1 . While most teenagers are simply hoping to get their driver’s license, 17-year-old Mack Rutherford has had far higher goals. The ambitious teen sought to become the youngest person to fly solo around the world. After five months and a day, Rutherford successfully achieved the incredible feat.

In March 2022, 16-year-old Rutherford took off on his adventure. He flew a Shark, a high-performance ultralight (超轻型的) aircraft. His journey around the world tested him in the skies through monsoons (季风) and extreme temperatures. Rutherford’s longest flight on this journey was from Japan to the U. S., which took him 10 hours over water. The highest altitude he had to face was 12, 500 feet over Mexico. He flew across four continents, 30 countries.

After everything, Rutherford landed safely in Sofia on August 24. He arrived home to discover he’d broken two Guinness world records: he is the youngest person ever to fly around the world solo, and also the youngest person to do it in an ultralight aircraft. But he surprised the world by becoming the youngest pilot ever at age 15, when he received his microlight pilot’s license.

This incredible achievement at such a young age is certainly worth celebrating and his family might be the perfect people to fully appreciate it. Rutherford’s father is a professional pilot. This sparked an interest in aviation (飞行) for the young Rutherford since he was 11. And Rutherford’s sister, Zara Rutherford, recently completed a similar solo journey and holds her own world record as the youngest female pilot to complete a solo flight around the world.

“I’m very happy to complete my five-month journey around the world,” Rutherford said. “It took a bit longer than it was supposed to, but everything is fine. I’m trying to show that young people can do something special and make a difference; just follow their dreams and they’ll eventually come true.”

What does Rutherford advise the young to do?

A．Learn to fly as early as possible.

B．Take heart to achieve their dreams.

C．Do special things to change the world.

D．Travel the world to enrich their experience.

2 . While most teenagers are simply hoping to get their driver’s license, 17-year-old Mack Rutherford has had far higher goals. The ambitious teen sought to become the youngest person to fly solo around the world. After five months and a day, Rutherford successfully achieved the incredible feat.

In March 2022, 16-year-old Rutherford took off on his adventure. He flew a Shark, a high-performance ultralight (超轻型的) aircraft. His journey around the world tested him in the skies through monsoons (季风) and extreme temperatures. Rutherford’s longest flight on this journey was from Japan to the U. S., which took him 10 hours over water. The highest altitude he had to face was 12, 500 feet over Mexico. He flew across four continents, 30 countries.

After everything, Rutherford landed safely in Sofia on August 24. He arrived home to discover he’d broken two Guinness world records: he is the youngest person ever to fly around the world solo, and also the youngest person to do it in an ultralight aircraft. But he surprised the world by becoming the youngest pilot ever at age 15, when he received his microlight pilot’s license.

This incredible achievement at such a young age is certainly worth celebrating and his family might be the perfect people to fully appreciate it. Rutherford’s father is a professional pilot. This sparked an interest in aviation (飞行) for the young Rutherford since he was 11. And Rutherford’s sister, Zara Rutherford, recently completed a similar solo journey and holds her own world record as the youngest female pilot to complete a solo flight around the world.

“I’m very happy to complete my five-month journey around the world,” Rutherford said. “It took a bit longer than it was supposed to, but everything is fine. I’m trying to show that young people can do something special and make a difference; just follow their dreams and they’ll eventually come true.”

What Rutherford did made the world amazed at first?

A．His ambition different from his peers.

B．His accomplishment of a solo journey.

C．His high-performance ultralight aircraft.

D．His microlight pilot’s license at age of 15.

3 . The scientist’s job is to figure out how the world works, to “torture (拷问)” Nature to reveal her secrets, as the 17th century philosopher Francis Bacon described it. But who are these people in the lab coats (or sports jackets, or T-shirts and jeans) and how do they work? It turns out that there is a good deal of mystery surrounding the mystery-solvers.

“One of the greatest mysteries is the question of what it is about human beings — brains, education, culture etc. that makes them capable of doing science at all,” said Colin Allen, a cognitive scientist at Indiana University.

Two vital ingredients seem to be necessary to make a scientist: the curiosity to seek out mysteries and the creativity to solve them. “Scientists exhibit a heightened level of curiosity,” reads a 2007 report on scientific creativity. “They go further and deeper into basic questions showing a passion for knowledge for its own sake.” Max Planck, one of the fathers of quantum physics, once said, the scientist “must have a vivid and intuitive imagination, for new ideas are not generated by deduction (推论), but by an artistically creative imagination.”

......

As long as our best technology for seeing inside the brain requires subjects to lie nearly motionless while surrounded by a giant magnet, we’re only going to make limited pro gress on these questions,” Allen said.

What is a suitable title for the text?

A．Who Are The Mystery-solvers

B．Scientists Are Not Born But Made

C．Great Mystery: What Makes A Scientist

D．Solving Mysteries: Inside A Scientist’s Mind

5 . Crime fiction books have been popular with readers for many decades-so popular, in fact, that at a recent London Book Fair sales of the genre (类型) overtook general fiction for the first time ever, a development that had been widely anticipated. Commercial success, of course, does not impress everyone and there are those who believe crime fiction should not be held in such high regard. Well-known in this group is Sebastian Franklin, who has argued that most crime fiction books look more like crossword puzzles than literature. However, increasingly this is a minority opinion as crime fiction is becoming recognized as a rich and dynamic literary genre in around the world.

Crime writing really came to the public’s notice in the 1920s and 1930s with the books of the British author Agatha Christie. Christie was a productive writer, publishing more than 60 detective novels over a 50-year period, beginning in 1920.

Without a doubt, there are certain elements that tend to be repeated in Christie’s books. The stories generally focus on a well-off circle of people, whose peaceful lives are thrown into chaos by an unexplained crime. The location is often a restricted space of some sort: a train, an island, a boat, or a village. This is quite different, for example, to the world of the fictional detective Sherlock Holmes, who often has the entire city of London as his hunting ground.

The books are also action-packed just like today’s most popular thrillers (惊悚小说). Christie mastered the art of the page-turner: events unfold so quickly and unpredictably that we keep reading to find out what happens next. The most significant consequence is that it is so simple to overlook vital clues.

It is worth reading a Christie book a second time just to notice how carefully she hides crucial information about the criminal’s identity.

A survey of contemporary crime writing shows that Agatha Christie’s legacy (遗产) is more important now than at any time previously, at the very point when crime writing has become the most popular of all book genres.

What can be a suitable title for the text?

A．The Influence of Crime Writer Agatha Christie	B．The Surprising Rise of Crime Fiction Books
C．Agatha Christie Enjoys Growing Wealth and Fame	D．Crime Writers Sharpen Their Writing Skills

6 . While famous foreign architects are invited to lead the designs of landmark buildings in China such as the new CCTV tower and the National Center for the Performing Arts, many excellent Chinese architects are making great efforts to take the center stage.

Their efforts have been proven fruitful. Wang Shu, a 49-year-old Chinese architect, won the 2012 Pritzker Architecture Prize — which is often referred to as the Nobel Prize in architecture — on February 28. He is the first Chinese citizen to win this award.

Wang serves as head of the Architecture Department at the China Academy of Art (CAA). His office is located at the Xiangshan campus (校园) of the university in Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province. Many buildings on the campus are his original creations.

The style of the campus is quite different from that of most Chinese universities. Many visitors were amazed by the complex architectural space and abundant building types. The curves (曲线) of the buildings perfectly match the rise and fall of hills, forming a unique view.

Wang collected more than 7 million abandoned bricks of different ages. He asked the workers to use traditional techniques to make the bricks into walls, roofs and corridors. This creation attracted a lot of attention thanks to its mixture of modern and traditional Chinese elements (元素).

Wang’s works show a deep understanding of modern architecture and a good knowledge of traditions. Through such a balance, he had created a new type of Chinese architecture, said Tadao Ando, the winner of the 1995 Pritzker Prize.

Wang believes traditions should not be sealed in glass boxes at museums. "That is only evidence that traditions once existed," he said.

"Many Chinese people have a misunderstanding of traditions. They think tradition means old things from the past. In fact, tradition also refers to the things that have been developing and that are still being created, " he said.

"Today, many Chinese people are learning Western styles and theories rather than focusing on Chinese traditions. Many people tend to talk about traditions without knowing what they really are, " said Wang.

The study of traditions should be combined with practice. Otherwise, the recreation of traditions would be artificial and empty, he said.

1. Wang’s winning of the prize means that Chinese architects are ___________.

A．following the latest world trend

B．getting international recognition

C．working harder than ever before

D．relying on foreign architects

2. What should we do about Chinese traditions according to Wang?

A．Spread them to the world.

B．Preserve them at museums.

C．Teach them in universities.

D．Recreate them in practice.

7 . While famous foreign architects are invited to lead the designs of landmark buildings in China such as the new CCTV tower and the National Center for the Performing Arts, many excellent Chinese architects are making great efforts to take the center stage.

Their efforts have been proven fruitful. Wang Shu, a 49-year-old Chinese architect, won the 2012 Pritzker Architecture Prize — which is often referred to as the Nobel Prize in architecture — on February 28. He is the first Chinese citizen to win this award.

Wang serves as head of the Architecture Department at the China Academy of Art (CAA). His office is located at the Xiangshan campus (校园) of the university in Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province. Many buildings on the campus are his original creations.

The style of the campus is quite different from that of most Chinese universities. Many visitors were amazed by the complex architectural space and abundant building types. The curves (曲线) of the buildings perfectly match the rise and fall of hills, forming a unique view.

Wang collected more than 7 million abandoned bricks of different ages. He asked the workers to use traditional techniques to make the bricks into walls, roofs and corridors. This creation attracted a lot of attention thanks to its mixture of modern and traditional Chinese elements (元素).

Wang’s works show a deep understanding of modern architecture and a good knowledge of traditions. Through such a balance, he had created a new type of Chinese architecture, said Tadao Ando, the winner of the 1995 Pritzker Prize.

Wang believes traditions should not be sealed in glass boxes at museums. “That is only evidence that traditions once existed,” he said.

“Many Chinese people have a misunderstanding of traditions. They think tradition means old things from the past. In fact, tradition also refers to the things that have been developing and that are still being created,” he said.

“Today, many Chinese people are learning Western styles and theories rather than focusing on Chinese traditions. Many people tend to talk about traditions without knowing what they really are,” said Wang.

The study of traditions should be combined with practice. Otherwise, the recreation of traditions would be artificial and empty, he said.

1. What impressed visitors to the CAA Xiangshan campus most?

A．Its hilly environment.

B．Its large size.

C．Its unique style.

D．Its diverse functions.

2. What made Wang’s architectural design a success?

A．The mixture of different shapes.

B．The balance of East and West.

C．The use of popular techniques.

D．The harmony of old and new.

8 . In 1812, the year Charles Dickens was born, there were 66 novels published in Britain. People had been writing novels for a century—most experts date the first novel to Robinson Crusoe in 1719 — but nobody wanted to do it professionally. The steam-powered printing press was still in its early stages; the literacy (识字) rate in England was under 50%. Many works of fiction appeared without the names of the authors, often with something like “By a lady”. Novels, for the most part, were looked upon as silly, immoral, or just plain bad.

In 1870, when Dickens died, the world mourned him as its first professional writer and publisher, famous and beloved, who had led an explosion in both the publication of novels and their readership and whose characters — from Oliver Twist to Tiny Tim — were held up as moral touchstones. Today Dickens’ greatness is unchallenged. Removing him from the pantheon (名人堂) of English literature would make about as much sense as the Louvre selling off the Mona Lisa.

How did Dickens get to the top? For all the feelings readers attach to stories, literature is a number’s game, and the test of time is extremely difficult to pass. Some 60,000 novels were published during the Victorian age, from 1837 to 1901; today a casual reader might be able to name a half-dozen of them. It’s partly true that Dickens’ style of writing attracted audiences from all walks of life. It’s partly that his writings rode a wave of social, political and scientific progress. But it’s also that he rewrote the culture of literature and put himself at the center. No one will ever know what mix of talent, ambition, energy and luck made Dickens such a singular writer. But as the 200th anniversary of his birth approaches, it is possible — and important for our own culture — to understand how he made himself a lasting one.

Dickens is compared with the Mona Lisa in the text to stress ________.

A．his reputation in France

B．his interest in modern art

C．his success in publication

D．his importance in literature

9 . In 1812, the year Charles Dickens was born, there were 66 novels published in Britain. People had been writing novels for a century — most experts date the first novel to Robinson Crusoe in 1719 — but nobody wanted to do it professionally. The steam-powered printing press was still in its early stages; the literacy (识字) rate in England was under 50%. Many works of fiction appeared without the names of the authors, often with something like “By a lady.” Novels, for the most part, were looked upon as silly, immoral, or just plain bad.

In 1870, when Dickens died, the world mourned him as its first professional writer and publisher, famous and beloved, who had led an explosion in both the publication of novels and their readership and whose characters — from Oliver Twist to Tiny Tim — were held up as moral touchstones. Today Dickens’ greatness is unchallenged. Removing him from the pantheon (名人堂) of English literature would make about as much sense as the Louvre selling off the Mona Lisa.

How did Dickens get to the top? For all the feelings readers attach to stories, literature is a numbers game, and the test of time is extremely difficult to pass. Some 60,000 novels were published during the Victorian age, from 1837 to 1901; today a casual reader might be able to name a half-dozen of them. It’s partly true that Dickens’ style of writing attracted audiences

from all walks of life. It’s partly that his writings rode a wave of social, political and scientific progress. But it’s also that he rewrote the culture of literature and put himself at the center. No one will ever know what mix of talent, ambition, energy and luck made Dickens such a singular writer. But as the 200th anniversary of his birth approaches, it is possible — and important for our own culture — to understand how he made himself a lasting one.

Which of the following best describes British novels in the 18^th century?

A．They were difficult to understand.

B．They were popular among the rich.

C．They were seen as nearly worthless.

D．They were written mostly by women.