1 . 任务型阅读

It was summer, and my dad wanted to treat me to a vacation like never before. He decided to take me on a trip to the Wild West.

We took a plane to Albuquerque, a big city in the state of New Mexico. We reached Albuquerque in the late afternoon. Uncle Paul, my dad’s friend, picked us up from the airport and drove us up to his farm in Pecos.

His wife Tina cooked us a delicious dinner and we got to know his sons Ryan and Kyle. My dad and I spent the night in the guestroom of the farm house listening to the frogs and water rolling down the river nearby. Very early in the morning, Uncle Paul woke us up to have breakfast. “The day starts at dawn on my farm, “he said. After breakfast, I went to help Aunt Tina feed the chickens, while my dad went with Uncle Paul to take the sheep out to graze (吃草). I was impressed to see my dad and Uncle Paul riding horses. They looked really cool.

In the afternoon, I asked Uncle Paul if I could take a horse ride, and he said yes, as long as my dad went with me. I wasn’t going to take a horse ride by myself anyway. So, my dad and I put on our new cowboy hats, got on our horses, and headed slowly towards the mountains. “Don’t be late for supper, “Uncle Paul cried, “and keep to the track so that you don’t get lost!” “OK!” my dad cried back. After a while Uncle Paul and his farm house were out of sight. It was so peaceful and quiet and the colors of the brown rocks, the deep green pine trees, and the late afternoon sun mixed to create a magic scene. It looked like a beautiful woven (编织的) blanket spread out upon the ground just for us.

1. 阅读下面材料，根据其内容和所给段落开头语续写两段，使之构成一篇完整的短文。续写的词数应为150左右。
注意：
续写词数应为150左右；
请按如下格式在答题卡的相应位置作答。
Suddenly a little rabbit jumped out in front of my horse.
___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
We had no idea where we were and it got dark.
___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
2. Task one: put the correct forms of the following words into the blanks.

drive            comfort          out            permit            loss        dusks        noon            last               roll             delight            trip        next
time	event	feeling
One summer day	My dad decided to take me on a new _______	excited
In the late afternoon	Uncle Paul picked us up and ________us up to his farm in Pecos	Curious
The first night on the farm	We spend the night in the guestroom listening to the frog and water ________ down the river.	________
Early in the _______morning	I helped Tina feed the chickens. My dad and Uncle Paul took the sheep _______ to gaze.	admirable
In the afternoon	I got a _______ to ride a horse with my father’s company.	_______
At _______	We got ________	……

3. Task two: answer the following questions.
1) How did the writer or the horse react to the rabbit?
___________________________________________________________________________
2) How did the writer and his father get lost?
___________________________________________________________________________
3) What difficulties did they meet?
___________________________________________________________________________
4) How did they find their way back to Uncle Paul’s house?
_________________________________________________________________________

3 . Goffin’s cockatoos, a kind of small parrot native to Australasia, have been shown to have similar shape-recognition abilities to a human two-year-old. Though not known to use tools in the wild, the birds have proved skilful at tool use while kept in the cage. In a recent experiment, cockatoos were presented with a box with a nut inside it. The clear front of the box had a “keyhole” in a geometric shape, and the birds were given five differently shaped “keys” to choose from. Inserting the correct “key” would let out the nut.

In humans, babies can put a round shape in a round hole from around one year of age, but it will be another year before they are able to do the same with less symmetrical (对称的) shapes. This ability to recognize that a shape will need to be turned in a specific direction before it will fit is called an “allocentric frame of reference”. In the experiment, Goffin’s cockatoos were able to select the right tool for the job, in most cases, by visual recognition alone. Where trial-and-error was used, the cockatoos did better than monkeys in similar tests. This indicates that Goffin’s cockatoos do indeed possess an allocentric frame of reference when moving objects in space, similar to two-year-old babies.

1. How did the cockatoos get the nut from the box in the experiment?

A．By following instructions.	B．By using a tool.
C．By turning the box around.	D．By removing the lid.

2. Which task can human one-year-olds most likely complete according to the text?

A．Using a key to unlock a door.	B．Telling parrots from other birds.
C．Putting a ball into a round hole.	D．Grouping toys of different shapes.

4 . The Yawa technology is an example of best practice in the circular economy. Materials used to build the machine are recyclable. The technology is even being adjusted to local air quality, a response to the challenges caused by air pollution. But most importantly, the technology can be used, owned and repaired by the communities it serves, even if they are not clear on the science behind it.

“When I was first testing this technology in different rural communities, I spent a lot of time explaining the technical aspects of it,” Hidalgo said. “At one point a woman stopped me and looked me in the eye and said, ‘Young man, I just want water.’ And that changed something inside of me, and I knew that I had to keep things simple.”

What does the underlined sentence in paragraph 4 imply?

A．The woman didn’t trust Yawa.

B．The woman badly needed water.

C．The science behind Yawa was complex.

D．The test on Yawa was disappointing.

7 . The call for public engagement with the unthinkable is especially germane in this moment of still-uncontrolled pandemic and economic crises in the world's most technologically advanced nations. Not very long ago, it was also unthinkable that a virus would shut down nations and that safety nets would be proven so disastrously lacking in flexibility.

The international scholars’ warning letter doesn't say exactly what collapse will look like or when it might happen. Collapseology, the study of collapse, is more concerned with identifying trends and with them the dangers of everyday civilization. Among the signatories (签署者) of the warning was Bob Johnson, the originator of the “ecological footprint” concept, which measures the total amount of environmental input needed to maintain a given lifestyle. With the current footprint of humanity, “it seems that global collapse is certain to happen in some form, possibly within a decade, certainly within this century,” Johnson said in an email.

What does the underlined word “germane” in Paragraph 1 probably mean?

A．Scientific.

B．Credible.

C．Original.

D．Relevant.

8 . Researchers say they have translated the meaning of gestures that wild chimpanzees（黑猩猩）use to communicate. They say wild chimps communicate 19 specific messages to one another with a "vocabulary" of 66 gestures. The scientists discovered this by following and filming groups of chimps in Uganda, and examining more than 5, 000 incidents of these meaningful exchanges.

Dr Catherine Hobaiter, who led the research, said that this was the only form of intentional communication to be recorded in the animal kingdom. Only humans and chimps, she said, had a system of communication where they deliberately sent a message to another group member.

"That's what's so amazing about chimp gestures, " she said. "They're the only thing that looks like human language in that respect."

Although previous research has shown that apes and monkeys can understand complex information from another animal's call, the animals do not appear to use their voices intentionally to communicate messages. This was a significant difference between calls and gestures, Dr Hobaiter said.

Chimps will check to see if they have the attention of the animal with which they wish to communicate. In one case, a mother presents her foot to her crying baby, signaling: "Climb on me." The youngster immediately jumps on to its mother's back and they travel off together. "The big message from this study is that there is another species（物种）out there that is meaningful in its communication, so that's not unique to humans, " said Dr Hobaiter.

Dr Susanne Shultz, an evolutionary biologist from the University of Manchester, said the study was praiseworthy in seeking to enrich our knowledge of the evolution of human language. But, she added, the results were "a little disappointing".

"The vagueness of the gesture meanings suggests either that the chimps have little to communicate, or we are still missing a lot of the information contained in their gestures and actions, " she said. "Moreover, the meanings seem to not go beyond what other animals convey with non-verbal communication. So, it seems the gulf remains."

What did Dr Shultz think of the study?

A．It was well designed but poorly conducted.

B．It was a good try but the findings were limited.

C．It was inspiring but the evidence was unreliable.

D．It was a failure but the methods deserved praise.

9 . Art is everywhere. Any public space has been carefully designed by an artistic mind to be both functional and beautiful. Why, then, is art still so widely considered to be "the easy subject" at school, insignificant to wider society, a waste of time and effort?

Art can connect culture with commercial products in a way that not many other things can; art generates money and holds significant emotional and cultural value within communities. When people attend a concert, they are paying for music, sure, maybe even hotel rooms, meals, and transport, but they also gain an incredible experience, a unique atmosphere and a memory that will go through the rest of their lives. People don't just want material things anymore, they want to experience life-the arts are a perfect crossover（交迭）between culture and commerce.

Furthermore, the arts can bring communities together, reducing loneliness and making people feel safer. Social bonds are created among individuals when they share their arts experiences through reflection and discussion, and their expression of common values through artworks in honour of events significant to a nation's experience.

The arts clearly have a pretty positive impact on physical and psychological health. It is found that people who frequent cultural places or participate in artistic events are more likely to gain good health compared to those who do not; more engagement with the arts is linked to a higher level of people's wellbeing. The Royal Society of Public Health discovered that music and art, when used in hospitals, help to improve the conditions of patients by reducing stress, anxiety and blood pressure.

Children who are involved with the arts make greater achievements in their education: those engaged with drama have greater literary ability while others taking part in musical practice exhibit greater skills in math and languages. Kids with preference for the arts have a greater chance of finding employment in the future. Participating in the arts is essential for child development; encouraging children to express themselves in constructive ways could help to form healthy emotional responses in later life.

Vital to human life, art is celebrated and used by nations across the world for various purposes. Life without art would be boring and dead still, for art is a part of what makes us human.

What can we learn about people who are involved in artistic activities?

A．They enjoy better living conditions.

B．They like to compare themselves with others.

C．They are particularly good at both music and art.

D．They tend to be healthier physically and mentally.

10 . A trial project by the Montreal Children’s Hospital suggested that the use of medical hypnosis (催眠) can reduce pain and anxiety in patients. The project also resulted in a reduction in the amount of medicines used to perform medical-imaging (医学影像) procedures.

“During the examination children don’t move. It works perfectly. It’s amazing,” said Johanne L’Ecuyer, a medical-imaging technologist at the hospital.

The project was inspired by a French team from Rouen University Hospital Centre where examinations are done under hypnosis instead of general anesthesia (麻醉).

A French medical-imaging technologist — also a hypnotist — was invited to train a few members in the medical-imaging department of the children’s hospital. In all, 80 examinations were conducted for the project between January and September, 2019, focusing on the imaging procedures that would cause anxiety.

Hypnosis is not a state of sleep: It is rather a modified (改变的) state of consciousness. The technologist will guide the patient to this modified state — an imaginary world that will disassociate itself more and more from the procedure that follows.

“The technologist must build up a story with the patient,” Ms. L’Ecuyer said. “The patient is left with the power to choose what he wants to talk about. Do you play sports? Do you like going to the beach? We establish a subject that we will discuss throughout the procedure.”

Everything that happens next during the procedure must be related to this story — an injection (注射) becomes the bite of an insect; the heat on the skin becomes the sensation of the sun and a machine that rings becomes a police car passing nearby.

“The important thing is that the technologist associates what is happening outside the patient’s body with what the patient sees in his head,” Ms. L’Ecuyer said. “It requires creativity on the part of the technologist, imagination, a lot of patience and kindness.”

The procedure appealed to the staff a lot when it was introduced in January. “It spread like wildfire that someone from France was here to train the technologists,” Ms. L’Ecuyer said. She added that she had a line of staff at her door wanting to take the training

What is the passage mainly about?

A．An easy way to communicate with patients.

B．The standard method of conducting hypnosis.

C．An introduction of medical-imaging technology.

D．The use of hypnosis in medical-imaging procedures.