1. Who is the main audience for the announcement?
A.Soccer players. | B.Parents of soccer players. | C.The youngest soccer players. |
A.They are too young to play. |
B.The transportation will be arranged by the speaker. |
C.There aren’t enough players to make teams. |
A.Some insurance. | B.Some reservations. | C.Some paperwork. |
A.His name is Steve. | B.His child plays soccer. | C.He is a soccer coach. |
2 . It was meant to connect us, make us smarter and our lives easier. And it has. But there’s at least one comer of life where the Internet has made things so much more difficult: gift giving.
Once upon a time, if you were struggling to find a present for a loved one, there were easy options to fall back on-DVDs, CDs, video games and other physical media. This wasn’t even that long ago, but now it’s been snatched from our grasp by the Internet offering us the chance, at a relatively low cost, to watch, listen to or read whatever we want, whenever we want. With everything already watched, listened to, or read, buying a present has become near impossible.
Therefore, we all have to work at becoming perfect gift givers, taking all factors into consideration and searching high and low to seek out the ideal present. If we go the extra mile, there’s less chance that the person we have in mind has already bought what we’re considering online.
But as I now consider this exact plan of action, I’m thinking perhaps it’s not all that bad. Maybe the Internet is delivering us a lesson, firm but fair: the era of half-baked present purchasing is over and it’s time to go hard or go home.
In this era of immediate satisfaction, if you want to give someone a useful present, you do have to actually go to the effort of sourcing something nice for them. Perhaps that’s making for a more rewarding gift experience for all involved. And perhaps it also means fewer gifts that are given as an excuse and end up being unused.
1. How is the topic of gift giving introduced in Paragraph 1?A.By demonstrating the prospect of the Internet. |
B.By showing the difficulty in using the Internet. |
C.By pointing out the shortcoming of the Internet. |
D.By arguing about the possible benefits of the Internet. |
A.Numerous gift options. | B.Relative high cost for presents. |
C.Limited offer from digital giants. | D.Easy access to the Internet versions. |
A.Purchase satisfactory gifts. | B.Try to select a present. |
C.Buy fewer gifts as an excuse. | D.Make more valuable presents. |
A.Confused. | B.Critical. | C.Neutral. | D.Acceptable. |
3 . Why do we talk the way we do? It might date back to when our ancestors left the jungle for the open plain. Between 5.3 million and 16 million years ago, Africa’s landscapes changed from thick, leafy forests to wide-open grasslands. This environmental change pushed our ancestors out of the trees and onto the ground. Along with all of the physical and behavioral changes this may have caused, researchers also believe it may have changed the way we speak.
“Open landscapes provide us with fewer objects to affect signal communication, meaning our voices can travel further compared with that in thick forests,” Charlotte Gannon, a researcher who studies language development, told Newsweek. “The move to these open spaces may have increased the effectiveness of our communication.”
By comparing the vocal calls of the orangutan (大猩猩) , Gannon and her team were able to establish how different calls could travel across different landscapes. In their study, the team played 487 calls from orangutans and measured their audibility (可听度) at set length over an overall distance of over 1,300 feet in the South African plain.
“Our results were surprising,” Gannon said, “The rule of sound spread suggests that lower-frequency (低频率) sounds (the grumphs) would have traveled further than higher-frequency sounds (the kiss squeaks). Our results actually found the opposite to this.” In these environmental settings, consonant (辅音)-like calls traveled a lot further than vowel (元音) -like calls. Actually, around 80 percent of consonant-based calls were audible at 1,300 feet, compared to only 20 percent of vowel-based calls.
Gannon said these results highlight the importance of studying living orangutan to learn about our species’ history. “We can view them as time machines that allow us to recreate key moments of our history so we can learn more about the development of our language,” Gannon said. “Despite their popularity in modern languages, consonants have often been forgotten when discussing speech development. Our research highlights not only their presence in ancient times but their importance to the development of language.”
1. What led to the speech development?A.Behavioral change. | B.Time development. |
C.Physical development. | D.Environmental change. |
A.Less block. | B.Better tools. | C.Louder voice. | D.Larger vocabulary. |
A.The results of the study. |
B.The process of the research. |
C.The purpose of the program. |
D.The participants of the project. |
A.The living orangutan can recreate our language. |
B.Consonants are significant in language development. |
C.The sound of grumphs travels further than that of kiss squeaks. |
D.Consonant-like calls travel four times further than vowel-like calls. |
For years, my wife Teresa taught physical education at the elementary school level. Travelling on a regular schedule to the six schools in her district, she had a chance to get to know most of the kids in the area and see them at their best and their worst.
One day, in her class, Teresa noticed a third-grade girl, Meagan, who was short and grossly overweight, with a closed and hopeless look on her face. Meagan always sat alone in class, played alone at break, and ate alone from a recycled paper sack at lunch. The teachers and staff were kind to Meagan, but the students were not.
The stories made your shoulders drop. Teresa heard that when the playground supervisors (管理员) turned their backs, kids would run up to Meagan, calling her “Meagan the Fat Pig.” They did far worse than isolate (孤立) her; they filled her school days and walks home with physical and emotional torment (折磨). Also, Meagan’s single mother, a hard-working woman, was trying her best to make ends meet but she had never made it before.
Meagan’s situation disturbed my wife deeply. After talking with the principle and other teachers, Teresa came up with an idea. She knew from talking to Meagan that the child had never had a pet. Teresa was sure a pet would be the perfect way to inject some high-powered love and acceptance into Meagan’s life.
So one Saturday afternoon, Meagan was invited to Teresa’s office. When the door buzzer sounded, a dog engaged in a predictable and vigorous welcome. Getting down on one knee, Teresa introduced herself to Meagan. She told Meagan her thought that she could take away a puppy if she liked. Like any creature that has been cared about, Meagan gleamed in her eyes and playfully lifted the puppy almost off the ground. That day Meagan left the office with the puppy.
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。
Paragraph 1: Now she had a living, breathing friend who wanted to play with her.
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Paragraph 2: Ten years later, Teresa received an invitation to the high school graduation ceremony from Meagan, where Meagan made a speech.
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
5 . People these days are posting about their lives on social media. But what if you’re a private and introverted person like me? What if you want to live in the moment instead of sharing every bit of your life? To be honest, it’s nobody’s business but your own.
Escaping stalkers (跟踪者).
I’ve been a public person as a jazz vocalist for years. It exposed me to stalkers who felt they knew me, just because I was present everywhere. Needless to say, it brought me much anxiety and stress. At some point I asked myself-is being visible more important than my peace of mind?
Protecting privacy
Another reason I keep my life private is that I prefer to be in the present moment and appreciate it fully. To be on your phone constantly, or to film everything you do, can be quite disrespectful to the people you spend your time with. You lose out on those spontaneous(自发的) moments and a deeper connection. I choose what I share and when I share it, and the rest is for experiencing life without expectations.
Live your life fully, regardless of whether the world knows it or not!
A.Experiencing life |
B.Living in the moment |
C.Don’t I really care about privacy? |
D.Are my followers more important than my friends and family? |
E.If you feel like sharing your life openly without hesitation, go for it. |
F.Here are my reasons for not sharing my personal life on social media. |
G.It can be quite challenging to go through tough moments with everyone watching. |
6 . Taking a picture of Mars is not easy. Once light bounces off the planet, it can take between 3 to 22 minutes to travel to Earth - so there aren’t truly “live” images of Mars.
But on Friday afternoon, the European Space Agency will offer the closest thing: the first “livestream” of Mars a rare, almost real-time look into space on YouTube, which posts pictures of the planet every 50 seconds as they beam down directly from the camera mounted (安装) on the agency’s Mars Express orbiter (轨道飞行器). We can get a firsthand look at Mars on Friday.
“During Friday’s one-hour livestream, the time between the images being taken from orbit around Mars and appearing on your screen will be about 18 minutes,” James Godfrey, the spacecraft operations manager at the ESA’s mission control center, said in a statement. “That’s 17 minutes for light to travel from Mars to Earth in their current configuration, and about one minute to pass through the wires and servers on the ground. ”
“Normally, we see images from Mars and know that they were taken days before. I’m excited to see Mars as it is now - as close to a Martian(火星人) ‘now’ as we can possibly get!’
In 50-second intervals, the camera shoots across Mars, showing a side of the planet entering night, as well as some clouds billowing out on the comer. The livestream celebrates the 20th anniversary of the Mars Express mission which was launched in 2003 to better understand the planet, as well as search for traces of water.
It’s with this camera, originally meant for engineering purposes, that we’ll get ”live“ images on Friday evening from 18:00 CEST in the first MarsLIVE. What makes this unique, is that it’s a one-hour livestream from Mars but don’t expect a detailed view of the Red Planet!
1. What can we learn from this text?A.Watching the MarsLIVE, people will have a completely real-time view of the Mars. |
B.The audience can watch the MarsLIVE thanks to the camera on the Mars |
C.About 20 years ago, the ESA launched an orbiter to search for Martians. |
D.The MarsLIVE is to celebrate the launch of the Mars Express mission in 2003. |
A.Equipment. | B.Orbit. | C.Planet. | D.Spacecraft. |
A.The live images taken from orbit around Mars. |
B.The 20th anniversary of the Mars Express mission. |
C.The first ”livestream“ of Mars to be shown on YouTube. |
D.A rare and almost real-time look into space on YouTube. |
A.The camera was originally used to shoot the Mars. |
B.We can get truly live Mars images in the first MarsLIVE. |
C.Detailed images about the Mars can’t be ensured. |
D.The unique MarsLIVE will live up to viewers’ expectation. |
7 . In the joyful summer Chadalavada spent with Jayasree, his grandmother in 2018, the pair watched endless movies. Late one evening, Jayasree, who had recently been diagnosed (诊断) with Alzheimer’s, got up in her nightdress and went to make tea at her home in India. After she returned to her bedroom, Chadalavada went into the kitchen to find that his grandmother had left the gas on!
Chadalavada decided to invent a wearable device to help people like his grandmother. Now aged 17, Chadalavada is ready to start making the Alpha Monitor. The device, which can be worn as an armband, sets off an alarm when the wearer with Alzheimer’s starts to move and warns a caregiver if the patient falls or wanders off.
Most similar devices run on Wi-Fi or Bluetooth, so when a person moves out of their frequencies’ limited range the connection is lost and with it the monitoring. But the Alpha Monitor can detect a person more than a mile away in cities and three miles in the countryside thanks to the long-range technology, known as LoRa, it uses.
Teaching himself with YouTube videos about robotics and electronics, Chadalavada has developed several prototypes (模型). To understand the needs of people with Alzheimer’s, he spent time in a day centre run by the Alzheimer’s and Related Disorders Society of India. There, the cofounder told him that the device “had to be something light that can be worn on any part of the body”. She says: “Many patients don’t like having to wear a watch and they take it off.”
In March, when Chadalavada’s school exams are over, he will put the finishing touches to the monitor, with the aim of getting the device ready for market by September. He is confident that it should be sold at an affordable price for most people.
Chadalavada hopes to study robotics at a university abroad. His aim is simple: “I want to create products to help people in India for the whole world.”
1. Why did Chadalavada invent the Alpha Monitor?A.To treat Alzheimer’s. |
B.To entertain senior citizens. |
C.To improve Alzheimer’s caregiving. |
D.To ensure fire safety at the elderly’s homes. |
A.It is more comfortable to wear. | B.It has a longer service time. |
C.It offers a remoter monitoring. | D.It uses higher frequency controls. |
A.Where his invention could be polished. |
B.What people with Alzheimer’s felt like. |
C.How Alzheimer’s disease could be cured. |
D.Whether his invention would be profitable. |
A.He enjoys living simply. | B.He has an innovative mind. |
C.He used to be a health worker. | D.He longs to be a robotics professor. |
1. What is the name of the speaker’s first play?
A.Bird on the Wing. | B.Iris Falls. | C.Clara’s Girl. |
A.She was a talented actress. |
B.She didn’t trust another actress. |
C.She couldn’t afford to pay proper actors. |
A.Yvette Rogers. | B.Dame Vera Parker. | C.Shing Wu. |
1. What does the speaker think of the wedding in Italy?
A.It is typical. | B.It is boring. | C.It is impressive. |
A.In Italy. | B.In France. | C.In England. |
A.Long speeches are given. |
B.A big dinner is served before the wedding. |
C.Everything about wedding is made at home. |
A.To play a joke on the bridegroom. |
B.To make the bridegroom different. |
C.To raise money for the new couple. |
10 . I used to stutter (口吃) quite badly. I felt very
I didn’t have any
The stepping stone to self-belief for me was
My learning disability was a bit of me, but it doesn’t
A.tense | B.small | C.frightened | D.annoyed |
A.impressions | B.requirements | C.qualifications | D.challenges |
A.wage | B.degree | C.honour | D.friendship |
A.supported | B.coached | C.confused | D.abused |
A.talking | B.working | C.living | D.studying |
A.calm | B.brave | C.dying | D.lost |
A.where | B.why | C.how | D.when |
A.comfortably | B.peacefully | C.independently | D.colourfully |
A.get around | B.decide on | C.ask about | D.seek for |
A.intervention | B.funding | C.guidance | D.permit |
A.Gradually | B.Eventually | C.Surprisingly | D.Desperately |
A.email | B.appeal | C.option | D.interview |
A.train | B.persuade | C.promise | D.expect |
A.vocabulary | B.wealth | C.confidence | D.strength |
A.remind | B.abandon | C.confirm | D.define |