1 . On a recent afternoon, some 60 years after they graduated from grammar school, Kathleen Rys, 72, and her sister Lorraine O’Kelly, 70, sat down and had a meal with a classmate, Bruce Smit, 71 for the first time.
In the 1950s, Lorraine and Kathleen Rys’ family moved from Chicago to Monee. As new kids at Monee Elementary School, they soon found themselves on the outs with other students.
“I would be with the other guys and see Kathleen walking down the hallway, her head down, holding her books, walking slowly. And all of us guys would be flat against the wall until she passed. Then we’d burst into laughter. How rude is that? It’s just crazy.” said Smit, a doctor whose wife, Tammy, organized the meeting.
The women said none of the teachers cared about it. “We just kept it to ourselves.” Lorraine said.
Over the years, Tammy Smit said, “Bruce would just start to cry at times. He’d wonder what happened to the sisters, if they landed OK.” One day a few weeks ago, Tammy took to the internet and found Mary O’Kelly, Lorraine’s daughter, and offered to set up a meeting. The idea of revisiting the pain was not well- received by Kathleen, who had never married, let alone gone on a date. It took some convincing, but Lorraine finally got Kathleen to agree to meet with Bruce.
Bruce broke into tears. “I’m so ashamed, so embarrassed,” he said. “But I’m so happy you’re still here and that I can finally apologize.” He said he hopes his apology will encourage others to seek forgiveness for the pain they make on others. Lorraine said, “This is a beautiful thing. It’s just wonderful that a person from 60 years ago can ask for forgiveness. It’s like a miracle to us. It’s a healing to us.”
1. What can we learn from the first three paragraphs?| A．Kathleen made her classmates afraid of her at school. |
| B．Kathleen was once hurt by her classmates at school. |
| C．Bruce Smit asked his wife to organize the meeting. |
| D．Bruce Smit spoke ill of Kathleen. |
| A．The guys’ meeting. | B．Kathleen’s slow pace. |
| C．The guys’ apology. | D．Kathleen’s suffering. |
| A．Angry. | B．Excited. | C．Anxious. | D．Unwilling. |
| A．Bruce was embarrassed for his apology. | B．The other guys apologized to the two sisters. |
| C．Bruce and the two sisters felt a sense of relief. | D．Lorraine thought the apology came a little late. |
2 . Pop singers, actors and sports stars are not the only ones today’s teenagers seek to imitate. It turns out that the legendary American poet Emily Dickinson (1830—1886) has a sincere following among many young people.
She may seem a curious choice for teenage devotion. Many might think of Emily Dickinson as someone locked away from the world, a spinster (未婚女性) living and writing in her bedroom as if she were in a self-made prison. In a way, though, many teens are just like this. Uncertain and a little afraid of the approaching world of adulthood, it seems safer to many to keep to oneself.
It turns out that Emily Dickinson wasn’t quite like this. A new exhibition at the Morgan Library in New York is encouraging a different perspective on the poet. The designer of the show, Carolyn Vega, told the BBC that while it is true that Dickinson liked to keep herself to herself, she also took a great interest in life beyond the front door of her father’s house in Amherst, Massachusetts.
According to Vega, Dickinson was deeply connected to her world through family, friendships, and literary mentors and editors. She also read many books and was aware of the political realities that were going on around her, including the American Civil War.
The title of the New York exhibition, “I’m nobody! Who are you?”，from one of her poems, tells us a little about Dickinson’s approach to life and writing. She seemed to have thought, “The less I am to myself, the more interesting the world will become.” And when reading a large number of the 1,800 poems she wrote, the world seems just like that a place we thought we knew, but which Dickinson represents to us in a brand new way.
1. What does the underlined word “this” in Paragraph 3 refer to?| A．Dickinson’s isolated life. |
| B．Dickinson’s high self-esteem. |
| C．Dickinson’s positive attitude. |
| D．Dickinson’s wide interest. |
| A．To present a fresh view about Dickinson. |
| B．To sell poems written by Dickinson. |
| C．To encourage more people to read classic poems. |
| D．To attract more young people to read poems. |
| A．Dickinson didn’t want to be famous. |
| B．Dickinson is not a productive poet. |
| C．Dickinson’s world is more colorful than we thought. |
| D．We know nothing about the world. |
3 . Binge-watching (追剧) your favorite TV series is bad for your brain. Dr. Randall Wright, based in Texas, said the need to watch episode (集) after episode has a similar influence on the brain to gambling (赌博). What’s more, it often leads to social loneliness, snacking on junk food and a shortage of exercise and sleep, which, over time, is bad for the brain.
When you let auto play start the next episode, you can find out what happens next and your brain receives good feedback, Dr. Wright wrote in an article. This right-away satisfaction is similar to gambling where even after a win, you are not satisfied and want to continue playing. With binge-watching, you are not satisfied with stopping after episode five and want to continue watching. This cycle coupled with the snacking and the long time sitting can lead to unhealthy changes in your brain and body over time.
Dr. Wright said, “Binge-watching itself is not bad. It becomes problematic when you are watching a third, fourth or fifth episode instead of doing healthy activities.” But he said it is possible to avoid the bad influence of binge-watching with four tips, including staying away from salty, fatty, calorific foods, exercising before a binge-watching, setting an alarm for sleep and balancing TV viewing with socializing.
If you add these tips to your binge-watching practice, you can create lasting healthy habits and still enjoy the now-and-then binge-watching time without hurting your brain.
1. What might “it” in paragraph 1 refer to?| A．Gambling. | B．Binge-watching. |
| C．TV series. | D．Brain. |
| A．The long time sitting. | B．The changes of feeling. |
| C．The snacking on junk food. | D．The immediate satisfaction. |
| A．The tips on how to develop a healthy lifestyle. |
| B．The reasons why binge-watching is problematic. |
| C．The ways to keep away from binge-watching. |
| D．Do’s and don’ts of binge-watching. |
| A．Ill Health: The Result of Addiction |
| B．Healthy Habits: A Must of A Better Life |
| C．Binge-watching: A Killer of Your Brain |
| D．TV-Viewing: Gradual Harm on Your Health |
4 . Anyone who commutes(通勤)by car knows that traffic jams are an unavoidable part of life. But humans are not alone in facing potential backups.
Ants also commute—between their nest and sources of food. The survival of their habitats depends on doing this efficiently.
When humans commute, there’s a point at which cars become dense(稠密) enough to slow down the flow of traffic, causing jam. Researchers wanted to know if ants on the move could also get stuck. So they regulated traffic density by constructing bridges of various widths between a colony of Argentine ants and a source of food. Then they waited and watched, trying to find out at what point they are going to have a traffic jam.
But it appears that that never happened. They always managed to avoid traffic jam. The flow of ants did increase at the beginning as ants started to fill the bridge and then levelled off at high densities. But it never slowed down or stopped, even when the bridge was nearly filled with ants.
The researchers then took a closer look at how the behaviour of individual ants impacted traffic as a whole. And they found that when ants sense overcrowding, they adjust their speeds and avoid entering high-density areas, which prevents jams. These behaviors may be promoted by pheromones, chemicals that tell other ants where a trail is. The ants also manage to avoid colliding(碰撞) with each other at high densities, which could really slow them down.
Can ants help us solve our own traffic problems? Not likely. That’s because when it comes to getting from point A to point B as fast as possible, human drivers put their own goals first. Individual ants have to be more cooperative in order to feed the colony. But the research could be useful in improving traffic flow for self-driving cars, which can be designed to be less like selfish humans—and more like ants.
1. What does the underlined word “this” in paragraph 2 refer to?| A．Surviving. | B．Commuting. | C．Finding food. | D．Avoiding jams. |
| A．Through closer observation. | B．By regulating their numbers. |
| C．By finding out the dense points. | D．By controlling the widths of their path. |
| A．They follow a special route. |
| B．They level off at high densities. |
| C．They never stop or slow down on the way. |
| D．They depend on their natural chemicals to adjust their speeds. |
| A．Traffic jams | B．Survival of an ant colony |
| C．Unavoidable? Not for ants! | D．Differences between human and ants |
5 . It is often said that Western Europeans speak English. From traveling all through Europe, I know that this is not entirely true. Some regions of Europe have a 90% of English speaking rate, while in other parts, English is generally a tongue which is impossible to understand. The divide, it seems, lies with the Romance languages.
In Scandinavia, Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, and the rest of the Western European nonRomance language speaking regions, English seems to be understood and spoken just like the people's first tongue. In Iceland, I have never experienced English was spoken so well and so widely by a nonnative speaking country. And I have almost never met a Dutch person who did not speak English almost as well as my countrymen.
But when you move to the south of Western Europe a little, something happens. English becomes a less useful language for traveling. You just cross over the Romance language barrier (障碍) and into Spain, Portugal, France, and Italy, where English is spoken at a rate that does not seem to be much higher than in China, Latin America, or Southeast Asia.
Traveling through Europe and working in hotels around the world that are popular with Europeans have given me a deeper view of their usage of foreign languages. The northern Europeans can often speak five or six languages, while the Romance speakers hardly know more than their birth tongue. And if you think that Spanish and Italian are so similar that their speakers can understand each other, I tell you that this is completely wrong. Spaniards and Italians don't even understand each other. It is also not a fact that people from both of these countries can communicate in French; only those who put a large amount of effort into learning English or have lived abroad for years can speak English well.
People often say that French people really understand English but refuse to speak it, but from watching hundreds of French travelers over the years struggle with English abroad as well as friends in France trying in vain to communicate with me, I know that this is not true. English is simply not widely spoken there outside the large cities.
1. What can we learn from the passage?| A．In Iceland, English is not spoken very well. |
| B．A Dutch person can almost speak English as well as the author himself. |
| C．Spanish and Italian are so similar that their speakers can understand each other easily. |
| D．English is as widely spoken as French in France. |
| A．American | B．Dutchman | C．Frenchman | D．Chinese |
| A．Western Europeans speak English. |
| B．French people really understand English but refuse to speak it. |
| C．Hundreds of French travelers struggle with English abroad. |
| D．Friends in France try in vain to communicate with me in English. |
| A．A geography textbook. | B．A fashion magazine. |
| C．A travel journal. | D．A news report. |
6 . In the first days after a team of 25 delivery robots landed on George Mason University's campus in January,they appeared to cause curious glances and many photos but not much else.
It was clear,officials said,that more time and more data would be necessary to understand whether the robots would change the campus culture or become forgettable.Two months later,an extra 1,500 breakfast orders have been delivered autonomously,according to the technologists of Sodexo,a company that manages food service for GMU and works closely with the robots.
Research has shown that up to 88 percent of college students skip breakfast,primarily because of lack of time,but that number is starting to turn around when delivery robots arrive on campus.They're constantly seen making the 15 minute trip from campus restaurant to a handful of nearby dorms,as well as to other buildings across campus,where students meet them.Two months later,breakfast has replaced dinner as the go-to meal for robot delivery.
Sodexo officials have noted that college students are main users of food delivery apps and place a high value on convenience and multiple options when they dine.During the morning hours,restaurant experts say,there is generally more emphasis（强调）on speed than any other part of the day.Combine college students'love of food delivery with messy morning routines,and perhaps they have a perfect recipe for robots to deliver in the campus.
The robots also provide campus officials with valuable data showing how meal plans are being used,which could lead to changes in how the university serves students over time.Sodexo technologists also announced Monday that a new team of more than 30 robots is launching at Northern Arizona University
.
| A．They are on diets. |
| B．They have a tight schedule. |
| C．The food doesn't agree with them. |
| D．GMU doesn't offer delivery services. |
| A．College students. | B．Campus officials. |
| C．College professors. | D．Restaurant managers. |
| A．They make timely deliveries. |
| B．They were ignored at first. |
| C．They mainly carry dinner at present. |
| D．They have changed the whole campus culture. |
| A．Delivery services grow fast in college. |
| B．Breakfast in necessary for college students. |
| C．Robots help with GMU's campus management. |
| D．Delivery robots are changing students'eating habits. |
7 . The different parts of a health care system have different focuses. A hospital's stroke （中风） unit monitors blood flow in the brain. The cardiac unit is interested in that same flow, but through and from the heart. Each collection of equipment and data is effective in its own field. Thus, like the story of blind men feeling an elephant, modern health care offers many separate pictures of a patient, but rarely a useful united one.
On top of all this, the instruments that doctors use to monitor health are often expensive, as is the training required to use them. That combined cost is too high for the medical system to scan regularly, for early signs of illness, so patients are at risk of heart disease or a stroke.
An unusual research project called AlzEye, run by Moorfields Eye Hospital in London, in cooperation with University College, London (UCL) , may change this. It is attempting to use the eye as a window through which signals about the health of other organs could be discovered. The doctors in charge of it, Siegfried Wagner and Pearse Keane, are studying Moorfields' database of eye scans, which offers a detailed picture of the health of the retina (视网膜).
The project will go a step further：With the information about other aspects of patients' health collected from other hospitals around England, doctors will be able to look for more accurate signs of disease through eye scans.
The Moorfields data set has lots of linked cases to work with--far more than any similar project. For instance, the UK Biobank, one of the world's leading collections of medical data about individual people, contains 631 cases of a "major cardiac adverse event". The Moorfields data contain about 12, 000 such. The Biobank has data on about 1, 500 stroke patients. Moorfields has 11, 900. For the disease on which the Moorfields project will focus to start with dementia, the data set holds 15, 100 cases. The only comparable study has 86.
Wagner and Keane are searching for patterns in the eye that show the emergence of disease elsewhere in the body. If such patterns could be recognized reliably, the potential impact would be huge.
1. Why does the author mention “the story of blind men feeling an elephant” in Paragraph 1?| A．To claim the ineffectiveness of our health care system. |
| B．To tell the similarity in various health care units. |
| C．To explain the limitation of modern health care. |
| D．To show the complexity of patients' pictures. |
| A．The challenge of making advanced medical instruments. |
| B．The high risk of getting a heart disease or a stroke |
| C．The inconvenience of modern health care service. |
| D．The incomplete and expensive health monitoring. |
| A．By thoroughly examining one's body organs. |
| B．By identifying one's state of health through eye scans |
| C．By helping doctors discover one's diseases of the eye |
| D．By comparing the eye-scan data from different hospitals. |
| A．It takes advantage of abundantly available medical data. |
| B．It makes the collection of medical data more convenient. |
| C．It improves the Moorfields' competitiveness in the medical field. |
| D．It strengthens data sharing between the Moorfields and the Biobank. |
8 . The decision on Tuesday by Japan and the International Olympic Committee (IOC) to postpone the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games until next summer because of the novel coronavirus pandemic must have been a hard one to make.
Although the Games have been canceled—three times in all, in 1916, 1940 and 1944—due to the two world wars in the modern Olympics’ history of more than 120 years, never before have any Games been postponed to a different year.
Nonetheless, the decision is the right one. If it is not brought under control, the harm done to human society by the pandemic could be more serious and far-reaching than even the two world wars. Given the number of countries affected and social and economic shock waves that have been caused by the rapid spread of the virus, postponing the Games is the only right and sensible choice to make.
After all, nothing is more important than people’s lives. Postponing the Games not only safeguards the health of athletes, audiences and everyone involved in the Games, but also reduces potential transmission of the virus from one place to another. Even looking at it from only a sporting level, the pandemic has already caused huge disruptions to athletes’ training and the qualification process.
It is undoubtedly a big blow for Japan, which has prepared meticulously for the largest sports event in the world, including renovating and upgrading its infrastructure and sports venues, such as rebuilding Tokyo’s Olympic Stadium at cost of $1.45 billion. Japan will suffer huge loss at least in the short term.
The international community owes a big “thank you” to Japan for all it has done for the Games despite the postponement. That’s why the Games will still be called the Olympic and Paralympic Games Tokyo 2020 despite taking place in 2021. The Olympic flame will also remain stored and displayed in Japan.
More importantly, all members in the Olympic family, guided by the Olympic spirit of respect and understanding are morally bound to stand behind Japan to go through this most difficult moment in the Games’ history.
1. What does the word “it” in Paragraph 3 refer to?| A．The decision. | B．The Games. | C．The pandemic. | D．The war. |
| A．Wisely. | B．Recently. | C．Easily. | D．Precisely. |
| A．the Games should be put off in times of war and disaster |
| B．the Games will still be called Tokyo 2020 Games for its sacrifice |
| C．postponing the Games will have a bad influence on the athletes |
| D．the Olympic family will have to make up for the loss of Japan |
| A．The whole world will support Japan. | B．Japan will keep the Olympic flame burning. |
| C．Postponing the Games will bring the world hope. | D．Tokyo will become the symbol of the Games. |
9 . If you’re planning on travelling, there are a few simple rules about how to make life easier both before and after your journey.
First of all, always check and doublecheck departure(出发) time. It is amazing how few people really do this carefully. Once I arrived at the airport a few minutes after ten. My secretary had got the ticket for me and I thought she had said that the plane left at 10:50. When I arrived at the airport, the clerk at the departure desk told me that my flight was closed. Therefore, I had to wait three hours for the next one and missed an important meeting.
The second rule is to remember that even in this age of credit cards, it is still important to have at least a little of the local currency with you when you arrive in a country. This can be necessary if you are flying to a place few tourists normally visit. A few years ago I was sent to Tulsa, Oklahoma. I flew there from London via Dallas, with very little time to change planes in between. I arrived there at midnight and the bank at the airport was closed. The only way to get to my hotel was by taxi and because I had no dollars, I offered to pay in pounds instead.
“Listen! I only take real money!” the driver said angrily. Luckily I was able to borrow a few dollars from a clerk at the hotel, but it was very embarrassing.
The third and last rule is to find out as much as you can about the weather at your destination before you leave. I feel sorry for some of my workmates who travel in heavy suits and raincoats in May, when it is still fairly cool in London or Manchester, to places like Athens, Rome or Madrid, where it is already beginning to get quite warm during the day.
1. According to the passage, it’s obvious that ________．| A．the author learns some rules of travelling from his own experience |
| B．the author doesn’t plan his trips or journeys carefully |
| C．Englishmen like to wear heavy suits wherever they travel |
| D．the American taxi driver never travels to England |
| A．Where you will go. | B．When you will leave. |
| C．How you will travel. | D．Whom you will go with. |
| A．London. | B．Manchester. | C．Dallas. | D．Tulsa. |
| A．The author tells people to choose warm places as their travel destinations. |
| B．You should remember to take credit cards when travelling. |
| C．You should know more about the weather of the place you’ll visit. |
| D．You should take enough change when you travel to another country. |
10 . It's hard to be a bird in the world dominated(支配) by human beings, as it's barely possible for you to hear yourself sing. Hearing the songs of your friends would be even more difficult,and you can just forget about hearing a predator approaching.
Noise is almost everywhere,especially from traffic.Lots of the landscape in the US is within just one kilometre of a road.Therefore,it is unsurprisingly to see researchers focus on the animals living near noisy roads when they evaluate the impact of road noise on animals."The problem is that noisy roads are both noisy,and at the same time,they are roads.It's hard to separate the two,"said a biologist who worked on this subject with his team.To make sure that there is just the noise without any other effect of the road,they ran speakers through a forest where there was no road.They then built an audio phantom road at a popular stopover spot for birds to fly south for the winter.
While lots of birds were kept away by noise,the researchers found that some birds just stuck around,because they lacked strength to support the next part of their migratory journey.To eat,the birds had to look down,meaning that they were not able to notice predators.And when there was too much noise,they couldn’t hear the alarm calls of other birds.The two things were sadly in conflict with each other.So they had to waste time watching for predators instead of searching for food.
Road building is increasing worldwide.But there is an easy solution to the noise problem-lowering speed limits.So next time you are driving through nature,just slow down a little. It's safer for you and the wildlife.And you can enjoy the view a little longer.
1. The underlined word"you"in the first paragraph refers to_______.| A．the reader | B．the writer | C．.the bird | D．the scientist |
| A．The noise can make birds become thinner along the migratory journey. |
| B．The noise stops birds from making alarm calls to others when seeing predators. |
| C．The noise makes birds unable to notice possible predators around. |
| D．The noise puts birds into the conflict between watching for predators and searching for food. |
| A．Build more roads. | B．Slow down a little while driving. |
| C．Speed up while driving. | D．Build more video phantoms. |
| A．how the road noise affects birds | B．how we address the problem of noise |
| C．what the roads will be like in the future | D．what conflicts birds are faced with |
