“Are personal sad stories a must to win talent shows?” “Shouldn’t talent be judged on the basis of itself without needing a sad story of struggle to win?” These are questions Sanya Malhotra posed on a recent Facebook post.
This morning I came across this interesting post by Sanya Malhotra. She revealed that she loved dancing and dreamt of becoming an actress, but got defeated in “Dance India Dance” because her background story wasn’t sad and inspiring enough. That’s when she started doubting her artistic gift.
This really set me thinking. Why are people attracted to sob stories? Why do we always appreciate only those people who have achieved something after going through a lot of hardships? Why does the headline of a newspaper “Taxi-driver’s Son Stands First In UPSC Exam” find more readers? I think it is because most people, who are in a similar situation, find it comforting that someone has succeeded with so many hardships. I know it is really very difficult for people with financial, health, or family problems to overcome obstacles and succeed. I really feel proud of them and I am often touched and inspired by their stories.
Now come back to what Sanya has said. I think this is a talent show rather than a story-telling competition. When it comes to a competition of singing or dancing or any fine arts, all the competitors should be judged without any bias (偏见). No one should lose because they don’t have a sad story of struggle to tell. It’s very unfair. They can be given opportunities otherwise, but should not be judged because of their stories.
Maybe, the TV channels do it to attract more viewers, because the most important element of any reality show is these touching stories. But as Sanya has said, it’s unfair to those who haven't such a story and are equally talented.
1.What do we know about Sanya Malhotra?
A.She entered a talent show. B.She won “Dance India Dance”.
C.She had a sad story to tell. D.She was rejected in a film.
2.From the second paragraph, we can infer that Sanya Malhotra________.
A.experienced many hardships B.is a famous actress in Indian
C.has a great gift for gymnastics D.used to be confident in her artistic talent
3.Which of the following headlines appeals to the readers most according to the passage?
A.A Millionaire Donated Money To Harvard University.
B.A Gifted Indian Teenager Won “Dance India Dance”.
C.An Armless Girl Was Admitted To Harvard University.
D.A Freshman Paid Off Loans By Getting A Part-time Job.
4.Which of the following is the best title of the passage?
A.Winners Should Be Determined By Public Judges
B.Sanya Malhotra Displayed A Great Artistic Gift
C.Competitors Should Not Be Judged By Sob Stories
D.Talent Shows Competitors Can Tell Their Stories
难度: 中等查看答案及解析
Missouri Wildlife Rescue Center
Missouri Wildlife Rescue Center is a shelter for endangered and illegally-traded foreign animals confiscated (没收) by the U.S. Wildlife Service. It carries out the motto "Preservation through Education" by educating visitors about the preservation of the environment and the inter-dependence of all living things.
Field trips
The Center hosts field trips for schools and camps throughout Southern California. Each field trip lasts two hours, consisting of a one-hour gathering and a one-hour tour of the facility with lessons associated with California State Science Standards.
Throughout the field trip, students learn about the latest developments in environmental protection and the ways in which wildlife interacts with various ecosystems. The students also receive an up-close and hands-on experience with our rescued foreign wildlife. The tour includes different environmental exhibits that show the ways students can help protect animals in the wild.
Public tours
Guided tours of the Center introduce visitors to over two hundred rescued foreign wildlife. Each tour is led by a staff member, and features fun animal facts, hands-on animal encounters. surprising rescue stories, environmental exhibits, and original approaches to going green. Visitors may only see the animals on a guided tour, for both your safety and the safety of our animals.
The guided tour lasts approximately 45-60 minutes. Visitors are served on a first-come, first-served basis. No reservations are required. However, tours may sell out. We suggest larger groups schedule a private tour.
Our regular public tour’s times are subject to change without notice. Please call in advance for the most up-to-date information
1.What is Missouri Wildlife Rescue Center intended for?
A.Helping study wildlife abroad.
B.Collecting money for animal shelters.
C.Raising awareness of wildlife protection.
D.Deepening our understanding of rare animals.
2.What can students do on a field trip?
A.Share stories of rescuing animals. B.Take part in foreign wildlife rescue.
C.Explore why species get endangered. D.Learn how wildlife affects ecosystems.
3.What can we learn about a guided tour?
A.Large groups are served first. B.Animals are not available.
C.Booking ahead is needed. D.Tours 'times are flexible.
难度: 简单查看答案及解析
The Internet, as we know, is probably one of the greatest inventions of human history. Never before has the access to the collection of the world’s knowledge ever been more available. 1. Some people look to make use of the information you are providing to the Internet. Everything you do online leaves a small footprint.
There are a couple of steps you can take to make your adventures online a little safer and more secure. Let’s take a look at them.
Cover your tracks.
Whenever you visit a website, a small file is marked in your browser(浏览器), which is called a “cookie”. 2. This enables the webserver to know if you have been there before and it can tailor the presentation to your personal tastes. They are also how Facebook knows to serve you ads based on stuff you looked at on Amazon.
So what’s the harm in the cookie? Well, hackers can use the information stored in your cookies to edit a browsing history or with less secure cookies, take your passwords for some sites. If you want to protect yourself from your information being available to sites then you can turn off the generation of cookies in your browser. 3.
4.
The major browsers, Chrome, Internet Explorer, Firefox, and Safari are all built to be secure from snooping(窥探), but the people who write the code for the browsers are human and they make mistakes. 5. These are usually addressed very quickly, but it is important that you make sure your browser is up to date. Just like your operating system, new security patches are being applied all the time, you need to make sure you have them. Turning on automatic updates is something I highly recommend.
A.Use the latest browsers.
B.Change browsers frequently.
C.This will help protect you online.
D.That’s how the cookie works on our computer.
E.This great invention and resource is not without its dangers.
F.It is common for a security problem to pop up with a browser.
G.These cookies store information about who you are and what you looked at.
难度: 中等查看答案及解析
阅读下面短文，根据其内容写一篇60词左右的内容概要。
Not all education can and should happen within the classroom. Sometimes, traveling is the best form of education, as students can get a number of personal and educational benefits from travel. From learning about other cultures first-hand to seeing where historical events took place with their own eyes, educational travel gives students the opportunity to deepen their understanding of art, science, history, and culture in many ways.
Educational becomes a whole new experience when students can see lots of tools and equipment for themselves by traveling to different places. The tools and equipment could be used by scientists decades or even centuries ago to make discoveries that make our modern world possible. Educational travel brings the materials off the pages and into reality, allowing students to connect themselves with them in a more meaningful way.
No matter where students go, it’s almost guaranteed that they’ll find some kind of food that is unique to that place or done better than anywhere else. If someone gets Chicago-style pizza in Chicago, they’re going to have a different tasting experience than they would if they were getting the same type of thing in, say, Texas. At the same time, getting chili in Texas would be a whole different experience from getting chili in New York or Chicago. Students can learn a lot about a culture by what they eat on a daily basis and what they consider a special meal, so it’s good to take a taste of the local food and learn through all of the senses.
Being away from family, home, and familiar ground is a courageous and independent adventure in its own right. Educational travel provides that opportunity to allow students to open their minds regarding how they choose to live life, which can be extraordinarily helpful in preparing students for college and adulthood. Traveling – with the combined social skills and perspectives(视角) it teaches – really allows students to better understand how they can operate on their own.
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难度: 中等查看答案及解析
They say that picture is worth a thousand words, but the briefest look at books and the movies based on them would have anyone questioning this common saying. All too often, great words end up being turned into cinematic “turkeys”.
Good movies need good stories. If so, why has one of the earliest and greatest works in Western storytelling, Homer’s The Odyssey, never had an equally great movie based on it? Movies need strong characters. So why have the movies based on The Great Gatsby never been praised as “great”? Movies of course need impressive images, so why has Alice in Wonderland only resulted in movies best described as “interesting”?
One of the key reasons behind this is that while a book usually takes a few days to read, a movie typically lasts under two hours. This means that great books can lose plot details and characters when they move to the big screen. This is something that even the highly successful Harry Potter movies can’t escape from, with fans of the books disappointed not to see some of their favorite characters in the movie versions.
Movies also disappoint us when things don’t look the way we imagined them in the books. Take, for example, the epic movie Troy, which is in part based on Homer’s The Iliad and was met with mixed reviews from the audience. The most questionable issue was the actress chosen to play the part of Helen. Many people thought she didn’t live up to Helen's title of “the most beautiful woman in the world”, influencing opinions of the movie to some extent.
There are a thousand Hamlets in a thousand people’s eyes. Furthermore, books and movies are two different forms of media and therefore have different rules. With this in mind, perhaps we should judge a movie in its own right, and not against its original source. Interestingly, audiences have in recent years turned to television series such as Sherlock or Mad Men, which can have many characters and gradual plot development. Perhaps, one day, readers of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s most admired work will find themselves glued to their screens by episodes of The Great Gatsby.
1.Which of the following statements about the movie adaptation is true?
A.The characters in The Odyssey do not stand out.
B.The movie Troy doesn't look the way we visualized while reading the book.
C.The visual images are not as striking as the descriptions in the book The Great Gatsby.
D.Some parts of the story and characters are missing in the movie Alice in Wonderland.
2.One of the reasons why adaptations disappoint the audience is that ________.
A.they lack good storytelling
B.the images are not impressive enough
C.the characters in the movies are not strong and interesting
D.there is not enough time for movies to fully present the whole story
3.The underlined “ original source” in the last paragraph probably refers to _________.
A.audience B.book
C.characters. D.images
4.What does the text mainly talk about?
A.Good books may not be adapted for great movies.
B.Reading books is better than watching movies.
C.People are dissatisfied with the current movies.
D.People are expressing their preference to reading books.
难度: 困难查看答案及解析
Erik Kobayashi-Solomon spent a day with Dr. Paul Gauthier, a plant physiologist specializing in vertical (垂直的) farming research and came away with several important ideas about vertical farming.
Humans have 12,000 years of experience in growing food, but only a generation’s worth of experience or so in growing crops indoors. We are still progressing up the technology learning curve (曲线). What’s more, traditional farming techniques are based on conditions that are not applicable to vertical farming. Therefore, without taking time to understand the science, vertical farming is not likely to be able to live up to its implied promise.
The cost of powering LED grow lights is one of the biggest problems a vertical farm must overcome. Dr. Louis Albright at Cornell has characterized vertical farms as the “pie-in-the-sky” business. He famously calculates, for instance, that the cost of a loaf of bread would be $ 24 if farmed indoors—the cost is too high. Gauthier acknowledges that energy prices are high but points out that scientific work has shown that only about 6% of available sunlight is used in crop photosynthesis (光合作用), so there may be ways of growing the same plants with less light.
Gauthier also points out that while energy costs are a bit high, vertical farming does create enormous efficiencies in other areas. Water usage may be significantly reduced because the same water can be recycled time and again. Fertilizer use can also be greatly reduced and pesticides for pest control are unnecessary. It’s clear that vertical farming offers real value to society.
The future is probably mixed. In some environments—the Middle East, for instance—a move to vertical farming is a no-brainer. An indoor farm in Saudi Arabia, for instance, can use solar energy to power LEDs at low cost without shading other farmland. In other environments, though, the expense of establishing a facility places a high bar on growth and profitability. A large vertical farming and equipment operation only started generating a small profit eight years into its nine-year life.
1.What can we infer about vertical farming in Paragraph 2?
A.It relies on more basic scientific research.
B.It will replace traditional farming one day.
C.It actually came into being 12,000 years ago.
D.It can be applicable under different conditions.
2.What does Dr. Louis Albright think of vertical farms?
A.They use less light than traditional ones.
B.They can overcome many problems in farming.
C.They may seem very unlikely to be popularized.
D.They do not need any natural sunlight any longer.
3.What is the fourth paragraph mainly about?
A.The recent trend of vertical farming.
B.The possible benefits of vertical farming.
C.The secrets of developing vertical farming.
D.The ways of reducing costs of vertical farming.
4.Why is the example of “an indoor farm in Saudi Arabia” mentioned?
A.To argue that vegetables do not need to be imported any longer.
B.To prove solar energy is vital for farming in Saudi Arabia.
C.To confirm the expense of setting up a vertical farm is high.
D.To show vertical farming can work pretty well in some places.
难度: 中等查看答案及解析
An act of kindness doesn't have to be a grand gesture. Even those small acts of kindness can make a difference in someone's day. That was just the case for Amie Mickey when she _________ a bumper sticker (车尾贴) on her car reading: You Matter.
Amie started to do this several years ago. At first, she wondered if people would_________it. However, much to her surprise, she began seeing a flood of _________ every time she hit the road. More often than not, people _________slowly near her car would roll down their windows, raising their_________, waving and smiling. Sometimes, she even found some sticky notes left on her windshield saying things like “You _________too! “Once while she was driving down the highway, she became_________ when a man driving a sports car at a high speed pulled his car alongside suddenly, waving and mouthing, “You matter!” Though it took her some time to recover from the_________, she still felt happy. Last year, someone _________ her car while she was waiting for her friend in the car by the roadside, saying to her, “It is a(an) ____________sticker. I’ve seen various stickers before, but none of them have touched me as your sticker has done. “The two small words on the sticker seem simple enough, but they really struck a chord with many complete strangers who____________to catch sight of the sticker.
Stories like Amie's really____________the rest of us. Sometimes a kind word or gesture may lift our____________ and it doesn't cost a thing except for a little extra thought. Maybe it means offering a friend a hug, praising the children when their children ____________well in school, helping someone out or volunteering at nursing homes. Acts of kindness are waiting everywhere. Small as they seem, they can make a ____________ impact on the world, and help form general goodness.
1.A.tore up B.picked up C.fixed up D.put up
2.A.watch B.overlook C.notice D.ignore
3.A.attention B.confusion C.strangers D.passers-by
4.A.running B.driving C.walking D.riding
5.A.voices B.hats C.shoulders D.thumbs
6.A.count B.share C.value D.matter
7.A.frightened B.discouraged C.embarrassed D.disappointed
8.A.parking B.speed C.incident D.event
9.A.approached B.blocked C.repaired D.cleaned
10.A.important B.special C.typical D.skeptical
11.A.happened B.occurred C.managed D.offered
12.A.shock B.inspire C.delight D.satisfy
13.A.feelings B.thoughts C.spirits D.minds
14.A.work B.exercise C.conduct D.behave
15.A.reliable B.subjective C.positive D.brief
难度: 中等查看答案及解析
阅读下面句子，在空白处填入适当的内容(1个单词)或括号内汉语提示的正确形式。
1.Doctors warn people that one may develop skin cancer if his skin ______(暴露) to the sun too much.
2.Neither could they relax or read a book without ______(塞住) their ears.
3.Because of illegal logging, forest fires and climate change, the world’s forests are disappearing ______ the rate of 146,000 square kilometers a year.
4.No sooner had they settled themselves into their seats ______ the curtain went up.
5.______ number of pandas has fallen because of human activity destroying much of their habitat.
6.Dust from the volcano ______(滚动) across the Earth’s skies and pretty much cancelled the following summer in Europe and America.
7.In the last three years, Indonesia has had a rough time, ______(遭受) several killer quakes.
8.Many nations have already been in armed conflict over water, and ______(减少) rainfall has resulted in huge forest fires.
9.Given this data, it seems that the link between human ______(活动) and rising global temperatures is not merely a coincidence.
10.Without these ______(自然) occurring gases, the sun’s rays would bounce back into space leaving the Earth cold and impossible to live on.
难度: 中等查看答案及解析
假设你是星光中学的李华，将参加主题为“Let’s Ride Bicycles”的英语演讲比赛，请写一份演讲稿，内容主要包括：
1、汽车带来的问题；
2、骑自行车的益处；
3、你的立场。
参考词汇：低碳的 low-carbon
注意：1.词数：80字左右，开头结尾已给，不计入；
2.可适当增加细节，以使行文连贯。
Good morning, everyone!
I'm Li Hua from Xingguang Middle School.
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Thanks for your listening!
难度: 中等查看答案及解析