A recent Auburn University study provides some real numbers to back a theory we’ve all known was true for some time—planting a shade tree near your home reduces energy bil
ls significantly in the spring and summer months. The study, conducted in Auburn,
Alabama, included 160 homes with different levels of shade. Each home’s energy usage was monitored and compared to other houses with similar energy— using patterns, size, type of cooling system, etc. Here are some highlights from the study:
Houses with trees on the west side of their home had a “much lower power bill”.
Older homes had the most shade coverage, because people did not use to rely on air conditioning as much to keep them cool.
Children under age 12 consume the most power in a home as they watch television, play games and frequently leave lights on.
Fall and early winter are the perfect seasons to plant a tree. This time of year many nurseries（苗圃）are trying to reduce their inventory of trees heading into the winter, so you may find a deal on trees easily to plant around your lot.
While you have the spade out, consider planting a tree near your outside air conditioning unit. The shade will keep the unit cooler and help it operate more efficiently. Be sure to plant far enough from the unit to allow proper airflow, and account for the tree’s growth over time.
It actually hurts to watch the trees being knocked over when land developers plan neighborhoods be
cause trees could provide much needed shade to new homeowners, reducing their electric bill and the amount of energy they consume. Hopefully this study, and more like it in the future, will encourage developers and builders to plan around trees as much as possible to offer homeowners a shaded lot.
1．What does the passage m
ainly tell us?
A．A new study about planting trees.
B．Planting trees to reduce your power bill.
C．Houses with trees on the west side.
D．Don't cut trees down when planning neighborhoods.
2．The underlined word "inventory" in Paragraph 5 is closest in meaning to ________.
A．invention B．volume C．list D．type
3．According to the passage, ____ might spend more energy cost.
A．houses with trees on the west side of their home
B．older houses with the most shade coverage
C．houses with different levels of shade
D．houses with the children under age 12
4．Which is NOT the benefit of planting a tree near the outside air conditioning unit?
A．The shade will keep the unit much cooler.
B．The shade helps the unit operate more efficiently.
C．The trees stops the unit having proper airflow.
D．The shade prevents the sunlight from shining on the unit.
5．What can we learn from this study?
A．The study is carried out by the students at Auburn University, Alabama.
B．While planning new neighborhoods, developers often cut down the trees there.
C．Houses with trees on the east side of their house had a lower power bill.
D．The study will prevent developers and builders from planning more trees.
Pupils are ordered not to wade into ankle-deep water unless teachers first carry out a full risk assessment and put“proper measures in place”.
Staff are expected to check rivers, ponds and the sea for currents and rocks before allowing children to dip their feet.
Guidance issued to schools warns that any“impromptu (事先无准备的) water-based activities”could pose dangers to children.
The recommendations were outlined in a document-available to all 21,000 schools in England — to help teachers organize more school trips. Advice from the Department for Children, Schools and Families is intended to cut red tape (官样文章) and give staff practical tips.
But the guidance caused argument after teachers were presented with a series of orders surrounding swimming and the use of minibuses.
It said:“Swimming and padding or otherwise entering the waters of river, canal, sea or lake should never be allowed as an impromptu activity. The pleas of young people to bathe — because it is hot weather, for example, should be resisted where bathing has not been prepared for.”
“In-water activities should take place only when a proper risk assessment has been completed and proper measures put in place to control the risks.”
Teachers are urged to check the weather, currents, weeds, rip tides, river or se
a beds and breakwaters before allowing children into the water. No child should be able to swim deeper than waist height, the guidance added.
Margaret Morrissey, from campaign group Parents Outloud, said:“Wading out into the ocean is one thing but there’s nothing wrong with padding where the waves break.”
“Part of children’s learning is to walk along the water’s edge and get your feet wet. There are dangerous currents further out and you stay at the edge.”
She added:“I want to see schools and youth groups taking advantage of opportunities that learning outside the classroom can provide.”
But the Department for Children, Schools and Families said teachers had to plan activities carefully.
“We are not banning padding,”said a spokeswoman.“We have seen cases in the past where things have not been planned and assessed for the risk. Unplanned activities around water can be dangerous.”
67．Guidance issued to schools in England gives the information that _________.
A．school trips to oceans are forbidde
n in the country
B．school swimming pools should be surrounded with fence
C．school staff must plan water-based activities carefully
D．school children shouldn’t have a walk along river banks
68．Advice from the Department for Children, Schools and Families shows us that _________.
A．they are strongly against the guidance
B．they are fond of the outlin
e of the guidance
C．they don’t understand the aim of the guidance
D．they want the guidance to become more useful
69．To the guidance, Margaret Morrissey holds the opinion that _________.
A．oceans are dangerous place for children to visit
B．young people should be encouraged to learn outside
C．children should learn padding in rough ocean alone
D．schools should stop students from walking along beaches
70．Which of the following can be the best title for this passage?
A．No padding on school trips, children told.
B．No walking along the rivers, teachers told.
C．No swimming after school, parents told.
D．No learning out of school, students told.
Watching bison up close is fascinating, like watching a grass fire about to leap out of control. With their huge, wedge-shaped heads and silver-dollar-size brown eyes, the 2,000-pound animals are symbols of another place and time. More than 100 bison now roam the 30,000-acre American Prairie Reserve in eastern Montana — the first time they’ve inhabited that region in a century. Direct descendants of the tens of millions of bison that once populated the Western plains, they represent an epic effort： to restore a piece of America’s prairie to the national grandeur that Lewis and Clark extolled two centuries ago. During that famous expedition across the Western states to the Pacific, the two explorers encountered so many bison that they had to wait hours for one herd to pass.
In order to protect what’s here and reintroduce long-gone wildlife (something the World Wildlife Fund is helping with), the American Prairie Foundation began purchasing land from local ranchers in 2004. It now owns 30,000 acres and has grazing privileges on another 57,000. Its goal over the next 25 years is to assemble three million acres, the largest area of land devoted to wildlife management in the continental United States.
Already, herds of elk, deer, and pronghorn antelope roam the grasslands, where
visitors can camp, hike, and bike. Cottonwoods and willows are thriving along streams, creating habitats for bobcats, beavers, and other animals.
Not everyone shares APF’s vision. Some residents of Phillips County (pop. 3,904) worry that the area could become a prairie Disneyland, overcrowded with tourists. But the biggest obstacle is the ranchers themselves, whose cattle compete with prairie dogs and bison for grass and space.
“People like me have no intention of selling their ranches,”says Dale Veseth, who heads the Ranchers Stewardship Alliance of 35 families in Phillips County and whose family has been ranching here since 1886.“They’ve been a labor of love through the generations.”Instead, he wants APF to pay or subsidize ranchers to raise bison. This would be far less costly for the foundation, he argues, than buying the land directly.
63．If you go to the American Prairie Reserve in eastern Montana, you will see ________.
A．the burning fire moving across the grassland
B．hundreds of bison travelling through the prairie
C．tens of millions of bison occupying the farmland
D．groups of experts examining the dead bison
64．What measures have been taken to protect the wildlife by APF?
A．They have borrowed much money and developed new habitat.
B．They have hired many farmers to raise bison on their farms.
C．They have turned grassland into Disneyland to attract tourists.
D．They have bought large land from farmers for bison to live on.
65．The underlined word“subsidize”in this passage means ________.
A．give money to B．borrow money from
C．provide land to D．exchange land with
66．Which would be the best title for this passage?
A．The exciting scenery in eastern Montana
B．Great changes in raising bison in America
C．The return of the American prairie
D．The challenge in
protecting the grassland
The days of the hunter are almost over in India. This is partly because there is practically nothing left to kill, and partly because some steps have been taken mainly by banning tiger-shooting to protect those animals which still survive.
Some people say that Man is naturally a hunter. I disagree with this view. Surely our earliest forefathers, who at first possessed no weapons, spent their time digging for roots, and were no doubt themselves often hunted by meat-eating animals.
I believe the main reason why the modern hunter kills is that he thinks people will admire his courage in overpowering dangerous animals. Of course, there are some who truly believe that the killing is not really the important thing, and that the chief pleasure lies in the joy of the hunt and the beauty of the wild countryside. There are also those for whom hunting in fact offers a chance to prove themselves and risk death by design; these men go out after dangerous animals like tigers, even if they say they only do it to rid the countryside of a threat. I can respect reasons like these, but they are clearly different from the need to strengthen your high opinion of yourself.
The greatest big-game hunters expressed in their writings something of these finer motives. One of them wrote：
“You must properly respect what you are after and shoot it clearly and on the animal’s own territory (领地).You must fix forever in your mind all the wonders of that particular day. This is better than letting him grow a few years older to be attacked and wounded by his own son and eventually eaten, half alive, by other animals. Hunting is not a cruel and senseless killing — not if you respect the thing you kill, not if you kill to enrich your memories, not if you kill to feed your people.”
I can understand such beliefs, and can compare these hunters with those who hunted lions with spears and bravely caught them by the tail. But this is very different from many tiger-shoots I have seen, in which modern weapons were used. The so-called hunters fired from tall trees or from the backs of trained elephants. Such methods made tigers seem no more dangerous than rabbits.
59．There is no more hunting in India now partly because ________.
A．it is dangerous to hunt there B．hunting is already out of date
C．hunters want to protect animals D．there are few animals left to hunt
60．The author thinks modern hunters kill mainly ________.
A．to make the countryside safe B．to earn people’s admiration
C．to gain power and influence D．to improve their health
61．What do we learn about the big-game hunters?
A．They hunt old animals. B．They mistreat animals.
C．They hunt for food. D．They hunt for money.
62．What is the author’s view on the tiger-shoots he has seen?
A．Modern hunters lack the courage to hunt face-to-face.
B．Modern hunters should use more advanced weapons.
C．Modern hunters like to hunt rabbits instead of tigers.
D．Modern hunters should put their safety first.
Warning： reading too much Cinderella to your daughter may damage her emotional health in later life. A paper to be developed at the international congress of cognitive psychotherapy in Gothenburg suggests a link between the attitudes of women abused by their parents and early exposure to the wrong sort of fairy tales. It says girls who identified with Cinderella, Rapunzel and Beauty in Beauty and the Beast were more likely to say in destructive relationships as adults.
The theory was developed by Susan Darker Smith, a psychotherapist at the University of Derby. She interviewed 67 female abuse survivors and found that 61 put up with severe abuse because they believed they could change their partners with patience, composition and love. The same view was taken by male survivors who had been abused as children. Hardly any of the women in a control group, who had not experienced abuse, thought they could change their partners in this way.
These women and men said they would leave a relationship rather than put up with abuse from a partner. Ms Darker Smith found the abused women were much more likely to identify with Cinderella and other submissive female characters in fairytales, who were later rescued by a stranger prince or hero.
Although most girls heard the stories, damage appeared to be done to those who adopted the characters as role models.“They believe if their love is strong enough they can change their parents’ behaviors,” she said.”Overexposure in children to stories that emphasize the transformational qualities of love may make women believe they can change their partners.” For example, they might never have understood the obvious flaw in the story of Rapunzel, who remained locked in a high tower until rescued by a knight on a white horse, who broke the door down. “The question,”said Ms Darker Smith, “is why she did not break the door down herself.”
55．The passage is especially intended for _________.
A．parents with young daughters
B．girls who like reading fairy stories
C．girls who think they can change their partners
D．parents with grown-up daughters
56．Cinderella, Rapunzel and Beauty in Beauty and the Beast are similar in that _________.
A．they all married some princes B．they all changed their partners with love
C．they were all abused by their partners D．they all put up with abuse
57．Which of the following statements is true of the women in a control group?
A．They don’t believe in fairy tales.
B．They don’t believe in the transformational qualities of love.
C．They have also experienced abuse.
D．They survived abuse.
58．What does the underlined word
“submissive”in the 3rd paragraph probably mean?
A．kind-hearted B．passive C．gentle D．easy-going
第三部分：阅读理解（共20小题;每小题2分, 满分40分）
阅读下列短文，从每篇短文后所给各题的四个选项（A、B、C和D）中，选出最佳选项，并在答题卡上将该项涂黑。
MEXICO CITY： A jetliner from the beach resort of Cancun was briefly hijacked as it landed in Mexico City on Wednesday. The hijackers released all passengers shortly before federal police stormed the plane, and the crew emerged unharmed moments later.
Police, who did not fire a single shot, led as many as
eight handcuffed men away from the airplane, which was isolated at the end of a runway in an area designed for emergencies. The hijackers’ motive was unclear, though Mexican news media initially identified them as Bolivians demanding to speak with Mexican President Felipe Calderon.
US, French and Mexican citizens were among the 112 passengers and crew on Aeromexico Flight 576, according to a US official who had been briefed on the situation. The official was not authorized to discuss the case and spoke on condition of anonymity.
Mexico’s transportation and communications secretary, Juan Molinar, said there was no bomb on the airplane, although some passengers said one of the hijackers held a package that resembled an explosive device, and a bomb squad (拆弹小组) was later seen near the airplane.
He did not immediately identify the hijackers or speculate on their motive.
“Various people who participated in the act have been detained and we are investigating,”Molinar said.
The attorney general’s office said it was opening an investigation into terrorism and kidnapping but did not specify how many people could be charged.
Mexican news media initially reported the hijackers were Bolivian, but Bolivia’s ambassador to Mexico, Jorge Mancilla, said Mexican authorities had no evidence that was the case. Mancilla said sources told him they could be Colombian or Venezuelan. Several passengers told reporters they did not notice a non-Mexican accent.
Passenger Rocio Garcia told the Televisa network that the pilot made an announcement after landing in Mexico City that the airplane was being hijacked. Passengers said the hijackers never communicated with them directly.
“These were scary moments,”she said.
She said she saw one of the hijackers whom she described as a well-dressed, older man.
“He looked fine, like a normal passenger,”she said.
Passenger Daniel Hernandez said he saw a hijacker carrying a Bible.
51．From the first paragraph we can conclude that _________.
A．the hijackers just wanted to play a trick on the police
B．the hijackers didn’t prepare for their action
C．the hijackers surrendered before the police fired
D．the hijackers lost their way at the last moment
52．From what Juan Molinar said we can learn that _________.
A．police were still trying to identify a possible bomb
B．passengers succeeded in stopping the explosion
C．a frightening bomb was found later on the airplane
D．several Mexicans were involved in the hijacking
53．What may be the first step taken when the hijacked plane landed?
A．They gave a sudden attack at the hijackers.
B．They kept the plane away from other planes.
C．They asked the crew to control the hijackers.
D．They abandoned the plane at the end of the runway.
54．The hijackers, as some passengers described, _________.
A．were good at bargaining with the police
B．were all well-dressed American old men
C．all came from Colombia or Venezuela
D．stayed calm and appeared noble, educated
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