2 . Jim Thorpe is one of the greatest athletes of all time. He had amazing athletic abilities and was well-known during his lifetime, yet that did not make Thorpe a stranger to adversity.

Thorpe was an American Indian from Oklahoma who developed his extraordinary athletic skills in his youth through hard labor. It was also in his youth that he learned to endure hardship brought upon by racial prejudice. Many would say his childhood was not easy. He grew up poor and at age 9 his twin brother passed away and a few years later he lost both of his parents.

But that did not stop him from doing what he loved and pursuing his dreams. Nothing seemed to stop him, not even stolen shoes. Just hours before Thorpe was going to compete in the 1912 Olympics, somebody stole his shoes. Thorpe improvised (临时拼凑) by getting shoes out of the garbage. The shoes were two different sizes. He wore an extra pair of socks on one foot to even them out.

He still went on to win two gold medals—winning each event he competed in except for one, the javelin (标枪). The javelin was the only event he didn’t win, probably because he had never competed in that event before. It is interesting to note that Thorpe had tried to throw the javelin once before in the Olympic trials. At the time, he didn’t know that he could throw it with a running start. He threw it standing still and was placed second.

At the Olympics，he also took part in the decathlon (十项全能运动). He finished first in two events, third in four events, and fourth in two more. Thorpe ended up finishing third in the world. He was undoubtedly a dominating force that couldn’t be stopped and just kept on going.

I think Paul Dughi said it best, “It’s hard to imagine now that pro athletes get paid millions of dollars just to wear a particular brand of shoes. For Jim Thorpe, it didn’t matter what kind he wore.”

1. What does the underlined sentence in Paragraph 1 mean?

A．The adversity Thorpe met with led to his success.

B．Thorpe’s success was no guarantee of a better life.

C．Thorpe’s career brought him both gains and losses.

D．Thorpe suffered many hardships despite his success.

2. Why did Thorpe wear more socks on one foot?

A．To prevent the foot from injury.	B．To make the shoe fit the foot.
C．To stop the shoe from being stolen.	D．To show his problem-solving skills.

3. What most likely led to Thorpe’s failure to win the javelin?

A．Loss of his own sports shoes.	B．A casual attitude towards the event.
C．Lack of experience in the event.	D．A shortage of talent for the event.

4. Which of the following words can best describe Jim Thorpe?

A．Loyal and enthusiastic.	B．Genuine and creative.
C．Tough and strong-minded.	D．Selfless and good-tempered.

3 . 根据句子结构的语法性，在下面空格处填入一个适当的词或使用括号中词的适当形式填空。

Peru is a country on the Pacific coast of South America,     1    includes three main areas: narrow, dry, flat land     2    (run) along the coast, the Andes Mountains, and the Amazon rainforest. In the high plain area is Lake Titicaca, the highest lake in the world, on which boats can travel. Peru has abundant plants from desert grasses     3    vast areas of jungle.

Peru     4    (rule ) by Spain from the 16th century to 1821. So Spanish is     5    (official) spoken in Peru. The ancient Inca capital, Cusco, is a popular destination for the     6    (tour) as it is close to the famous Inca ruins of the city of Machu Picchu.

There are two especially interesting things for us     7    (admire) about the Inca civilization. The first is the roads and paths they built to connect     8    (they) important cities. Second, the Inca built wonderful cities,     9     there were no markets in these cities. One of the interesting     10    (question) of history is how the Inca lived without shopping.

4 . 阅读下面材料，在空白处填入适当的内容（1 个单词）或括号内单词的正确形式。

The use of chopsticks has been    1     big part of Chinese food culture for   centuries. When cooking food or picking it up, a pair of chopsticks always comes for use.

So how did chopsticks come into being? It’s said that Dayu, a legendary ruler of ancient China     2     helped his people fight floods, invented them. In those days, people    3     (eat) only with their hands. But Dayu was busy in    4     (prepare) for flood control work and often had his meals in the wild. Mostly, he hurried to deal    5     unexpected (意外的) accidents and didn’t want to wait to eat. The meat     6     (cook) in the pot was too hot to pick up with his hands. So one day Dayu picked up some twigs (细枝) to help him hold the meat. Later, the twigs    7     (gradual) became the chopsticks we know today.

But     of     course,     this     is     just     a     story. The     8     (early) chopsticks archaeologists (考古学家) have found so far are more than 3,000 years, dating back to the Shang Dynasty. The six bronze chopsticks     9     (find) in 1934 in Yinxu, one of China’s oldest archaeological    10     (site) in Anyang, Henan Province.

5 . Scientists say they have developed a system that uses machine learning to predict when and where lightning will strike. Researchers report the system is able to predict lightning strikes up to 30 minutes before they happen within a 30-kilometer area. Lightning is a strong burst of electricity in the atmosphere. Since it carries an extremely powerful electrical charge, it can cause very deadly results. European researchers have estimated that between 6,000 and 24,000 people are killed by lightning worldwide each year. For this reason, climate scientists have long sought to develop methods to predict lightning.

The system tested in the experiments uses a combination of data from weather stations and machine learning methods. The researchers developed a prediction model that was trained to recognize weather conditions that were likely to cause lightning.

The model was created with data collected over a 12-year period from 12 Swiss weather stations in cities and mountain areas. The data, related to four main surface conditions: air pressure, air temperature, relative humidity (湿度) and wind speed, was placed into a unique machine learning algorithm (算法), which compared it to records of lightning strikes. Researchers say the algorithm was then able to learn the conditions under which lightning happens.

The researchers test-ran the system several times. They found that the system made predictions that proved correct almost 80 percent of the time. “It can now be used anywhere,” the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology said in a statement.

The researchers plan to keep developing the technology in partnership with a European effort that aims to create a lightning protection program. The effort is called the European Laser Lightning Rod project. Scientists working on the project are experimenting with a laser technology that could someday control lightning activity, transferring lightning charges from clouds to the ground. They hope that such technology can one day be used as protection against lightning strikes. Possible uses could be at stations, airports or places where large crowds gather.

1. Why was the system developed?

A．To keep track of lightning deaths.

B．To meet people’s curiosity about lightning.

C．To protect people from lightning strikes.

D．To take advantage of the energy of lightning.

2. What is special about the system?

A．It collects data samples from around the world.

B．It involves the use of a machine learning algorithm.

C．It was test-run several times before being put into use.

D．Its success owes greatly to a European effort.

3. What will the researchers do in the next stage?

A．Prevent the formation of lightning.	B．Get lightning striking under control.
C．Inspire the study of a laser technology.	D．Raise the accuracy of lightning prediction.

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

A．A system of Controlling Lightning	B．A Theory of Employing Lightning
C．A Method of Forecasting Lightning	D．A Model of Creating Lightning

6 .

Summer Culture Welcome a student from France or Spain into your family! Exchange (交换) students from Spain and France are looking for welcoming, fun and loving hosts who will share life and culture with them for a few weeks in June, July and August. Stays can be from 4 to 6 weeks. What to do with your exchange student: Movies/ Museums/ Beach/ Cooking/ Community projects/ Volunteering/ Shopping/ anything you can think of...

Requirements to hosts: Loving and active family One stay-at-home host parent Willing to take students to places of interest once a week Contact information: If you are interested and would like more information, please contact: Shirley Wentzell 909-918-6715 Email: Shirley(@uceus.com

1. How long will exchange students possibly stay in host families?

A．10 days.

B．5 weeks.

C．2 months.

D．1 year.

2. According to the passage, the host should                      .

A．be rich and well-educated.	B．have good full-time jobs.
C．speak Spanish and French.	D．take students on a trip every week.

3. The text above is probably a                   .

A．letter

B．notice

C．poster

D．diary

7 . The Pomodoro technique is probably one of the most powerful techniques in all of learning. All you have to do is set a timer for 25 minutes, and then just focus as attentively as you can for those 25 minutes.

Now if you start focusing on and you’re working on, and then you look up at the timer and two minutes have passed. You may feel like you can’t hold on. And just let the thought go by, and return your focus to whatever you are working on. And when that 25 minutes is up you relax a little bit. You might wonder why that 25 minutes is the magic number, and the reality is we don’t really know. There’s not a lot of research on the Pomodoro technique, which is surprising because it’s so incredibly popular and people find it very useful.

But there’s an interesting tidbit (小趣闻) related to the Pomodoro technique, and that is that: when you just think about something that you don’t like very much, it stimulates a part of the brain that experiences pain. And so the brain naturally enough shifts its attention to something else, like Facebook or Twitter or something like that.

And what the Pomodoro technique does, when you do it you’re setting that timer. You don’t want to sit there and think, “I’m going to work on this problem and get it all finished. You just want to think, I’ve got 25 minutes where I just have to work on something. ” Don’t even think about what that thing is. What that does is it slips in under your brain’s radar. It doesn’t stimulate so much that pain in your brain; and then that pain in the brain, research has shown, lasts for 20 minutes.

So if you work for 25 minutes you will suddenly find yourself getting into the flow because you’ve gone past that painful period. So the Pomodoro technique is effective in many different aspects.

1. How does the Pomodoro technique work?

A．It boosts your concentration.

B．It helps your mind go faster.

C．It urges you to finish your work.

D．It shortens the pain time in your brain.

2. Which is an example of using the Pomodoro technique?

A．Reading a novel for 25 minutes.

B．Spending 25 minutes scanning WeChat.

C．Setting a timer for 25 minutes to do a tough task.

D．Attending a lecture for 25 minutes with two minds.

3. What can be inferred about the Pomodoro technique from Paragraph 2?

A．The first two minutes is vital.

B．25 minutes is a magic number.

C．More research is around the corner.

D．You may get discouraged when using it.

4. Why is the tidbit mentioned in Paragraph 3?

A．To further explain the Pomodoro technique.

B．To arouse interest in the Pomodoro technique.

C．To highlight how to use the Pomodoro technique.

D．To prove the effectiveness of the Pomodoro technique.

10 . A happy beagle (小猎犬) called Bella loves Amazon boxes. It tears into them while ignoring other delivery boxes. Little Bit, a tortoiseshell cat, is similarly consumed — but by socks. It raids (偷袭) the laundry basket in the middle of the night and also paws through the open suitcases of house guests, who almost always find themselves missing a sock in the morning. Pets do some pretty weird things. But these strange behaviors often make perfect sense to the pets, said scientists who study animal behaviors. “These behaviors are not invented on the spot,” said Carlo Siracusa, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania School of Veterinary Medicine. The pets are doing behaviors that their wild ancestors did, but they’ve changed them a bit to fit their new lives as pets.

Dogs can be trained to roll over and play dead. But their ancient instincts from their wolf ancestors are still there. Instincts, or instinctive behaviors, are behaviors that are done without thinking. They don’t have to be learned. For example, some dogs will scratch the ground after pooping(排便). But they’re not trying to bury their poop. They want other animals to notice it. “They are depositing smell in those areas,” Siracusa said. “It’s almost like drawing a picture with a big red marker around it,” he added.

Cats, on the other hand, almost always bury their waste. “They are covering their tracks,” says Monique Udell, an expert on human-animal interactions who works at Oregon State University. Cats are predators, meaning they hunt other animals for food. But other animals hunt them, too. So they don’t want to be seen-or smelled. Mikel Delgado, the founder of a California-based cat behavior consulting service, said that many other cat behaviors, arise from cats’ wild origins.

While dogs share many behaviors inherited (继承) from wolves, they’ve also developed a few of their own. “Puppy dog eyes”, the innocent look that many humans are helpless to resist, is one. Over the time period that they’ve lived with people, dogs have developed certain muscles around their eyes. This helps them make the adorable expressions that win over humans. Like wolves, dogs also like to lick faces. Humans think their pets are kissing them, but they are not. “It’s how wolf puppies get food from their parents’ mouths,” Siracusa said. “It also can be a sign of submission. When a lower-ranking individual approaches a higher-ranking one, it gets down real low and licks the dominant one to say: ‘I’m not a threat to you.’”

1. What has been done to introduce the topic in Paragraph 1?

A．Telling a story.	B．Making a comparison.
C．Presenting research results.	D．Criticizing pets’ bad behaviors.

2. Which can best replace the word “depositing” in Paragraph 2?

A．leaving

B．hiding

C．removing

D．detecting

3. Which statement summarizes the third paragraph?

A．Cats are interested in burying their waste.

B．Humans like the fact that their pet cats bury their waste.

C．Pet cats bury their waste because their wild ancestors did so.

D．Cats have changed a lot after becoming pets.

4. How do wolves show submission to dominant wolves?

A．Wolves run energetically around dominant wolves.

B．Wolves show dominant wolves “puppy dog eyes”.

C．Wolves beg food from dominant wolves.

D．Wolves lick dominant wolves’ faces.