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The Summer Program
Program Highlights:
(1)More outdoor Chinese study: All trips and activities focus on developing language skills in Chinese, as well as building up self-confidence and teamwork ability. Campers would get a clear awareness of the program theme---- “Observe-Think-Act”.
(2) One-to-one Chinese tutoring; One hour per day, we have college students majoring in Teaching Chinese as a Foreign Language work as tutors.
(3) Breakfast is upgraded to western buffet style and offered by the host four-star hotel.
Discount Policy:
●￥1,000 off per student for early bird applications on or before March 31st;
●¥1,000 off per student for returning students;
●¥500 off per student for 2 family siblings;
●¥1,000 off per student for a group of 3 or above (siblings/friends).
Contact information: Ms Summer
E-mail : [email protected] . com
Tel: (+86) 10 8230-3067
1.What will campers do if they join in the program?
A. Study together with some college teachers.
B. Have a chance to improve their confidence.
C. Spend more time learning Chinese.
D. Have each meal in four-star hotels every day.
2.When should all the applications be submitted at the latest?
A. By late July. B. By late August. C. By late March. D. By late June.
3.What should we do to save some money according to the discount policy?
A. Attend the program with three or more students.
B. Hand in our applications as early as we can.
C. Make a trip with all our family members.
D. Come back to the program in a limited time.
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What does the woman advise the man to do?
A. Do more outdoor activities.
B. Think about his homework.
C. Start working and watching TV.
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The traditional Chinese lunar calendar divides the year into 24 solar terms (节气). Start of Summer (立夏), the 7th term of the year, begins on May 6 and ends on May 21 this year. Start of Summer signals the change of seasons. On this day, the sun’s rays reach an angle of 45 degrees to the earth. The temperature will rise quickly during this period.
Here are four traditions to learn about the Start of Summer.
Greeting Start of Summer
The term Start of Summer was originated at the end of the Warring States Period (239BC). Since it is a key time for the harvest of summer crops, ancient Chinese emperors in different dynasties attached great importance to the Start of Summer. They encouraged people to seize the key time to do farm work. It’s said that most of the decorations were arranged in the color red in order to show respect for the god of summer and pray for a good harvest.
Checking one’s weight
The custom of weighing people at the Start of Summer originated from the Three Kingdoms Period (220-180) and is still popular in South China today. It was believed this practice would bring health and good luck to the people weighted.
After lunch on this day, people would hang a basket from a beam (房梁). The young and old took turns to get weighed while the person calculating the weight would offer good wishes. It is said that those who were weighed would stay healthy in the hot summer and those who weren’t would suffer illness.
Eating eggs
In ancient China, people believed a round egg symbolized a happy life and eating eggs on the day of Start of Summer was a prayer for good health. They put leftover tea into boiled water together with eggs and the original “tea egg” was created. Later people improved cooking methods and added spices (香料) to the eggs to make them taste delicious. Today tea egg has become a traditional snack in China.
Egg Competitions
As an old Chinese saying goes “hanging an egg on children’s chest can prevent them from getting summer diseases”, parents will prepare boiled eggs and put them in a bag before hanging them on their child’s chest. When at school, children gather together to play egg competitions by hitting each other’s eggs in pairs and the one whose egg is not broken wins.
1.People believe that if one is weighed on Start of Summer, he or she will ________.
A.have a good harvest B.have respect for god
C.be fortunate D.suffer illness
2.Which tradition is particularly designed for children?
A.Greeting Start of Summer B.Checking one’s weight
C.Eating eggs D.Egg Competitions
3.What is the difference between the tradition “Greeting Start of Summer” and the other three?
A.It is very old. B.It has nothing to do with health.
C.It was only popular in Zhou Dynasty. D.It is organized by the emperor.
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As the summer time approaches, more and more commercials and advertisements can be seen on the mass media encouraging students to join English study tours abroad. The purpose of these tours is to provide students with an opportunity to learn English in a native speaking environment and use English in real situations. Parents always believe that their children will automatically speak good English after attending these study tours. However, for me, as an English major and former participant of many English study tours, I find these summer tours ineffective.
Parents who send their children abroad for a summer to study English usually believe that the native speaking environment, including the courses, teachers, and host families, can help their children to learn English better. This might be true if the students really study hard and they really get an all-English environment. But the fact is that, most of the time, the tour part is more important than the study part. Although these tours take place in foreign countries, students are rarely exposed in an all-English environment. You will find that, in the morning classes, Taiwanese students would like to stick together and speak Chinese with each other, even though there are some students from other countries. In the afternoon, the students go on a sightseeing excursion with their companions from Taiwan; they speak Chinese of course. In the evening, when students return to the host families, they would stay in their room and share the day with their roommate, another Taiwanese student. People who speak the same language with you is like a log（原木）in the ocean when living in a foreign country where you can not express yourself well, so that you would naturally stick with them. This is especially true with children.
Another unrealistic expectation parents have for these tours is that the experience of living abroad can make their children more independent and mature. However, maturity does not come overnight. It takes time and practice. The most important of all is that they need a good mentor（顾问）. None of these exist in the study tours.
1.Which of the following is the most important thing for children who study in an English environment according to the writer?
A. Host families. B. Hard work. C. Courses. D. Teachers.
2.The underlined word “mature” in the last paragraph probably means .
A. active B. free C. outgoing D. grown-up
3.What’s the author’s attitude towards the English study tours abroad?
A. Doubtful. B. Negative. C. Positive. D. Neutral.
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Last summer, more than 12,000 fans packed London's Wembley Arena. Thousands more watched online. They shouted and cheered. Were they watching soccer? No, they were watching esports, or competitive PC gaming.
Millions of people in the United Kingdom play PC games for fun. Some of them have become professionals, playing games as their full-time job. The prize at the Wembley event totaled 3 million pounds.
It's not easy being a professional gamer, though. They practice for 10 or more hours a day, five or six days a week. They do exercises like typing something and then trying to type it faster and faster. They also study videos of other players and plan ways to beat them.
Many people who play games also enjoy watching them. They often watch games on video sites like Twitch and YouTube, and in the UK there's even a TV channel showing esports 24 hours a day. Matches can be exciting to watch. Just like in other sports, there are close games, last-minute victories and creative strategies. Sometimes online viewers can interact with the players through instant messaging. For example, some pros (支持者) rename characters in the game with the names of their biggest supporters.
But are esports really sports? Are the players athletes? It's easy to say, ''No way. '' After all, professional gamers don't need to run, jump or throw a ball. At the moment, the UK government classifies esports as a kind of game, not as a sport.
But many people think that esports are sports. They say that players do need physical skills, especially hand-eye coordination, quick reflexes (反应能力), accuracy and timing. If darts (掷镖游戏) and snooker (斯诺克) are classified as sports, then perhaps esports should be too. In fact, the governments of China and South Korea do classify esports as sports, and pro gamers will soon be able to compete for medals at the 2022 Asian Games.
For many esports fans and players, though, the most important thing is that esports are growing in popularity and prestige (声望). If esports are not important at the moment, they probably will be soon.
1.What are the first four paragraphs mainly about?
A.The fun of playing esports.
B.The popularity of esports in the UK.
C.How to start a career as a professional esports gamer.
D.How esports are different from traditional sports.
2.According to the text, why do some people believe esports are sports?
A.It takes players time and energy to learn them.
B.They excite people as much as other sports do.
C.They share rules and strategies with other sports.
D.Players need to develop physical skills to perform well.
3.What is the author's attitude toward the future of esports?
A.Optimistic. B.Negative.
C.Doubtful. D.Unconcerned.
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For more and more young Chinese professionals, the first day back at work after the Lunar New Year holiday is the day they quit.
The period after the Lunar New Year holiday, also known as Spring Festival, often sees Chinese workers on the move. This year, the number looking for new opportunities is supposed to be especially high.
Mr. Zhu, a 27-year-old Beijing native, is one of the young workers looking for a better deal. “Salary is a big concern for me and I need a job that pays more, and my department can’t provide good career development for me,” he said.
An online survey by Zhaopin.com, a leading job-hunting website, provides further details on why China’s young white-collar workers are so keen to move on.
Low salaries are the biggest concern for 62% of the job-hunters, and overtime and a wide mismatch between low salaries and high housing costs are also the complaints. Two-thirds of them said they had to work at home after office hours, and a full 95% said they felt they were under heavy pressure because of the housing payment or rent.
The survey also found that what was seen as a “good job” has changed. For the generation born in the 1970s, high salary and status is the key. For the generation born after 1980, work-life balance and respect in the office are also important.
Zhao Bin, a 28-year-old woman who earns over 7,000 yuan a month working at a public relations company in Shanghai, said she would wait until the Lunar New Year to change her job. “My salary is OK for me, but I am working like crazy. So I want to find something comfortable, like being an English teacher in training schools.”
1.Mr. Zhu is looking for a new job because ________.
A. he was fired before the Lunar New Year holiday
B. he was promised a better job
C. he wants a job better in salary and in development
D. he was advised to do so
2.Which of the following can best take the place of the underlined words “a wide mismatch”?
A. a big gap B. a lost game
C. a hot debate D. a failed marriage
3.The writer uses the example of Zhao Bin to prove that ________.
A. salary is the first concern for people who change jobs
B. young people are under pressure of high housing prices
C. young people tend to value work-life balance
D. teacher has become a good job for Chinese youth
4.The article is intended to ________.
A. encourage Chinese white-collar workers to change jobs
B. present a social phenomenon and explain its causes
C. carry out an online survey to readers
D. compare different reasons why people quit jobs
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As more and more people speak the global languages of English, Chinese, Spanish, and Arabic, other languages are rapidly disappearing. In fact, half of the 6,000--7,000 languages spoken around the world today will likely die out by the next century, according to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).
In an effort to prevent language loss, scholars from a number of organizations--UNESCO and National Geographic among them--have for many years been documenting dying languages and the cultures they reflect.
Mark Turin, a scientist at the Macmillan Centre Yale University, who specializes in the languages and oral traditions of the Himalayas, is following in that tradition. His recently published book, A Grammar of Thangmi with an Ethnolinguistic Introduction to the Speakers and Their Culture, grows out of his experience living, working, and raising a family in a village in Nepal.
Documenting the Thangmi language and culture is just a starting point for Turin, who seeks to include other languages and oral traditions across the Himalayan reaches of India, Nepal, Bhutan, and China. But he is not content to simply record these voices before they disappear without record.
At the University of Cambridge Turin discovered a wealth of important materials-including photographs, films, tape recordings, and field notes--which had remained unstudied and were badly in need of care and protection.
Now, through the two organizations that he has founded–the Digital Himalaya Project and the World Oral Literature Project--Turin has started a campaign to make such documents, for the world available not just to scholars but to the younger generations of communities from whom the materials were originally collected. Thanks to digital technology and the widely available Internet, Turin notes, the endangered languages can be saved and reconnected with speech communities.
1.Many scholars are making efforts to ______.
A. promote global languages
B. set up language research organizations.
C. search for language communities
D. rescue disappearing languages
2.What does “that tradition’ in Paragraph 3 refer to?
A. Telling stories about language users
B. Writing books on language teaching.
C. Having full records of the languages
D. Living with the native speaker.
3.What is Turin’s book based on?
A. The cultual studies
B. The documents available at Yale.
C. His language research in Bhutan.
D. His personal experience in Nepal.
4.Which of the following best describe Turin’s work?
A.Write, sell and donate.
B. Collect, protect and reconnect.
C. Record, repair and reward.
D. Design, experiment and report.
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More and more Chinese people follow the practice ______ they will travel to various scenic spots to enjoy the scenery in their leisure time.
A．whether B．which C．where D．that
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The Summer Palace is really beautiful. In fact I doubt whether China has ________ park.
A. a more beautiful B. a most beautiful
C. the most beautiful D. a beautiful
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The summer is so hot and sticky, why would we want to sweat even more by exercising? Or is it just I who think like that? Sweat and clothes sticking to our bodies as we move make exercise seem rather uncomfortable. What can be done to fix it?
Researchers at MIT have come up with a solution. They’ve developed a workout suit with flaps that open as the wearer begins sweating. As the person cools off, the flaps shrink until they assume their original position.
Sounds cool, sounds practical. These flaps are lined with live, microbial ( 微生物的)cells. These cells can detect when the body is heating up too much, and in response, expand. It’s just as if they were working within any other organism, recognizing patterns of heating and cooling, then responding appropriately to maintain body temperature. It seems kind of strange to have living cells (that aren’t your own) on you, right? Not to fear, these cells have been believed safe. Plus, there’s a material in the suit that helps the flaps/cells hover ever so slightly above the exerciser's skin. The flaps start opening as soon as people start feeling warm and sweaty, and the bit of space between the suit and the skin helps develop that feeling of cool and refreshing air as they move. For more information about flaps, click here.
According to Gadgetify.com, researchers have also been working to apply this technology to running shoes as well. Moisture-responsive workout clothing has the potential to revolutionize sport fashion industry. People can stay drier, cooler and fresher at the end of the workout, which sounds better than leaving the gym with a trail of sweat and a red face. It’s possible that the comfort of these suits can make people enjoy exercising more and exercise with more intensity.
1.What’s the purpose of the first paragraph?
A.To introduce the topic. B.To show his dislike of summer.
C.To give an example. D.To tell of his dream.
2.What can’t be learned from the passage?
A.When a person doesn’t sweat, the flaps will come to its original position.
B.The flaps themselves can float slightly around the exerciser’s skin.
C.When a person sweats, the flaps will expand.
D.The flaps are essential to cooling exercisers down.
3.What’s mainly talked about in the last paragraph?
A.The influence of the technology. B.The efficiency of the technology.
C.Different reviews on the technology. D.Author’s attitude to the technology.
4.Where does the essay come from?
A.Magazine B.Newspaper
C.Brochure D.Website