人教版（新课程标准）高中英语必修五Unit 4 Making the news单元测试1

    Kay and Charles Giddens, two lawyers, sold their home to start a B & B hotel. Four years later, the couple dishes out banana pancake breakfast, cleans toilets and serves home-made chocolate chip cookies to guests in a B & B hotel surrounded by trees on a hill known for colourful sunsets.

    "Do I miss the freeways? Do I miss the traffic? Do I miss the stress? No," says Mrs Giddens. "This is a phenomenon that's fairly widespread. A lot of people are re-evaluating their lives and figuring out what they want to do. If their base is being damaged, what's the pay-off?"

    Simple living ranges from cutting down on weeknight activities to sharing housing, living closer to work, avoiding shopping malls, borrowing books from the library instead of buying them, and taking a cut in pay to work at a more pleasurable job.

    Vicki Robin, a writer, lives on a budget equal to a fifth of what she used to make. "You become conscious about where your money is going and how valuable it is," Ms Robin says. "You tend not to use things up. You cook at home rather than eat out…"

    Janet Luhrs, a lawyer, quit her job after giving birth and leaving her daughter with a nanny for two weeks. "It was not the way I wanted to raise my kids," she says. "Simplicity is not just about saving money; it's about me sitting down every night with my kids to a candlelit dinner with classical music."

    Mrs Luhrs now edits a magazine, Simple Living, which publishes tips on how to buy recycled furniture and shoes, organize potluck(百味餐)dinners instead of expensive receptions, and generally how to consume less.

    "Simplicity is about conscious living and creating the life you want. The less stuff you buy, the less money goes out the door, and the less money you have to earn," Mrs Luhrs explains.

    Youth football team members rescued more than two weeks after sudden flooding trapped them in a cave in Thailand are now being well looked after at a hospital in the northern city of Chiang Rai. In addition to treating the boys for potential body fluid loss, inadequate nutrition and lack of oxygen, their doctors also plan to closely monitor them for symptoms of diseases that may have been infected by animals living in the cave.

    "The next step is to make sure those kids and their families are safe, because living in a cave provides a different environment, which might contain animals that could transmit…disease," said the local hospital. The boys and their family members have been told to watch for symptoms such as headache, nausea(反胃), muscle pain or difficulty breathing, the reports added.

    Yet based on the location where the boys were trapped—more than four kilometres from the cave complex's main entrance, past some fully submerged passages—and the fact that they have been swimming out wearing full scuba face masks, it seems unlikely that they were living with bats in the cave or breathed in bat-associated bacteria during their rescue, several infectious disease experts said. "It's hard to imagine bats got that deep into the cave because of all those narrow passageways, but it is possible," says Ian Lipkin, an animal expert and professor at the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University. "It's unlikely that there would be many animals in there," notes Jonathan Epstein, a doctor at EcoHealth Alliance, a non-profit organization that studies diseases and how to prevent them. Bats typically like to rest in areas they can easily enter and exit, not in places that fully flood, he adds.

    Bats in Thailand have been linked with a wide range of viruses that are similar to severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS)—Lipkin says. But it seems more likely that the boys would have been exposed to infection-causing bacteria when they swam through the dirty water with cuts and scrapes. "If you are trying to prioritize issues with respect to health care for these kids, number one would be psychological damage and second will be bacterial infections from the cuts and scrapes they may have encountered," Lipkin says.

    Wouldn't it be wonderful to travel to a foreign country without having to worry about the headache of communicating in a different language?

    In a recent The Wall Street Journal article, technology policy expert Alec Ross argued that, within a decade or so, we'll be able to communicate with one another via(通过) small earpieces with built-in microphones. That's because technological progress is extremely rapid. It's only a matter of time. Indeed, some parents are so convinced that this technology is imminent that they're wondering if their kids should even learn a second language.

    It's true that an increase in the quantity and accuracy of the data loaded into computers will make them cleverer at translating "No es bueno dormir mucho" as "It's not good to sleep too much". Replacing a word with its equivalent (对应词) in the target language is actually the "easy part" of a translator's job. But even this seems to be a discouraging task for computers.

    It's so difficult for computers because translation doesn't—or shouldn't—involve simply translating words, sentences or paragraphs. Rather, it's about translating meaning. And in order to infer meaning from a specific expression, humans have to interpret a mass of information at the same time.

    Think about all the related clues that go into understanding an expression: volume, gesture, situation, and even your culture. All are likely to convey(传达) as much meaning as the words you use.

    Therefore, we should be very sceptical of a machine that is unable to interpret the world around us. If people from different cultures can offend (冒犯) each other without realizing it, how can we expect a machine to do better? Unless engineers actually find a way to breathe a soul into a computer, undoubtedly when it comes to conveying and interpreting meaning using a natural language, a machine will never fully take our place.

How to improve vocabulary fast

    Your vocabulary refers to the words in a language you are familiar with. We should learn some ways to expand it.

    Read every day.  Choose reading material that is slightly above your level and keep a dictionary with you to look up words you do not know.

     If you do not meet with an unfamiliar word in your daily reading, use your dictionary to search for one.

    Learn the correct definition and pronunciation for each new word. Pronunciation is as important as definition because in order to add a word to your active vocabulary, you must be able to use it in speech.

    Elaborate (详尽阐述) on the meaning of the word. If you have just learned the word "stubborn", think about the neighbour who will not lend you his car.

    Use your new word in speech and in writing. E-mail your sister about how your cat is stubborn about sleeping on your pillow.  But the more you use it, the more fluent you will become in its use. Soon it will be a regular part of your active vocabulary.

    Tell everyone you are trying to increase your vocabulary. Encourage them to ask you what your latest word is.  The more you explain the meaning of a word to someone, the more likely you are to remember it.

A. The vocabulary can be increased.

B. Find a new word every day.

C. Or let them ask for the definition of a new word you have used.

D. The more often you read, the faster your vocabulary can grow.

E. The first time you use a new word in speech it may seem strange.

F. Imagine him shaking his head, and think of him as "stubborn in his refusal".

G. Your vocabulary contains the words you understand.

    Miwa Sado is a Japanese journalist who died in 2013 after working too hard. Her case became 1 this week after labour inspectors published a detailed 2.

    The journalist worked 159 hours of overtime a month and then died of heart failure at home. She was working 3 for Japan's public broadcaster NHK, which is Japan's largest broadcasting 4. At the time of her death she was gathering information on a Tokyo 5 for the next governor.

    The death of Sado is expected to make the Japanese government more 6 of the health risks 7 in working too much. According to a survey, about one 8 five workers risks a critical(严重的) health condition because of too 9 work. Now the government wants to 10 overtime to a maximum of 100 hours a month and 11 companies that do not obey.

    In another case 12 became known, 24-year-old Matsuri Takahashi, killed herself in 2015 after suffering from 13 and working long hours for a Japanese advertising agency.

    Japanese employees, 14, work more hours than anywhere else in the Western world. They also 15 only a third of the holidays they are entitled to. Many Japanese work hard in order to show that they are loyal(忠诚的) to their 16. In 2016, two thousand Japanese workers killed themselves due to stress and 17. Many others died from stress-related diseases, 18 from heart attacks and high blood pressure. The Japanese 19 such work-related deaths as "karoshi"(过劳死).

    We can conclude from above that too much work does 20 stress and illnesses. Therefore, the Japanese government has launched a campaign encouraging people to enjoy their holidays.

    One day when I was five years old, my mother took me to a swimming pool. She wanted to teach me how to swim. (sad), I was almost drowned. I was rescued by a man, my mother was so  (frighten) that she decided never to let me get close to a swimming pool again., I thought quite differently. Instead of letting that horrible incident create more fear around water for me, I decided to become a good  (swim). After I told my mother about that, she thought I was right and  (agree). So I started to learn how to swim again. My mother became more careful and I was not in danger again. Later I became  interested in swimming that I decided to compete in swimming events. After years of efforts, my dream came true. I was the first African American  (win) an Olympic gold medal in swimming. I did so at both the 2008 and 2012 Olympics.

    Now I spend much of my time  (help) children learn how to swim. Hundreds of children each year drown in the United States. (learn) how to swim can prevent 80% of these tragedies.

1）讲座目的；

2）讲座内容；

3）讲座时间和地点；

4）邀请Peter参加。

注意：1）词数80左右(信的开头与结束语已为你写好，但不计入总词数)；

2）可以适当增加细节，以使行文连贯。

参考词汇：弘扬 promote;

Dear Peter,

Yours,

Li Hua

    Many of us do the revision work alone by shutting ourselves in a room with a book. Shutting yourself away can make you learn to hate studying. This leads to a situation where instead of being able to pay attention to your work, you are troubled by how unfair it is that you must study. When you hate your work, it's very difficult to make yourself like and do the work. This can be part of a vicious cycle(恶性循环) that you are caught in ineffective revision. Your poor progress makes you dislike the revision work more.

    Just being around other people really helps fight against feelings of loneliness and, thankfully, it's perfectly possible to work with a partner. We just need to learn how to deal with distractions(使人分心的事物).

    It's not necessary to avoid all people around, just people having nothing to do. Studying in the same room with someone who is ironing(熨烫衣服) or working out is perfectly possible. People who are bored and have nothing to do, however, are terrible to work around. They often try to keep others in conversation.

    It's also a good idea to avoid the company(陪伴) of people involved in activities that you like doing very much. Working while sitting next to someone playing video games is much more likely to end with a new high score in the game than a few hours of high-quality revision.

    If being around others means working in a noisy environment, a pair of headphones and some background music can keep out even noisy children.

    When you're studying for a big exam, it seems like your whole life is taken up with study. Friends and family can lessen feelings of isolation(孤独). And connecting with other people makes us happy, so it's important not to give that up and to make sure that we take the time to be with other people.