1 . Two years ago, I had nervous breakdown. That happened after had
I'm not
I started writing. That was the most liberating (释放的) feeling I’ve ever experienced. When I read that email I wrote, I came to
| A．moved | B．traveled | C．marched | D．escaped |
| A．welcomes | B．knows | C．respects | D．helps |
| A．contributions | B．efforts | C．differences | D．changes |
| A．fight | B．loss | C．mess | D．hurry |
| A．normal | B．polite | C．deep | D．brief |
| A．judging | B．suggesting | C．comparing | D．questioning |
| A．select | B．find | C．afford | D．decorate |
| A．so | B．but | C．or | D．for |
| A．management | B．customs | C．culture | D．nature |
| A．business | B．secret | C．choice | D．contact |
| A．Though | B．When | C．Since | D．Unless |
| A．ashamed | B．afraid | C．guilty | D．tired |
| A．meeting | B．calling | C．believing | D．remembering |
| A．busy | B．impatient | C．nervous | D．shocked |
| A．letter | B．note | C．email | D．point |
| A．improve | B．describe | C．face | D．understand |
| A．looking down on | B．getting ahead of | C．standing up for | D．running away from |
| A．reading | B．practicing | C．writing | D．exploring |
| A．really | B．strangely | C．nearly | D．constantly |
| A．happier | B．richer | C．smarter | D．braver |
2 . How to lower costs and improve the living quality?
There are numerous products posted on social media, and you might believe an electric toothbrush, Luna facial cleaning massager, a flight ticket to Phuket and so on will bring you a better life. But for many graduates or those who have worked for only one or two years, your income cannot keep pace with expense.
Keep running or doing yoga
It seems to be a challenge to afford a fitness center costing over 10,000 yuan in annual fees or for a personal trainer. But you can buy a pair of sneakers or a yoga mat instead. Running in a park regularly or doing yoga at home using free online resources is definitely a type of quality life.
Go to museums or libraries
Chasing young good-looking stars, watching their films and buying expensive tickets for their concerts are popular with many young people.
For some young people, the easy and instant access and the discount codes of online shopping make it an addictive draw. Sometimes what you buy online is not what you really need and the demands are created by the producers. For example, many buy new clothing and they don’t wear.
| A．Stop over-spending online |
| B．Limit your shopping spending |
| C．So, how can we save some money and improve quality of life? |
| D．Making money and saving money are not the final goal of life. |
| E．To live a quality life requires more self-discipline than money. |
| F．However, this would do little to enrich your spiritual life and add to economic burdens. |
| G．Exercise is more rewarding than holding a membership card at an expensive fitness club. |
3 . Easter(复活节) is still a great day for worship, candy in baskets and running around the yard finding eggs, but every year it gets quite a bit worse for bunnies.
And no, not because the kids like to pull their ears. The culprit is climate change, and some researchers found that rising temperatures are having harmful effects on at least five species of rabbit in the US.
Take the Lower Keys Marsh rabbit, for instance. An endangered species that lives in the Lower Florida Keys, this species of cottontail is a great swimmer — it lives on the islands’ - but it is already severely affected by development and now by rising sea levels. According to the Center for Biological Diversity, an ocean level rise of only 0.6 meters will send these guys jumping to higher ground and a 0.9-meter rise would wipe out theirhabitat(栖息地) completely.
The snowshoe hare, on the other hand, has a color issue. Most of these rabbits change their for color from white in the wintertime to brown in the summer, each designed to give them better cover from predators(捕食者). As the number of days with snow decreases all across the country, however, more and more bunnies are being left in white fur during brown dirt days of both fall and spring, making them an easier mark for predators. Researchers know that the color change is controlled by the number of hours of sunlight, but whether the rabbit will be able to adapt quick enough to survive is a big question. The National Wildlife Federation has reported that hunters have noticed their numbers are already markedly down.
American pikas or rock rabbits, a relative of rabbits and hares, might be the first of these species to go extinct due to climate change. About 7-8 inches long, pikas live high in the cool, damp mountains west of the Rocky Mountains. As global temperatures rise, they would naturally(迁徙) to higher ground — but they already occupy the mountaintops. They can’t go any higher. The National Wildlife Federation reports that they might not be able to stand the new temperatures as their habitat heats up.
The volcano rabbit has the same problem. These rabbits live on the slopes of volcanoes in Mexico, and recent studies have shown that the lower range of their habitat has already shifted upward about 700 meters, but there are not suitable plants for them to move higher, so they are stuck in the middle. Scientists are concerned about their populations.
All of this gives new meaning to dressing up in a giant bunny costume this Easter.
1. The writer mentions Easter at the beginning of the passage in order to ________.| A．show the importance of Easter Day |
| B．introduce the issue about bunnies |
| C．remind people of Easter traditions |
| D．discuss the relationship between Easter and bunnies. |
| A．criminal | B．judge |
| C．victim | D．producer |
| A．are exposed to more skillful hunters |
| B．have moved to habitats with fewer plants |
| C．haven’t adapted themselves to climate change |
| D．can’t change their fur color into white in the fall and the spring. |
| A．Approving. | B．Concerned. |
| C．Enthusiastic. | D．Doubtful. |
4 . China Train Guide
Quick Guide on China Train Travel
If you’re looking for an affordable and comfortable way to get around China, train travel is the way to go. Getting train information and cheap train tickets has never been easier. Online train ticket booking makes it easy for travelers to look through China’s train timetable, compare train fares, and look for ticket availability. Once you’ve found a suitable train, you can book online and pick your tickets up at the train station or get them delivered to your home or hotel. Train tickets can be booked online a minimum of 35 minutes and a maximum of 60 days before departure.
How to choose train types
When you’re buying China train tickets online, you’ll notice that the journey duration differs depending on which type of train you choose. China train types can be recognized by their letter codes G, D and C trains are high-speed trains, while Z, T and K are slower or overnight trains. China’s high-speed trains run between Chinese provincial capitals and first-tier Chinese cities. G trains (high-speed trains, standing for gāotiě) are China’s bullet trains—the fastest trains with a maximum speed of 400 km／h. Tickets for these trains are the most expensive.
How to buy train tickets
Unless you can read Chinese, there are only two ways to make train reservations in China:
—Online train ticket booking with a travel agency (up to 60 days before departure).
—At the train station／local ticket agency with your passport (up to 58 days before departure).
How to read train tickets
When reading your train ticket, please take note of the Chinese characters and Pinyin printed next to your departure / arrival city. Directions (North, South, East, and West) appear in Pinyin (Bei, Nan, Dong, and Xi), not English. Please make sure you are going to the correct train station.
1. What can we learn from the first paragraph?| A．It’s difficult to get train information in China. |
| B．You can get on the train without tickets after booking online. |
| C．Traveling by train in China is not very expensive. |
| D．Train tickets online are available at any time within 60 days before you leave. |
| A．G trains | B．Z trains | C．D trains | D．Overnight trains |
| A．Native tourists. | B．Travel agencies. | C．Businessmen. | D．Foreign travelers. |
1.写信意图；
2.活动时间和地点；
3.活动目的和内容；
4.表达希望。
注意:1.词数100左右；
2.可以适当增加细节，以使行文连贯。
参考词汇:科技小发明:technology gadgets
Dear David,
I’m glad to invite you to the Science Festival
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Yours,
Li Hua
6 . I have had a lifelong fascination﹣call it obsession if you like﹣with communication， with making links to other places， other cultures， other worlds． The roots of this obsession have often puzzled me． I am not﹣never have been﹣a gregarious person． Quite the opposite， I was a solitary child and my classmates at school and university always thought of me as a loner． I was never crazy about the noisy solidarity of social gatherings． So why was I possessed of a desire to make contact with distant places？
It can partly be explained by the start I had in life． I grew up on what seemed at the time like the edge of the world﹣in a remote part of rural Ireland， in a household with few books or magazines， and no television． Foreign travel was unheard of． Apart from those who emigrated to Great Britain or the United States， virtually nobody we knew had ever been abroad． Nobody ever went overseas on holiday， and no foreign languages were taught in the schools I attended﹣with the exception of Latin． We lived in a closed society that thought of itself as self﹣sufficient．
There was however one chink of light in the suffocating gloom﹣the radio， which we called "the wireless．" It was， by modern standards， a huge apparatus powered by valves﹣which is why it took some time to warm up﹣and a "magic eye" tuning indicator﹣a greenish glass circle that winked at you as the signal waxed or waned． The best thing about our wireless， though， was that it had a shortwave band． This was the source of endless fascination to me， because it meant that even with this primitive device one could listen to the world． At first I couldn't understand how it worked． Why was reception so much better at night？ Why was it so infuriatingly variable？ I asked my father， who looked evasive and just said it had something to do with "the whachamacallit sphere" （he always called complicated things the whachamacallit）， but this gave me enough of a steer to go to the local library and start digging． In due course I discovered that he was referring to the ionosphere﹣a layer of charged particles high up at the edge of the Earth's atmosphere that acts as a kind of reflector for radio waves of certain frequencies． The reason shortwave radio could travel such huge distances was that it used the ionosphere to bounce signals round the world﹣which was why radio hams in Latin America or Australia could sometimes be heard by a young boy on the western seaboard of Ireland． Signals from such distant shores were more likely to get through at night because then the ionosphere was higher and transmission over longer distances was possible．
I was spellbound by this discovery of how technology could piggyback on a natural phenomenon to push forward low﹣power signals through immense distances． But most of all I was entranced by the idea of shortwave radio， for this was a technology which belonged not to great corporations or governments， but to people． It was possible， my father explained， to obtain a license to operate your own shortwave radio station． And all over the globe people held such licenses， which enabled them to sit in their back rooms and broadcast to the whole world． The world suddenly seemed wide open to me．
1. The second paragraph primarily serves to ．| A．reveal the author's attitude toward foreign cultures |
| B．present information that sheds light on a certain preoccupation |
| C．to display the author's nostalgia for his adolescence |
| D．foreshadow the crucial difference between the author and his father |
| A．incomplete but helpful |
| B．humorous but meaningful |
| C．lighthearted yet concerned |
| D．silly and confusing |
| A．Many governments around the world do not regulate shortwave users |
| B．Shortwave equipment is very inexpensive and is getting cheaper all the time |
| C．Most individuals who apply for shortwave licenses are turned down． |
| D．Communications experts predict that the Internet will eventually replace shortwave radio． |
| A．decision to pursue a career in science |
| B．acceptance of his family's sheltered outlook |
| C．devotion to the study of emerging technology |
| D．discovery of a medium's liberating potential |
7 . People in South Korea who feel they can no longer bear the stress of everyday life now can choose to stay in a prison to relax and think deeply.
In a society where pressure to do well in school and find highly-paid jobs is intense, a former lawyer came up with an extreme relaxation idea. Kwon Yong-seok created the “Prison Inside Me”—a stress-reduction center with a punishment theme. People come here to cut themselves off from the outside world and pay to be kept in 60-square-foot (5.6-square-meter) cells (囚室).
Located on the outskirts of Hongcheon, about 58 miles (93 km) northeast of Seoul, “Prison Inside Me” came to life after Mr. Kwon voluntarily asked to spend time behind bars for “healing reasons,” but his request was turned down. “I didn’t know how to stop working back then,” he said. “I felt like I was being swept away against my will, and it seemed I couldn’t control my own life.” So, Kwon and his wife Roh Ji-hyang decided to take matters into their own hands, and designed and built a prison-like spiritual center. The construction was completed in June last year and cost about 2 billion won ($19 million).
The facility includes 28 cells, furnished with only a toilet, a sink and a small table, where guests can spend time alone, thinking about life and enjoying private thinking periods. Moreover, guests can also join group thinking periods in the hall, where they are given instructions on how to free themselves from what Mr. Kwon calls the “inner prison” to find inner peace.
According to the Wall Street Journal, hundreds of stressed South Koreans are checking in at the stress-reduction facility to think about their lives and regain control of it. A two-night stay at “Prison Inside Me” costs 150,000 won ($146).
Mr. Kwon and his wife explained that at the beginning they had a different plan for the “relaxation center,” and imagined a longer stay for their guests, but, given that people weren’t able to take more time off, they had to reduce the length of stays to just two days.
Park Woo-sub, a guest at “Prison Inside Me,” said the experience helped him a lot. “This is my third time in prison. Being kept in a prison makes me hard to breathe, but it also offers time to focus only on me and spend some quiet time with myself.”
Others said the experience would have been more helpful if the conditions had been poorer, like in a real prison.
1. Paragraph 3 mainly tells us _______________.| A．where “Prison Inside Me” is located | B．what people can do in “Prison Inside Me” |
| C．how “Prison Inside Me” came into being | D．when “Prison Inside Me” was completed |
| A．people in South Korea prefer living under great pressure |
| B．Mr. Kwon had intended to let guests stay at “Prison Inside Me” for over two days |
| C．most people in South Korea can not afford to stay at “Prison Inside Me” |
| D．the 28 cells are well furnished, but with no toilets in them |
| A．many people have been kept in such a prison at least three times |
| B．it is not a good idea for people to focus only on themselves |
| C．people find it not difficult to breathe though the prison is small |
| D．some still felt a bit unsatisfied as the conditions weren’t poor enough |
| A．Many South Koreans voluntarily go to “prison” to reduce stress. |
| B．Many South Koreans can hardly bear the stress of daily life. |
| C．South Koreans should spend more time alone thinking about life. |
| D．South Koreans have found the best way to deal with everyday pressure. |
8 . When I was eight, I got my first pair of glasses. Far from being made fun of at school, the only struggle I got was endless requests to try on my new glasses. Hearing about what happened at school, my father once looked at me and asked whether I had pretended to be the blindness just to look like Harry Potter?
With my strange hair and glasses, I did nothing to avoid it, either. The Harry Potter books were the great pop cultural event of my generation, who began reading again. My school librarian, both confused and annoyed by us Potter fans, dealt with fights over the schools few old copies by setting a new rule: Harry Potter could be borrowed for only three days, instead of the whole week of borrowing period every other title was allowed.
In the 20 years since the first book arrived on shelves, publishers and parents have been asking what has made J.K. Rowling's books so loved. It is better to look at the influence they have had on their readers. Yes, the books were about a boy taking on a dark and powerful enemy in the magical world, but they were also about love defeating hate, determination and choosing" between what is easy and what is right". Rowling’s entire magical characters were all people we want to be.
I grew up with Harry and together we became children with our own opinions, teens easy to get angry and young adults thinking of everything as normal. When the final book came out in 2007.I read it for 12 hours without a break and cried as I finished it. I felt something sad: the end of Harry’s story signaled the end of my childhood. I was suddenly aimless. Meanwhile, my now Potter-mad father walked impatiently nearby, waiting for the proper moment to take the book away from his daughter.
Harry Potter did shape my generation. As a girl who grew up mostly in peacetime, many of the ideas I found in these books were ones we had never come across before. The magical world’s terrible treatment of non-human beings was the first description of slavery I knew. The treatment of Harry’s teacher Remus Lupin, who hides his condition at work, is a metaphor(比喻) for the shame surrounding those who suffer from AIDS. And all settings like this may have real-world reflections .A study found that teenage Harry Potter readers showed more tolerance (包容) towards those who were suffering. Is it possible that Jeremy Corbyn's popularity among the young had anything to do with their literary education? Is it possible that Harry Potter, in the 20 years he has been with us, has inspired a generation to be more empathetic（感同身受）， welcoming and socially open－ minded than those before it? We will see If not, at least my glasses are still cool.
1. Paragraph 1 is intended to show_____.| A．the authors sufferings caused by the glasses |
| B．the author s close relations with other students |
| C．the misunderstanding between the author and her father |
| D．the popularity of Harry Porter among students |
| A．By preventing Potter fans borrowing Harry Potter many times |
| B．By selling the Harry Porter books in the library. |
| C．By creating a new rule for Harry Potter’s borrowing period. |
| D．By buying more Harry Potter books for the library. |
| A．The book has been the most popular one among all the books for twenty years. |
| B．It is the story of revenge(复仇)in the magical world that makes the book popular. |
| C．Readers are crazy about the book because it has taught them how to love and make wise choices. |
| D．The book has had such great influence on the readers that they all want to be magical persons. |
| A．Because she suddenly found that she was too old to read Harry Potter. |
| B．Because her father was for a chance to take her book away. |
| C．Because she had no plan for what to do after her childhood ended. |
| D．Because she was too sad to know the 2007 book was the last Harry Potter book. |
| A．described | B．created |
| C．changed | D．marked |
| A．Harry Potter has great effects on the author's generation. |
| B．The characters in Harry Porter were created through great imagination. |
| C．Compared with other people, Harry Potter readers are more tolerant. |
| D．Reading Harry Potter is important for children living in peacetime. |
9 . Cooperation at work is generally seen as a good thing. The latest survey by the Financial Times of what employers want from MBA graduates found that the ability to work with a wide variety of people was what managers wanted most. But managers always have to balance the benefits of teamwork, which help ensure that everyone is working towards the same goal, with the dangers of “groupthink” when critics are reluctant to point out a plan’s drawbacks for fear of being kept out of the group. The disastrous Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba in 1961 was a classic case of groupthink. Skeptics were reluctant to challenge John F. Kennedy, the newly elected American president.
Modern communication methods mean that cooperation is more frequent. Workers are constantly in touch with each other via e-mail messaging groups or mobile calls. But does that improve, or lower performance? A new study by three American academics, tried to answer this question. They set a logical problem (designing the shortest route for a travelling salesman visiting various cities). Three groups were involved: one where subjects acted independently; another where they saw the solutions posted by team members at every stage; and a third where they were kept informed of each other’s views only intermittently.
The survey found that members of the individualist group reached the premier solution more often than the constant cooperators but had a poorer average result. The intermittent cooperators found the right result as often as the individualists, and got a better average solution. When it comes to ideal generation, giving people a bit of space to a solution seems to be a good idea. Occasional cooperation can be a big help: most people have benefited from a colleague’s brainwave or (just as often) wise advice to avoid a particular course of action.
Further clues come from a book, Superminds, by Thomas Malone of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He says that three factors determine the collective intelligence of cooperating groups: social intelligence (how good people were at rating the emotional states of others); the extent to which members took part equally in conversation (the more equal, the better); and the cooperation of women in the group (the higher, the better). Groups ranked highly in these areas cooperated far better than others.
In short, cooperation may be a useful tool but it doesn’t work in every situation.
1. The author cites the example of The Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba in paragraph 1 to _______.| A．prove that team players are skilled at communication |
| B．show that teamwork cannot always be beneficial |
| C．prove that critics are unwilling to challenge anybody |
| D．show the danger of groupthink is not very serious |
| A．those who do not cooperate but reach the best solution |
| B．those who are seldom informed of other’s views |
| C．those who cooperate with others occasionally |
| D．the constant cooperators with a poor average result |
| A．Group members cooperating all the time. |
| B．Group members in a good emotional state. |
| C．Equal distribution of men and women. |
| D．Equal participation in the communication. |
| A．When Teamwork Works | B．What Teamwork Is About |
| C．How Teamwork Operates | D．A Useful Tool: Cooperation |
10 . Perhaps no one knows the power of imagination better than Chinese writer Liu Cixin. Until four years ago, Liu worked full-time as a computer engineer at a power plant in Shanxi province. He only wrote science fiction in his spare time. But it was during this time that Liu’s imagination took flight. He did what he might never have the chance to do in real life – wander in space, fight with aliens, and visit planets light-years away.
But even with such a powerful imagination, Liu, 55, probably hadn’t expected that he would become the first Asian to win the Hugo Award, science fiction’s highest prize, in 2015. Perhaps neither did he think that former US president Barack Obama would read his novel The Three-Body Problem, nor that on Nov 9 in Washington DC, he would win the 2018 Arthur C. Clarke Award for Imagination in Service to Society. It’s the first time a Chinese writer has ever won the award.
In his acceptance speech, Liu said that he owed his imagination to Arthur C. Clarke (1917-2008), a famous UK sci-fi author. He said that reading Clarke’s 1968 classic novel 2001: A Space Odyssey in the early 1980s had a great effect on him.
“My mind opened up like never before. I felt like a narrow river finally seeing the sea,” Liu said. “That night, in my eyes, the starry sky was completely different from the past. For the first time in my life, I was awed (使……敬畏) by the mystery of the universe.”
But no matter how far away Liu’s imagination takes him, somehow his novels always stay rational.
In The Three-Body Problem, for example, Liu tells a tale of aliens invading Earth. But unlike other alien stories, Liu talks more about relationships between civilizations, rules of survival, and the meanings of life. And in The Wandering Earth, Liu looks ahead to the day when our solar system comes to an end and humans have to look for a new place to live. However, all his visions and solutions are based on “hard science”. Liu’s works aren’t simply daydreams.
1. What do we know about Liu Cixin?| A．He became a full-time writer when he was young. |
| B．He dreamed about wandering in space from childhood. |
| C．He is the first Asian to win the Arthur C. Clarke Award. |
| D．He is the first Chinese winner of the Hugo Award. |
| A．his interest in mysteries of the universe |
| B．his love of reading science fiction |
| C．his confusion when he started writing |
| D．his feeling after reading Clarke’s work |
| A．To compare the different writing styles in the two books. |
| B．To explain how Liu Cixin came up with his ideas. |
| C．To show that Liu Cixin has a powerful imagination. |
| D．To prove that Liu Cixin’s works relate science to reality. |
| A．Liu Cixin’s achievements and writing style. |
| B．Liu Cixin’s contributions to science fiction. |
| C．How Liu Cixin became a sci-fi writer. |
| D．How Liu Cixin started a new sci-fi style. |
