The Hong Kong Ocean Park is a famous marine museum. Located between Aberdeen and Repulse Bay, the park sponsored by the Hong Kong Derby dates back to 1969. In 1987, the park was changed from a joint organization into an independent legal organization for Hong Kong governors to appoint board members.
The park is divided into two parts: the lowland section and the headland section, and a cable car system links the two parts. The lowland section is the on-water amusement park, which is the first on-water amusement center in Asia; the headland section includes the aquarium (水族馆), the hall of sea waves, the marine theater and the paradise of various birds, and is the main part of the park.
The aquarium is one of the largest in the world, with a water body of 22 meters wide, 38 meters long and 7 meters deep. It has four layers, and visitors can view the ocean creatures on the passages surrounding it.
The hall of sea waves is a huge water pool, and is 152 meters wide, 122 meters long and 2.7 meters deep. There are various kinds of man-made seacoasts suitable for living of different sea creatures.
The marine theater is located in the middle on top of a mountain and can hold 4,000 people. In the center, there is a huge pool with sharks and sea lions and dolphins performing in it.
The paradise of various birds has a unique design and is a huge net made of stainless steel wires supported by five columns. It covers an area of 2,500 square meters in four sections, namely the birds living on the ground, the birds living in forests, the birds living in jungles and the birds living in water.
As my kids and I walked around a community garden the other week, I asked them what veggies they could identify. We were in Alberta, where many plants were still in their early stages of growth — I wasn't optimistic about what the kids would be able to name by leaves alone. However, they called out, "Tomatoes! Potatoes! Carrots!" Their answers made me even prouder than if they'd just explained some knowledge of physics. All the time we've spent in our home garden is actually sinking in.
Although I've been gardening for years, this year feels different. Spending time in the garden has helped me with my own well-being at a trying time, and it has given me a new way to connect with my kids when I'm running out of steam.
My garden is wild, full of life, and a bit messy. Honestly, the same goes for my kids — and I don't expect perfection from them either. Unless you're relying on your yield for money or food, it's a good idea to have your expectations for gardening as low as possible. My kids say they "love the garden" but "don't like gardening" — I think they mean they don't like the chores. If I have some weeding or potting to do, I'll also have some entertainment for them, which can be as simple as "find these 10 rocks" or "wet this plot with your water gun".
Involving the kids in every stage of the process can be powerful and fun, even if what you have are just a few containers on a balcony. "Gardening allows us to spend free, unscheduled outdoor time with our kids," writes journalist and author Shannon Brescher Shea in her book Growing Sustainable Together. "Let your kids lead the way. Invite them to participate in every step, from planting to harvesting, but don't force it."
One of the best things about gardens is the food, but frankly, my kids are not going to be pushing greens into their mouths any time soon. Finding uses for garden goods that go beyond food production can spark interest and supply you with some unexpectedly good results.
Humans are naturally drawn to other life forms and the worlds outside of our own. We take delight in the existence of creatures and even whole societies beyond our everyday lives.
This sense of wonder is universal. Look at the efforts that scientists have made to find out whether life of some kind exists on Mars, and the popularity of fantasy literature or movies like The Lord of the Rings. This sense of wonder draws us to each other, to the world around us, and to the world of make-believe. But have we gone so far in creating worlds of fantasy that we are missing the pleasure of other worlds that already exist all around us?
Human beings, as biologists have suggested, possess an inborn desire to connect with and understand other life forms. However, people, especially in big cities, often lead isolated lives. In a study of British schoolchildren, it was found that children by age eight were much more familiar with characters from television shows and video games than with common wildlife. Without modern technology, a small pond could be an amazing world filled with strange and beautiful plants, insects, birds, and animals. When we lack meaningful interaction with the world around us, and sometimes even with our families and friends, we seek to understand and communicate with things existing only in our imaginations or on a computer screen.
The world of make-believe is not necessarily bad. But when the world of fantasy becomes the only outlet for our sense of wonder, then we are really missing something. We are missing a connection with the living world. Other wonderful worlds exist all around us. But even more interesting is that if we look closely enough, we can see that these worlds, in a broad sense, are really part of our own.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released a report. It stated that the world is quickly running out of time to keep global warming below 1.5 degrees Celsius, the level widely agreed to be the conservative, safety-first goal to prevent serious climate harm. To get there, the world would have to cut current emissions(排放物) by 45 percent by 2030. That sounds absurdly unlikely.
But before we give in to despair, we should remember that the technology to address climate change is going along at high speed. The largest source of US carbon emissions is transportation, and a Green New Deal program for motor vehicles would be quite straightforward.
The reason is simple: With some subsidies( 补 贴 ), electric cars and buses are cost- competitive with fossil-fuel vehicles. Electric buses have gone into the market at the greatest speed, because they are a logical choice for electrification. At the end of 2018, electric vehicles were displacing about 280,000 barrels of oil demand per day. That's more than the whole consumption of Greece.
And the electric car market is also reaching maturity, with appealing designs, longer range, and a quickly-expanding rapid charging network in many countries. It's worth emphasizing that most of the basic systems necessary to recharge electric vehicles already exist. People often tend to assume that we would need to replace every gas station, but virtually all homes and businesses already have an electrical connection which can be easily improved for fast charging. All that is needed to go fully electric is enough battery capacity and fast charging stations to deal with long trips.
Now America would have to repair its electricity production, rails, shipping, and so on to fully decarbonize ( 脱碳) the transportation sector. It will be considerably more difficult than simply rooting out fossil fuel vehicles from the market.
But greening America's vehicles would be straightforward, relatively cheap, and a huge step forward on climate. The politics of climate change are so fearful that despair can seem logical, but the first step in achieving a tough goal is the firm belief that it can be done. And this particular step wouldn't even be that tough.
Some speaking activities do not give an exact picture of your true language skill. But storytelling does. Storytelling is the retelling of a story. It can be a short piece of invented story; or it can be the retelling of a news event. Or you can talk about something that happened in your own life.On the other hand, an activity requiring your opinion can slow you down.
For the storytelling activity, try to provide as much information as possible and aim for a recording of three minutes or fewer. Don't just say, "I studied at the library." Say, "
And most of the seats were taken, so I looked around and finally found a place, but it was near the window. It was cold, so I had to keep my coat on," or something like that.
Instead, it is to speak at a faster speed because you do not have to stop and think of each idea separately. Before the activity, you'd better speak out loud to yourself a few times to make sure you have your main points in mind.
When listening to the recording, do not expect to find all or even most grammar or vocabulary mistakes. After the first recording, record yourself telling the same story at least once more and take note of your progress. But avoid memorizing your speech.
A.Put your speech into written or typed form.
B.The goal of giving such information is not to fill the time.
C.I walked into the library and thought about where I should sit.
D.That is because it forces you to think about your ideas as you say them.
E.Choose a place that you know well, like your home or a nearby bus station.
F.But you can easily find some mistakes, such as wrong verb and noun endings.
G.Storytelling frees you from forming complex ideas and lets you speak easily in English .
I never imagined that an interstate trip could be so exciting. But when your world has become smaller since the pandemic hit two-and-a-bit years ago, and then slowly1 , the most ordinary experience gives new 2 to life. And so it was with me when I was 3 given the chance to take my first flight in more than two years.
I'd forgotten how it felt to be among the people coming and going. I got to the airport two hours before boarding. Time for the bar and, of course,4 .
That group of young Arab women laughing and posing for photographs by the expansive windows, aircraft in the5 , lighting up the place with their happiness.
The man in the corner drinking alone. Just another one of the 70,000 or so stories that would pass through the airport6 .
I couldn't be calmer as a flyer. But when the plane took off I was7 , in that moment of weightlessness as the wheels 8 Earth, leaning towards the window to watch everything below becoming smaller and smaller.
Is it possible that the denial of so much during the pandemic lockdown had added new 9 to what was the ordinary? I think so. The plane ride, the hotel stay, and the social occasion all now gave me a sense of10 that might have previously only aroused in me nothing more than a certain nonchalance(若无其事) or even11 .
Last June, just ahead of the long Sydney lockdown, a friend12 a birthday party. That experience for me would continue happily through some of the13 months of the lockdown that would follow.14 the repeated fear that the pandemic holds over us, the memory of that celebration still keeps its bright, warm light in my mind. That's what happens when everything old is new again, when 15 is rediscovered as a virtue.
"Six Degrees of Separation" refers the theory that any person on Earth can be connected to any other person through a chain of no more than five other people.
The theory was first mentioned in the 1920s by the Hungarian author Frigyes Karinthy discussed social networks. In the 1950s, an attempt (make) by two scientists to prove the (theory) idea. However, they were unsuccessful. In 1967, Stanley Milgram tried using a new method to test the theory. He (random) chose a sample of people in the middle of America (send) packages to a stranger. Amazingly, only took between five and seven people to get the parcels (deliver). It was this research that inspired the phrase "Six Degrees of Separation".
In the last few decades, the theory and the phrase have appeared again. Its name was used as the title of a play and then a film. In 2003, Columbia University tried to recreate Milgram's experiment on the Internet. In 2011, an experiment at the University of Milan analysed relationship between 721 million social media users and (find) that 92 percent were connected by only four stages, or five degrees of separation.
I live in a small but lovely neighborhood. Our house is neither large nor luxurious, but it has a fairly big garden. My father loves his garden. He planted some seeds in it and took good care of the plants, watering them, applying fertilizer, weeding and getting rid of bugs. He was never tired of doing all that stuff. But at that time, I didn't understand why working in the dirt excited him so much.
Unfortunately, in the summer vacation before senior high school, my father was seriously injured in an accident. He had to stay in bed for a while. My mother had several business trips, so she couldn't take care of the garden. I didn't want my father to worry. I said that I would take care of his garden until he recovered. I assumed that the little plants would continue to grow as long as they had water, and luckily it rained fairly often, so I didn't think much about the garden.
One Saturday morning, my father said to me, "Christine, the vegetables should be about ready to be picked. Let's have a salad today!" I went out to the garden and was upset to see that many of the lettuce leaves and carrots had been half eaten by bugs. There were hundreds of bugs all over them!
I panicked for a moment but then I quietly went to the nearest supermarket to buy some vegetables. When I was making the salad, my mother came home and saw the bag from the supermarket in the kitchen. I was embarrassed and admitted, "Dad would like a salad, but the garden is a disaster. I don't want to disappoint him, so I went to the store and bought some vegetables." My mother smiled, saying, "Honey, you know what is the right thing to do."
注意：1. 所续写短文的词数应为 150 左右；2. 续写部分分为两段每段的开头语已为你写好。
Paragraph 1:
My father seemed very pleased when I took the salad to him.
Paragraph 2:
Feeling guilty, I decided to do the right thing.
