1 . At eleven, I decided to learn to swim. There was a pool at the YMCA offering exactly the opportunity. My mother continually warned against it, and kept fresh in my mind the details of each drowning in the river. But the YMCA pool was safe.
I had a childhood fear of water. This started when I was three years old and my father took me to the beach.The huge waves knocked me down and swept over me.
The pool was quiet. I was afraid of going in all alone, so I sat on one side of the pool to wait for others. Then came a big boy. He yelled, “Hi, how’d you like to be ducked?” With that he picked me up and threw me into the deep end.I landed in a sitting position, and swallowed water. But I was not frightened out of my wits—when my feet hit the bottom, I would make a big jump to come out of the surface. It seemed a long way down. I gathered all my strength when I landed and made what I thought was a great spring upwards. Then I opened my eyes and saw nothing but water. I tried to yell but no sound came out. I went down, down, endlessly.
When I came to consciousness, I found myself lying on the bed in the hospital.
I never went back to the pool. I avoided water whenever I could. This misadventure stayed with me as the years rolled by.It deprived(剥夺) me of the joy of boating and swimming. Finally, I decided to get an instructor. Piece by piece, he built a swimmer. Several months later, the instructor was finished, but I was not .Sometimes the terror would return.
This went on until July. I swam across the Lake Went worth.Only once did the terror return. When I was in the middle of the lake, I put my face under and saw nothing but bottomless water. I laughed and said, “Well, Mr Terror, what do you think you can do to me?” I had conquered my fear of water.
1. What was the author’s original fear of water caused by?| A．His poor skill in swimming. |
| B．His mother’s warning of drowning. |
| C．An outing to the beach with his father. |
| D．An unpleasant memory of the pool. |
| A．He knew how to swim in the pool. |
| B．He felt that the YMCA pool was safe. |
| C．He was waiting for others to save him. |
| D．He came up with an idea to go upwards. |
| A．He was still a poor swimmer. |
| B．He had not overcome the fear yet. |
| C．He was not afraid of drowning any more. |
| D．He was not satisfied with the swimming training. |
| A．Goodbye,Mr Terror |
| B．Hello,Childhood Fear |
| C．A Swimming Adventure |
| D．My Passion for Swimming |
2 . Music is said to be a universal language. But for Chase Burton, a deaf filmmaker, music has always been a different experience.
“When I was a kid, I used to lie on the floor above our garage so that I could feel the vibrations (震动) from my brother’s band rocking out below my body. That was one of the first times I began building a relationship with music,” said Burton.
In 2016, his ability to experience music changed completely, thanks to the California-based technology company Not Impossible Labs. It designed a vibrating suit. The suit enables deaf people to “feel” music through their skin. It can translate audio into a range of vibrating pulses that are felt at 24 points of contact. Burton has been wearing the suit for four years. “The sound drubs different parts of my body,” said Burton. “It strikes me on my ankles first. And then I start to feel the vibrations on my back and wrists.”
The creators want to extend the musical experience beyond the deaf community. In 2018, they gave out 150 vibrating suits at a rock concert where half the audience members were deaf and half could hear. From then on, the creators worked to improve the technology and wanted the suit to become a consumer product accessible to all, which would be used in live sports broadcasts or video games.
As a writer and director, Burton has been working to make the movie world more inclusive. For his latest movie he hired all-deaf staff and actors. Burton hopes that the vibrating suits will be available to his film audiences in the future. He believes that the suits can improve emotions while people are watching a movie for normal people as well as the deaf. “I see the tech as a real opportunity to help people understand that music or movies don’t always need to be enjoyed through the ears,” said Burton.
1. What does the underlined word “drubs” in Paragraph 3 probably mean?| A．Hits. | B．Affects. |
| C．Changes. | D．Reflects. |
| A．To promote sales. |
| B．To enrich their experience. |
| C．To carry out an experiment. |
| D．To make people enjoy music. |
| A．It will be used by his film audiences. |
| B．It will help improve actors’ emotions. |
| C．It will become the main theme in his movies. |
| D．It will change normal people’s attitude to the deaf. |
| A．A Deaf Filmmaker’s Musical Experiences |
| B．The Application of Vibrating Suits to Films |
| C．Wearable Devices for Deaf People Are Coming |
| D．Vibrating Suits Allow Deaf People to Feel Music |
3 . Paris is the city of dreams. If you plan to head for Paris for a study period, perhaps a little reality check is in order. But my experience was a romantic one.
I paved my path to Paris through an exchange program. On arrival in Paris, I was constantly reminded of the official processes I had to complete—forms to fill in, meetings to attend—the list seemed endless.
Then the real work began. Once classes were underway, I found myself volunteering to do oral presentations and assignments first rather than last. This method proved to be very helpful.
Once I had finished classes for the week, I had an everincreasing list of museums to visit, neighborhoods to explore, and cafes to sit in. Maybe you can read books about Paris and talk to locals and other foreigners living there. But the one thing that reading a book or talking to someone cannot do is provide you with the experience of wandering Paris on foot. The people watching, the sounds of the city, and the colors as the seasons change, they all add to the ecstasy that I experienced in Paris as an exchange student.
After spending five months wandering through the charming neighborhoods, I fell in love with the atmosphere that came out from every open door and every spoken word. There is something comforting about walking to the market each Sunday to enjoy the beautiful display of fruits, vegetables and dairy products. There is warmth in saying Bonjour to the passersby.
On my last day in Paris, I confidently said “Bonjour Monsieur” as I passed the little store down the street. I guess the best part about going on exchange in Paris is falling in love with the city in your own way. And I know mine is unique and special to me—my own little pieces of Paris.
1. What does the underlined word “ecstasy” in Paragraph 4 probably mean?| A．Courage. | B．Imagination. | C．Happiness. | D．Depression. |
| A．The friendly people he met in Paris. |
| B．The special culture he experienced in the city. |
| C．The academic achievement he made in his study. |
| D．The presentations and assignments he did in class. |
| A．Because of the romantic locals. | B．Because of the pleasant weather. |
| C．Because of the fresh vegetables. | D．Because of the warm atmosphere. |
| A．An exchange student’s life. | B．Charming neighborhoods. |
| C．An exchange program. | D．A traveling experience. |
4 . Many people like traveling. Travel in Canada has become exciting as a number of lakes make it attractive. In fact, Canada has more lakes than any other country which contains fresh water. In addition to lakes, Canada has a number of beaches as it has a long coastline on its north, east, and west. Travelers from around the world come in large numbers to enjoy the sunbath on various beaches.
Niagara Falls lies on the border between Canada and the US. It is now popular for its beauty and is a valuable source of hydroelectric power. Niagara Falls is most attractive during the summer season when the weather condition is charming and attractive. At the Canadian side, floodlights illuminate both sides of the falls for several hours after dark and the whole scene becomes magnificent.
When traveling in Canada, travelers can enjoy doing the shopping in Toronto which is considered a leading city. It symbolizes the spirit of independence. Migrants from Europe, Latin America and Asia inhabit the place and make it a plural society. Ottawa, on the other hand, is the capital of Canada and center of political activities.
Vancouver is an enlightening city in Canada which was named after British Captain George Vancouver, who explored the area in the 1790s. The city is a leading industrial place in Canada. Another tourist attraction in Canada is the capital city of British Columbia, Victoria. The city is located on the southern tip of Vancouver Island.
Travel in Canada is being made easy because of a higher standard of transportation facilities. Besides, very few people know that Canada is a country with high wages per hour. In addition to a popular tourist destination, Canada is an economic powerhouse of North America, particularly in agricultural products. The Canadian dairy industry exports milk products around the world.
1. What attracts travelers most in Canada according to the first paragraph?| A．Coastlines and sunbaths. | B．Lakes and beaches. |
| C．Animals and plants. | D．Mountains and water. |
| A．Canada and the US. | B．The beauty of Niagara Falls. |
| C．The importance of the falls. | D．The hydroelectric power. |
| A．It is the political center of Canada. | B．It displays the Canadian bravery. |
| C．Its people come from different countries. | D．Travelers can buy something cheap there. |
| A．To tell us a history story. | B．To compare Vancouver and Victoria. |
| C．To remind us to keep him in mind. | D．To introduce the city of Vancouver. |
5 . “More and more consumers across the country are using cashless payment methods. The rapid development of third⁃party mobile payment tools is helping to encourage cashless payment across the country,” said Dong Ximiao, a researcher at Renmin University of China.
Although there were 3.4 billion third⁃party payment accounts in total in China in 2016, China is not the first country to seek a cashless society. Developed countries like Sweden, Denmark and Singapore are also seeing that increase.
However, the rapid development of the cashless payment does not mean there are no challenges or criticisms. Alibaba’s Hema store has come under the spotlight (成为焦点) recently. The media said that consumers couldn’t buy goods in cash there, which would be considered illegal.
Alipay and WeChat Pay, the nation’s two major third⁃party mobile payment tools, also launched campaigns this month to encourage more people to use cashless payment methods, which caused concern over whether cash will soon disappear.
“Some offline sellers refuse to accept cash, which influences the natural circulation (流通) of cash,” said Dong. He stressed that a cashless society would not mean that cash would completely disappear. “Also it’s important to remember that nearly half of China’s population live in the country, and they are unable to enjoy innovation (革新) brought by the Internet,” said Dong. “And when it comes to China’s senior citizens, most of them prefer to use cash in their daily lives,” he added.
“It’s ridiculous (荒谬的) to question digital payment tools’ contribution to financial development. In the long term, various payment methods will be used by consumers, and merchants should respect consumers’ payment habits,” Dong noted.
1. What does the underlined word “that” in Paragraph 2 probably refer to?| A．The economic activity. | B．A large amount of payment. |
| C．The development of the economy. | D．The cashless payment. |
| A．It fights against illegal activities. |
| B．Customers are not permitted to use cash there. |
| C．It provides comprehensive services. |
| D．It starts campaigns to encourage mobile payment. |
| A．The cashless payment should be limited in the countryside. |
| B．The innovation from payment is ridiculous in fact. |
| C．Various payment methods should be supported. |
| D．The digital payment should replace cash completely. |
| A．Innovation on the Internet | B．Cash or cashless? |
| C．Payment online should replace cash | D．Is the circulation of cash dying? |
6 . The wonderful multiple-award winning producer, writer, and director Norman Lear, who is 100, was recently interviewed by a TV host, who asked him what advice he would give to younger people as a successful man. Without missing a beat, Lear said, “Learn to let things that bother you go.”
Those few words are some of the most powerful in the world. I know that if people could just learn to do it, murder and divorce rates would fall dramatically, and I would be out of a job.
Learning to let go of what bothers you is a dream for many people, each of us has our own personal demons (魔鬼) to fight. The big question is: how do you let go of them? There is no one solution that works for everyone, because we’re all different. Psychotherapy(心理疗法) may help some people who hold on to negative thoughts, while others don’t respond to such treatments.
Even after you’ve worked on this, you may have to deal with the after-effects of a traumatic experience. It’s hard to forget, for example, that someone held a gun to your head or broke your heart. Truly letting go means not forgetting what happened but rather leading to live with it, because no one can completely forget their past and it’s no use avoiding the unfortunate past. But each day is a chance to start anew.
Elvira, an actress, was disturbed by PTSD, a mental disorder. Medication didn’t help. She got counseling from some good people and did her own work, but she would still wake up in a state of anxiety every morning. When we started working together, I asked her to imagine, as often as she could, that the discomfort she was feeling was the negativity leaving her body. Whenever a negative thought entered her mind, she would repeat this visualization exercise and would soon begin to feel okay again.
Learning to let go of things that bother you frees you from the feeling that you don’t deserve good things coming your way. It takes effort, but it’s worthwhile.
1. What advice did Norman Lear share with younger people?| A．Being professional in multiple fields. | B．Being enthusiastic about one’s career. |
| C．Having an optimistic attitude to bad things. | D．Showing great love and caring for the young. |
| A．Annoying dreams share certain similarities. | B．Strategies for letting go vary between individuals. |
| C．It’s necessary for us to let go of negative thoughts. | D．It’s normal for us to receive psychological treatments. |
| A．Move forward with bad memories. | B．Avoid things related to past traumas |
| C．Try hard to forget unpleasant experiences. | D．Mark the boundary between the present and the past. |
| A．An effective technique for battling against anxiety. |
| B．The way how mental disorders affect people’s life. |
| C．The process of treating mental disorders is painful. |
| D．Actresses are more likely to suffer mental disorders. |
7 . Wang Yaping, 41, became China’s first female astronaut to conduct a spacewalk on November. 2021.
Wang’s dream of becoming an astronaut was
“Now China has its first man in space, when will our country have its first
After years of
In the first year, Wang could not get the top level in the high-G training, which simulates (模拟) the environment when the spacecraft
Wang realized her space dream as part of the Shenzhou-10 mission. She was confident that the crew could fulfill this challenging mission.
Meanwhile, to prepare for their
| A．influenced | B．requested | C．inspired | D．reported |
| A．aircraft | B．woman | C．planet | D．experiment |
| A．boring | B．tough | C．online | D．proper |
| A．missions | B．countries | C．methods | D．sections |
| A．loved | B．respected | C．titled | D．selected |
| A．burst into | B．show up | C．set out | D．brought in |
| A．takes off | B．puts on | C．jumps over | D．rises up |
| A．firmly | B．properly | C．frequently | D．gently |
| A．lack | B．supply | C．form | D．release |
| A．ignore | B．land | C．board | D．operate |
| A．mental | B．basic | C．additional | D．similar |
| A．selection | B．competition | C．separation | D．celebration |
| A．platform | B．cause | C．performance | D．tasks |
| A．collect | B．draw | C．buy | D．circle |
| A．sighed | B．laughed | C．yelled | D．regretted |
8 . George Headley would have been a dentist in the USA rather than one of the greatest cricketers (板球运动员) if he had got his papers from Panama on time. The Indian legend was born in Colón, Panama and a period of unemployment in Jamaica caused him to begin the process of seeking a career elsewhere.
The delay, however, gave Headley time to make his first-class debut (首次亮相) for Jamaica against the visiting Lord Tennyson’s XI from England. These were his scores in the three first-class games in the series: 16, 40, and 71. The rest, as they say, is history. Yet, consider what might have occurred if his documents had arrived on time and he had migrated to America. There would have been a missing chapter in cricket.
Headley’s ta le brings to the fore the role that happenstance (偶然情况) plays in life. In the song A Different Comer, George Michael lamented (哀叹) that a romantic union went wrong and suggested that it might have been better if circumstances had worked to prevent their first meeting: “Take me back in time; maybe I can forget. Turn a different corner and we never would have met.”
Our lives are the result of much planning and deliberate action. But they are the result of chance as well. “The harder I practice, the luckier I get” is a quote normally used by sportsmen to discount the occurrence or consequence of luck. Athletes like to think that whatever success they’ve had is only down to them. To admit otherwise is to devalue the skills and efforts.
The changes in luck are a large part of why we watch sports. It fosters uncertainty, which, in turn. enhances interest in the process and the result. On any given day, the underdog can be at the champion. Whenever that occurs, luck is likely to have played some significant part, and sport is better for it.
1. What decision did George Headley make before getting his papers?| A．To complete his official documents in Panama. | B．To sharpen his cricket skills in Jamaica. |
| C．To get a degree in medicine in the USA. | D．To work as a dentist in the USA. |
| A．It affected his debut performance. | B．It became a turning point in his life. |
| C．It benefited the England cricket team. | D．It led to a missing chapter in cricket. |
| A．To stress the importance of chance. |
| B．To explain the necessity of planning ahead. |
| C．To show the significance of the first impressions. |
| D．To illustrate a love-hate relationship with friends. |
| A．Practice makes perfect. | B．Little people can make a big difference. |
| C．Efforts and chances are equally important. | D．Nothing is impossible to a willing heart. |
9 . When we want to communicate with another person, we generally use our voice, such as speaking or shouting. They are great ways to communicate, but they have some drawbacks.
For instance, if you live on a mountainside and your friend lives on another mountainside, shouting to each other isn’t always that effective. Shouting creates lots of echoes (回声) among the corners and holes of mountains, and the average outdoor range of an understandable human voice is only about 180 meters. Unless you walk over to where your friend lives to carry on a conversation at a reasonable speaking distance, or communicate by some sort of visual technique like smoke signals, there’s not much to be done except whistle (吹口哨).
Whistling is the product of air being forced through a small hole made by your lips. A whistle is different from your voice because it’s clear, and the frequency is high. The sound of a whistle can carry for over 8 kilometers and it holds its form, while a shout can become a mess because of the echoes.
For thousands of years, humans have relied on spoken language to accomplish daily, face-to-face communication most of the time. And in recent years, the coming of text messaging has also made whistled languages take a dive worldwide. Luckily, there are still over 70 groups around the world that engage in special whistled languages.
They’re most commonly found in mountainous regions where farmers need to pass messages around without walking up and down hills, and whistles are also used to communicate through the thick Amazon rainforest and are useful to Inuit at sea as well. Hunters can use whistling to communicate with each other in a way that doesn’t alarm their targets as the voice-produced language might.
Whistled languages are unique to a certain area and they are not distinct from spoken language. However, whistled language speakers around the world are found to be able to understand about 90 percent of what’s communicated. When whistled languages are still present, it signals that traditional activities are still commonly practiced and therefore the cultures behind them have been maintained.
1. What does the author want to express in the first two paragraphs?| A．Reasons for producing echoes outdoors. |
| B．The difficulty of living on the mountainside. |
| C．The necessity of adopting face-to-face communication. |
| D．Limitations of communicating by speaking or shouting. |
| A．Stay adaptable. | B．Become influential. |
| C．Get an improvement. | D．Experience a decline. |
| A．By providing research results. | B．By listing the statistic data. |
| C．By giving examples. | D．By doing some questionnaires. |
| A．They will disappear gradually. |
| B．They could help keep traditional cultures alive. |
| C．They are independent of the local spoken language. |
| D．They become much more complex as time goes by. |
10 . Scientists say the plant enset, an Ethiopian staple (主食), could be a new superfood and a lifesaver in the face of climate change. The banana-like crop has the potential to feed more than 100 million people in a warming world, according to a new study.
Enset or “false banana”, almost unknown outside of Ethiopia, is a close relative of the banana, but is consumed only in one part of this country. The banana-like fruit of the plant is inedible, but the starchy stems (茎) and roots can be used to make porridge and bread. Research suggests the crop can be grown over a much larger range in Africa. “This is a crop that can play a really important role in addressing food security and sustainable development,” said a university professor in Awasa, Ethiopia.
Using agricultural surveys and modelling work, scientists predicted the potential range of enset over the next four decades. They found the crop could potentially feed more than 100 million people and boost food security in Ethiopia and other African countries, including Kenya, Uganda and Rwanda.
Study researcher Dr James Borrell, of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, said planting enset, as an alternative for lean times, could help boost food security. “It’s got some really unusual features that make it absolutely unique as a crop,” he said. “You plant it at any time, you harvest it at any time. That’s why they call it the tree against hunger.”
There is growing interest in seeking new plants to feed the world, given our reliance on a few staple crops. Nearly half of all the calories we eat come from three species — rice, wheat, and maize. “We need to diversify the plants we use globally as a species because all our eggs are in a very small basket at the moment,” said Dr Borrell.
1. What does the underlined word “inedible” in Paragraph 2 mean?| A．Not secure enough. | B．Not diverse enough. |
| C．Not fit to be planted. | D．Not suitable to be eaten. |
| A．It is a special species of banana. |
| B．It can help with solving food shortage. |
| C．It has fed more than 100 million people. |
| D．It can be grown at anytime and anywhere. |
| A．Negative. | B．Objective. | C．Approving. | D．Doubtful. |
| A．To provide a solution to food problems. |
| B．To advertise a unique banana-like staple. |
| C．To recommend a magic crop against hunger. |
| D．To introduce a wonder crop for climate change. |
