1 . He’s considered the father of the technological innovation, and apart from that, he was also known as a design perfectionist. There is no single executive or creator in the technology industry who is more creative and inspirational than him, and with that being said he was a one-in-billion creator.

On February 24, 1955, in San Francisco, California, United States, a baby named Steve Jobs entered the world. His parents’ inability to provide for him led to a difficult childhood, one in which he battled with his sense of self and felt constantly confused and unfulfilled. Nonetheless, who could have predicted that this person would cause such a dramatic shift in the information technology? The way Steve Jobs showed the world the new products and devices he was working on was truly out of this world, and that’s a big part of why he’s so beloved.

Steve Jobs was well-informed, but he was not a scholar. He possessed a high IQ but showed little enthusiasm for formal education. His main hobbies were playing tricks on people via phone and computer, goofing off with his best friends, and coming up with ground-breaking business concepts.

Steve Jobs’ philosophy on education is well-known at this point; he has stated publicly that he was only able to learn after leaving college. When Steve Jobs and his friend Wozniak were in their early 20s, they came up with the idea for the Apple Computer. Steve Jobs’ Volkswagen bus and Wozniak’s beloved scientific calculator were sold to finance the pair’s garage-based startup. Jobs and Wozniak have been given much of credit for democratizing the computer industry by making computers more user-friendly, portable, and affordable.

Wozniak envisioned a line of accessible and lightning-fast personal computers, and Jobs was put in charge of the company’s marketing and management. From the get-go, Apple sold the computers for up to $666. The unexpected greatness of their early success inspired them to develop more powerful machines. In the 70s, they accomplished what would become the company’s crowning achievement. Assembled by Apple, Inc. , the high-performance computer was an instant success in their home state of California, and its sales helped make Jobs a multimillionaire.

1. Which of the following is a big reason for Jobs being beloved?

A．Jobs revolutionized the technology industry.

B．Jobs realized his dream despite his painful childhood.

C．Jobs employed an extraordinary way to present the new devices.

D．Jobs is the most creative and motivational person in the technology industry.

2. What does the underlined phrase “goofing off” in paragraph three most probably mean?

A．quitting school	B．playing around
C．starting a business	D．learning knowledge

3. Which of the following is TRUE according to the passage?

A．Jobs is keen on keeping in contact with friends via phone and computer.

B．Jobs and Wozniak advocated democracy for every staff in the computer industry.

C．Jobs showed less passion for education because of the influence of his difficult childhood.

D．The economic situation was a barrier to Jobs and Wozniak when they started their business.

4. Which of the following does Jobs most probably agree with?

A．All things come to those who always choose to wait.

B．The only thing that keeps you going is that you love what you do.

C．Knowledge makes you humble, while ignorance makes you proud.

D．If you look at what you have in your life, you will always have more.

3 . When authoring his epitaph (墓志铭), Thomas Jefferson omitted his two terms as the nation’s third president yet included “Father of the University of Virginia.” The Founding Father spent the last years of his life not in the _____ but instead pursuing one of his most treasured missions: it was creating the University of Virginia. As mastermind of the university’s architecture and curriculum, Jefferson assured that what he _____ was sound.

Jefferson personally designed and oversaw the _____ of what he would regard as an “academic village.” At the front and center of a tree-lined lawn area, Jefferson _____ positioned the Rotunda, a round brick building featuring classical Greek columns in front. The domed (圆顶的) top of the Rotunda contained a library stocked with 7,000 books _____ by Jefferson himself, while the area beneath included two floors of classrooms. At that time, such noticeable placement of the Rotunda was a marked _____ from other universities’ designs, which generally featured chapels (小教堂) for the training of clergy (牧师).

_____ use of the grassy area in front of the Rotunda, Jefferson added ten two-story houses for teachers’ housing and connected them to student dormitories with colonnades, column- lined covered walkways. To keep teachers _____ while they were talking heated, Jefferson included dining halls in his design, referring to them as “hotels.”

In the spirit of his new nation, Jefferson introduced the notion of what we now call electives. Instead of a strictly dictated curriculum, students could _____ from ten academic disciplines. These disciplines were subject areas that _____ from ancient and modern languages to certain branches of science. To support the _____ components of the university’s curriculum, Jefferson included a botanical garden, an experimental farm, and an observatory. (Not one to _____ the slightest detail, Jefferson showcased the ten categories by placing a carefully chosen Roman symbol on each of the ten house.)

Although he didn’t live to see the full completion of the university’s construction, or _____ the graduation of the first senior class, Jefferson ensured that the university, which would later be named a World Heritage site, _____ free choice in classes, respect for classical routes, and curiosity about the sciences.

Those principles are forever remembered in the last part of his epitaph, which, if stated differently, could easily have read “____visionary for all Americans.”

1.

A．company

B．school

C．government

D．library

2.

A．figured out

B．left behind

C．carried on

D．took over

3.

A．construction

B．decoration

C．evolution

D．launch

4.

A．optimistically

B．accidentally

C．emotionally

D．strategically

5.

A．edited

B．written

C．chosen

D．copied

6.

A．absence

B．departure

C．prevention

D．relief

7.

A．Maximizing

B．Denying

C．Protecting

D．Losing

8.

A．turned to

B．held up

C．looked to

D．fuelled up

9.

A．select

B．differ

C．hear

D．keep

10.

A．dated

B．ranged

C．resulted

D．borrowed

11.

A．mathematics

B．language

C．science

D．history

12.

A．overlook

B．notice

C．hide

D．explore

13.

A．less

B．rather

C．else

D．even

14.

A．encouraged

B．reformed

C．questioned

D．evaluated

15.

A．personal

B．academic

C．professional

D．economic

4 . A Victory for Women in Economics

Economic history has long been documented through a male perspective, putting emphasis on the contributions of men and their viewpoints. For proof, just look to the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences.     1     The third, Harvard labor economist Claudia Goldin, won the prize in 2023, for her decades of work studying the gender pay gap.

    2     This narrow view might not appeal to everyone. Women in particular tend to be drawn to areas that have a direct impact on social challenges, such as health economics, development economics and education economics. But those fields don’t get as much attention and are sometimes not even recognized as economics at all.

Not only are women insufficiently represented as economists, economics as a field has historically ignored the role women play in the economy.     3     This resulted in economists failing to appreciate the unpaid labor that women provided in households and continuing to shape their analyses based on their traditional gender role beliefs.

Goldin has challenged the traditional male-centered world and turned the attention to women’s economic roles and challenges. Her Nobel recognition isn’t merely an honor for her individual achievements. It shows the world how inclusive, diverse and interconnected the field truly is.     4    

A．Economics isn’t just the boring science — it’s a human science.

B．Goldin’s research advocates the establishment of support systems for families to address the gender pay gap.

C．Part of the problem is that economics is often identified with finance, banking and the stock market.

D．It wasn’t a victory just for her but for women in the field.

E．It’s been awarded to 90 men since 1969 — and just three women.

F．Traditional models often oversimplified households’ decision-making processes and did not account for women’s contributions.

5 . Pablo Picasso was probably the most famous artist and one of the greatest creative minds of the 20th century. This great artist lived more artistic lifetimes than any of his peers. During his 75-year career, he produced thousands of works, not only paintings but also sculptures, prints, and ceramics, using a wide variety of materials. He almost single-handedly created modern art, changing art more profoundly than any other artist of his century.

Born in 1881, in Spain, Picasso was a child with great talents, completing the one-month qualifying examination for the Academy of Fine Arts in Barcelona in one day at the age of 14. After finishing his studies in Barcelona, the artist continued his training in Madrid but later returned to Barcelona. There began his “blue period”, so named for the dominant blue tones in the artist’s paintings. During this time, he moved frequently between Barcelona and Paris. In Paris, he spent his days studying the masterworks at the Louvre and his nights with other artists at night clubs, during which time he became fascinated with the circus world’s acrobats and wandering performers. This marked a radical change in color and mood for the artist. He began painting in subtle pinks and grays, often highlighted with brighter tones. This was known as his “rose period”.

The peak of Picasso’s creativity is evidenced in his pioneering role in Cubism. In 1907, he painted Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, a Cubist painting which changed 20th century art completely. In it, the artist and viewer look at the subjects from many different angles at the same time. Picasso and French painter Georges Braque were the leading figures of the Cubist movement. For Picasso, the 1920s were years of rich artistic exploration and great productivity. He designed theater sets and painted in Cubist, Classical styles. In the last decades of his life, he still experimented with new methods of printing and painted a series of variations of old master paintings. He died in France in 1973, at the age of 91. His powers of creativity and execution continue to astonish artists all over the world.

1. How are Picasso’s early paintings categorized?

A．According to their subject matter.

B．According to where he lived and worked.

C．According to the colors he used.

D．According to the trainings he got.

2. What does the writer suggest in this passage?

A．Picasso was accomplished in a number of media.

B．Picasso was primarily an accomplished painter and illustrator.

C．Picasso was an artist who was known for a limited number of works.

D．Picasso was an artist who had the longest life span.

3. What can we assume according to the passage?

A．Picasso’s reputation exceeded other artists of the period.

B．Picasso was a solitary genius, unconnected to others of the period.

C．Picasso’s genius failed him in the later years of his life.

D．Picasso’s genius astonished artists all over the world after his death.

4. Why does the author write this passage?

A．To explain the reasons for Picasso’s creativity.

B．To describe the major periods that marked Picasso’s artistry.

C．To compare Picasso with other painters and styles of the period.

D．To stimulate modern artists to learn from Picasso.

6 . Directions: Complete the following passage by using the words in the box. Each word can only be used once. Note that there is one word more than you need.

A.breakdown               B.masterpieces          C.committed                 D. reduced          E.extreme   F.allowances G.memorable       H.security       I.   attribute          J.tribute        K.conducted

The little thief: How Charlie Chaplin survived his hungry childhood

A recently unearthed interview with an old friend recalls how the actor was looked after by a kindly ‘foster mother’ who made sure he did the right thing.

The     1     poverty endured by Charlie Chaplin while growing up in the slums (贫民窟) of Victorian London    2    him to stealing and being scolded by the woman who took care of him, according to an interview with one of his childhood friends that has remained unheard in the British Film Institute for almost 40 years.

Effie Wisdom, whose aunt gave him a home from home when he needed it most, lamented that Chaplin “had a terrible life” as a child, “always hungry”, dressed in “ragged”, filthy clothes - no doubt later inspiring the comic genius who created the Tramp, society’s eternal victim and one of cinema’s most     3     characters.

In 1983, aged 92, Wisdom gave an interview in which she recalled first meeting Chaplin when he was five and she was seven, with her aunt becoming his “foster mother”, as he used to tell her.

She recalled: “My aunt used to feed him because there was no social    4     in those days, no free milk, no children’s     5    , nothing. You never starved and yet you were on the breadline.”

“He used to go up Lambeth Walk and pinch . He’d come home with four eggs one day in his pocket. He came home with a pair of boots one day he’d nicked.”

Her aunt scolded him: “Do you want me to get the police? If you go on doing this, you’ll be locked up. You realize that, don’t you?”

The interview was     6    by Kevin Brownlow, one of Britain’s leading experts in silent films after researching Unknown Chaplin, the acclaimed three-part 1983 documentary series that he made with David Gill. It has been stored in the British Film Institute’s archive (档案) ever since.

Chaplin’s parents were music-hall performers and his mother was abandoned by her husband. His mother was then    7    to an asylum (精神病院).

After Chaplin’s death in 1977, Wisdom had written to his widow (遗孀), with memories of his mother’s desperate concern for her sons, Charlie and Sydney “I told Lady Chaplin I knew Charlie when he was a little boy. I used to play with him out in the street. When his mother had a nervous    8    , she said to my aunt, ‘If I had to go away, you wouldn’t let my lovely sons go into an orphanage?’ My aunt said, ‘No, I’ll look after them, don’t you worry’. My aunt looked after them, fed them and clothed them.”

Chaplin never forgot that. Wisdom paid     9    to his generosity towards her after finding success in America: “He used to send my aunt so much money because she used to look after him.”He also wrote to her.

Chaplin, with his derby hat (圆顶窄边礼帽)，toothbrush moustache and impossibly large boots, was the protagonist in such    10    as City Lights, The Great Dictator and Limelight.

Wisdom, who left school at 13 and worked in a London pub into her 80s, recalled his natural comedic talent, “He was always falling about being funny. He’d get an old table out in the yard, and he’d get all the kids in there, and get up there, put an old pair of trousers on, an old coat and a stick when he was 12. The kids loved that, he used to fall off the table, then he’d get up.” But she joked: “I never thought he’d get to where he got.”

She remembered him writing to her aunt from America, telling her that he would visit on his return to England: “He said, I’m not like when I left England with nothing. I’m going on to be a rich man.”

She added that Chaplin stayed at the Ritz (一家豪华酒店) and turned up at his aunt’s home in-a chauffeur (私人司机)-driven Rolls-Royce: “He invited my aunt and my uncle and me to the Ritz. My aunt says to me, ‘Of course I’d never been in a place like that’.”

From the Gardian

7 . Directions: After reading the passage below, fill in the blanks to make the passage coherent and grammatically correct. For the blanks with a given word, fill in each blank with the proper form of the given word; for the other blanks, use one word that best fits each blank.

Denmark’s Queen Margrethe II has announced her surprise abdication in a new year TV address. She will formally step down on 14 January, which will be 52 years to the day     1     she became queen. “I will leave the throne to my son, Crown Prince Frederik,” she announced.

Unlike British royal tradition, there will be no formal crowning ceremony for Crown Prince Frederik,     2     is 55. Instead, his accession will be announced from Amalienborg Castle in Copenhagen on the day. He will take her place as King of Denmark and head of state in the country — which is a constitutional monarchy --       3     in Greenland and the Faroe Islands.

Queen Margrethe revealed that she came to the decision after a period of reflection     4     (follow) surgery on her back in early 2023. “The surgery naturally gave rise to thinking about     5     the time had come to leave the responsibility to the next generation,” she said.

“Although the duty and position of regent     6     (hand) down for more than 1,000 years, it is still difficult to understand that the time has now come for a change of throne,” she said in a statement. Queen Margrethe is a popular figure in Denmark, and many Danes had expected her to remain on the throne until her death. “She is to us     7     Queen Elizabeth was to you,” Danish journalist Tine Gotzsche told the BBC.

Queen Margrethe attended the funeral of Queen Elizabeth II in 2022, and they celebrated their respective jubilees in the same year. She had not been expected to become Queen when she was born. But when she was 13, Danish law changed to allow women     8     (take) the throne. More than a decade ago, Queen Margrethe reflected that she was inspired by the late British Queen “that I understand that I must dedicate my life to my nation like she has done, and in that way she has been very important to me.”

Queen Margrethe is     9     (long)-serving monarch in Danish history, after surpassing King Christian IV, of Denmark and Norway. Gotzsche said the Danish royal transition is a moment of     10     (mix) celebration and sadness. “She has always been there, she has been ageing with all of us,” she said, but added: “the Crown Prince is in a very good position to take over, the succession is laid out — it’s very logical, and it absolutely makes sense.”

8 . Artist Susan Shepherd is best known for her flower paintings, and the large garden that surrounds her house is the source of many of her subjects. It is full of her favourite flowers, most especially vancties of tulips and poppies. Some of the plants are unruly and seed themselves all over the garden. There is a harmony of colour, shape and structure in the two long flower borders that line the paved path which crosses the garden from east to west. Much of this is due to the previous owners who were keen gardeners, and who left plants that appealed to Susan. She also inherited the gardener, Danny. “In fact, it was really his garden,” she says. “We got on very well. At first he would say, “Oh, it’s not worth it” to some of the things I wanted to put in, but when I said I wanted to paint them, he recognized what I had in mind.”

Susan prefers to focus on detailed studies of individual plants rather than on the garden as a whole, though she will occasionally paint a group of plants where they are. More usually, she picks them and then takes them up to her studio. “I don’t set the whole thing up at once,” she says. “I take one flower up at once,” she says. “I take one flower out and paint it, which might take a few days, and then I bring in another one and build up the painting that way. Sometimes it takes a couple of years to finish.”

Her busiest time of year is spring and early summer, when the tulips are out, followed by the poppies. “They all come out together, and you’re so busy,” she says. But the gradual decaying process is also part of the fascination for her. With tulips, for example, “you bring them in and put them in water, then leave them for perhaps a day and they each form themselves into different shapes. They open out and are fantastic. When you first put them in a vase, you think they are boring, but they change all the time with twists and turns.”

1. In the first paragraph, the author describes Susan’s garden as ________.

A．being only partly finished

B．having a path lined with flowers

C．having caused problems for the previous owners

D．needing a lot of work to keep it looking attractive

2. What does Susan say about Danny?

A．He felt she was interfering in his work.

B．He immediately understood her feelings.

C．He was recommended by the previous owners.

D．He was slow to see the point of some of her ideas.

3. What is Susan’s approach to painting?

A．She creates her paintings in several stages.

B．She spends all day painting an individual flower.

C．She likes to do research on a plant before she paints it.

D．She will wait until a flower is ready to be picked before painting it.

4. Susan thinks that tulips ________.

A．look best some time after they have been cut.

B．should be kept in the house for as long as possible.

C．are not easy to paint because they change so quickly.

D．are more colourful and better shaped than other flowers.

9 . A pencil drawing of a broken old man, head in hands, looking extremely exhausted, has been identified as a newly-discovered work by Vincent Van Gogh.

The Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam said yesterday that it had _______ the authenticity (真实性) of the drawing. Senior researcher Teio Meedendorp described it as a(an) “_______” discovery, shining light on van Gogh’s early career as an artist in the Hague, a time less well-known than his years in Paris or the south of France.

The drawing has been titled Study for _______. It was drawn in late 1882s when the 29-year-old van Gogh was two years into his career as an artist. He was drawing as many studies of _______ as he could. He often recruited models from an almshouse for the elderly run by the Dutch Reformed church, _______ them a modest fee and gave them coffee.

He called these models his “orphan men” and “orphan women”. A favourite was the man in the newly discovered drawing, Adrianus Jacobus Zuyderland, the only one of these models whose name is known.

Van Gogh used a thick carpenter’s pencil on rough watercolour paper. The sheet _______ 48.8 cm by 30 cm.

Experts have _______ the drawing back to the end of November 1882, linking it to several other works made at the time.

Van Gogh talked about the two drawings in a letter to his brother, Theo. “Today and yesterday I drew two _______ of an old man with his elbows on his knees and his head in his hands.... Perhaps I’ll do a lithograph (平版印刷画) of it. What a fine _______ an old working man makes, in his patched bombazine (斜纹布) suit with his bald head.”

At the time Van Gogh was ________ to work as a magazine illustrator, so he could earn money in his own right and be less dependent on his brother.

The drawing, which has been in a ________ collection in the Netherlands since about 1910, goes on display at the Amsterdam museum from 17 September, 2021, until 2 January, 2022, after which it will be returned to the owner.

Meedendorp recalled his ________ on making the discovery: “I’ve worked with Van Gogh for a substantial part of my life, especially the drawings, and it is always a delight to have them in your hand and looking at them up close. These drawings from the Hague are ________ delightful to look at — you can follow the working process of Vincent so well... the way he ________ the pencil.”

“Whenever you have a ________ at drawings like this, you want to pick up a pencil yourself and start drawing.”

1.

A．denied

B．doubted

C．recognized

D．concealed

2.

A．expensive

B．extraordinary

C．impossible

D．useless

3.

A．Worn Out

B．Reach Out

C．Hands Up

D．On the Way

4.

A．animals

B．people

C．buildings

D．nature

5.

A．lent

B．protected

C．showed

D．paid

6.

A．costs

B．values

C．measures

D．weighs

7.

A．traced

B．favoured

C．displayed

D．withdrew

8.

A．squares

B．figures

C．triangles

D．servants

9.

A．design

B．scenery

C．sight

D．drawing

10.

A．talented

B．ambitious

C．modest

D．pessimistic

11.

A．fine

B．new

C．private

D．public

12.

A．annoyance

B．disappointment

C．excitement

D．indifference

13.

A．absolutely

B．barely

C．hardly

D．instantly

14.

A．ruins

B．classifies

C．handles

D．accompanies

15.

A．purchase

B．laugh

C．scream

D．peer

10 . What Makes a Nobel Laureate?

Are there any predictors that point to who will be selected as Nobel laureates?

Is brilliance in childhood a predictor? When the 2006 chemistry laureate, Roger Kornberg, was asked what he wanted for Christmas, he said, “A week in the lab.”     1    . Mario Capecchi (medicine, 2007) was an abandoned child on the streets of wartime Italy.

    2    . Five of Enrico Fermi’s (physics, 1938) postdoctoral students went on to win the Nobel Prize. Otto Warburg (medicine, 1931) advised an American doctoral student, “If you wish to become a scientist, you must ask a successful scientist to accept you in his laboratory.”

Experts often recommend that people specialize in one field of work or research to maximize their chances of success.     3     If you look at the careers of Nobel Prize winners, you’ll find that they are unusually likely to be “creative polymaths.” That is, they purposely integrate formal and informal expertise from widely varied disciplines to yield new and useful ideas and practices.

There remains one quality that is essential. It is what Leon Lederman (physics, 1988) called “compulsive dedication.”     4    . Take Marie Curie (physics, 1903; chemistry, 1911) and her husband Pierre (physics, 1903). The Curies were assigned a shed with a leaking roof and a dirt floor, where they worked for years, freezing in winter and sweltering in summer. “And yet,” Marie Curie wrote in her biography of her husband, “it was in this miserable old shed that the best and happiest years of our life were spent, entirely dedicated to work.”

A．What distinguishes Nobel laureates is passion for their work, work that engages their hearts as well as their heads.

B．But early privilege is not essential.

C．The typical Nobel laureate in science is a male born into a middle-class family.

D．In many Nobel laureates’ autobiographies, they pay tribute to an outstanding mentor.

E．In fact, Nobel laureates are mostly down-to-earth and discreet.

F．Yet recently published researches indicate that successful innovators take a broader path.