1 . One morning soon, you’ll get on your bike and ride from one end of America to the other, because the Great American Rail-Trail is 53% complete, making a cross-country bike ride closer to a reality.
The idea of a bike trail made up of scenic paths, trails and former rail lines from Washington D. C. to Washington State has been 30 years in the making. Now, with more than 50% of the trail up and running, the project, run by the Rails to Trails in cooperation with local authorities, is gaining steam, with hundreds of miles of trails in development now.
Last August, Ryan Gardill and a colleague biked 350 miles from Pittsburgh to Washington D. C.. Their travels took them through some beautiful and historical parts of the American East.“The trail connected me to our revolutionary and industrial history. Though not entirely complete, the rail trail has drawn people of all types due to its beautiful scenery along the way. Most of the towns on the trail were once important to America.”
The major goal of the trail is to provide the American public with the opportunity to explore their beautiful country, without getting in their cars. A secondary objective is to make the small towns and cities prosperous(繁荣的) again, according to National Geographic.
One of these is Muncie, Indiana, a city located on a former rail system and a part of the Great American Rail-Trail. The city is already seeing the economic benefits of the trail. “A large majority of our customers are locals, but the Rail-Trail could help grow tourism,” said Jason Allardt, owner of the historic Kirk’s Bike Shop.
This is the hope for numerous once-prosperous towns and cities all throughout America, though it may take nearly 20 years to get the entire trail up and running.
1. What can we know about the Great American Rail-Trail?| A．It’s fit for trains. | B．It’s been finished already. |
| C．It’s a long and complex project. | D．It’s run by the American government. |
| A．It’s a bike trail with good scenery. | B．It’s a rail line across the country. |
| C．It offers adventurous paths. | D．Its construction lasts 30 years. |
| A．They mainly lie in the mountains. |
| B．They have been popular tourist destinations. |
| C．They’re no longer prosperous towns or cities in America. |
| D．They are the main towns and cities along the U. S. railway. |
| A．It recovers its rail system. | B．It has made it a popular city. |
| C．It brings many bike shops. | D．It stimulates the local economy. |
2 . Argentinians aren’t known for helping strangers, but young people are leading the way in tough times.
There are thousands of people living on the streets across the capital, and 43% of the country’s population lives in poverty. It’s a reflection of the terrible economic crisis and sky- high inflation (通货膨胀) that’s enveloping the country. Some 600 volunteers are working to fill the void(空白) where government services and the labor market are falling short. These volunteers may not be well off, but they offer whatever they can to lift their neighbors up: a hand, a meal, or simply some of their time.
Generosity of time and affection is generally reserved for family and close friends in Argentina. But there are significant increases in volunteering in times of the greatest crisis.
Study found a correlation between volunteering and general satisfaction. Some 23% of respondents who said they volunteered last year indicated Argentina as the best place for them to live, compared to only 14% of non-volunteers.
Carmela Pavesi, an organizer in her mid-20s said, “You don’t need a lot of money or a lot of things,” she said. “With the people you have nearby, wherever you are, you can do something with what you have.”
“Today there are more people living on the streets, more people in need, more people begging for money or help,” said Eduardo Donza, a researcher with the Social Debt Observatory at the Universidad Católica de Argentina. “If we don’t generate more wealth, if we can’t create more good jobs, we’re never going to come out of this.”
The crisis itself pushes people together, uniting in empathy (共鸣). “Volunteering can’t solve these wider issues on its own. But it seems to me like solidarity has increased. That willingness to help matters,” he added.
1. What do we know about the Argentinians mentioned in paragraph 2?| A．They are unwilling to help the poor. | B．They are applying to be volunteers. |
| C．They are going through hardships. | D．They are leaving their hometown. |
| A．It mainly involves the students. | B．It brings about life satisfaction. |
| C．It makes people wealthier. | D．It costs a great deal. |
| A．Inflation. | B．Satisfaction. |
| C．Wealth. | D．Unity. |
| A．Helping neighbors in hard times | B．Getting rid of poverty together |
| C．Showing sympathy for the poor | D．No longer living on the streets |
I lost all my hair at age two due to a disease. All I wanted growing up was to fit in. I would look at all the beautiful girls and think, “If I had hair, I would be beautiful, too.”
I wore a wig(假发) and was teased for it. They would call me “bald(秃头)” or say, “Lindsay has no hair.” They were right, so I just let them bully me. And I felt like I deserved it.
Sports became my escape, and I was fortunate to have athletic ability. I would race home every day and play basketball in my driveway for hours. I would pretend to make the game-winning shot. The crowd would go wild. I never thought about my bald head during these moments, but rather who I wanted to become and what I wanted to accomplish.
I started to gain recognition from others. I became known as a girl who was good at basketball, not just as the girl who didn’t have hair. I was still bullied, but it began to bother me less because I had another distraction. I put all my time and energy into basketball and becoming the best player I could be.
In my senior year of college, I wanted to run the marathon in my town to check this athletic endeavor off my wish list. I barely trained and thought it was just running. I was wrong in countless ways.
I had no idea at the time that this 26.2-mile run would change my life and attitude in more ways than I could have imagined. During that run, something clicked inside me. I felt strong, fierce, and truly like Superwoman. I had never felt this way before, not even during the other sporting games I had played in. I will never forget the feeling of crossing the finish line, all the emotions I felt, and the way everyone celebrated me. I fell in love with the sport and knew I wanted to become a runner.
I began running marathons all over the country. The more I ran, the stronger and more confident I felt. I slowly started to talk about my hair to close friends and even went out walking without my wig.
注意：
1.所续写短文的词数应为150个左右；
2.请按如下格式在答题卡的相应位置作答。
Then one day, on a hot twenty-mile training run, I took off my wig mid-run.
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Two weeks later, I ran my first marathon, bald.
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4 . At the beginning of Grade Two, I joined the cross-country running team in our school.
When I came to the first practice, I was filled with optimism. But as the distance we ran in each practice gradually increased from three to four, to six miles, I realized with surprise that no matter how hard I tried, I wasn’t able to run as fast as others. In fact, I was one of the slowest on the team.
What was the point of putting myself through so much pain? After the first few weeks, I wanted to quit.
Then we had our first cross-country meet.
When we started the race, I felt the great pressure of expectations sink onto my shoulders. And after a while I stopped running and struggled to walk up the hill. But then I heard my coaches shouting my name from the top of the hill. I felt confused and embarrassed; why were they cheering for me? I was running terribly! As I tried my best to finish the race, I realized that my coaches didn’t care how fast I ran. Neither did my teammates. During the rest of the season, they were always on the sidelines of every race, cheering for me just as loudly as they’d cheered for the front runner.
From then on, I began to put my effort into supporting my teammates instead of focusing on my own performance. In that way, I celebrated my teammates’ victories as if they were my own; I felt their pain and exhaustion as if they were my own.
Cross-country running made me realize I don’t need to be the best to be successful in life. It taught me to value my relationships with people more than my relationship with my ego. It taught me to cheer for others even if I don’t know their names.
1. Why did the author want to give up after the first few weeks?| A．He had much pain in his knees. |
| B．He didn’t perform well in long-distance running. |
| C．He couldn’t get along well with others |
| D．He showed no interest in running. |
| A．Strict and hard-hearted. | B．Brave and adventurous. |
| C．Considerate and supportive. | D．Optimistic and humorous. |
| A．He lost himself in victories |
| B．He put more effort into his study |
| C．He received more support from his coaches |
| D．He started caring about his teammates |
| A．The importance of team spirit | B．The value of competition |
| C．The secret of winning a race | D．The benefits of doing sports |
5 . Why is Art so Powerful?
Perhaps the simplest answer to this question is that art touches us emotionally.
Art is powerful because it can potentially influence our culture, politics, and even the economy. When we see a powerful work of art, you feel it touching deep within your core, giving us the power to make real-life changes.
It has the power to educate people about almost anything.
It breaks cultural, social, and economic barriers. While art hardly really solves poverty or promotes social justice on its own, it can be used as a fair playing field for conversation and expression.
It accesses higher orders of thinking. Art doesn’t just make you absorb information.
| A．Everyone can relate to art because everyone has emotions and personal experiences. |
| B．Rather, it makes you think about current ideas and inspire you to make your own. |
| C．Art may seek to bring about some particular emotion to relax and entertain the viewers. |
| D．The truth is that people have recognized how powerful art can be. |
| E．Art, at its simplest, is a form of communicating with each other. |
| F．It presents information in a way that could be absorbed by many easily. |
| G．As a matter of fact, studies have shown that exposure to art can make you better in other fields. |
6 . The drone (无人机) is flying above the Amazon River in Brazil, but its battery is running low. Andre Coelho, the chief pilot, guides it back to safety with skills perfected by playing video games. Long hours’ practicing has become a surprising benefit in an effort to conserve dolphins that live in the river. Marcelo Oliveira, a conservation specialist, stands on the bow of a boat. He pulls the white drone from the air, changes the battery, and quickly sends it back in the sky.
Later, scientists will examine the video which has recorded for signs of the two species of dolphins that inhabit the river: the pink and bulbous boto (亚马孙河豚), and the smaller, prettier tucuxi (白海豚). Exactly how many live in the basin is a mystery. Some studies have suggested a decline of the pink dolphins in specific areas of the Amazon River, but the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) says there isn’t enough data available for either species of dolphins.
“We need to base everything on hard data,” says Miriam Marmontel, a scientist. “We need to focus on what’s really critical to help us get to a real situation that can influence policy. We need numbers. We need information on death and reproduction.”
Marmontel’s biggest concern is that dolphins are being caught in the nets of local fishermen. Scientists have also given a warning against fishermen’s killing botos. Pollution from gold mining is also a concern.
The scientists want to use the information they collect to persuade the IUCN to list the boto and the tucuxi as endangered species. Funding agencies and governments want evidence. Without the IUCN’s categorization, it’s difficult to raise the money for protection measures.
They hope their drone monitoring will do the trick. During three trips to the Amazon last year, the team has recorded about 70 samples (样本) that will contribute to a more accurate estimate of dolphin populations in the Amazon basin.
1. What are Coelho and Oliveira doing in the Amazon River?| A．Playing a video game. |
| B．Recording the video of the flowing river. |
| C．Testing the drone they designed for fun. |
| D．Collecting data on dolphins with a drone. |
| A．The fishermen’s living conditions. | B．The money for protection measures. |
| C．The pollution from the gold mining. | D．The dolphins being caught by fishermen. |
| A．To raise money to protect the Amazon basin. |
| B．To find evidence for the need to take measures. |
| C．To urge governments to record Amazon species. |
| D．To get an exact number of species in the Amazon. |
| A．Worried. | B．Approving. | C．Unfavorable. | D．Unclear. |
7 . Getting motivated when you don't feel like working out is so much easier when you have a workout partner!
If you are doubting your discipline or feel like your motivation ebbs and flows(起伏), then a workout partner can make all the difference! For both of you!
With A Workout Partner, You Show Up
You set time to meet and exercise about an hour, and you are getting dressed and planning to head out soon. When you are alone, so many things can get in the way and seem more important: the laundry, the kid's needs, fixing dinner, petting the dog...
You’ll Work Harder With A Partner
You and your workout partner will have a workout plan, and you'll know what is expected for the day.
A Workout Partner Keeps You Focused
Your focus on the exercise at hand is multiplied when you have a workout partner. There is a purpose for your meeting, and it becomes clear how to make the goal a reality with consistent work. The hard work seems worth it when you have a partner who is working towards the same goal.
| A．If you have ever done, you know what I mean. |
| B．Before you know it, your planned exercise time is gone. |
| C．As a workout partner, you are a motivator and a voice of reason. |
| D．Your partner will remind you of the potential mistakes you may make. |
| E．With a workout partner, you learn how to achieve the desired results. |
| F．So it makes you more focused, knowing your time together is limited. |
| G．Your partner will push and motivate you because he or she expects the same from you! |
When a reporter first met Jake Lee Pinnick, the American’s fluency in Putonghua
Dressed
In 2010, Pinnick moved all the way to Wudang from the US when he was just 20 years old and
Now he has over 600 thousand
9 . Silence might not be deafening but it’s something that literally can be heard, concludes a team of philosophers and psychologists who used auditory illusion(听觉错觉) to reveal how moments of silence misinterpret people’s perception of time. The findings address the debate of whether people can hear more than sounds, which has puzzled philosophers for centuries.
The team adapted well-known auditory illusions to create versions in which the sounds of the original illusions were replaced by moments of silence. For example, one illusion made a sound seem much longer than it really was. In the team’s new silence-based illusion, an equally long moment of silence also seemed longer than it really was.
The fact that these silence-based illusions produced exactly the same results as their sound-based counterparts(对应物) suggests that people hear silence just like they hear sounds, the researchers said.
Like visual illusions that trick what people see, auditory illusions can make people hear periods of time as being longer or shorter than they actually are. One example is known as the one-is-more illusion, where one long beep(哔哔声) seems longer than two short continuous beeps even when they are equally long.
In tests involving 1, 000 participants, the team replaced the sounds in the one-is-more illusion with moments of silence, re-working the auditory illusion into what they called the one-silence-is-more illusion. They found the same results：People thought one long moment of silence was longer than two short moments of silence. Other silence illusions produced the same outcomes as sound illusions.
In the lab, participants were asked to listen to sounds induced by the noise of busy restaurants, markets and train stations. They then listened for periods when all sounds stopped abruptly, creating brief silences. The idea wasn’t simply that these silences made people experience illusions, the researchers said. It was that the same illusions that scientists thought could only be caused by sounds worked just as well when the sounds were replaced by silences.
The findings establish a new way to study the perception of absence, the team said.
1. Why did the researchers adapt auditory illusions?| A．To measure the length of silence. | B．To create silence-based illusions. |
| C．To correct the original illusion. | D．To prove the advantage of silence. |
| A．People mishears the length of beeps. |
| B．1, 000 participants get different results. |
| C．The pause between two beeps is hard to sense. |
| D．Moments of silence seem longer than those of sounds when they are equally long. |
| A．Drowned by. | B．Reduced to. | C．Caused by. | D．Compared to. |
| A．Are sounds tricky? It has scientific basis. |
| B．Is silence gold? Science gives us the answer. |
| C．Auditory illusion? It exists just as visual illusion. |
| D．The sound of silence? Research indicates people hear it. |
10 . There was a time when the solar industry was considered dead money. It was too expensive, too inefficient, and too inconsistent to be a good alternative energy source for anything, let alone your home or office.
But those days are long gone. Today, solar energy represents the future of our planet’s energy needs because it’s cheap, efficient, consistent, and most importantly, clean.
Solar energy costs have dropped by more than 70% over the past 10 years, and solar energy is now cheaper than fossil fuels in most parts of the United States. Let that sink in for a moment.
Better yet, the drivers of these cost declines—economies of scale and technological improvements powered by Moore’s Law and Wright’s Law-are lasting, and therefore, solar energy is going to get even cheaper. Indeed, these forces are so powerful in the solar industry that they have their own law-Swanson’s Law-which states that the price of solar modules (组件) decreases by about 20%for every doubling in global solar capacity.
For what it’s worth, the US Department of Energy believes solar costs can and will fall by another 60% in 2030. So, solar energy is the cheapest way to power things today.
Meanwhile, solar panels have become very efficient at turning light from the sun into usable energy. Back in 1992, researchers at the University of South Florida created a thin-film solar cell with 15.9% efficiency—and that was considered a breakthrough at the time. These days, though, your average silicon (硅) solar cells sport efficiency rates above 20%. That’s standard. And manufacturers have created prototypes (原型机) that are getting 30% efficiency, while some research efforts have even managed to achieve near 50% efficiency in certain lab tests.
At the same time, these solar systems have become dramatically more consistent. One of the biggest disadvantages for solar energy in the early 2000s was its intermittency (间歇性) —the sun doesn’t shine every day, so what do you do when it’s cloudy? Well, that’s why big batteries exist.
1. What can we learn from paragraph 4?| A．The worldwide popularity of solar energy. |
| B．The rapid increase in global solar capacity. |
| C．The contents of Moore’s Law and Wright’s Law. |
| D．The contributors to the decline in solar energy costs. |
| A．To indicate the variety of solar cells. |
| B．To prove the wide use of solar cells. |
| C．To show the improvement of solar cells. |
| D．To compare the size of different solar cells. |
| A．Positive. | B．Doubtful. | C．Uncaring. | D．Worried. |
| A．The wide use of solar power. | B．The alternative to solar power. |
| C．The disadvantage of solar power. | D．The storage of solar power. |
