1 . As a child, I had a library phobia. I associated going to the library with doing research for a school project or a book report. I defined reading as work, and books came from the library, so going to the library for fun was out of the range of my thinking. As hard as they tried, my parents could not get me interested in reading. They purchased a few of the Hardy Boys series.
The books collected dust. The closest I came to wanting to read was The Big Green Book by Robert Graves, with illustrations by Maurice Sendak, a gift from my aunt. Its lead character, a boy of about 8, my age, discovered a book of magic spells. I was fascinated spells were not in the book, but I drew an imaginary magic circle with a long stick in my bedroom, stood inside the circle, took three deep breaths and made up my own spell. I never became invisible, which was my goal. This was my favorite book. I read it again and again. Certainly no need to go to the library.
Eventually, I started reading novels in my 20s. To avoid going to the library, which was only seven blocks from my Brooklyn home, I joined various book clubs. I didn’t mind having to buy a book a month as long as I didn’t have to go to the library.
My library phobia was cured 23 years ago when my family moved to Long Island. The East Meadow Public Library, a two-block walk from our home, became a regular destination for me and my family. My children were introduced to books through the children’s section with free programs that even my wife and I enjoyed. My children made friends, and my wife and I made friends with the parents.
My library card is faded, the edges are ragged and I renew my membership time and time again. I have given up mail-order books, and when I go to a store that sells books, I snap pictures of the book jackets that enthral me and put the book on reserve at the library.
1. What can we learn about the book The Big Green Book?| A．It inspired the author with some ideas. | B．It appealed to the author’s parents. |
| C．It contained some magic spells. | D．It is a gift from the author’s uncle. |
| A．To go to book clubs. | B．To read novels. |
| C．To start a school. | D．To purchase books on his own. |
| A．He formed a new family. | B．He moved to a new place. |
| C．He wanted to meet targeted people. | D．He came to know more about his family. |
| A．Puzzle. | B．Frighten. | C．Attract. | D．Escape. |
2 . “Your homework is to collect sounds and take them down,” Mrs. Olson said before class was over. She handed out sheets of paper shaped like giant ears.
On his way home, Colin glared out the school-bus window. Not fair, he thought. How could he collect enough sounds on his family's farm? If only he lived in the town.
He got off the bus when it stopped at his mailbox. But he wasn't in the mood to wave as it drove away. “I'm home!”Colin called when he pushed open the gate. He threw his school bag down on a kitchen chair.
“How was school?”His mother asked, walking in with his baby brother on her shoulder.
“I've got homework,” Colin complained.
“Eat something before doing your chores.”His mother gave him the animal biscuits. Colin ate two tigers, three lions, and a seal, then drank some milk.
Astrid, Colin’s dog, woofed as Colin walked toward the barn(谷仓).Her young dogs were yipping. Colin placed dog food into their pan. In the chicken house, Colin hurried two hens from their nests. He put their warm eggs into his jacket. The black cow napped in the sun. Colin woke her when he poured corn into her pan.“Moo, thank you!”she seemed to say.
Colin put the eggs in the kitchen, then climbed to his tree house as usual. He could see Dad's beehives(蜂箱)by the field. Six hives usually meant plenty of humming noise. But today he couldn't hear it over the chattering sound of the sparrows. How could a person think?
“QUIET!”Colin shouted.
Suddenly, he sat up straight. Cows mooed and young dogs yipped. Chickens crackled in their yard. When Astrid began woofing below, Colin smiled broadly.“I hear you!” he called. He hurried down from the tree.
1. Why did Colin wish he lived in the town?| A．Because living on the farm was boring. |
| B．Because people were treated fairly there. |
| C．Because the town was near his school. |
| D．Because collecting sounds would be easier. |
| A．Doing his homework. | B．Helping with farm work. |
| C．Playing with animals. | D．Babysitting his brother. |
| A．4. | B．5. | C．6. | D．7. |
| A．woof | B．yip | C．nap | D．hum |
| A．Walk Astrid. | B．Gather honey. |
| C．Draw a giant ear. | D．Record the sounds. |
3 . Living on an island might sound wonderful. But what if you left for a trip and found you could never return? What if your home, and even the land it stood on, was gone forever? For people living in the Pacific Islands, this is really possible.
Why? Climate (气候) change. Climate change is causing the sea to rise. That's bad news for the Pacific Islands. Young people on the islands are even starting to wonder: Will they be the last generation (一代人)?
Not if the islanders have anything to do about it. These people are deeply connected to their homelands. The Pacific Islands are made up of 11 different countries: the Marshall Islands, Fiji, Samoa, and others. But now, those countries are working together. They're joining forces to fight climate change.
Why is climate change such a huge threat to this part of the world? Islands are low elevations (海拔). So they are among the first places influenced by rising sea levels. That's why countries of the Pacific Islands are working together to do their part.
But these are small countries. When it comes to climate change, can they make a big difference? They can, because most of the things that people on islands buy are brought by ships. This is very harmful to the environment. After all, ships put out almost 3 percent of the world's carbon emissions (碳排放). That makes climate change worse.
Pacific Islanders realize the problem. So, in 2019, six countries got together: Fuji, the Marshall islands, Samoa, Vanuatu, the Solomon Islands and Tuvalu. They came up with a plan. They agreed to cut carbon emissions from shipping by 40 percent by 2030. And by 2050, they expect zero-carbon shipping.
How will they pull this off? They plan to use some really cool carbon-free technologies. They'll make use of solar and wind energy.
Sea levels are rising, but hopes aren't sinking in the Pacific Islands.
1. What is the bad news for the Pacific Islands according to the passage?| A．Some Pacific Island countries have disappeared. |
| B．The sea level is going up because of climate change. |
| C．All the shipping to the Pacific Islands has been stopped. |
| D．The Pacific Islanders have nothing to do about the climate change. |
| A．risk | B．step | C．project | D．development |
| A．there will never be zero carbon emissions from shipping |
| B．solar and wind energy will make climate change worse |
| C．all the Pacific Islanders may leave their homelands by 2050 |
| D．some Pacific Island countries may have hopes to make a difference |
| A．why other countries are helping the Pacific Islanders fight climate change |
| B．how some countries are working hard to develop carbon-free technologies |
| C．how Pacific Island countries are working together to fight shipping pollution |
| D．why Pacific Island countries put out so much of the world's carbon emissions |
4 . Asking for help is a sign of strength rather than weakness. In American culture, the independent individual is seen as their ideal. As the University of Missouri at St. Louis states on its website under the heading Key American Values, “Americans have been trained since very early in their lives to consider themselves as separate individuals who are responsible for their own situations in life and their own destinies.” The value also makes them think they can do everything themselves, and makes them feel bad about asking for help when they need it.
And when it comes to work situations, when they think about asking for help there, sometimes they fear that a request for help would make them look inept. While this has always been true for men, many women in the workplace have felt the need to try twice as hard as their male colleagues and do twice as much to get just as far and to prove their worth. Sometimes when we think about asking for help, our inner voices tell us, “See, if you admit you can’t do this on your own, they’ll see you for the imposter （骗子）you really are.”
But the fact is, even though individualism is on the rise, we can’t do everything by ourselves and we shouldn’t try.
Apple founder Steve Jobs once told the Santa Clara Valley Historical Association about the power of asking for help, and how he “never found anybody who didn’t want to help me when I asked them for help”. He said, at the age of 12, he called Bill Hewlett, co-founder of Hewlett-Packard, on the phone after getting his number from the phone book and asking him for spare parts so he could build a frequency counter（计频器）And Hewlett agreed and offered young Jobs a summer job assembling frequency counters.
“If you’re afraid of failing, you won’t get very far,” Jobs said.
1. What is the first paragraph mainly about?| A．What key American values are. |
| B．Asking for help is a sign of strength. |
| C．Why Americans refuse to ask for help. |
| D．Americans are responsible for their life. |
| A．incompetent | B．depressed |
| C．impolite | D．sensitive |
| A．Americans suffer a lot from mutual distrust. |
| B．Americans think highly of individual values. |
| C．Americans should learn to build up confidence. |
| D．Americans see weakness as a sign of strength. |
| A．Learn to cooperate with others. | B．Be brave to try whatever you want. |
| C．Never ask for help. | D．Don’t hesitate to ask for help. |
5 . A new color changing ink could aid in health and environment monitoring for example. allowing clothing to switch colors when exposed to sweat or a woolen blanket to shift colors if a dangerous gas enters the room. The ink could be printed on anything from a T-shirt to a tent.
Wearable sensing devices like smart watches use electronics just to monitor heart rate, blood sugar. and more. Now researchers at Tufts University's Silklab say the new silk-based ink can respond to. and quantify the presence of chemicals on or around the body. “Silk has the ability to add necessary sensing and color changing chemical substances to the ink without losing their functions. " says Fiorenzo Omenetto. a biomedical engineer at Silklab.
The researchers improved on an earlier repetition that worked with inkjet printers, thickening the ink with a chemical to make it capable for screen printing. and then added various reactive substances. With the new ink, they can now easily print a large number of reactive elements onto large surfaces.
The team made the ink by breaking down raw silk fibers into proteins, which the researchers suspended in water. Next they mixed in various reactive molecules (分子) and analyzed how the resulting products changed hues when exposed to changes in their environment. When printed on fabric. pH indicators, for example. could convey information about skin health and a wearer s tiredness levels. The changes are visible to eyes. but the researchers also used a camera- imaging analysis to continuously monitor the color variations and create a database of values.
Omenetto says that the ink could be adapted to track environmental changes in a room, or to respond to bacteria and follow disease progression.
Mechanical engineer Tyler Ray of Hawaii University notes that most of today's wearable monitors are rigid, fairly large and heavy. "The new ink technology has the potential to transform consumer wearable monitors from entertainment devices into body worn, clinical grade physiological measurement tools providing useful information and making it easier for physicians to operate. " he says.
1. What can the new ink be used for?| A．Making pictures, | B．Printing documents. |
| C．Breaking down fibers and proteins. | D．Detecting health and environment changes. |
| A．The chemical substances in silk. |
| B．The practical functions of smart watches. |
| C．The role of silk in the new ink technology. |
| D．The influence of the new ink on the human body. |
| A．Levels. | B．Colors. | C．Wearers. | D．Analysis. |
| A．Practical. | B．Soft. | C．Large and heavy. | D．Small but inconvenient. |
6 . I am a person who has always loved reading. For me, it is easy to get lost in a book and return to the world a couple of hours later having been on an adventure. As a 6-year-old, I could be found reading Harry Potter, a difficult book for a 6-year-old but I enjoyed it all the same. Now, as a student, it is harder to find the time to read books for pleasure; however, I relish the summers where I have the time to read to satisfy myself. Growing up, it soon became clear that spelling for me was not difficult and I had a wide vocabulary. This is because I began reading from such a young age.
My advice for you as English learners would be to read the books that you have often read in your own language in English. Reading, stories especially, is a great way of improving your vocabulary and spelling without noticing as you are lost in the story. For me, I have read Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone in French and am currently reading Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets in Spanish. This is a really useful way of being able to read in another language because I know the story so well in English, it is easy to follow the story in the foreign language even if I do not understand every word.
This is another important point: it is not necessary to understand every word. If you understand the meaning of the sentence, each word is not necessarily important. Sometimes it is impossible to translate directly from one language to another. Quite often, if a word is used several times in a text, you can gain your own meaning from it and it makes much more sense than if you tried to translate it in the first place.
Give it a try. If you like reading you could be opening up a whole new world of literature.
1. What can we learn from the author’s reading experiences?| A．He often spent hours taking an adventure. |
| B．He didn’t like Harry Potter any more with aging. |
| C．He could spare enough time reading for fun as a student. |
| D．Reading helped him a lot since his early age. |
| A．Spend. | B．Lose. | C．Enjoy. | D．Hate. |
| A．Reading English stories you’re familiar with in your own language. |
| B．Reading Harry Potter in different languages. |
| C．Translating word by word. |
| D．Understanding the story in your own language. |
| A．Better Ways to Read stories. |
| B．The Benefits of Reading. |
| C．How to Improve Spelling and Vocabulary. |
| D．Is It Necessary to Know Each Word? |
7 . Israeli company Watergen has produced an appliance that can generate clean,drinkable water out of air. The device,called GENNY, is small enough to be used in a home or office but can generate up to 30 liters of water a day.
GENNY takes air in and passes through a filter(过滤器)to remove dust and dirt. The filter is powerful enough to work with high air pollution. The air is directed through GENius,a heating and cooling process which causes water in the air to condense(凝结).This water is then passed through several more filters and minerals are added to improve the flavor of the water. Finally, the water is stored in a tank where it is continually circulated to keep it fresh. Therefore,the water produced by GENNY is often of a higher quality than water running through filtration systems attached to the city's water lines.
The technology of GENius is much better than other technologies that generate water from air. It produces four to five times more water per kilowatt-hour.Watergen has other products that use this same technology on a larger scale, the largest of which can produce up to 5,000 liters of water per day.
As an added bonus,during the water generation process, GENNY can emit clean air which is healthier for people to breathe.
At the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, GENNY was named the Energy Efficient Product of the Year. The award series recognize the world's top high-tech home products.
Last year,Watergen's large-scale products were donated to authorities in Brazil,Vietnam and India. They also assisted rescue and recovery efforts during the 2018 California wildfires and provided clean,safe water for the residents of Texas and Florida in the aftermath of the devastation caused by hurricanes Harvey and Irma.
Watergen also seeks to help protect the environment by reducing waste generated by plastic water bottles. People are called upon to put the water from GEENY into reusable bottles so that plastic ones don't get used and thrown away.
1. What does GENNY accomplish by adding minerals to the water?| A．It keeps the water fresh. |
| B．It helps kill harmful bacteria. |
| C．It satisfies local water regulations. |
| D．It makes the water taste better. |
| A．Energy-efficient. | B．Cost-saving. | C．Time-saving. | D．Environment-friendly. |
| A．Cut down. | B．Blow away. | C．Give off. | D．Use up. |
| A．Consume plastic waste. |
| B．Respond to natural disasters. |
| C．Test water quality globally. |
| D．Relieve drought in some countries. |
8 . China will have the most 5G connections of any nation by 2025, according to a new study, while Europe will fall behind Korea, the United States and Japan in terms of 5G penetration(渗透)by that year.
5G is the fifth generation of network technology. It is expected to bring unbelievable speeds to Internet users, with some operations running 10 times faster than on 4G networks. 5G is also expected to unlock the potential in a lot of new services, including artificial intelligence, science of robots self-driving cars, and the Internet of things.
The GSMA said that China's three major mobile operators-China Unicorn, China Mobile, and China Telecom-are already moving ahead with 5G networks. While most nations will have 5G by updating existing foundations, the study noted that China plans to build part of its 5G networks.
One of the most distinguishing(显著的) factors between Chinese mobile operators and those in the rest of the world is the intention to erect the new and independent 5G networks. That is, China is determined to build a completely advanced 5G. The high cost underlines China's seriousness about paying whatever it takes.
Korea will lead the world in terms of 5G penetration in 2025, when 66 percent of the nation's total connections will be 5G, according to GSMA. This compares to 50 percent in the US, 49 percent in Japan, 36 percent in China, 30 percent in Europe, and a global average of 18 percent. Out of the five economies leading on 5G, Europe will have the lowest participation in 2025, as the area is moving more slowly in having its 5G networks.
1. What will 5G bring?| A．A completely new pattern for daily life. |
| B．Excellent networks and national safety. |
| C．Amazing speeds for public transportation. |
| D．Realizing the potential in many new services. |
| A．It will develop rapidly. | B．It may be lack of government support. |
| C．It will move forward slowly. | D．It may fall behind Europe. |
| A．bring up. | B．set up. | C．turn up. | D．pick up. |
| A．More than half Koreans use 5G in 2025. | B．Chinese cannot own 5G in 2025. |
| C．Only five countries will have 5G in 2025. | D．Europe will pay little attention to 5G in 2025. |
9 . A simple gesture can be formed into a child’s memory so quickly that it will cause the child to give a false answer to a question accompanied by that gesture. A new finding suggests that parents, social workers, psychologists and lawyers should be careful with their hands as well as their words.
While memories of both adults and children are easy to react to suggestion, those of children are known to be particularly influenced, said lead researcher Sara Broaders of Northwestern University. Kids are used to looking to adults to tell events for them and can be misled even if not intentionally.
Previous research, for example, has shown that detail-loaded questions often cause false answers; when asked, say “Did you drink juice at the picnic?” the child is likely to say “yes” even if no juice had been available. It is not that the child is consciously lying, but rather the detail is quickly formed into his or her memory.
To avoid this problem, social workers have long been advised to ask children only open- ended questions, such as “What did you have at the picnic?” But an open-ended question paired with a gesture, briefly meaning a juice box, is treated like a detailed question. That is，children become likely to answer falsely.
And it isn’t just a few kids: 77% of children gave at least one piece of false information when a detail was suggested by an ordinary gesture. Gestures may also become more popular when talking with non-fluent language users, such as little kids, Broaders said as hand movements can impart meaning of unfamiliar words and phrases. “It certainly seems reasonable that adults would gesture more with children. ’’
In general, Broaders advises parents and other adults to “try to be aware of your hands when questioning a child about an event. Otherwise, you might be getting answers that don’t reflect what actually happened. ’’
1. What can we know about gestures from the text?| A．They are rarely used by people. | B．They have certain effect on children. |
| C．They have not any function at all. | D．They are often used by social workers. |
| A．Children are easy to tell lies. | B．These gestures are very attractive. |
| C．Their memories are affected easily. | D．These gestures are used frequently. |
| A．Where are you going Lucy? |
| B．What will you have for lunch? |
| C．Did you see anything else last night? |
| D．Did you cheat in the last English examination? |
| A．Pass on. | B．Tell apart. |
| C．Confuse. | D．Separate. |
10 . If you have felt the skies above you seem increasingly empty of birds you are not alone. A 2018 study by Bird Life International showed that 40 percent of the world’s 11,000 bird species are in decline, and one in eight bird species is threatened with global extinction. Now, some scientists are using technology to save endangered kakapo. If successful, the technique used may help save other bird species as well.
The kakapo, a kind of parrot, is unlike any other member of its species. The bird lost its ability to fly and added on weight, giving it the double honor of being the world’s only flightless parrot and its heaviest one!
Once found in large numbers across New Zealand, the bird, which can weigh up to 5 kilograms, is now in danger of dying out. While cats are largely to blame, the kakapa’s unusual breeding habits don’t help either. For starters, the parrots, which can live up to 100 years, do not start breeding until the age of five. They also only mate (交配) when the rimu trees — their primary food source — bear large amounts of fruit, an event that happens every two to four years.
Given the impediments to increasing the population, it is not surprising that as of 2019, only 114 adult parrots remain.
To help them, the researchers tie an electronic tracker to each bird, which can pick up the information of the birds, such as where they are nesting and if they are sick. The trackers also allow researchers to control the parrots’ diet.
Once the birds lay eggs, the eggs are taken to a special room to hatch (孵化) and the newborns except one that is given to the mother kakapo will be fed by researchers until they can live by themselves.
1. What is mainly talked about in Paragraph 3?| A．The food of the kakapo. |
| B．The enemy of the kakapo. |
| C．The breeding habits of the kakapo. |
| D．The reasons for the kakapo dying out. |
| A．Importance. | B．Possibility. | C．Difficulty. | D．Experience. |
| A．All the young birds are raised by humans. |
| B．Each kakapo is moved to a special room. |
| C．The kakapo is closely observed when hatching. |
| D．Trackers are used to collect the kakapo’s information. |
