Melati and Isabel deeply love their home on the island, surrounded by tropical rain forests, green fields, and a vast ocean. Enjoying a swim at their local beach was once a daily pleasure for them. But when Melati was fifteen, and Isabel just ten, the sisters started to lose their enthusiasm for swimming in the waters near their borne. More often than not, plastic bags would be around them as they swam and some were scattered on the beach. They got really upset about that.
Melati didn’t think much about it until one day her teacher gave a lesson on some world heroes. Each of those people had sparked movements of positive changes in the world. They believed in the impact they could have and they did inspire more people to do something meaningful. After school, Melati walked home slowly in silence, concerned about the vast amount of plastic rubbish on the beach. The heroes crossed her mind. If they could do it, we could do it too, she thought. The idea lit her up. She couldn’t wait to share what she thought with Isabel and quickened her pace.
“So many plastic bags around! The beach is dirty and messy! It’s so terrible! We have lost the clean and beautiful beach. Can’t we do something to get it back?” Melati said heartily. Isabel felt a bit puzzled at what to do, but she also had a strong desire to do something. Picturing a beach as fascinating as before in mind, the pair jumped with joy.
They talked a lot, anxious to know how Dad and Mom would respond to their ideas. That night when the family sat by the dinner table, the sisters eagerly got their ideas across. While Mom and Dad listened to the girls carefully, their eyes shone. “How amazing that would be! We are so proud of you!” Dad exclaimed. Mom came up, gave them a thumb up and hugged the sisters.
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。
Melati and Isabel decided to make a positive impact straight away.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________One month later, Melati received a call from the local newspaper.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________2 . Many people believe it is crucial to have gender equality in the workplace. But achieving equality means overturning centuries of social norms. Recent research by Oxford University suggests that sometimes it is women themselves who are limiting their career opportunities.
The study surveyed 3,698 students from 63 schools and colleges across the UK . It found out that female students tend to choose “worthwhile” jobs, while male students often go after jobs that offer big salaries. Researchers noticed that secondary school girls said they were more willing to accept low-income jobs like charity work or museum positions, while boys focused more on getting high-prestige careers, reported The Guardian.
“Compared with boys, girls are more concerned about each aspect of job application. They are more interested in careers that offer job security, in a cause they ‘feel good about’,” Jonathan Black, director of the Oxford University Careers Service, told The Telegraph.
China faces a similar gender gap. This month, a poll by Chongqing Morning Post indicates that female college graduates care more about their working environment. As for male graduates, career prospects are more important. “This has the knock-on effect that girls may be self-limiting their choice of careers, especially because the types of jobs they seek often have informal entry processes, like getting an internship or doing unpaid work,” Black said.
1. What kind of job do girl graduates tend to look for?| A．Well-paid. | B．Promising. |
| C．Challenging. | D．Safe and easy. |
| A．Women’s self-limit in career. | B．Social gender discrimination. |
| C．Men’s attitude towards jobs. | D．Job application in the UK and China. |
| A．by comparison | B．by classification |
| C．by order of space | D．by order of time |
| A．Girls are fighting against restrictions in jobs. |
| B．There are not many jobs open to girls after graduation. |
| C．The gender gap in employment has narrowed recently in China. |
| D．Research in the UK shows that the gender gap exists in employment. |
In late February, my dad asked me if I wanted to go fishing with him. I said yes. My whole family, minus one of my sisters, would be going.
On the day we left I was excited to go on the trip. As soon as we got there, I unpacked all the things I had in the bedroom. My bedroom was small and had two bunk beds on either side of the room. The room made me feel like I was in someone’s grandma’s house. It was late by the time we got to the house, so I went to bed quickly.
The next morning I got up and my dad said that we would board the boat for just something to do. As we were in the car, I noticed that it was raining pretty hard outside.
Just then another boat approached us. A man with heavy beard shouted at us, claiming that it was not a good day for boating. He warned us to go back, but we thought nothing of it. The boat was pretty nice. It had a covering over the front side of the boat and seats in the back.
We got out to the water, and the waves started to pick up a little. As we got out to the water a little farther I thought to myself, “Wouldn’t it be funny if the boat starts sinking?”
Apparently, my thought was starting to come into reality, as the waves started picking up even more. I looked at my sister with a worried look on my face. She also looked worried.
The boat started tipping more as the waves spilled into the boat. My sister and I started screaming. I looked at my dad and he had a worried look on his face too. That was how I knew that things were getting worse.
My dad usually never gets worried about these sorts of things. The water was about knee high on my sister and me. The boat kept rocking from side to side.
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。
My sister was now crying and my mom was yelling at us to put our life jackets on.
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I thought I was going to die.
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I had always enjoyed living in my flat on the top floor of a Victorian building in Wimbledon. Being so high up made me feel safe and secure, and I enjoyed wonderful views across the tree tops. I had never expected that I would experience a fire in the flat.
One night I went to sleep as usual after setting my alarm clock for 7 am and switching off the bedside light. A few hours later, I woke up puzzled. I could smell smoke and I could see that the bedroom was extremely dark. Then I realized the room was so dark because it was filled with smoke. I immediately left my bed and stood by the door. I was in panic. I was also convinced that I had somehow caused the fire without knowing it. I thought, “What will my neighbors think? I must get rid of the smoke before it gets into their flats.”
I managed to make my way to the curtains and tried to draw them open. This simple everyday act proved quite beyond me. When I finally opened the window, I saw all my neighbors standing on the lawn below, tightly wrapped up in their dressing gowns against the December cold. Then I realized it wasn’t me that had caused the fire. It was someone else.
Even though I had taken many fire awareness courses at work, I forgot everything I’d ever been taught at that time. My one instinct was to flee down the stairs.
“There’s a fire! Stay by the window!” someone shouted below the building. And that man’s words of warning stopped me and helped save my life. If I had opened my front door at the top of the stairwell to escape, the flames raging below would have been drawn upwards by the rush of oxygen and would have swept over me in an instant. I knew I should go to the kitchen and wait for help by the window there. I knew the firemen would save me using a ladder.
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。
So I went to the kitchen.
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Finally, the firemen arrived.
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The influence of Chinese tea culture has been intertwined (交织) with the nation throughout much of its history. It
Traditional tea processing techniques consist of the knowledge, skills and practices. These traditional techniques are
Tea is common in Chinese people’s daily lives.
China now has 43 items
Wang Yongjian, head of the delegation to the UNESCO session, told Xinhua that
6 . I am a patrolman (巡逻警察), sent to check on the family. The young woman sat
A flash of fear crossed the older child’s eyes as I
“Is that so, little lady?” I said. “I want you two to climb on those benches over there and order something to eat.”
After a while, they crossed to the benches, and I called the waitress to take their
We sat there
“The owner says no
“Officer, excuse me,” a man said to me. He was a big man in jeans next to the waitress standing by the
“Here,” he said, giving me a handful of paper money. “We made a
When I
A police officer sees the worst in people most of the time. It is good to be
| A．crying | B．eating | C．talking | D．phoning |
| A．repairmen | B．salesmen | C．cleaners | D．drivers |
| A．patiently | B．carelessly | C．anxiously | D．hopefully |
| A．declined | B．approached | C．comforted | D．recognized |
| A．once | B．just | C．still | D．ever |
| A．food | B．time | C．order | D．seat |
| A．advocating | B．exchanging | C．announcing | D．discussing |
| A．brought | B．introduced | C．treated | D．lifted |
| A．choice | B．problem | C．charge | D．wonder |
| A．counter | B．truck | C．highway | D．bathroom |
| A．laughing | B．staring | C．shouting | D．weeping |
| A．deal | B．living | C．donation | D．fortune |
| A．left | B．moved | C．handed | D．threw |
| A．evaluated | B．resolved | C．predicted | D．submitted |
| A．persuaded | B．questioned | C．required | D．reminded |
7 . Collingwood Children’s Farm is an inner-city oasis (绿洲). For 40 years, this scenic farm with pigs, chickens and vegetable gardens has provided a taste of the countryside in Melbourne.
The four-hectare patch is no throwback to the past. It is providing a glimpse of our future. In a time where a changing climate and population growth are causing concerns about food security, the farm is becoming a model for how we might change our approach to inner-city food production.
The farm’s primary purpose has always been to support those in the community experiencing disadvantage. However, the not-for-profit has also spent the past year becoming a model of best-practice inner-city agriculture.
Since mid-2020, an unused field has slowly been transformed into a bio-intensive vegetable garden. On top of that, new horticulturalists (园艺专家) have been employed to help build vegetable gardens that will help the soil.
Horticulturist Rachel Freeman is head of the farm’s vegetable gardens. Freeman says she is a big believer in the importance of “linking people to food systems and showing people what you can do”. When it comes to showing how to educate and engage the community, this farm is hard to beat.
In 2019, Collingwood Children’s Farm had an average of 15,000 visitors each month. In April 2020, 17,000 people came through. At that time, Ash and Shacklock were harvesting fast-growing turnips (萝卜) they had sown between cabbages to make the most of the growing space.
Freeman says the land had a long history of food growing before it became the children’s farm in 1979. The Wurundjeri people cultivated food here for thousands of years before a group of nuns (修女) began growing vegetables on the site in the 1860s.
Freeman says that the farm has been “in this amazing state of” change with many new projects under way. However, they are happening at a snail’s pace due to the farm’s focus on involving volunteers, especially people with disadvantage. “We do the work slowly with volunteers,” Freeman says. “This is an active space not a botanical one.”
1. What is the main purpose of the farm?| A．To deal with global climate change. |
| B．To produce safe food for local people. |
| C．To set a model for inner-city agriculture. |
| D．To support poor people in the community. |
| A．People should get closely connected. |
| B．Farms should be built big and strong. |
| C．Involving people in farming matters. |
| D．Education is the key to great success. |
| A．To satisfy children’s curiosity. | B．To help cabbages grow better. |
| C．To attract more visitors to join. | D．To use the growing space fully. |
| A．They are aimed at involving volunteers. |
| B．They have put volunteers at a disadvantage. |
| C．They are gaining popularity among children. |
| D．They have got into some financial difficulties. |
8 . After decades of argument, psychologists have apparently agreed that arranging one’s features into the shape of a smile helps brighten the mood. In other words, if you want to feel a little happier, try looking a little happier first.
The idea has a rocky history, though. To settle the matter once and for all, Nicholas Coles, a research scientist at Stanford University, organised the Many Smiles Collaboration to conduct an experiment that advocates, critics and those on the fence could all agree.
The psychologists recruited (招募) nearly 4,000 people from 19 countries and divided them into three groups. The first adopted the pen-in-mouth method to activate facial muscles for smiling. The second imitated the facial expressions of smiling actors. The third was told to move the corners of their lips towards their ears and raise their cheeks, using only the muscles in their face.
The volunteers then rated their happiness as they pulled the faces, wore neutral expressions, and looked at a blank screens or images of puppies, kittens, flowers and fireworks. According to a report in Nature Human Behaviour, the pen-in-mouth method did little for emotions — perhaps because people had to bite their teeth together. But the other two approaches boosted happiness, though the effect was small.
“Some people believe that emotional experience is very cognitive — that’s it’s driven by our evaluations of what’s going on in the world. This work, however, suggests that it’s also physiological,” said Coles. “Emotional experience appears to be built, in part, off of feedback or sensations from the nervous system. The accelerated heart can make people feel anxious and the stretch of a smile can make them feel happy,” he added.
Dr Magdalena Rychlowska, who works on facial expressions, emotions and culture at Queen’s University, Belfast, said such studies were “tremendously beneficial” for psychology. “As a researcher working on how facial movements influence our feelings, I am delighted to see that an independent study found support for the facial feedback assumption,” she said.
1. What does the underlined sentence in paragraph 2 mean?| A．People are divided on the idea. | B．People refuse to accept the idea. |
| C．The idea gains popularity quickly. | D．The idea has stood the test of time. |
| A．How the volunteers felt. | B．How the volunteers acted. |
| C．How the volunteers looked. | D．How the volunteers thought. |
| A．To praise his research work. | B．To state his research finding. |
| C．To put forward a new project. | D．To criticize the mistaken belief. |
| A．Its independence. | B．Its practical application. |
| C．Its significance. | D．Its appeal to the public. |
A music concert “Echoes of Ancient Tang Poems” jointly performed by iSING! Suzhou and the Philadelphia Orchestra was staged at Kimmel Performing Arts Center in Philadelphia on Jan. 6.
Another concert featuring Tang poetry was
The iSING! Suzhou International Young Artists Festival
The performances were also held to commemorate(纪念) the
10 . The sperm whale is an astonishing creature. It’s longer than a semi-truck, weighs more than 90, 000 pounds and is the largest member of the toothed whale family. It’s known to dive 6, 500 feet in search of food, and to stay down there for longer than an hour at a time.
Perhaps most fantastically, the sperm whale’s brain weighs as much as 20 pounds-the biggest of any species on Earth. But when it comes to brains, is size all that matters? There’s a lot we don’t know about the sperm whale’s intelligence because it’s difficult to carry out neurological (神经的) testing on such a huge marine mammal. But some clues point to sperm whales being much smarter than we give them credit for.
A 2021 study published in Biology Letters, for example, looked back to 19th-century historical logbooks from whalers. Researchers found that sperm whales were at first easy to catch-but almost immediately, the whales learned how to evade hunters and whaling success dropped by 60 percent. The study suggests that the whales passed information to one another through soundwaves to avoid being caught.
Animals that have big brains usually have a few things in common. They usually live long lives; for example, sperm whales can live for 70 years or longer. Additionally, they’re capable of complex behaviors and they tend to be more socia1. Whales may work together to hunt or communicate in a language all their own.
What’s more, humans, whales and dolphins all have spindle neurons in their brains. These nerve cells make us capable of deeper thought, such as reasoning skills, memory, communication and adaptive thinking. And like humans, whales have emotional intelligence- meaning they＇re capable of empathy, grief and sadness. Still, in proportion to (与…成比例)our body size, the human brain is bigger than that of the sperm whale.
Yet there’s still so much we don’t know about how smart sperm whales really are. And just like the whalers of a century ago, we have likely been underestimating marine mammals, whether large or small, for as long as we’ve known of their existence.
1. Why do people know little about the sperm whale’s intelligence?| A．Sperm whales’ big size makes research difficult. |
| B．It didn’t attract scientists’ attention until recently. |
| C．Whalers didn’t keep enough records of their hunting. |
| D．Sperm whales usually stay deep down in the ocean. |
| A．Track. | B．Avoid. | C．Locate. | D．Trick. |
| A．The nerve cells distinguish humans from animals. |
| B．Sperm whales have smaller brains than humans. |
| C．Spindle neurons make higher intelligence possible. |
| D．Emotional intelligence is unique to whales and humans. |
| A．Sperm Whales Are Astonishingly Smart |
| B．Sperm Whales Have the Biggest Brain |
| C．Break the Code of Whale Language |
| D．Unlock the Mystery of Sea Mammals |
