1 . An 18-year-old US girl gained unexpected appreciation and a surprise after she gave “extra help” to an elderly man in the restaurant she was working.
It's social media that made her seemingly small action go viral and brought her appreciation from hundreds of thousands of strangers and a scholarship to Texas Southern University.
The heroine Evoni Williams has reportedly been working full-time to earn money for further study in a restaurant in La Marque, Texas, the United States. It was last week when an old man named Adrian Charpentier asked for help to chop his ham for his hands were weak because of illness. On that busy morning when she had loads of work on shoulder, Williams helped the man without hesitation. The moment she was leaning over the counter and cutting the ham was shot by a customer known as Laura Wolf.
Wolf posted the picture on the Internet and wrote, “I'm thankful to have seen this act of kindness and caring at the start of my day while everything in this world seems so negative. If we could all be like this waitress and take time to offer a helping hand. . . ” According to local reports, Wolf didn't know Williams, neither did Williams know her act was shot and shared on the web. However, the small act of kindness soon accumulated its own power on and outside the Internet.
Besides praise from netizens and media reports across the United States, a 16000-dollar scholarship to Texas Southern University was recently granted to Williams to support her study plan on business management.
“We wanted to reward Evoni's act of kindness and let her know that good deeds do not go unnoticed,” said Melinda Spaulding, an administrator at Texas Southern University.
1. What did Evoni Williams help Adrian Charpentier do?| A．Cut his ham. | B．Paid his bill. |
| C．Changed his food. | D．Took a picture for him. |
| A．To attract people's attention. | B．To support Williams' study. |
| C．To share a beautiful picture. | D．To encourage people to help others. |
| A．To help Charpentier open a restaurant. |
| B．To sponsor elderly customers in the restaurant. |
| C．To support Williams to learn business management. |
| D．To achieve Wolf's dream of helping people in need. |
| A．No pains, no gains. | B．Do well and have well. |
| C．All that ends well is well. | D．A merry heart goes all the way. |
2 . Paper-cut is a very special visual art of Chinese handicrafts. One saying is that it originated from the religious ceremonies or offering sacrifices (祭祀). The ancient people cut papers into animals or people. They either buried them with the dead or burned them on the funerals (葬礼), wishing things that paper stood for could be with the dead. Later, they were used during festivals to decorate gates and windows. After hundreds of years' progress, now they have become a very popular means of decoration among country folk, especially women.
It is easy to learn about cutting a piece of paper but very difficult to master it with perfection. Beginners need only a knife and paper. For craftsman, they need knives and gravers of various types to make complicated (复杂的) patterns. It can be one piece of paper or many pieces. Simple patterns can be cut with a knife. For complicated patterns, people first pasted(粘贴)the pattern on the paper and then used various kinds of knives to make it. No mistake can be made during the process otherwise the work would fail.
Paper cutting covers nearly all topics, from flowers, birds, animals, admirable people, figures in classic novels, to types of facial make-up in Peking opera. Paper cutting has various styles in different parts of China.
In the past, women living in the countryside gathered in their free time to make paper cutting, which is a way to judge their skillfulness. As society develops, fewer and fewer people learn this skill while there are some who still regard it as a profession. At present, there are factories and associations for paper cutting in China. Exhibitions and exchanges are held regularly and books of this kind are published. Paper cutting has changed from decoration to a kind of art. At the same time, paper cutting also appears in cartoons, on stage, in magazines or in TV series.
1. What may be the origin of paper-cut according to the text?| A．Special visual art. | B．Ancient story. | C．Traditional customs. | D．Religious activities. |
| A．Becoming a paper cutting artist is very easy. |
| B．Making a perfect paper cutting needs great patience and skill. |
| C．Paper cutting is limited to some topics. |
| D．Paper cutting in different parts of China has similar styles. |
| A．More and more people regard paper cutting as a profession. |
| B．Paper cutting is in danger of disappearing in the future. |
| C．Paper cutting is a way to judge a woman's skill. |
| D．Paper cutting as an art form is still very popular today. |
| A．A special kind of art form in China. | B．Some ancient religious ceremonies. |
| C．Various things are made of paper. | D．Decoration of festivals in ancient China. |
3 . I am an e-mail user. When I first started to use the e-mail system, I used to read all my e-mail. I didn't have much mail. I gave my friends my e-mail address. Soon I had more mail than wanted. Some of the mail was junk mail. I was worried. I didn't want my mail to control me.
I've tried some methods to help me get control of my mail. First, I check my mail at the same time every day. Also, I try to allow myself only 15~20 minutes every day to process my email. This doesn't always work, but I try. Sometimes I save the messages. Sometimes I read them, maybe answer a few, and then delete them.
Sometimes I get some junk mail that I'm not interested in at all, I don't even open it. I usually delete it right away. This is very much the way I go through the mail that the postal service delivers to my home.
These methods are very simple. I have some friends who are very clever with computers. From time to time, they teach me new tricks for managing my e-mail. I'm still amazed at what email can do for me! I'm still worried, however, about having too much to read.
1. Why did the author use to read all his e mails?| A．He was forced to do that. | B．He didn't have much mail. |
| C．He had nothing else to do. | D．He didn't know how to read mail. |
| A．Saving it sometimes. | B．Deleting it immediately. |
| C．Reading and answering it. | D．Passing it on to his friends. |
| A．By the help of his friends. | B．By the methods from mail. |
| C．By checking messages. | D．By controlling computers. |
| A．Worries about using mail. | B．The happiness of using mail. |
| C．Methods of dealing with mail. | D．Persuasions to avoid using mail. |
4 . Binge-watching is when a person watches more than one episode of a show in quick succession(一连串，连续）". With developments in the speed and connectivity of the internet, increases in technology and the rise of on-demand entertainment companies, people can now have their favorite shows streamed directly to their television at their convenience.
This behavior is nothing new. In fact, " binge-watching" has been officially listed in dictionaries since 2015. The entertainment companies recognize this behavior and many take steps to encourage it. Often, instead of releasing each episode on a week-by-week basis, an entire series will become available concurrently. Once the episode finishes many platforms will display pop-ups with “you might like suggestions, or will automatically play the next episode”.
However, recent research suggests that out of the more than half of British adults who watch more than one episode of a show back-to-back, almost a third have admitted missing sleep or becoming tired as a result; and one quarter have neglected their household chores. Next we’ll be missing work!
Bingeing has other connections-binge eating, binge drinking and binge smoking. All of them are often associated with a lack of control and a possible route to addiction. Lindsey Fussell, consumer group director, said: “The days of waiting a week for the next episode are largely gone, with people finding it hard to resist watching multiple episodes around the house or on the move.” If people find binge-watching hard to resist, coupled with the fact that it has shown to lead to negligence in many, are we witnessing the birth of a new type of addiction?
The countless of information and entertainment that television and online media can bring us is, many would say, a good thing. However, when the activity begins to bleed into other areas, causing us to stop functioning then it becomes a problem. So, what's the answer? Moderation! Neither a tiny amount, nor too much. After all, as the old proverb says, “A little of what you fancy does you good.”
1. How did the writer develop the first paragraph?| A．Listing some examples |
| B．Telling a story. |
| C．Giving a definition |
| D．Analyzing the cause and effect |
| A．similarly | B．gradually | C．naturally | D．necessarily |
| A．people have no patience to do work |
| B．people can’t control their movements |
| C．people are delighted to watch television |
| D．people can’t resist the temptation |
| A．To watch episodes in a moderate way. |
| B．To draw life lessons from the episodes. |
| C．To enjoy entertainment as much as possible. |
| D．To keep online media from stopping functioning. |
5 . If you are looking for a vacation to a beautiful beach town, each state on the East Coast has something new to offer. Here you can find the best cities along the East Coast based on a departure (离开) from Los Angeles.
Savannah, GeorgiaRound-trip fight cost:$ 415
Walking tours of the city’s attractions are led by local historians, and you can know more about the famous squares and see the bench where Forrest Gump sat. There is also a free tour to Forsyth Park, home to a 300-year-old Candler Oak tree. Visitors can also stay at the Forsyth Park, which includes a spa, restaurant and cooking school.
Charleston, South Carolina
Round-trip flight cost:$519
You don’t have to travel to Europe to visit one of the world’s best spots. Charleston made Travel and Leisure’s 2018 list of the top 15 international cities. It was also ranked the No. 1 U.S. city for the sixth year in a row in 2018. You can enjoy the sunshine for free at Folly Beach and watch the sunset from the pier (码头).
Block Island, Rhode Island
Round-trip flight cost:$358
There are no flights from Los Angeles directly to Block Island, but a round-trip flight to Providence, Rhode Island. There you can make your way to Block Island and visit 1661 Farms and Gardens, which is home to kangaroos, camels, ducks, goats and much more. Southeast Lighthouse here is praised for its beautiful views of the Atlantic Ocean.
Roanoke, Virginia
Round-trip fight cost:$517
Take advantage of the arts and crafts trips, hiking paths and waterfall stops all along the Blue Ridge Parkway. If you don’t want to stay outdoors, visit the Taubman Museum of Art for free. The museum has a collection of over 2,100 pieces from around the world and hosts special exhibits(展览会) throughout the year.
1. What do tours in Savannah allow visitors to do?| A．Learn about the history of the city. | B．Help plant trees in Forsyth Park |
| C．Attend a cooking school for free. | D．Watch an open-air movie. |
| A．are unwilling to travel by air |
| B．love to spend time with animals |
| C．want to appreciate works of art |
| D．prefer enjoying the mountain view |
| A．Savannah. | B．Charleston. | C．Block Island | D．Roanoke. |
6 . Since it first opened after four years of construction in 1937 at a cost of $27 million，the Golden Gate Bridge has made its appearance in films and poetry.
CNN Travel spent a day climbing into and ground the bridge，learning these secrets from the people who know and love it best.
Why is it called the Golden Gate Bridge?It’s not golden.
“The Golden Gate Bridge gets its name because it spans what is called the Golden Gate Strait，”said Paolo Cosulich-Schwartz，spokesman for the Golden Gate Bridge，Highway and Transportation District，which operates the bridge. It’s a three-mile-long and one-mile-wide body of water that connects the Pacific Ocean to the San Francisco Bay.
What color is the bridge?It looks red.
“It’s not red，although you’re not crazy to think so. Visitors all call it red，”said Russell. “Back in the day，the US Navy，then part of the War Department，oversaw the waterways and wanted to paint this bridge black and yellow for high visibility，”said fellow painter Jarrod Bauer. “They ended up mixing paint to create the color International Orange，which is similar to the color of red lead，”he said.
Does the bridge get entirely painted every year?
No，and it doesn’t need to be. It’s true that the top coat has been fully repainted over time with new and environmentally-improved International Orange top coats.
Who performs bridge rescues?
McVeigh and his fellow ironworkers，the so—called“Cowboys of the Sky”，have that responsibility. McVeigh has lost count of how many troubled souls he’s been called to rescue over the past 17 years.
In September in 2018，the bridge started constructing a suicide(自杀)prevention system，also known as the safety net，to keep people from jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge. It’s expected to be completed in 2021.
1. What’s the true color of the Golden Gate Bridge?| A．Red. | B．Red lead. |
| C．Black and yellow. | D．International Orange. |
| A．McVeigh. | B．Jarrod Bauer. |
| C．Russell. | D．Paolo. |
| A．It is safer now because of the safety net. |
| B．It got its name because of its color. |
| C．It took much time and money to be built. |
| D．It needs to be repainted once a year. |
7 . When faced with the decision to get out of bed or have a few more minutes of sleep, which do you choose? Believe it or not, that decision could make a world of difference in the rest of your day.
About 85 percent of Americans use an alarm clock to wake up in the mornings, according to sleep researcher Till Roennenber. And while there are no official numbers on snoozing (打盹), a quick survey of social media makes it clear that hitting the snooze button is a popular pastime.
As to how the snooze button will affect your day, scientists have mixed opinions. Some scientists think people who hit the snooze button in the mornings are actually clever, creative and happy while some said that hitting the snooze button will ruin your life, or at the very least your day. "I feel that hitting the snooze button has got to be one of the worst things that ever happened to human sleep,” researcher Jonathan Horowitz said. "The chances of you ‘snoozing’ and actually experiencing a meaningful rest are close to zero.”
According to some sleep experts, when hitting the snooze button，you are in fact confusing your body and mind, and throwing yourself into a deep state of being sleepy. The body needs some time to wake up, so, when returning to what will be a light sleep for a brief period of time, you are putting your body back into a sleep mode before waking it again. At that point your body won’t know what it wants, resulting in a sort of half awaken state.
If you really want to take advantage of an alarm clock, the key is to form a healthy sleep cycle. Focus your efforts on getting enough sleep each night and waking up at the same time each day so that when your alarm goes off you feel rested.
1. What can we infer about hitting the snooze button from Paragraph 2?| A．People do it just for fun. | B．It is a common practice. |
| C．People take it seriously. | D．It is a bit childish. |
| A．It is meaningful in the long term. |
| B．It makes people become lazy. |
| C．It brings us a sense of satisfaction. |
| D．It affects our body and mind. |
| A．Forming a good sleep habit. | B．Trying to relax ourselves. |
| C．Making use of willpower. | D．Using an extra alarm. |
| A．Ways to keep refreshed in the morning. |
| B．The snooze button and people's character. |
| C．Should you rely on the snooze button? |
| D．How to avoid the light sleep mode? |
8 . Traveling with kids is 90 percent reminding yourself to live in the moment and 10 percent making up your mind to never again leave your house.
I have an uncanny ability to forget this as soon as we return home from a trip and I've finished washing piles of dirty clothes in our luggage and cleaning all the messy caused by the kids. Extremely tired and annoyed, I would actually begin to miss the place we just left!
Family travel is like childbirth, I suppose. Painful, loud, messy, sort of awful, actually, but also wonderful. And you remember only the wonderful—until you’re back on a plane and your kids are fighting over who gets the aisle seat. Then you remember the bad stuff.
Last weekend, my kids and I flew to Texas for a trip we would have nothing to complain(抱怨) about—big hotel, wonderful view.
And yet—we found things to complain about. The pool was bigger in that other hotel! Why do you get to shower first? They call this coffee?! Luckily, I’ve learned to put my metaphorical coat of armor (盔甲) on as soon as we land somewhere, and it forces complaints to bounce off me and land in a pile at my feet.
For three days, genuine fun was had and annoying complaints were heard and ignored. Until it was time to catch a plane and fly home.
Unfortunately, our flight was canceled. We spent hours finding a hotel room. We hit the hotel pool before bed and swam well into the night, my kids making up songs and laughing so hard at their silly lyrics (歌词) and their crazy good fortune to be swimming at 10: 30 on a school night.
And that was when it hit me that family travel is all those things I said before but it’s also a lot more. It’s taking your kids to parts of the world that will open their eyes and finding that actually, yours need opening too. It’s remembering that joy and memories are where you make them, not where you find them.
1. The underlined word “uncanny” in Paragraph 2 is closest in meaning to .| A．unknown. | B．uncertain. |
| C．unexpected. | D．unusual. |
| A．they both cause financial trouble and pain. |
| B．they are both hard as well as rewarding. |
| C．childhood memories come flooding back when they travel. |
| D．both of them need many preparations. |
| A．she tries to deal with the complaints more wisely and properly. |
| B．she turns those annoying complaints into a means to educate kids. |
| C．she has improved her language skills when handling the complaints. |
| D．she has succeeded in escaping kids’ fighting thanks to the armor. |
| A．family vacation benefits her kids as well as her. |
| B．joy and memories should be created rather than discovered. |
| C．the most unforgettable memory for her is about the complaints. |
| D．she has to spend some time on housework after the family vacation. |
9 . Hi, I’m Neil Harbisso. I come from a place where the sky is always grey, where flowers are always grey, and where television is still in black and white.
I actually come from a world where color doesn’t exist. I was born with achromatopsia. I was born completely color-blind. So I’ve never seen color, and don’t know what it looks like. But since the age of 21, I can hear color thanks to a magic electronic eye called “eyeborg”: a color sensor between my eyes connected to a chip(芯片) installed at the back of my head that transforms color frequencies into sound frequencies that I hear through my bone.
I’ve had the electronic eye permanently attached to my head and I’ve been listening to colors nonstop since 2004. So I find it completely normal now to hear colors all the time.
Since I started to hear color, my life has changed significantly. Art galleries have become concert halls. I can hear a Picasso. And supermarkets have become like night clubs. I love how they sound.
My sense of beauty has changed. Someone might look very beautiful but sound terrible, and someone might sound very harmonious but look awful. So I find it really exciting to create sound portraits(画像) of people. Instead of drawing the shape of someone’s face I write down the different notes I hear when I look at them, and then I send them an mp3 of their face. Each face sounds different. I can even give face concerts now, concerts where I play the audience’s faces. The good thing about doing this is that if the concert doesn’t sound good, it’s their fault.
I also found out that things I thought were colorless are not colorless at all. Cities are not grey. Lisbon is yellow turquoise(宝石绿); London is very golden red…and humans are not black and white. Human skins range from light shades of orange to very dark shades of orange. We are all orange.
If we extend our senses, we will consequently extend our knowledge.
1. We can infer from the article that people with achromatopsia ____________.| A．suffer from blindness |
| B．have a good sense of colors |
| C．are not able to see colors |
| D．like to go to concert halls and supermarkets |
| A．Art galleries have been changed into various sounds. |
| B．Works at the art galleries are created by great musicians. |
| C．Art galleries are filled with noisy people. |
| D．The author now likes art galleries as much as concert halls. |
| A．Neil developed a rare disease in his childhood. |
| B．The eyeborg produces sounds based on shades of colors. |
| C．Neil will use the eyeborg for the rest of his life. |
| D．In Neil’s mind, all people are orange. |
| A．Eyeborg – a real life saver. | B．I listen to color. |
| C．Sense the world. | D．Art galleries turned into concert halls. |
10 . London (CNN) There is no God -- that's the conclusion of the well-known physicist Stephen Hawking, whose final book is published on Tuesday. The book Brief Answers to the Big Questions, which was completed by his family after his death, presents answers to the questions that Hawking said he received most during his time on Earth.
Other bombshells(爆炸性事件)the British scientist left his readers with include the belief that alien life is out there, artificial intelligence could outsmart humans and time travel can't be impossible.
"There is no God. No one directs the universe," he writes in the book." For centuries, it was believed that disabled people like me were living under a curse by God," he adds. "I prefer to think that everything can be explained another way, by the laws of nature."
While Hawking spoke of his lack of belief in God during his life, several of his other answers are more surprising. "There are forms of intelligent life out there," he writes. "We need to be cautious about answering back until we have developed a bit further."
"Travel back in time can't be ruled out according to our present understanding," he says. He also predicts that "within the next hundred years we will be able to travel to anywhere in the Solar System."
In remarks prepared by Hawking and played at the launch of the book in London on Monday, the scientist also turned his attention to the world he was leaving behind. His greatest concern, his daughter said, "is how divided we've become," adding ,"He makes this comment about how we seem to have lost the ability to look outward, and we are increasingly looking inward to ourselves."
Hawking's final message to readers, though, is a hopeful one. Attempting to answer the question "How do we shape the future?", the scientist writes, "Remember to look up at the stars and not down at your feet."
1. Which question is NOT probably included in the book Brief Answers to the Big Questions,?| A．Is there alien life? | B．Does anyone direct the universe? |
| C．Is time travel possible? | D．Does the solar system exist? |
| A．show his confidence. | B．support his disbelief in God. |
| C．tell readers about his hardship. | D．complain of God |
| A．Artificial intelligence will outsmart humans. |
| B．Human beings are not united. |
| C．Technology will destroy the world. |
| D．Allen life will come to the earth some day. |
| A．Contact alien life. | B．Respect artificial intelligence. |
| C．Develop the earth. | D．Explore the universe. |
