1 . No matter how long it took, or how much birthday money he would have to save, the 6-year-old South Carolina boy named Bell would spend his special day in "The Happiest Place On Earth."
And, as local TV station reports, he was pretty close to realizing that dream, planning for a visit to Disney's Animal Kingdom just in time for his seventh birthday this month.
Then he heard the story of the hurricane: how it transformed the Bahamas into the unhappiest place on Earth—and how it continues to churn up(搅动)the East Coast, leaving tears in its wake.
How could Bell dream of Disney World when so many others were living a nightmare?
So the boy gathered his savings—and went to the grocery store. Instead of a romp(嬉闹)in Disney's Animal Kingdom, Bell bought much-needed food and water for thousands of people forced to leave their homes in advance of the storm.
“The people that are traveling to go to places, I wanted them to have some food to eat, so they can enjoy the ride to the place that they're going to stay at,” Bell told a reporter. Indeed, Bell made it hard for anyone to miss his offer. He pulled a couple of homemade signs to Highway 125 in Allendale with the words "Free hot dogs and water" on them. And he stood at the side of that highway, calling out to motorists, many of them tired and traumatized after leaving their homes behind. In all, he served more than 100 evacuees(被撤离者).
"I am very proud," his grandmother Aretha Grant told CNN. "We knew Bell was very special, but we didn't know he was special in this way, to be such a giver like this."
Indeed, at his little stand in Allendale, Bell is giving people something much more precious than hot dogs. He's offering hope—and along the way, the little boy with the big heart is making his own magic kingdom.
1. What can we learn about Bell at the beginning of the story?| A．He quit his birthday plan. | B．He visited the Bahamas. |
| C．He played happily at Disneyland. | D．He experienced the hurricane. |
| A．By donating money. | B．By offering food. |
| C．By providing shelters. | D．By making campaigns. |
| A．In great relief. | B．In great sorrow. |
| C．With great appreciation. | D．With great caution. |
| A．Bell's act makes a big difference. |
| B．Hot dogs are more precious than hope. |
| C．People should have a lifelong ambition. |
| D．Children are full of imagination and creativity. |
2 . Walmart China has named Zhu Xiaojing Christina as president and CEO, effective May 8, its first female head in China. Current CEO Wern-Yuen Tan will leave the company after three years to return home to his family in Singapore. Zhu joins Walmart from Fonterra China, where she most recently served as president. The new appointment signals the US retailer's direction to be more digitalized and innovative in China's competitive retail（零售的）market.
"At a time of incredible disruption（扰乱）in retail landscape across China, it's vital to have a digital savvy, innovative leader to continue the remarkable work Yuen has done over the past few years heading up our business in China,” said Dirk Van den Berghe, Walmart's EVP, Global Sourcing and Regional CEO-Asia.
"Christina's impact on Fonterra's overall business —improving its brands and products as top sellers in many categories through digitization and constant innovation ——cannot be understated."
Before joining Fonterra in 2011, Zhu held various leadership roles in multinational companies such as Honeywell and McKinsey & Co.
Tan, who will leave the company on June 15, joined Walmart China in 2017. During his three years with Walmart China, Tan oversaw an expansion in formats and services across Walmart and Sam's Club China. Recently, Tan played a good role in Walmart China's response to the recent COVID-19 crisis.
Van den Berghe said： "From the moment we first learned of the novel coronavirus（冠状 病毒）threat, Yuen poured himself into the response effort, first ensuring the health and safety of our staff, then working with government officials to keep our retail units open so that customers could access essential goods and services. ” As our business in China found its way forward, Yuen went even further, compiling learning and best practices to share with the US business and across our international markets. The speed and effectiveness of Walmart's global response to the pandemic is a credit to Yuen's leadership.
Walmart said it was planning to open more than 500 new stores and depots （smaller warehouses） in China during the next five to seven years and improving 200 existing stores in three years.
1. What does the underlined word "savvy" mean in Para. 2?| A．Practical knowledge or understanding of sth. |
| B．A statement in which sb admits that sth is true. |
| C．The part of a person's character that consists of feelings |
| D．Something that you do or say to show a particular intention. |
| A．Sam's Clubs China. | B．Fonterra. |
| C．Honeywell. | D．McKinsey & Co. |
| A．Yuen s contribution to working to keep the retail units open. |
| B．Yuen s contribution to Walmart's global response to the pandemic. |
| C．Yuen s contribution to ensuring the health and safety of the staff. |
| D．Yuen s contribution to customers' accessing essential goods and services. |
| A．Walmart's direction to be more digitalized in China |
| B．Current CEO Wern-Yuen Tan will leave Walmart |
| C．Walmart expects to be more competitive in China's retail market |
| D．Walmart creates history by appointing female as China head |
3 . When we were very small, we realized that having friends was important. Some of us even had imaginary (想象中的)friends. The need for friends continued as we grew into our teens. Friends played a big part in forming our personalities (性格). As adults，it is still important for us to have friends.
True friends are people who like us though we made mistakes and who listen to us and tell us the truth. Friends support our decisions and tell us when we're foolish. They laugh with us and share our sadness. They are our partners and share interests with us. They stimulate us when we are feeling down. They are people we aren't afraid of telling our secret wishes to or what is really on our minds.
Friends are our supporters. When you can depend on friends, you feel safe and warm.
Friends offer acceptance and emotional (情感的) support. At times, they also help with our everyday lives, cooking a meal, doing chores, or giving us a lift when we need one. Friends also are there to offer advice, an ear to listen, or a shoulder to cry on.
Friends also help us reduce stress. Not only do they listen to us when we feel stressed, but they also discuss what is stressing us. Sharing interests and doing activities with friends help us forget about problems at work or at home. For a short time, we can lose ourselves in a pleasant activity and perhaps laugh and breathe more easily.
1. What is the best title for the passage?| A．How to Reduce Stress | B．How to Make New Friends |
| C．The Importance of Friends | D．The Qualities of Good Friends |
| A．educate | B．encourage |
| C．surprise | D．dislike |
| A．laugh at us when we're foolish |
| B．tell us other people's secrets |
| C．share our sadness and interests |
| D．support us when we need help |
a. Making more new friends
b. discussing stress with friends
c. ignoring our problems for a while
d. Sharing interests with friends
| A．a,b,c | B．b,c,d |
| C．a,b,d | D．a,c ,d |
4 . Grandma’s Marathon doesn’t have the nationwide recognition. In Minnesota, though, people who’ve never run more than a few steps are familiar with the race.
While Grandma’s Marathon has been on my mind for years, I always found myself committed to a different race. When my sister mentioned she was signing up for the race last fall, I followed suit. It felt so far away at first, especially during those early training runs in the dead of winter. That changed once spring began. Before I knew it, the marathon day had arrived.
I’m no stranger to this, but nothing prepared me for Grandma’s Marathon mentally. Race day would be cold and rainy one day, then hot and sunny the next. Part of this has to do with the fact that Grandma’s Marathon is in June, the middle of Minnesota’s severe weather season, which typically witnesses the most thunderstorms.
Things weren’t looking great the night before the race. There was potential for thunderstorms, meaning race cancellation, and the temperature seemed a little hot. Everything changed when we woke up.
I’m not sure if it was because of the fog present through most of the morning, but the race course was just beautiful. We passed through gently rolling hills in quiet, wooded areas for much of the beginning. And the first time I saw Lake Superior, it nearly took my breath away. Even the finishing area was picturesque. I really had a good race that day.
I come from a family full of runners and many of us compete in the same events. The sad reality is that it’s rare that more than one of us will have a good race during the same competition until Grandma’s Marathon 2018. Finishing in a time of 3:26:18, I ran the second fastest.
1. What does the author intend to tell in the first two paragraphs?| A．The training for Grandma’s Marathon is easy. |
| B．The author ran Grandma’s Marathon for the first time. |
| C．The place where Grandma’s Marathon take place is far away. |
| D．Grandma’s Marathon is popular among the people in America. |
| A．Beautiful. | B．Tough. |
| C．Relaxing. | D．Interesting. |
| A．The weather on the race day was severe. |
| B．The author made full preparation for the race. |
| C．Things were not going smoothly along the race course. |
| D．The author got a good result in the Grandma’s Marathon. |
| A．Objective. | B．Puzzled. |
| C．Proud. | D．Worried. |
5 . Contrary to popular belief, when a person makes a mistake while learning, it improves their memory for the right information, but only if the error is close to the correct answer, according to their recent findings made by Baycrest researchers.
To figure out the influence of making mistakes on learning, researchers carried out the study. They asked 32 young adults with no Spanish background to guess the English definitions of certain Spanish words. The Spanish words selected either resemble an English word with similar meaning or look like an English word, but mean something different. Participants were first shown a Spanish word and asked to guess its meaning. Then, they were briefly shown the correct translation before being shown another Spanish word. After repeating this process with 16
Spanish words, participants had a short break before their memory for the translations was tested.
Researchers found that people were better able to think of the correct translations of Spanish words that were similar to the English words. They had greater difficulty retrieving the meaning of words that look misleading.
“Our research found evidence that mistakes that are a ‘near miss’ can help a person learn the information better than if no errors are made at all,” says Dr. Nicole Anderson. “These types of errors can serve as stepping stones to remembering the right answer. But if the error made is a wild guess and out in left field, then a person doesn't learn the correct information easily.”
"Based on these findings, someone studying for an exam should only take practice quizzes after reviewing the materials,” says Dr. Anderson. “If a person takes a practice test and is unfamiliar with the content, they risk making guesses that are nowhere near the right answer. This could make it harder for them to learn the correct information later.”
“Even if a person makes a mistake while testing themselves, as long as their error is close to the right answer, they’re more likely to remember the right information,” adds Dr. Anderson.
1. What do we know about the subjects in the recent study?| A．They have a good memory for new words |
| B．They know nothing about any foreign language |
| C．They get answers by making wild guesses in the test |
| D．They need to translate Spanish words into English ones |
| A．Guessing. | B．Remembering. |
| C．Distinguishing. | D．Understanding. |
| A．Errors of certain kind are likely to help with learning |
| B．It is rewarding to make wild guesses during learning |
| C．Taking practice tests before exams is an unwise practice |
| D．It is hard to make “near miss” types of errors during learning |
| A．The art of making mistakes. |
| B．The way of improving memory. |
| C．Good guesses while learning matter a lot. |
| D．Making mistakes may bring unexpected benefits. |
6 . Over the past decade, drug-resistant diseases have appeared as a major health threat. But where do they develop the drug resistance? One surprising theory: they may have developed the resistance on farms, and not in hospitals.
The crop protection products farmers use to control many plant diseases are almost the same as the drugs doctors use to treat infections, including fungi (真菌). Fungi are continually mutating (变异), and with a life cycle measured in days or weeks, they mutate quickly. When a mutation produces resistance to a chemical-killing fungi, fungi will jump to any host that provides a welcoming environment, such as a human body. And if the treatment for the fungal infection involves a drug similar to the fungicide encountered on the farm, Fungi may develop quickly in the human body-just as they did in the field.
An obvious solution is to use less fungicide in the field. Reducing fungicide use would not only slow the development of the drug resistance, it would help restore diversity to the fungal world. Fungicides are a must in the farming community. Plant diseases pose a major problem for farmers globally-in some crops, disease can reduce harvests by more than 70 percent-and failure to deal with the problem can mean financial ruin.
Just like Fungi-or, indeed, any living thing-plants continually evolve. This is how natural gene editing (基因编辑) works, and without it, we'd all still be single cells in a salty soup. Through natural selection, almost any plant will eventually produce resistance to Fungi. But this can take centuries, so we don't have the time to wait.
On the other hand, advances in genetics have given us an understanding of nature's gene editing process in plants, helping us develop resistance to a disease. Gene editing techniques can then enable us to produce disease resistance-just as nature would do, if given enough time.
1. What can we infer about Fungi from Paragraph 2?| A．They can treat infection sometimes. |
| B．They don't stop developing new forms. |
| C．A human body is their favorite place. |
| D．There are no Fungi in the fields now. |
| A．Solve. | B．Face. |
| C．Cause. | D．Overcome. |
| A．The survival of the fittest. |
| B．Advances in technology. |
| C．The use of farm chemicals. |
| D．A welcoming environment. |
| A．Ways to Prevent Drug-resistant Diseases |
| B．The Source of the Drug Resistance |
| C．The Popularity of Gene Editing Techniques |
| D．The New Theory of Natural Selection |
7 . Young children often “read” picture books. They’re attracted by the colorful scenery and the realistic characters that contribute to fascinating plots.
Unfortunately, some children can’t use these resources, even if they do know how to read. Take three-year old Elodie Bateson, for example. Elodie was born with under-developed eyes and has retinal detachments（视网膜脱落），making her visually impaired.
It is because of people like Elodie that Tom Yeh, head of the Tactile Picture Books Project, has started printing 3D books, so they can feel the illustrations in picture books.
The first book Tom Yeh printed was Goodnight Moon, a popular children’s book about a rabbit going to sleep and wishing good night to his surroundings. In the 3D version of this book， children can feel each thing that the rabbit says good night to, whether it is a cow jumping over the moon, a balloon, or a dollhouse.
Generally, when children grow older, they read by using Braille, a language that was invented by Louis Braille in 1824. It uses different patterns of raised dots representing different letters. Readers can then feel the dots and mentally translate the patterns they feel into words. The only problem is that many blind children do not start learning Braille until they are about six years old.
Another reason why 3D printed books are such a valuable resource is that children don’t have to know how to read to understand them. However, without these, visually impaired kids are losing six developmental years vital to their growth since they can ’t take advantage of picture books.
When 3D picture books are printed, plastic is layered（分层放置）repeatedly over a single shape: the shape of the illustration. These raised pictures created through layered plastic serve as substitutes for the Braille letters that little children have no knowledge of.
1. What does the underlined word “impaired” in paragraph 2 mean？| A．Unmatched. | B．Disappeared. |
| C．Defeated. | D．Damaged. |
| A．The blind at any age can read by using Braille. |
| B．Most people can translate Braille into words. |
| C．Blind kids begin learning Braille at about six years old. |
| D．Braille uses similar patterns of raised dots to stand for different letters. |
| A．dots | B．pictures |
| C．letters | D．plastic |
| A．To teach the blind children Braille. |
| B．To encourage kids to read books. |
| C．To cure visually impaired children. |
| D．To help the blind children read picture books. |
8 . People who have got rhythm might have an advantage when it comes to language and reading skills. A new study shows the brains of people who can move to a musical beat react to speech on a more consistent basis than those who can't. Researchers also find that musical training can sharpen the brain's response to language.
The researchers say their discovery provides the first biological link between the ability to keep a beat and how the brain responds to speech, something that can have important value for reading skills. To gather materials for their research, the team got more than 100 teenagers who lived in Chicago, Illinois. The teens were given two tests. First, they were instructed to listen to and tap their fingers along to the beat. The researchers calculated how accurately their young volunteers were able to tap along to the musical timekeeper. Second, the teen subjects were linked to an EEG device, which measures electrical activity in the brain. The EEG device was focused on an area of the brain that not only processes sound, but is also connected to parts of the brain responsible for motor-movement. The researchers recorded the brainwaves as their teen subjects listened to the synthesized speech sound, which was repeated irregularly for half an hour. The researchers were able to find out how the nerve cells in that particular region of the brain responded every time the synthesized sound was played. a Across this population of adolescents, the more accurate they were at tapping along to the beat, the more consistent their brains' response to the letter unit was," said Nina Kraus.
While past studies have showed the links between reading skills and a person's ability to keep a beat, the researchers said their new findings show the hearing system is what provides a common basis for those links. “Rhythm is naturally a part of music and language." Nina said.
1. According to the first paragraph, what can get the brain's reaction to language more effectively?| A．Rhythm. | B．Musical training. |
| C．Language. | D．Reading skills. |
| A．areas of knowledge studied in a school, college, and so on |
| B．things that are being discussed in a conversation or a book |
| C．persons or things that are the main features of works of art |
| D．persons or animals that are studied in an experiment or a research |
| A．reading skills may make language learners keep a beat |
| B．the hearing system may be useless while a person is learning to read |
| C．the hearing system may separate sound from meaning while a person is reading |
| D．the hearing system may be used while a person is reading or taking musical training |
| A．Experts are expanding their studies on rhythm. |
| B．Rhythm might help us improve our reading skills. |
| C．Moving to a musical beat is more popular nowadays. |
| D．Experts find the links between the hearing system and reading. |
9 . Art and culture is lived and breathed in every corner of Canada. Due to a racial and immigrant(移民的) population, the variety and richness of art and sports is very evident.
Since World War Ⅱ, Canada has produced an impressive amount of writing. From novels to poetry, the selection is wide. Native writers are also becoming better known across Canada in recent years.
Musicians are reaching a higher level of recognition in the world music scene. Everything from country to pop, classical to heavy rock can be found across Canada and across the globe performed by Canadian artists.
The National Film Board, a film crew in Canada, is the most famous producer of movies in Canada. However, many Hollywood studios are turning to Canada as an alternative(供替代的选择) to the more expensive US. Many well-known actors, directors, screen writers and movies come from Canada and often scoop awards for their work.
French art was the first to appear in Canada along the St Lawrence in and around Quebec. Since then the volume of art and artists has increased. Canadian photography as well as painting by Canadians is not well-known outside of Canada but recognition is increasing.
Sport is a major part of today’s society in Canada. Hockey is the most popular sport with more participants taking part in curling(冰壶). American-style football and baseball are also very popular and all of these sports are played across Canada.
1. Canada has many forms of art and culture because it has ___________.| A．a long history | B．a large area |
| C．a large population | D．a variety of immigrants |
| A．Expect. | B．Set up. |
| C．Harvest. | D．Ignore. |
| A．Native writers and screen writers. | B．Photographers and actors. |
| C．Painters and writers. | D．Musicians, actors and directors. |
| A．Brief Introduction to Canada |
| B．Canadian Arts, Culture and Sports |
| C．Canadian Artists |
| D．Canadian Arts and Culture Are World Famous |
10 . This is the colourful waste created by a Swedish city with a unique recycling system. Like many cities in Sweden，Eskilstuna has an impressive recycling record. It met the EU 2020 target of recycling 50%of waste many years ago. But almost everyone who lives here follows a strict recycling policy at home. People are expected to sort their household waste into seven separate categories，including food，textiles, cartons（纸板箱）and metal. But what really makes the system stand out is the bright colour code.
The reason for this becomes clear at the city’s recycling plant. The bags arrive all jumbled up because they’re collected altogether in a rush, once a fortnight from outside people’s houses. But thanks to those bright colors, scanners can select the bags and separate them efficiently. The food waste in green bags is processed on site into a certain thick liquid to make burnable gas, which powers the city’s buses. One of the benefits of this method of recycling is that there is less cross-pollution, so more of the recycled waste can actually be used to make new things. Like the rest of Sweden，Eskilstuna is committed to sending zero waste from its citizens to landfill. Waste that cannot be recycled is burnt at a local plant to generate electricity. This reduces reliance on fossil fuels, but does create greenhouse gases.
As countries around the world try to improve their recycling rates, some may look to Eskilstuna as an example to follow as long as they think they can persuade their citizens to get busy sorting at home.
1. What can we learn about Eskilstuna?| A．It is flooded with colorful waste. |
| B．It is best-known for waste-recycling. |
| C．Waste there is painted into seven colors. |
| D．Rubbish recycling is handled seriously there. |
| A．Mixed together. | B．Collected orderly. |
| C．Sealed cautiously. | D．Piled purposefully. |
| A．The increase in the efficiency of waste recycling. |
| B．The convenience to the citizens in waste dropping. |
| C．The avoidance of rubbish related environmental problems. |
| D．The decrease of profit for waste plants. |
| A．Parents. | B．In style. |
| C．Fortune. | D．The New York Times. |
