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2 . My Biggest Challenge
As a writer on an adventure sports magazine, I’d always fought shy of doing the adventurous stuff myself, preferring instead to observe the experts from a safe distance and relay their experiences to readers in the form of written language. Thus, when I was challenged to take part in a mountain climb in aid of raising money for charity — and to write about it afterwards — I was unwilling, to say the least.
I was lucky enough to have a brilliant climbing coach called Keith, who put me through my paces after my daily work. He gave me knowledge about everything from the importance of building muscle groups to how to avoid tiredness through nutrition. It quickly became apparent that the mechanics of climbing were more complex than I had imagined. There was the equipment and techniques I’d never even heard of, all of which would come in handy on the snow-capped peak I’d be climbing.
Aware of the challenge, Keith made a detailed action plan and I forced myself to stick to it, doing a daily workout at the gym and going on hikes with a heavy pack. I perfected my technique on the climbing wall and even went to climb the mountains to get vital experience. My self-belief increased alongside my muscle power and I became confident about finishing the climb.
All too soon I was on a plane to my destination. On that day, when I looked up at the mountain, I thought of abandoning it. But then I remembered all the hard work I’d done and how disappointed Keith would be if I gave up at the last minute-not to mention letting down the charity and the sense of failure I’d experience myself. With a deep breath I gathered my equipment and headed out into the sunshine to meet the rest of the group.
And as I sit here now, tapping away on my laptop, I’m amazed at the details in which I can recall every second of the climb: the burning muscles, the tiredness, the minor problems along the way. Could I have been better prepared? Possibly. Would I be back for another go? Thankfully not. The feeling of being excited when I stood on top of the world is a never-to-be-repeated experience but one I will enjoy forever nevertheless.
1. At the beginning of the activity, the author revealed his ______.| A．disappointment in the coming adventure. |
| B．expectation of writing about his experience. |
| C．lack of enthusiasm for the challenge he’d been offered. |
| D．curiosity about taking part in the mountain climb for charity. |
| A．The knowledge about climbing was really confusing. |
| B．The equipment was the key factor to reach the peak. |
| C．Climbing was much more complicated than expected. |
| D．Hard training was far more important than making plans. |
| A．He was relieved that he wouldn’t have to do it again. |
| B．He was well satisfied that he had done his best for it. |
| C．He was surprised that he had managed to complete it. |
| D．He was regretful that it wasn’t as smooth as imagined. |
3 . Jamie Wardley is a special kind of artist—an ice sculptor. He first trained as a sand sculptor. Later,he learnt about ice sculpture. Now he does sand sculpture in the summer. And in the winter, he sculpts ice.
When sculpting ice,Wardley has to work in cold temperatures. If the weather is cold enough, he can work outside. But winter in the United Kingdom is not always very cold. So often he works in a large freezer where the temperature is about -12℃.
Wardley enjoys sculpting ice outside in the winter. When he sculpts in the open air, people can watch. They can be part of the creative process.
Wardley makes ice sculpting sound simple. But the tools Wardley uses are sharp and dangerous. And the ice is very heavy. Each block of ice weighs 120 kilos. And some larger sculptures are made from several combined blocks of ice. Sometimes ice sculptures can be as big as buildings. In Kemi, Finland there is an ice hotel called the Snow Castle. Each year, Wardley helps build the Snow Castle.
Inside the Snow Castle, the temperature is -50℃. Even the dining tables are made of ice. So you have to wear winter clothes when eating and wear a hat when sleeping. “The ice hotel is built every year in January. Then it melts in April. Each year we rebuild it and create a new design,” Wardley said.
The Snow Castle is a large and amazing work of ice, but Wardley's smaller ice sculptures are special too. One winter, in the city of Bradford, the UK,Wardley created several small sculptures. He used the sculptures to tell a story which contained an important message about goodwill and understanding.
Ice sculptures are temporary works of art. When the temperature rises, they will melt. But that does not mean that their beauty is lost. The sculptures from that day in Bradford have now melted away, but their message of goodwill, understanding, and acceptance remains.
1. According to the text, Wardley________.| A．loves sand sculpture more than ice sculpture | B．sculpts ice in a large freezer in the summer |
| C．worked as an ice sculptor in the beginning | D．enjoys carving ice outdoors in the winter |
| A．Easy and amazing. | B．Special but difficult. |
| C．Boring and dangerous. | D．Simple but temporary. |
| A．It lies in the city of Bradford, the UK. | B．It is too cold for people to live in. |
| C．It requires to be built every year. | D．It is built between January and April. |
| A．They never melt in people's hearts. | B．It takes time to understand them. |
| C．Their beauty doesn't last forever. | D．They add more beauty to Bradford. |
4 . Fu Cong, a Chinese-born pianist, died on Monday at a hospital in London, where he had lived for many years.
A lover of classical music from a young age, Mr. Fu began taking piano lessons when he was 7. He made his first stage appearance in 1952. The concert caught the attention of officials in Beijing, who selected him to compete and tour in Eastern Europe. Mr. Fu soon moved to Poland, where he studied at the Warsaw Conservatory (音乐学校) on a scholarship. To prepare for the fifth Chopin Competition in Warsaw in 1955, he practiced so hard that he hurt his fingers and was nearly cut from the first round of the competition.
Mr. Fu was one of the first Chinese pianists to achieve global fame when he took third place in the International Chopin Piano Competition in Warsaw in 1955. He also won a special prize for his performance of Chopin's mazurkas. Almost overnight, he became a national hero. To China, Mr. Fu's recognition in a well-known international competition was evidence that the country could stand on its own artistically in the West. Chinese reporters came to interview Mr. Fu, while many others went to his father, Fu Lei, for advice on child-raising.
In 1981, a volume of letters written by his father, was published in China. Full of advice, encouragement, life teachings and strict paternal love, the book Fu Lei's Family Letters became a best-seller in China. Besides influencing a generation of Chinese, Mr. Fu's words resonated (引起共鸣) long after his death with the person for whom they were intended.
“My father had a saying that 'First you must be a person, then an artist, and then a musician, and only then can you be a pianist,'" Mr. Fu Cong once recalled in an interview. "Even now, I believe in this order-that it should be this way and that I am this way.”
1. What is paragraph 2 mainly about?| A．Fu Cong's achievements in music. | B．Fu Cong's stage performances. |
| C．Fu Cong's experiences of learning music. | D．Fu Cong’s efforts for competitions. |
| A．It earns Chinese arts a place in the West. |
| B．It promotes the spread of Chinese culture. |
| C．It proves Chinese people's love for music. |
| D．It enables Chinese art education to be recognized. |
| A．Fu Lei's Family Letters. | B．Young people of China. |
| C．Fu Cong and his family. | D．Readers of Fu Lei's Family Letters. |
| A．It's easy to be an artist. |
| B．It requires various qualities to be a pianist. |
| C．Everyone should develop an interest in art. |
| D．Talent is of greatest importance for a pianist. |
5 . The exact location from where Vincent van Gogh is likely to have painted his final masterpiece, perhaps just hours before his death, has been determined with the help of a postcard.
The scene in Tree Roots, a painting of trunks (树干）and roots growing on a hillside, was first spotted on a card dating from 1900 to 1910 by Van der Veen, the scientific director of the Institute Van Gogh. Following a comparative study of the painting, the postcard and the current condition of the hillside, researchers concluded that it was highly possible that the place where Van Gogh made his final brushstrokes had been unearthed.
The main trunk in the painting has survived the 130 years since the Dutch master’s death. It has long been believed that Van Gogh had been working on Tree Roots shortly before he took his own life with a shot to the chest. Andries Bonger, the brother-in-law of Van Gough's brother Theo, had described in a letter how the “morning before his death” Van Gogh had “painted a forest scene, full of sun and life” Van der Veen said, t4The sunlight painted by Van Gogh suggests that the last brushstrokes were painted towards the end of the afternoon.”
Teio Meedendorp, a senior researcher at the Van Gogh Museum, said the spot, some 150 meters from the hotel where Van Gogh had stayed the last 70 days of his life, would likely have been passed on a number of occasions by him. “The scene on the postcard shows very clear similarities to the shape of the roots on Van Gogh’s painting,” he said. “He must often have passed by the location when going to the fields behind the castle of Auvers, where he painted several times during the last week of his life and where he would take his own life.”
1. What is Tree Roots?| A．A trunk. |
| B．A hillside. |
| C．A drawing. |
| D．A postcard. |
| A．He had a close relationship with his brother. |
| B．What he drew in his paintings all came from real life. |
| C．He was working on his artwork shortly before killing himself. |
| D．He was so sick in his last days that he spent all the time in a hotel. |
| A．In the fields. | B．In a local hotel. |
| C．In the castle of Auvers. | D．In the scene on the postcard. |
| A．To remember a famous painter. Van Gogh. |
| B．To introduce Van Gogh's life and his works. |
| C．To describe the influence of Van Gogh in art. |
| D．To tell the place in Van Gogh’s last painting. |
6 . I left university with a good degree in English Literature, but no sense of what I wanted to do. Over the next six years, I was treading water, just trying to earn an income. I tried journalism, but I didn’t think I was any good, then finance, which I hated. Finally, I got a job as a rights assistant at a famous publisher. I loved working with books, although the job that I did was dull.
I had enough savings to take a year off work, and I decided to try to satisfy a deep-down wish to write a novel. Attending a Novel Writing MA course gave me the structure I needed to write my first 55,000 words.
It takes confidence to make a new-start there’s a dark period in-between where you’re neither one thing nor the other. You’re out for dinner and people ask what you do, and you’re too ashamed to say, “Well, I’m writing a novel, but I’m not quite sure if I’m going to get there. ” My confidence dived. Believing my novel could not be published, I put it aside.
Then I met an agen(代理商)who said I should send my novel out to agents. So, I did and, to my surprise, got some wonderful feedback. I felt a little hope that I might actually become a published writer and, after signing with an agent, I finished the second half of the novel.
The next problem was finding a publisher. After two-and-a-half years of no income, just waiting and wondering, a publisher offered me a book deal — that publisher turned out to be the one I once worked for.
It feels like an unbelievable stroke of luck — of fate, really. When you set out to do something different, there’s no end in sight, so to find myself in a position where I now have my own name on a contract(合同)of the publisher — to be a published writer — is unbelievably rewarding(有回报的).
1. What can be inferred from the first paragraph？| A．I was seeking to find an admirable job. | B．I was waiting for good fortune . |
| C．I was being aimless about an appropriate job. | D．I was doing several jobs for more at a time. |
| A．Because the author wanted to finish the writing course. |
| B．Because the author aimed to fulfill his dream. |
| C．Because the author would like to meet readers’ needs. |
| D．Because the author intended to earn more money. |
| A．Unsure | B．Ashamed | C．Confident | D．Embarrassed |
| A．Good luck makes a difference. |
| B．Hard work can lead to success. |
| C．The early bird catches the worm. |
| D．It pays to stick to one's dream. |
7 . An international group of electronic music composers is taking beats from the dance club to jungles and forests and back, all to help save nature's greatest singers. A Guide to the Birdsong of Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean is a new album that includes the sounds of endangered birds. The album will come out next month, whose proceeds will go directly towards efforts to save birds.
The whole project was born out of this idea of trying to combine birdsong, electronic music and conservation. A Guide to the Birdsong of Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean was organized by activist, music producer, Robin Perkins. He invited artists from each of the endangered birds 'homelands to build their own songs around the birds’ songs. There are contributions from ten artists in eight different countries.
First single Black Catbird was created by The Garifuna Collective, from Belize. Al Obando, guitarist and producer of the group, always took in national parks and viewed birds when on the road with the band. “There are no trails, and there are no signs there to tell you about what you reseeing,” Obando says. “So we're trying to do something for the birds and nature tourism.”
Another musician who responded to Robin's call is Tamara Montenegro, an artist from Nicaragua. She was shocked to hear of the serious situation of the Guardabarranco after being approached: “This beautiful creature I grew up adoring also faced the influence of the systematic human activities”. In response, she created a song inspired by this bird and the challenges it faces to live naturally.
The new album is the second edition, following on from A Guide to the Birdsong of South America, produced by Robin in 2015. That first album has raised, to date, over $15,000 benefitting conservation projects in South America. As with the first album, all of the money from the sales of the new album will support specific organizations, including Birds Caribbean.
1. What does the underlined word “proceeds” in Paragraph 1 refer to?| A．Profits. | B．Budgets. | C．Challenges. | D．Effects. |
| A．He created a hit single himself. |
| B．He was fond of observing birds. |
| C．He was the organizer of the new album. |
| D．He did a lot for birds in South America. |
| A．It was friendly to humans. |
| B．It was beautiful in appearance. |
| C．It was losing its living environment. |
| D．It was facing challenges from other birds. |
| A．To collect money for a project. |
| B．To popularize electronic music. |
| C．To recommend some famous artists. |
| D．To introduce a new album of electronic music. |
8 . I was born with eye disease. At school I even couldn’t read the blackboard. By the time I got to university, I couldn’t really see images(图像) at all. I just can tell the difference between light and dark. In the first year of my PHD, I was almost 100% blind.
When I was young I used to get very angry if I encountered something I found difficult or couldn’t do because of my eyes. But over time I learned that wasn’t a helpful response. There’s no point getting wound up by the fact that I can’t see, because it won’t change it.
I started climbing when I was young. My dad took me up my first rock route(路线) when I was two. All my early climbing was outdoor traditional climbing. My dad had been in the Mountain Rescue and was part of Mountaineering Club, so we would go for weekends away climbing throughout the UK.
He taught me everything I know and I led my first route outside when I was 11. At this time I could just about see well enough to place rock gear（齿轮）, but not well enough to pick out the routes from the ground. People are usually amazed when they discover that not only do I climb, but I also lead climbs.
At university I joined the Mountaineering Club and was able to climb much more frequently. We had regular trips to indoor walls and weekends away outdoors. I developed a great circle of climbing friends and went on multiple trips to Europe. On these I started Alpine climbing and ice climbing too.
There was a time when I thought I might have to give up leading as my eyesight got worse. But I never thought I would stop climbing. I just learnt to adapt myself to the eye disease with the support of my friends. It’s quite possible that I wouldn’t be as good a climber if I weren’t blind — if I didn’t have these challenges. That concentration and determination is built through my disability.
1. How did the author eventually respond to his eye problem?| A．He ended up feeling annoyed. | B．He accepted it and faced it bravely |
| C．He sought help from others | D．He quit his study at university. |
| A．He was a professional climber at university. |
| B．He ran his own mountaineering club. |
| C．He taught his son to do outdoor climbing. |
| D．He introduced his son to a love of rocks. |
| A．His disability. | B．His university. |
| C．His father. | D．The Mountaineering Club. |
| A．A Blind Man’s Life Struggle. | B．Mountain Climbing Experience. |
| C．Courses on Rock Climbing. | D．Determination and Experience. |
9 . It is not rare in China that many seniors take advantage of their retirement years to please their grandchildren.
Some are good at sugar figure blowing art-the maker uses sugar as its basic material to boil and blow into various figures. Some can weave, using even the most unexpected materials such as leaves, and some excel in carpentry, using wood to carve lifelike dolls and toys.
Recently, in a small village in Fujian province, one — and — a — half — year — old Dandan became the most enviable child. His grandfather made a wooden " mantis cart （螳螂车）"for him. The wooden components on both sides of the cart would rise and fall with the metal wheels, resembling a mantis. This one-of-a-kind toy was filmed by the child's parents and posted online, immediately arousing curiosity.
The grandfather, Li Shishui, 70, who has been a carpenter for more than 50 years, retired in 2018. In his spare time, he picks up his old craftsmanship and uses the scrap （小块）wood from his old house to make the "mantis cart" with long legs. He also makes pure wooden toys such as robots , birds and even an "Iron Man".
When Dandan goes out in the “ mantis cart"， it never fails to turn heads and children of the neighbors next door shout and cry to their parents for one too.
Full of childlike fun, fatherly love and delicate design, the wooden toy, not merely catches the heart of children in his neighbourhood, some netizens also express their envy after watching online videos. "I want a grandpa like him too. " "Does grandpa want a granddaughter?" Some also recollect that although their grandfather is not a carpenter, these videos have brought back their fond memories when they were young — their grandfather also made some gadgets （小物件）for them.
Therefore, many believe, parents should stress the importance of the education of their children's interpersonal communication skills at an early age. Children who grow up in the love of their elders can expect to be more brave, positive, optimistic and confident than other children.
1. What does the author mean by the underlined part "This one-of-a-kind toy”?| A．The toy is hard-won. | B．The toy is specially made. |
| C．The toy is of high quality. | D．The toy is the only one made by Grandpa Li. |
| A．All the components of it are made of wood. |
| B．Its online videos were not immediately accepted. |
| C．Its insect-like features attract both children and adults. |
| D．It was hand-made by Grandpa Li, a craftsman of sugar figures. |
| A．Much importance should be attached to children's behavior. |
| B．Children under the care of their elders may have better personalities. |
| C．Some netizens envy Dandan as their grandparents are not carpenters. |
| D．Some children of the neighbors cry as Dandan doesn't share the toy with them. |
| A．Fashion. | B．Entertainment・ |
| C．Lifestyle. | D．Transportation. |
10 . Andrew Orkin was taking a break from his evening jog to sit by Prospect Park Lake when he was frightened to see a mass of snakes. They turned out to be swamp eels(黄鳝) that had escaped from one of two large plastic bags that split open as a man dragged them to the shoreline. After dumping the eels in the lake, the man walked away, explaining to bystanders that “I just want to save lives.”
The illegal release became a curiosity on social media, but the dumping of exotic(外来的) animals in urban parks isn’t new. New Yorkers free thousands of non-native animals every year. “People like animals and they sometimes think they’re doing a good thing by letting them go,” said Jason Munshi-South, an urban ecologist at Fordham University. “Most will die. Some will become a problem, and then there’s no going back.”
New York state and city officials say it’s too soon to know how the eels in Prospect Park might affect local species. The eels eat almost anything including plants, insects, frogs, turtles and other fish. And they could prey(捕食) upon or compete with the park’s native species for however long they survive.
There are no plans to eradicate the eels. Since they’re active at night and spend most of their time in the mud of lakes and rivers, spotting and removing them from the lake could be impossible. Officials say they will look for swamp eels during the agency’s next survey in the spring, but don’t expect them to make it through the winter. However, University of Toronto freshwater ecologist Nicholas Mandrak said, “Even if they don’t survive, they could have negative short-term effects.”
1. Why did the man pour the eels into the lake?| A．To challenge the law. | B．To increase the local species. |
| C．To keep the eels alive. | D．To become a web celebrity. |
| A．They might get caught once again. |
| B．They might not adapt to the new environment. |
| C．They might frighten the joggers by the lake. |
| D．They might pose a threat to local species. |
| A．Get rid of. | B．Look after. |
| C．Sell. | D．Examine. |
| A．It is risky. | B．It is tricky. |
| C．It takes patience. | D．It requires legal support. |
