Join the ranks of bright travelers and load up your smart phone with these must-have travel apps.
Sky Scanner
Stop wasting precious time clicking through website after website for airfare deals. Searching over 1,000 airlines and travel agents, Sky Scanner locates the cheapest dates to fly as well as the most affordable destinations. Got your heart set on some place special? Just enter your destination, dates, and the number of travelers and the app does all the heavy lifting for you.
Easy Travel
Just enter your city, or postal code into the search window, and Easy Travel will display the cheapest gas being served up near you. Whether you're driving in Canada, or the United States, Easy Travel is by your side helping you save money.
Bother Free
Don't be lost in translation. Here's an app that will serve as your travel translator, translating over 60 languages for your communication pleasure. It's easy! Just select the language you want to learn, speak or type a phrase into your phone, and the app will deliver a translation that you can read and hear.
World Atlas
You can have the whole world in your hands! National Geographic's beautiful award-winning World Atlas app is a must-have for armchair travelers and globetrotters alike. Spin, expand, and zoom the 3D globe to access detailed maps, tools to measure distances and need-to-know facts such as current weather, demographics and currency.
1.If one prefers self-driving tour, which app may help him or her save money?
A.Sky Scanner. B.Easy Travel.
C.Bother Free. D.World Atlas.
2.Who might be interested in Bother Free?
A.People with language difficulty. B.People who enjoy travel by plane.
C.People who want to travel cheaply. D.People with poor sense of direction.
3.In which part of a magazine can you most probably find this text?
A.Sports. B.Geography.
C.Travel. D.Traffic.
难度: 简单查看答案及解析
Fairies today are the material of, children's stories, little magical people with wings, often shining with light. Typically pretty and female, like Tinkerbell in Peter Pan, they usually use their magic to do small things and are mostly friendly to humans.
One explanation suggests the origin of fairies is a memory of real people. So, for example when tribes with metal weapons invaded land where people only used stone weapons some of the people escaped and hid in forests and caves. Further support for this idea is that fairies were thought to be afraid of iron and could not touch it. Living outside of society, the hiding people probably stole food and attacked villages. This might explain why fairies were often described as playing tricks on humans. Hundreds of years ago, people actually believed that fairies stole new babies and replaced them with a "changeling"-a fairy baby-or that they took new mothers and made them feed fairy babies with their milk.
While most people no longer believe in fairies, only a hundred years ago some people were very willing to think they might exist. In 1917, 16-year-old Elsie Wright took two photos of her cousin, nine-year-old Frances Griffiths, sitting with fairies. Some photography experts thought they were not real, while others weren't sure. But Arthur Conan Doyle, the writer of the Sherlock Holmes detective stories, believed they were real. He published the original pictures, and three more that the girls took for him, in a magazine called The Strand, in 1920. The girls only admitted the photos were not real years later in 1983, and that they created them using pictures of dancers that Elsie copied from a book.
1.What does the underlined words "this idea" in Paragraph 2 refer to?
A.Fairies used stone tools. B.Fairies used metal weapons.
C.Fairies are based on real people. D.Fairies are friendly to humans.
2.Why were fairies often described as playing tricks on humans?
A.Fairies were afraid of iron and could not touch it.
B.Fairies stole new babies and replaced them with a fairy baby.
C.People who were defeated would escape and hide in the forests.
D.The hiding people would probably steal food and attack villages.
3.Who thought the photos taken in 1917 were real?
A.Arthur Conan Doyle. B.Elsie Wright.
C.Most photography experts. D.Elsie Wright's cousin.
4.Which idea will the author most probably agree with?
A.Whether fairies exist or not is uncertain.
B.There are still many people believing in fairies.
C.Children should not believe in fairies any longer.
D.The attitude people hold towards fairies has changed.
难度: 中等查看答案及解析
Ever notice your phone dies faster in cold weather? But why? As LiveScience reports, it all comes down to chemical reactions within the battery.
If you were to open any smartphone, you'd probably find a Li-ion(锂离子)battery running the show. Inside the battery, there are two poles, a positive pole(正极)and a negative pole(负极), and how much charge your phone has all depends on which side the ions stay. A fully charged battery will be jam-packed with ions on the positive end, while a dead battery will have all the ions stored in the negative end.
Your phone is powered as the individual ions travel in solution(溶液)from one pole to the other, but a cold temperature doesn't cause the Solution flow in the battery itself. If it flowed, the ions would have to go somewhere, but they actually stay put when it gets cold. The cold temperature causes chemical reactions that slow down the current(电流). The only other time this smaller current is sent through the battery is when all the ions have been spent, so your phone mistakenly reads the slowdown as being out of power.
Now, how can you get yourself out of this situation? Dr. Stephen J. Harris, a chemist at the Lawrence Berkeley Lab, says whatever you do, don't charge it. Your fully charged battery isn't lacking ions, and the cold temperature isn't allowing more ions to be pulled into the anode. They pass through the solution as solid lithium, which can really do some serious damage to the battery cell itself.
The only way to get the battery back to life is to let it return to its normal operating temperature. We recommend leaving it in your pocket or spending a few minutes inside away from the bitter cold.
1.What do we know about the battery?·
A.We can just charge one side of it.
B.A dead battery stores no ions inside.
C.It's full with all ions on the negative end.
D.Smartphones are powered by Li-ion batteries.
2.What makes the phone dead in the cold weather?
A.The lack of ions. B.The loss of solution.
C.The slowdown of the current. D.The disorder of the ions.
3.What might Dr. Stephen agree to do when your phone dies in the cold?
A.Leave it in the cold. B.Warm it in the pocket.
C.Get it charged immediately. D.Restart it immediately.
4.What may be the best title of the text?
A.Reactions Inside the Battery B.Ways to Keep Phones Alive
C.Cold Weather Kills Your Phone D.How Phones Work Under Cold Weather
难度: 中等查看答案及解析
Is that person really glad to see me? Or is he just being polite? Some people struggle to tell an artificial smile from a truly happy-one. And computers have found this task even more difficult. Recently, researchers have trained a program to detect when a smile is genuine(真诚的).
Visual computing researchers at the University of Bradford in the U. K. started with a software for analyzing a changing facial expression. This program can examine a video clip of a human head and identify(确认) specific details around the eyes, cheeks and mouth. Then the program tracks the details relative to each other as the face smiles.
Next，the scientists had their program evaluate(评估)two sets of video clips. In one subjects performed posed smiles. In the other, they watched a film that inspired genuine displays of emotion. The program calculated the differences among the subjects’ faces during the two clips. And it turns out that one's mouth, cheeks and eyes move differently when pretending to smile.
In particular, the muscles around the eyes shift 10 percent more for a real smile than they do for a fake one. These results are in the journal Advanced Engineering Informatics. "A genuine smile is indeed in the eyes. The computer aids analysis of the exact weight distribution of human smiles across the face.” Hassan Ugail and Ahmad Al-dahoud say.
The researchers suggest their work could improve a computer's ability to analyze facial expressions and thus to interact more smoothly with humans. But their real accomplishment is in proving Tyra Banks right: "You have to smile with your eyes."
1.What's the purpose of the program?
A.To tell different smiles. B.To detect human heads.
C.To examine human faces. D.To record facial expressions.
2.What did the researchers do in the program?
A.They performed posed smiles. B.They analyzed different video clips.
C.They improved a computer's ability. D.They evaluated a very special software.
3.What result have the researchers found from the program?
A.Smiling with eyes is the most important.
B.Eyes reflect whether a smile is real or not.
C.Mouth，cheeks and eyes always move the same.
D.Muscles move more frequently when people do a faking smile,
4.In which section of a newspaper may this text appear?
A.Entertainment. B.Health.
C.Inventions. D.Science.
难度: 中等查看答案及解析
Talking to strangers along your travels can change your trip into an adventure. Here are rules of thumb to serve as your guide.
Don't ignore your fellow tourists. When you go to some place off the beaten path, you're likely to meet other tourists there. Find them, and ask where you would go.1.
Abandon your phone. Phones often get between you and the surroundings, ruining your chances to make contact with the people you see.2., take a deep breath and put it in a different pocket or cover it with tape.
3..The easiest way to do this is to talk to people who are in "open roles", such as anyone in a public service job, or a taxi driver. Or ask someone seated near you; ask where the person's favorite street is; ask if there's a residential area where it would be nice to take a walk.
Use a map-or none at all.4..However, the truth is, sometimes those small streets are nowhere to be found with a map. So ask for directions a lot. Asking for any kind of help is the key to many doors.
Most Important: Ask good questions. Finding good questions means observing and noticing. A well-turned question shows that you are really paying attentions you are curious and ready to listen.5..
A. Let strangers make your plans
B. Maps can be of great assistance
C. When the unwillingness gets in the way
D. A good question will get you everywhere
E. They are going to offer advice made of gold
F. Those fellow tourists can make sense of your journey
G. If abandoning your phone isn't practical or feels insecure to you
难度: 中等查看答案及解析
Clara was seated on an Airlines flight to LA when a flight attendant asked an urgent question over the loudspeaker, "Does anyone on________know American Sign Language (ASL)?"
Clara had been studying ASL for the past year and she'd be able to________spell into a man's palm, so she____the call button. The flight attendant came and explained the________, "We have a passenger who's blind and deaf." The passenger seemed to want something, but the flight attendants couldn't________what he needed.
Clara________her seat belt, walked toward the front of the plane, and________by the aisle seat of Tim Cook.________taking his hand, she________, "Are you OK? What do you need?" Cook________for some water.
When it arrived, Clara returned to her seat. She________again later and stayed. "He was________and wanted to talk," Clara says.
For the next hour, she talked about her family and her plans for the future. Cook told Clara how he had gradually become________and shared stories of his.“________Tim couldn't see her, she looked________at his face with such________,” a passenger said.
"Clara was________," a flight attendant told Alaska Airlines in a blog interview. "You could________Tim was very relaxed to have someone he could________to, and she was such a (n)________."
1.A.board B.business C.mission D.vacation
2.A.change B.put C.finger D.send
3.A.searched for B.pressed C.looked at D.examined
4.A.headache B.result C.danger D.situation
5.A.understand B.find C.fetch D.satisfy
6.A.checked B.unfastened C.secured D.adjusted
7.A.rested B.lay C.fell D.knelt
8.A.Tightly B.Immediately C.Gently D.Eagerly
9.A.signed B.doubted C.comforted D.demanded
10.A.begged B.asked C.looked D.paid
11.A.got up B.walked around C.wandered about D.came by
12.A.sad B.terrified C.lonely D.nervous
13.A.blind B.helpless C.sensitive D.impossible
14.A.If B.Though C.But D.So
15.A.carefully B.passionately C.enthusiastically D.attentively
16.A.pride B.bravery C.kindness D.passion
17.A.amazing B.relaxed C.interesting D.confident
18.A.inform B.tell C.recall D.hope
19.A.respond B.stick C.talk D.adapt
20.A.expert B.professional C.assistant D.angel
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。
The Financial Times gave part of my job to a robot named Amy last week. For years I have been making podcast version(播客)of my column, but now I am faced with a tough competition.
To be fair, Amy1.(do) something going for her. She has a great voice, smooth as velvet. Her2.(two) advantage is that she's practically free. She is part of a new service from Amazon that turns text3.speech, costing-nearly nothing. Even more4.(impress) is her speed. Less than two seconds after receiving my5.(write) text, which means when I just start to read, "Yesterday the Finan…", she has already finished.
Yet once I got over my distress and listened to her work, I felt6.(good). I know it's early days for her, but at the moment Amy is no match for me. Listening to her is not like listening to7.non-English speaker read aloud, but to someone without brain, or heart, or sense of humor. Her8.(deliver) is so poor that I don't even understand. Amy never reads with understanding, never knows when9.(pause), and never does irony. She continues to get it wrong.
Finally, I'm not afraid Amy is about to steal my job. Only people possess human touch. It is the heart-to-heart communication10.makes us special, beautiful and irreplaceable.
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。
I really wanted to cook when I was four. My dad, however, thinks I was too young to learn cooking. For many years, he only allowed me observe him cook. All I did was watch him in the kitchen. Sometimes, he would not let me give a hand. I really enjoyed stay in the kitchen. Besides, there were also not good kitchen moment. There was a time when the fire became really bigger and I was scared by them greatly. It took about a year of me to overcome my fear of fire. One day, my dad permitted me to start cooking on my own final. You couldn't imagine how happy I was.
难度: 中等查看答案及解析
假如你是李华。你的英国朋友Jack在网上看到一篇关于中国环境持续改善的报道，对此感到非常好奇，发来邮件询问你所在地的情况。请你根据以下内容写一封回信：
1.环境的变化；
2.所采取的措施；
3.个人感受。
注意：1.词数100左右；
2.可适当增加细节，以使行文连贯。
Dear Jack,
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Yours,
Li Hua
难度: 中等查看答案及解析