1 . On February 6, 2020, American astronaut Christina Koch arrived back on Earth after 328 days in space. Her time in space is just one of the records set by herself. That’s the longest spaceflight ever made by a woman, and just one of the many things Ms. Koch achieved in space.
Ms. Koch took off from Earth for the International Space Station (ISS) on March 12, 2019. While in space, she made 5, 248 trips around the Earth, travelling 2, 237 million kilometers, which is roughly the same as 291 trips to the Moon and back. During her 11 months on the ISS, Ms. Koch took part in six spacewalks, spending over 42 hours in all outside the station. In October of 2019, Ms. Koch led the first ever all-female spacewalk with Jessica Meir.
But for most astronauts, space travel isn’t about setting records. It’s about doing science. Ms. Koch took part in a wide variety of special experiments, including studying how crystals grow in space, how atoms behave in extreme cold and learning more about growing plants in low gravity. Growing plants in space could be an important way to provide food on future trips. She also tested a new way of separating liquids from gases. This experiment could lead to simple methods of cleaning water and air in space, which could be very important for future space travel.
Ms. Koch isn’t just a scientist and an astronaut. She is also being studied. She’s part of a NASA program studying how astronauts are affected by being in space for long periods of time. Her trip was only 12 days shorter than the American record set by Scott Kelly in 2016. As they did with Mr. Kelly, NASA scientists are looking carefully at ways Ms. Koch’s body has been affected by her time in space. That research is important for the longer space trips NASA hopes to make in the future, such as for a base on the moon or a trip to Mars.
1. Which of the following is an achievement Ms. Koch has made?| A．Making the longest spaceflight by herself. | B．Leading the first women-only spacewalk. |
| C．Cleaning water and air successfully in space. | D．Staying outside the ISS continuously for 42 hours. |
| A．Koch made historic breakthroughs in space. | B．Koch went through a life-threatening space trip. |
| C．Koch completed admirable tasks in the space travel. | D．Koch is the most experienced astronaut in NASA. |
| A．Astronauts are competing to set new records. | B．Koch’s team produced their own food in space. |
| C．NASA has founded a scientific base on the moon. | D．Koch’s research is significant for space exploration. |
| A．Record-Setting Astronaut Koch Returns to Earth | B．US Astronauts Carried out Experiments in Space |
| C．Spacewalks Have Successfully Been Done on the ISS | D．NASA is Studying Astronauts for Longer Space Trips |
2 . Have you ever heard of King Charles the Twelfth of Sweden? He was born in 1682. When he was only three or four years old, he was able to speak German as well as Swedish. He became a good horse rider at the age of eight. As a king, he was famous for his courage in defending his country.
One day he was working in a small house. The house was almost between two armies. He asked one of his officers to sit down and write a short order for him.
The officer began to write, but jus as he finished the first word, a bomb came through the roof of the house and struck the floor close by him. He dropped the pen and sprang to his feet. He was pale with fear. “What is the matter?” asked the king .
“Oh, sir. The bomb! The bomb!” he answered.
“Yes, I see,” said the king. But what has the bomb to do with what I wish you to write? Sit down, and take your pen. When your country is in danger, you should forget your own safety.”
1. From the first paragraph we can infer that_________.| A．Charles was clever as a child | B．Charles dreamed to be a ride |
| C．German was kind of difficult for Charles | D．Charles preferred riding to languages |
| A．His kindness. | B．His knowledge. |
| C．His learning skills. | D．His courage. |
| A．Far from the enemy. | B．In a small house by a river. |
| C．Between two armies. | D．In an old house in a city. |
| A．a bomb struck near him | B．he was very excited |
| C．he was afraid of the king | D．his pen was broken |
3 . When Donovan Carrillo entered the ice rink at the Beijing Winter Olympics, he was the first Mexican to do so in 30 years. And although he came in 22nd in the free skate, his journey is so inspirational that he can only be viewed as a true champion.
When Carrillo was selected for the Olympics, he described it as “a dream comes true,” according to an article in The New York Times. It came after years of devotion to a sport that is seriously underfunded (资金不足的) in his hometown of Guadalajara in Mexico.
The 22-year-old started his athletic career with gymnastics and diving. However, with his parents’ support, he started ice skating, and thankfully his sporting past lent itself nicely to the sport. The only problem was the cost and the lack of facilities. As Carrillo’s father jokingly explains, Mexicans normally associate ice with something you put in a drink and not with the sport. So his son is actually one of the very few young men ice skating in their home country.
In fact, in 2013, while Carrillo was just a teen, his usual ice rink closed and he had nowhere to practice. In the end he had to move to Leon, in Guanajuato, and lived with his coach, Gregorio Nunez, so he could still practice. The move was hard on the whole family, both emotionally and financially, and what was meant to be just a few months away from home turned out to be nine years — nearly half of Carrillo’s life.
The ice skating hero’s story isn’t about medals: it’s about determination and effort. Looking at the Olympian’s face, you can see he’s more than happy. He wants to show what anyone can achieve, even if you don’t have state-of-the-art equipment.
Looking at him glide along the ice rink with ease, it’s hard to imagine that he trained on a small ice rink with substandard ice, and used a run-down skatepark to imagine performing in front of the judges. Carrillo is a young man who’ll jump over any obstacles to achieve his dream and honor his family. And that’s a true champion!
1. Why is Carrillo’s journey considered to be inspirational?| A．He made great progress in ice skating. | B．He succeeded in the Beijing Winter Olympics. |
| C．He trained in unfavorable situations. | D．He devoted his life to ice skating. |
| A．He started his athletic career with ice skating. |
| B．He was made by his family to practice diving. |
| C．He quit his career under his parents’ influence. |
| D．His previous sports experience was good for his ice skating. |
| A．His being unable to use his usual ice rink. |
| B．His intention to live far away from his family. |
| C．His coach living in Leon. |
| D．His family being in financial difficulties |
| A．Modest and creative. | B．Caring and courageous. |
| C．Determined and positive. | D．Ambitious and cooperative. |
4 . Shen Hao was born in 1964. He was the former first secretary of Party branch of Xiaogang Village, Fengyang County, Anhui Province. He died on November 6, 2009. From 2004 to 2009, he had done many good things for the villagers. For the development of Xiaogang Village he had made great contributions (贡献). So he was respected by all the villagers.
During the six years, he repaired the village roads, and built a building for a number of villagers. He rented a house in the village and thought about how to get the villagers to get rich all day. Even in the New Year, he still got together with his villagers. At last, under his leadership, Xiaogang Village was out of poverty. Now the villagers are leading a rich life.
He is a very filial son, but he had almost no time to get together with his over 90-year-old mother. But she never complained. His wife works in the bank and she is very busy. They both have little time to look after their daughter.
Although he did not do what he should do to his mother, wife and daughter, all the villagers will remember their good secretary forever.
1. Shen Hao worked as first secretary of Party branch of Xiaogang Village _______.| A．for about six years | B．for about sixteen years |
| C．about six years ago | D．about sixteen years ago |
| A．repairing the roads | B．putting up a building |
| C．helping the villagers to get rich | D．moving the village to a new place |
| A．孝顺 | B．叛逆 |
| C．勤奋 | D．诚实 |
| A．Shen Hao was only 45 years old when he died. |
| B．Shen Hao spent much time in taking care of his daughter. |
| C．Shen Hao helped the villagers a lot. |
| D．Now in Xiaogang Village, people are leading a rich life. |
5 . Sometimes, people get nicknames (绰号) because of their special gifts. We learned about a person whose nickname came from her excellent detective (侦探的) work. Her real name was Grace Humiston, but people called her “Mrs. Sherlock Holmes”. You must have seen the character Sherlock Holmes in books, movies and TV shows. Was Mrs. Sherlock Holmes a character who married Sherlock Holmes? No, she wasn’t the famous detective’s wife.
Grace Humiston began detective work in 1906. The family of a missing man came to her for help. Humiston took the case and tracked the man to the deep south. There, Humiston found illegal camps that forced men to do hard work when they couldn’t pay their debts (债务). Humiston realized that all the men there were reported missing in the north. Humiston entered the camps to know their situations. Then she returned to New York and reported what she had found to the police. The police rescued the missing men and closed the camps.
Another ten years passed before people called Grace Humiston “Mrs. Sherlock Holmes”. In 1917, Ruth Cruger took her ice skates to be fixed at a shop, and she never came home. The police looked into the shop’s owner, Alfredo Cocchi. They quickly ruled him out as a suspect (嫌疑犯).
That’s when the Crugers asked Grace Humiston for help. Humiston found that Alfredo Cocchi had escaped to Italy. So she decided to look into Alfredo Cocchi again. The police had searched Cocchi’s house twice, finding nothing. Humiston searched it again. This time, they found Ruth Cruger buried deep under the basement floor.
That’s how Grace Humiston became known as “Mrs. Sherlock Holmes”. People everywhere celebrated Humiston as an excellent detective. Grace Humiston became a Special Assistant United States Attorney. She was the first woman in history to work in this position. The New York Police Department even made her an official detective.
1. Why was Grace Humiston called “Mrs. Sherlock Holmes”?| A．She wrote a book on Holmes. | B．She knew everything about Holmes. |
| C．She was very good at detective work. | D．She is a character in a book on Holmes. |
| A．in the east | B．in the south | C．in the west | D．in the north |
| A．She ran away from home. | B．She was killed by Alfredo Cocchi. |
| C．She was found dead near a shop. | D．She went to Italy with a stranger. |
| A．She was recognized officially. | B．She got famous around the world. |
| C．She was greater than Sherlock Holmes. | D．She was the first woman detective in the US. |
Today you could get a ticket if you don’t drive on your side of the road. Worse yet, you could have a head-on collision(正面碰撞). But in 1917, Dr. June McCarroll could not get drivers to understand what seems so obvious today.
June McCarroll was born in New York in 1867. Unlike most young women of her age, she attended medical college in Chicago. After her husband became ill, the couple moved to Southern California in 1904.
In 1917, while driving down a familiar road near Indio, California Dr. McCarroll had a driving accident. In order to avoid a head-on collision with a truck going in the opposite direction, her car was driven off the road and into a ditch (沟). This gave Dr. McCarrolla new idea—paint lines on the road, separating lanes(车道) with a center line.
“My car and I found ourselves face-to-face with a truck on the highway. It did not take me long to choose between a sandy ditch to the right and a ten-ton truck to the left! Then an idea struck me.”
McCarroll wrote to the local government. However, the government didn’t take McCarroll seriously. After receiving no response to her letters, McCarroll took her idea and matters into her own hands. She painted a white line down the center of the street to make two separate lanes of traffic as a way to prevent future collisions.
Dr. McCarroll then asked women’s groups through the state of California to organize letter writing campaigns to state and local politicians and in 1924 California approved of the practice of painting traffic lines on highway roads. The safety practice quickly spread to other states, then other countries. By virtue of the lines, thousands of accidents are prevented and an untold number of lives are saved each year.
1. What is the text mainly about?(no more than 10 words)2. What encouraged the idea of painting lines on the highway
3. How did the local government treat McCarroll’s suggestion at the beginning? (no more than 10 words)
4. What do the underlined words “By virtue of” in Paragraph 6 probably mean? (no more than 5 words)
5. According to the last two paragraphs, what do you think of McCarroll?(no more than 20 words)
7 . Recently, the topic “Chinese people can eat such a sweet melon but can’t do without this grandma” has topped the hot search list. The grandma is 92-year-old Wu Mingzhu called “Queen of Chinese Melon”, a melon-growing expert and academician. Among Wu Mingzhu’s classmates was Yuan Longping, who later became the “father of hybrid rice”.
Wu Mingzhu was born in 1930 into a scholarly family in Wuhan City. After her graduation in 1953, she was assigned to work in the Department of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China in Beijing. Wu declined. “What I studied was the science of fruit and vegetables. I wanted to work in the field not in an office,” said Wu.
In 1955, Wu voluntarily went to work in Shanshan County. Turpan Basin surrounded by the very famous Flame Mountain, where working conditions were quite harsh. She found that the Hami melon, a rare specialty fruit which was once common in the area, was in danger of becoming extinct if not properly cultivated. Wu spent a full three years visiting over 300 production teams, picking out 44 varieties. She overcame varieties of setbacks to produce particularly delicious melons in a scientific way, winning over the local farmers accustomed to folk cultivation methods. Then the promotion area covered 80 percent of Xinjiang’s main commodity areas, and a group of melon-rich villages emerged.
In 1973, in order to speed up the breeding process and shorten the cultivation cycle, Wu, 42 then, decided to go to Hainan for melon breeding. She wanted to develop Hainan as a pilot area to improve the speed and efficiency of breeding. so that the south area of China could also grow melons, and realized the dream of three-matured or even four-matured melons. After numerous difficulties, finally in the 80s, the melon variety selected by Wu succeeded.
For more than 60 years, Wu Mingzhu has cultivated more than 30 varieties, dedicated the sweetness of melons to the people, and promoted the melon series with Chinese characteristics and a complete breeding innovation system to the world. When first hearing her nickname of “a pearl in the Turpan Basin” Wu said, “In Xinjiang, there are thousands of science and technology workers like me. They have worked hard for decades on the frontline of agriculture. I’m just one of the ordinary ones.”
1. Why did the author mention Yuan Longping in the first Paragraph?| A．To let us get a further glimpse of Wu. |
| B．To inform us that she lives longer than Yuan. |
| C．To prove her success resulting from Yuan’s help. |
| D．To tell us she graduated from a world-rate university. |
| A．She had studied science for years. |
| B．The Flame Mountain in Xinjing fascinated her. |
| C．Making money easily in Xingjing is what she love. |
| D．She had a preference for working in the field rather than in the office. |
| A．By persuading them into taking her advice. |
| B．By providing enough financial assistance. |
| C．By presenting high-quality melons scientifically. |
| D．By recommending the local government to adopt favorable policies. |
| A．Efficient and energetic | B．Devoted and modest |
| C．Flexible and frank | D．Positive and tolerant |
8 . Huang Danian, the renowned Chinese geophysicist, was bornin1958in Guangxi, China. As a keen and able student, Huang went to the UK in 1993 to further his studies.
By 2008, he had a good job and a life there, but he gave it all up to return to home, driven by the idea that he needed to contribute to his country. As one of the world’s leading experts in deep earth exploration technology, Huang was approached to participate in the “Thousand Talent” programme and took up a position at Jilin University, Changchun.
Huang was named lead scientist on China’s deep earth exploration programme, developing advanced cameras that can see through the Earth’s crust so that it can be analysed without having to dig into it. He setup a state-of-the-art lab, sometimes paying for equipment with his own money. Huang’s dedication contributed to China’s lunar probe Yutu being landed on the moon in 2013 and the launch of the spacecrafts Shenzhou-11 and Tiangong-2 in 2016.
Huang’s health also paid the price for his commitment to his work. But even from his hospital bed, he continued his work, writing letters of reference for his colleagues and replying to questions from his students. He had great faith in the talent of the up-and-coming generation. “Our country is in urgent need of talented people,” he said. “If we spend more time and pay more attention to the young, masters and even Nobel prizewinners may rise among them.”
Huang died in January 2017, aged just 58. More than 800 people attended his funeral to celebrate a life that burned so bright, but was so short.
1. Why did Huang Danian return to China?| A．To serve for his motherland in need. |
| B．To apply for a job at Jilin University. |
| C．To make a bigger fame in geography. |
| D．To stay away from former colleagues. |
| A．Dig a deep hole through the Earth. |
| B．Discover urgently-needed resources. |
| C．Analyse the components of the crust. |
| D．Take photos below the Earth’s surface. |
| A．Because he was appreciative of what they did to help him. |
| B．Because he was aimed at winning the Nobel Prize himself. |
| C．Because he wanted to develop the next generation of talent. |
| D．Because he believed this would help them get higher scores. |
9 . Book Express
About the translator (翻译家)
Xu Yuanchong (1921—2021) was a professor of literary translation at Peking University. In 1994, British publishing company Penguin published his 300 Tang Poems.
Drinking Wine
Tao Qian, more widely known for his other name Tao Yuanming (陶渊明), was a Chinese poet (诗人) of the Eastern Jin Dynasty (东晋) (317—420). The poet lived a peaceful life, and is known to have enjoyed country life, farming, reading and drinking wine.
Golden Treasury of Chinese Poetry in Han, Wei and Six Dynasties/Translated by Xu Yuanchong/Published by China Intercontinental Press
Mooring by Maple Bridge at Night
Zhang Ji, a Chinese poet who was born during the Tang Dynasty (唐朝) (618—907). Zhang’s poem Mooring by Maple Bridge at Night was one of his most famous poems and is still known to many readers today.
300 Tang Poems/Translated by Xu Yuanchong/Published by China Intercontinental Press
On the Height
Du Fu, a Chinese poet of the Tang Dynasty. The poet was a good friend with another famous poet of the same time who was called Li Bai.
300 Tang Poems/Translated by Xu Yuanchong/Published by China Intercontinental Press
Lake Dongting Viewed from Afar
Liu Yuxi, a well-known Chinese poet during the Tang Dynasty. The poet was especially interested in writing poetry that reflected (反映) real social problems in common people’s everyday lives.
300 Tang Poems/Translated by Xu Yuanchong/Published by China Intercontinental Press
1. Who enjoyed the country life best?| A．Tao Qian. | B．Zhang Ji. | C．Du Fu. | D．Liu Yuxi. |
| A．Its poet was born in the Tang Dynasty. | B．It is unknown to young readers. |
| C．It was born earliest of the four poems. | D．It is the most popular in China. |
| A．Interesting. | B．Real. | C．Creative. | D．Relaxing. |
This summer has been full of unforgettable
Known
Now in his third Olympics, his
