1 . I have well travelled in Spain and visited a good number of Spanish cities. However, no city will ever quite match Cadiz, where I spent six months studying as a student.
Before that, I knew very little about Cadiz but I decided to take a risk and explore it. Well, the risk certainly paid off.
Cadiz, Europe’s oldest city, hangs off Spain’s southern coast on a peninsula (半岛), surrounded almost entirely by water. As you leave the shady streets of the historical old city and explore more of it, you are met with vast areas of the blue Atlantic Ocean and white sandy beaches, which in my opinion are some of the best in Spain!
One of the great things about Cadiz is the wonderful, rich culture of food and drink. There are little tapas (小吃) bars lining every street and most will serve tapas for around 1.50~2 euros, meaning you can try a whole variety of Andalusian dishes.
Cadiz has also come to be known as “The Singing City”. It comes from the annual carnival (狂欢节), one of the biggest in Europe. A very large number of people go to Cadiz to see it. During those ten days, Cadiz’s narrow streets are filed with the sound of singing as musical groups fight for a place in the contest, which takes place on the last Saturday of carnival. The songs perfectly show the sense of humor of the Gaditanos, who, besides being so warm and welcoming, are said to have the best sense of humor in Spain!
That is my experience of Cadiz: a wonderful, typically Andalusian city which is often overlooked but well worth a visit. I can currently living in Huelva, just a short drive from Cadiz, so please pay attention to my next sharing!
1. What dose the word “that” underlined in paragraph 2 refer to?| A．Studying in Cadiz. | B．Competing in a match. |
| C．Teaching a student. | D．Becoming an explorer. |
| A．The unknown origin and long history of Cadiz. | B．The beautiful life of people living to Cadiz. |
| C．The geographic position and scenery of Cadiz. | D．The author’s complex attitude towards Cadiz. |
| A．A number of local people enjoy humorous songs. |
| B．Singing is everywhere during a big annual carnival. |
| C．Many grand carnivals attract well-known singers. |
| D．A lot of singing competitions take place each year. |
| A．A post on the Internet. | B．A geography textbook. |
| C．A travel brochure. | D．A biography. |
2 . Smoking is harmful. But as soon as you quit the habit, everything will be OK, right? Wrong.
New research has found that even if you give up smoking, the damage it has done to your genes will stay there for a much longer time. In the research, a team of US scientists studied the blood of 16,000 people. Among them, some were smokers, some used to smoke, and the rest were non-smokers. Scientists compared their genes and found that more than 7,000 genes of smokers had changed－a number that is one-third of known human genes.
According to NBC News, both heart disease and cancer are caused by genetic changes. Some people may have had the changes when they were born, but most people get them in their day-to-day lives while doing things like smoking.
When you stop smoking, a lot of these genes will return to normal within five years.
This means your body is trying to heal (治愈) itself of the harmful effects of smoking. But the changes in some of the genes stay for longer. They can stay for as long as 30 years, It’s almost like leaving a footprint on wet cement (水泥)－it will always be there, even when you’ve walked away and when the cement becomes dry.
Although the study results may make people unhappy, there is a bright side: the findings could help scientists invent medicine to treat genetic damage caused by smoking or find ways to tell which people have heart disease or cancer risks.
1. The purpose of Paragraph 1 is to______ .| A．raise a question | B．give an example |
| C．make an argument | D．show the main idea of the passage |
| A．people’s condition at birth | B．environmental pollution |
| C．heart disease and cancer | D．people’s bad living habit |
| A．the footprint | B．the cement |
| C．the harmful effect | D．the genetic change |
| A．The findings are the fruit of more than three years’ research. |
| B．The findings have prevented more people from starting smoking |
| C．The findings offer evidence that a damaged gene can heal itself. |
| D．The findings help to find cures for genetic damage caused by smoking. |
3 . Annette Larkins is an incredible woman who looks like a healthy 40-year-old, although she just turned 70. She follows a special raw diet and only drinks rainwater.
She looks so young that people mistake her to be the daughter, when she’s out with her husband of 54 years, but I suppose he isn’t complaining.
Mrs. Larkins says the secret to her beauty lies in her special diet, consisting of organic vegetables, fruits, seeds and nuts grown in her own garden; she calls it the “fountain of youth”. The woman doesn’t touch anything that has been cooked.
And another strange thing she does is to collect rainwater, to keep her garden blossoming, but also to drink. But the residents of Miami-Dade County, Florida, didn’t always have such a healthy lifestyle. In fact, she consumed meat regularly, as her husband used to own a meat factory way back in the 1960s. It was then that she decided to change her eating habits forever. And what a great decision that was. I mean, just look at her!
When she started off, Mrs. Larkins was just looking for a few health benefits and never anticipated that she would look like a 40-year-old at the age of 70. Over the 27 years that she has been eating raw, Mrs. Larkins has written two booklets railed Journey to Health and also produced a DVD containing all her healthy secrets.
Her husband, Mr. Larkins, wishes he had followed her example, because now he looks much, much older and also suffers from diabetes（糖尿病）and high blood pressure. He takes prescription medicine every day, but Annette doesn’t even take an aspirin.
1. What does the underlined word “it” in Paragraph 3 refer to?| A．The organic food. | B．Her beauty. |
| C．Specially cooked food. | D．Her raw diet. |
| A．Strong-willed. | B．Honest. |
| C．Modest. | D．Open-minded. |
| A．She sold them to the local people. |
| B．She abandoned them at the age of 70. |
| C．She publicized them in various ways. |
| D．She improved them with her husband’s help. |
| A．Disapproving | B．Supportive. |
| C．Sympathetic. | D．doubtful. |
4 . Artificial intelligence (AI) technology may soon be a useful tool for doctors. For example, it may help them better understand and treat diseases like breast cancer（乳腺癌）in ways that were not possible.
Rishi Rawat teaches AI at a University in Los Angeles. He is part of a team of scientists who are researching how AI and machine learning can more easily recognize cancerous growths in the breast. He says, "You put information about cancer cells（细胞）into a computer and it will learn the cancerous growth patterns（方式）. The pattern recognition is very important to making decisions."
At present, researchers have to take a thin piece of tissue（组织）, put it on a small piece of glass and add color to better see the cell-growth patterns. That process could take days or even longer. Scientists say artificial intelligence can do it better than just count cells. Through machine learning, it can quickly recognize patterns, or structures, and learn how the cells are organized.
The hope is that machines will soon be able to make a quick recognition of cancerous cell-growth patterns that is free of human mistakes. Rawat adds that the process could be done “for almost no cost for the patients”. But having a large amount of information about cells is important for a machine to effectively do its job.
Once the cancerous growth pattern is recognized, doctors still have to treat the patient. The form of treatment depends on the kind of cancer.
David Agus is another researcher of the team. He believes, “Computers will help doctors make better decisions and look for those patterns that the human brain can’t recognize by itself. But they will not treat patients.”
1. AI technology may ______.| A．treat breast cancer all by itself |
| B．provide free cancer treatment for the patients |
| C．recognize the cancerous I growth patterns faster |
| D．help doctors avoid making mistakes in cancer treatment |
| A．The process of treating cancers. |
| B．The process of adding color to cells. |
| C．The process of taking a piece of tissue. |
| D．The process of recognizing the cell-growth. |
| A．AI will develop fast in the future. |
| B．AI can be useless in treating cancers. |
| C．AI will not replace doctors. |
| D．AI can provide the doctors with treatments. |
| A．The Advantages of AI | B．AI Makes Better Doctors |
| C．Future Cancer Treatments | D．AI Helps Pattern Recognition |
5 . One of the greatest sources of unhappiness, in my experience, is the difficulty we have in accepting things as they are.
When we see something we don’t like, we wish it could be different. We cry out for something better. That may be human nature, or perhaps it’s something ingrained(根深蒂固的) in our culture. The root of the unhappiness isn’t necessarily that we want things to be different. However, it’s that we decided we didn’t like it in the first place. We’ve judged it as bad, rather than saying, “It’s not bad or good, and it just is it.”
In one of my books, I said “You should expect people to mess up and expect things to go differently than you planned”. Some readers said it’s too sorrowful to expect things to go wrong. However, it’s only negative if you see it as negative and judge it as bad. Instead, you could accept it as the way the world works and try to understand why that is.
This can be applied to whatever you do: how other people act at work, how politics works and how depressing the news media can be. Accept these things as they are, and try to understand why they’re that way. It will save you a lot of sadness, because you’ll no longer say, “Oh. I wish bad things didn’t happen!”
Does it mean you can never change things? Not at all. But change things not because you can’t accept things as they are, but because you enjoy the process of changing, learning and growing.
Can we make this world a better place? You can say that you’ll continue to try to do things to help others, to grow as a person, to make a difference in this world. That’s the correct path you choose to take, because you enjoy that path. Therefore, when you find yourself judging and wishing for difference, try a different approach: accept, and understand. It might lead to some interesting results.
1. The author believes that we feel unhappy maybe because ________.| A．it is our natural emotion in the life |
| B．culture asks us to be different from others |
| C．everyone has their own opinions on things |
| D．we dislike something in the beginning |
| A．Acting well at work and in politics. |
| B．Feeling depressed for the news media. |
| C．Accepting and understanding what has happened. |
| D．Saying something negative when bad things come. |
| A．Help others and make a difference. |
| B．Enjoy what you have to do in the work. |
| C．Judge yourself and make a wish for you. |
| D．Try a new way when making the world better. |
| A．Accepting can make our life happier and better. |
| B．Expecting things to be different gives us hope. |
| C．Traditional culture becomes root of unhappiness. |
| D．Judging good or bad is important for our world. |
6 . Too many people want others to be their friends, but they don’t give friendship back. That is why some friendships don’t last very long. To have a friend, you must learn to treat your friend the way you want your friend to treat you. Learning to be a good friend means learning three rules: be honest; be generous(宽宏大量的); be understanding.
Honesty is where a good friendship starts. Friends must be able to trust one another. If you do not tell the truth, people usually find out. If a friend finds out that you haven’t been honest, you may lose your friend’s trust. Good friends always rely on one another to speak and act honestly.
Generosity means sharing and sharing makes a friendship grow. You do not have to give your lunch money or your clothes. Naturally you will want to share your ideas and feelings. These can be very valuable to a friend. They tell your friend what is important to you. By sharing them, you help your friend know better.
Sooner or later everyone needs understanding and help with a problem. Something may go wrong at school. Talking about the problem can make it easier to solve. Turning to a friend can be a first step in solving the problem. So to be a friend you must listen and understand. You must try to put yourself in your friend’s place so that you can understand the problem better.
No two friendships are exactly alike(相同的)．But all true friendships have three things in common. If you plan to keep your friends, you must practice honesty, generosity and understanding.
1. Some friendships don’t last long because ________.| A．there are too many people who want to make friends. |
| B．those who give others friendship receive friendship from others. |
| C．some people receive friendship but don’t give friendship back. |
| D．they don’t know friendship is something serious. |
| A．something countable |
| B．the base of friendship |
| C．as important as money |
| D．more important than anything else |
| A．generosity and friendship |
| B．generosity and sharing |
| C．your ideas and feelings |
| D．your clothes |
| A．How to Be a Friend |
| B．Honesty Is the Best Policy |
| C．A Friend in Need Is a Friend Indeed |
| D．Three Important Points in Life |
