1 . Germany’s top court (法院) has ruled that parts of the country’s 2019 climate action law must be changed because they don’t do a good job of protecting young people. Nine young people aged 15 to 24 took the government to court over the law. They said that the government’s failure to plan carefully was putting their future lives in danger.

The judges (法官) of Germany’s highest court said climate change will influence young people far more than adults. That’s because climate change will become more serious over time. As young people become adults, they’ll be left to deal with any problems that today’s adults don’t deal with.

In 2019, Germany passed a new law, promising that the country would be producing no more CO2 than the forest can take in by 2050. The law made a plan of action until 2030. But the law didn’t have any plans for climate actions that would be taken between 2031 and 2050.

The court has asked the German government to fix the law by the end of 2022. The climate law will now need to have a plan for the actions that will be taken after 2030.

The German government has said that it will quickly begin working to make the needed changes. One important part of high court decisions like this is that they act as guides or examples for future decisions. This means that in the future, Germany’s lawmakers will be more likely to think about the climate future of young people as they create their laws.

1. Why did the judges make such a decision?

A．They decided the new law made no sense.

B．They wanted to give the young more rights.

C．They focused more on the future of the young.

D．They thought it’s hard to solve climate change.

2. What did the nine young people feel displeased with about the government?

A．It failed to take action before 2030.

B．It was producing more and more CO2.

C．It refused to consider the young’s rights.

D．It didn’t plan the climate actions after 2030.

3. How will the German government do in the future?

A．It will make more decisions on climate change.

B．It will ask the young to help make climate laws.

C．It will consider the young when making climate laws.

D．It will encourage the young to protect the environment.

4. What did the nine young people’s action show?

A．They were brave and forward-looking enough.

B．They couldn’t bear the present climate change.

C．They wanted to take part in law-making.

D．They planned to work in the government.

2 . In July 2021, kids from around the world watched the first appearance of skateboarding at the Summer Olympics in Tokyo, Japan. The four medal events for men and women in park and street boarding showed the gifts of 80 athletes from all over the world.

Bryce Wettstein is one of the top competitors from the United States in park skateboarding, which requires athletes to show skills that combine (使结合) art and athleticism in a bowl that looks like an empty swimming pool. At 17, Bryce shows her skills in a way that celebrates the skateboarding community.

Skateboarding began in the late 1940s and early 1950s in small Southern California beach towns. Born into this community, Bryce has won a place at the center of the sport. “Skateboarding just seems like it can be everything and anything all washed together in some washing machine of color,” she said.

Bryce shares her California hometown with international skateboard pioneer Tony Hawk. He was chosen by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) as an ambassador (大使) in its “Stronger Together” competitive sport, which celebrates this year’s athletes. In an IOC video, Hawk summarized the unlikely rise of skateboarding. “We used to see ourselves as a family of misfits (不合群),” he said. “But now the world calls us Olympians.”

Skateboarders celebrate each other’s natural abilities and achievements, while working to help the sport develop. This is shown in the friendship between Bryce and top Australian competitor Poppy Starr Olsen. Both athletes have dreamed of acting for their own countries at the Olympic Games since they skateboarded together as kids.

“I think skateboarding is going to be really different from all the other sports,” Poppy said. “We’re all kind of like a family.” Bryce agreed. “That’s what makes skateboarding such a great sport,” she said.

1. Which of the following best describes Bryce Wettstein?

A．A skateboarder who likes everything colourful.

B．An excellent skateboarder easy to get on with.

C．An excellent skateboarder from the birthplace of skateboarding.

D．A skateboarder having a special understanding of skateboarding.

2. Why was Tony Hawk chosen as an ambassador in the competitive sport?

A．He does much to celebrate the athletes.	B．He made skateboarding rise in the world.
C．He is a skateboard pioneer all over the world.	D．He made an important speech in an IOC video.

3. What do Bryce and Poppy most probably think of skateboarding?

A．It gets family members together.	B．It is the dream of many children.
C．It is a means to celebrate success.	D．It can bring people close together.

4. What is the text mainly about?

A．Top athletes at the Olympics.	B．A new Olympic sports event.
C．Some skateboarders’ success.	D．Opinions on an Olympic sports event.

3 . Summer volunteer chances for students

Finding a summer volunteer chance is easier than you think. There are national programs all over the US that you can take part in. Check out these volunteer chances for students.

UN Volunteer Program

If you are an 18-year-old high school student, you might choose to volunteer in a UN organisation. The UN Volunteer Program (paid) is looking for excellent adults aged 18 to 55. Volunteer projects explore peace-building, climate change and disaster management (气候变化和灾害管理). Those looking for a summer program will also receive training before and after a short-term task.

National Park Service

Teens aged 15-18 can take part in National Park Service and get paid. The volunteers work outdoors on several different projects including cleaning up campgrounds, improving wildlife habitat (栖息地), environmental education planning and teaching, and more! You’ll also take part in educational field trips where you’ll be able to see wildlife before your eyes.

Habitat for Humanity

You can find a lot of summer volunteer fun through Habitat for Humanity. Not only can you help build houses, but you can join in improving your community and helping out at the donation (捐赠) center. Youths aged 16 or older may take part in this program, and must have turned 16 by the first day of the project.

American Red Cross

The American Red Cross is always looking for youth volunteers. Its Red Cross youth programs offer students and young adults meaningful chances of leadership training and community service. The chances are given to all junior and senior high school students.

1. What is special about the National Park Service?

A．It allows its volunteers to camp.	B．It offers chances to see wild animals.
C．It offers job-related training to volunteers.	D．It allows volunteers to explore new interests.

2. What can high school students do at Habitat for Humanity?

A．Clean up houses.	B．Enjoy some fun games.
C．Make money to help people in need.	D．Make their community better.

3. Which program can you choose if you are 14 years old?

A．UN Volunteer Program.	B．National Park Service.
C．Habitat for Humanity.	D．American Red Cross.

4 . 听下面一段较长对话，回答以下小题。
1. What is the man in the band?

A．A guitar player.

B．A singer.

C．A drummer.

2. What is puzzling the man now?

A．Whether they should make fame quickly.

B．Whether they should go on tour.

C．Whether they should start a band.

3. What advice does the woman give to the man?

A．Play music out of love.

B．Sell lots of records.

C．Attract more fans.

5 . Yue-Sai Kan was born in China. In 1972, she moved to New York. When Kan was a child, she was told by her father that she should always aim to (力争) be the first because no one remembered the second. What her father said has been a driving inspiration over the years for her to become a bestselling author and a successful businesswoman.

Her new book Be a Pioneer, which is the tenth she has written and her first Chinese-language autobiography (自传), was produced after three years, inspired by her father’s words.

When writing an autobiography, the biggest challenge is not how to present one’s life, but to remember it. To help with reconstructing her story, Kan asked many friends and colleagues she made over the years to write down their memories of her from earlier times. So besides featuring Kan’s own words, the new book is also filled with those of her friends’s, which gives Kan a new understanding of herself — a woman who works hard, studies hard. and the most important thing is that she is a woman filled with a sense of responsibility.

“My helper Stephanie mentioned that I was worried because we were running out of money for the company. My housekeeper reminded me that before the start of one of my events she found that I had fainted (晕倒) in the bathroom. I was so tired that I was getting sick. They know more about me than myself,” Kan says.

“Writing a book is a good business to be in, not so much to make money but to grow the brain. I believe what I do will benefit the world. All the things I have done in Be a Pioneer — my successes and my failures — can be a good example to young people in particular. That’s the main reason why I wrote the book,” adds Kan.

1. What can we know about Kan’s book Be a Pioneer?

A．It took her 10 years to finish.

B．It is full of her father’s words.

C．It was completed with her friends’ help.

D．It tops the tenth on the bestseller list.

2. What is Kan’s difficulty in writing her autobiography?

A．Being short of money.	B．Having no supporters.
C．Having to write it in Chinese.	D．Remembering her past.

3. What does the author intend to do in paragraph 4?

A．To tell Kan is weak in health.

B．To show Kan is a worried woman.

C．To report the path of writing is difficult.

D．To state how Kan’s story was reconstructed.

4. What is Kan’s book Be a Pioneer aimed at?

A．Setting an example.	B．Earning money.
C．Making herself popular.	D．Proving herself to her father.

6 . The green revolution in the 1960s was one of the greatest achievements in human history. By promoting more productive varieties of wheat and, especially, rice, scientists in India, Mexico, China and the Philippines doubled Asia’s rice yields from 1965 to 1995.

But the world has reached a crossroad again. By one estimate, the world will need to produce almost a third more rice by 2050. Yet rice production has increased by less than 1% a year over the past decade.

This has many explanations. Urbanization and industrialization have made labour and farmland scarcer (稀缺的). Overuse of chemicals and irrigation have poisoned soils and dried up groundwater. But the biggest reason may be global warming that often leads to extreme conditions. Heavy rains and droughts last year in India, the world’s biggest rice exporter, led to a reduced harvest and an export ban. Floods in Pakistan, the fourth-biggest exporter, wiped out 15% of its rice harvest. Rising sea-levels are causing salt to enter the Mekong Delta, Vietnam’s “rice bowl”.

It is getting worse. Rice is not just a victim of climate change, but also a contributor to it. It is a bigger source of greenhouse gas than any foodstuff except beef. If you count the destruction of forestland for rice fields, that footprint is even bigger.

Therefore, governments need to attract producers and consumers away from rice. India and Indonesia are promoting millet, which is more nutritious and uses much less water. Canceling subsidies (补贴) that favour rice over other crops would make such efforts more effective. India, for example, purchases rice from farmers, often at above-market rates, then distributes it as food aid to the poor. It should make its interventions more rice-unfriendly, by replacing subsidies and free rice with income support for farmers and the poor. That would encourage farmers to choose the best crop for their local conditions — much of India’s agricultural north-west would switch from rice to wheat overnight. Poor Indians would be free to choose a more balanced diet. As a result, it would correct a market unfavorable to environment and health.

1. What can we know about the green revolution in Asia?

A．It has remarkably reduced the use of water and chemicals.

B．It once increased rice production by more than 3% a year.

C．It has popularized more productive crops, especially wheat.

D．It has been mainly led by scientists from America and Europe.

2. What is the most serious threat to rice production according to the text?

A．Worsening global warming.	B．Unnecessary bans on rice export.
C．Lowering prices for the crop.	D．Urbanization and industrialization.

3. What does the author suggest the Indian government do?

A．Expand the planting of rice.	B．Give rice farmers more subsidies.
C．Replace rice with better local crops.	D．Distribute rice as food aid to the poor.

4. Which of the following can be the best title for the text?

A．Achievements of the Green Revolution	B．Efforts to Promote More Suitable Crops
C．Consequences of the Green Revolution	D．Ideas to Fix the Current Global Rice Crisis

7 . Think of the Mississippi Delta. Maybe you imagine cotton fields and blues music. It has been all that. But for more than a century, the Delta has also been a popular destination for immigrants. Recently, I was assigned to learn more about one immigrant group in particular: the Chinese in Greenville, a small city along the Mississippi River. There I met Raymond Wong, whose family has long been part of the community.

The first wave of Chinese immigrants came to the Mississippi Delta soon after the Civil War, and the pace picked up by the early 1900s. The Chinese originally came to pick cotton, but they quickly started opening grocery stores, mostly in the African-American communities where they lived. The stores sold meat, fresh vegetables, canned goods, anything you might need. Nothing Chinese about them, except the owners.

“On my street alone, there were at least four grocery stores. I’m talking about a small street,” Wong recalls. “I was raised in a grocery store. All my family — six of us — lived in a couple of rooms at the back of our store. As soon as I could count money I had to work in the store.”

In 1968, Wong’s father opened a Chinese restaurant called How Joy in Greenville, one of the first in the town. At the time, nobody knew what Chinese food was. “But the restaurant existed for 40 years. I worked there, too,” Wong says.

Wong remembers a time of big excitement when he was young: The family finally could afford to buy a house in a white neighborhood. Then suddenly, that conversation stopped.

“When people found out that we were moving in, they started throwing bottles in the driveway,” Wong says. “We ended up building a house directly behind the grocery.”

And the future? It’s probably not in the Delta. Wong remembers the question his son asked when he was still in high school: “Dad, do you want me to take over the store when you retire?” Wong’s response was immediate: “No. I want you to do better than me.” That’s the story of the typical Delta Chinese.

1. What did the Delta Chinese originally do shortly after the Civil War?

A．Working in cotton fields.	B．Running restaurants.
C．Importing Chinese food.	D．Opening grocery stores.

2. What can we learn from paragraph 3?

A．Raymond Wong had a fun and carefree childhood.

B．The store owners’ children were very talented in math.

C．There was intense competition among the grocery stores.

D．The Wongs was the most successful family in Greenville.

3. The Wongs stopped buying the house because ______.

A．the house owner raised the price	B．their business failed unexpectedly
C．they did not have enough money	D．the white people did not accept them

4. How do the typical Chinese feel about their life in the Delta?

A．Excited.

B．Insecure.

C．Unconcerned.

D．Optimistic.

8 . When I was a child, I always wanted to be a superhero. I wanted to save the world and make everyone happy. But I knew that I’d need superpowers to make my dreams come true. So I used to embark on these imaginary journeys to find intergalactic (星系之间的) objects from planet Krypton, but didn’t yield much result. When I grew up and realized that science fiction was not a good source for superpowers, I decided instead to embark on a journey of real science, to find a more useful truth.

I started my journey in California, with a UC Berkeley 30-year longitudinal study that examined the photos of students in an old yearbook, and tried to measure their success and well-being throughout their life.By measuring the students’ smiles, researchers were able to predict how fulfilling and long-lasting a subject’s marriage would be, how well they would score on standardized tests of well-being, and how inspiring they would be to others.

Another aha moment came from a 2010 Wayne State University span research project that looked into pre-1950s baseball cards of Major League players. The researchers found that the span of a player’s smile could actually assist to predict the span of his life. Players who didn’t smile in their pictures lived an average of only 72.9 years, while players with beaming smiles lived an average of almost 80 years.

British researchers found that one smile can generate the same level of brain stimulation as up to 2,000 bars of chocolate. Wait — The same study found that smiling is as stimulating as receiving up to £16,000 in cash. That’s like $25,000 a smile. It’s not bad. And think about it this way: 25,000 times 400 — children smile as many as 400 times per day — quite a few kids out there feel like Mark Zuckerberg every day.

So whenever you want to tap into a superpower that will help you and everyone around you live a longer, healthier, happier life, smile.

1. Why did the author shift to pursuing scientific research?

A．Because he discovered galactic objects during childhood.

B．Because he realized sci-fi couldn’t bring superpowers.

C．Because he dreamed of global happiness since youth.

D．Because he embarked on these fictional journeys.

2. What can we infer from Paragraph 4?

A．Every child smiles 400 times per day.

B．Kids who smile are as rich as Zukerberg.

C．Smiling is equal to eating 2,000 bars of chocolate.

D．Smiling can gain stimulation alike receiving cash.

3. What’s the author’s attitude towards the effect of smiles on people?

A．Positive.

B．Doubtful.

C．Neutral.

D．Indifferent.

4. What is the text mainly about?

A．The journey to find the truth.

B．The hidden power of smiling.

C．The secret to a long and healthy life.

D．The significance of superhero studies.

9 . 阅读下面短文，在空白处填入 1 个适当的单词或括号内单词的正确形式。

Does music have the power to help us sleep better? According to a recent research, it does. Using an experiment in     1     62 young adults listened to five nights of happy music, five nights of sad music, and five nights of pink noise, researchers found that people reported sleeping better and feeling more positive    2     (little) negative, and more satisfied with life on mornings after listening to music while falling asleep.

These benefits    3     (find) when comparing listening to music with listening to pink noise. Given that pink noise is thought    4     (help) deepen sleep, the additional beneficial effects of music beyond pink noise are    5     (impress).

Does the type of music matter? There were no    6     (difference) in sleep quality and well-being when comparing happy and sad music.     7     (important), all of the music was selected with the goal of being calm and relaxing. And although this study focused    8     young adults, other research has found effects on older adults, suggesting music might be helpful across the lifespan.

Why would music have these beneficial effects? So far, little research     9     (test) the reasons why music improves sleep quality but suggested reasons include relaxation, a distraction from unwanted thoughts,     10     masking of unpleasant background noise.

10 . 阅读下面材料，根据其内容和所给段落开头语续写两段，使之构成一篇完整的短文。

When our youngest sister was born, my little brother Tom was six and I was eight. I had always been the “Big Sister” and he had always been “The Baby”.

Our sister’s arrival was a complete surprise to both of us. In those days no one worried much about sibling rivalry (兄弟姐妹间的较劲), and no “experts” told us how to deal with another child in the house. We had wise and loving grandpa and mom, however.

I was excited about the baby and loved to hold her and help care for her. Tom’s feelings were quite different! He just looked at her and left, preferring to spend the evening in his room. When I went to his room to talk to him and try to get him to play games with me, he just looked away. “Why did they have to get that baby?” Tom asked.

Later that night, Grandpa came over to see the new baby. As he held her, he said to Tom, “You know, she’s a lot like the baby lamb I’m raising on the bottle. I have to take care of her and feed her often, just the way your mom does with the baby.” Tom said, “I’d rather have the lamb.”

Grandpa heard and said, “Well, if you’d rather have a lamb, maybe we could trade your little sister for it. I’ll give you a day to think it over, and if you still want to trade tomorrow, we’ll do it.” I thought I saw him wink at Mom, but I knew I must have been mistaken because Grandpa never winked at anyone.

After Grandpa left, Mom read to Tom for a long while. Tom kept looking at the baby, and Mom asked him to hold our little sister while she went to the bathroom. When Mom came back. Tom was gently touching the baby’s smooth black hair, and as he held her hand, she took hold of his finger.

注意：
1. 续写词数应为150左右；
2. 请按如下格式在答题卡的相应位置作答。

“Mom, look! She’s holding my hand!” Tom smiled.

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“She’s a day older now. I think she’s worth five lambs now,” Tom said.

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