D.false
12.A.meal B.party C.speech D.meeting
13.A.booked B.checked C.cleaned D.scanned
14.A.sharp B.familiar C.cold D.annoying
15.A.decided B.realized C.demanded D.pretended
16.A.children B.family C.brothers D.pets
17.A.while B.and C.but D.so
18.A.settled into B.set down C.turned down D.steal into
19.A.regretting B.struggling C.watching D.praying
20.A.share B.disturb C.ruin D.change
难度: 中等查看答案及解析
阅读下面短文，在空白处填入1个适当的单词或括号内单词的正确形式。
Several thousand years ago, the silk trade first reached Europe via the Silk Road, 1. brought with it not only excellent silk clothes and decorative items, but also the ancient culture of the Far East. From then on, silk 2. (regard) as the symbol of Eastern civilization.
According to 3. ancient Chinese legend, it was the Yellow Emperor 4. ordered the fibers woven into cloth and made into silk clothes, which were 5. (extreme) soft and comfortable. Later generations worshiped the Yellow Emperor 6. the God of Weaving.
China is the birthplace of sericulture (养蚕). Sericulture, including planting mulberry trees, raising silk worms and 7. (produce) silk fabric, has been an essential form of labor in China for 8. (century). The Chinese ancestors had invented flat-weaving and figured -weaving techniques, and colored cloth using natural vermilion (朱红) dye.
With the 9. (improve) in loom construction and printing and dying methods, more varieties of silk were developed. China possessed the most 10. (advance) silk dying and weaving techniques of the ancient world.
难度: 中等查看答案及解析
假定英语课上老师要求同桌之间交换修改作文，请你修改你同桌写的以下作文。文中共有10处语言错误，每句中最多有两处。每处错误仅涉及一个单词的增加、删除或修改。
增加：在缺词处加一个漏字符号（∧），并在其下面写出该加的词。
删除：把多余的词用斜线（\）划掉。
修改：在错的词下划一横线，并在该词下面写出修改后的词。
注意：1. 每处错误及其修改均仅限一词；
2. 只允许修改10处，多者（从第11处起）不计分。
There are basically two ways to get work done. One is to work individual. In this way, people can decide for them when to start to work and how to do it. What’s more, they will be able to learn how to solve the problems on their own. People may also choose to work in a team which they can learn from each other and help each other. Beside, they may work out better ways get work done by discussing. Personally, I prefer to work in a team, which offer me a chance to learn how to get along to others and to share my experience with them. As the work can be dividing among several people, it can be done efficiently. Teamwork is always importance.
难度: 中等查看答案及解析
假设你是李华，你准备参选你校英语口语俱乐部主席一职，请你写一篇英语演讲稿，进行竞选演讲。内容包括：
1. 竞选职位；
2. 个人优势；
3. 当选设想。
注意：1. 词数100词左右；
2. 开头已给出，但不计入词数；
3. 可以适当增加细节，以使行文连贯。
Dear teachers and students, may I have your attention please?
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难度: 中等查看答案及解析