When I was a child growing up in the Netherlands, I often begged my mother to tell me this story about an experience her family had at the end of World War II.
During the terrible last winter of the German occupation, food was scarce in the Netherlands. People were so hungry that they began to eat small animals and many things not normally considered edible (可食用的), including tulip bulbs (郁金香球茎), which could be cooked like potatoes.
For centuries, my mother’s family had owned a highly successful tulip business, which provided jobs for many in our village. But the war shut their business down, and during the winter of hunger, my grandfather, Albert, donated all his tulip bulbs to feed the hungriest villagers. For years, Albert had been trying to grow a black tulip. By careful selection, he was very close. So he guarded these few bulbs carefully to prevent people from stealing them for food.
One day, it was announced that the war was over. But there was much destruction and the Dutch people still faced dangers. My grandfather looked at his pale, thin children and realized that the hunger could continue for a long time, so he made his decision. He seized a shovel (铁铲) and went into the garden. There he found my mother, Vivian, who was just seven years old, looking nervous. Over her shoulder, Albert saw a band of Germans coming toward them down the street. He whispered to Vivian to run inside the house and began digging for his bulbs. But it was too late. Someone had already stolen them. Angry and desperate, Albert ran toward the street screaming, “They have stolen my tulip bulbs!” Vivian, watching from the doorway, cried out and ran to stop her father. Before she could reach him, Albert stumbled and fell, badly hurting his leg.
注意：
1. 续写词数应为150个左右；
2. 请按如下格式在答题卡的相应位置作答。
Fortunately, Albert recovered slowly.
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It took some time for Albert to rebuild his business, starting with those few bulbs that were spared by the thieves.
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Lena could clearly remember the night she had to flee her home in Hungary. It was the beginning of the Second World War and her family needed to escape fast. She quickly packed a suitcase with a few pieces of clothing, her diary, and-her most prized possession - a beautiful silk scarf. Lena and her best friend, Monika, had persuaded their parents to buy them matching scarves, which they each wore tied around their neck as a symbol of their friendship. Lena had no idea that when she left for America that night, she would never return. Her family settled on the sunny west coast in California.
Lena kept that special silk scarf for many years. One day she decided to give it to her granddaughter, Eliza, to wear to her first job interview for good luck. Lena was afraid that Eliza would lose the scarf, but her granddaughter reassured her, “Don’t worry, Grandma nothing’s going to happen to your scarf. You’ll see, It is going to bring both of us luck today.” With that, Eliza kissed her grandmother on the cheek and left.
That afternoon, Eliza left the interview feeling confident that she had got the job-She decided to celebrate by going to a restaurant. As she sat at her table, she felt someone staring at her.
Sitting next to her was an elderly woman who could not take her eyes off her. “I’m sorry, do I know you?” Eliza asked.
“I’m sorry, dear, but you remind me of someone I once knew,” the old woman replied in an accented voice. “My best friend looked like you and used to wear a scarf just like the one you’re wearing around your neck.” Eliza felt goose bumps go up her arms. She had heard stories of her grandmother’s best friend and knew the significance of the scarf. Could this be Monika, her grandmother’s childhood friend?
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 I:
Eliza introduced herself and waited to hear the name of the other woman.
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________Paragraph 2:
They walked the short distance to Lena’s home and rang the doorbell.
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________1.家乡简介；
2.具体计划；
3.表达祝愿。
注意：
1.写作词数应为80左右；
2.请按如下格式在答题卡的相应位置作答。
Dear Jim,
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Yours,
Li Hua
1. 你的理想职业；
2. 选择它的理由；
3. 实现的途径。
注意：
1. 词数80左右；
2. 可根据内容要点适当发挥，以使行文连贯。
My Dream Career
___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________5 . In our information-driven society, shaping our worldview through the media is similar to forming an opinion about someone solely based on a picture of their foot. While the media might not deliberately deceive us, it often fails to provide a comprehensive view of reality.
Consequently, the question arises: Where, then, shall we get our information from if not from the media? Who can we trust? How about experts- people who devote their working lives to understanding their chosen slice of the world? However, even experts can fall prey to the allure of oversimplification, leading to the “single perspective instinct” that hampers (阻碍) our ability to grasp the intricacies (错综复杂) of the world.
Simple ideas can be appealing because they offer a sense of understanding and certainty. And it is easy to take off down a slippery slope, from one attention-grabbing simple idea to a feeling that this idea beautifully explains, or is the beautiful solution for, lots of other things. The world becomes simple that way.
Yet, when we embrace a singular cause or solution for all problems, we risk oversimplifying complex issues. For instance, championing the concept of equality may lead us to view all problems through the lens of inequality and see resource distribution as the sole panacea. However, such rigidity prevents us from seeing the multidimensional nature of challenges and hinders true comprehension of reality. This “single perspective instinct” ultimately clouds our judgment and restricts our capacity to tackle complex issues effectively. Being always in favor of or always against any particular idea makes you blind to information that doesn’t fit your perspective. This is usually a bad approach if you would like to understand reality.
Instead, constantly test your favorite ideas for weaknesses. Be humble about the extent of your expertise. Be curious about new information that doesn’t fit, and information from other fields. And rather than talking only to people who agree with you, or collecting examples that fit your ideas, consult people who contradict you, disagree with you, and put forward different ideas as a great resource for understanding the world. If this means you don’t have time to form so may opinions, so what?
Wouldn’t you rather have few opinions that are right than many that are wrong?
1. What does the underlined word “allure” in Para.2 probably mean?| A．Temptation. | B．Tradition. | C．Convenience. | D．Consequence. |
| A．They meet people’s demand for high efficiency. |
| B．They generate a sense of complete understanding. |
| C．They are raised and supported by multiple experts. |
| D．They reflect the opinions of like-minded individuals. |
| A．Simplifying matters releases energy for human brains. |
| B．Constant tests on our ideas help make up for our weakness. |
| C．A well-founded opinion counts more than many shallow ones. |
| D．People who disagree with us often have comprehensive views. |
| A．Embracing Disagreement: Refusing Overcomplexity |
| B．Simplifying Information: Enhancing Comprehension |
| C．Understanding Differences: Establishing Relationships |
| D．Navigating Complexity: Challenging Oversimplification |
注意：1．文章的开头已给出，不计入总字数；
2．可以适当增加细节，以使行文连贯，词数100左右。
Good morning, everyone!
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7 . “Two centuries ago, Lewis and Clark left St. Louis to explore the new lands acquired in the Louisiana Purchase,” George W. Bush said, announcing his desire for a program to send men and women to Mars. They made that journey in the spirit of discovery. America has ventured forth into space for the same reasons.
Yet there are vital differences between Lewis and Clark’s expedition and a Mars mission. First, they were headed to a place where hundreds of thousands of people were already living. Second, they were certain to discover places and things of immediate value to the new nation. Third, their venture cost next to nothing by today’s standards. A Mars mission may be the single most expensive non-wartime undertaking in U.S. history.
Appealing as the thought of travel to Mars is, it does not mean the journey makes sense, even considering the human calling to explore. And Mars as a destination for people makes absolutely no sense with current technology.
Present systems for getting from Earth’s surface to low-Earth orbit are so fantastically expensive that merely launching the 1,000 tons or so of spacecraft and equipment a Mars mission would require could be accomplished only by cutting health-care benefits, education spending, or other important programs—or by raising taxes. Absent (缺乏)some remarkable discovery, astronauts, geologists, and biologists once on Mars could do little more than analyze rocks and feel awestruck (敬畏的) staring into the sky of another world. Yet rocks can be analyzed by automated probes without risk to human life, and at a tiny portion of the cost of sending people.
It is interesting to note that when President Bush unveiled (公开) his proposal, he listed these recent major achievements of space exploration: pictures of evidence of water on Mars, discovery of more than 100 planets outside our solar system, and study of the soil of Mars. All these accomplishments came from automated probes or automated space telescopes. Bush’s proposal, which calls for reprogramming some of NASA’s present budget into the Mars effort, might actually lead to a reduction in such unmanned science—the one aspect of space exploration that’s working really well.
Rather than spend hundreds of billions of dollars to hurl (投) tons toward Mars using current technology, why not take a decade or two or however much time is required researching new launch systems and advanced propulsion (推进力)? If new launch systems could put weight into orbit affordably, and advanced propulsion could speed up that long, slow transit (运输) to Mars, the dream of stepping onto the red planet might become reality. Mars will still be there when the technology is ready.
1. What do Lewis and Clark’s expedition and a Mars mission have in common?| A．Instant value. | B．Human inhabitance. |
| C．Venture cost. | D．Exploring spirit. |
| A．great achievements have already been made in Mars exploration in America. |
| B．American people’s well-being will suffer a lot if it is carried out. |
| C．its expense is too huge for the government to afford. |
| D．unmanned Mars exploration sounds more practical and economical for the moment. |
| A．Going to Mars using current technology is quite sensible. |
| B．A Mars mission will in turn promote the development of unmanned program. |
| C．Bush’s proposal is based on three recent great achievements of space exploration. |
| D．The achievements in space exploration show how well manned science has developed. |
| A．Risky as it is, a Mars mission helps maintain America’s position as a technological leader. |
| B．A Mars mission is so costly that it may lead to an economic disaster in America. |
| C．Someday people may go to Mars but not until it makes technological sense. |
| D．A Mars mission is unnecessary since the scientists once there won’t make great discoveries. |
8 . When it comes to black holes, we are caught between a rock and a hard place. In the 1970s, Stephen Hawking showed that all black holes give off thermal radiation(热辐射)and eventually evaporate(蒸发). In doing so, they seemed to be destroying information contained in the matter that fell into them, therefore going against a rule of quantum mechanics(量子力学): information cannot be created or destroyed.
Some argued that the outgoing “Hawking radiation” preserved the information. However, if this were the case, then given certain assumptions, the event horizon(视界)—— the black hole’s boundary of no return—— would become intensely energetic, forming a firewall. But such firewalls go against the theory of general relativity, which says that space-time near the event horizon should be smooth. The black hole firewall paradox was thus born.
Now, Sean Carroll at the California Institute of Technology and his colleagues have shown that the paradox disappears when the evolution of black holes is understood in the context of the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics.
The quantum state of the universe is described by something called the global wave function(全局波函数). According to traditional quantum mechanics, whenever there are many possible outcomes for physical process, this wave function ”collapses“ to represent one outcome. But in the many-worlds Interpretation, the wave function doesn’t collapse-rather, it branches, with one branch for each outcome. The branches evolve independently of each other, as separate worlds.
In this way of thinking, the formation of a black hole and its evaporation due to Hawking radiation lead to multiple branches of the wave function. An observer monitoring a black hole also splits into multiple observers, one in each branch.
The new work shows that from the perspective of an observer in a given branch, space-time behaves as described by general relativity and the black hole has no firewall.
But does that imply loss of information? No, says team member Aidan Chatwin-Davies, also of Caltech. That is because the principle of preservation of information applies to the global wave function and not to its individual branches, he says. Information is preserved across all branches of the global wave function, but not necessarily in any one branch. Given this case, a black hole that doesn’t lose information and yet has a smooth, uneventful event horizon without a fire wall isn’t a contradiction.
Yasunori Nomura at the University of California at Berkeleyy has independently arrived at some similar conclusions in his work. He agrees that the many-worlds approach resolves the paradox around information loss from black holes. “Many worlds should be taken seriously,” he says.
1. Which word in the article is similar in meaning to the underlined word in Paragraph 2?| A．Assumption (Paragraph 2) | B．Interpretation (Paragraph 4) |
| C．Evaporation (Paragraph 5) | D．Contradiction (Paragraph 7) |
| A．There is a firewall. | B．No observer will split. |
| C．No information is lost. | D．The wave function collapses. |
| A．introduce an independent scientist |
| B．support the many-worlds interpretation |
| C．question whether many worlds really exist |
| D．argue against the information loss from black holes |
| A．Rules of quantum mechanics. |
| B．A new understanding of the black hole. |
| C．Hawking’s interpretation of the black hole. |
| D．The development of the global wave function. |
9 . The environmental practices of big businesses are shaped by a fundamental fact that offends our sense of justice. A business may maximize the amount of money it makes by damaging the environment and hurting people. When government regulation is effective, and the public is environmentally aware, environmentally clean big businesses may out-compete dirty ones, but the reverse is likely to be true if government regulation is ineffective and the public doesn’t care.
It is easy to blame a business for helping itself by hurting other people. But blaming alone is unlikely to produce change. It ignores the fact that businesses are not charities but profit-making companies, and they are under obligation to maximize profits for shareholders by legal means.
Our blaming of businesses also ignores the ultimate responsibility of the public for creating the conditions that let a business profit through destructive environmental policies. In the long run, it is the public, either directly or through its politicians, that has the power to make such destructive policies unprofitable and illegal, and to make sustainable environmental policies profitable.
The public can do that by accusing businesses of harming them. The public may also make their opinion felt by choosing to buy sustainably harvested products; by preferring their governments to award valuable contracts to businesses with a good environmental track record; and by pressing their governments to pass and enforce laws and regulations requiring good environmental practices.
In turn, big businesses can exert powerful pressure on any suppliers that might ignore public or government pressure. For instance, after the US public became concerned about the spread of a disease, transmitted to humans through infected meat, the US government introduced rules demanding that the meat industry abandon practices associated with the risk of the disease spreading. But the meat packers refused to follow these, claiming that they would be too expensive to obey. However, when a fast-food company made the same demands after customer purchases of its hamburgers dropped, the meat industry followed immediately. The public’s task is therefore to identify which links in the supply chain are sensitive to public pressure.
Some readers may be disappointed or outraged that I place the ultimate responsibility for business practices harming the public on the public itself. I also believe that the public must accept the necessity for higher prices for products to cover the added costs of sound environmental practices. My views may seem to ignore the belief that businesses should act in accordance with moral principles even if this leads to a reduction in their profits. But I think we have to recognize that, throughout human history, government regulation has arisen precisely because it was found that not only did moral principles need to be made explicit, they also needed to be enforced.
My conclusion is not a moralistic one about who is right or wrong, admirable or selfish. I believe that changes in public attitudes are essential for changes in businesses’ environmental practices.
1. The main idea of Paragraph 3 is that environmental damage__________.| A．is the result of ignorance of the public |
| B．requires political action if it is to be stopped |
| C．can be prevented by the action of ordinary people |
| D．can only be stopped by educating business leaders |
| A．reduce their own individual impact on the environment |
| B．learn more about the impact of business on the environment |
| C．raise awareness of the effects of specific environmental disasters |
| D．influence the environmental policies of businesses and governments |
| A．Meat packers stopped supplying hamburgers to fast-food chains. |
| B．Meat packers persuaded the government to reduce their expenses. |
| C．A fast-food company forced their meat suppliers to follow the law. |
| D．A fast-food company encouraged the government to introduce regulations. |
| A．Will the world survive the threat caused by big businesses? |
| B．How can big businesses be encouraged to be less driven by profit? |
| C．What environmental dangers are caused by the greed of businesses? |
| D．Are big businesses to blame for the damage they cause to the environment? |
参考词汇：invade 侵略 unify统一 violation 违背/反 war game 军演
注意：
1．词数100左右；已经给出的开头和结尾，不计入总词数；
2．可以适当增加细节，以使行文连贯。
Dear Adam,
I’m more than glad to have heard from you. Now let me explain to you in detail.
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I’m expecting to receive your other emails.
Yours,
Li Hua
