1 . Directions: Fill in each blank with a proper word chosen from the box. Each word can only be used once. Note that there is one word more than you need.

A. address          B. process          C. reminder       D. swept E. imposing        F. governed        G. appeal        H. overlooking

Palaces are known for their beauty and splendor, but they offer little protection against attacks. It is easy to defend a fortress, but fortresses are not designed with the comfort of a king or queen in mind. When it comes to structures that are both    1    and well-fortified, the classic European castle is the pinnacle of design. Across the ages castles changed, developed, and eventually fell out of use, but they still command the    2    of our culture.

Castles were originally built in England by Norman invaders in 1066. As William the Conqueror    3    through England, he fortified key positions to secure the land he had taken. The castles he built allowed the Norman lords to retreat to safety when threatened by English rebellion. Castles also served as bases of operation for offensive attacks. Troops were summoned to, organized around, and deployed from castles. In this way castles served both offensive and defensive roles in military operations.

Not limited to military purposes, castles also served as offices from which the lord would administer control over his fiefdom. That is to say, the lord of the land would hold court in his castle. Those that were socially beneath the lord would come to report the affairs of the lands that they    4    and pay tribute to the lord. They would    5    disputes, handle business, feast, and enjoy festivities. In this way castles served as important social centers in medieval England. Castles also served as symbols of power. Built on prominent sites    6    the surrounding areas, castles constantly loomed in the background of many peasants’ lives and served as a daily    7    of the lord’s strength.

2 . Directions: write an English composition in 120-150 words according to the Instructions given.
在中国城市中'随处可见身穿制服骑者电动摩托车(electric scooter)的外卖骑手穿梭于大街小巷，风雨无阻为市民送餐。外卖对你的生活有何影响？请根据自身实际经历谈谈外卖服务的利弊。
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3 . In 1624 English poet John Donne famously wrote, “No man is an island.” In recent years, neuroscientists have caught up with the wisdom of Donne. They recognize that our brain needs more than simply the food we eat, the oxygen we breathe, and the water we drink.     1    

Normal brain functioning depends on the social web around us. Our neurons require other people's neurons to survive and thrive. Brains have traditionally been studied in isolation, but that approach overlooks the fact that an enormous amount of brain circuitry (回路) has to do with other brains.

    2     From our families, friends, co-workers and business partners, our societies are built on layers of complex social interactions. All this social glue is generated by specific circuitry in the brain: sprawling networks that monitor other people, communicate with them, feel their pain, judge their intentions and read their emotions.

Social interaction doesn’t just boost our mood, it feeds our brains.     3     In a California study published by the American Journal of Public Health, researchers reported that older women who managed large social networks reduced their risk of dementia (痴呆) by 26%. And women who had daily contact with their network cut their risk of dementia by almost half.

Socialization is typically associated with healthy behaviors, like joining a walking group or a bowling league, or partaking in mentally stimulating activities, such as participating in a book club or playing bingo.     4    .

So if you’re looking for a reason to linger at your weekly coffee dale with the girls, or take your grandkids to the park, here it is. Socializing isn't just about having fun — It’s about keeping your brain healthy.

A．We are deeply social creatures.

B．Remember io spend some time with your loved ones.

C．We need   to keep that specific circuitry in the brain healthy and functioning.

D．There’s something else, something equally as important: it needs other people.

E．Engaging with other people can also help a brain react to different situations and topics.

F．When socializing involves activities such as these, the health benefits are increased substantially.

4 . Is any economist so dull as to criticize Christmas? At first glance, the holiday season in western economies seems a treat for those concerned with such vagaries (奇想)as GDP growth. After all, everyone is spending; in America, retailers make 25% of their yearly sales and 60% of their profits between Thanksgiving and Christmas. Even so, economists find something to worry about in the nature of the purchases being made.

Much of the holiday spending is on gifts for others. At the simplest level, giving gifts involves the giver thinking of something that the recipient would like he tries to guess his or her preferences, as economists say - and then buying the gift and delivering it. Yet this guessing of preferences is not easy; indeed, it is often done badly. Every year, ties go unworn and books unread. And even if a gift is enjoyed, it may not be what the recipient would have bought if they had spent the money themselves.

Interested in this mismatch between wants and gifts, in 1993 Joel Waldfogel, then an economist at Yale University, sought estimate the difference in dollar terms. In a research, he asked students two questions at the end of a holiday season: first, estimate the total amount paid (by the givers) for all the holiday gifts you received; second, apart from the emotional value of the items, if you did not have them, how much would you be willing to pay to get them? His results were gloomy: on average, a gift was valued by the recipient well below the price paid by the giver.

In addition, recipients may hot know their own preferences very well. Some of the best gifts, after all, are unexpected items that you would never have thought of buying, but which turn out to be especially well picked. And preference can change. So by giving a jazz CD, for example, the giver may be encouraging the recipient to enjoy something that was ignored before. This, a desire to build skills, is possibly the hope held by many parents who ignore their children’s desires for video games and buy them books instead.

Finally, there are items that a recipient would like to receive but not purchase. If someone else buys them, however, they can be enjoyed guilt-free. This might explain the high volume of chocolate that changes over the holidays. Thus, the lesson for gift-givers is that you should try hard to guess the preference of each person on your list and then choose a gift that will have a high emotional value.

1. For what reason are economists concerned about holiday purchases?

A．Seasonal sales don’t match profits well.

B．Some of the holiday purchases end up with waste.

C．Sales and profits arc far from being matched.

D．Seasonal sales fail to satisfy people's special wants.

2. The word “gloomy” (in 3rd paragraph) most probably means___.

A．accurate	B．persuasive
C．depressing	D．undoubtable

3. According to the passage, which of the following statements is true?

A．Recipients tend to overestimate the values of a gift.

B．People’s preference is born with nature and remains unchanged.

C．Chocolate is a gift which may cause recipients’ sense of guilt

D．Gifts may be used to help a person to cultivate a hobby or skill.

4. Which of the following statements might the author agree with?

A．Guessing preference is important although sometimes it fails.

B．The more money you spend on the gift, the more emotional value it has.

C．Recipients’ preferences have an impact on the holiday season economy.

D．The attached value of a present is the essence of gift giving.

7 . When I was four, I lost my sight by falling off a box car and landing on my head. Now I’m thirty-two. I can vaguely remember the brightness of sunshine and what color red is. It’d be wonderful to see again, but a disaster can do strange things to people.

    1    . The loss of my eyes made me appreciate more what I had left.

It took me years to discover and strengthen this belief. It had to start with the most trivial things. Once a man gave me an indoor baseball. “I can’t use this,” I was hurt, thinking he was teasing me. “Take it with you,” he insisted, “and roll it around.” The words stuck in my head. By rolling the ball I could feel where it went.     2    —playing baseball. Later, at Philadelphia’s Overbrook School for the Blind, I invented a successful variation of baseball. We called it ground ball.

    3    —I believe it! The more readily you are able to make them, the more peaceful your private world becomes. The adjustment is never easy. I was once puzzled and afraid, knowing nowhere to go. But I was lucky, for I have my parents, teachers and others who saw in me a potential to live.

The hardest lesson I had to learn was to believe in myself. Had I not done that, I’d have broken down and become a chair rocker for the rest of my life. And the path to the belief is never smooth.     4    .

A．I’d fail sometimes, but on average, I made progress

B．This gave me an idea on something I had thought impossible to achieve

C．As people always say, it takes steel and temper to make a difference

D．It came into my mind all of a sudden

E．It occurred to me the other day that I might not have come to love life as I do now if I hadn’t been blind

F．Life asks a continuous series of adjustments to reality

9 . Directions: Read the following passage. Fill in each blank with a proper sentence given in the box.Each sentence can be used only once. Note that there are two more sentences than you need.

Long before they can actually speak, babies pay special attention to the speech they hear around them. Within the first month of their lives, babies’ responses to the sound of the human voice will be different from their responses to other sorts of auditory stimuli.     1    

At first, the sounds that an infant notices might be only those words that receive the heaviest emphasis and that often occur at the ends of utterances.     2     Very soon, these differences in adult stress and intonation can influence babies’ emotional states and behavior. Long before they develop actual language comprehension, babies can sense when an adult is playful or angry, attempting to initiate or terminate new behavior. And so on, merely on the basis of cues such as the rate, volume, and melody of adult speech.

    3     One researcher observed babies and their mothers in six diverse cultures and found that, in all six languages, the mothers used simplified syntax, short utterances and nonsense sounds, and transformed certain sounds into baby talk. Other investigators have noted that when mothers talk to babies who are only a few months old, they exaggerate the pitch, loudness, and intensity of their words. They also exaggerate their facial expressions, hold vowels longer, and emphasize certain words.

More significant for language development than their response to general intonation is observation that tiny babies can make relatively fine distinctions between speech sounds.     4    

A．In other words, babies enter the world with the ability to make precisely those perceptual discriminations that are necessary if they are to acquire aural (听觉的) language.

B．By the time they are six or seven weeks old, babies can detect the difference between syllables pronounced with rising and falling inflections.

C．For babies, language is a sensory-motor delight rather than the route to meaning that it often is for adults.

D．Adults make it as easy as they can for babies to pick up a language by exaggerating such cues.

E．They will stop crying when they hear a person talking, but not if they hear a bell or the sound of a rattle.

F．Babies obviously derive pleasure from sound input, too, although the words themselves are beyond their understanding.

10 . 假如你是李华，你的美国笔友Jenny正在做一份关于中国移动支付( mobile payment)的问卷调查( survey)，你是她的重点采访对象，采访内容如下;请你就这些问题给她回一封邮件完成采访。
采访内容:
1.你或你身边的人在日常生活中使用移动支付的情况；
2.移动支付带来的好处
3.你的看法。
参考词汇: 微信: Wechat   支付宝: Alipay 二维码: QR code
注意:1.词数120左右;
2.可适当增加细节，以使行文连贯
Dear Jenny,

How is your survey on mobile payment going？ ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Yours faithfully

Li Hua