1 . Mickey Mouse welcomed visitors to his new home in China on June 16, 2016 as Disney opened its first theme park in the country.
The park, located in the city of Shanghai, opened with fireworks.
Joe Schott, president and general manager of Shanghai Disney Resort, said, “I can promise you that there is still so much left to be revealed, and I cannot wait to share it all with you in the months and years to come.”
Tens of thousands streamed into Shanghai Disneyland for its debut(问世), an event that was nearly two decades in the making. The $ 5.5 billion resort(度假胜地) covers 963 acres, but Disney has already begun expansion.
Company officials said they tried to reflect Chinese preferences in the new park.
“We didn’t build Disneyland in China, we built China’s Disneyland,” said Bob Iger, Disney’s chairman.
There’s a traditional Chinese tea house featuring local food. The Lion King performed in Mandarin for the first time, features the Monkey King and characters dressed in Chinese opera garb(服装)to appeal to an Asian audience.
In the castle, guests not only walk through, as they do in other Disney parks, they can also eat and shop. When it was discovered that Chinese people didn’t have a favourite Disney princess, the company decided that the castle would feature all the princesses. Parks in California and France are based on the Sleeping Beauty story.
“The visitors can learn the princesses over time, and this gives them an opportunity to have an introduction to all of the princess stories,” said executive producer Ali Rubinstein.
However, China’s Disneyland sometimes are not closely related to China. Disney’s only animated film based on a Chinese story, Mulan, which tells the tale of a Chinese warrior woman, got neither its own ride nor stage show. The character appears only as a statue and afloat in the parade.
1. What’s Joe Schott’s attitude to Shanghai Disney Resort?| A．Disappointed. | B．Concerned. | C．Doubtful. | D．Confident. |
| A．They build the theme park in China. |
| B．The theme park belongs to China. |
| C．The theme park has Chinese elements. |
| D．The theme park has a long Chinese history. |
| A．Chinese people have no certain favourite Disney princess. |
| B．Chinese people don’t know any princess characters in Disney movies. |
| C．Chinese people believe “the more, the better”. |
| D．Parks in other countries are based on the Sleeping Beauty story. |
| A．To show the Chinese character of Disneyland. |
| B．To show Mulan is an important part of Chinese culture. |
| C．To show China’s Disneyland has not reflected enough Chinese culture. |
| D．To show Disneyland has too few Chinese character films. |
2 . China’s second national botanical (植物学的) garden, South China National Botanical Garden, was set up in Guangzhou on July 11th, 2022.
With a total of 319 hectares of core functional area planned, the new national botanical garden was built based on South China Botanical Garden. It spans Guangzhou and Zhaoqing, two cities in Guangdong Province.
The South China National Botanical Garden aims to strengthen the conservation, scientific research and knowledge broadcasting of tropical (热带的) and subtropical (亚热带的) plants. The garden has three research centers, two national-level field stations and three key laboratories of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. There are 17, 168 protected plants, 643 rare and endangered plants, and 337 national key wild protected plants in the garden at present.
The garden will participate in plant diversity protection both in China and the world and achieve the conservation goal of 20, 000 species. Meanwhile, it aims to play a world-leading role in collection and storage of living plants, among which 6, 000 species are economic plants.
Besides, 95 percent of rare and endangered plants in South China will be effectively protected, thus to provide plant resources for green development.
China is one of the countries in the world with the richest biodiversity, having more than 37, 000 known species of higher plants, accounting for about one tenth of the world’s total.
The South China National Botanical Garden, together with the national botanical garden in Beijing, has formed a system of collection and complete the retention of wild plant groups, which is helpful to maintain the country’s plant diversity.
1. What can be inferred about South China National Botanical Garden?| A．It is well equipped. | B．It only offers service for research. |
| C．It has become a popular scenic spot. | D．It is the largest national botanical garden. |
| A．They are dying out sharply. |
| B．Most of them will be protected well. |
| C．They will be used to improve economic development. |
| D．Most of them are transplanted to botanical gardens. |
| A．Development. | B．Comparison. | C．Preservation. | D．Improvement. |
| A．A Garden For Collecting And Studying Plants |
| B．A Novel Way To Strengthen Plant Conservation |
| C．China’s Various Environmental Protection |
| D．China’s Second National Botanical Garden |
3 . The State of Colorado has four of the best parks out of the 58 national parks in the United States. The parks have some of the best scenery of all the national parks.
Black Canyon (峡谷) of Gunnison National Park
This park offers the most breathtaking views from up in the mountains into the canyons below. While exploring the canyons, you will find that the walls drop nearly straight down into the narrow valleys of the snake-like rivers below. Visitors are offered more than 100 camping sites, and a lot of bird species and many animals are native to the area.
Rocky Mountain National Park
It is the only national park in the north central region in the state of Colorado. Elevations in this park are anywhere from 8,000 feet to 14,259 feet at the top of Longs Peak. While traveling throughout this park you will notice two very different climates because of the difference the upper peaks of the Rocky Mountains make. You can enjoy 359 miles of hiking trails, a lot of places for camping, horse-back riding and beautiful scenery.
Mesa Verde National Park
This is probably the most interesting national park, offering a fascinating trip back in time to 600 AD up to 1300 AD．This park was declared a protected national park in 1906 because of the cliff dwellings(住所) that were found throughout the area, which were once home to American Indians. Many of these dwellings can be walked through, while you imagine what each room may have been used for so many years ago.
Great Sand Dunes (沙丘) National Park
The Great Sand Dunes National Park lies in south central Colorado, about 127 miles from Pueblo. This park has the tallest sand dunes in all of North America and has trails for hiking. The natural sandy beaches around the small rivers and lakes are good for swimmers.
1. What’s the most breathtaking thing in the Black Canyon of Gunnison National Park?| A．The animals. | B．The walls. |
| C．The hiking trails. | D．The camping sites. |
| A．the Mesa Verde National Park |
| B．the Rocky Mountain National Park |
| C．the Great Sand Dunes National Park |
| D．the Black Canyon of Gunnison National Park |
| A．Telling people some traveling information in Colorado. |
| B．Persuading people to visit Colorado when in America. |
| C．Introducing the best four parks in Colorado to people. |
| D．Showing people which park is the best of the four in Colorado. |
4 . A self-driving Uber vehicle struck and killed a pedestrian in a late-night accident in Tempe, Arizona, police said on Monday. The accident is believed to be the first pedestrian death involving the technology of autonomous vehicles.
The gray SUV had an operator in the driver’s seat and was traveling at about 40 miles per hour in autonomous mode when it struck a woman who was walking across the street late Sunday night, Tempe police said. The pedestrian was rushed to a hospital, where she was pronounced dead from her injuries.
“The City of Tempe has been supportive of autonomous vehicle testing because of the innovation and promise that the technology may offer in many areas, including transportation options for disabled residents and seniors,” Tempe Mayor, Mitchell said in the statement. “Testing must occur safely. All indications we have had in the past show that traffic laws are being obeyed by the companies testing here. Our city leadership and Tempe police will pursue any and all answers to what happened in order to ensure safety moving forward.”
Self-driving cars have been praised by technology companies as the wave of the future. Autonomous cars are already being in more than 30 cities around the world, with companies investing more than $80 billion into research and development.
“Everyone recognized that someone was going to die in a crash involving an autonomous vehicle eventually,” Bryant Walker Smith, a law professor at the University of South Carolina who studies risks in automated driving systems, told NBC News. “As good as that technology tries to be, mistakes can happen, or it may be one of the small fraction of crashes. I just think everybody kind of hoped that one wouldn’t come this soon.”
Smith added that because federal and state agencies don’t have the resources to monitor individual vehicles, the responsibility for safety falls on the individual companies running the technology.
The National Transportation Safety Board announced that a four-person team has been sent to Tempe to investigate the crash.
1. Which of the following is true about the accident?| A．The woman was dead on the spot. |
| B．The accident is under investigation. |
| C．The driver was arrested for speeding. |
| D．It is the first accident caused by autonomous vehicles. |
| A．The autonomous vehicle can make transportation safer. |
| B．A large profit will be brought by the autonomous vehicles. |
| C．The autonomous vehicles will help disabled residents and seniors. |
| D．Companies invest more than $80 billion into research and development. |
| A．The driver. | B．The pedestrian. |
| C．The individual companies. | D．The federal and state agency. |
| A．Tempe is in favor of autonomous vehicle testing. |
| B．Autonomous vehicles have a lot of disadvantages. |
| C．Companies should take action to improve self-driving cars. |
| D．A self-driving Uber car caused a pedestrian’s death in Arizona. |
5 . Some scientists have traced the increase in earthquakes, especially in areas not known for the presence of fault lines or past seismic (地震的) activity, to human actions. The idea of humans causing earthquakes may seem strange at first. After all, you can run around your backyard and jump up and down as you want, and the ground isn’t going to start shaking. However, scientists have identified a variety of large scale human activities that can result in earthquakes.
Scientists have confirmed over 700 places where human activities have caused earthquakes over the last century. While many human-related earthquakes are mild and don’t cause much damage, some of them can be serious and dangerous. In fact, scientists believe human activity has caused earthquakes with magnitudes as high as 7.9 on the Richter scale.
Scientists believe most human-related earthquakes are the result of mining. As companies drill deeper and deeper below Earth’s surface to get natural resources, holes left behind can cause instability that leads to collapses that cause earthquakes. Another human activity leading to earthquakes is fracking (水力压裂) for oil and gas, including the high pressure waste water processing that usually goes with fracking. In this process, water, sand and chemicals are pressed underground under high pressure to break rocks to release natural resources.
Building large dams can also cause earthquakes. For example, about 80, 000 people died in China in 2008 as a result of a 7.9-magnitude earthquake caused by 320 million tons of water that had been collected in the Zipingpu Reservoir after a large dam was built over a known fault line.
These aren’t the only human activities that can result in earthquakes, though. Scientists point out that earthquakes can also be caused by other human activities, such as construction of skyscrapers and nuclear explosions.
1. What does the underlined part “fault lines” in Paragraph 1 refer to?| A．Regions with active human actions. | B．Places associated with natural balance. |
| C．Zones where natural resources are rich. | D．Areas where earthquakes tend to happen. |
| A．They break the balance of nature. | B．They destroy the stability of rocks. |
| C．They use high pressure to get resources. | D．They do much damage to Earth’s surface. |
| A．The 2008 earthquake is the worst in history. | B．Construction of dams should be stopped. |
| C．Tons of water must cause earthquakes. | D．The location of a dam matters much. |
| A．Nature punishes humans by means of earthquakes. | B．Progress has been made on earthquake research. |
| C．Humans are to blame for some earthquakes. | D．Earthquakes are no longer nature-made. |
6 . With the rapid development of science and technology, we don’t know how different our life will be in the future.
At first we think about human relationships. In the year 2050, we will use computers almost every day. We will be making new friends through the Internet — even our husbands or wives will be met in this way.
Computers will also help us in many other activities in 2050. For example, they will be used by the children at school to make their learning easier. In addition, there will be much more other machines which will play a similar role as computers, like robots which will do the housework for us.
We could expect that the faster technological progress would lead to a more polluted environment. But it isn’t true.
Although we can’t predict the exact changes which will be made in the world, we often think about them. We worry about our and our children’s future; we have expectations, hopes as well as fears. But I think we should be rather confident about our future.
| A．However, we are convinced of the following |
| B．We should be happy and believe good things will happen |
| C．We will pay more attention to protecting the environment |
| D．We can only imagine it |
| E．Spending holidays will also be completely different |
| F．It will be much faster and easier for us |
| G．Our environment will be more polluted |
7 . “Meet me in the conference room with the contracts and a cup of coffee,” my boss barked at me. “Ten minutes. ”
I didn’t respond. I stood still as if my shoes had been glued to the floor. I had no intention of taking a cup of anything to anyone, supervisor or not.
I had seen with my own eyes what such behavior did to a woman. It happened to Mrs. Wilson next door. Old Mr. Wilson couldn’t put in his own false teeth without his wife’s assistance, let alone make himself lunch. It was a miserable union. I vowed by age eight that I would never live like her. I adopted the motto: Don’t help those who won’t help themselves.
I rushed to the file room and pulled my phone. I explained to my father what had happened and asked his advice on what to do, only to be asked back. He must have forgotten the unwritten rule between us about not answering a question with a question. Fortunately, I came up with an idea that would have the best of both worlds.
I took up the files and headed for the coffee pot. I took two cups and made two cups of coffee. Then I walked into the boss’ office with a cup of coffee in each hand. I handed my boss a cup of coffee and drank at the same time as him.
“Let’s take a break,” partway through the meeting, my boss stood, saying. “I need more coffee.” I picked up my empty cup. “I do, too,” I said, and handed it to him across the table. “Thanks,” I added, looking at him expectantly. The boss was staggered for a moment, and then took the cup from me.
When I finally left my boss’ office, I hid in the bathroom and called my dad. My father’s laughter on the phone made me feel even prouder.
1. Why does the author mention the Wilsons?| A．To show how the couple grew old together. |
| B．To picture what she will be like when she ages. |
| C．To stress her opposition to inequality in society. |
| D．To explain her unwillingness to serve the coffee. |
| A．She meant to share instead of serving. |
| B．She planned to have the boss serve her later. |
| C．She intended to play a trick on her mean boss. |
| D．She wanted to save the trouble of doing it again. |
| A．Annoyed. | B．Shocked. | C．Confused. | D．Excited. |
| A．She figured out how to show respect for her superior. |
| B．She found it practical to seek solutions from her father. |
| C．She took a sensible approach to standing up for herself. |
| D．She considered it significant to fight against men bravely. |
8 . A star athlete at the college where I work recently stopped by my office. After committing a few unforced errors during a weekend match, she was tom apart by self-criticism. “I can’t stop beating myself up,” she told me. “I’m at peak fitness, and I practice hard. How is this happening?”
Many students I teach, like this athlete, believe that all-nighters in the library and hours on the field should get them exactly where they need to go. When they fall short of what they imagine they should accomplish, they are crushed by self-blame.
We talk often about young adults struggling with failure because their parents have protected them from discomfort. But there is something else at play among the most privileged in particular: a false promise that they can achieve anything if they are willing to work for it.
Psychologists have sourced this phenomenon to a misapplication of “mind set” research, which has found that praising children for effort will increase academic performance. But a recent analysis found that while praising effort over ability may benefit high-risk or economically disadvantaged students, it does not necessarily help everyone.
The cruel, messy reality is that you can do everything in your power and still fail. Instead of allowing our kids to beat themselves up when things don’t go their way, we should all question a culture that has taught them that feeling anything less than overwhelmed means they’re lazy, and that where they go to college matters more than the kind of person they are. It’s suggested that parents and teachers spend time helping students find purpose, or goals they genuinely love to pursue and that make an impact on the world, which may help them gain greater life satisfaction and become more psychologically mature.
The point is not to give our kids a pass on working hard. But we would be wise to remind our kids that life has a way of sucker-punching us when we least expect it. It’s often the people who learn to say “stuff happens” who get up the fastest.
1. Which sort of students does the star athlete belong to?| A．Those lacking courage to make self-criticism. |
| B．Those tired of working all night in the library. |
| C．Those believing hard work surely pay off. |
| D．Those overprotected by their parents in life. |
| A．Praising effort over ability will surely be beneficial to all kids. |
| B．The result of the “mindset” research doesn’t apply to all cases. |
| C．Parents should lay more emphasis on their kids’ academic performance. |
| D．Whether praising kids’ effort over ability does good to kids depends. |
| A．By choosing where to go to college for them. |
| B．By pushing them to fight against the cruel reality. |
| C．By discouraging them from making efforts to study hard. |
| D．By encouraging them to stick to a worthy cause they truly love. |
| A．Students should not expect too much from their study. |
| B．Students with positive attitudes can move on more easily. |
| C．Students should bear all the failures on their own. |
| D．Students are sure to succeed if they try their best. |
9 . Feeling overloaded by your to-do list can certainly make you unhappy, but new research suggests that more free time might not be the elixir many of us dream it could be.
In a new study released last week, researchers analyzed data from two large-scale (大规模) surveys about how Americans spend their time. Together, the surveys included more than 35,000 respondents. The researchers found that people with more free time generally had higher levels of subjective well-being — but only up to a point. People who had around two hours of free time a day generally reported they felt better than those who had less time. But people who had five or more hours of free time a day generally said they felt worse. So ultimately the free-time “sweet spot” might be two to three hours per day, the findings suggest.
Part of finding this seemingly tricky “sweet spot” has to do with how people spend the extra time they have, the researchers behind the new study argue. They conducted several smaller online experiments. In one they asked participants to imagine having 3.5 to 7 free hours per day. They were asked to imagine spending that time doing “productive” things (like exercising) or to imagine doing “unproductive” activities (like watching TV). Study participants believed their well-being would suffer if they had a lot of free time during the day — but only if they used it unproductively. Though that experiment was hypothetical, which is one limitation of the new research, it’s certainly in line with other research showing that being in a state of “flow” can be good for people’s mental health.
Of course, what feels “productive” is up to you. Many traditionally productive or purposeful activities can be easy and fun. Engaging in a bit of low-key cardio, like walking and jogging, can help burn stress. Free-time activities like reading or cooking are also known to put people in a state of flow.
1. What does the underlined word “elixir” in paragraph 1 refer to?| A．Magic solution. |
| B．Physical power. |
| C．Psychological test. |
| D．Relaxed atmosphere. |
| A．By doing large-scale online surveys. |
| B．By giving interviews and mental tests. |
| C．By comparing respondents’ backgrounds. |
| D．By conducting experiments and analyzing data. |
| A．Doing unproductive things leads to unhappiness. |
| B．Being in a state of flow benefits people’s mental health. |
| C．Man’s well-being is positively related to the free time they have. |
| D．How people spend their free time affects their sense of well-being. |
| A．The importance of burning stress. |
| B．Easy and fun activities to kill time. |
| C．Further explanation of being productive. |
| D．The benefits of engaging in free-time activities. |
10 . Whether you’re traveling to the next town over or to the other side of the world, careful planning goes a long way toward ensuring your trip is a success. The right preparation helps you avoid potential disasters, such as having your credit card declined or running out of clean clothes to wear.
Make your reservations for flights and accommodations. Once you’re sure of where you want to go and when you want to go, where you want to stay and how you want to get around, make your reservations. For flights, book around two months out.
Set a travel budget.
Pack appropriate clothing for your destination and trip. Check the weather at your destination 2-3 days before you depart. This will let you know what type of clothes you need to bring.
| A．In addition, consider the nature of your trip. |
| B．Obtain a visa for international destinations if necessary. |
| C．And don’t wait till the last minute for your hotels either. |
| D．All trips are meant for adventure, relaxation, and enjoyment. |
| E．Travel agents simply must charge booking fees, or they cannot stay in business. |
| F．Here are some tips on how to plan your travel well to ensure a great travel experience. |
| G．Before you do anything, you need to know how much money you will have for this trip. |
