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.

The Office of the Future

The office used to be a place which people went to because they had to. Now the pandemic has exposed the office to competition from remote working, and brought up a host of questions about     1     it should be designed in the future.

Start with what the office is for. In the past,     2     form it took, it was a place for employees to get their work done. Now other conceptions of its role compete for attention. Some think of the office as the new offsite, the purpose of     3     is to get people together so they can do the things that remote working makes harder: establishing deeper relationships or cooperating in real time on specific projects.     4     talk of the office as a destination, a place that has to make the idea of getting out of bed earlier seem attractive. With fewer people coming in and more emphasis on cooperation, fewer desks     5     (assign) to individuals. Instead, there will be more shared areas, or “neighbourhoods”, where people in a team can work together flexibly.     6     (bridge) gaps between teams, one method is to set aside more of the office to display the work of each department, so that people never     7     (encounter) each other on Zoom can see examples of what their colleagues do.

Variety will be another theme, implying the need for flexibility. A best-known furniture firm compares the difference between the pre- and post-pandemic office to that between a hotel and a home. Hotels are largely given over to rooms for individuals,     8     “Home is thought of as a place for a family over years, hosting lots of different activities.”And meeting rooms are likely to be more flexible, too, with desks sliding and walls     9     (remove).

Another theme is data. Managers alike will want more data in order to understand how facilities are being used, and the question of who owns data and what data are needed is about to become     10     (pressing).

Whatever happens, the office won’t be what it was.

2 . 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.

A Chinese Class in a Chicago High School

Standing in front of the blackboard, Christina Xu announced the start of the class. Eighteen students stood up,     1     their greetings of "good morning" in Chinese, and started the 90-minute class.

This is a usual Chinese class at Walter Payton College Preparatory High School in downtown Chicago. The students     2     (divide) into small groups, four in each group, to practice Chinese     3     (speak) and writing.

The four different tones are considered one of     4     (difficult)parts in Chinese learning. To make it easier, Xu attached to each tone a gesture, and asked the students     5     (make) corresponding gestures to the words she pronounced.

In the sentence composing section, the students were encouraged to write down as many Chinese sentences as they    6    . However, it turned out    7     there are often strokes either to the left or to the right missing in a character.     8     Xu added the missed strokes together with humorous comments, the students laughed again and easily remembered the correct ones.

The school is one of the 41 public schools in Chicago that     9     (give) Chinese classes. Next term, some 60 full-time Chinses teachers like Xu    10     (offer)Chinese courses in four levels to some 11,000 elementary and middle school students in Chicago Public Schools(CPS).

3 . 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.

The Year in a Word or Two

Can anybody describe a year with only one word?

Each December, the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) nominates (提名) a word to describe the very year     1     has just passed.

2020 was a very unusual year that was really worthy     2     (describe) with two words. Two of the obvious words the OED suggested were “pandemic (疫情)” and “lockdown,” due to most of human activities across the globe     3     (bring) to a stop by the life-threatening disease. Businesses have been closed and people have had to stay in their homes for weeks or even months on end.

    4     I would like to nominate “cooperation” and “hope” as my words of the year because it is supposed to be described in a more positive and       5     (helpless) way, because there was a great deal of cooperation between countries and international health organizations. China took a leading role in this effort by sending masks and protective clothing to Canada, the United States and Europe,       6     to countries in the Middle East and Africa. Without this cooperation, the pandemic, bad       7     it has been, could have been much worse.

And that brings me to my second word: hope. We are beginning to see the light at the end of the tunnel, and, with a little “hope,” we will get to see the world begin to return to normal.

For young people, it was the first time that they       8     (experience) something big, a worry that they shared with their families, friends and neighbors, and a suffering       9     (endure) at this moment and to be endured next few weeks. And they also learned that “hope” — the belief that       10     you will see tomorrow will be better than today — is at the heart of every human being.

With “cooperation” and “hope,” 2021 should make for a wonderful year.