1 . My family always had some sort of animal around, but none of them were truly mine. My parents didn’t permit me to
Every Friday I would clean out his bowl. I found myself
One day, I came home from school and headed to my room to
My mom walked into my room. I turned around as tears started to well in my eyes. “Mommy, George d…d…died.” With that
Suddenly, I realized that George hadn’t just
| A．draw | B．imagine | C．have | D．share |
| A．doubtful | B．excited | C．surprised | D．afraid |
| A．toy | B．mind | C．time | D．pet |
| A．take care of | B．make use of | C．get hold of | D．look forward to |
| A．reading out | B．putting away | C．turning down | D．showing off |
| A．replaced | B．recognized | C．affected | D．needed |
| A．feed | B．save | C．impress | D．find |
| A．basic | B．terrible | C．funny | D．familiar |
| A．dropped | B．emptied | C．hid | D．checked |
| A．common | B．last | C．extra | D．new |
| A．left | B．reminded | C．defeated | D．chosen |
| A．preference | B．independence | C．difficulty | D．responsibility |
| A．safe | B．good | C．sorry | D．tired |
| A．agreement | B．treatment | C．disappointment | D．achievement |
| A．Otherwise | B．Besides | C．However | D．Therefore |
2 . 400 million tons of plastic are generated annually, most of which comes from single-use plastic While countries are making progress in reducing this waste through paper bags and straws, there are still applications where the properties of plastic are necessary.
Transparent (透明的) wood is an alternative for such applications and is highly preferred since it prevents the harm of petroleum-derived (石油衍生的) plastic products. German scientist Siegfried Fink first created transparent wood in the year 1992, and over the past three decades it has been significantly improved by other researchers as well.
In its natural form, wood is not transparent. However, researchers have found that removing lignin, a naturally occurring biopolymer that provides structural support for the plant tissue, can make it transparent. To do so, the wood is soaked in a warm solution consisting of multiple chemicals, followed by boiling it in another solution. This removes the lignin completely and turns the wood white. However, the space that was occupied by lignin needs to be filled up to maintain structural integrity. This process is done by using a resin (树脂) at a temperature of 185 Fahrenheit (85℃).
The final product can have as much as 90 transparency, and it doesn’t break easily. More importantly, it is more biodegradable than glass or plastic.
While transparent wood isn’t commercial yet, it has been employed in a wide variety of applications ranging from construction to energy storage, making flexible electronics and packaging.
The researchers at the Indian Institute of Technology ( IIT) conducted a life-cycle analysis (LCA) of transparent wood to determine the environmental impact of its production and end-of-life (EOL) cycle. The study found that using hydrogen peroxide for delignification, followed by using epoxy for infiltration, was the most eco-friendly. When scaled up for industrial production, the former method would lower electricity consumption by as much as 98. 8 percent.
EOL analysis showed that transparent wood had a reduced ecological impact compared to polyethylene (聚乙烯), paving the way for it to be commercially adapted to replace the petroleum-based material.
1. Why is transparent wood preferred compared to plastic?| A．It is easier to make. | B．It is environmentally friendly. |
| C．It can be used longer. | D．It can be used repeatedly. |
| A．The natural form of wood. | B．The importance of chemicals. |
| C．How transparent wood is made. | D．How lignin keeps wood strong. |
| A．It can be recycled. |
| B．It will replace plastic soon. |
| C．The most eco-friendly way to produce it. |
| D．Potential damage caused by it to the environment. |
| A．Promising. | B．Difficult. | C．Profitable. | D．Uncertain. |
3 . The fruit-tree pinhole borer (针孔蛀虫), as its name implies, makes holes in fruit trees. It lays its eggs and raises its young in the galleries thus created . Yet the beetles (甲虫) do not feed directly on the wood they bore into. Instead, they devour fungi (真菌) that grow on the wood thus exposed.
Researchers have long suspected that this is a form of farming, because they have evidence that the beetles carry spores (孢子) of their preferred crop, R. sulphurea, into their smallholdings—in effect, sowing it there.
Observations of natural fruit-tree pinhole-bore r dwellings suggest that R. sulphurea grows in them more abundantly (大量地) than might be expected, given all the fungal competition around—but not why. To check whether the beetles are, indeed, weeding their crop, Janina Diehl and Peter Biedermann of the University of Freiburg did an experiment.
In the laboratory, they had mother beetles of the little wood bore restablish nests, in which the typical fungal gardens formed. But before the beetles had started laying their eggs, they collected all of the beetles and then returned half to their dwellings while leaving the other nests empty. Genetic analysis of the fungal gardens after 40 days showed that the presence of the beetles had greatly changed the fungal community. Twenty days after that, they sampled the gallery walls for fungi.
As they had hoped and expected, R. sulphurea was much more abundant in beetle-tended galleries than in those without residents. In the former, it made up half of the fungal mass extracted. In the latter, less than a third. These beetles are indeed weeding their crop.
“Further research into how exactly the beetles suppress the growth of weed fungi could alsoprovide worthwhile insights for human agriculture, which is struggling with weed resistance, for example,” says Biedermann. “It’s highly exciting for us to see how nature has been doing this for 60 million years. We humans can still learn something from these mechanisms.”
1. What does the underlined word “devour” in paragraph 1 mean?| A．Sow. | B．Tend. | C．Eat. | D．Move. |
| A．The number of the mother beetles. | B．The presence of the beetles. |
| C．The quality of food fungi. | D．The types of weed fungi. |
| A．They weed crops. | B．They feed on fruit. |
| C．They live in groups. | D．They lay eggs in trees. |
| A．The research findings are of little value. |
| B．Measures should be taken to protect the beetles. |
| C．Fungi cause much damage to human agriculture. |
| D．Further research to the beetles might benefit farmers. |
4 . It may seem as if Mother’s Day was invented by a company named Hallmark, but people have been taking time on the calendar to give a shout-out to Mom for a long time. The Greeks and Romans had mother goddess festivals — although their celebrations didn’t involve the menfolk taking their underappreciated mothers out to dinner. A more recent tradition was Mothering Sunday, which developed in the British Isles during the 16th century. On the fourth Sunday in April, young men and women who were living and working apart from their families were advised to return to their mothers’ houses.
Mother’s Day as it is observed in the United States started in the 1850s with Ann Jarvis, a West Virginia woman who held “Mothers’ Work Days” to promote health and hygiene (卫生) at home and in the workplace. During the Civil War, Jarvis organized women to improve sanitary conditions for soldiers on both sides, and after the war she became a peacemaker, furthering the cause by bringing together mothers of Union and Confederate soldiers and promoting a Mother’s Day holiday.
Jarvis’s work inspired another 19th-century woman, Julia Ward Howe. In 1870 Howe published her “Mother’s Day Proclamation”, which envisioned the day not as appreciation of mothers by their children but as an opportunity for women to exercise their collective power for peace. Howe started holding annual Mother’s Day celebrations in Boston, her hometown, but after about a decade she stopped footing the bill and the tradition faded away.
It was Jarvis’s daughter Anna who succeeded in getting Mother’s Day recognized as a national holiday. After her mother died, in May 1905, Anna started holding yearly ceremony on the anniversary and conducting a tireless PR campaign to have the day made a holiday. In 1908 she succeeded in enlisting the support of John Wanamaker, the Philadelphia department store magnate and advertising pioneer, and by 1912 West Virginia and a few other states had adopted Mother’s Day. Two years later, President Woodrow Wilson signed a resolution declaring the second Sunday in May a national holiday.
It wasn’t long, though, before whatever ideals the day was supposed to celebrate were buried under an amount of greeting cards and candy. By the 1920s Anna Jarvis was campaigning against the holiday she had been instrumental in creating. “I wanted it to be a day of emotionalism, not profit,” she said.
1. The first paragraph suggests that ________.| A．mothers didn’t get enough appreciation |
| B．Mother’s Day was invented by Hallmark |
| C．young people returned to their mothers’ houses |
| D．Greeks and Romans were the first to celebrate Mother’s Day |
| A．Ann Jarvis. | B．Julia Ward Howe. |
| C．Woodrow Wilson. | D．Anna Jarvis. |
| A．Because it was an emotional day. |
| B．Because the festival was not profitable. |
| C．Because the celebrations went against the original spirit. |
| D．Because the day was buried under greeting cards and candy. |
| A．The Objection to Mother’s Day |
| B．The Argument on Celebrating Mother’s Day |
| C．The Story Behind the Creation of Mother’s Day |
| D．Different Form of Celebrations on Mother’s Day |
5 . Innovative Ideas by Students
Oxygen / carbon dioxide level indicator
S R-Valava, Aftab English Higher Secondary School
The system can detect levels of oxygen / carbon dioxide in the closed car and open windows when the oxygen level drops or carbon dioxide level rises, thereby preventing accidental deaths of children or pets locked inside the car.
New serving tray (托盘)
Alok Singh, Shah Faiz Public School
This serving tray has a release mechanism that can put cups / glasses on the table along with a coaster (玻璃杯垫) without touching it. Once while serving tea to a guest, Alok spilled (洒出) hot tea over him resulting in some burns to his hands. After this incident he came up with this idea to make serving easy and “stylish”.
Posture (姿势) correcting chair
Kulsoom Rizavi, La Martiniere Girls’ College
With sensors at appropriate places, the chair alarms the user when their sitting posture is wrong. Kulsoom dreamed up this idea after being regularly criticized by her mother for her bad posture. She thought that while it may not be possible to be reminded again and again by someone for sitting wrongly, this task can be done by the chair itself.
Sudden fall detector
Soumya Ranjan Behera, BTTS Upper Primary School.
The wearable device alarms others when the user falls suddenly. It is useful for old people and those suffering from fits, epilepsy (癫痫), etc. It will help keep an electronic eye on one’s loved ones. The idea struck Soumya Ranjan when his grandma suffered an epileptic attack and fell down. He wondered, what if she wasn't around?
1. Where does the student designing the system available for cars come from?| A．Shah Faiz Public School. | B．La Martiniere Girls College. |
| C．BTTS Upper Primary School. | D．Aftab English Higher Secondary School. |
| A．Warn users against sitting improperly. | B．Correct users’ poor standing posture. |
| C．Make users sit still more comfortably. | D．Alarm users about falling off a chair. |
| A．New serving tray. | B．Sudden fall detector. |
| C．Posture correcting chair. | D．Oxygen / carbon dioxide level indicator. |
6 . Recent the news a school in Ganzhou, Jiangxi, serves pre-made meals to its students have sparked heated discussions across the country. People doubt if pre-made meals, despite being convenient, are healthy and nutritious enough for growing teenagers.
Pre-made meals refer to half-finished or finished dishes that are already cooked or prepared, according to the China Cuisine Association. There are several types of pre-made foods, including ready-to-eat food, such as canned food or cooked food in packages, and ready-to-heat or ready-to-cook food, which requires heating or cooking before being served.
Many people tend to think that ready-to-heat and ready-to-cook foods are less nutritious because they usually need to be kept in refrigerators. “Actually freezing does not cause a loss of nutrients,” Liu Junya, a 33-year-old dietitian in Beijing said. “Nutrient loss typically occurs during the heating or frying process.”
Vitamins from the B group and vitamin C found in meat and vegetables are heat-sensitive and can be lost during the process. By being heated or cooked twice or more, “pre-made foods can be less nutritious than freshly prepared and cooked foods,” Liu said.
Meanwhile, “many pre-made food companies prioritize taste over nutrition,” said Liu. This leads to higher levels of salt and sugar in the food, which may lead to health problems, such as high blood pressure in the long term.
Additives (添加剂) are also a major concern related to pre-made food. In China, there are strict standards for food additives. Currently, China’s food industry has well-developed techniques to preserve pre-made food without the excessive use of additives. Some food can be sterilized (消毒) and then sealed (密封) after cooking, followed by low-temperature storage, allowing for a longer shelf life. However, it’s essential that customers buy pre-made meals from qualified food companies or supermarkets.
It is hoped that regulations on pre-made meals can be strengthened to better ensure nutrition and hygiene (卫生). This way, “pre-made meals will be more accepted by the public,” Liu said.
1. What can we learn about pre-made meals from the article?| A．They are typically costly and flavorful. | B．They are rich in a large numbe of vitamins. |
| C．They taste better than homemade food. | D．They are already partially or fully cooked. |
| A．During freezing. | B．During cooking. | C．During packaging. | D．During sales. |
| A．Buy from reliable sources. | B．Check the cooking instructions. |
| C．Keep pre-made meals frozen. | D．Pay attention to the additives used. |
| A．They are a convenient choice for all. | B．They are suitable for daily life. |
| C．They can be nutritious if properly regulated. | D．They are best avoided for long-term health. |
7 . Following Cook’s death in 1779, the Endeavour journal of James Cook is thought to have been held by his wife Elizabeth. There is no record of the journal’s movements following Elizabeth Cook’s death in 1835 until its appearance in 1923 when it was offered at auction (拍卖) by its owners the Bolckow family of Yorkshire. The family were unable to explain how they came to hold the journal. It had apparently been in the family’s library ‘for over fifty years, having been purchased by the late Bolckow’s uncle, but from whom and in what circumstances is unknown’.
On 21 March 1923 the Australian government purchased the Endeavour journal for £5000 for the Commonwealth Parliamentary Library.
The Mitchell Library, Sydney, had been chasing the journal since its discovery with the Bolckow family in 1922 before the auction, and had approached the Commonwealth Government for a financial contribution towards the purchase. Though Interim (临时的) Commonwealth Parliamentary Librarian Arthur Wadsworth had guaranteed the Mitchell that there would be no competition for the item, Kenneth Binns (to be Wadsworth’s successor) felt that the Endeavour journal was more suited to remain within the nation’s library.
Binns put forward an eventually persuasive argument that the Commonwealth could not finance the Mitchell, ‘which was, after all, a private institution’. Prime Minister Bruce telegraphed the officer in London to instruct the Mitchell Library’s Chief Librarian, already in England anticipating the auction, to bid on behalf of the Commonwealth. The Mitchell Library accepted upon the understanding that it would be the keeper of the journal until such time that the Commonwealth Government had a suitable storing place, a National Library.
Upon arrival in Australia the journal was exhibited in Queens Hall, Melbourne, for a month after which it was taken to the Mitchell Library which held it for four years, before it was removed to Canberra.
1. Who owned the Endeavour journal of James Cook at last ?| A．James Cook. | B．Elizabeth Cook. |
| C．The Bolckow family of Yorkshire. | D．The Australian government. |
| A．Melbourne . | B．The Mitchell Library. |
| C．The Commonwealth Government. | D．Canberra. |
| A．Cook’s wife Elizabeth passed on the Endeavour journal to the Blockow family. |
| B．The Endeavour journal was on show in Melbourne before being taken to Sydney. |
| C．The Mitchell Library bought the Endeavour journal at its own expense. |
| D．The National Library of Australia is in Melbourne. |
| A．How the Endeavour journal came to the National Library of Australia. |
| B．How the Endeavour journey came to the Mitchell Library of Sydney. |
| C．How the Endeavour journey came to the Bolckow family of Yorkshire. |
| D．How important the Endeavour journey is to Australian. |
8 . It is said that Lincoln’s ghost(幽灵) often appears in the White House. He appears in the room where the Lincoln bed is kept. Harry Truman once responded to a 3 o’clock knock on his door and found no one there. He attributed the knock to Lincoln.
Lincoln is said to return to the White House when the safety of the country is at risk. He walks up and down the second floor hallway, gently knocks at doors, and stands by certain windows with his hands put behind his back. One staff member firmly said that he had seen Lincoln sitting on his bed pulling on his boots.
A guard to President Harrison was kept awake many nights trying to protect the president from strange footsteps he heard in the hall. He grew so tired and worried; he finally attended a séance(降神会) to beg President Lincoln to stop so that he could get enough sleep to properly protect the president!
Abigail Adam’s ghost was seen wandering through the closed doors of the East Room to hang the laundry(洗衣店) during the Taft administration.
A gardener said that he had spoken to the ghost of Dolly Madison, who was angry with him for trying to remove the rose bushes she had planted over a hundred years ago.
In the 1930’s Andrew Jackson’s ghost could be heard laughing in the Rose room.
In 1952, complete repairs were done to the second floor of the White House. Since then, the ghosts have not walked so actively.
1. How many people’s ghosts appear in the white house?| A．Four. | B．Five. | C．Six. | D．Seven. |
| A．Harrison’s. | B．John Adam’s. | C．Andrew Jackson’s. | D．Dolly Madison’s. |
| A．Harry Truman had heard Lincoln’s footsteps. |
| B．Lincoln always returns to the White House when he misses his people. |
| C．President Harrison was not afraid of Lincoln’s ghost at all. |
| D．The rose bushes were planted by Dolly Madison. |
| A．The White House Ghosts |
| B．American Presidents’ Ghosts |
| C．The White House |
| D．American Presidents |
9 . It was the old lady’s birthday. She got up early to be ready for the
Today she was
The old lady was eighty today. She had
Even if Myra did not come, she would send a(an)
The little boy, Johnnie, had been up with a packet of mints(薄荷糖), and said he wouldn’t go out to play until
“I guess you’ll get lots and lots of presents,” he said. “I
She stood by the
Soon Johnnie knocked at her door. “Granny, granny,” he
“No parcel, Johnnie?”
“No, granny.”
Almost
| A．parcel | B．letter | C．post | D．gift |
| A．came | B．left | C．ran | D．drove |
| A．cleaned up | B．brought up | C．gave up | D．dressed up |
| A．afraid | B．excited | C．sure | D．pleased |
| A．by the way | B．in this case | C．on the other hand | D．at other times |
| A．picked | B．treated | C．regarded | D．appointed |
| A．worn | B．found | C．dressed | D．bought |
| A．heavy | B．common | C．special | D．basic |
| A．present | B．food | C．clothes | D．e-mail |
| A．Myra and her husband | B．the present | C．the post | D．Myra |
| A．did | B．got | C．made | D．saw |
| A．window | B．bed | C．door | D．table |
| A．beat | B．jumped | C．sank | D．knocked |
| A．spoke | B．cried | C．whispered | D．sobbed |
| A．envelopes | B．cards | C．letters | D．cheques |
| A．nice | B．delicious | C．beautiful | D．interesting |
| A．excitement | B．disappointment | C．satisfaction | D．surprise |
| A．immediately | B．happily | C．unwillingly | D．worriedly |
| A．Folded | B．Locked | C．Put | D．Stuck |
| A．news | B．information | C．message | D．word |
10 . I love the quiet of late autumn afternoons. I just look out at the skyline with the white clouds
Granny is such a(an)
The
The old cats
Granny listened to my music attentively，and clapped her hands to the
As a student in senior high school, I am now faced with the
| A．rushing | B．floating | C．wandering | D．running |
| A．lazy | B．shy | C．strange | D．outgoing |
| A．Unfortunately | B．Thankfully | C．Gradually | D．Undoubtedly |
| A．character | B．appearance | C．talent | D．strength |
| A．take off | B．give away | C．deal with | D．get through |
| A．guitar | B．violin | C．piano | D．drum |
| A．gate | B．house | C．yard | D．ground |
| A．seated | B．admired | C．taught | D．made |
| A．dogs | B．cats | C．birds | D．children |
| A．happened | B．seemed | C．occurred | D．sounded |
| A．cheered | B．left | C．kept | D．woke |
| A．ugly | B．lovely | C．young | D．naughty |
| A．shone | B．flashed | C．struck | D．hung |
| A．dance | B．beat | C．direction | D．sound |
| A．For a moment | B．At the moment | C．For the moment | D．In a moment |
| A．lucky | B．regular | C．special | D．necessary |
| A．stress | B．power | C．effort | D．trial |
| A．focus on | B．stick to | C．keep up | D．carry out |
| A．eating | B．singing | C．chatting | D．exploring |
| A．inspires | B．honors | C．satisfies | D．greets |
