1 . How many advertisements have you seen in your life?     1     Advertisements are a great way to make people aware of products, issues, and more. But has advertising become a problem for society? If let me rate the current online advertising risks, I would probably give 2 points.     2    

Advertising makes us associate happiness with consumerism (消费主义). After they’ve achieved to ruin our self-esteem (自尊), advertisements are trying to fool us into thinking that only products and services can make us feel better.     3     What is it? You guessed right: Shopping. Once they achieve to make you feel ugly, they sell you beauty products so you can improve on your ugliness. Once they manage to make you believe that you are not important, they sell you expensive clothes so you can attract the attention of others. And so on and so forth.

    4     We have an economic system in which people have to make money in order to survive — and this can be clearly seen in the advertising industry. By showing you what the ideal life is supposed to be, and then making you compare your ordinary life to it, they slowly lead you to believe that you’re not beautiful, intelligent, confident, and so on, until they fully convince you that you are basically not good. The reason? To make you feel insecure so that they can then emotionally control you.

In short, advertisements promise you happiness, provided that you spend money in return. The result?     5    

A．Advertising pushes us to make money.

B．Advertising makes us feel that we’re not good enough.

C．So what exactly are the main problems of advertising on society?

D．The average person sees between 280 and 310 advertisements per day.

E．Without shopping, advertisements tell you that you can’t find happiness.

F．In other words, advertisements create a problem and then offer us a solution to it.

G．Consuming stuff you don’t even need and leading to waste that is pollution our planet.

2 . Every Thursday afternoon, the food pantry (食品储藏室) at the local high school opens up to provide fresh food bags for families who can hardly make both ends meet to get their meals to last through the weekend. Nearly a hundred families rely on the extra food. Some are between jobs, some got hit hard with medical bills for a few months, and some are new to the neighborhood, placed there by refugee services.

On one breezy afternoon, two young mothers walked in together, each accompanied by a young child. There was nothing different about their dress, but their manner revealed a shyness that they struggled to overcome. When they spoke, it was clear why: Their accents were thick, even though they were trying hard to make their English sound American. They were uncertain of being understood. But the pantry is run by grandmothers who are never pressed for time when it comes to conversations. So they sat for a moment and told their story while the little ones were held in arms so very familiar with children.

The two lived in apartments in the basement of the Methodist Church. They had been in the United States for one month. Their husbands were well-educated but working labor jobs to pay for food and save for more typical apartments.

Both had fled the war in Eastern Europe, one family from Ukraine and one from Russia. They ended up in the same church basement and discovered that they needed each other. They became fast friends. Their children played together. They shared meals and navigated their new world together.

There were no bombs or soldiers or rations in their new neighborhood, only a chance to start over. Friendships are sometimes hard to come by, yet matter so much to each of us. A good friend gives us strength, love, laughter and the courage to keep trying.

These two families — worn down by uncertainty and war, thrown together in a new country, a new community with a new language — found so much in common. And isn’t that what we all need? A friend who faces the same life challenges, even if the forces above them have different political views. We are, after all, just mothers and fathers, friends and neighbors.

1. In the article, who primarily benefits from the services provided by the food pantry?

A．High school students.	B．People with disabilities.
C．Families with tight budgets.	D．Underpaid individuals.

2. What was the most noticeable characteristic of the two young mothers when they entered the food pantry?

A．Their clothing.	B．Their language.
C．Their children.	D．Their ID documents.

3. What is one of the reasons why these two families became friends?

A．They both live in the basement of the same church.

B．They met at the same restaurant.

C．They are from the same country.

D．They both have similar professions.

4. Which title best fits the article?

A．Challenges of Life and New Friendship	B．The Story of the Food Pantry
C．New Life in America	D．From War to Peace

3 . 阅读下面短文，在空白处填入1个适当的单词或括号内单词的正确形式。

Guessing lantern riddles is an activity that     1     (date) back at least as far as the Southern Song Dynasty,     2     scholars wrote riddles on small slips of paper and     3       (hang) them from lanterns for festival attendees to guess.

Most of these lantern riddles were     4     (simple) created as a form of entertainment. Sometimes, however, imperial advisors used them to make a     5     (suggest) to the emperor.

If the emperor didn’t like it, the advisors could claim that the riddle had been interpreted incorrectly, thus     6     (avoid) his wrath (愤怒). This was possible because the riddles’ answers were rarely obvious and clear-cut, leaving them open to multiple interpretations.

Today’s lantern riddles are still difficult     7     (guess). So difficult, in fact, that they’re referred to as “lantern tigers” and guessing lantern riddles is sometimes referred to as “guessing lantern tigers”. Generally, lantern riddles are based on complex forms of wordplay and may be difficult for even     8     (advance) students of Chinese to understand.

Most riddles consist of the riddle itself and an implication that tells the guesser what form he or she should expect the answer to take. For example, sometimes     9     implication might indicate that the answer is a Chinese idiom, the name of a country or that it should be composed     10     Chinese characters.

4 . Each summer I teach at the Cranberry Lake Biological Station, a remote wilderness field school in the Adirondacks.

One of our best teachers return s every summer. There are hundreds of sandy places for a snapping turtle (鳄龟) nest, but this turtle chooses to lay her eggs in the warm open sand of our volleyball court. Our students are excited to snap photos as eggs leave her body. It is a highlight of their field biology summer. But they also want to play volleyball. So the class carefully uncovers the eggs and takes them to another site the students have prepared and measured to be sure it’s a good place for warm, dry sand, so the babies will hatch (孵化) .

The turtle shows me that my life is thanks to the kindness of nature’s creatures who share this beautiful world with us. We’ve been ignoring the many other living things on this planet because of our way of taking without giving back. Science, armed with models to predict the coming changes, is a powerful tool for addressing these crises. But it is not the only one. As a scientist, I hear the certain data, and also a message, carried by snapping turtles: The Earth asks more of us than gratitude.

A few years ago, there was a second mother in just the same spot on our volleyball court. The next day there was another. And another. In all, more than a dozen snapping turtles came among us in a dozen days. Why would lonely things walk into a community of 100 humans? When our students went to find suitable sites for the repeated groups of eggs, they found that as the lake level rose, they had to seek out higher ground. It seemed to me that the snapping turtles had become climate refugees.

I believe the turtles madly climbing to higher places are trying to tell us something important. They’re showing us that we’re dangerously close to a huge climate disaster, and lots of plants and animals are quickly going extinct. They want us to notice and take action before it’s too late.

1. What do the students do after the turtle comes?

A．Find a nest for her in advance.	B．Photo the course of her laying eggs.
C．Clean the volleyball court completely.	D．Lead her to a good place for birth.

2. What does the author learn from the turtle mother?

A．Species actually owe a lot to the earth.	B．Humans should quit their culture of taking.
C．The earth asks gratitude of human beings.	D．Science isn’t powerful enough to save wildlife.

3. What can we infer about snapping turtles in paragraph 4?

A．They were eager to live in a community.	B．They found the volleyball court the best nest.
C．They gradually adapted to a life on land.	D．They displaced themselves for climate change.

4. What is the purpose of writing this text?

A．To appeal people to protect wildlife.	B．To amuse people with interesting turtle stories.
C．To introduce the survival ability of turtles.	D．To show the wisdom of turtles in laying eggs.

6 . Clear winners are hard to pick in the race to develop self-driving vehicles, but autonomous trucks have built a convincing lead. Robotrucks have completed thousands of automated journeys and a new era of driverless delivery appears to lie in store for the world.

Big-name vehicle manufacturers like Daimler, alongside AV (autonomous vehicle) innovators like Aurorae have sunk billions of dollars into making self-driving trucks work, which is a solid investment in road freight (货运).

Fitted with complex LIDAR road scanning systems, computer vision, and AI predictive software, the vehicles serve the so-called “middle mile” between distribution centers, where loads are picked up and dropped off for human drivers to complete deliveries to homes and businesses.

Texas, with its spacious highways, prosperous road freight market, and relaxed regulations, provides ideal conditions to road test the trucks. Other states have their own regulations in place to allow AV testing on public roads.

There are six levels of vehicle automation (from 0 to 5) and level five — full autonomy, drive anywhere — is the end goal. Autonomous journeys often run at level four, which turns out safe, with a backup driver in the cab ready to take control in case an accident happens. In December 2021 a level 4 semi-truck drove 80 miles on public roads, between a railyard in Tucson, Arizona, and a distribution center in Phoenix.

Analysts say that up to 90 percent of long-distance trucking jobs could be lost to self-driving technology once it becomes widespread. Safety is another concern. Questions of whether authorities are ready to deal with the new technology followed a crash between a Waymo Via class 8 truck and another human-driven semi-truck near Ennis, Texas. The human driver was at fault, but the safety operator in the Waymo truck did not take control during the incident and a report exposed the weaknesses of the way the crash was dealt with.

AV industry representatives say their vehicles with self-driving technology are safer and more efficient than cars driven by people and will improve road safety. But doubts from road safety campaigners, transport workers, and city authorities exist about rapid change without stricter controls. All agree that new laws will be necessary.

1. What is paragraph 3 of the text mainly about?

A．The complex system of the vehicles.

B．The process of picking up and dropping off loads.

C．Ways of completing deliveries to homes and businesses.

D．The function of autonomous vehicles in road freight.

2. What does the example mentioned in paragraph 5 prove?

A．More often than not, trucks running at level 4 are secure.

B．Levels of vehicle automation serve different purposes.

C．“Full autonomy, drive anywhere” is the ultimate target.

D．A backup driver in the cab is crucial in avoiding an accident.

3. What is the author’s attitude toward the self-driving technology?

A．Unclear.

B．Approving.

C．Objective.

D．Dismissive.

4. What can be a suitable title for the text?

A．The Evolution and Implications of Self-Driving Vehicles

B．Robotrucks to Deliver a New Era of Driverless Technology

C．A Solid Investment from Big-Name Vehicle Manufacturers

D．The Testing of Autonomous Trucks on Public Roads with Level 4

8 . 阅读下面材料，根据其内容和所给段落开头语续写两段，使之构成一篇完整的短文。

My family had only recently moved into a new neighborhood. All of my neighbors have been very friendly and helpful since we moved in.

However, Mrs Davis, an elderly lady living in the last house on the other side of the road, escaped associating with us, or anyone else. When I asked around the neighborhood why, they warned me not to go after her because they thought she was insane (精神失常的) and preferred staying alone after losing her husband and only daughter in an aircraft crash. After that, she stayed isolated (孤立的) from all the neighbors, refusing all the care and help.

I often saw her on the streets during the evening, but she was always by herself. She appeared weak and I always wanted to help her, but after hearing what my neighbors had said about her, I wasn’t sure whether I should.

One day, when I was on my way to the supermarket, our paths crossed. I was walking past her and overheard her singing a tune. It immediately drew my attention because my parents used to sing the same song with me. I began to sing along with her, and she smiled at me for the first time. But when I smiled back, she quickly hurried her pace and went home.

She seemed very different to me that day. I refused to trust my neighbors’ claims that she had cut herself off from the rest of society because she was insane, so the next day, I knocked on her door. Mrs Davis was home, and instead of letting me in, she just looked at me silently through the window. I noticed her staring at me and was about to walk to the window when she quickly closed the curtains.

The next day, I revisited her house. “Hello, I brought you something,” I called out to her. “It’s the record of the music you were singing yesterday.”

注意：
1. 续写词数应为150左右；
2. 请按如下格式在答题卡的相应位置作答。

The door opened and Mrs Davis’ eyes widened in surprise at the sight of me standing there.

________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Several days later in the morning, the doorbell rang at my house.

________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

10 . Donna Urquhart is an experienced runner. She ran 1,402 kilometers over the course of 28 days in Antarctica (南极洲), _______ the record for the longest-ever run in a polar region.

Urquhart spent 10 months training for the _______, turning to some unusual training methods. A company allowed her to run in a _______ storage unit where she ran in temperatures below zero. Besides, she ran along the beaches with uneven (凹凸不平的) surfaces that are like the _______ grounds in Antarctica. All those proved useful _______.

The difficulties that Urquhart faced in Antarctica were _______: taking in about 5,000 calories each day, _______ in a tent. Combined with the sound of _______ winds and the continent’s 24 hours of sunlight in the summer months, these were _______ favorable to a good night’s sleep. Urquhart would usually wear four layers of coats and keep ________ her own body temperature while running.

Urquhart launched the Run Antarctica aiming to encourage more women to ________ sport. Though still unsure about what her next running challenge will have, she has set a ________ of raising $1.5 million for charity.

“Confidence is a real issue for females,” says Urquhart. “And a sporting environment provides them with a great opportunity to ________ themselves.” This served as a huge ________ for her to take on a challenge that no other woman had attempted before. “It was actually showing that we can push our ________, and explore what seems impossible,” says Urquhart.

1.

A．closing

B．keeping

C．missing

D．setting

2.

A．puzzle

B．outcome

C．challenge

D．examination

3.

A．painted

B．refrigerated

C．heated

D．crowded

4.

A．varied

B．soft

C．smooth

D．high

5.

A．purposes

B．messages

C．preparations

D．suggestions

6.

A．new

B．tough

C．interesting

D．exciting

7.

A．accommodating

B．recovering

C．harvesting

D．complaining

8.

A．gentle

B．slight

C．warm

D．wild

9.

A．likely

B．significantly

C．hardly

D．really

10.

A．noticing

B．taking

C．decreasing

D．forgetting

11.

A．refer to

B．apply for

C．carry on

D．take up

12.

A．price

B．record

C．target

D．rule

13.

A．support

B．trust

C．prevent

D．wait

14.

A．inspiration

B．impression

C．symbol

D．adventure

15.

A．processes

B．positions

C．schedules

D．limits