Science fiction doesn’t always get the respect it deserves. My friend Ryan calls
Yes, science fiction is fun, but it’s also “real” literature. After all, some of
Not only
One accurate example by a science fiction writer is the invention of the automatic sliding door,
Okay, so maybe we could survive without automatic doors, but in the short story From the London Times of 1904 (published in 1898), Mark Twain described a m
In a coastal village named Seaford, lived a courageous young woman named Amelia. Amelia was known throughout Seaford for her adventurous nature. From the moment she could walk, she would eagerly run towards the crashing waves, feeling the sand between her toes and the cool spray of the ocean mist on her face. She was a woman with a strong will and possessed a heart full of kindness. Amelia’s love for the ocean was intense, and she spent most of her days exploring the beautiful beaches and sparkling waters that surrounded her house.
One sunny morning, while Amelia was walking along the shore, she noticed a group of restless seagulls abnormally circling above the crashing waves. Their unusual calls echoed (回) through the air. Concerned for their well-being, she followed their flight pattern, her instincts guiding her toward danger.
As she approached a towering cliff, Amelia gasped in horror. On a narrow ledge (岩架), high above the violent waves, was a young dolphin trapped in a thick fishing net. Its shiny body shone under the golden rays of the sun, but its freedom was cruelly limited by the trap. With each struggle, the net tightened around its delicate body, leaving painful marks on its skin. Its tail flapped helplessly, each movement a request for help, while its desperate cries for assistance echoed through the air.
A sense of urgency filled her, pushing her forward with determination and resolve. Realizing that time was tight, Amelia knew she had to act instantly to free this innocent creature from its difficult position before it submitted to exhaustion or the force of the tides.
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: Without hesitation, Amelia rushed back to the village.
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Paragraph 2: As the dolphin was released into the waters, it hesitated for a moment.
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Sacrificing Hair for a Friend
My seven-year-old daughter Sue looked frightened with tears in her eyes. In front of her was a bowl of medicine, which tasted so bitter. “Sue, why don’t you take the medicine? Just for Dad’s sake, dear.” Sue softened a bit. “Dad, if I take the medicine, will you give me whatever I ask for?” “Oh sure, darling.” I replied. “Promise?” “Promise.”
Slowly and painfully, she finished taking the medicine and then looked at me with her eyes wide with expectation. “Dad, I want to have my head shaved off, this Sunday!”
“A girl child having her head shaved off? Why don’t you ask for something else? We will be sad seeing you with a clean-shaven head,” I said. “I do not want anything else,” Sue said with finality. “Dad, you promised to give me whatever I ask for. Was it not you who told me a story yesterday, and its moral that we should honor our promises no matter what?”
I had to give in.
On Monday morning, I dropped her at her school. It was a sight to watch my daughter walking towards her classroom with her head clean-shaven. She turned around and waved. I waved back with a smile. Just then, a boy got out of a car, and shouted, “Sue, please wait for me!”
What struck me was the hairless head of that boy. Then a lady got out of the car, and said to me, “Sir, that boy is my son Mike, and your daughter visited him last week. Mike is suffering from leukemia. He lost all his hair due to the side effects of the chemotherapy. He refused to come back to school for fear that he would be made fun of by the schoolmates.”
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。
“Your daughter is great indeed!” the lady continued.
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Sue’s story spread quickly and soon many other children showed their care for Mike in various ways.
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Outside the Box
The Harvestfest contest was falling on Friday and everyone in school was talking about it. All the students would show up in their self-made costumes and a winner would be chosen by the principal.
“Do you have your costume for the Harvestfest contest?” Alice asked. “I’m going as a chocolate bar. My mom and I have been working on it all week.”
“Yeah, I have a costume,” said Jordan Eastman, popping up the two front wheels of his wheelchair as he waited for his dad to pick him up. “But it’s boring.”
“Why? What is it?” Alice asked.
“MaxMag the superhero, but Danny, Tom and Izzy are all going as MaxMag too.” Jordan shook his head. “That’s too many to stand a chance at winning the contest.” He waved to his dad, who had just pulled up in front of the school.
Jordan rolled his wheelchair toward his dad, and Alice walked with him to the minivan.
“Maybe you should go as something else.”
“The contest is Friday night.” Jordan sighed. “It’s too late to change costumes.”
“Jordan, you have to think outside the box. Look around your house and see what you have. There’s hidden potential in everyday items.” She took a sip of her drink, and told Jordan that her chocolate-bar costume was made from old fabric her mom had lying around and recycled plastics.
On his way home, Jordan was quiet. He kept thinking about Alice’s words: Think outside the box. There’s hidden potential in everyday items. When he got home, he found his mum handling with some wooden pieces. She was putting a new desk together. On top of the desk was the huge empty cardboard box the pieces had come in. Mom smiled at Jordan, pointing at the desk, “What do you think?”
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。
Jordan’s eyes fell on the box and he smiled, “It’s perfect . … with my wheelchair.”
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Soon it was Friday night, and Jordan couldn’t wait to show his costume.
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5 . What does it mean to leave something better than you found it? For Breon Dennis Jr. , it
Breon is from Louisiana, and came to Dallas Baptist University in the late 2000s to
As the VP of the RoughRiders Foundation, his ultimate
A key part to Breon’s philosophy in helping others to
| A．shows | B．includes | C．collects | D．involves |
| A．obtain | B．learn | C．find | D．make |
| A．studying | B．training | C．working | D．living |
| A．earned | B．finished | C．lost | D．kept |
| A．labor | B．management | C．influence | D．project |
| A．reward | B．desire | C．effort | D．hobby |
| A．personally | B．mentally | C．physically | D．financially |
| A．businesses | B．events | C．occasions | D．tasks |
| A．demands | B．prefers | C．seeks | D．promises |
| A．expects | B．teaches | C．shows | D．encourages |
| A．grow | B．love | C．succeed | D．enjoy |
| A．meet with | B．agree with | C．live with | D．begin with |
| A．bring | B．take | C．move | D．pass |
| A．effects | B．knowledge | C．values | D．standards |
| A．richest | B．best | C．smartest | D．strongest |
6 . How would you feel if you were invited to the moon? If you found a gold coin, would you save it, give it to charity or use it for a holiday? Personality quizzes of this kind, known as “psychometrics”, have bothered many job seekers. Now, it is being applied to the oldest problem in finance: will a borrower repay?
In rich countries, lenders use credit scores to weigh risk. But just 7% of Africans and 13% of South Asians are covered by credit bureaus (征信机构). Bailey Klinger of the Entrepreneurial Finance Lab (EFL), which explores new kinds of credit data, argues that psychometrics could include many more people in the financial system. Everyone has a personality, after all.
Judging character is not new. Psychometrics attempts to make it a science. The model developed by EFL has undergone many tests and adapted to different cultures. Its collected data reflect something unnoticed. For instance, young optimists are risky, but old ones are a safe bet.
Clever design cuts cheating. There are no obvious right answers; responses are cross-checked for consistency. The model monitors mouse movements for signs of indecision or distraction. When borrowers lie to get a loan, they often do so in predictable ways. In an EFL test, people are shown pictures of five drinks and asked which one they would be. Choosing water over something with small bubbles may be a sign of cheating.
This sounds fanciful, but there is evidence that it works. In one Indonesian bank, combining psychometrics with existing customer data cut default (违约) rates for small businesses by 45%. A study by the World Bank found that EFL’s model increased lending to those without a credit history.
The technique needs further development. At present, turning to credit bureaus is still the best way to tell if somebody will repay a loan. But bureaus improve more slowly than technology. Lenders will find ever more ways to look into their customers’ souls.
1. What are the figures intended to show in the second paragraph?| A．Racial discrimination from lenders. |
| B．Uncertain property of poor people. |
| C．Great risks brought by credit scores. |
| D．Current weakness of credit bureaus. |
| A．It has been greatly improved. |
| B．Its data confirm some ideas. |
| C．Its effects vary with cultures. |
| D．It can’t tell character exactly. |
| A．Borrowers’ responses. | B．Lenders’ answers. |
| C．Pictures of five drinks. | D．Drinks with bubbles. |
| A．It will replace credit bureaus. |
| B．It will be mature in the future. |
| C．It has won most lenders’ love. |
| D．It is far from satisfactory. |
As a young boy, I was carefree. Every vacation I looked forward to two things—seeing my grandpa and hearing his wonderful stories. My grandpa was a very good storyteller. He had worked various odd jobs when he was young and wove his adventures and misadventures into fantastic tales. These wonderful tales colored my childhood.
As I grew up, I had to admit that Grandpa’s stories went on a little long, even a little boring and gradually lost their magic. However, not wanting to upset him, my brother and I would sometimes take turns sitting in the living room, listening to grandpa tell his stories.
When my grandpa was approaching 91, he suffered from serious memory-loss. It was kind of what doctors called dementia (痴呆), probably the earliest stage of Alzheimer’s disease. Following the doctor’s directions, we moved him into a Sunrise Assisted Living Community, where he could get a better care. After that, grandpa hardly came to our house.
One weekend before my grandpa’s birthday, I came to visit him. Seeing grandpa sitting in his armchair, dull-looking, I was consumed with mixed feelings. I wheeled grandpa to the sunshine in the courtyard, talking to him. He couldn’t express himself clearly and spoke in short bursts, but I listened to him patiently and carefully just as I used to be a little boy.
It was then that I noticed a shadow box with some old and yellowish photos in it. I picked one up, in which my brother, several boys in our neighborhood, and I were playing basketball with grandpa cheering us on twenty years before. My mind flashed back to those beautiful memories. Back then, Grandpa was in good physical condition and we were all wearing basketball jerseys, playing and laughing with abandon. I presented the photo to my grandpa, pointing at each member and reminding him of their names. Incredibly, grandpa could speak out the name of every player. I even caught a soft light in grandpa’s eyes and a smile on his lips.
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。
A bright idea for grandpa’s birthday came to my mind.
________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________Seeing “the same players” playing there, grandpa seemed to have thought of something.
________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________8 . Have you ever found picking out the face of a friend in a group photo is sometimes hard, especially when everyone crowds together? In the same way, it can also be hard to read a passage of text when the letters are too close together. In fact, a new study shows that spacing the letters farther apart can help anyone read faster, and possibly understand more.
Dyslexia is a common reading disorder. Crowded text was especially difficult for people with dyslexia to read. So researchers wanted to see if increasing the spacing between letters would help.
Steven Stagg, a scientist, studies how people think and learn. His team recruited 59 students between 11 and 15 years old, thirty-two of whom had dyslexia. While the researchers recorded them, each student read two passages out loud. One passage was in its original format. In the other, there was an increase of 2.5 points in the spacing between the litters. The recording allowed the scientists to measure their reading speed and count any mistakes, such as skipped words.
People with dyslexia often employ aids to help them read, such as colored overlays (覆盖物). This time they are offered by the researchers. Those colored overlays didn’t help either group of kids. However, kids with dyslexia read the wider-spaced text 13 percent faster than the text with original spacing. These kids also made fewer mistakes. Students without dyslexia read faster, too, although only by 5 percent.
This is very good news. It means teachers and publishers can print material with extra spacing between litters. Readers with dyslexia won’t feel singled out by having to use special aids for reading. An organization called Readability Matters is working on these issues. The group is trying to get tech companies to make changes that should make reading easier.
Stagg says, “Some methods have shown mixed results, but Letter spacing seems to be the one thing that everyone is finding works.”
1. What is the purpose of the first paragraph?| A．To make the article interesting. |
| B．To present a common problem. |
| C．To lead to the topic of the article. |
| D．To provide a new solution. |
| A．They may understand everything while reading wider-spaced text. |
| B．They may read faster than normal kids while reading wider- spaced text. |
| C．They may free from dyslexia after increasing letter spacing. |
| D．They may feel singled out while using colored layouts for reading. |
| A．Science study. | B．Campus life. |
| C．Star stories. | D．Business. |
| A．Readers Try to Improve Reading Speed |
| B．You Just Need More Space |
| C．Colored Overlays Are Helpful Aids |
| D．Dyslexia Affects Reading Speed |
9 . One of the roles of the Nobel Prize for literature is to shine a light on someone who has been less visible than they deserve. That role was
Unlike previous popular recipients living in Britain, he is not a
There is a(n)
He began and stuck to writing to
In this sense, Gurnah’s work, which
| A．assumed | B．fulfilled | C．interpreted | D．handled |
| A．household name | B．black horse | C．new face | D．walking dictionary |
| A．demanded | B．tended | C．qualified | D．failed |
| A．cast doubt on | B．shown sympathy for | C．taken any notice of | D．put trust in |
| A．bridge | B．gulf | C．opposition | D．association |
| A．illustration | B．definition | C．navigation | D．accusation |
| A．prizing | B．initiating | C．fighting | D．escaping |
| A．take care | B．take charge | C．make sense | D．make sure |
| A．repeatedly | B．periodically | C．scarcely | D．accidentally |
| A．bother with | B．contribute to | C．consist of | D．admit to |
| A．spite | B．knowledge | C．empathy | D．necessity |
| A．Obviously | B．Naturally | C．Consequently | D．Strikingly |
| A．imposed | B．healed | C．received | D．examined |
| A．psychological | B．geographical | C．ideological | D．demographical |
| A．discounts | B．awards | C．spotlights | D．evaluates |
10 . When it came to concealing his troubles, Tommy Wilhelm was not less capable than the next fellow. So at least he thought, and there was a certain amount of evidence to back him up. He had once been an actor—no, not quite, an extra—and he knew what acting should be. Also, he was smoking a cigar, and when a man is smoking a cigar, wearing a hat, he has an advantage: it is harder to find out how he feels. He came from the twenty-third floor down to the lobby on the mezzanine to collect his mail before breakfast, and he believed — he hoped — that he looked passably well: doing all right. It was a matter of sheer hope, because there was not much that he could add to his present effort. On the fourteenth floor he looked for his father to enter the elevator; they often met at this hour, on the way to breakfast. If he worried about his appearance it was mainly for his old father's sake. But there was no stop on the fourteenth, and the elevator sank and sank. Then the smooth door opened and the great dark-red uneven carpet that covered the lobby billowed toward Wilhelm's feet. In the foreground the lobby was dark, sleepy. French drapes like sails kept out the sun, but three high, narrow windows were open, and in the blue air Wilhelm saw a pigeon about to light on the great chain that supported the marquee of the movie house directly underneath the lobby. For one moment he heard the wings beating strongly.
Most of the guests at the Hotel Gloriana were past the age of retirement. Along Broadway in the Seventies, Eighties, and Nineties, a great part of New York's vast population of old men and women lives. Unless the weather is too cold or wet they fill the benches about the tiny railed parks and along the subway gratings from Verdi Square to Columbia University, they crowd the shops and cafeterias, the dime stores, the tearooms, the bakeries, the beauty parlors, the reading rooms and club rooms. Among these old people at the Gloriana, Wilhelm felt out of place. He was comparatively young, in his middle forties, large and blond, with big shoulders; his back was heavy and strong, if already a little stooped or thickened. After breakfast the old guests sat down on the green leather armchairs and sofas in the lobby and began to gossip and look into the papers: they had nothing to do but wait out the day. But Wilhelm was used to an active life and liked to go out energetically in the morning. And for several months, because he had no position, he had kept up his morale by rising early: he was shaved and in the lobby by eight o'clock. He bought the paper and some cigars and drank a Coca-Cola or two before he went in to breakfast with his father. After breakfast—out, out, out to attend to business. The getting out had in itself become the chief business. But he had realized that he could not keep this up much longer, and today he was afraid. He was aware that his routine was about to break up and he sensed that a huge trouble long presaged(预感)but till now formless was due. Before evening, he'd know.
Nevertheless he followed his daily course and crossed the lobby.
Rubin, the man at the newsstand, had poor eyes. They may not have been actually weak but they were poor in expression, with lacy lids that furled down at the corners. He dressed well. It didn't seem necessary—he was behind the counter most of the time—but he dressed very well. He had on a rich brown suit; the cuffs embarrassed the hairs on his small hands. He wore a Countess Mara painted necktie. As Wilhelm approached, Rubin did not see him; he was looking out dreamily at the Hotel Ansonia, which was visible from his corner, several blocks away. The Ansonia, the neighborhood's great landmark, was built by Stanford White. It looks like a baroque palace from Prague or Munich enlarged a hundred times, with towers, domes, huge swells and bubbles of metal gone green from exposure, iron fretwork and festoons. Black television antennae are densely planted on its round summits. Under the changes of weather it may look like marble or like sea water, black as slate in the fog, white as tufa in sunlight. This morning it looked like the image of itself reflected in deep water, white and cumulous above, with cavernous distortions underneath. Together, the two men gazed at it.
Then Rubin said, “Your dad is in to breakfast already, the old gentleman.”
“Oh, yes？Ahead of me today？”
“That's a real knocked-out shirt you got on,” said Rubin.“Where’s it from, Saks？”
“No, it’s a Jack Fagman—Chicago.”
Even when his spirits were low, Wilhelm could still wrinkle his forehead in a pleasing way. Some of the slow, silent movements of his face were very attractive. He went back a step, as if to stand away from himself and get a better look at his shirt. His glance was comic, a comment upon his untidiness. He liked to wear good clothes, but once he had put it on each article appeared to go its own way. Wilhelm, laughing, panted a little; his teeth were small; his cheeks when he laughed and puffed grew round, and he looked much younger than his years. In the old days when he was a college freshman and wore a beanie(无檐小帽)on his large blonde head his father used to say that, big as he was, he could charm a bird out of a tree. Wilhelm had great charm still.
“I like this dove-gray color,” he said in his sociable, good-natured way. “It isn’t washable. You have to send it to the cleaner. It never smells as good as washed. But it’s a nice shirt. It cost sixteen, eighteen bucks.”
1. Wilhelm hoped he looked all right on his way to the lobby because he wanted to________.| A．leave a good impression | B．give his father a surprise |
| C．show his acting potential | D．disguise his low spirit |
| A．lived a luxurious life | B．liked to swap gossips |
| C．idled their time away | D．liked to get up early |
| A．He felt something ominous was coming. | B．He was worried that his father was late. |
| C．He was feeling at ease among the old. | D．He was excited about a possible job offer. |
| A．His shirt made him look better. | B．He cared much about his clothes. |
| C．He looked like a comedian in his shirt. | D．The clothes he wore never quite matched. |
