高三时文阅读系列(1)基础版版课前预习作业

请各位高三同学在明天听课前务必阅读下列文章，并根据提示完成阅读任务，否则无法听课。

课上将进行时文阅读的相关讲评。

高三时文阅读系列(1)Before-class activities:●背景知识亚马逊热带雨林（葡萄牙语：Amazônia、西班牙语：Amazonia），又称亚马逊河雨林，位于南美洲亚马逊盆地的热带雨林，占地约700万平方公里（7亿公顷）。

雨林横越了包括巴西（占森林60%面积）、哥伦比亚、秘鲁、委内瑞拉、厄瓜多尔、玻利维亚、圭亚那等多个国家，占世界雨林面积的一半，全球森林面积的20%，是全球最大及物种最多的热带雨林，因此，被人们称为“地球之肺”和“绿色心脏”。

●略读文章，掌握文章大意：1.How do you find the title ‘Brazil has the power to save earth’s greatest forest--- or destroy it’?2.Why is it important for humans to protect the forest well?3.What does Brazil’s president prefer---- development or environment?●再读文章，积累好词：1.cradle ___________________________________2.human-induced changes____________________3.soar _____________________________________4.kick in____________________________________5.dismiss ___________________________________6.be flawed _________________________________7.end up doing ______________________________8.be blessed with_____________________________Reading material:Brazil has the power to save Earth’s greatest forest—or destroy it!Print edition | Leaders Aug 3st 2019①ALTHOUGH ITS cradle is the sparsely wooded plain, humankind has long looked to forests for food, fuel, timber(木材) and inspiration. Still a livelihood for 1.5bn people, forests maintain local and regional ecosystems and, for the other 6.2bn, provide a—fragile and creaking—barrier against climate change. Now droughts, wildfires and other human-induced changes are compounding the damage from chainsaws. In the tropics, which contain half of the world’s forest biomass, tree-cover loss has accelerated by two-thirds since 2015; if it were a country, the shrinkage would make the tropical rainforest the world’s third-biggest carbon-dioxide emitter, after China and America.②Nowhere are the stakes higher than in the Amazon basin—and not just because it contains 40% of Earth’s rainforests and harbours 10-15% of the world’s terrestrial species. South America’s naturalwonder may be perilously close to the tipping-point beyond which its gradual transformation into something closer to steppe（没有树的草原）cannot be stopped or reversed, even if people lay down their axes. Brazil’s president, Jair Bolsonaro, is hastening the process—in the name, he claims, of development. The ecological collapse his policies may precipitate would be felt most acutely within his country’s borders, which encircle 80% of the basin—but would go far beyond them, too. It must be averted.③Humans have been chipping away at the Amazon rainforest since they settled there well over ten millennia ago. Since the 1970s they have done so on an industrial scale. In the past 50 years Brazil has given up17% of the forest’s original extent, more than the area of France, to road- and dam-building, logging, mining, soybean farming and cattle ranching. After a seven-year government effort to slow the destruction, it picked up in 2013 because of weakened enforcement and an amnesty(特赦) for past deforestation. Recession and political crisis further pared back the government’s ability to enforce the rules. Now Mr Bolsonaro has happily taken a buzz saw to them. Although congress and the courts have blocked some of his efforts to rob parts of the Amazon of their protected status, he has made it clear that rule-breakers have nothing to fear, despite the fact that he was elected to restore law and order. Because 70-80% of logging in the Amazon is illegal, the destruction has soared to record levels. Since he took office in January, trees have been disappearing at a rate of over two Manhattans a week.④The Amazon is unusual in that it recycles much of its own water. As the forest decreases, less recycling takes place. At a certain point, that causes more of the forest to wither so that, over a matter of decades, the process feeds on itself. Climate change is bringing the point closer every year as the forest heats up. Mr Bolsonaro is pushing it towards the edge. Pessimists fear that the cycle of runaway degradation may kick in when another 3-8% of the forest vanishes—which, under Mr Bolsonaro, could happen soon. There are hints the pessimists may be correct. In the past 15 years the Amazon has suffered three severe droughts. Fires are on the rise.⑤Brazil’s president dismisses such findings, as he does science more broadly. He accuses outsiders of hypocrisy—did rich countries not fell their own forests?—and, sometimes, of using environmental dogma as an excuse to keep Brazil poor. “The Amazon is ours,” the president thundered recently. What happens in the Brazilian Amazon, he thinks, is Brazil’s business.⑥Except it isn’t. A “dieback” would directly hurt the seven other countries with which Brazil shares the river basin. It would reduce the moisture channeled along the Andes as far south as Buenos Aires. If Brazil were damming a real river, not choking off an aerial one, downstream nations could consider it an act of war. As the vast Amazonian store of carbon burned and rotted, the world could heat up by as much as 0.1°C by 2100—not a lot, you may think, but the preferred target of the Paris climate agreement allows further warming of only 0.5°C or so.⑦Mr Bolsonaro’s other arguments are also flawed. Yes, the rich world has razed its forests. Brazil should not copy its mistakes, but learn from them instead as, say, France has, by reforesting while it still can. Paranoia about Western scheming is just that. The knowledge economy values the genetic information sequestered in the forest more highly than land or dead trees. Even if it did not, deforestation is not a necessary price of development. Brazil’s output of soybeans and beef rose between 2004 and 2012, when forest-clearing slowed by 80%. In fact, aside from the Amazon itself, Brazilian agriculture may be deforestation’s biggest victim. The drought of 2015 caused maize farmers in the central Brazilian state of Mato Grosso to lose a third of their harvest.⑧For all these reasons, the world ought to make clear to Mr Bolsonaro that it will not tolerate his vandalism（肆意破坏）. Food companies, pressed by consumers, should abandon soybeans and beefproduced on illegally logged Amazonian land, as they did in the mid-2000s. Brazil’s trading partners should make deals contingent on its good behavior. The agreement reached in June by the EU and Mercosur, a South American trading bloc of which Brazil is the biggest member, already includes provisions to protect the rainforest. It is overwhelmingly in the parties’ interest to enforce them. So too for China, which is anxious about global warming and needs Brazilian agriculture to feed its livestock. Rich signatories(签约国) of the Paris agreement, who pledged to pay developing ones to plant carbon-consuming trees, ought to do so. Deforestation accounts for 8% of global greenhouse-gas emissions but attracts only 3% of the aid earmarked for combating climate change.⑨If there is a green shoot in Mr Bolsonaro’s scorched-earth tactics towards the rainforest, it is that they have made the Amazon’s plight harder to ignore—and not just for outsiders. Brazil’s agriculture minister urged Mr Bolsonaro to stay in the Paris agreement. Unchecked deforestation could end up hurting Brazilian farmers if it leads to foreign boycotts of Brazilian farm goods. Ordinary Brazilians should press their president to reverse course. They have been blessed with a unique planetary heritage, whose value is life-sustaining as much as it is commercial. Letting it perish would be a needless catastrophe.While-class activities:Activity 1: Structure analysis （matching）Para 1 current situationPara 2-7 what to do nextPara 8-9 the importance of forestsActivity 2: Reading comprehension1.What does ‘hastening’ mean in paragraph 2?A.holding backB. slowing downC. speeding upD. taking off2.What can we infer from paragraphs 3 and 4?A.The congress of Brazil didn’t try its best to stop the president’s plan.B.It is the recession and political crisis that helped the rainforest get better protected.C.The future of the Amazon is likely to be bright if another president is elected.D.The Brazil’s president should largely be to blame for the serious situation of the Amazon.3. What does ‘hypocrisy’ mean in para5?A. pretended kindnessB. generosity B. big mouth D. stubbornness4.What measure should Not be taken to better protect the Amazon according to the last twoparagraphs?A.Other countries should be intolerant to Mr. Bolsonaro’s destruction behavior.B.Food companies should reject products produced on illegally logged Amazon land.C.Trading partners can end the deal with Brazil if it continues razing the Amazon.D.Members of the Paris agreement needn’t pay developing countries to plant carbon-consumingtrees.Activity3: Task-based readingActivity 4: Sentence appreciation1. Now droughts, wildfires and other human-induced changes are compounding the damage from chainsaws. (para1)2.If it were a country, the shrinkage would make the tropical rainforest the world’s third-biggest carbon-dioxide emitter, after China and America.(para1)3.Nowhere are the stakes higher than in the Amazon basin—and not just because it contains 40% of Earth’s rainforests and harbours 10-15% of the world’s terrestrial species. (para2)4. Humans have been chipping away at the Amazon rainforest since they settled there well over ten millennia ago.(para3)5. He has made it clear that rule-breakers have nothing to fear, despite the fact that he was elected to restore law and order. (para3)6. They have been blessed with a unique planetary heritage, whose value is life-sustaining as much as it is commercial. (para9)Activity 5:Discovery activityCan you find out any expressions related to the environment?Homework:Preview for the next lesson.。