Golden Gate Bridge

    Located in San Francisco, the Golden Gate Bridge started in the year 1933 to connect the San Francisco Peninsula with Marin County. It was finally thrown open to public traffic in 1937. It cost $25.7 million in the construction. Till the year 1957, the Golden Gate Bridge, at a length of 2,737 meters, was the longest suspension bridge in the world.

    Brooklyn Bridge

    The Brooklyn Bridge is located in Brooklyn. It is one of the oldest suspension bridges in the United States, having been opened in the year 1883. The length of the bridge is 1,843 meters. The bridge has been featured in several Hollywood movies.

    George Washington Bridge

    Also known as the Hudson River Bridge and the Columbus Bridge, the George Washington Bridge which connects Fort Lee to Manhattan came into use in 1931 after a construction period of almost 4 years. It is a two level suspension bridge that cost about $52 million to build.

    Mackinac Bridge

    This is the third biggest suspension bridge in the world at a length of 8,038 meters. The architect of this bridge was Dr. David B. Steinman, who directed the construction of the bridge which started in the year 1954 and opened to the public in 1958. People using this bridge are charged a certain amount of money.

Navajo Bridge

    Located in Arizona, this bridge crosses the Colorado River and is almost 250 meters long. The construction of this bridge started in the year 1927, ending two years later, costing $390,000. In the 1990s, a second bridge was built which was opened to the public in 1994. The first bridge is now used only by pedestrians.

    I once complained to my friend Mike, "I often cycle two miles from my house to the town center but unfortunately there is a big hill on the route." He replied, "You mean fortunately." He explained that I should be glad of the extra exercise that the hill provided.

    My attitude to the hill has now changed. I used to complain as I approached it but now I tell myself the following. This hill will exercise my heart and lungs. It will help me to lose weight and get fit. It will mean that I live longer. This hill is my friend. Finally I comfort myself with the thought of all those silly people who pay money to go to a gym and sit on stationary exercise bicycles when I can get the same value for free. I have a smile of satisfaction as I reach the top of the hill.

    Problems are there to be faced and overcome. We cannot achieve anything with an easy life. Helen Keller was the first deaf and blind person to gain a university degree. Her activism and writing proved inspirational. She wrote, "The character cannot be developed with ease. Only through experiences of suffering can the soul be strengthened, vision cleared, ambition inspired and success achieved."

    One of the main determinants of success in life is our attitude towards adversity. From time to time we all face hardships，problems，accidents and difficulties. Some are of our making but many are no fault of our own. While we cannot choose adversity, we can choose our attitude towards it.

    Douglas Bader was 21 when in 1931 he had both legs cut off following a flying accident. He was determined to fly again and went on to become one of the leading flying aviators in the Battle of Britain with 22 aerial victories over the Germans. He was an inspiration to others during the war. He said, "Don't listen to anyone who tells you that you can't do this or that. That's nonsense. Make up your mind, and you'll never use crutches or a stick, and then have a go at everything. Go to school, and join in all the games you can. Go anywhere you want to. But never, never let them persuade you that things are too difficult or impossible."

    The biographies of great people are full of examples of how they took steps to overcome the difficulties they faced. The common thread is that they did not become depressed. They chose their attitude. They chose to be positive. They took on the challenge. They won. Nevertheless, there is still the problem of how you change your attitude towards adversity.

    A biologist once criticized for stealing eggs from the nests of the rarest bird in the world has been awarded the "Nobel Prize" of conservation after his methods saved nine species from extinction.

Professor Carl Jones won the 2016 Indianapolis Prize — the highest accolade in the field of animal conservation — for his 40 years of work in Mauritius, where he saved an endangered kestrel from becoming the next Great Auk.

    When the 61-year-old first travelled to the east African island in the 1970s, he was told to close down a project to save the Mauritius kestrel. At the time there were just four left in the wild, making it the rarest bird on Earth. However, he stayed, using the techniques of captive breeding (人工繁殖), which involved snatching eggs from the birds' nests and hatching(孵化)them under incubators, prompting the mothers to lay another set of eggs in the wild.

    A decade later, the number of Mauritius kestrels had soared to over 300 and today there are around 400 in the wild. The biologist has also been necessary in efforts to bring other rare species back from the edge of extinction, including the pink pigeon, echo parakeet and Rodrigues warbler.

    Prof Jones was awarded the $250,000 (£172,000) prize at a ceremony in London.

"As a young man in my 20s, I certainly didn't enjoy the stress and the tension of the criticism I received," reflecting on the start of his career, he said the Maurutius kestrel project had been seen as a "dead loss" at the time. In the 1970s there was fierce opposition to the captive breeding techniques, with critics arguing that they were too risky and took the emphasis off breeding in the wild.

    Prof Jones has devoted his whole life to his work, only becoming a father for the first time eight years ago, at 53. He said receiving the prize was particularly important to him, because it proved that his work to save birds was right.

    Many of us have reached in our pockets, feeling a vibration (振动), wrongly believing our mobile phones have just rung. The phenomenon even has a name: phantom (幻觉的) vibration syndrome—and found it is surprisingly common.

    Now scientists believe that we are so alert (警觉) for phone calls and messages we are misinterpreting slight muscle spasms (痉挛)as proof of a call. Robert Rosenberger, an assistant professor at the Georgia Tech Institute of Technology has studied the delusional calls. He said sufferers describe a vague tingling feeling which they think is their mobile phone indicating it has received a text message or call while on 'silent'. But when the device is retrieved, there was no one on the other end.

    Dr. Rosenberger said he found so many people say, "This happens to me, but I thought I was the only one. I thought I was odd." It seems that the syndrome particularly affects people at the beck and call of mobile phones or pagers. A 2010 study by Michael Rothberg and colleagues found that nearly 70 per cent of doctors at a hospital in Massachusetts suffered phantom vibrations. A more recent study of US college students found the figure was as high as 90 per cent.

    While the odd feeling is widespread, it does not seem to be considered a grave problem. Dr. Rosenberger said: "It's not actually a syndrome in a technical sense. That's just the name that's got stuck to it." He added," Only 2 per cent of people consider it a problem."

    While this phenomenon is widespread, the scientific community has not yet invested much effort in getting to the bottom of why we suffer phantom calls.

    Dr. Rosenberger said: "People are guessing it has something to do with nervous energy. The cognitive(认知的)scientists are talking about brain chemistry, cognitive pathways changing. But it's not like they have brain scans to go on." He said: "We have a phone call in our pocket all the time and it becomes sort of an extension of ourselves. We have this sort of readiness to experience a call. We feel something and we think, OK, that could be a call."

    Parents usually teach their children how to cross the street safely, by looking both ways for cars.The city of Honolulu, Hawaii wants everyone to learn that lesson.

    Beginning on October 24, you will be fined from $15 to $99 if you step into a Honolulu street while looking at your phone. Honolulu is the first major U.S. city to ban what is called "distracted walking". It recently passed a law in a seven to two vote. The law says, "No pedestrian shall cross a street or highway while viewing a mobile electronic device." 

    The law includes all electronic devices with screens: cellphone, tablets, gaming devices, digital cameras and laptop computers.Pedestrians may use such devices in the street to call emergency services and rescue workers, such as firefighters and police officers.

    Pedestrian deaths have been increasing as the use of cellphones rises. The Governors Highway Safety Association, or GHSA, says pedestrian deaths in the United States increased 25 percent between 2010 and 2015. That trend continued in 2016 with the number of pedestrian deaths rising to almost 6000, 11% higher than in 2015.

    The state of Washington was the first to outlaw distracted driving back in 2007. Now, 46 other states as well as D. C. Puerto Rico, Guam and the U. S. Virgin Islands, have laws against texting while driving.

    If you still want to text while walking, you could avoid being fined in Honolulu by using a voice-controlled digital assistant such as Siri or Google Assistant. Or you could just wait until you are again, safely, off the street.

A. The law does permit an exception.

B. Other U. S. cities may follow Honolulu.

C. But do they also teach them to put away their cellphones?

D. Texting while crossing the street will soon be banned in the city.

E. Do you like Honolulu's new law that bans texting while walking?

F. In other words, do not look at a screen when you cross the street or you could be fined.

G. The law's creator hope it will lower the number of people hit and killed by cars in the city.

    There was a businessman who was deep in debt and could see no way out. He sat on the park bench, head in hands,1if anything could save his company from bankruptcy (破产).

    Suddenly an old man appeared before him. "I can see that something is2you," he said. After listening to the businessman's troubles, the old man said, "I believe I can help you." He asked the man his name, wrote out a3, and pushed it into his hand saying, "Take this money. Meet me here exactly one year from today, and you can pay me back at that time." Then he turned and disappeared as4as he had come.

    The businessman saw in his hand a check for $500,000,5by John D. Rockefeller, then one of the richest men in the world! "I can6my money worries in an instant!" he realized. But7, he decided to put the uncashed check in his safe. Just knowing it was there might give him the8to work out a way to save his business, he thought.

    With renewed9, he negotiated better deals. Within a few months, he was out of debt and making money once again.

    Exactly one year later, he returned to the10with the uncashed check. At the11time, the old man appeared. But just as the businessman was about to12the check and share his success story, a 13came running up and grabbed the old man. "I'm so delighted I14him!" she cried. "I hope he hasn't been bothering you. He's15escaping from the rest home and telling people he's John D. Rockefeller." And she led the old man away16the arm.

    The businessman just stood there,17. All year long he'd been buying and selling,18he had half a million dollars behind him.

Suddenly, he realized that it wasn't the money, real or19, that had turned his life around. It was his20self-confidence that gave him the power to achieve anything he went after.

    Artist Song Peilun is known"The Father of Yelang Valley" after spending the last two decades turning a village into an artistic village.

    Yelang was an ancient political centre first(describe) in the 3rd century BC, and it was centered inis now western Guizhou Province, China. Experts believe that many ancient(culture) were rooted here,there are unfortunately no buildings left standing in the great valley. Inspired by Crazy Horse, a mountain monument in the US slate, Chinese artist Song Peilun devoted his life to building a memorial to the artistic culture of Yelang Valley.

    It was in 1996Song quit his job as a professor and purchased a 200,000 square meter plot of land in a mountainous forest area. Then he began to follow his dream.

    When he first arrived in the area, most of the locals(mine) in the mountain and selling the stones to make ends meet，but he convinced many of them to help him instead.

    So far, Song Peilun and the villagers(turn) the forest land that he bought into an artistic village full of stone sculptures,were inspired by Chinese Nuo culture. It is now a(relative) popular tourist attraction.

增加：在缺词处加一个漏字符号（∧），并在其下面写出该加的词。

删减：把多余的词用斜线（\）划掉。

修改：在错词下面划一横线，并在该词下面写出修改后的词。

注意：1．每处错误及其修改均仅限一词；

2．只允许修改10处，多者（从第11处起）不计分。

    Yesterday I went to see a film with my best friend. We set off at 1:30 in the afternoon and plan to arrive at the cinema before 2:30 so that we could watch the 3:15 show. The traffic was terrible bad. That made it even worse was that our bus broke up on the way. They stopped a taxi but rushed to the cinema, arriving ten minutes before the show. "Two ticket for 3:15," Kate said, put the money on the courier. The film started at the moment we sat down in the cinema. It was an exciting film and we had great time yesterday afternoon.

1）你们学校平时开展哪些运动；

2）你最喜欢的运动及原因。

注意：

1）词数100左右；

2）可以适当增加细节，以使行文连贯。