The blue tits(山雀) have been inspecting the nest-box again this year. The male is the house-hunter but the female will make the final choice. He lands at the hole and turns his head to expose his white cheeks as a signal to attract the female from where she has been feeding.
Among many birds that nest in holes, the male has a light-coloured patch on its plumage(鸟羽) which acts as signal for drawing the female’s attention to a suitable nesting-place. Unlike the blue tit, the redstart(红尾鸲) may be only the male that strikingly coloured and the female is not beautiful.
A few years ago I was lucky enough to spot a pair of redstarts in action in a Walsh wood. The male was leading an interested female to holes that he had previously(先前) checked out. He sat at the entrance of each hole and put his head on to show off his white forehead, or his head in to reveal(显露) his tail.
If the female failed to react to his visual signals, the male sometimes sang for extra effect, while gliding towards her on spread wings and tail. Once the female accepts by following the male through the hole the displays stop, you must be at the right place at the right time to watch them. How do the blue tits choose their nest?
| A．They choose their nest together. | B．The male chooses their nest. |
| C．The house-hunter chooses their nest. | D．The female chooses their nest. |
The writer was lucky to see ________.
| A．how the male made his tricks |
| B．how an interested female played with the male happily |
| C．what the male displayed and won the female |
| D．that the male tried his best but failed to attract the female |
You can spot a pair of redstarts in a Walsh wood ________.
| A．at any time | B．regularly | C．in April | D．occasionally |
The writer is probably ________.
| A．a bird expert | B．a bird-hunter | C．a bird raiser | D．a scientist |
The Isle of Wight, off the south coast of England, is the best place in Europe for discovering dinosaur bones. Dinosaur Farm Museum was established in 1993. Since then, the museum has introduced the study of old bones to many more people.
What we offer
Visitors can enjoy our displays, or watch us cleaning dinosaur bones and other fossils found on the island’s beaches.
The museum has a variety of different fossils, many of them never displayed to the public before. As more are discovered all the time, you can be sure of seeing something new each time you visit.
We have a free Fossil Identification Service, so you can bring in any fossils you have and find out what they are. In addition, we have a reasonably-priced Museum Shop, where you can buy a souvenir of your visit. You could also bring a picnic and relax in our special picnic area.
Activities
Fossil hunts are organized from the museum and run all year round. Groups of up to 25 are guided on a local beach where they can search for fossils. All these hunts are fully licensed and insured, and guides can help to identify any fossils found and point out things of interest.
Due to the popularity of these hunts, all trips must be booked by a personal visit to Dinosaur Farm Museum.
Did you know…?
The BBC programme “Live from Dinosaur Island” was filmed along the coast here, and Dinosaur Farm Museum was the base for the television crew.
Find out more
Check out our website at www.isleofwight/dinosaurfarm to learn in detail how we dig for dinosaurs. You can also read about the many different kinds of dinosaurs which lived in this area, which was connected to Europe 120 million years ago.Why are there always new fossils to see at the museum?
| A．New fossils are discovered constantly. |
| B．People keep donating fossils to the museum. |
| C．Only a few of the fossils are displayed each day. |
| D．The museum exchanges fossils with other museums. |
Which of the following is free of charge at the museum?
| A．Food for a picnic. |
| B．Attending fossil hunts. |
| C．Having fossils identified. |
| D．A souvenir of the museum. |
One can book a fossil hunt _____.
| A．through a BBC programme |
| B．through the museum’s website |
| C．by making a call to the museum |
| D．by visiting the museum personally |
Shirley Temple, who died on February 10, 2014, was that rare example of a Hollywood child star who, when the cameras stopped rolling, carved out a new career.
For four years, she was Hollywood’s biggest box-office star representing the kind of sweet, innocent girl that everyone wanted as their daughter. However, years later, she reappeared as a successful politician.
Shirley Temple was born in Santa Monica, California on 23 April 1928. Encouraged by her mother, she learned to dance while she was just three.
In 1934, Stand Up and Cheer became her first film and the film was a great success. At the age of six she was earning $1,250 a week — more than $21,000 at today’s values.
Across the world, audiences flocked to see her in films such as Little Miss Marker, The Little Colonel and The Littlest Rebel.
In 1935 she was awarded a special Oscar (Academy Award) and her foot and hand prints were added to those of stars such as Jean Harlow and Mary Pickford outside Grauman’s Chinese theatre in Hollywood. The peak of her film career came in 1939 when The Little Princess became a box-office success.
Temple starred in a total of 43 feature films. But she found it difficult to maintain her film career in adulthood and retired from Hollywood in 1950.
She disappeared from the spotlight for nearly 20 years. She returned to the public eye in 1967, as a Republican candidate for Congress. When Nixon became president, he rewarded her with an appointment to the American delegation to the United Nations. Then, in 1974, President Ford appointed her the United States Ambassador(大使) to Ghana. George Bush Snr, appointed her Ambassador to Czechoslovakia.
Shirley Temple drew a line between her childhood stardom and her later political career. “Some people are stuck on this image of the little girl,” she once said. “She is not me. We shouldn’t live in the past; my life is now.” Nevertheless, for many across the world, the name Shirley Temple always called to mind a superstar child.Shirley Temple died at the age of _____.
| A．75 | B．80 | C．86 | D．90 |
What happened to Shirley Temple when she was 7 years old?
| A．She won a special Oscar. |
| B．She began to learn to dance. |
| C．She appeared in her first film. |
| D．She retired from Hollywood. |
Which of the following represents the peak of Shirley Temple’s film career?
| A．Stand Up and Cheer. | B．Little Miss Marker. |
| C．The Little Colonel. | D．The Little Princess. |
We can infer that _____.
| A．the films in which Shirley Temple starred in adulthood were not popular |
| B．Jean Harlow and Mary Pickford appeared in the same film with Temple |
| C．Shirley Temple succeeded in being elected as Congresswoman in 1967 |
| D．Shirley Temple was the youngest person to receive an Academy Award |
In our world today, the media and entertainment industries are constantly focusing on beauty over brains. Movies, television shows, commercials, and magazines all make use of models and actors whose physical attributes(特性) will sell their product.
As our country is trying to reduce the obesity numbers, eating disorder statistics continue to increase due to the push for thinner people. While obesity is a serious medical condition that can lead to many health problems, many of us try to lose weight for appearance purposes. Children as young as elementary school age have begun to worry about the numbers that appear on the scale. In my opinion, it seems that “fat” has become the new“ugly”.
Two weeks ago, 37-year-old Wisconsin television reporter Livingston, who is 235 pounds, received an email from a man named Krause. In the email Krause attacked her, writing,“Your physical condition hasn’t improved for many years. Surely you don’t consider yourself a suitable example for this community’s young people, girls in particular.”
Today, it seems that a vast majority of people care more about how they look and appear to their peers rather than what is inside. The truth is that every person is built differently; we all come in different shapes and sizes. Just because someone is heavier, that doesn’t mean they eat large amounts of junk food around the day. Likewise, even though a person is thin, that doesn’t mean they are necessarily healthy and fit.
If you are reading this and you struggle with your weight or your appearance, please recognize that you are beautiful and special in your own way. You are worth so much more than you realize, and even if I don’t know you, understand that I respect and support you. Beauty is not defined by size; it is defined by how we treat others and respect ourselves. In the words of the talented film actress Kirstie Alley, “There’s a lot more to life than how fat or thin you are.” With so many people losing weight, it will end in .
| A．models’ and actors’ appearance in ads |
| B．the fall of media and entertainment industries |
| C．more and more people becoming obesity |
| D．more people’s suffering from eating disorder |
The underlined phrase “the numbers that appear on the scale” in the second paragraph may mean.
| A．intelligence | B．weight | C．patience | D．strength |
The writer used the example of Jennifer Livingston to show .
| A．people think “fat” looks ugly |
| B．fat people are becoming cleverer |
| C．physical condition is good |
| D．young people never follow example |
What Kirstie Alley said means .
| A．people should pay attention to the appearance |
| B．there is no need for any people to go on diet |
| C．people are beautiful when they concern others |
| D．there’s always someone who understands and supports you |
What is a six-letter word that immediately comes to mind when you need some information on the Internet? You probably thought of Google. But Google wasn’t always the name of the famous search engine. In fact, the original name was BackRub!
BackRub was the name two graduate students gave to the new search engine they developed in 1996. They called it BackRub because the engine used backlinks to measure the popularity of Web sites. Later, they wanted a better name — a name that suggests huge quantities of data. They thought of the word googol. (A googol is a number followed by 100 zeros.) When they checked the Internet registry of names to see if googol was already taken, one of the students misspelled the word by mistake, and that’s how Google was born.
Google is just one example of a name change in the business world. Many other companies have decided to change their names or the names of their products. Here are some more examples:
Jerry Yang and David Filo, two young computer specialists, developed a guide to Internet content in 1994. They called it “Jerry and David’s Guide to World Wide Web.” But they soon realized that this wasn’t a very catchy name, so they searched through a dictionary and found a better one: “Yahoo.”
Sometimes companies change their names because of the popularity of one of their products. In 1962, a young runner named Phil Knight started a company called Blue Ribbon Sports. In 1971, Knight decided to design and manufacture his own brand of shoes. He named the shoes after the Greek goddess of victory — Nike. Nike shoes became so well known that Knight changed the name of the whole company to Nike.According to the text, Google.
| A．has been famous since 1996 |
| B．is a result of a spelling mistake |
| C．means a number followed by 100 zeros |
| D．is the original name of the search engine |
Jerry and David changed the guide’s name to Yahoo because the original name .
| A．had been registered | B．had been forgotten |
| C．was not attractive | D．was too short |
The company Nike got its name from .
| A．its founders | B．its customers |
| C．its popular products | D．its advanced techniques |
Which of the following can be the best title for the text?
| A．The name changes | B．The history of Google |
| C．How to choose a name? | D．Why are names important? |
Having a great collection of books at home doesn’t really mean that you are a person who has a passion for literature and reading． It can be a family inheritance or it can be just to impress people around you by the fact that you are a person of culture． On the other hand, there are many persons who cannot afford to buy books, because some of them are quite expensive, but who usually go to libraries and spend hours reading something that interests them a lot, or just borrow books to home．
From my point of view, literature is very important in our life． For example, reading is a means of gaining culture and enriching our knowledge in different areas． It can help us have a great imagination and it makes things easier when it comes to make compositions on different themes． It gives you the possibility to speak about science, even if you don’t work in this domain, or you can express your opinion about a political aspect, just because you have read something connected to that．
Secondly, literature offers us the possibility to enter the world of imagination, and to leave the real one for a couple of hours． We come to meet kings and queens many years ago, dream of being in the world of the rich or imagine how life will be in the future． Sometimes, we identify ourselves with the characters in the stories we read and they can give us some clues to solve our problems and how to react in certain circumstances．
In conclusion, I would like to say that literature is the perfect means to enrich our culture, to express ourselves correctly, to have a rich vocabulary, to be able to interfere in conversations in different fields of interest and to really be considered an erudite person．People who are fond of literature are those that ________ ．
| A．have much interest in reading |
| B．keep many books |
| C．go to libraries every day |
| D．buy expensive books in the bookstore |
According to the author we can broaden our knowledge by ________ ．
| A．composing | B．imagining | C．communicating | D．reading |
We can know from the third paragraph that ___________ ．
| A．we can bring kings and queens back to life |
| B．it is very good for us to stay alone for some hours |
| C．what we read can be useful in our daily life |
| D．we can make friends with people in the stories |
The underline word “erudite” in Paragraph 4 probably means “ _______”．
| A．learned | B．enthusiastic | C．smart | D．creative |
What is the author’s purpose by writing the passage?
| A．To share his own reading experience． |
| B．To distinguish the true readers． |
| C．To attract people to literature． |
| D．To stress the importance of imagination． |