时文阅读
一起来看看APEC会议期间的一些有趣事!
 本文讲述了在APEC会议期间的一些趣事,习近平与参会的领导人参加了植树活动,彭丽媛则陪同各位领导人的夫人游览了颐和园,中国还为参会的领导人准备了体现中国文化的特色礼物。
中国拟再派遣1000多人前往非洲抗击埃博拉
 中国政府为正遭受埃博拉病毒肆虐的西非国家提供援助。
在你看来,金钱与幸福总是成正比的吗?
 金钱可以提高人们的幸福感,但并不意味着钱越多人们就越幸福。‍
中国飞行器首次成功绕月返回
中国的环月飞行器首次绕月成功返回,这次环月飞行历时八天,在周六上午6:13开始返航,接近大气层时,飞行器工程师成功地给其降速,安全着陆。这次飞行为将来的任务搜集的大量资料并积累了经验。
10岁墨西哥男孩把手粘到床上
一个10岁的墨西哥男孩把自己的手粘到床上,为的是不去学校,因为他还沉浸在结束的圣诞节的氛围中。
继中国之后,美国也出现了“小悦悦”
住在美国新泽西的3岁男童被车两次碾压,而17位路人无一伸手,人情何以如此冷漠。
11个月男婴误打911
一个11个月大的小男婴在玩他父亲的电话时,不小心误拨了911报警电话。警察到他家时发现他父亲在家做盆栽试验种植毒品,随后将他父亲带到了警察局。 
2014湖北卷B
【文章大意】本文是一篇新闻报道,报道了伦敦最新的摩天大楼the Shard的建造所带来的争议。一部分人认为这是对传统的传承,但也很多人都反对这栋大楼,说它并没有向一个好的方向改变。 London’s newest skyscraper (摩天大楼) is called the Shard and it cost about 430 million pounds to build. At a height of almost 310 metres, it is the tallest building in Europe. The Shard has completely changed the appearance ofLondon. However, not everyone thinks that it is a change for the better.The Shard was designed by the famous Italian architect Renzo Piano. When he began designing the Shard for London, Piano wanted a very tall building that looked like a spire (尖顶). He wanted the glass surfaces to reflect the sky and the city. The sides of the building aren’t regular. So the building has an unusual shape. It looks like a very thin, sharp piece of broken glass. And that is how the building got the name: the Shard. Piano says that the spire shape of the Shard is part of a greatLondontradition. The shape reminds him of the spires of the churches of London or the tall masts (桅杆) of the ships that were once on the river Thames.The Shard has 87 floors. At the top, there is an observatory. At the moment the building is empty, but eventually there will be a five-star hotel. There will also be top quality restaurants, apartments and offices.Before building work began, a lot of people didn’t want the Shard though the plans were approved. Now they are still unhappy about the Shard. Some critics say that such a tall skyscraper might be good in a city likeNew York, but not inLondon. They say that the best thing about the Shard is its spire shape. But that is the only thing. There is no decoration, only flat surfaces. The Egyptians did that 4,500 years ago. They also think the Shard is too big forLondon. It destroys the beauty of the city.Other critics don’t like what the Shard seems to represent. They say that the Shard shows howLondonis becoming more unequal. Only very rich people can afford to buy the expensive private apartments and stay in the hotel. But the people who live near the Shard are among the poorest inLondon. So the Shard seems a symbol of the division in society between the very rich and the poor.The Shard now dominates theLondonskyline. It is not certain, however, that ordinaryLondoncitizens will ever accept it as a valuable addition to the city. 
2014湖南卷C
【文章大意】根据UKERC的最新研究发现房屋居住者的行为和房屋的设计在环保节能方面一样重要。文章号召人们要注意自己的生活习惯即消费质量,进而来达到节能环保的作用。         The behaviour of a building’s users may be at least as important as its design when it comes to energy use, according to new research from the UK Energy Research Centre (UKERC). The UK promises to reduce its carbon emissions (排放)by 80 percent by 2050, part of which will be achieved by all new homes being zero-carbon by 2016. But this report shows that sustainable building design on its own — though extremely important- is not enough to achieve such reductions: the behaviour of the people using the building has to change too.    The study suggests that the ways that people use and live in their homes have been largely ignored by existing efforts to improve energy efficiency (效率),which instead focus on architectural and technological developments.“Technology is going to assist but it is not going to do everything,” explains Katy Janda, a UKERC senior researcher, “consumption patterns of building users can defeat the most careful design.” In other words, old habits die hard, even in the best-designed eco-home.Another part of the problem is information. Households and bill-payers don’t have the knowledge they need to change their energy-use habits. Without specific information, it’s hard to estimate the costs and benefits of making different choices. Feedback (反馈) facilities, like smart meters and energy monitors, could help bridge this information gap by helping people see how changing their behaviour directly affects their energy use; some studies have shown that households can achieve up to 15 percent energy savings using smart meters.Social science research has added a further dimension (方面), suggesting that individuals’ behaviour in the home can be personal and cannot be predicted 一 whether people throw open their windows rather than turn down the thermostat (恒温器) , for example. Janda argues that education is the key. She calls for a focused programme to teach people about buildings and their own behaviour in them. 
2014湖北卷C
【语篇解读】本文通过叙述Dr Alecia Carter在狒狒身上进行的分组研究,显示了动物的性格在社会化的学习中起着很重要的作用。同样人类也与此相似,我们正是通过交换信息等社会学习活动而形成相关文化的。 Working with a group of baboons (狒狒) in the Namibian desert, Dr. Alecia Carter of the Department of Zoology, CambridgeUniversityset baboons learning tasks involving a novel food and a familiar food hidden in a box. Some baboons were given the chance to watch another baboon who already knew how to solve the task, while others had to learn for themselves. To work out how brave or anxious the baboons were, Dr Carter presented them either with a novel food or a threat in the form of a model of a poisonous snake.She found that personality had a major impact on learning. The braver baboons learnt, but the shy ones did not learn the task although they watched the baboon perform the task of finding the novel food just as long as the brave ones did. In effect, despite being made aware of what to do, they were still too shy to do what the experienced baboon did.The same held true for anxious baboons compared with calm ones. The anxious individuals learnt the task by observing others while those who were relaxed did not, even though they spent more time watching.This mismatch between collecting social information and using it shows that personality plays a key role in social learning in animals, something that has previously been ignored in studies on how animals learn to do things. The findings are significant because they suggest that animals may perform poorly in cognitive (认知的) tasks not because they aren’t clever enough to solve them, but because they are too shy or nervous to use the social information.The findings may impact how we understand the formation of culture in societies through social learning. If some individuals are unable to get information from others because they don’t associate with the knowledgeable individuals, or they are too shy to use the information once they have it, information may not travel between all group members, preventing the formation of a culture based on social learning.