1 . Once upon a time, a daughter complained to her father that her senior high school life was unhappy and that she was tired of struggling with homework all the time.
Her father, a chef, took her to the kitchen. He filled three pots with water and placed each on a high fire. Once the three pots began to boil, h placed potatoes, eggs and coffee beans in them. After 20 minutes, he took them out, putting the potatoes and eggs in a bowl and the coffee in a cup.
Turning to his daughter, he said, “Look closer, and touch the potatoes.” She did and noted that they were soft. He then asked her to take an egg and break it. After puling off the shell, she observed the hard-boiled egg. Finally, he asked her to taste the coffee. Its good smell brought a smile to her face.
“Father, what does this mean?” she asked. He then explained that the potatoes, the eggs and the coffee beans were in the same adversity (逆境)—the boiling water. However, each one reacted differently.
The strong and hard potato became soft and weak in boiling water. The egg was fragile, with the thin outer shell protecting its liquid until it was put in the boiling water. Then the inside of the egg became hard. However, the coffee beans were unique. After they were exposed to the boiling water, they changed the water and created something new. “Which one do you want to be like,” he asked. “When adversity knocks on your door, how will you respond?”
In life, challenges happen to us all, but the only thing that truly matters is what happens within us.
1. Why did the girl complain to her father?| A．Because of her tiring job. | B．Because of her hard school life. |
| C．Because of her father’ s busy work. | D．Because of the food her father cooked. |
| A．The girl liked the coffee best. |
| B．The father was good at cooking. |
| C．Different people have different reactions to adversity. |
| D．The girl didn’t like the potatoes and eggs. |
| A．thick | B．hard | C．strong | D．easily-broken |
| A．Challenges and responses. | B．Adversities and a chef. |
| C．A chef and coffee beans. | D．Father and daughter. |
2 . Five years ago, Chinese skater Wu Dajing introduced himself to the skating world by winning a silver medal at the Sochi Olympic Winter Games. At Pyeong Chang Olympics, Wu not only returned, but also made history.
On Feb 22th, 2018, Wu won the gold medal in the men’s short-track 500-metre race. He set a new world record with a time of 39.584 seconds. He also became the first Chinese man to take home an Olympic short-track gold medal. BBC said Wu’s win was “flawless”, because he was much faster than all of the other skaters.
“I didn’t give them a chance and I kept my speed from the start,” he told the media after the match.
But China’s short-track teams didn’t do well in general at the Games. Chinese skaters in the women’s 500 metres, 3000-metre relay and men’s 1500 metres all failed to take home the gold. Wu was China’s biggest hope, which put a lot of pressure on him. But he proved himself with his great performance.
Wu is now known as a highly talented skater. But things were not always that way. When Wu joined the national team in 2010, he was seen as almost “nothing” compared to gifted skaters like Zhou Yang and Fan Kexin, as his coaches said at the time. Their comments made him quite upset. But as the saying goes. “Winners never quit (放弃) and quitters never win”. Wu didn’t want to give up and worked as hard as he could. He practiced skating all year round. He even didn’t return to his hometown for the holidays for 10 years. “I believe in myself.” he told the media after his match at the Olympics.
1. People began to know Wu Dajing by the time he .| A．won the second place at the Sochi Olympic Winter Games |
| B．won a gold medal at the Sochi Olympic Winter Games |
| C．won a gold medal at Pycong Chang Olympic Winter Games |
| D．entered the Pycong Chang Olympic Winter Games |
| A．common | B．valuable | C．perfect | D．difficult |
| A．Wu won a gold medal at the Sochi Olympic Winter Games four years ago. |
| B．Wu broke the world record with a time of 39.584 seconds and made history. |
| C．Wu’s coaches placed great hope on him when he joined the national team. |
| D．Chinese skaters in women’s 500 metres, 3000-metre relay took home the gold. |
| A．The national team and coaches thought Wu as a talented skater all the way. |
| B．Wu kept on practicing skating all year round even in the holidays for 10 years. |
| C．Zhou Yang and Fan Kexin were more hard-working on skating than Wu Dajing. |
| D．It is the hardwork, confidence and strong will that have made Wu a winner. |
3 . Here come four most popular clubs in our school! Join us, and we will help you to find your own shining points, lead you to find beauty and to create beauty, and make your campus life as fulfilling and happy as a dream.
Basketball Club
Students will be able to develop their basketball skills further and have the opportunity to compete in basketball games with members from other international schools in Beijing. The club will be available to 10-16 members from Grades 5 to 8, and will practice twice weekly.
Public Speaking Club
The Public Speaking Club will be centered around the personal development of students along with developing public speaking skills. The club will be interested in focusing on all skills in delivering better speeches and improving communication skills. The club will be available to 10-12 members from Grades 7 to 12, and will meet once weekly (Wednesday).
Yoga Club
Yoga not only improves balance, flexibility, and joint stability, but also serves as a peaceful escape from the stress of daily life. Our students will have the chance to physically exercise while reducing some stress from their life. The club will be available to 10-16 members from Grades 7 to 12, and will meet once weekly (Tuesday).
Media Club
The Media Club teaches students the basics of journalism. The club engages in a wide range of activities like interviewing teachers and students, writing about big events on campus, and operating the weekly school radio broadcasts. The club will be available to 8-12 members from Grades 6 to 12 and will meet once weekly (Monday).
1. Which club will attract students who want to get both mental and physical benefits?| A．Basketball Club. | B．Public Speaking Club. | C．Yoga Club. | D．Media Club. |
| A．Set up a school radio. | B．Write imaginary stories. |
| C．Learn public speaking skills. | D．Interview teachers and students. |
| A．In a school introduction. | B．In a research paper. |
| C．In a history textbook. | D．In a guidebook. |
4 . This year’s Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine has been awarded to Tu Youyou (co-winner), whose research led to the discovery of artemisinin, a crucial new treatment for malaria. Artemisinin has saved hundreds of thousands of lives, and has led to improved health for millions of people. Over 200 million people around the world get malaria each year, and about 600,000 die from it. Artemisinin has become a vital part of the treatment for malaria, and is thought to save 100,000 lives a year in Africa alone.
Tu Youyou, a committed and patient scientist, was born in Ningbo, China, on 30 December 1930, and graduated from Peking University Medical School in 1955. After she graduated, she worked at the China Academy of Traditional Chinese Medicine in Beijing. In 1967, the Chinese government formed a team of scientists with the objective of discovering a new treatment for malaria, and Tu Youyou was among the first researchers chosen. In the beginning, Tu Youyou went to Hainan, where malaria was more common, to study malaria patients. In 1969, she became the head of the project in Beijing, and decided to review ancient Chinese medical texts to find traditional botanical treatments for the disease. Her team examined over 2, 000 old medical texts, and evaluated 280, 000 plants for their medical properties. From their research, they discovered and tested 380 distinct ancient Chinese medical treatments that showed promise in the fight against malaria.
One medical text from the fourth century suggested using the extract from sweet wormwood to treat a fever. Tu’s team tested a collection of dried wormwood leaves but found no effect. They then tried boiling fresh wormwood, and using the liquid obtained from this to treat malaria, but this did not work either. Their project got stuck. However, Tu Youyou would not acknowledge defeat. She analysed the medical texts again, and by chance, she found one sentence suggesting a different way to treat the wormwood. She concluded that boiling the sweet wormwood apparently destroyed its medical properties. Using a lower temperature to draw out the extract, she found a substance that worked. After failing more than 190 times, the team finally succeeded in 1971. Tu Youyou and her team members even insisted on testing the medicine on themselves to make sure that it was safe. Later, the medicine was tested on malaria patients, most of whom recovered. This medicine, which was called artemisinin, soon became a standard treatment for malaria.
According to Tu Youyou, the discovery of artemisinin was a team effort. Upon hearing that she had been awarded the Nobel Prize, she said, “The honour is not just mine. There is a team behind me, and all the people of my country. This success proves the great value of traditional Chinese medicine. It is indeed an honour for China’s scientific research and Chinese medicine to be spread around the world.”
1. Which of the following statements about artemisinin is NOT true according to the passage?| A．It is an extract from sweet wormwood that can treat malaria. |
| B．It has improved people’s health. |
| C．It is a great discovery. |
| D．It has saved 100,000 lives a year in the world. |
| A．Determined. | B．Bold and brave. | C．Easy-going. | D．Polite. |
| A．How was artemisinin discovered and tested to treat malaria? |
| B．What contributions did Tu Youyou and her team members make? |
| C．What was the childhood experience of Tu Youyou? |
| D．Why did Tu Youyou decide to use the extract from sweet wormwood to treat malaria? |
| A．It is the effort of the whole team and traditional Chinese medicine. |
| B．It belongs to her hard work. |
| C．It turns out to be the great luck of her and her team. |
| D．It depends on the big support from the government. |
5 . Carbon dioxide emissions from transportation are now thought as the top source of green-house gases. One of the most effective ways to reduce your carbon footprint is to reconsider how much, and how often, you travel.
Going car free for a year could save about 2. 6 tons of carbon dioxide, according to a study from the University of British Columbia. How can you stop using a car? Try taking a train, bus or better yet, riding a bike.
But let’s be realistic. You will likely need to use a car this year. So, when you do, here are some tips to make your trip more climate-friendly. Driving efficiently can help to reduce emissions. Go easy on the gas and brakes and drive like you have an egg under your foot. Regularly service your car to keep it more efficient. Keeping your tires pumped correctly can re-duce emissions. Low tire pressure will hurt your fuel economy. Air conditioning and frequent city driving can make emissions go up. So cut down on these as often as possible. Use cruise control (定速巡航) on long drives-in most cases, this can help to save gas. Don’t weigh your car down with extra things that you don’t need on your trip.
Fly often? Taking one fewer long round-trip flight could reduce your personal carbon footprint significantly. If you use public transportation often and fly less, your carbon foot-print might still be relatively sustainable, but if you drive and fly a lot, your emissions will be sigher. If you can’t avoid flying, you can offset them by donating money to sustainable proacts, such as supplying efficient stoves to rural homes, or projects which help farmers deal with crop waste environmentally.
1. What does the author think of going car free?| A．Efficient. | B．Costly. | C．Impractical. | D．Reliable. |
| A．Maintaining your car properly. | B．Using cruise control in the city. |
| C．Stepping hard on the gas and brakes. | D．Geiting rid of all the necessary loads. |
| A．Make up for. | B．Team up with. | C．Set foot in. | D．Put up with. |
| A．How to save fuel when driving cars | B．How to reduce your carbon footprint |
| C．Reduce carbon footprint by all means | D．Lower carbon footprint in transportation |
6 . When you set a foot outside of your door to drop trash, go to a social event or go for a walk, thoughts like “I hope I don’t see anyone I know” or “please don’t talk to me” may run through your mind. I’ve also said such things to myself. Sometimes the last thing you want to do is to talk with someone, especially someone new.
Why do we go out of our ways to avoid people? Do we think meeting new people is a waste of time? Or are we just lazy, thinking that meeting someone new really is a trouble?
Communication is the key to life. We have been told that many times. Take the past generations, like our parents, for example. They seem to take full advantage of that whole “communication” idea because they grew up talking face to face while Generation-Y grew up staring at screens. We spend hours of our days sitting on Facebook. We send messages to our friends and think about all of the things we want to say to certain people that we don’t have the courage to do in reality.
Nowadays, we are so caught up in our little circle of friends—our comfort zone. We love it that they laugh at our jokes, understand our feelings and can read our minds. Most importantly, they know when we want to be alone. They just get us.
Holding a conversation with someone new means agreeing with things that you don’t really believe and being someone you think they want you to be—it is, as I said before, a trouble. It takes up so much energy, and at some point or another, it is too tiring.
But meeting new people is important. Life is too short, so meet all the people you can meet, make the effort to go out and laugh. Remember, every “hello” leads to a smile—and a smile is worth a lot.
1. What do we learn about the author?| A．He likes to meet someone new. | B．He feels stressed out lately. |
| C．He’s active in attending social events. | D．He used to be afraid of talking to others. |
| A．They rely on the Internet to socialize. | B．They are less confident in themselves. |
| C．They have difficulty in communicating. | D．They are unwilling to make new friends. |
| A．They think it troublesome. | B．They are busy with their study. |
| C．They fear to disappoint their friends. | D．They want to do meaningful work. |
| A．To stress the importance of friends. |
| B．To give tips on how to meet new people. |
| C．To encourage people to meet new people. |
| D．To display the disadvantages of Generation-Y. |
7 . I am sitting at the table in my favorite Boston bookstore-café, laptop open, writing. Ten minutes ago I ordered coffee. The server—a young, dark-haired woman with a broad smile and glasses—stopped and quietly said, “I just want to tell you how much your TED talk meant to me, you helped me find out what I really wanted to do with my life—go to medical school—and then you helped me do what I needed to do to get there. Thank you.”
Tears in my eyes, I asked, “What’s your name?”
“Fetaine,” she said. Then we talked for the next ten minutes about Fetaine’s challenges in the past and new-found excitement about her future.
Everyone who communicates with me is special and memorable, but this kind of communication happens far more often than I’d ever have expected: a stranger warmly greets me, shares a personal story about how they successfully dealt with difficulties, and then simply thanks me for my part in it. They are women and men, old and young, poor and wealthy. But something connects them: all have felt powerless in the face of great pressure and anxiety(焦虑), and all discovered a quite simple way to free themselves from that feeling of powerlessness.
For most writers, the book comes first, then the responses. For me, it was the other way around. First, I performed experiments that led to a talk I gave at the TEDGlobal conference in 2012. In that talk, I discussed some interesting findings about how we can quickly increase our confidence and decrease(减轻) our anxiety in challenging situations. I also shared my own troubles and how I learned to become more confident. Soon after the twenty-one-minute video of the talk was posted on the Internet, I began hearing from people who had seen it.
Of course, watching my talk didn’t magically give Fetaine the knowledge she needed to do well on Medical College Admission Test. But it may have helped her get out of the fear that could have prevented her from expressing the things she knew.
1. What happened in the Boston bookstore-café?| A．The writer waited ten minutes for her coffee. |
| B．The writer came across a friend of hers. |
| C．A waitress expressed her thanks to the writer. |
| D．A waitress encouraged the writer to give a TED talk. |
| A．They once faced problems and felt helpless. |
| B．They shared personal stories about strangers. |
| C．They were famous but under great pressure. |
| D．They were afraid to communicate with others. |
| A．How to increase confidence. | B．How to perform meaningful experiments. |
| C．How to overcome anxiety in a talk. | D．How to find interesting things in life. |
| A．She gave Fetaine power to look to the future. |
| B．She helped Fetaine with her knowledge. |
| C．She advised Fetaine to go to medical school. |
| D．She helped Fetaine to get a good job. |
8 . At eleven, I decided to learn to swim. There was a pool at the YMCA offering exactly the opportunity. My mother continually warned against it, and kept fresh in my mind the details of each drowning in the river. But the YMCA pool was safe.
I had a childhood fear of water. This started when I was three years old and my father took me to the beach.The huge waves knocked me down and swept over me.
The pool was quiet. I was afraid of going in all alone, so I sat on one side of the pool to wait for others. Then came a big boy. He yelled, “Hi, how’d you like to be ducked?” With that he picked me up and threw me into the deep end.I landed in a sitting position, and swallowed water. But I was not frightened out of my wits—when my feet hit the bottom, I would make a big jump to come out of the surface. It seemed a long way down. I gathered all my strength when I landed and made what I thought was a great spring upwards. Then I opened my eyes and saw nothing but water. I tried to yell but no sound came out. I went down, down, endlessly.
When I came to consciousness, I found myself lying on the bed in the hospital.
I never went back to the pool. I avoided water whenever I could. This misadventure stayed with me as the years rolled by.It deprived(剥夺) me of the joy of boating and swimming. Finally, I decided to get an instructor. Piece by piece, he built a swimmer. Several months later, the instructor was finished, but I was not .Sometimes the terror would return.
This went on until July. I swam across the Lake Went worth.Only once did the terror return. When I was in the middle of the lake, I put my face under and saw nothing but bottomless water. I laughed and said, “Well, Mr Terror, what do you think you can do to me?” I had conquered my fear of water.
1. What was the author’s original fear of water caused by?| A．His poor skill in swimming. |
| B．His mother’s warning of drowning. |
| C．An outing to the beach with his father. |
| D．An unpleasant memory of the pool. |
| A．He knew how to swim in the pool. |
| B．He felt that the YMCA pool was safe. |
| C．He was waiting for others to save him. |
| D．He came up with an idea to go upwards. |
| A．He was still a poor swimmer. |
| B．He had not overcome the fear yet. |
| C．He was not afraid of drowning any more. |
| D．He was not satisfied with the swimming training. |
| A．Goodbye,Mr Terror |
| B．Hello,Childhood Fear |
| C．A Swimming Adventure |
| D．My Passion for Swimming |
9 . A crowd cheered Kunle Adeyanju as he turned off his motorbike engine after completing a tiring 41-day trip. The 44-year-old left London on April 19 and arrived in Nigeria’s commercial center Lagos on Sunday after travelling more than 8, 000 miles across 13 countries. He started the impressive journey to raise funds for Rotary International to deal with polio(小儿麻痹症）in his native Nigeria.
Accompanied by a dozen bikers for the last stretch of the journey from the Republic of Benin , Adeyanju was welcomed by supporters in Ikeja, in central Lagos. Adeyanju, called “Lion Heart” by fans won popularity among the public by posting daily pictures with comments about his journey on social media. At every stop along the way, he was greeted by enthusiastic supporters.
He did face some challenges, like the one in Mali where one of his wheels broke. “I was standing in the middle of the night, alone in a bush, not knowing what to do,without speaking the language,”he said, explaining he had to walk to the nearest village.“Fortunately, the locals helped me. ”Not all of the challenges he faced were solved smoothly.“Mauritania, a country in northwest Africa, was ‘terrible’, ” he said, after he got robbed of hundreds of euros. “The worst experience,” he added.
The former Shell employee self-funded his trip with $ 20, 400 in savings,hoping to raise up to $ 48million for Rotary International. “I have been suffering from a lack of sleep lately because I slept only three to four hours per night. But I feel proud because I finished this challenge,” Adeyanju said just after he arrived, wiping the sweat off his face. Adeyanju added that he is now planning to have a possible cycling trip to Ghana or a bike ride to Israel to help raise more funds. And he has another dream: to climb Mount Qomolangma.
1. Why did Adeyanju go on the 41-day trip?| A．To challenge himself. | B．To help fight polio. |
| C．To connect with more people. | D．To advertise Rotary International. |
| A．By using the title “Lion Heart”. | B．By commenting on other bikers’ journeys. |
| C．By sharing his experiences online. | D．By showing his deep love for his hometown. |
| A．His getting lost in the bush. | B．His failing to understand the locals. |
| C．His meeting with crime. | D．His motorbike’s breaking down. |
| A．Caring and determined. | B．Generous and sensitive. |
| C．Reliable and enthusiastic. | D．Adventurous and confident. |
10 . Traditional tea processing techniques and social practices in China were added to UNESCO’s Intangible Cultural Heritage List (非物质文化遗产名录) on November 29. China now ranks first in the world with 43 items on the list.
In China, there are 44 registered items of national intangible cultural heritage related to tea. More than 40 vocational (职业的) colleges and 80 universities in China offer majors in tea science or tea culture.
Tea is everywhere in Chinese people’s daily life. You can find it at home, work, tea houses, restaurants, temples and even at social events like weddings or ceremonies.
Tea has delighted and fascinated the world for many thousands of years. It is a shared cultural treasure of mankind.
| A．It’s a big part of Chinese culture. |
| B．The techniques are related to many ways. |
| C．Tea was eventually spread to the west and beyond. |
| D．Most tea grows between 18°—37° N and 94°—122°. |
| E．E. Tea- related customs reflect Chinese people’s values. |
| F．Experts explored the long history of this universal drink. |
| G．Every year over 3,000 graduates enter tea production and art. |
