1 . Directions: After reading the passage below, fill in the blanks to make the passage coherent and grammatically correct. For the blanks with a given word, fill in each blank with the proper form of the given word; for the other blanks, use one word that best fits each blank.

Signs You Are Eating Pre-Made Food at a Restaurant

Even at fine dining restaurants, serving pre-made food is a common practice most regular customers are not aware of. So how can you know for sure your food was made     1     you ever sat down at your table? Here’s how to tell if the food you’re eating is fresh.

You may be excited to see your waitress approaching with your food not long after you order it, but the biggest sign     2     you’re dinning at a restaurant serving pre-made food is how quickly your food arrives at the table.

A freshly prepared meal that’s made for people     3    (order) takes time. What doesn’t take much time is reheating pre-made food,     4     is often done at fast-food restaurants.

An extensive menu means the chef     5     have all those ingredients on-hand, which makes it difficult to guarantee freshness along with timeliness. To solve this problem, chefs often use pre-made food. That can range from already packaged products     6     preparing the meals in advance, but either way, they’re getting a head start, and the quality of your meal may suffer from     7    .

Often enough, the establishment you     8    (dine) at is the first indicator that your meal is pre-made. Choosing a chain restaurant for your dining destination may seem like a safe choice, for you know what’s on the menu and you know     9     it’s going to taste like, no matter what city you’re in.

Say you’re at a restaurant and you order a steak. You wait in anticipation, watering at the thought of     10    (slice) into a juicy steak. Your order arrives, and it looks just like you imagined it would, except for the taste. That’s probably because your steak hit the microwave before it hit your plate!

2 . Why Are You Still Coughing?

Have you caught a cold recently — but can’t get rid of the cough? You’re not alone. The symptom can stick around for weeks after our bodies have cleared a virus. Michael Shiloh, a physician specializing in infectious disease research at UT Southwestern Medical Center, says coughing patients often report that they were sick as many as eight weeks prior to seeing him. He says, “    1    ”

The United States saw a sharp rise in cases of influenza in late 2023 that’s dragged on into 2024. And though positive tests for the illness have leveled off or decreased countrywide over the past weeks, the number of people seeking healthcare for respiratory (呼吸的) diseases is still elevated across much of the U.S.     2     But research on how infections affect nerves in the airway is revealing new clues.

Coughing is an important reaction that protects the airway from dangers like water or bits of mis-swallowed food, says doctor and researcher Lorcan McGarvey of Queen’s University Belfast.     3     These nerves are decorated with receptor (受体) proteins that react to everything from cold air to hot pepper. When a stimulus causes those receptors, nerves send signals to the brain that we experience as the urge to cough.

While it may seem obvious that coughing is meant to clear our throats, it’s also possible that viruses cause the reaction to help themselves spread.     4     And if we do ultimately cough to clear out our airway during an infection, that still wouldn’t explain what exactly our nerves sense during an infection that causes a cough.

“We don’t know,” says electrophysiologist Thomas Taylor-Clark of the University of South Florida. “But what we can say is that we do know some things, one being that viruses cause infection.”

A．The reaction is caused by nerves that reach into the airway.

B．Scientists know about many different stimuli that can cause cough.

C．Many infections involve dry coughs that don’t produce phlegm (痰) at all.

D．We can’t really detect virus any more in these individuals, and yet they’re still coughing.

E．But at least temporarily, they can send us into coughing even when we’re no longer sick.

F．Scientists still aren’t sure exactly why otherwise healthy people experience this kind of persistent cough.

3 . At first the question was how quickly people would get back to the office. Then it was whether they would ever return. The last three years has introduced in a major change in white-collar working patterns. The office is not dead but many professionals have settled into a hybrid (混合的) arrangement of some office days and some remote days.

Hybrid working has much to recommend: flexibility for employees, periods of concentration at home, bursts of cooperation in the office. A new paper from Harvard Business School describes an experiment in which workers at BRAC, a non-profit organisation in Britain, were randomly assigned to three groups, each spending different amounts of time working from home. The intermediate (中等的) group, who spent between 23% and 40% of their time in the office, performed best on various performance measures.

But a shift on this large scale is bound to raise tricky issues. In workplaces that have moved to hybrid work, there are still plenty of open questions. One is how to handle the impact of less time in the office for new joiners and younger workers. Research by Emma Harrington of the University of Iowa shows that software engineers receive more feedback on their code when the team sits next to each other in the office, especially new engineers. According to Nicholas Bloom of Stanford University, making new employees spend more time in the office can be a good way of integrating them into company culture and improving their competence. And these younger employees were most likely to quit when everyone was forced to go remote.

A second question concerns how strictly to enforce attendance on days when teams are meant to be in the office. An agreement holds that there should be agreed “anchor days” on which all the people come to work in the office; since the idea is to spend time together, as many people as possible should be there. But one person on the team might have moved somewhere else; someone else might have asked to stay home to let the repairer in. In practice, therefore, hybrid working still often means a mixture of people on screen and people in the office.

Other questions exist. How to define performance measures so managers do not spend time worrying about lazy workers at home? Do you require company-wide anchor days or team-level ones? The era of hybrid working is only just beginning, so it will take time for answers to emerge. But if there is a message from this first full year of hybrid working, it is that flexibility does not mean a free-for-all.

1. How can in-office work help new employees?

A．Giving them more feedback from senior employees.

B．Getting them to catch up with the work schedule.

C．Saving them the cost of staying at home.

D．Helping them feel part of the company.

2. What makes it difficult to enforce attendance on anchor days?

A．Young workers prefer working on screen.

B．Engineers object to the idea of anchor days.

C．Office workers can’t take a day off as expected.

D．Employees have various private matters to address.

3. Which of the following statements is the author most likely to agree with?

A．It is necessary to grant employees full autonomous rights.

B．Employers should go with the flow because new questions will emerge.

C．Allowing flexibility in work arrangements does not mean having no rules.

D．It is no easy job to arrange either company-wide or team-level anchor days.

4. What does the passage mainly talk about?

A．Hybrid working is outdated after workers’ return.

B．There are some open questions of hybrid working.

C．A shift of working patterns calls for hybrid working.

D．Fixed restrictions should be applied to hybrid working.

4 . Whether you are attracted by landscapes or the after-effects of weather, there are photo opportunities everywhere. The following photography tips from photographers will help you shoot your best shot.

Get to know your subject and their habits

Take time to get to know your local wildlife before shooting, and you might just capture something truly special. Try to shoot from the perspective of the animal you are filming. Resist the urge to just point and click — take the time to observe local wildlife and you will see the rewards in your photos.

Capture details in a close-up

Going in close can bring some fascinating rewards in nature photography. Zooming (聚焦) into plants with frost or picking up water drops on a spider’s web can help show the beauty we might miss in everyday life. If you’re zooming in on one particular subject, such as a bee landing on a flower, you could end up with soft-focus objects in the background to create added interest.

Shoot photos at best time of day

There are no hard and fast rules when it comes to timing, and a shadow or lots of natural sunlight can produce great results — it’s just best to avoid extremes. Too much bright light hitting your camera lens (镜头) sensor will result in an overexposed photo with little detail, while a dark sky full of stars might provide too much contrast between the background and the subject you are taking pictures of.

Capture sharp, clear images

Although the delete button can be your best friend, a few things will help you avoid unclear images. Keeping the camera stable is key, whether that’s through a solid pose as you stand ready to shoot or using a support. A self-timer can also be a handy tool for keeping your hands away from dials and settings once you have chosen your shot.

1. Which of the following is the benefit of “zooming in” in shooting?

A．It may be an aid to capture the delicate beauty in daily life.

B．It may be helpful to avoid overexposing photos with little detail.

C．It may bring about deleting the background to create added interest.

D．It may contribute to focusing on several particular subjects at a time.

2. What is a photographer recommended to do to shoot satisfactory photos?

A．Chase the running rabbit when shooting.	B．Follow his instinct when shooting.
C．Shoot in bright daylight at midday.	D．Use a stable stand when shooting.

3. You will find the tips above most useful if you want to take photos _____.

A．at a wedding ceremony	B．while visiting an art gallery
C．on an excursion to the countryside	D．while walking on the street in a city

5 . I was sitting in my high school classroom, nervously tapping my pencil against the desk as I awaited the start of the English exam.

As the clock struck, signaling the beginning of the exam, my heart began to race. I opened the exam booklet and scanned the questions, and I felt a wave of panic over me. The questions seemed foreign, and the topics unfamiliar. In a state of panic, I hurriedly wrote down my answers, hoping that somehow, by some stroke of luck, they would be correct. But as the minutes went by, I realized I couldn’t seem to make sense of the questions before me. As the final bell rang, I handed in my paper with a heavy heart.

In the days that followed, I couldn’t shake the feeling of failure that hung over me like a dark cloud. I replayed the exam over and over in my mind, analyzing every question, every answer, searching for clues as to where I had gone wrong.

But in the depression, a realization began to dawn on me — I had failed, yes, but I had also learned valuable lessons along the way. Armed with this newfound wisdom, I ensured that I would do better next time. I threw myself into my studies with renewed determination, devouring books and practicing past exams with an eagerness I had never known before.

When the time came to retake the exam, I was ready. I approached each question with confidence and clarity, drawing upon the lessons I had learned from my previous missteps.

When the results were announced, I held my breath as I scanned the list of names. And there it was — my name, shining brightly among the list of successful candidates. At that moment, all the hard work, all the late nights and early mornings, were worth it.

And as I look back on that sunny afternoon in the high school classroom, I am grateful for the lessons it taught me, and the person it helped me become.

1. Why did the author panic when he first took the exam?

A．He sat with a pounding heart.

B．He found the questions too difficult.

C．He was not familiar with the foreign language.

D．He was in a hurry when answering the questions.

2. What did the author do after he failed in the exam?

A．He attended valuable lessons in school.

B．He retook the exam over and over again.

C．He promised to arm himself with eagerness.

D．He determined to engage himself in learning.

3. Which of the following can replace the underlined word “devouring” (paragraph 4)?

A．being targeted at	B．being obliged for
C．being absorbed in	D．being credited to

4. According to the passage, this experience helped the author become _____.

A．cheerful and considerate	B．objective and demanding
C．tough and persevering	D．proud and tolerant

6 . Although many over-processed foods can satisfy the desire for sweet, fatty, salty foods, research suggests these items are particularly bad for the heart and brain, with mood and cognition taking a hit.

The most recent research looking at the _______ of over-processed food found the most far-reaching results. Researchers _______ direct links between higher consumption of over-processed foods and a greater risk of many health issues.

These results are _______ earlier studies. Diets high in these foods were linked to greater risk of depression and anxiety, according to an analysis published in the journal Nutrients. In one of these studies, risk rose from _______ just 33 percent of calories from over-processed food. A separate study found that taking in just 20 percent of calories from these foods was linked to a 28 percent faster rate of cognitive _______ compared with people who ate less processed food.

Also _______ is a study tracking about half a million people living in England, Scotland, and Wales that found the risk of dementia (痴呆) went up by 25 percent for every 10 percent increase in over-processed food. While the exact cause-and-effect relationship is still unknown, the strongest evidence from prospective studies _______ the idea that eating high amounts of over-processed foods increases the risk of depression in the future.

It is common knowledge that eating too much salt or sugar is linked to high blood pressure and Type 2 diabetes. What the public may not appreciate, _______, is that all these conditions affect the brain by raising the risk for dementia. _______ such as certain artificial sweeteners may also disturb the production and release of brain chemicals, such as dopamine, which can negatively affect mental and emotional ________.

Another problem with over-processed foods is that they might be addictive. Over-processed foods have more in common with a(n) ________ than foods by Mother Nature. Humans have evolved to respond to foods that are sweet, fatty, and high in calories. For most of human existence this helped us ________. But in nature, foods are ________ modestly high in sugar — like berries — or high in fat, like nuts. You don’t find foods high in both sugar and fat. That’s a distinctive ________ of over-processed foods. Add in salt, artificial flavorings and bright colors, and our brain simply ________ these foods.

1.

A．recipe

B．flavor

C．preparation

D．impact

2.

A．promoted

B．identified

C．evaluated

D．dismissed

3.

A．contrary to

B．consistent with

C．concerned about

D．dependent on

4.

A．consuming

B．calculating

C．reducing

D．burning

5.

A．improvement

B．advantage

C．quality

D．decline

6.

A．reassuring

B．contradictory

C．alarming

D．sustainable

7.

A．goes against

B．casts doubt on

C．leans towards

D．puts forward

8.

A．however

B．therefore

C．by chance

D．for instance

9.

A．Decorations

B．Additives

C．Options

D．Contributors

10.

A．problem

B．capacity

C．outburst

D．well-being

11.

A．appetizer

B．cigarette

C．dessert

D．snack

12.

A．survive

B．emerge

C．venture

D．mature

13.

A．still

B．barely

C．only

D．rather

14.

A．nutrition

B．taste

C．dish

D．characteristic

15.

A．gains insight into

B．loses control over

C．shows concern for

D．gets hold of

7 . Directions:   After reading the passage below, fill in the blanks to make the passage coherent and grammatically correct.   For the blanks with a given word, fill in each blank with the proper form of the given word; for the other blanks, use one word that best fits each blank.

Number of Steps a Day It Takes to Cut Risk of Early Death

New research suggests exactly how many steps you need to take each day to reduce the risk of heart disease and early death. If you     1     (fail) in your pursuit of walking 10,000 steps a day — researchers have some good news for you.

They found walking up to 10,000 steps a day reduces these risks. The lowest risk of early death was     2     people who took 9,000 to 10,500 steps a day. When it came to avoiding heart attack, people     3     (manage) around 9,700 steps a day had the lowest risks.

Experts have previously found people who spend a lot of time sitting while awake are more likely     4     (suffer) an early death and develop heart disease. It has been unclear     5     walking can balance out the effects of sitting down for most of the day — until now.

A study, published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine, analysed data from 72,174 people     6     (age) around 61 from UK. Participants wore a device for seven days to measure their exercise levels. After a seven-year follow-up, 1,633 deaths and 6,190 cardiovascular (心脏血管的) events, such as heart attack, were recorded. The results showed any amount of daily steps above 2,200 a day were linked to lower death and heart disease —    7     the rest of the day was spent being inactive.

Julie Ward, a senior nurse in the U.K., said, “We encourage people to stay active for     8     heart and circulatory health by doing 150 minutes of moderate exercise a week. “This can be any activity     9     fits into your lifestyle, such as taking regular walking breaks away from your computer screen, going to the gym, enjoying exercise classes, or even getting off the bus one stop     10     (early) to get more steps in.”

8 . 听下面一段较长对话，回答以下小题。1.

A．Teaching students Chinese.	B．Learning teaching techniques.
C．Studying with local university students.	D．Giving lessons about VR technology.

2.

A．She taught the students how to make Chinese handicrafts.

B．The students learnt a lot about Chinese history and culture.

C．The students visited several historic sites in China in person.

D．She gave a map of China to every student attending the presentation.

3.

A．Exciting.

B．Relaxing.

C．Agreeable.

D．Eye-opening.

4.

A．Mike’s plan to study abroad.	B．Mike’s dream of traveling overseas.
C．Lauren’s exchange experience.	D．Lauren’s future travel plan in the U.S.

9 . 听下面一段独白，回答以下小题。1.

A．They make careful preparations beforehand.

B．They spend too much time expecting their failure.

C．They try hard to encourage themselves to be braver.

D．They take too many irrelevant factors into consideration.

2.

A．She left an unfavorable impression in front of the judge.

B．She had a positive goal setting at first.

C．She used to be a successful golfer.

D．She won her first trial.

3.

A．Prepare for possible problems.	B．Make a list of do’s and don’ts.
C．Picture themselves succeeding.	D．Try to appear more professional.

10 . 听下面一段独白，回答以下小题。1.

A．About a month.	B．About three months.
C．About eight minutes.	D．About eight weeks.

2.

A．Those who received verbal compliments.

B．Those who were offered material rewards.

C．Those who had much exposure to the dish.

D．Those who had five different kinds of vegetables.

3.

A．The least-liked vegetable among children.

B．Steps to make carrots more appealing to children.

C．A psychological experiment carried out in Belgium.

D．An effective way to increase children’s vegetable intake.