“If you talk to the plants, they will grow faster and the effect is even better if you’re a woman.” Researchers at Royal Horticultural Society carried out an experiment to find that the voice of a woman gardener makes plants grow faster.
The experiment lasted a month and by the end of the study scientists managed to discover that tomato plants grew up two inches taller when women gardeners talked to them instead of male.
Sarah Darwin was the one making the plants the best growth. Her voice was the most “inspiring” for plants than those of nine other gardeners when reading a passage from The Origin of Species. The great-great-granddaughter of the famous botanist （植物学家）Charles Darwin found that her plant grew about two inches taller than the plant of the best male gardener.
Colin Crosbie, Garden Superintendent at RHS, said that the finding cannot yet be explained.He says that women have a greater range of pitch and tone（音高和音色）which might have a certain effect on the sound waves that reach the plant. “Sound waves are an environmental effect just like rain or light ,”said Mr Grosbie.
The study began in April at RHS Garden Wisley in Survey. Scientists started with open auditions(听力) for the people who were asked to record passages from John Wyndham's The Day of the Triffids, Shakespeare’s A Midsummer's Night Dream and Darwin's The Origin of Species.
Afterwards researchers selected a number of different voices and played them to 10 tomato plants during a period of a month. Each plant had headphones connected to it. Through the headphones the sound waves could hit the plants. It was discovered that plants that “listened” to female voices grew taller by an inch in comparison to plants that heard male voices.What does the passage talk about?
| A．Plants enjoy men’s voices than women’s. |
| B．A science experiment in a museum. |
| C．Voice’s influence on plant growing. |
| D．Strange findings at Royal Horticultural Society. |
What does the underlined sentence in paragraph 4 mean?
| A．Plants need sound as well as rain and light. |
| B．Sound is basic for the plant to grow. |
| C．Sound has a good effect as rain or light does. |
| D．Plants can’t live without sound, rain or light. |
What can we learn from the passage?
| A．The experiment ended in May. |
| B．Scientist can explain the findings clearly. |
| C．Plants enjoy listening to the passages from famous works. |
| D．The findings are of great importance to human beings. |
Enter a typical high school, and the first thing you see is the front office， where the principal dwells and grades are stored. The front office also reinforces familiar hierarchy(等级制度): principal at the top, teachers in the middle, kids on the bottom, sitting with hands folded at their desks.
Now, imagine a school where the organizational structure is completely flat. At the New Country School in Henderson, Minn, there is no front office. Visitors are immediately embraced by an airy atrium that is the centerpiece of this one-room schoolhouse. And all around the room, 124 students sit at desks — real office desks — working at their own personal computers on their own projects.
When Dee Thomas and her colleagues got together 15 years ago to design a new high school, they knew there was one thing that had to go: The bell. "You don't go into your job in the morning and say, 'OK, for the first 45 minutes of my job, I'm going to do the math part.' And then a bell goes off, and you do the social history part of your job. You don't do that," Thomas said.
There are no teachers at New Country. Every few weeks, students must present projects they've been working on to the rest of the school community. To prepare for their presentations, they gather at tables in the middle of the school atrium and present their work to their "advisers."
Kids at New Country test better than their peers on the state tests and on the pre-college ACT. The school sends 90 percent of its graduates to college. But that doesn't tell the whole story. New Country struggles to keep its seniors from leaving. The school's senior project is demanding — 300 hours of work.
But for some students, New Country offers a rare alternative, a choice they can't find anywhere else. And the school is constantly visited by educators from around the world looking for new ideas. That's the foundation of efforts to reform American high schools today — that there's a need to experiment with an institution that is failing millions of studentsThe author mentioned the typical high school in the first paragraph ___________.
A. to tell us what the typical high school is like in USA.
B. to present a sharp contrast with the experimental school, New Country.
C. to introduce the topic, New Country, of the passage.
D. to call on students to register in the typical high schoolThe following statements about New Country are all true except________.
| A．New Country students sit in an open environment that looks a lot like a typical office. |
| B．Students consult with "advisers", who "teach" in the traditional sense. |
| C．No bells in New Country, students choose how to spend their time. |
| D．No traditional classes, students work on projects they select themselves. |
Compared with typical high school, New Country is well received for its_________.
| A．high test scores | B．alternative |
| C．comfortable conditions | D．teaching methods |
The passage mainly tells us __________.
| A．experimental school gets rid of classes and teachers. |
| B．typical high school and experimental School. |
| C．new schools in future in America. |
| D．education reform in America. |
At the beginning of my 8:00 a.m. class one Monday at UNLV（拉斯维加斯内华达大学）, I cheerfully asked my students how their weekend had been. One young man said that his weekend had not been very good. The young man then proceeded to ask me why I always seemed to be so cheerful.
His question reminded me of something I’d read somewhere before: “Every morning when you get up, you have a choice about how you want to approach life that day,” I said to the young man. “I choose to be cheerful.”
“Let me give you an example,” I continued. “In addition to teaching here at UNLV, I also teach out at the community college in Henderson. One day a few weeks ago I drove to Henderson. I exited the freeway and turned onto College Drive. But just then my car died. I tried to start it again, but the engine wouldn’t turn over. So I put my flashers on, grabbed my books, and marched down the road to the college.”
“As soon as I got there, the secretary in the Provost’s office asked me what had happened. ‘This is my lucky day’, I replied, smiling.”
“Your car breaks down and today is your lucky day?” She was puzzled, “What do you mean?”
“I live seventeen miles from here. I replied. My car could have broken down anywhere along the freeway. It didn’t. Instead, it broke down in the perfect place: off the freeway, within walking distance of here. I’m still able to teach my class, and I’ve been able to arrange for the tow truck to meet me after class. If my car was meant to break down today, it couldn’t have been arranged in a more convenient fashion.”If you want to be cheerful you should ___________.
| A．try to succeed in doing everything | B．try to please your boss every day |
| C．earn a lot of money by working | D．choose to be cheerful every day |
The underlined phrase “turn over” in the third paragraph means “________”
| A．roll over | B．work normally | C．stopped suddenly | D．move around |
According to this passage we can infer that the teacher’s car broke down ____.
| A．near UNLV | B．along the highway |
| C．near Henderson | D．at the community college |
Which one of the following is TRUE?
| A．The teacher taught not only at UNLV but also at the community college. |
| B．That was the teacher’s lucky day because the teacher liked walking. |
| C．The teacher always hoped that the car would break down often. |
| D．The young man was sad because his car broke down. |
Recently some American scientists have given a useful piece of advice to people in industrialized nations．They say people should eat more of the same kind of food eaten by humans living more than 10,000 years ago．
The scientists say that the human life has changed greatly．Our bodies have not been able to deal with these changes in lifestyle and this had led to new kinds of sicknesses． So they are called "diseases of civilization"．Many cancers and diseases of the blood system are examples of such diseases.
Scientists noted that people in both the Old Stone Age and the New Stone Age enjoyed very little alcohol or tobacco, probably none． However, a change in food is one of the main differences between life in ancient times and that of today.
Stone Age people hunted wild animals for their meat, which had much less fat than domestic ones．They ate a lot of fresh wild vegetables and fruits．They did not have milk or any other dairy products, and they made very little use of grains． We eat six times more salt than our ancestors．We eat more sugar．We eat twice as much fat but only one third as much protein and much less vitamin C.
But scientists say that we would be much healthier if we eat much the same way the ancient people did, cutting the amount of fatty, salty and sweet food.
| A．Stone Age people lived a simple life. B．But today, we enjoy eating a lot of these. C．In that case, they would live much healthier. D．Ancient people also got lots of physical exercise. E．These new sicknesses were not known in ancient times. F．People today probably don't want to live like our ancestors. G．Modern people used to suffer from "diseases of civilization". |
Man has always wanted to fly. Some of the greatest men in history have thought about the problem. One of these, for example, was the great Italian artist, Leonardo da Vinci. In the sixteenth century he made designs for machines that could fly. But they were never built.,
Throughout history, other less famous men have wanted to fly. An example was a man in England 800years ago. He made a pair of wings from chicken feathers. Then he fixed them to his body and jumped into the air from a tall building. He did not fly very far. He fell to the ground and broke every bone in his body.
The first real step took place in France in 1783. Two brothers, the Mongolfiers, made a very large “hot air balloon”. They knew that hot air rises. Why not fill a balloon with it? The balloon was made of cloth and paper. In September of that year, the King and Queen of France came to see the balloon. They watched it carry the very first air passengers into the sky. The passengers were a sheep and a chicken. We do not know how they felt about the trip. But we do know that the trip lasted 8 minutes and that the animals landed safely. Two months later, two men did the same thing. They rose above Paris in a balloon of the same kind. Their trip lasted twenty-five minutes and they traveled about 8 kilometers. Leonardo da Vinci .
| A．said that man would fly in the sky one day |
| B．built a kind of machine which never flew |
| C．drew many beautiful pictures of the birds |
| D．made designs of flying machines |
Eight hundred years ago an Englishman .
| A．made a kind of flying machine |
| B．tried to fly with wings made of chicken feathers |
| C．wanted to build a kind of balloon |
| D．tried to fly on a large bird |
In fact, the Englishman who tried to fly .
| A．lost his life | B．flew only 8 minutes |
| C．was not wounded | D．succeeded in flying |
The very first air passengers in the balloon were .
| A．the King and Queen | B．two Frenchmen |
| C．two animals | D．the Mongolfiers |
Some people are pessimistic(悲观的)when they think about the future. They say that, a hundred years from now, we will have used up most of the earths resources. We will have made our seas so dirty that we will not be able to eat fish from them. There will be so many people in the world that we will have to use all the countryside for housing; there will be no farmland left.
Other people have a different idea about the future. In their view, the city of the future will be a huge pyramid-shaped(金字塔形的) building, which will be floating on the surface of the sea. About 5,000 families will live there, and there will also be schools, shops in it.
In a hundred years’ time, people will not need to use oil. They will heat their homes with power from the sun.
Think of space. Perhaps a station will be set up on the moon; people will be able to visit the moon as tourists. They may even spend their holidays in space, travelling from planet to planet.
What an interesting picture!
Many people don't think about the future. “I don't care. I’ll be dead. ”they say. But it is our duty to care because the world of a hundred years’ time will be the world of our children’s and their children after them. How many viewpoints are discussed here about the future?
| A．Two | B．Three | C．Four | D．Five |
In the pessimistic view, people will in a hundred years ’time.
| A．have to use power from the sea |
| B．have to live on the moon |
| C．be able to grow food on the sea |
| D．find it difficult to live on the earth |
Where will people live in the future in the optimistic view?
| A．On the moon | B．On the sea | C．In pyramids | D．On other planets |
The writer of the article seems to agree .
| A．with those who look at the bright side of the future |
| B．with those who take a pessimistic view about the future |
| C．with those who won’t trouble their heads about the future |
| D．to none of these viewpoints |
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