The traditional tent cities at festivals such as Glastonbury may never be the same again. In a victory of green business that is certain to appeal to environmentally-aware music-lovers, a design student is to receive financial support to produce eco-friendly tents made of cardboard that can be recycled after the bands and the crowds have gone home.

Major festivals such as Glastonbury throw away some 10,000 abandoned tents at the end of events each year. For his final year project at the University of the West of England, James Dunlop came up with a material that can be recycled. And to cope with the British summer, the cardboard has been made waterproof.

Taking inspiration from a Japanese architect, who has used cardboard to make big buildings including churches, Mr. Dunlop used cardboard material for his tents, which he called Myhabs.

The design won an award at the annual New Designers Exhibition after Mr. Dunlop graduated from his product design degree and he decided to try to turn it into a business.

To raise money for the idea, he toured the City’s private companies which fund new business and found a supporter in the finance group Mint. He introduced his idea to four of Mint’s directors and won their support. Mint has committed around ??500,000 to MyHab and taken a share of 30 per cent in Mr. Dunlop’s business. The first Myhabs should be tested at festivals this summer, before being marketed fully next year.

Mr. Dunlop said that the design, which accommodates two people, could have other uses, such as for disaster relief and housing for the London Olympics.

For music events, the cardboard houses will be ordered online and put up at the sites by the Myhab team before the festival-goers arrive and removed by the company afterwards. They can be personalized and the company will offer reductions on the expense if people agree to sell exterior (外部的) advertising space.

The biggest festivals attract tens of thousands of participants, with Glastonbury having some 150,000 each year. Altogether there are around 100 annual music festivals where people camp in the UK. The events are becoming increasingly environmentally conscious.

“Eco-friendly tents” in paragraph 1 refer to tents _______.

   A. economically desirable       B. favorable to the environment

   C. for holding music performances D. designed for disaster relief

Mr. Dunlop established his business ______.

   A. independently with an interest-free loan from Mint

   B. with the approval of the City’s administration

   C. in partnership with a finance group

   D. with the help of a Japanese architect

It is implied in the passage that _______.

   A. the weather in the UK is changeable in summer

   B. most performances at British festivals are given in the open air

   C. the cardboard tents produced by Mr. Dunlop can be user-tailored

D. cardboard tents can be easily put up and removed by users.

The passage is mainly concerned with ______.

A. an attempt at developing recyclable tents

B. some efforts at making full use of cardboards

C. an unusual success of a graduation project

   D. the effects of using cardboard tents on music festivals


E
“A good book for children should simply be a good book in its own right,” says Mollie Hunter. Born and brought up near Edinburgh, Mollie has devoted her talents to writing primarily for young people. She firmly believes that there is always and should always be a wider audience for any good book whatever its main market is. In Mollie's opinion it is necessary to make full use of language and she enjoys telling a story, which is what every writer should be doing. “If you aren't telling a story, you're a very dead writer indeed,” she says. With the chief function of a writer being to entertain, Mollie is indeed an entertainer. “I have this great love of not only the meaning of language but of the music of language,” she says. “This love goes back to early childhood. I've told stories all my life. I had a school teacher who used to ask us what we would like to be when we grew up and, because my family always had dogs, and I was very good at handling them, I said I wanted to work with dogs, and the teacher always said ‘Nonsense, Mollie, dear, you’ll be a writer.’ So finally I thought that this woman must have something, since she was a good teacher and I decided when I was nine that I would be a writer.”
This childhood intention is described in her novel, A Sound of Chariots, which although written in the third person is clearly autobiographical and gives a picture both of Mollie's ambition and her struggle towards its achievement. Thoughts of her childhood inevitably(不可避免地)brought thoughts of the time when her home was still a village with buttercup meadows and strawberry fields—sadly now covered with modern houses.“I was once taken back to see it and I felt that somebody had lain dirty hands all over my childhood. I'll never go back,”she said. “Never.”“When I set one of my books in Scotland,”she said,“I can recall my romantic (浪漫的) feelings as a child playing in those fields, or watching the village blacksmith at work. And that's important, because children now know so much so early that romance can't exist for them, as it did for us.”
57. What does Mollie Hunter feel about the nature of a good book?
A. It should not aim at a narrow audience.
B. It should not be attractive to young readers.
C. It should be based on original ideas.
D. It should not include too much conversation.
58. In Mollie Hunter's opinion, which of the following is one sign of a poor writer?
A. Being poor in life experience.        B. Being short of writing skills.
C. The weakness of description.           D. The absence of a story.
59. What do we learn about Mollie Hunter as a young child?
A. She didn't expect to become a writer.         B. She didn't enjoy writing stories.
C. She didn't have any particular ambitions.   D. She didn't respect her teacher's views.
60. What's the writer's purpose in this text?
A. To describe Mollie Hunter's most successful books.
B. To share her enjoyment of Mollie Hunter's books.
C. To introduce Mollie Hunter's work to a wider audience.
D. To provide information for Mollie Hunter's existing readers.

Everyone knows about straight-A students. We see them frequently in TV situation comedies and in movies like Revenge (报复) of the Nerds. They get high grades, all right, but only by becoming dull laborers, their noses always stuck in a book. They are not good at social communication and look clumsy while doing sports.
How, then, do we account for Domenica Roman or Paul Melendres? Roman is on the tennis team at Fairmont Senior High School. She also sings in the choral group, serves on the student council and is a member of the mathematics society. For two years she has maintained A’s in every subject. Melendres, a freshman at the University of New Mexico, was student-body president at Valley High School in Albuquerque. He played soccer and basketball well, exhibited at the science fair, and meanwhile worked as a reporter on a local television station. Being a speech giver at the graduation ceremony, he achieved straight A’s in his regular classes, plus bonus points for A’s in two college-level courses.
How do super-achievers like Roman and Melendres do it? Brains aren’t the only answer. “Top grades don’t always go to the brightest students,” declares Herbert Walberg, a professor of education at the University of Illinois at Chicago, who has conducted major studies on super-achieving students. “Knowing how to make full use of your innate (天生的) abilities counts for more. Much more.”
In fact, Walberg says, students with high IQ sometimes don’t do as well as classmates with lower IQ. For them, learning comes too easily and they never find out how to get down. Hard work isn’t the whole story, either. “It’s not how long you sit there with the books open,” said one of the many-A students we interviewed. “It’s what you do while you’re sitting.” Indeed, some of these students actually put in fewer hours of homework time than their lower-scoring classmates.
The kids at the top of the class get there by mastering a few basic techniques that others can readily learn.
【小题1】 What can we conclude from the first paragraph?

A.Most TV programs and films are about straight-A students.
B.People have unfavorable impression on straight-A students.
C.Everyone knows about straight-A students from TV or films.
D.Straight-A students are well admired by people in the society.
【小题2】 Some students become super-achievers mainly because ________.
A.they are born cleverer than others B.they work longer hours at study
C.they make full use of their abilities D.they know the shortcut to success
【小题3】 What will be talked about after the last paragraph?
A.The interviews with more students. B.The role IQ plays in learning well.
C.The techniques to be better learners. D.The achievements top students make.

Shakespeare, more perhaps than any other writer, made full use of the greatest resources of the English Language.Most of us use about five thousand words in our normal employment of English; Shakespeare in his works used about twenty-five thousand! There is probably no better way for a foreigner to appreciate the richness and variety of the English language than by studying the various ways in which Shakespeare uses it.Such a study is well worth the effort, even though some aspects of English usage, and the meaning of many words, have changed since Shakespeare’s day.

         However, it is surprising that we should know comparatively little about the life of the greatest English author.We know that Shakespeare was born in 1564 in Stratford-on-Avon, and that he died there in 1616.He almost certainly attended the Grammar School in the town, but of this we cannot be sure.We know he was married there in 1582 to Anne Hathaway and that he had three children.We know that he spent much of his life in London writing his masterpieces.But this is almost all that we do know.

         However, what is important about Shakespeare’s life is not its incidental details but its products, the plays and the poems.For many years scholars have been trying to add a few facts about Shakespeare’s life to the small number we already possess and for an equally long time critics have been theorizing about the plays.Sometimes, indeed, it seems that the poetry of Shakespeare will disappear under the great mass of comment that has been written upon it.

         Fortunately this is not likely to happen.Shakespeare’s people have long delighted not just the English but lovers of literature everywhere, and will continue to do so after the scholars and critics and all their works have been forgotten.

1.This passage is about         

A. the great length of each chapter

B. the great varieties in writing styles

C. the richness of the content in Shakespeare’s works

D. the rich English language used by Shakespeare in his works

2. According to the writer, which of the following remains uncertain about Shakespeare?

A. His date of birth

B. His marriage

C. His life in the Grammar School

D. His date of death

3.It can be inferred from Para 3 that           

A. not all the comments on Shakespeare’s works have produced good effects

B. scholars have successfully collected facts about Shakespeare’s life

C. critics are more interested in Shakespeare’s play than his poetry

D. the details of Shakespeare’s life are more important than his literary works

4. What does the last sentence in Para 3 mean ?

A. People don’t think the poetry of Shakespeare good any more.

B. People pay more attention to the comment than the poetry of Shakespeare.

C. People can’t see the poetry of Shakespeare any more.

D. The comment is printed on the poetry of Shakespeare.

 

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