A used book or nearly-new kitchen gadget (配件) may not be at the top of every Christmas wish list, but hard economic times coupled with a new green awareness are changing attitudes about gift-giving in France.
French holiday shoppers are choosing larger numbers for “green” gifting this Christmas, studies show. About 30 percent of French consumers will give second-hand items as gifts to stretch out their tight budgets but also to do their little bit for recycling, according to a study by international consulting firm Deloitte.
The survey of Christmas consumer behaviors in 18 European countries found the French were more than twice as likely as other Europeans to give second-hand items. Websites promoting re-gifting and green gifting are popular in France, with many reporting a rise in business.
“Concerns about the ecology and the economy have come together and we are now seeing people who accept the types of gifts that were not appreciated just a short time ago,” said Sebastien Ravut, who runs a website promoting eco-friendly consumerism. His site lists shops in France that offer fair trade products, bio-friendly goods and recycled items. Over the Christmas holidays, the number of visits to the site has doubled from last year, reaching 60,000 a month.
A study by online survey firm Vivodi for PriceMinister showed eight out of 10 people would be happy to receive a used item as a gift and that younger consumers were more open to the idea.
But Gilles Goldenberg, author of the Deloitte study, said that environmental concerns are not why customers buy used goods. “The number one concern is getting the lowest possible price,” said Goldenberg. “Eco-friendly products are drawing a lot of interest, but not if that means paying more.”
Theatre tickets and other low-carbon gifts are fashionable, and eco-friendly websites are also encouraging gift givers to offer time and services instead of stuff. “The order of the day is to spend less time shopping and more time connecting” over the holidays, said Florence de Monclin from the Nicolas Helot foundation for Nature and Humanity.
1.We can judge from the Deloitte study that _________.
A. over a quarter of the French give second-hand Christmas gifts
B. the French are less willing to buy eco-friendly gifts than other Europeans
C. 80% of French people are happy to receive second-hand gifts
D. less than 10% of European consumers are likely to give second-hand gifts
2.According to Goldenberg, the main reason for customers to buy used goods is that _______.
A. they want to be eco-friendly B. they want to save money
C. it is encouraged by websites D. it is a new fashion in Europe
3. All the following might be a promoted gift EXCEPT ________.
A. a theatre ticket
B. a second-hand book
C. a nearly-new digital toaster
D. a box of heavily packaged chocolate
4.Which of the following statements is TRUE?
A. Old people are not open minded enough to accept second-hand gifts.
B. People wish to receive second-hand gifts because of the economic downturn.
C. Ravut’s website received a sharp decrease in visits during the Christmas holidays.
D. In de Monclin’s opinion, people should spend more time with friends and family during holidays
星级口算天天练系列答案科目：高中英语 来源：2010届江苏省扬州市高三第二次模拟考试英语试题 题型：阅读理解
Saving the Planet with Earth-Friendly Bamboo Products
Jackie Heinricher’s love affair with bamboo started in her backyard. “As a child, I remember playing among the golden bamboo my dad had planted, and when there was a slight wind, the bamboos sounded really musical.”
A fisheries biologist, Heinricher, 47, planned to work in the salmon industry in Seattle, where she lived with her husband, Guy Thornburgh, but she found it too competitive. Then her garden gave her the idea for a business: She’d planted 20 bamboo forests on their seven-acre farm.
Heinricher started Boo-Shoot Gardens in 1998. She realized early on what is just now beginning to be known to the rest of the world. It can be used to make fishing poles, skateboards, buildings, furniture, floors, and even clothing. An added bonus: Bamboo absorbs four times as much carbon dioxide as a group of hardwood trees and releases 35 percent more oxygen.
First she had to find a way to mass-produce the plants—a tough task, since bamboo flowers create seed only once every 50 to 100 years. And dividing a bamboo plant frequently kills it.
Heinricher appealed to Randy Burr, a tissue culture expert, to help her. “People kept telling us we’d never figure it out,” says Heinricher. “Others had worked on it for 27 years! I believed in what we were doing, though, so I just kept going.”
She was right to feel a sense of urgency. Bamboo forests are being rapidly used up, and a United Nations report showed that even though bamboo is highly renewable, as many as half of the world’s species are threatened with dying out. Heinricher knew that bamboo could make a significant impact on carbon emissions (排放) and world economies, but only if huge numbers could be produced. And that’s just what she and Burr figured out after nine years of experiments—a way to grow millions of plants. By placing cuttings in test tubes with salts, vitamins, plant hormones, and seaweed gel, they got the plants to grow and then raised them in soil in greenhouses.
Not long after it, Burr’s lab hit financial difficulties. Heinricher had no experience running a tissue culture operation, but she wasn’t prepared to quit. So she bought the lab.
Today Heinricher heads up a profitable multimillion-dollar company, working on species from all over the world and selling them to wholesalers. “If you want to farm bamboo, it’s hard to do without the young plants, and that’s what we have,” she says proudly.
56. What was the main problem with planting bamboo widely?
A. They didn’t have enough young bamboo.
B. They were short of money and experience.
C. They didn’t have a big enough farm to do it.
D. They were not understood by other people.
57. What does Heinricher think of bamboo?
A. Renewable and acceptable B. Productive and flexible.
C. Useful and earth-friendly. D. Strong and profitable.
58. The underlined word “renewable” in Paragraph 6 probably means “________”.
A. able to be replaced naturally B. able to be raised difficultly
C. able to be shaped easily D. able to be recycled conveniently
59. What do you learn from the passage?
A. Heinricher’s love for bamboo led to her experiments in the lab.
B. Heinricher’s determination helped her to succeed in her work.
C. Heinricher struggled to prevent bamboo from disappearing.
D. Heinricher finally succeeded in realizing her childhood dream.
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科目：高中英语 来源：江苏宁海外国语学校2010届高三高考模拟英语试题（12） 题型：阅读理解
第二部分阅读理解（共20小题，每小题2分，满分40分）
A
Saving the Planet with Earth-Friendly Bamboo Products
Jackie Heinricher’s love affair with bamboo started in her backyard. “As a child, I remember playing among the golden bamboo my dad had planted, and when there was a slight wind, the bamboos sounded really musical.”
A fisheries biologist, Heinricher, 47, planned to work in the salmon industry in Seattle, where she lived with her husband, Guy Thornburgh, but she found it too competitive. Then her garden gave her the idea for a business: She’d planted 20 bamboo forests on their seven-acre farm.
Heinricher started Boo-Shoot Gardens in 1998. She realized early on what is just now beginning to be known to the rest of the world. It can be used to make fishing poles, skateboards, buildings, furniture, floors, and even clothing. An added bonus: Bamboo absorbs four times as much carbon dioxide as a group of hardwood trees and releases 35 percent more oxygen.
First she had to find a way to mass-produce the plants—a tough task, since bamboo flowers create seed only once every 50 to 100 years. And dividing a bamboo plant frequently kills it.
Heinricher appealed to Randy Burr, a tissue culture expert, to help her. “People kept telling us we’d never figure it out,” says Heinricher. “Others had worked on it for 27 years! I believed in what we were doing, though, so I just kept going.”
She was right to feel a sense of urgency. Bamboo forests are being rapidly used up, and a United Nations report showed that even though bamboo is highly renewable, as many as half of the world’s species are threatened with dying out. Heinricher knew that bamboo could make a significant impact on carbon emissions (排放) and world economies, but only if huge numbers could be produced. And that’s just what she and Burr figured out after nine years of experiments—a way to grow millions of plants. By placing cuttings in test tubes with salts, vitamins, plant hormones, and seaweed gel, they got the plants to grow and then raised them in soil in greenhouses.
Not long after it, Burr’s lab hit financial difficulties. Heinricher had no experience running a tissue culture operation, but she wasn’t prepared to quit. So she bought the lab.
Today Heinricher heads up a profitable multimillion-dollar company, working on species from all over the world and selling them to wholesalers. “If you want to farm bamboo, it’s hard to do without the young plants, and that’s what we have,” she says proudly.
56. What was the main problem with planting bamboo widely?
A. They didn’t have enough young bamboo. B. They were short of money and experience.
C. They didn’t have a big enough farm to do it. D. They were not understood by other people.
57. What does Heinricher think of bamboo?
A. Renewable and acceptable B. Productive and flexible.
C. Useful and earth-friendly. D. Strong and profitable.
58. The underlined word “renewable” in Paragraph 6 probably means “________”.
A. able to be replaced naturally B. able to be raised difficultly
C. able to be shaped easily D. able to be recycled conveniently
59. What do you learn from the passage?
A. Heinricher’s love for bamboo led to her experiments in the lab.
B. Heinricher’s determination helped her to succeed in her work.
C. Heinricher struggled to prevent bamboo from disappearing.
D. Heinricher finally succeeded in realizing her childhood dream.
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科目：高中英语 来源：江苏省洪泽中学2010届高三第13次周练英语试卷 题型：阅读理解
第三部分阅读理解 (共15小题；每小题2分，满分30分)
请认真阅读下列短文，从短文后各题所给的A、B、C、D四个选项中，选出最佳选项，并在答题卡上将该项涂黑。
A
Saving the Planet with Earth-Friendly Bamboo Products
Jackie Heinricher’s love affair with bamboo started in her backyard. “As a child, I remember playing among the golden bamboo my dad had planted, and when there was a slight wind, the bamboos sounded really musical.”
A fisheries biologist, Heinricher, 47, planned to work in the salmon industry in Seattle, where she lived with her husband, Guy Thornburgh, but she found it too competitive. Then her garden gave her the idea for a business: She’d planted 20 bamboo forests on their seven-acre farm.
Heinricher started Boo-Shoot Gardens in 1998. She realized early on what is just now beginning to be known to the rest of the world. It can be used to make fishing poles, skateboards, buildings, furniture, floors, and even clothing. An added bonus: Bamboo absorbs four times as much carbon dioxide as a group of hardwood trees and releases 35 percent more oxygen.
First she had to find a way to mass-produce the plants—a tough task, since bamboo flowers create seed only once every 50 to 100 years. And dividing a bamboo plant frequently kills it.
Heinricher appealed to Randy Burr, a tissue culture expert, to help her. “People kept telling us we’d never figure it out,” says Heinricher. “Others had worked on it for 27 years! I believed in what we were doing, though, so I just kept going.”
She was right to feel a sense of urgency. Bamboo forests are being rapidly used up, and a United Nations report showed that even though bamboo is highly renewable, as many as half of the world’s species are threatened with dying out. Heinricher knew that bamboo could make a significant impact on carbon emissions (排放) and world economies, but only if huge numbers could be produced. And that’s just what she and Burr figured out after nine years of experiments—a way to grow millions of plants. By placing cuttings in test tubes with salts, vitamins, plant hormones, and seaweed gel, they got the plants to grow and then raised them in soil in greenhouses.
Not long after it, Burr’s lab hit financial difficulties. Heinricher had no experience running a tissue culture operation, but she wasn’t prepared to quit. So she bought the lab.
Today Heinricher heads up a profitable multimillion-dollar company, working on species from all over the world and selling them to wholesalers. “If you want to farm bamboo, it’s hard to do without the young plants, and that’s what we have,” she says proudly.
56. What was the main problem with planting bamboo widely?
A. They didn’t have enough young bamboo.
B. They were short of money and experience.
C. They didn’t have a big enough farm to do it.
D. They were not understood by other people.
57. What does Heinricher think of bamboo?
A. Renewable and acceptable B. Productive and flexible.
C. Useful and earth-friendly. D. Strong and profitable.
58. The underlined word “renewable” in Paragraph 6 probably means “________”.
A. able to be replaced naturally B. able to be raised difficultly
C. able to be shaped easily D. able to be recycled conveniently
59. What do you learn from the passage?
A. Heinricher’s love for bamboo led to her experiments in the lab.
B. Heinricher’s determination helped her to succeed in her work.
C. Heinricher struggled to prevent bamboo from disappearing.
D. Heinricher finally succeeded in realizing her childhood dream.
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科目：高中英语 来源：2010届江苏省南通、扬州、泰州三市高三第二次模拟考试英语试题 题型：阅读理解
Saving the Planet with Earth-Friendly Bamboo Products
Jackie Heinricher’s love affair with bamboo started in her backyard. “As a child, I remember playing among the golden bamboo my dad had planted, and when there was a slight wind, the bamboos sounded really musical.”
A fisheries biologist, Heinricher, 47, planned to work in the salmon industry in Seattle, where she lived with her husband, Guy Thornburgh, but she found it too competitive. Then her garden gave her the idea for a business: She’d planted 20 bamboo forests on their seven-acre farm.
Heinricher started Boo-Shoot Gardens in 1998. She realized early on what is just now beginning to be known to the rest of the world. It can be used to make fishing poles, skateboards, buildings, furniture, floors, and even clothing. An added bonus: Bamboo absorbs four times as much carbon dioxide as a group of hardwood trees and releases 35 percent more oxygen.
First she had to find a way to mass-produce the plants—a tough task, since bamboo flowers create seed only once every 50 to 100 years. And dividing a bamboo plant frequently kills it.
Heinricher appealed to Randy Burr, a tissue culture expert, to help her. “People kept telling us we’d never figure it out,” says Heinricher. “Others had worked on it for 27 years! I believed in what we were doing, though, so I just kept going.”
She was right to feel a sense of urgency. Bamboo forests are being rapidly used up, and a United Nations report showed that even though bamboo is highly renewable, as many as half of the world’s species are threatened with dying out. Heinricher knew that bamboo could make a significant impact on carbon emissions (排放) and world economies, but only if huge numbers could be produced. And that’s just what she and Burr figured out after nine years of experiments—a way to grow millions of plants. By placing cuttings in test tubes with salts, vitamins, plant hormones, and seaweed gel, they got the plants to grow and then raised them in soil in greenhouses.
Not long after it, Burr’s lab hit financial difficulties. Heinricher had no experience running a tissue culture operation, but she wasn’t prepared to quit. So she bought the lab.
Today Heinricher heads up a profitable multimillion-dollar company, working on species from all over the world and selling them to wholesalers. “If you want to farm bamboo, it’s hard to do without the young plants, and that’s what we have,” she says proudly.
56. What was the main problem with planting bamboo widely?
A. They didn’t have enough young bamboo.
B. They were short of money and experience.
C. They didn’t have a big enough farm to do it.
D. They were not understood by other people.
57. What does Heinricher think of bamboo?
A. Renewable and acceptable B. Productive and flexible.
C. Useful and earth-friendly. D. Strong and profitable.
58. The underlined word “renewable” in Paragraph 6 probably means “________”.
A. able to be replaced naturally B. able to be raised difficultly
C. able to be shaped easily D. able to be recycled conveniently
59. What do you learn from the passage?
A. Heinricher’s love for bamboo led to her experiments in the lab.
B. Heinricher’s determination helped her to succeed in her work.
C. Heinricher struggled to prevent bamboo from disappearing.
D. Heinricher finally succeeded in realizing her childhood dream.
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科目：高中英语 来源： 题型：阅读理解
A blind baby is doubly handicapped. Not only is it unable to see, but because it cannot receive the visual stimulus（刺激）from its environment that a sighted child does, it is likely to be slow in intellectual development. Now the ten-month old son of Dr. and Mrs. Dennis Daughters is the subject of an unusual psychological experiment designed to prevent a lag（滞后）in the learning process. With the aid of a sonar-type electronic that he wears on his head, infant(婴儿) Dennis is learning to identify the people and objects in the world around him by means of echoes(回声).
The device is an improvement of the “Sonicguide”, an instrument produced by Telesensory Systems, Inc., of Palo Alto, Calif, and used by blind adults in addition to a smart or guide dog. As adapted for Dennis, it consists of a battery-powered system about the size of a half dollar that is on a headgear. A transmitter sends out an ultrasonic(超声的) pulse that creates an 80 degree cone of sound at 6 feet. Echoes from objects within the cone are perceived (felt) as sounds that vary in pitch(音调) and volume(音量) with the size and distance of the object.
The closer an object is, the lower the pitch, and the larger the object, the louder the signal. Hard surfaces produce a sharp ping, while soft ones send back signals with a slightly fuzzy quality. An object slightly to the right of Denny’s sends back a louder sound to his right ear than to the left. Thus , by simply moving his head right and left and up and down, he can not only locate an object but also get some notion of its shape and size, thanks to the varying qualities of sounds reaching his ears as the cone of ultrasound(超声波) passes its edges. Dennis likes to use the device to play a kind of peek-a-boo with his mother. Standing on her knee and facing her directly, he receives a strong signal in both ears. By turning his head away, he makes her seem to disappear. “From the first time he wore it,” says Mrs. Daughters, “it was like a light going on in his head.”
What remains to be determined is how well the device will help Dennis cope with his surroundings as he begins to walk and venture further into his environment.
Meanwhile, Telesensory, Inc, is working on the development of sonar(声纳) device with somewhat the same sensitivity as Dennis’s for use by school-age children.
66. Dr. and Mrs. Daughters’ research is directed to ______________.
A. helping the blind to see and learn as well as others
B. benefiting the learning process of blind children
C. solving blind children’s psychological problems
D. finding out how children develop intellectually
67. Infant Dennis becomes the subject of the experiment most probably because _____________.
A. he already lags behind the sighted children B. he leads a life as normal as any other children
C. he is at the early stage of the learning process D. he has the aid of a sonar-type electronic device
68. What can we learn about infant Dennis’ device?
A. Its the first design was designed for blind adults. B. Its battery is as small as a half-dollar coin.
C. It is functionally similar to a sane and guide dog. D. It has been improved by Telesensory Systems, Inc.
69. In the third paragraph, “its edge” refers to ___________ .
A. the edge of an object B. the edge of the device
C. the boundary of Dennis’ movement D. the boundary of the sound pitch.
70. What is Telesensory Systems, Inc. most likely to think about infant Dennis’ device?
A. It had better be used by blind children from school age.
B. It needs improving for use in a complicated environment.
C. It may not be so suitable for the blind adults.
D. It benefits blind children in terms of learning.
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