Amazing leaf dress

主题语境：生活创意 篇幅：357词 建议用时：7分钟

1Four students in China proved that you don't have to spend a small fortune on a designer dress to look amazing.You can make it yourself,for free,using only plant leaves.

2The team behind the unique dress—two girls and two boys—got the idea for it over six months ago,while trying to come up with an interesting project for the annual“Animal and Plant Specimen Contest”at their school in Hefei.During that time,the girls couldn't stop talking about how beautiful the dress worn by a Chinese actress at the Cannes Film Festival looked, and one of them suggested they try to recreate it out of plant leaves. They ran the idea by their teacher, and even though they considered it difficult to pull it off,they went with it anyway.

3After researching the best way to use plant leaves as fabric (织物), and coming up with a design for their dress, the four students started collecting the leaves. Some species were readily available on campus, but others were not, so they had to travel to Tianzhu Mountain to collect them.

4To ensure that the collected leaves didn't rot, the students removed the flesh (叶肉)by boiling them in specially prepared mixtures for about two hours. This made it easier to peel away the flesh,leaving only the skeleton of the leaf.

5This was much harder than it sounds,as the four students struggled to get the proper amount of the mixtures and the boiling time just right,to ensure that the flesh could be easily removed without damaging the skeleton of the leaf. Through trial and error, and with their teacher's guidance,they were able to come up with a perfect formula(配方).

6The four students could only work on their special dress after classes and on weekends, so it took them nearly four months to complete. That's a pretty long time, but it all paid off when one of the girls finally put on the leaf dress and showed it off to everyone.They posted photos of it,at various stages,online,and it became popular almost instantly.

Reading Check

Gist 1.What's paragraph 2 mainly about?

A.How popular the leaf dress was.

B.Where the leaf dress was exhibited.

C.Why the leaf dress was made.

D.When the leaf dress was finished.

Detail 2.What did the students do after finishing the design for their dress?

A.Study clothes worn by actresses.

B.Collect the leaves for their dress.

C.Travel to Tianzhu Mountain to relax.

D.Find the skeleton of different leaves.

Detail 3.Why were the collected leaves boiled in the special mixtures?

A.To make the leaves more fresh.

B.To ensure the best color of the leaves.

C.To keep the leaves in their best condition.

D.To prevent the leaves from getting rotten.

Inference 4.Which words can best describe the process of making the dress?

A.Painful and worthless.

B.Complex and failed.

C.Difficult but rewarding.

D.Easy but timeconsuming.

Language Study

Ⅰ.Useful expressions

农村基层各个地区的农机推广受经济发展、地理位置等多方面的影响，部分乡镇尽管设置了农机站，但是却不能完备健全的现代化办公设置，也不能良好的进行农机推广工作。在部分地理位置较为偏远、交通条件不好的乡镇，连固定的办公场所也没有，进行农机推广的工作人员也不具备相应的专业知识，加之人员年龄老化严重这些都对农机推广业务工作的开展产生阻力，导致农机普查、购置补贴等工作很难及时、顺利的开展。

spend a small fortune on 花一大笔钱在……上面

come up with 提出

pull off 完成

available 可得到的

struggle to do 努力做

through trial and error 经过反复尝试

Ⅱ.单句填空

1.You can make a dress by ______(use)only plant leaves.

2.They couldn't stop ______(talk)about how beautiful the dress worn by those actresses.

3.One of the students suggested they ______(turn)to their science teacher for help.

4.They have to travel to nearby mountains ______(collect)the leaves.

5.Designing a dress is much harder ______it sounds.

6.It took them about four months ______(complete)the project.