Chocolate is good for your heart, skin and brain. Usually, people think that chocolate is bad for their health. They describe chocolate as “something to die for” or say “death by chocolate”. Now they should bite their tongues! Evidence(证据) is showing that some kinds of chocolate are actually good for you in the following ways:
A happier heart
Scientists at Harvard University recently examined 136 studies on cocoa—the main ingredient in chocolate and found that it does seem to strengthen the heart. Studies have shown heart benefits from increased blood flow. These benefits are the result of cocoa’s chemicals, which seem to prevent both cell damage and inflammation(炎症).
Better blood pressure
If yours is high, chocolate may help. Jeffrey Blumberg from Tufts University recently
found that people with high blood pressure who ate 3.5 ounces of dark chocolate
per day for two weeks their blood pressure drop quickly.
Muscle magic
Chocolate milk may help you recover after a hard workout(锻炼). In a small study at Indiana University, people who drank chocolate milk between workouts did better on a tiredness test than those who had some sports drinks.
Better for your skin. German researchers gave 24 women a half-cup of special cocoa every day. After three months, the women’s skin was moister(滑润的)and smoother. The research shows that chocolate helps protect and increase blood flow to the skin, improving its appearance.
Brain gains
It sounds almost too good to be true, but research suggests that chocolate may improve your memory, attention span, reaction time, and problem-solving by increasing blood flow to the brain. Which of the following is wrong?
| A．Coca’s chemicals can prevent both cell damage and inflammation. |
| B．Chocolate may help you lower your blood pressure. |
| C．People early know chocolate is good for their health. |
| D．Chocolate may improve your memory, attention span, reaction time, and problem-solving. |
What’s the meaning of the underlined sentence in the fourth paragraph?
| A．Sports drinks are better than chocolate milk. |
| B．Sports drinks can make people easy to be tired. |
| C．Drinking milk can keep you energetic at work. |
| D．We should drink chocolate milk between times when we work hard. |
What’s the main idea of the text?
| A．Chocolate, a Healthy Food | B．More Chocolate, Less Health |
| C．Chocolate and Blood Pressure | D．Advice on Eating Chocolate |
What’s the meaning of “bite their tongues” in the first paragraph?
| A．Think of it. | B．Speak up. | C． Stop talking | D．Listen to it |
The National Gallery
Description:
The National Gallery is the British national art museum built on the north side of Trafalgar Square in London. It houses a diverse collection of more than 2,300 examples of European art ranging from 13th-century religious paintings to more modern ones by Renoir and Van Gogh. The older collections of the gallery are reached through the main entrance while the more modern works in the East Wing are most easily reached from Trafalgar Square by a ground floor entrance.
Layout:
The modern Sainsbury Wing on the western side of the building houses 13th- to 15th-century paintings, and artists include Duccio, Uccello, Van Eyck, Lippi, Mantegna, Botticelli and Memling.
The main West Wing houses 16th-century paintings, and artists include Leonardo da Vinci, Cranach, Michelangelo, Raphael, Bruegel, Bronzino, Titan and Veronese.
The North Wing houses 17th-century paintings, and artists include Caravaggio, Rubens, Poussin, Van Dyck, Velazquez, Claude and Vermeer.
The East Wing houses 18th- to early 20th-century paintings, and artists include Canaletto, Goya, Turner, Constable, Renoir and Van Gogh.
Opening Hours: The Gallery is open every day from 10am to 6pm (Fridays 10am to 9pm) and is free, but charges apply to some special exhibitions.
Getting There: Nearest underground stations: Charing Cross (2-minute walk), Leicester Square (3-minute walk), Embankment (7-minute walk), and Piccadilly Circus (8-minute walk).
| A．The 13th. | B．The 17th. | C．The 18th. | D．The 20th. |
| A．In the East Wing. | B．In the main West Wing. |
| C．In the Sainsbury Wing. | D．In the North Wing. |
| A．Piccadilly Circus | B．Leicester Square |
| C．Embankment | D．Charing Cross |
Teachers and parents usually call attention to the pictures when they read storybooks to pre-school children. But a new study suggests that calling attention to the words and letters on the page may lead to better readers.
The two-year study compared children who were read in this way in class with children who were not. Those whose teachers most often discussed the print showed clearly higher skills in reading, spelling and understanding. These results were found one year and even two years later.
Shayne Piasta, an assistant professor of teaching and learning at Ohio State University, was an author of the study. She says most pre-school teachers would find this method manageable and would need only a small change in the way they teach. They already read story-books in class. The only difference would be increased attention to the printed text. “If you get children to pay attention to letters and words, it makes sense that they will do better at word recognition and spelling.” But she says research suggests that very few parents and teachers do this in a systematic way.
More than 300 children aged four and five were observed in classrooms. They came from poor families and were below average in their language skills. For thirty weeks, the children took part in a program called Project STAR--- Sit Together and Read. The project is based at Ohio State. It tests the short-term and long-term results of reading regularly to pre-school children in their classrooms.
There are different ways that adults can talk to children about print. They can point to a letter and discuss it, and even trace the shape with a finger. They can point out a word and discuss the meaning of the print or how the words tell the story. And they can talk about the organization of the print--- for instance, showing how words are written left to right in English.
| A．More attention is paid to the pictures ,with words and letters being ignored. |
| B．Preference is given to the shape of letters and the organization of the print. |
| C．The focus of the teaching is on bringing them up to be good readers. |
| D．Equal attention is paid to the texts and the pictures. |
| A．Teach children how to draw pictures to get an idea of what they mean. |
| B．Change the way they teach and pay more attention to words and letters. |
| C．Adopt different methods according to the students’ difference in reading skills. |
| D．Read storybooks to children rather than explain the meaning of the pictures. |
| A．Many teachers want to change their way of teaching pre-school children. |
| B．Attention on the pictures has made the children uninterested in reading. |
| C．Project STAR aims to research into the results of reading books to pre-school children in the classroom. |
| D．Teachers are often prevented from taking different approaches to language teaching. |
| A．Fashion. | B．Economy . | C．Entertainment. | D．Education. |
Ann was on her first package trip in Rosas, Spain.
At the hotel, she checked in, and then went to her room to change before dinner. She was just ready to go downstairs when she found that her Spanish money wasn’t in her handbag. She carefully looked in all her luggage, but she couldn’t find it. All she had was a small purse with ten English pound notes in it!
Ann found a place to change her English money. She had very few pesetas(西班牙货币单位), and she would be here for two weeks. On her way back to the hotel, Ann bought some cheese, some bread and some oranges. When she got back, she told the manager that her doctor had told her not to eat Spanish food; she’d just have breakfast each day, as she knew the price of hotels included breakfast.
For the rest of her holiday, Ann swam in the hotel swimming pool, or lay on the beach and got a sunbath. When the other tourists went to interesting places, she always said she wasn’t well. In fact, her holiday wasn’t bad, except that she was always hungry. After all, a piece of fruit for lunch, and bread and cheese for supper isn’t very much.
Late in the afternoon of their last day, a girl, Jane, asked her why she never ate with them in the hotel restaurant. Ann told her about her money problems. Jane looked at her for a minute, and then said, “But didn’t you know? The price of this holiday includes everything!”
| A．a free trip |
| B．a long journey |
| C．a pleasant trip |
| D．a trip that includes the cost of all the tickets and services |
| A．she was afraid that she couldn’t pay for them with her little money |
| B．her doctor told her not to eat them |
| C．she wasn’t well |
| D．she wasn’t hungry |
| A．Because they were good for her health. |
| B．Because she planned to eat them instead of lunch and supper. |
| C．Because she liked them more than dinners in the hotel restaurant. |
| D．Because she is afraid that she couldn’t eat enough in the hotel restaurant. |
| A．Angry. | B．Happy. | C．Surprised. | D．Excited |
At one time or another most farmers have problems with mice. This is especially true for grain farmers. Mice eat a lot of grain. They also carry diseases(疾病), which people can get from eating or touching grain the mice have made dirty. Farmers can use special grain storage buildings or they can kill the mice. However, both methods can be costly. Farmers must buy materials to build the special grain storage buildings or chemical poisons to kill the mice．
Here is a way to kill mice without spending a lot of money. It is a simple but effective kind of mouse trap. The method is first used by some farmers in the west African country of Mali. An agricultural expert in Mali reported about the Mali mouse trap in a magazine. The expert reported that his gardener caught 150 mice in just one night. The gardener used four traps. The trap is easy to make. First, remove the top from a 20 liter metal or plastic container(容器). Put it in a hole in the ground. The top edge of the container should be the level with the surface of the ground. Fill the container with water to within eight centimeters of the top. Add tiny pieces of grain wastes. They should float on the water. Also put some wastes on the ground near the trap. During the night, mice will come out to eat the grain wastes. They will fall into the container and drown. Replace the food in the trap every night．
| A．an agricultural expert in the west Africa |
| B．farmers in the United States |
| C．all American gardener |
| D．farmers in Mali |
| A．A simple and effective method used by farmers to kill mice |
| B．How to kill mice |
| C．Methods used by farmers to kill mice |
| D．Farmers have problems with mice |
| A．A special grain storage building |
| B．Chemical poisons |
| C．A mouse trap |
| D．A hole in the ground |
They say that cats have nine lives but our lazy old cat,PJ,had concurrent(并存的)lives and identities. He became well-known for sleeping around the neighbourhood and used to nap in the spare bedroom of elderly couple who lived three doors up from us.While I wasn’t always aware of all his liaisons, it didn’t matter as long as he always came home at mealtimes.
One day we noticed he had gained weight. We guessed he was enjoying snacks at the local takeaway shop bins and so we began to reduce the amount of his food. He didn’t seem to notice.
Some months later. we invited some new neighbours in for drinks. Not long into the evening, our new neighbor saw PJ sitting proudly on the window ledge. “You’ve got my cat!” She exclaimed, laughing.
We let her down gently, and learnt that at their house, PJ was known as Tiger. Thanks to them, he’d been receiving the royal treatment, including removing small insects from his body by spraying medicine. PJ continued living with us until a new cat and a new dog finally tested his patience. He walked out and was missing for ten days before my husband spotted him near his work. He brought our wandering cat home, but it was clear that PJ wasn’t happy. After shouting at him angrily, I let him out and he never returned.
A few months later, our new neighbour told us she’d seen PJ. It seems that an elderly neighbour had welcomed him into her home, and since taking up residence he’d doubled in size and been given his own sitting – room chair to lie. The two had become very fond of each other, ever since he’d followed her home. What a smart cat.By exclaiming “You’ve got my cat,” the neighbour implied that .
| A．she admitted the eat belonged to that author |
| B．the author had stolen the lovely eat PJ |
| C．she was surprised at seeing the cat there |
| D．she was very angry with the author |
What does the underlined word “He” in Paragraph 4 probably refer to?
| A．The cat PJ | B．the author’s husband |
| C．a new neighbour | D．a neighbour’s husband |
It can be inferred from the passage that .
| A．the cat had visited all the neighbours before leaving |
| B．the author found the cat had gained some weight |
| C．The author couldn’t provide the cat with medical care |
| D．the neighbours loved the cat PJ very much |
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