1 . Tucker’s adventure began in early November, when McCall, a retired electrician, spent the night in a hotel in the town of Cleveland, Tennessee. McCall’s budget was tight, and her head was full of questions. In the _______ two years, McCall had lost her husband to cancer, and their grandchildren to _______. And an accident had left McCall partially disabled and _______ to work.

“Honestly, after all the _______, I was ready to give up,” says McCall. “If it hadn’t been for Tucker, the cat, I don’t think I would’ve made it.”

McCall planned to spend the night in Cleveland and _______ on. But when she returned from breakfast the next morning, ready to _______ and hit the road again, the cat was gone. Panicked (惊慌的), she _______ along the busy road for hours, but he was _______ to be found.

As _______ fell, McCall realized she had to go. She couldn’t ________ to stay another night. ________, she got in her car and got back on the way.

The next day, Lillard, 27, was jogging just down the road from the hotel where McCall had stayed when she spotted Tucker. She took him home, certain he was someone’s missing friend, and ________ his story on Facebook. McCall, too, had been posting about Tucker. Within hours, someone made the ________, and soon McCall was on the phone with Lillard, hearing Tucker’s meows and sobbing with ________. One month and a half later, Tucker was ________ to McCall, just in time for Christmans.

1.

A．present

B．precious

C．previous

D．preferable

2.

A．violence

B．cancer

C．joy

D．revival

3.

A．unwilling

B．unnecessary

C．unable

D．inconvenient

4.

A．diseases

B．accidents

C．injuries

D．deaths

5.

A．ride

B．drive

C．walk

D． run

6.

A．clean up

B．take up

C．pick up

D． pack up

7.

A．looked

B．researched

C．searched

D．surveyed

8.

A．somewhere

B．nowhere

C．elsewhere

D．anywhere

9.

A．dawn

B．noon

C．dusk

D．night

10.

A．afford

B．offer

C．remain

D．ensure

11.

A．Bad-tempered

B．Heartbroken

C．Helpless

D．Homeless

12.

A．posted

B．wrote

C．blogged

D．told

13.

A．touch

B．apology

C．connection

D．announcement

14.

A．sorrow

B．panic

C．satisfaction

D．relief

15.

A．awarded

B．delivered

C．offered

D．donated

2 . Playing Minecraft, a video game, could be key to creating adaptable (可调试的) artificial intelligence models that can pick up a variety of tasks the way humans do.

Steven James at the University of the Witwatersrand in South Africa and his colleagues developed a test within Minecraft to measure the general intelligence of AI models. This MinePlanner test rates an AI’s ability to ignore unimportant details while solving a complex multi-step problem.

Lots of AI training “cheats” by giving a model all the data it needs to learn how to do a job and nothing related to it, says James. Future AI models will need to deal with confusing problems, and he hopes that MinePlanner will guide that research. AI working to solve a problem in the game will see everything involved, including objects and other details that aren’t necessarily needed to solve a problem and must be ignored. It will have to survey its surroundings and work out by itself what is and isn’t needed.

The virtual test consists of 15 construction problems, and each one can be easy, medium and hard. To finish each task, the AI may need to take some steps in between, like building stairs to reach a certain height. This means the AI has to think about the whole picture and plan what to do next.

State-of-the-art planning AI models were unable to complete any of the tough problems and they only do a little better on the easier ones, suggesting there is room for improvement.

“We can’t require a human designer to come in and tell the AI exactly what it should and shouldn’t care about for each and every task it might have to solve,” says James. “That’s the problem we’re trying to address.”

1. Why is playing Minecraft important for creating adaptable AI models?

A．Because it offers tasks that require human-like ability.

B．Because it provides different situations for AI training.

C．Because it is an easy game for AI to learn and master.

D．Because it is a video game popular among AI scientists.

2. What does James mean by saying that “AI training cheats”?

A．AI models are trained in a dishonest way.

B．AI models are only taught to perform simple tasks.

C．AI models are offered all the necessary data for a task.

D．AI models are given wrong information during training.

3. How did the state-of-the-art planning AI model perform in the test?

A．It solved all the 15 construction problems.

B．It performed poorly in handling hard tasks.

C．It was completely unable to deal with any task.

D．It performed excellently in solving easy problems.

4. What does James think AI models need improving?

A．Adaptable ability.	B．Computing speed.
C．Communicative skills.	D．Data-processing power.

6 . 阅读下面短文，根据所给情节进行续写，使之构成一个完整的故事。

Miguel looked across the school campus. Why did the English teacher annoy the whole class with such a stupid topic, “The Most Courageous Person I’ve Known”? He groaned (呻吟) at the painful thought of writing two full pages about a person who didn’t exist. He just couldn’t think of anyone.

At twelve, Miguel just wanted to be a boy. He wanted to play, get his homework done as quickly as possible, and eat. He reached his pocket for a candy bar, tore open the wrapper with his teeth and headed home.

Passing an alley (胡同) , he spotted a white chicken poking at a dirty bag that lay on a pile of garbage. Then, like soup, an idea bubbled in his mind. He got the dirty bag, held it open and got close to the chicken slowly. It lifted its head, took a few slow steps and clucked (咯咯叫) . Miguel was quick. He caught it by the neck, pushed it in and tied the bag.

For a moment, he felt like a fox, the trickiest of all animals. Now, it was time to go to Mr. Shafer, who sold chickens. Luckily, Mr. Shafer was in his front yard. Miguel announced that he had a nice chicken for him because his grandma couldn’t eat chicken anymore. Mr. Shafer took the chicken out, examined it carefully and handed him two dollars.

The chicken looked up at him with kind of sad eyes. Miguel’s heart sank. Why could I become so unfeeling? What had I done? Miguel groaned to himself. Money in hand, he turned around quickly and ran toward his home, trying not to think of the defenseless chicken. Yet, those sad eyes of the chicken seemed to be staring at him all the way.

注意：
1. 续写词数应为100左右；
2. 续写部分为一段，请按如下格式在答题卡的相应位置作答。

“I’ll save you,” he stopped and said to himself.

_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

9 . Sleep is so important that it has long interested scientists. Scientists have studied everything from mice to fruit flies in the lab to get a better understanding of what happens when animals sleep and why they do it. However, gathering data (数据) on how animals sleep in their natural habitat has always been hard to do.

But scientists did just that with wild chinstrap penguins in Antarctica. In doing so, researchers found the birds took over ten thousand microsleeps throughout the day — adding up to a 11-hour-long sleep.

To study the penguins, scientists put devices (设备) into a small group of penguins’ brain and neck muscles, which provided the brain wave and location data. The devices had never been used before, so this data collection was only supposed to be a test. However, the process went so well and the data was published in this study.

Researchers found that the microsleeps last only seconds. Researchers think that being able to sleep for such a short time might help the animals avoid predators (捕食者) that might more likely attack if the penguins were asleep for longer — especially when one parent goes out feeding in the ocean for days, leaving the other parent to protect the eggs from predatory birds.

The study is an early insight into a relatively large missing scientific knowledge about sleep.

“Almost every study on sleeping birds discovers something new, something we didn’t know about before,” says study co-author Paul-Antoine Libourel.

Vladyslav Vyazovskiy, a sleep neuroscientist at the University of Oxford who didn’t join in the study, is excited about this new data because “most of what we know about the animal sleep was gained in laboratory conditions, which are totally different from conditions where sleep developed”.

1. What is paragraph 3 mainly about?

A．The study method.	B．The device introduction.
C．The research purpose.	D．The background information.

2. What is a possible reason for penguins’ microsleeps?

A．Feeding baby birds.	B．Getting longer sleep.
C．Avoiding being hunted.	D．Attacking other birds.

3. What’s Vyazovskiy’s attitude towards the study?

A．Doubtful.

B．Positive.

C．Confused.

D．Objective.

4. What can be a suitable title for the text?

A．Animal Sleep Is Researched in the Lab

B．Penguins Gain a Different Way of Sleep

C．Sleep Is of Great Importance to Penguins

D．Penguins Take Thousands of Microsleeps a Day

10 . In the ever-changing world of women’s artistic gymnastics, there has been a gymnast for more than three decades: Oksana Chusovitina.

The 48-year-old had said with certainty that her final competition would be the Tokyo 2020 Games. With no fans in the stands to honor her legendary career (职业生涯) , judges, coaches and other athletes did their best to give her a party worthy of all she’d given the sport. After she thanked them through tears in her eyes, she told media that was her swansong.

However, just a few months after the Tokyo Olympics, Chusovitina said that she would return to training, dreaming of one final medal at a major competition —the Asian Games—for Uzbekistan. “I just can’t finish my career without a medal for my motherland,” she said on her Instagram story.

Chusovitina first competed in the 1992 Olympics as part of the Unified Team and won a team gold medal there. Though she represented (代表) Uzbekistan in the 1996, 2000 and 2004 Olympics, her second Olympic medal came some 16 years later in the 2008 Olympics. Chusovitina, then representing her third nation, Germany, where better medical treatment was provided for her sick son, got the silver medal.

And now, her story continues. The historic eight-time Olympian has started her ninth trip to the 2024 Paris Olympics. At the first two World Cup stops of the season she won bronze medals. “Thank you all so much for the support,” she wrote on Instagram. “First start, first medal.”

“More to come,” added the gymnast, whose motto is “I’d rather try today than regret tomorrow”.

1. What does the underlined word “swansong” mean in paragraph 2?

A．A popular song.	B．A great honor.
C．The last performance.	D．The wonderful career.

2. What made Chusovitina return to training after the Tokyo Olympics?

A．Personal glory.	B．National pride.
C．Economic situation.	D．International pressure.

3. Why did Chusovitina represent Germany in the 2008 Olympics?

A．To win more medals.	B．To receive better education.
C．To get medical treatment for her son.	D．To learn skills from the national team.

4. Which word best describes Chusovitina?

A．Determined.

B．Generous.

C．Creative.

D．Curious.