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【今日推荐阅读】

Spring arrived incredibly early this year, according to a botanist who monitors the blooming patterns of flowers.

Cristol Fleming says she believes the appearance of flowers up to two months' early is down to the changes created by global warming.

Experts have started calling the shift in the times that plants bloom "season creep" and using decades of research have charted how much earlier it is happening.

The leaves of the English oak are appearing sooner, meaning that winter moths are coming out earlier and, because the birds that eat them are still flying north, they have already turned from caterpillars and into moths.

Their research is matched by that of researchers in Korea tracking cherry blossom and the U.S., which records its findings at the Smithsonian Institution's National Herbarium every year.

A 2005 analysis of 100 of the most popular flowers, 90 bloomed up to 44 days sooner than they did 20 years ago, according to the Washington Post.

"There is always variation from year-to-year in nature."

"And I don't want to sound alarmist that spring is coming earlier and earlier," said Fleming, who is in her 70s. "But, boy, every year, we do feel it."

Meanwhile Remote Sensing Systems has shown that March 2011 was the coolest March since 1994.

It was 0.026C cooler than average - the first month that has been cooler than average since June 2008.

Ms Fleming worries that plants' life cycles are speeding up.

Her concern is that their insect pollinators won't be able to cope with the Earth's changing habitats.

Unlike animals, plants can't just get up and move.

"If they end up in a climate that's too warm, well, they'll just die."

【内容简介】

第一段开门进山说出今年春季提前到来这一事实，可称为主题句。我们可以推测，接下来的内容应该是用事例证明这一事实。

接下来文章中举了很多例子，包括树叶发芽时间变早，韩国樱花花期监测和美国植物协会的发现等。

文章最后，专家们说出了自己的担心，其实是在警告人们要好好应对气候变暖这一严峻挑战。

【知识点讲解】

①incredibly early  这是副词修饰形容词的一种语法现象，其中incredibly跟very类似，表示非常、极其等意思，强调意味很重的词还有beastly，desperately，badly等。在作文中多运用这种格式要比千篇一律的very……好很多。例句：It is beastly hot these days. 最近真的超热啊。

②bloom是指开花，所以blooming patterns of flowers就是指花期。

③globe warming，全球变暖，这是近几年的热点话题。

④cope with  对付，应付，妥善处理

⑤speed up 等同于accelerate，quicken  加快，使加速

【快速阅读支招】

先快速浏览，了解文章的大意和主题思想，并对文章的结构有个总的概念，特别要注意文章的起始段、结束段、文章中每段的段首句和结尾句以及篇章连接手段和行文中的信息词(signal word)，因为它们往往是对文章内容的最精简概括，是左右文章大意的关键。

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