江苏省南菁高中、常州一中2023-2024学年高二下学期3月月考英语试卷
学校:___________姓名:___________班级:___________考号:___________
一、阅读理解
Plants and exposure to greenery have been found to have multiple mental health benefits, such as lowering stress, decreasing feelings of depression, increasing sociability, restoring focus, improving cognitive performance, improving mood, and increasing self-esteem.
Gardening and care for plants can help to turn people away from negative thoughts or emotions. So with all that, what do these experts recommend as the best plant?
Snake plant. It’s very easy to care for, thrives in spaces with low sunlight, has visual appeal, and cleans the air, and they are drought resistant if you forget to water them.
Spider plants. Spider plants, with plenty of light-green leaves, are another low-maintenance selection.When a spider plant thrives, it will grow new offshoots that can be clipped and potted as a new plant.
Aloe Vera. Drought-resistant and easy to grow. Aloe Vera is low-maintenance, you can just water it monthly, and it helps clean the airspace and is helpful for burns, cuts, and scrapes to help injuries heal faster or soothe pain.
Lavender is well-known for its relaxing scent, and it has a calming effect, aids in reducing stress, promotes sleep.This means it’s great both in the garden, or clipped and dried in a bowl inside your space .
Basil is a summertime herb that loves the sun. Not only is it delicious in meals, but eating basil has health benefits, too. It has properties which help to relieve stress and anxiety.
Lemon balm. This fragrant green herb is part of the mint family and is simple to cultivate. Known for its calming properties, it has a light lemony scent that can be wonderfully intensified by rubbing the leaves between your fingers. It has been used to improve sleep, reduce stress and anxiety, improve appetite, and help with indigestion.
1.What can we know from the passage?
A. Spider plants will still survive if you forget to water them.
B. Lavender is recognized for its mint scent and calming effects.
C. Snake plants grow well in spaces without enough sunlight.
D. Basil is not edible but has some valuable properties.
2.What do these plants have in common?
A. They need little water. B. They appeal to the eye.
C. They help us calm down. D. They enhance health.
3.How many of the plants mentioned in the passage can help people to handle stress or anxiety?
A. Two B. Three C. Four D. Five
When you walk on a sandy beach, it takes more energy than walking down a sidewalk—because the weight of your body pushes into the sand. It turns out that the same thing is true for vehicles driving on roads.
“The weight of the vehicles creates a very shallow indentation in the pavement—and it makes it such that it’s continuously driving up a very shallow hill,” said Jeremy Gregory, a scientist at M. I. T…He modeled with his teammates how much energy could be saved—and greenhouse gases avoided—by simply hardening the nation’s roads and highways.
And they found that hardening 10 percent of the nation’s roads every year could prevent emissions equal to 440 megatons of carbon dioxide over the next 5 decades—that amount is equal to how much CO, you’d spare the planet by keeping a billion barrels of oil in the ground or by growing 7 billion trees for a decade. It reduces 0.5% of projected transportation emissions over that time period.
As for how to harden roads, Gregory says you could combine small amounts of certain fiber with high technology into paving materials. Or you could pave with specially-made concrete, which is harder than ordinary construction materials.

