This time, it is to be worn on wrists. Having already changed the way we communicate with its smartphones, Apple Inc released its next big thing on March 9 in San Francisco, US.
The Apple Watch, according to CNN, is “a simple rectangular (矩形的) shape with a range of stylish and useful wristbands.” “The style is classic... in those respects (方面) it’s up there with the top quality Swiss watches,” commented the news outlet.
The watch will be available in nine places, including the US, the UK and China, from April 24. The starting price is $349 (2,186 yuan).
With six different designs and 30 or so wristbands, the gadget “sets the standard for smartwatches, in style,” agreed The Brisbane Times,“but more importantly, in functionality (功能性).” “With the built-in speaker and microphone, you can receive calls on your watch. I have been wanting to do this since I was 5 years old,” said Apple’s chief executive Tim Cook.
In fact, anything you can do on the iPhone is there on the watch – e-mails, text messages, airline boarding services, and directions from Apple Maps. Using a home security app, you can keep an eye on your home from afar, or even open a locked door.
There are some features that have made Cook sure the watch is “our most personal device yet; a new chapter in the way we relate to technology”. According to NPR, the watch taps you on the wrist to draw your attention to a message or a calendar reminder, and it can send a tap on the wrist to another Apple Watch wearer.
However, the watch can also do things that are just plain fun. You can send a real-time display of your heartbeat to another Apple Watch to “let someone know you are thinking about them.”
Patrick Moorhead, a leading technology analyst in the US, described the tech company as “a master in the art of persuasion”. “The secret weapon is the ability to message each other by tapping on the watch,” he told The Associated Press. “I think people, particularly kids, are going to go nuts (疯狂) over that.”
So far, though, the most impressive part of this new device is “the monitoring of the wearer’s health and fitness,” said AFP. It will even tap you on the wrist if you have been sitting down for longer than is good for your health.Which of the following features of the Apple Watch are mentioned in the article?
a. its price
b. its functions
c. its shortcomings
d. its shape and weight
e. when and where people can buy it
| A．abd |
| B．abe |
| C．bce |
| D．bde |
Which of the following words best describes Tim Cook’s attitude toward the Apple Watch?
| A．Proud. |
| B．Modest. |
| C．Serious. |
| D．Cautious. |
How does the Apple Watch let wearers know there is a new message?
| A．The watch beeps. |
| B．The watch sends out music. |
| C．The watch changes its screen color. |
| D．The watch taps the wearer on the wrist. |
With an Apple Watch, you can ______.
| A．monitor your health and diagnose yourself |
| B．send a real-time display of your heartbeat to an iPhone |
| C．be reminded to move around if you’ve been sitting down for too long |
| D．receive emails, text messages and calls, and open a locked door for your neighbor |
Text messaging, or simply “texting”, with allows people to send and receive messages on mobile phones, becomes very popular today.
The advantages of texting are obvious. Texting helps to save money. If you have a few words to greet your families and friends on their birthdays or on some important festivals, sending messages can be cheaper than phone calling. Texting helps to save time. Even if you want to send a message to 100 people, you can do it one second. Texting helps you to “talk” to someone when he is too busy to answer the phone. Texting can also help you to “talk” to someone secretly if you don’t want others to hear what you are talking on the phone. These advantages are so amazing that many people are crazy about it. They hold mobile phones in hands all day long, send dozens of messages each day, and even text while driving or walking.
However, texting has its disadvantages. Junk messages may come into your mobile phone box now and then. When your phone box gets too full, you can’t receive any more messages. You may therefore miss some important information.
What’s more, if you don’t do texting properly, for example texting while driving or walking, it can be dangerous. It can cause injuries and even death. It was reported that about 6,000 people were killed and half a million were injured for this reason each year. In Fort Lee, a small town in New Jersey, USA, three people died because they walked into traffic while texting in 2011. Two researchers at Stony Brook University, New York found that texters are 60% more probably to have an accident than others. When people are texting, they don’t notice other people or things around them. To reduce traffic accidents, all drivers of the UN are now not allowed to text while driving. About 32 countries have passed laws restricting the use of mobile phones while driving.
Texting is a wonderful way of communication. However, only when we use it properly, can we fully enjoy the fun it brings.How many advantages of texting are mentioned in the passage?
| A．Two. | B．Three. | C．Four. | D．Five. |
What did the researchers at Stony Brook University find?
| A．Texters are easier to have an accident. |
| B．Texting is a good way of communication. |
| C．6,000 people were killed and injured. |
| D．Many people text to greet families and friends. |
The underlined word restricting probably means _________.
| A．not telling | B．not allowing | C．enjoying | D．making |
This passage is written to tell us that __________.
| A．we should do less texting |
| B．texting has many advantages |
| C．texting is better than phone calling |
| D．we should do texting properly |
I grew up in New Hampshire, a small town in South Canada, where in my father’s words for the seasons were “Spring, Summer, Fairtime and Winter!” At that time, a week-long fair was held in the town every autumn. Thousands of people from other towns came to sell and buy things. It was the busiest time of the year.
When “Fairtime” came, my grandma became the most “useful” and busiest person of the family. Grandma was a kind, well-educated old lady. She was good at cooking. All her rrelatives liked the foodshe cooked. During “fairtime”, they would come to live in her house and have meals there. Grandma was always happy to look after them.
Year after year, many people moved to big cities. There was no loner “Fairtime”. Grandma became very old and was gradually going blind. My parents and I moved to live with Granma in her house. We did our best to make her day-to-day life as comfortable as possible. I was at high school then. What I often did at home was to help Grandma with the daily newspaper’s crossword puzzle. However, she didn’t look happy. She often sat in her room for hours, without saying a word.
To attract people to move back, the Town Hall decided to reopen the Fair. One day, when I came back room school, I saw Grandma wearing her glasses, washing the dishes in the kitchen. With a big smile on her face, she looked a lot much younger. She told me that her two nieces would come. “They said the food I cooked was very delicious and they want to stay in my house again.” Grandma said happily. “They will stay here for one week and we can have a big party. That must be the busiest week I’ve had in years!”
I suddenly realized that Grandma didn’t want to be looked after. She wanted to be “useful”, appreciated and helpful.Thousands of people came to the town to __________ at the Fair.
| A．enjoy Grandma’s food | B．sell and buy things |
| C．learn to cook | D．have a big party |
Why was Grandma unhappy?
A.She was too busy. B. No one lived with her.
B.She was not “useful”. D. She couldn’t see anythingWhich of the following is NOT TRUE according to the passage?
| A．Grandma was good at cooking |
| B．Many people moved to big cities. |
| C．Grandma didn’t like “Fairtime” |
| D．Grandma was a kind old lady. |
What’s the best title for the passage?
| A．Fairtime | B．My “Old” Grandma |
| C．A Small Town | D．Grandma’s Family |
Frogs are animals that can live both in water and on land. There are more than 5,000 kinds of frogs on the earth. The earliest known frogs lived about 190 million years ago and the frogs today still look the same. Here are some fun things that you might not know about frogs. Enjoy!
The Biggest and the Smallest Frogs
Some frogs can be very big. The biggest kind of frog is the Goliath Frog in West Africa. Its body can be nearly 30cm long, about the size of a large cat. The Gold Frog and the Poison Frog are the smallest frogs in the world. They are less than 1cm long. Though the Poison Frog is very small, it is not weak at all. It is dangerous. Any animal that eats it will die very soon.
The Best Jumpers
Frogs are very good at jumping. They developed jumping legs so that they would not be eaten by other large animals. Using their big strong legs, more frogs can jump over 20 times their own length. It is like a person jumping over about 30,48. The Australian Rocket Frog can even jump over 2m, which is 50 times its body length(5.5cm). That might be the reason why frogs are called the best jumpers on the earth.
The Cryogenic Animal
Some frogs like the Common Wood Frog have a special ability to live in very cold places. When the temperature goes down, they become ice frogs. 2/3of their body water freezes. Their hearts stop, and their breathing stops too. You may think they are dead, but in fact they are not. Maybe we humans can learn the way that the frogs do for medical purpose.The earliest frogs lived about ________ million years ago.
| A．20 | B．30 | C．50 | D．190 |
The Gold Frog is one of the ________ frogs on the earth.
| A．smallest | B．biggest | C．strongest | D．weakest |
________ can jump over 2m.
| A．The Goliath Frog | B．The Common Wood Frog |
| C．The Poison Frog | D．The Australian Rocket Frog |
What will happen to a Common Wood Frog at very low temperature?
A.It will die very soon. B. It will be an ice frog.
B.It will become dangerous. D. It will become very small
“Reading makes a full man” (Bacon, 1597). Novels written by the writers like Jane Austen, Victor Hugo and Ernest Hemingway help us to know more about our history, culture and many other things.
| Jane Austen was one of the most well-known women writers of the world. She was born in England in 1775. Jane loved reading and writing. She wrote a number of famous novels in her life. Among them, Pride and Prejudice written in 1779 was the most popular. |
| Victor Hugo, born in 1802 in France, was one of the best writers in the19th century. The talent in writing and hard work brought great success to Hugo at an early age. His most popular novel, the Hunchback of Notre-Dame, was written in 1831. The book was so successful that it was quickly translated into many other languages across Europe. |
| Ernest Hemingway, an outstanding American writer and reporter, was born in 1899. His life experience had a great influence on his writing style. Hemingway lived in France and Italy between the 1920s and 1950s. Most of his books such as The Sun Also Rises were written at that time. He won the Nobel Prize in 1954 mainly because of the novel The Old Man and the Sea. |
When was Jane Austen born?
| A．In 1775 | B．In 1799 | C．In 1802 | D．In 1899 |
Where was Victor Hugo from?
| A．England. | B．America. | C．Italy. | D．France. |
Ernest Hemingway won the Nobel Prize mainly because of _________.
| A．The Hunchback of Notre-Dame | B．Pride and Prejudice |
| C．The Old man and the Sea | D．The Sun Also Rises |
Was the London Olympics a success? Many people hold different opinions. However one thing is certain, London could win a gold medal for hosting the “greenest” Games ever, BBC News reported.
Previous Olympic hosts have been criticized for the environmental damage they have caused through construction, waste. and transport. But things had to be different in London because seven years ago it bid for the Olympics through the concept of “a One Planet Olympics”.
What is most impressive is that London used the construction of the Olympic Park as an opportunity to clean up polluted areas — 2 million tons of contaminated (被污染的) soil were removed and 200 old factory buildings, were torn down, according to sustainablebusiness.com. But that’s not all —. 99 percent of the debris (废瓦砾) were reused to build the Olympic Park. For example, part of the Olympic Stadium’s roof is made from 2,500 tons of steel tubes recycled from old gas pipelines.
As well as using recycled materials, all venues were built with green building techniques. The Olympic Stadium is the lightest one ever built, which minimized the amount of steel and concrete needed. Also, the handball field has lighting pipes on the roof that reduce electricity use by 40 percent, according to sustainablebusiness.com.
The effort that London made to deal with waste also deserves praise. Water used for drinking and watering plants was from collected rainwater or recycled wastewater. In this way. about 30-40 percent less water was used in total. Waste food packages were either recycled or processed and turned into renewable energy.
As one of the best connected places in Europe, London tried to solve traffic jams by encouraging the use of public transport. For example, it had trains deliver half of the building materials, instead of cars, which greatly reduced carbon emissions.
The clean anti-doping (反兴奋剂) result also added to the greenness of the Games. The International Olympics Committee (IOC) said that the devices used this time were the most accurate and advanced. Only one athlete tested positive for a banned drug on the day of competing, which is why the IOC President, Jacques Rogge, has praised anti-doping efforts at the London Games.To make the Olympic Park green, London _______.
| A．recycled 2 million tons of contaminated soil |
| B．removed 99 percent of the debris from the city |
| C．built the Olympic Stadium mostly with recycled materials |
| D．applied green building techniques to the construction work |
The underlined word “minimized” in the fourth paragraph probably means
| A．increased as much as possible |
| B．reduced as much as possible |
| C．made good use of |
| D．took little notice |
What can we conclude from the article?
| A．The London Olympics cost less than the other Olympics ever held. |
| B．London has possessed the most advanced techniques to deal with waste. |
| C．Public transport is made good use of in London during the Olympic games. |
| D．The anti-doping result in the London Olympics turned out to be dissatisfactory. |
Which of the following best shows the structure of the text?
What is the best title of the passage?
| A．How to deal with the anti-doping |
| B．How to use recycled materials |
| C．London’s green games |
| D．London’s public transport |