Every morning, he sat quietly and motionless on the front steps of his house. His bright blue eyes seemed so distant and sad. Every morning, my daughter and I walked to her kindergarten and we passed his house. We were new to the neighbourhood, so I didn’t know many of my neighbours. On one beautiful morning, as we passed his house, my daughter joyfully called out to him, ‘Hi, Mr. Man!’ She was an outgoing girl, and I wasn’t surprised at her cheerfulness, but her enthusiasm soon faded when the man didn’t look at her or say ‘Hi’ back.
As we continued on our walk to school, my daughter curiously asked why the man didn’t want to say hi to her. Stumbling for words, because I didn’t have the answer, I said simply, ‘Maybe he is having a bad day.’
Once back home, I washed the breakfast dishes, and I thought about ‘Mr. Man.’ What was his story? Why did he seem so sad? Determined to do something to cheer him up, I brainstormed a few ways to make his day a bit brighter, but nothing seemed special enough.
The next morning, after dropping my daughter off at school, I saw one of my other neighbours tending her front garden. After I introduced myself, she invited me in for a chat. She was a long-time resident of the neighbourhood, who knew everyone and everything. She was a bubbly personality, but when I asked her about the man who lived nearby, she grew serious. ‘Bob recently lost his wife in a car accident. He hasn’t been the same since.’
The following week seemed to fly by. I had talked to my daughter about what we could do to bring a smile to Mr. Man’s face.
注意:
1. 续写的词数应为150左右;
2. 请按如下格式在答题卡的相应位置作答。
Paragraph 1: With every suggestion I made, my daughter simply said ‘No, not that.’
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Paragraph 2: Inside, in perfect calligraphy, it simply read, ‘Thank you, from Mr. Man.’
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The situation seemed hopeless.
From the first day he entered my junior-high classroom, Willard P. Franklin existed in his own world, shutting out his classmates and me, his teacher. My attempts at establishing a friendly relationship with him were met with complete indifference. Even a “Good morning, Willard” received only an audible grunt (嘟哝). I could see that his classmates feel no better. Willard was strictly a loner who seemed to have no desire or need to break his barrier of silence.
Shortly after the Thanksgiving holiday, word came that the annual Christmas collection of money for the less fortunate people in our school district was about to come. “Christmas is a season of giving,” I told my students. “There are a few students in the school who might not have happy holiday season, by contributing to our Christmas collection, you will help buy food, clothing and toys for these needy people. We will start the collection tomorrow.”
When I called for the contributions the next day, I discovered that almost everyone had forgotten, except Willard P. Franklin. The boy dug deep into his pants pockets as he strolled up to my desk. Carefully, he dropped two coins into the small container.
“I don’t need milk for lunch.” He mumbled. For a moment, just a moment, he smiled. Then he turned and walked back to his desk.
That night, after school, I took our meager (微薄的) contribution to the school principal. I couldn’t help sharing the incident that had taken place.
“I may be wrong, but I believe Willard might be getting ready to become a part of the world around him.” I told the principal.
“Yes, I believe it sounds hopeful,” he nodded, “And I think we might do well to have him share a bit of his world with us. I just received a list of the poor families in our school who most need help through the Christmas collection. Here, take a look at it.”
注意：1.续写词数应为150左右；
2.请按如下格式在答题卡相应位置作答。
Paragraph 1: As I gazed down to read, I discovered Willard P. Franklin and his family were the top names on the list!
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Paragraph 2: A flicker of joy, gratitude, and shyness danced across Willard’s face as he heard my words.
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3 . They say you catch more flies with honey than vinegar. But when it comes to tackling a tricky task, researchers have found that getting angry can also be a powerful motivator.
The experiments suggest people who are angry perform better on a set of challenging tasks than those who are emotionally neutral.
The study, published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, details how researchers at Texas A&M University conducted experiments involving more than 1,000 people, and analysed survey data from more than 1,400 people to explore the possible impact of anger on people in various circumstances.
In one experiment, students were shown images previously found to cause anger, desire, amusement, sadness or no particular emotion at all. Participants were subsequently asked to solve a series of anagrams (变形词).
The results reveal that for a challenging set of anagrams, those who were angry did better — although no difference was seen for easy anagrams.
The researchers say one explanation could be down to a link between anger and greater persistence, with the team finding those who were angry spent more time on the difficult set of anagrams.
In another experiment, participants who were angry did better at avoiding flags in a skiing video game than those who were neutral or sad, and were on a par with (同水平) those who felt amusement or desire.
“This pattern could indicate that general physical arousal (激起) had a benefit for game scores, as this would be greater in anger, amused, and desire conditions compared to the sad and neutral conditions,”the researchers write. However, no such differences in performance was found when it came to an easier video game.
“People often prefer to use positive emotions as tools more than negative and tend to see negative emotions as undesirable,” said Lench, the first author of the study. “Our research adds to the growing evidence that a mix of positive and negative emotions promotes well-being, and that using negative emotions as tools can be particularly effective in some situations.”
1. What tasks did the researchers set for the students?| A．Recognizing different emotion images. | B．Helping analyze a series of survey data. |
| C．Putting tasks into different categories. | D．Performing tasks in various emotional states. |
| A．It brings team spirit into full play. | B．It promotes a deep insight into the tasks. |
| C．It increases effort toward attaining a goal. | D．It changes challenging tasks into easy ones. |
| A．Research result consistent with previous findings. |
| B．Potential application of the research finding. |
| C．A further explanation of the research method. |
| D．A reasonable doubt about the research process. |
| A．To present more proofs. | B．To draw a conclusion. |
| C．To make a comparison. | D．To criticize old practices. |
4 . Different forests in the western United States have unique combinations of trees and birds. One type has broad-leaved trees like ash and cottonwood, along with kingbirds. Anoher type has evergreen trees like pine and white spruce, along with juncos. Ecologists in the early twentieth century once claimed these ecological communities were precisely balanced systems, where every species had a specific role to play in a complex machine. They believed that removing or adding any plant, bird, or insect, could disrupt this balance and harm the habitat. One of these pioneer ecologists was Frederick Clements, who believed that in a specific climate area, ecological communities gradually moved toward the most balanced and integrated group of species in that region.
Clements was challenged by another pioneer ecologist, Henry Gleason, who took the opposite view. Gleason viewed the community as largely a group of species with similar tolerances to the stresses given by climate and other factors typical of the region. Gleason thought chance played a big role in where species lived. His concept suggests that nature is not highly integrated. Each species is responding individually to its surroundings. Gleason thought things could change in different ways, depending upon local conditions.
Who was right? It now appears that Gleason was more accurate than Clements. The ecological community is mostly a random collection of species with similar responses to a particular climate. Ash trees are found in association with cottonwood trees because both can survive well on floodplains and the competition between them is not so strong that only one can survive.
This is not to say that precise harmonies are not present within communities. Most flowering plants rely on pollinators (传粉者). But if we see a precise balance of nature, it is largely a product of our perception, due to the false belief that nature, especially a complex system like a forest, seems so unchanging from one day to the next.
1. Early 20th century ecologists commonly claimed that___________.| A．each species plays a specific role in the community |
| B．new species need to be added as communities develop |
| C．maintaining precise balance in community is challenging |
| D．it is important to protect communities by removing certain species |
| A．How individualistic the species is. | B．Their ability to tolerate the stresses there. |
| C．The number of similar species present. | D．Their ways to integrate with other species. |
| A．To show greater species variety in floodplains. |
| B．To provide evidence to support Clements’ theory. |
| C．To give an example of species that prefer to live on floodplains. |
| D．To support the current view on how ecological communities develop. |
| A．culture | B．environment | C．understanding | D．education |
5 . Curiosity — the desire to know, to discover, to learn. Inspired by curiosity, humans are found everywhere on our planet, and beyond it in space. Yet according to human behaviourist and author of Curious, Ian Leslie, although we are all born curious, not all of us bring this into adulthood, and we can lose out as a result.
As Leslie explains, curiosity shapes us from the start. By trying new things, we build knowledge, and want to know more. “We are born aware that we don’t know stuff — we want to experience and discover.” However, the contrast between childhood and adulthood is clear. “We ask 40,000 questions a year between the ages of two and five,” says Leslie — around 110 each day; adults, in comparison, ask just 20.
As we get older, we may feel hesitant about asking questions, believing this reveals gaps in our knowledge. We can become scared to share unconventional ideas for fear of criticism or misunderstanding. We can also be a victim of our success, as Leslie explains. “Once you’ve worked out how to do your job, then you don’t feel curious anymore. The need to learn goes away — in a way, curiosity has done its job. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t cultivate it.”
Leslie’s tips for cultivating curiosity begin with spending time with the experts — children. “Talk to your kids, and try to answer those weird, difficult questions they have — like ‘What is air?’ This makes you think about things you’ve taken for granted — it reawakens your curiosity in what’s around us and how we perceive the world.”
So does finding what Leslie calls an ‘informal mentor’, through work or other circles, who is happy to share their expertise, from a skill, technology, to a field of learning. “Try to think of people the way children think of adults — as sources of secret knowledge, a great store of learning you can tap into,” says Leslie.
Leslie also suggests creating a ‘spark file’ — a digital or physical notebook in which you collect interesting thoughts. “Fill it with facts you’ve come across, sentences you like, insights that strike you. Let it be random. And let it build. Over time you’ll build up a rich source of inspiration, and you’ll think, ‘Oh that’s interesting, that relates to this…’ And suddenly your mind starts firing away with new ideas and ways of thinking.”
1. According to Leslie, what happens as we get older?| A．We gradually lose our natural curiosity. |
| B．We are less aware of our knowledge gaps. |
| C．We are unwilling to let others benefit from our ideas. |
| D．We may think asking questions makes people foolish. |
| A．A day’s planning is best done at daybreak. |
| B．In the eyes of a lover, Xi Shi will appear. |
| C．A master can lead you to the door, but the rest is up to you. |
| D．When three people walk together, one can surely be my teacher. |
| A．It is carefully organized. | B．It can help people connect ideas. |
| C．It only contains complete sentences. | D．It can help people improve their memory. |
| A．To prove Ian Leslie’s arguments. | B．To summarise Ian Leslie’s viewpoint. |
| C．To question Ian Leslie’s conclusions. | D．To introduce Ian Leslie’s achievements. |
6 . He is a Chinese superstar, a piano genius who has sold millions of albums worldwide. Lang Lang has also used his fame and fortune to help state schools around the world that lack music, warning at a 2019 awards ceremony in London that such lessons had become “a real challenge” for children in the most disadvantaged communities.
Now he is bringing music to British state schools in an ambitious project that will set up modern “piano labs” in needy schools across the nation. Each lab will have 20 to 30 keyboards. The plan is inspired by his programmes in the US and China, in which he has invested tens of millions of pounds.
In the US, he has set up piano labs in 86 schools, giving 70,000 kids access to keyboards. In China, he has installed them in 104 schools, enabling 110,000 children to make music. This is primarily for pupils aged seven to 12.
The first UK school to benefit is the Winns primary school in Waltham Forest, London’s 12th poorest area. It will receive 30 keyboards within the next few weeks. Every lab is accompanied by a curriculum created by the Royal Conservatory of Music of Toronto and Lang Lang, with ongoing teacher-training, financial support, and headphones, allowing group piano classes.
Asked what inspired him to support UK schools, Lang told the reporter: “We were able to identify many similarities between state schools in the UK and public schools in the US in terms of the way access to music and arts can be extremely limited when budgets are cut…I was so surprised by how music classes are never guaranteed. The schools and teachers are incredible, and are so dedicated to providing their students with everything they can. But it shocked me how access to music education can be so limited.”
His charity quotes the Greek philosopher Aristotle: “Music has the power of producing a certain effect on the moral character of the soul, and if it has the power to do this, it is clear that the young must be directed to music and must be educated in it.”
Lang Lang said: “When I visit our partner schools and see the joy on the students’ faces or hear from our teachers about the progress students are making, I’m reminded of why we created this programme—to give children an opportunity to discover what they’re capable of achieving and to find their voices through music.”
1. What is the purpose of the first paragraph?| A．To offer background information. | B．To introduce an argument. |
| C．To discuss Lang Lang’s plans. | D．To highlight Lang Lang’s reputation. |
| A．Private schools. | B．Ambitious schools. |
| C．Remote schools. | D．Disadvantaged schools. |
| A．The teachers are doing a good job. |
| B．Music classes aren’t always available. |
| C．The budgets are always being cut. |
| D．The schools are dedicated to helping students. |
| A．Lang Lang—a kind and caring pianist |
| B．Lang Lang teaches the world to play piano |
| C．Chinese superstar brings music to British kids |
| D．Chinese piano genius looks for future piano stars |
7 . We’re growing more used to chatting to our computers, phones and smart speakers through voice assistants. Out of these assistants, Siri is the most well-known spoken web. Blind people have been using text-to-speech assistant for decades.
Some think voice could soon take over from clicking as the main way to interact online. They believe online interaction would soon depend mainly on voice.
Building the spoken web—web-to-voice and voice-to-web—is by no means an easy task. For software to answer simple questions about the weather and play music for us is easy.
Using voice interaction feels far closer than surfing the net the old-fashioned way.
| A．Spoken web requires more personality to become popular. |
| B．But what are the challenges of moving to ”the spoken web“? |
| C．It is also possible to search for different information you need. |
| D．The benefits of using voice obviously depend on the context. |
| E．The informal tone of the assistant helps create an emotional attachment. |
| F．But to have a conversation with users on diverse topics is a long way off. |
| G．People who can’t read can also obtain information using the spoken web. |
8 . It was time to start my afternoon run on the school bus. I drove up to the elementary school, parked and opened the doors.
Usually I enjoyed
The kids walked past me onto the bus. One or two said ‘Hi’. A little girl
I absent mindedly
I’d hoped family counseling would help Shayn quit drinking.
I moved to throw the note in the rubbish can near the driver’s seat, then
As I read the note, my whole body
I searched my rearview mirror (后视镜) for the child who’d given me the note, but not a single one had long blonde hair.
1.| A．greeting | B．pulling | C．teaching | D．separating |
| A．gaze | B．thought | C．brake | D．schedule |
| A．cheap | B．expensive | C．easy | D．difficult |
| A．hopeless | B．effortless | C．neglected | D．homeless |
| A．failure | B．struggle | C．pleasure | D．success |
| A．distributed | B．laid | C．covered | D．returned |
| A．threw away | B．gave away | C．picked out | D．picked up |
| A．come | B．hang | C．disappear | D．emerge |
| A．For | B．And | C．Or | D．But |
| A．socially | B．sensitively | C．passively | D．politely |
| A．unless | B．if | C．so | D．though |
| A．refused | B．paused | C．left | D．explained |
| A．unfolded | B．unlocked | C．unwrapped | D．unpacked |
| A．confidence | B．patience | C．hope | D．courage |
| A．shook | B．ached | C．shrank | D．relaxed |
9 . When someone tells me that they’re going to spend just 3 days in Paris, I feel like they’re most likely not going to love it. I mean, it’s possible to have a great time if you do it right and put what you want to see at the first place. During such a short visit most tourists head to see the Eiffel Tower, Notre Dame, Louvre and some other tourist attractions, and therefore experience crowds, long lines and not the real local Paris.
Take your pick and spend some time actually enjoying these things instead of rushing through everything. I’m not telling you not to see these famous landmarks, but in order to fully feel the Paris atmosphere, you need to stay in the city longer. A stay in Paris just for a weekend seems far from seeing all the great things.
Almost everyone is dreaming of getting to the top of the Eiffel Tower. But the moment you start approaching the tower you might realize that it’s not very romantic, as it’s surrounded by a ton of visitors and annoying vendors (小贩). The place is crowded, and lines take forever no matter when you visit it.
It’s hard to find a romantic spot unless you book a dinner on top of the Eiffel Tower. It’s something you will only do once, as it’s not the best fine dining you’ve ever had — you’re doing it just for the experience. However, if you climb the stairs behind the Croatian Embassy you may be able to find a quiet spot overlooking the tower. The view is wonderful and definitely worth it, especially at night when the tower starts blinking!
I recommend you to see the city from up high from the top of the Tour Montparnasse, Arc de Triomphe, or even a carousel (旋转木马) in Tuileries, and actually have the Eiffel Tower in your view.
1. What can be inferred from the first paragraph?| A．You can only see crowds at tourist attractions. |
| B．He who has a short visit doesn’t love Paris. |
| C．Visitor can have a good time traveling in Paris in three days. |
| D．It takes more time to experience the real Paris. |
| A．Fully feeling the atmosphere of the city. |
| B．Only visiting the famous landmarks of the city. |
| C．Seeing the whole city at the weekend. |
| D．Rushing through all attractions in the city. |
| A．Delighted. | B．Sad. | C．Exhausted. | D．Romantic. |
| A．The atmosphere of Paris. |
| B．The tips of visiting Paris better. |
| C．The view of the Eiffel Tower. |
| D．The tourist attractions in Paris. |
10 . Language clubs are friendly and supportive places where like-minded students can learn and practice a different language.
Chinese Club
The Chinese Club offers chances for you to appreciate the most widely spoken language in the world. In the club, we not only have conversation hours to practice speaking Chinese, but also watch films and listen to music.
French Club
Russian Club
It is a club for both knowledge exchange and personal growth to students who want to learn about Russia. We offer a chance to discover Russian culture and history while making new friends.
Italian Club
It is a club for those who share a strong interest in Italian culture and language. Join our extra-curricular activities to meet native Italian speakers, make pizzas, and host opera workshops! We meet every Monday from 6:30 to 7:30 p.m. at the Overseas Student Center.
Make new friends and join us today! For more information about the latest activities, please feel free to contact languageclubs2023@gmail.com.
| A．If you are interested in museum visits |
| B．Here are some clubs that you need to know |
| C．Moreover, we also celebrate traditional festivals |
| D．It is a club for those who long to learn cooking skills |
| E．Whether you’re a beginner or an experienced speaker |
| F．Besides cultural events, we also run many weekly lessons |
| G．It is a club offering group events about language and history |
