1 . Emerson, my 11-year-old daughter, is constantly contacting with the United States Postal Service (USPS)and our mail carrier, Doug. She las a serious letter-writing habit and maintains correspondence with her favorite people. If you've been the receiver of her hand-decorated letters and envelopes, then I know they really make your day.
A letter from Emerson is likely to include some art, a joke and enough questions to guarantee a response. But when she wrote a letter to Doug, she put something new in it: "You may know me as the person living here that writes lots of letters...You're very important to me, helping me stay in touch with friends. I cheer people up with my letters, but you do too!"
The next day, a package arrived with two letters. One was from Doug and the other from his superior, Sara, saying she had shared Emerson's note in the internal newsletter of the USPS and believed many postal folks wanted to thank Emerson. Emerson was so pleased with the letter that it upset me much, for the possible result of no reply would come as a blow to her.
Surprisingly, today, we saw Doug come with two boxes of letters from around the country. These letters were so human, filled with family, pets and a sense of kindness. But there was something more in them. People felt seen—some for the first time in a long time. "I work alone in a small rural post office..." "Not many people think about how hard we work…" Emerson wrote back seriously.
I'm sharing this not because I'm a proud dad, but because it's relatively easy, if we take the time, to give others links they need to be well. We all want to be seen, known and loved. Send a letter. Give a call. Take a step of bravery, like Emerson.
1. What do we know about Emerson's letters?| A．They make receivers joyful. |
| B．They are all about family and pets. |
| C．They contain many practical jokes. |
| D．They are written to postal folks. |
| A．Emerson was too delighted with the package. |
| B．there might be no answer to Emerson's note. |
| C．postal folks would like to express their gratitude. |
| D．Sara had shared Emerson's note without permission. |
| A．Humorous. | B．Serious. | C．Ambitious. | D．Caring. |
| A．Courage lightens the blow. |
| B．Brief is life but love is long. |
| C．Connection makes a difference. |
| D．Life without a friend is death. |
2 . It wasn't until I was much older that I would find something that I would consider as evidence of my father's love.
When the Commodore 64 personal computer came onto the market, I convinced myself that I had to have it even though its price was out of my mother's range. So I decided to earn the money myself. I mowed（割草）every yard I could find that summer for few dollars each, yet it still wasn't enough. So my dad agreed to help me raise the rest of the money by driving me to one of the watermelon farms south of town, loading up his truck with wholesale melons and driving me around to sell them.
He came for me before daybreak. We made small talk, but it didn't matter. The fact he was talking to me was all that mattered. I was a teenager by then, but this was the first time that I had ever spent time alone with him. He laughed and repeatedly introduced me as "my boy", a phrase he relayed with a sense of pride. It was one of the best days of my life.
Although he had never told me that he loved me, I would consider that day as the greatest evidence of that fact. He had never intended me any wrong. He just didn't know how to love me right. He wasn't a mean man. So I took these random episodes and clung to them like a thing most precious, storing them away for the long periods of coldness when a warm memory would prove most useful.
It just goes to show that no matter how distant the father, no matter how deep the damage, no matter how broken the relationship, there is still time, still space, still a need for even the smallest bit of evidence of a father's love.
1. The author finally managed to get the Commodore 64 ________.| A．with the money he asked his mother for | B．by getting well paid from mowing yards |
| C．with his hard work and his father's help | D．by selling watermelons in the neighborhood |
| A．his father didn't know how to love him | B．his father didn't live with him |
| C．they didn't get along well at first | D．his father was always busy with work |
| A．He never told me. | B．He loved me. |
| C．He never intended me wrong. | D．He didn't know how to love me. |
| A．The Best Days of My Life | B．The Story of My Father |
| C．Evidence of Love | D．Father and Son |
| A．Narration | B．Argumentation | C．Description | D．Exposition（说明文） |
3 . Are you happy with your teeth? Becca, a 15-year-old girl from the US is not. She decided her teeth needed to be whiter. "They weren't that bad, but I wanted to make them all the same colour", she said.
In the last five years, teeth whitening has become very popular among young Americans. Now the trend（潮流）has come to China. If you turn on the TV you can see the Hong Kong pop star Karen Mok showing her bright white teeth, saying, "want to be like me? Use white teeth strips（牙贴）!" You may even have decided to buy one.
But wait a minute. Dentists have something to say. They think that kids should not use whitening products until they are 16 or even older.
"We don't know what will happen yet," says Dr. Nasrin Azim, a dentist in Chicago. "Studies have not been done on young people. I wouldn't do teeth whitening on anyone under 18."
The problem with whitening lies in the pulp（牙髓）, the innermost（最深处的）part of the tooth. It has the tooth's nerve（神经）ending. When we eat very hot or cold things, it's the pulp that hurts. Kids have larger pulps. The larger pulp might make teeth more sensitive（敏感的）to whitening and get hurt.
Another problem is that the gums around the teeth usually change shape（形状）with age. So, if someone whitens his or her teeth during childhood, the darker, natural color might show later around the gum line. At that time, your teeth will show two colors. And the darker color is difficult to whiten.
So, wait another few years before you make your teeth whiter. Or if you really want to do it, ask your dentist. They'll give you useful advice.
1. This passage mainly talks about ________.| A．how to whiten your teeth | B．the new trend of whitening teeth |
| C．Americans with white teeth | D．dentists' advice on tooth whitening |
| A．Notice | B．announcement | C．advertisement | D．talk |
| A．it is inside the teeth | B．it is sick |
| C．it is rich in nerves | D．it is not used to this kind of food |
| A．Their teeth may show two colors later. | B．Their gums may change shape with age. |
| C．Their teeth may get darker. | D．They may lose their teeth. |
| A．dentists like very much the idea of tooth whitening |
| B．more and more people in China will get their teeth whitened |
| C．it's necessary for children to whiten their teeth |
| D．tooth whitening will certainly bring good results for people |
4 . A young man went to a town and worked there. He did not have a wife and a servant did the work in his house. The young man liked laughing lot. He nailed（使固定）the servant's shoes to the floor on Monday, and then laughed, because he put his feet in them and fell down. The servant was not angry, but smiled. Then the young man put brushes in his bed on Tuesday. The servant got into bed and hit the brushes with his feet. He was afraid. The young man laughed loudly again. Again the servant was not angry, but smiled. Then on Wednesday the young man said to his servant, "You're a nice, kind man. I am not going to be unkind to you again." The servant smiled and said, "And I'm not going to put any more mud from the street in your coffee."
1. The young man went to a town ________.| A．to study | B．to work | C．to see his relative | D．to spend his holiday |
| A．he hated him |
| B．he was not satisfied with the food the servant prepared for him |
| C．he wanted to get pleasure |
| D．he liked to show off himself |
| A．he liked the young man's' action | B．making the young man laugh is his job |
| C．he was afraid to be fired | D．he thought he shouldn't' be angry with child |
| A．He stole something from the house. | B．He gave a smile to the young man. |
| C．He had a fight with him. | D．He put mud into the young man's coffee. |
| A．Because the servant showed kind and nice behavior to him |
| B．Because the servant told him the truth |
| C．Because he wanted to be a good man |
| D．Because his father told him to do so |
5 . Perfumes, soaps, and other products often contain special smells called fragrances. Fragrances are often not natural smells, but they're meant to be pleasant. Fragrances can strongly affect those who smell them. Though some people are sensitive to the smells, hoping the smells will be ridded some day, creating and selling fragrances brings in about ＄48 billion every year across the globe, causing some companies to take advantage of computers and other high-tech methods to help them. Many universities specially have the major for creating fragrances, which many students are eager to take.
IBM is a computer company whose Artificial Intelligence (AI) system for fragrances is called Philyra that can't actually smell, but can use lots of different information to find and act on new patterns. The information Philyra needs comes from a German company Symrise. Symrise has derailed information on all kinds of materials used to make perfumes. It also has about 1.7 million different formulas—special recipes for making fragrances, and it is also able to give Philyra information about what kinds of smells people like. For example, the kinds of smells most liked by men, women, or people in different age groups or in different countries.
O Boticario, Brazil's second-largest beauty store, asked IBM to come up with two new perfumes that millennials(千禧二代) would like. So Philyra began creating new formulas based on patterns it spotted in the information about different materials, different formulas and the kinds of fragrances people like. Philyra came up with many formulas very quickly. The master perfumer David Apel worked with the AI, and he said that the way Philyra combined different spices(香料) with milk and butter was something that he would never have thought of doing. When O Boticario tried out the new perfumes on groups of millennials, they were very popular. They even beat out some famous perfumes. The new special perfumes will go on sale soon this year.
1. What do we know about creating and selling fragrances from paragraph 1?| A．It's being done by computers. |
| B．It's a big business in the world. |
| C．It's been directed by AI system. |
| D．It will disappear sooner or later. |
| A．Making fragrances for IBM. |
| B．Offering fragrance information. |
| C．Using AI to create various smells. |
| D．Developing AI system for fragrances. |
| A．Unnoticed fragrances. |
| B．Expert favored. |
| C．Personal smells. |
| D．AI-created. |
| A．Entertainment. |
| B．Health. |
| C．Education. |
| D．Technology. |
6 . It is widely believed that smiling means a person is happy, and it usually occurs when they're meeting another person or a group of people. However, a new study led by the body language expert Dr Harry Witchel shows this isn't always the case.
In his research, he asked 44 participants aged 18—35 to play a geography quiz game consisting of nine difficult questions so that they often got the answer wrong. Participants seated interacted with a computer alone in a room while their faces were video recorded.
After the quiz, the participants were asked to rate their experience using a range of 12 emotions including “bored”, “interested” and “frustrated”. Meanwhile, their facial expressions were then computer analysed frame by frame in order to judge how much they were smiling based on a scale of between 0 to 1.
Dr Witchel said: “According to some researchers, a real smile reflects the inner state of cheerfulness or amusement. However, behavioral ecology theory suggests that all smiles are tools used in social interactions, meaning cheerfulness is neither necessary nor rich for smiling. Our study showed that in these humancomputer interaction experiments, smiling isn't driven by happiness; it is associated with subjective involvement(主观参与) , which acts like a social fuel for smiling, even when socialising with a computer on your own.”
Surprisingly, participants didn't tend to smile during the period when they were trying to figure out the answers. However, they did smile right after the computer game informed them if their answer was correct or wrong. Participants smiled more often when they got the answer wrong. Dr Witched added: “During these computerised quizzes, smiling was greatly increased just after answering questions incorrectly.This behaviour could be explained by selfratings of involvement, rather than by ratings of happiness or frustration.”
1. Why did Dr Witchel use difficult questions in the quiz game?| A．To make it hard for participants to answer them correctly. |
| B．To make the answer period last as long as possible. |
| C．To discover the most intelligent participants. |
| D．To create a stressful situation for participants deliberately. |
| A．Other researchers' opinion of a real smile is quite right. |
| B．Smiles aren't necessarily useful tools in social interactions. |
| C．Subjective involvement doesn't motivate smiling in social interactions. |
| D．Witchel's study finding is consistent with behavioural ecology theory. |
| A．Participants were asked to interact with each other in the quiz. |
| B．Participants in the quiz smiled less often when they got the answer wrong. |
| C．In Dr Witchel's opinion, smiling is connected with subjective involvement. |
| D．Dr Witchel thinks that a real smile reflects the inner state of cheerfulness. |
| A．What Contributes to Real Happiness? |
| B．How to Identify Whether a Person Is Really Happy? |
| C．Smiling Doesn't Necessarily Mean Happiness. |
| D．People Generally Hold a Wrong View on Happiness. |
7 . In times of stress, particularly when the water gets too warm, the coral(珊瑚)erupts the algae(海藻), and the coral turns white, causing a state called coral bleaching(漂白). Just a few degrees of heat can lead to coral bleaching, putting the coral on a path to starvation and death.
Driven by climate change, marine heat waves are becoming one of the greatest threats to the existence of coral, which is important to the ocean ecology. But in some rare good news researchers have discovered coral can recover from bleaching even before a heat wave ends, suggesting it has the potential to survive long heat waves. Coral was thought to survive only if a heat wave lasted just a few weeks.
But no one had studied this process during a longer heat wave. Then in 2015, Julia Baum, a marine ecologist at the University of Victoria, began a survey of two common species: brain and star coral around Kiritimati in the central Pacific Ocean. They checked the condition of the coral as the heat wave struck and disappeared.
Starting in May 2015, the temperature rose about 1 ℃ within 2 months. As expected, coral that housed heat-sensitive algae bleached sooner than those housing the heat-tolerant kind of algae. As the water continued to warm, even heat-tolerant algae erupted.
Many brain and star coral on Kiritimati recovered from bleaching while the water was still unusually warm. Baum said, "The unexpected recovery provides new hope, because it means that even under lasting heat waves, there's a path forward for some of them."
An unusual feature of the recovery is that brain coral that started out with heat-sensitive algae had a higher survival rate(82%)than coral that began with heat-tolerant algae(25%). "That finding is surprising," said Baum, expecting that heat-tolerant algae would be better suited for helping coral survive a heat wave. But during a longer heat wave, it might be more advantageous to start with a heat-sensitive algae.
1. What results in coral bleaching?| A．The white algae. | B．The coral's death. |
| C．An attack of waves. | D．A rise in ocean temperature. |
| A．To prove that coral can stop climate change. |
| B．To study how coral bleaching comes about. |
| C．To figure out whether coral survives long heat waves |
| D．To explain why coral bleaching is a big threat to coral |
| A．Ashamed. | B．Confused |
| C．Worried. | D．Astonished. |
| A．Protect the ocean environment. | B．Reduce coral bleaching. |
| C．Grow more different algae. | D．Regulate the heat wave. |
8 . “Don’t tell anyone”. We hear these words when someone tells a secret to us. But it can be hard to keep a secret. We often tend to “spill the beans”, even if we regret it later.
According to Asim Shah, professor in the Menninger Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Baylor College of Medicine, US, keeping a secret may well “become a burden”. This is because people often have an “obsessive and anxious urge to share it with someone”.
An earlier study, led by Anita E. Kelly, a scientist at the University of Notre Dame, US, suggested that keeping a secret could cause stress. People entrusted (受委托的) with secrets can suffer from depression, anxiety, and body aches, reported the Daily Mail.
But with secrets so often getting out, why do people share them at all?Shah explained that people often feel that it will help them keep a person as a friend. Another reason people share secrets is guilt over keeping it from someone close to them. A sense of distrust can develop when people who are close do not share it with each other. “Keeping or sharing secrets often puts people in a position of either gaining or losing the trust of someone,” according to Shah.
He added that talkative people could let secrets slip out (泄露). But this doesn’t mean that it is a good idea only to share secrets with quiet people. A quiet person may be someone who keeps everything inside. To tell such a person a secret may cause them stress, and make them talk about the secret.
Shah said that to judge whether to tell someone a secret, you’d better put yourself in their position. Think about how you would feel to be told that you mustn’t give the information away. Shah also recommended that if you accidentally give up someone’s secret you should come clean about it. Let the person know that their secret isn’t so secret anymore.
1. What does underlined words “spill the beans” mean?| A．Cut up beans. | B．Burst into laughter. |
| C．Let out the secret. | D．Keep the words. |
| A．It can help promote friendships between people. | B．It can result in mental and physical problems. |
| C．It can result in a sense of distrust between friends. | D．It can harm relationships between friends. |
| A．It’s not a good idea to share your secrets with others. |
| B．It’s better to share your secrets with quiet people. |
| C．Quiet people suffer less stress from keeping secrets. |
| D．Talkative people are unlikely to keep secrets. |
| A．Buy the person a gift as an apology. |
| B．Stay away from the person. |
| C．Exchange a new secret with the person. |
| D．Tell the affected person what happened. |
9 . Alice Moore is a teenager entrepreneur（创业者）, who in May 2015 set up her business AilieCandy. By the time she was 13, her company was worth millions of dollars with the invention of a super-sweet treat that could save kids’ teeth, instead of destroying them.
It all began when Moore visited a bank with her dad. On the outing, she was offered a candy bar. However, her dad reminded her that sugary treats were bad for her teeth. But Moore was sick of missing out on candies. So she desired to overcome the warning, “Why can’t I make a healthy candy that’s good for my teeth so that my parents can’t say no to it?” With that in mind, Moore asked her dad if she could start her own candy company. He recommended that she do some research and talk to dentists about what a healthier candy would contain.
With her dad’s permission, she spent the next two years researching online and conducting trials to get a recipe that was both tasty and tooth﹣friendly. She also consulted dentists to learn more about teeth cleaning. Consequently, she succeeded in making a kind of candy only using natural sweeteners, which can reduce oral bacteria.
Moore then used her savings to get her business off the ground. Afterwards, she and her father got their first business meeting with a supermarket owner, who finally agreed to sell Moore’s product﹣CanCandy.
As CanCandy’s success grows, so does Moore’s reliability as an entrepreneur. Moore is enthusiastic about the candy she created, and she hopes that every kid can have a clean mouth and a broad smile.
Meanwhile, with her parents’ help, Moore is generally able to live a normal teenage life. Although she founded her company early in life, she wasn’t driven primarily by profit. Moore wants to use her unique talent to help others find their smiles. She donates 10% of AilicCandy’s profits to Big Smiles.
1. How did Moore react to her dad’s warning?| A．She didn’t care. | B．She tried to find a way out. |
| C．She argued with him. | D．She chose to consult dentists. |
| A．It is produced to a dentists’ recipe. | B．It is free of sweeteners. |
| C．It is sweeter than other candies. | D．It is beneficial to dental health. |
| A．Humorous | B．Selfish |
| C．Caring | D．Stubborn |
| A．Positive thinking and action result in success. |
| B．Fame is a great thirst of the young. |
| C．A youth is to be regarded with respect. |
| D．Success means getting personal desires satisfied. |
10 . Slowing down was the last thing on Elaine Schaefer's mind when she turned 70 last year. She'd enjoyed an ambitious travel schedule for the previous decade. She didn't feel too old to travel.
Yet many people are asking that slightly embarrassing question: Can you be too old to travel? The travel industry has already responded. Try renting a car in Europe, for example. In Croatia, Schaefer wouldn't be able to this year, because the maximum age is 70. Insurance companies require higher rates; tour operators limit certain activities. That feels like a " no" for many travelers.
Definitely some folks should think twice before traveling, but not only based on their age. It's their level of fitness, says Kirsten Veldman, a former tour guide who now edits a retirement blog. She recalls a 93-year-old who was disabled and traveling alone on a Caribbean tour. "You can't expect to ask a tour leader to be there for you 24/7 for medical care. " she says. "Tour guides don't have the time, skills, and knowledge for it. So, in this case, my advice is: he shouldn't have traveled with us in this situation. "
But some tour operators serve older travelers. For example, Grand Circle Travel started in 1958 to serve senior members. “We have travelers into their 80s and even 90s. Some travel as a couple and some alone,” says company spokeswoman Ann Shannon. “We have no age limit.”
If you ask travel experts, they'll tell you that age is just a number. It's a question of physical, and to a certain extent, mental ability. "Many of our travelers are retired, focused on keeping their good health, and are experienced travelers who have a good idea of what to expect, "says Sara Baer-Sinnott, president of Oldways, a food and nutrition nonprofit that operates tours. "Someone in their 40's may struggle more than someone in their 80s. "
1. What is expected if Schaefer travels in Croatia this year?| A．She can rent a car to go around. |
| B．She has to pay more insurance fees. |
| C．She can join in all kinds of activities. |
| D．She will receive 24/7 medical care. |
| A．His old age. | B．His lack of money. |
| C．His poor health. | D．His in sociable personality. |
| A．It is a non-profit traveling organization. |
| B．It offers service to a wide range of travelers. |
| C．It has a history of more than seven decades. |
| D．Its main customers are senior travelers. |
| A．Opposed. | B．Supportive. | C．Tolerant. | D．Objective. |
