Short and shy, Ben Saunders was the last kid in his class picked for any sports team. “Football, tennis Cricket—anything with a round ball, I was useless, “he says now with a laugh. But back then he was the object of jokes in school gym classes in England’s rural Devonshire.

It was a mountain bike he received for his 15th birthday that changed him. At first the teen went biking alone in a nearby forest. Then he began to cycle along with a runner friend. Gradually, Saunders set his mind building up his body, increasing his speed, strength and endurance. At age 18, he ran his first marathon.

The following year, he met John Ridgway, who became famous in the 1960s for rowing an open boat across the Atlantic Ocean. Saunders was hired as an instructor at Ridgway’s school of Adventure in Scotland, where he learned about the older man’s cold-water exploits(成就).Intrigued, Saunders read all he could about Arctic explorers and North Pole expeditions, then decided that this would be his future.

Journeys to the Pole aren’t the usual holidays for British country boys, and many peiole dismissed his dream as fantasy. “John Ridgway was one of the few who didn’t say, ‘You are completely crazy, ’”Saunders says.

In 2001, after becoming a skilled skier, Saunders started his first long-distance expedition toward the North Pole. He suffered frostbite, had a closer encounter(遭遇) with a polar bear and pushed his body to the limit.

Saunders has since become the youngest person to ski alone to the North Pole, and he’s skied more of the Arctic by himself than any other Briton. His old playmates would not believe the transformation.

This October, Saunders, 27, heads south to explore from the coast of Antarctica to the South Pole and back, an 1800-mile journey that has never been completed on skis.

The turning point in Saunders’life came when _____

A. he started to play ball games

B. he got a mountain bike at age 15

C. he ran his first marathon at age 18

D. he started to receive Ridgway’s training

We can learn from the text that Ridgway _______.

A. dismissed Saunders’ dream as fantasy

B. built up his body together with Saunders

C. hired Saunders for his cold-water experience

D. won his fame for his voyage across the Atlantic

What do we know about Saunders?

A. He once worked at a school in Scotland.

B. He followed Ridgway to explore the North Pole.

C. He was chosen for the school sports team as a kid.

D. He was the first Briton to ski alone to the North Pole.

The underlined word “Intrigued” in the third paragraph probably means_____.

A. Excited   B. Convinced   C. Delighted    D. Fascinated

It can be inferred tat Saunders’ journey to the North Pole ______.

A. was accompanied by his old playmates

B. set a record in the North Pole expedition

C. was supported by other Arctic explorers

D. made him well-known in the 1960s

The government of Norway is planning to build an unusual storage center on an island in the Arctic Ocean. The place would be large enough to hold about two million seeds. The goal is to present all crops known to scientists. The British magazine New Scientist published details of the plan last month. The structure will be designed to protect the world’s food supply against nuclear war, climate change and other possible threats. It will be built in a mountain on the Norwegian island of Spitsbergen. The mountain is less than one thousand kilometers from the North Pole, the northernmost position on earth.

     An international group called the Global Crop Diversity Trust is working on the project. The director of the group, Cary Fowler, spoke to New Scientist. He said the project would let the world rebuild agriculture if, in his word, “the worst came to the worst”. Norway is expected to start work next year. The project is expected to cost three million dollars. Workers will drill(钻孔) deep in the side of a sandstone mountain. Temperatures in the area never rise above 0??C. The seeds will be protected behind walls a meter thick and high-security door.

     The magazine report says the collection will represent the products of ten thousand years of farming. Most of the seeds at first will e from collections at seed banks in Africa, Asia and Latin America. To last a long time, seeds need to be kept in very low temperatures. Workers will not be present all the time. But they plan to replace the air inside the storage space each winter. Winter temperatures on the island are about eighteen degrees below 0??C. The cold weather would protect the seeds even if the air could not be replaced.

Mr. Fowler says the proposed structure will be the world’s safest gene bank. He says the plant seeds would only be used when all other seeds are gone for some reason. Norway first put forward the idea in the 1980s. But safety concerns delayed the plan. At that time, the Soviet Union was meeting in Rome of the Food and Agriculture Organization.

The project is meant to ______.

    A.increase the world’s food output in the future

    B.carry out some scientific experiments on plant genes

    C.build an exhibition centre of the world’s plant seeds

    D.protect crop seeds from dying out in case of possible disasters

Which of the following statements is TRUE according to the above passage?

    A.The government of Norway will perform the project alone.

    B.Seeds to be collected there were produced ten thousands years ago.

    C.Spitsbergen is chosen because it is free of the nuclear war forever.

    D.Temperature is a major consideration when choosing the storage place.

We can infer from the text that _______.

    A.Norway had meant to build the storage centre about 20 years before.   

B.The storage center will greatly promote world agriculture

    C.People will get newly-developed seeds from the center every year.

    D.There haven’t been any seed storage centres in the world before.

What is probably the best title of the passage?

    A.The Best Place to Store Seeds    

    B.Noah’s Ark(诺亚方舟)of Plant Seeds in Plan

    C.Concerns of World Food Supply  

    D.A New Way to Feed the World

请阅读相关信息(选自Teens 1-3期的文章片段),并找出与之匹配的标题。如选E请涂AB,如选F请涂CD。
【小题1】The question is, how faithful is it to the novel? “Any adaptation of such a classic will meet with criticism. Li’s brave attempt offers a new view of the novel and so encourages us to return to it to experience it again.” Hu Xiaowen, 16, of Shanghai No 3 High School.
【小题2】 In the words of the Chinese saying, it is of greater benefit to travel ten thousand miles than read ten thousand books. The Arctic taught me about the real world and the importance of protecting our environment.” Zhang said.
【小题3】What do dreams mean? Dreams are not always filled with meaning. Sometimes dreams are just your mind playing with thoughts and images from your life, or things you may have read or seen on TV. But at other times, dreams show things that you want to achieve in real life, or things that cause you trouble or stress.
【小题4】 Being pure can be simple, not having complicated thoughts and being inexperienced. However, it doesn’t mean an ignorant or naive person. So, a person is pure in his or her nature if he or she is always enthusiastic and able to deal with difficult matters independently. This purity doesn’t pass with time.” 16-year-old Tan Mengxi of Nanjing said.
【小题5】 Because just thinking a word and not saying it produces the same brain waves, Greger and his team believe that soon they will be able to have a translation machine and voice box that repeats the word a person is thinking.

A.What Makes a Pure Girl?
B.A Chance in a Lifetime.
C.How do Dreams Work.
D.An Intern’s Dream.
E. A Dream We can Love?
F. Speech for the Speechless.

根据短文内容,从短文后的选项中选出能填入空白处的最佳选项。选项中有两项为多余选项。
The First Americans
There was a time long ago when a land bridge connected Asia and North America.The first settlers in North America crossed this land bridge from what is now Siberia to Alaska.The people who made this initial crossing were probably following the animals they used for food.
Finally, the oceans rose and the land bridge between the continents disappeared.The settlers, who I shall call the "First Americans" , could not return to their homeland.  1  
For the next few thousand years, the First Americans moved south and east throughout North and South America.They made the journey all the way from Alaska to the southern tip of South America, a distance of more than 10,000 miles.    2   
In the far north, above the Arctic Circle, the First Americans became hunters of the ocean.  3 __  In the summer, they gathered berries and other plants.In the winter, they stayed in lodges much of the time preparing for the next summer.It was a hard life, but they learned to survive in these terrible conditions.
Farther south, in what is now Arizona, Utah, Colorado, and New Mexico, the First Americans became cliff dwellers.They began by living in caves that already existed in the cliffs.  4  The dwellings they built in many ways resembled today's apartment buildings.
5    They built a system of dams and canals so they could store and use water almost any time of the year.They were so successful that they could raise fruits and vegetables that were not found naturally in the desert.

A.They also discovered foods like corn and potatoes.
B.Along the way, they established many different civilizations.
C.They discovered how to add to the caves by building structures of wood and stone.
D.People living near each other tended to share similar environments and customs.
E. They built boats of animal skins and hunted or fished for their food.
F. They would have to survive in the New World, they had discovered.
G. The First Americans of the Southwest learned to water the desert.

WASHINGTON—Two-thirds of the world’s polar bear population could be gone by 2050 if predictions of melting sea ice hold true, the US Geological Survey reported on Friday.

The fate of polar bears could be even worse than that estimate, because sea ice in the Arctic might be disappearing faster than the available computer models predict, the geological survey said in a report aimed at determining whether the big white bear should be listed as a threatened species.

“There is a definite link between changes in the sea ice and the welfare of polar bears,” said Steve Amstrup, who led the research team. He says Arctic sea ice is already at the lowest this year and is expected to retreat(退却) farther this month.

That means that polar bears—some 16,000 of them -- will disappear by 2050 from parts of the Arctic where sea ice is melting most rapidly, along the north coasts of Alaska and Russia, researchers said in a telephone briefing(简报).

Other polar bears could survive beyond that date but many of those could be gone by 2100, Amstrup said. By this century’s end, the only polar bears left might live in the Canadian Arctic islands and along the west coast of Greenland.

“It is likely to result in loss of approximately two-thirds of the world’s current polar bear population by the mid 21st century,” the report’s executive summary said.

“Because the observed trajectory(轨迹)of Arctic sea ice decline appears to be underestimated by currently available models, this assessment of future polar bear status may be conservative(保守的).”

In January, the US Fish and Wildlife Service proposed listing the polar bear as a threatened species, noting polar bears depend on sea ice as a platform to hunt seals, their main food.

Without enough sea ice, polar bears would be forced onto land, but they are poor hunters once they get out of the water and ice, the researchers said. The bears’ disappearance would probably take place as young cubs(幼兽)failed to survive to adulthood and females were unable to reproduce successfully.

1.What was the US Geological Survey intended to do?

A.To determine whether the polar bear was in danger.

B.To measure how fast the sea ice melts in the Arctic.

C.To check the predictions of the computer models.

D.To find out the exact number of the polar bear.

2.What causes the polar bears to disappear by 2050?

A.The pollution of the Arctic region.           B.The sea ice melting at high speed

C.Fewer food sources being left.             D.The temperature getting colder.

3.The key to preventing polar bears dying out seems to _______________.

A.help young polar bears to survive the cold winter

B.have large number of seals living in the oceans

C.make sure there is enough sea ice in the Arctic

D.provide chances for adult polar bears to reproduce

 

违法和不良信息举报电话:027-86699610 举报邮箱:58377363@163.com

精英家教网